Beth, bless her sensible, substitute-teacher’s heart, had plenty of experience dealing with incipient panic.
“No, we’re not. Didn’t you feel the engine slowing? We must be at the research station.”
Mia clutched that straw with the same desperate eagerness as the other woman. Still, her heart stayed in the middle of her throat while the crewman at the helm reversed thrust and backed off, then nudged the throttle forward again.
“Prepare to disembark,” the officer in charge shouted over the shrieking wind.
The passengers waited anxiously until another crew member put his shoulder to the hatch. Wind and sleet instantly poured in. Eyes watered. Smiles froze in place. Yet nothing could dampen their ecstatic relief as they inched toward the steps.
“Careful,” the ship’s officer cautioned. “Wait for the next swell!”
Ski-masked and goggled faces loomed above the open hatch. Gloved hands reached down. One by one, rescuers grabbed the passengers’ upraised arms and hauled them bodily from the wildly heaving lifeboat.
Beth and Mia helped the other passengers to the hatch. They were younger than most of their fellow travelers by several decades. When they’d booked the cruise, they hadn’t known they’d chosen a line that catered mostly to retirees. In retrospect they should have realized most people their own age would have to beg or cajole or threaten to quit to get two weeks’ vacation time so soon after the Christmas holidays.
Not that Mia had minded the age disparity on board the Adventurer. She’d sworn off men anywhere near her own age for the foreseeable future.
Refusing to think about the jerk who’d propelled her into this insane outing, she and Beth helped the others up the steps to the hatch until—finally!—it was their turn. A pair of gloved hands reached down for Beth. Her legs flailed, scissoring in the frigid air. When she swooped upward and disappeared into the gray sleet, the harried ship’s officer beckoned Mia forward.
“Your turn.”
Braced by two of the Adventurer’s crew, blinded by the stinging sleet, she groped for another pair of outstretched arms. An iron grip banded her wrists.
“I’ve got you.”
He’d better have her!
Mia had time for that one, wild thought before she was hauled up and onto an icy dock. Staggering, she would have fallen back through the hatch if not for the brutal grip on her wrists.
“Hold on.”
Her rescuer yanked her forward and anchored her with an arm around her waist. Gulping, she breathed in needle-sharp ice crystals and the rubbery tang of his orange parka.
“That’s the last of them,” the ship’s officer shouted behind her. “We’ll secure the boat.”
“Roger that! I’ll take this one to the station.”
Head down, her body angled against the waterproofed parka, Mia stumbled along the slippery pier with her rescuer. A gasp of relief rose in her throat when she touched solid rock, only to spiral into a yelp when her sneakers almost went out from under her.
“Careful,” a deep voice growled in her ear. The arm around her waist tightened, cutting off what little breath she had left. “The lichen’s slippery.”
“What was your first clue, Sherlock?”
Oh, crap! The wind had to die for a second or two at that precise moment. She tipped her head, hoping her rescuer hadn’t picked up her sarcasm.
No such luck. She was almost certain she caught a smile in a pair of seriously blue eyes shielded behind ice-encrusted goggles.
“Actually,” he replied, bending close to her ear, “the name’s Walker. Brent Walker.”
“Nice to…meet…you,” she got out through teeth that clattered like marbles in a tin can.
Walker-Brent-Walker yanked at the zipper on his parka, whipped open one flap and tucked Mia under his arm. Warmth flooded her. The sensation was instant and so welcome she decided to ignore his distinctly uncomplimentary editorial about tourists who traipse down to the end of the world in tennis shoes and lightweight windbreakers.
Nested against him like a penguin chick tucked under its parent’s wing, she scrabbled over the slippery rocks to a set of wooden stairs. At the top of the stairs he steered her toward a narrow walkway.
“Welcome to Palmer Station.”
She peeked out from under the flap of his parka, eager for a glimpse of shelter. She’d done some reading on Antarctica prior to boarding the Adventurer. Not much, admittedly. Like Beth, she’d been far more interested in the portion of the cruise itinerary that included Rio’s fabulous beaches and Buenos Aires’ sultry tango bars.
Still, she’d read enough to know at least ten or fifteen countries maintained permanent research stations on the White Continent. One of those stations housed over a thousand people during the polar summer.
This obviously wasn’t it!
Her stomach plunging, Mia saw only a handful of blue metal buildings huddled together on the rocky shoreline. Two were midsize structures, the rest hardly more than sheds or shacks.
“How…? How many…people live here?” she stuttered through numb lips.
“Forty-two this summer. About ten of us will winter over.”
Forty-two plus three hundred stranded tourists plus another hundred or so crew members? Mia lurched along the wooden pathway with Walker-Brent-Walker, wondering how in the world they’d pack everyone inside.
Very closely, she discovered when he steered her into the closest of the two large buildings. She found herself in a foyer facing a solid rack of orange. Waterproof parkas and pants like the one Walker wore jammed the rack and dripped onto the linoleum. While her rescuer shrugged out of his goggles, gloves and parka, Mia scanned the jam-packed hallway beyond the foyer.
Still-shaken tourists huddled in the corridor and in the labs and offices leading off it. Officers and crew members from the Adventurer roamed among them. Clipboards in hand, they checked names against passenger lists. People Mia assumed were station regulars also circulated, passing out mugs of steaming coffee and chocolate.
The scent of hot, foamy chocolate almost made her weep. But another glance around the hall drove everything except Beth from her mind.
“My sister,” she said worriedly. “She came off the lifeboat right before I did, but I don’t see her here.”
“She may be in one of the labs,” Walker replied, dragging off the black knit watch cap he’d worn under his parka hood. “Or upstairs, in the dining room or berthing area.”
Mia nodded, taking her first good look at the man. Her initial thought was that no male should be allowed such a dangerous combination of tawny hair, electric-blue eyes and strong, square chin. Her second, that she’d been taken in once by a man who ranked several notches higher on the stud scale than this one. Smarmy, smut-sucking Don Juan had totally immunized her against world-class hotties like Brent Walker.
Which didn’t explain the frisson that raced over her thawing skin when he took her elbow and steered her into the hall.
“We’ll find your sister. But first…” He raised his free hand and caught the attention of a fellow station member toting a tray of steaming mugs. “Hey, Jill! We could use a couple of those.”
“You got ’em.”
The woman passed over two mugs of hot chocolate. She looked to be in her late thirties with an easy smile and a headful of curly red hair. Walker introduced her as Dr. Jill Anderson, a marine biologist who’d racked up more than two hundred dives during her three Antarctic summers and one winter.
“That’s how we categorize folks here on the ice,” the biologist said as Mia gulped down a swallow of the life-restoring chocolate. “You’ve got your fingees. Loosely translated those are, ah, friggin’ new guys. Then those with one summer under their belt. Then multiple summers. First winter-over. Multiple winter-overs. First trip to the pole. And…Well, you get the picture.”
“I think so.”
With a friendly nod, the biologist moved to supply another stranded tourist, and Walker steered Mia down the crowded corri
dor.
“So which category do you fall into?” she asked, peering into each office and lab they passed in search of Beth.
“This is my second summer. Also my second winter. Normally we rotate off the ice after each season, but I’m staying over this time.”
One taste of Antarctica—winter or summer—was more than enough for Mia. She couldn’t imagine volunteering to stay through a long, perpetually dark winter on this isolated outcropping of rock and ice.
“What do you do here?” she asked as they approached a flight of stairs.
Before he could answer, the radio clipped to his belt crackled.
“This is Janie, Brent.”
Walker unclipped the radio and keyed the mike. “Go ahead, Janie.”
“We just completed a head count. We’ve got one hundred two pax, seventeen crew over here in GWR.”
“Roger that. I’ll get a count here at the BioLab and get back to you.”
He hooked the radio back on his belt just as a glad shout rang out from above their heads.
“Hey, sis! Up here!”
Mia tilted her head back and spotted her sister leaning over a railing two stories above.
“They’ve got showers,” Beth called down joyously. “Hot showers! Hurry up before the line gets too long.”
She swung toward Walker, who nodded. “Go ahead.”
When he accompanied the nod with a smile that crinkled the weathered skin at the corners of his eyes, Mia swallowed. Hard.
Oh, boy! Ohboyohboyohboy! Good thing she’d sworn off the male of the species. This particular specimen packed more firepower into a grin than any other she’d come across in a long time. Including jerk-off Don Juan.
“You’d better grab a shower while you can,” he told her. “I have to get to the communications room to check on the ships diverting to Palmer to pick you all up.”
“Hang on a sec.”
That came from the heavy-set male descending the stairs directly ahead of them. A faded University of Wisconsin sweatshirt encased his bulky torso and a bushy brown beard covered his cheeks and chin.
“I need your name for our station log,” he told Mia, his pen poised over a clipboard.
“Mia Harrelson.”
He scribbled the information and nodded. “Harrelson. Got it.”
She started past him. Head cocked, he stopped her.
“You sure look familiar. Have we met? Maybe at a conference or something?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You’re not in the biospheric measurement field, are you?”
“Not even close. I edit middle school history and social sciences textbooks.”
“Hmm.” He leaned closer, scrutinizing her face. “I could swear we’ve bumped into each other somewhere. Did you go to UW?”
Dread settled like an icy lump in Mia’s stomach and chilled the insides barely thawed out by the hot chocolate. Praying her all-too-recent past hadn’t caught up with her, she shook her head.
“Nope. The University of Rhode Island. ’Scuse me.”
Walker added his voice to hers. “Stand aside, Allen. The lady needs out of those damp clothes.”
“Oh. Sure. Sorry.”
Mia brushed past him and hurried up the stairs. Just as she hit the second-floor landing she caught the tail end of a startled exclamation.
“Omigod! Brent, that’s her!”
“Her who?”
“Number 112!”
CHAPTER TWO
“NO WAY!”
Brent’s gaze flew to the woman on the second-floor landing. The dismayed glance she zinged over her shoulder confirmed her ID even before Allen did.
“It’s her,” the meteorologist insisted as the passenger disappeared around the corner. “Same green eyes. Same jet-black hair.”
He lowered his voice so it wouldn’t carry to the cruise passengers milling nearby and waggled his brows.
“Whatdaya wanna bet Ms. Harrelson’s got a sweet little dimple on her left butt cheek?”
That produced several immediate reactions in Brent. Not the least of which was the memory of Ms. Harrelson’s left butt cheek pressed against his thigh all the way up from the dock.
“Number 112,” Allen chortled gleefully. “Here at Palmer, of all places. Who wudda thunk it?”
Certainly not Brent.
He hadn’t followed Don Juan’s salacious blog all that closely. He didn’t have to. Allen and a couple of other guys at the station checked the Web site regularly for updates. Their hooting and whooping when a new entry went online alerted anyone who might be interested to saunter by for a look.
Brent was no monk. He’d done his share of sauntering. But Don Juan’s gallery of good-time girls just didn’t do it for him.
Probably because his ex-fiancée fit right into that category. She’d explained all in her e-mail just weeks before Brent was due home after his first summer on the ice. She’d gotten bored sitting around waiting for him. So she’d gone out. Had a little fun. Met someone else. Several someones, he’d learned later.
Ironic really, since Linda was the one who’d pushed him to resign his air force commission and take a job with the civilian agency that managed all U.S. facilities in the Antarctic. Once he got some polar experience under his belt, she’d argued, he could work a management position with the company right there in Denver.
Thankfully, the thrill of living and working where few others had ever ventured and the close camaraderie of the scientists and support personnel on the ice helped ease the sting of Linda’s defection. So much so that Brent had come back for a second summer when offered the job as station manager.
A Colorado native, he’d grown up on skis and snowmobiles. After earning his USAF pilot’s wings, he’d breezed through the Arctic portion of SERE—Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape—training conducted at Eielson AFB, Alaska. Designed to help downed aircrew members survive in an arctic environment, the course taught lifesaving techniques that included methods of constructing thermal shelters and ways to build fires from unlikely materials.
But nothing in Colorado or Alaska could compare to Antarctica. Like so many others before him, Brent had fallen under the spell of the sometimes harsh, often unforgiving, but always fascinating White Continent. He also thoroughly enjoyed the challenges of his job.
As operations manager, he was responsible for the safety and welfare of every person at Palmer. That involved direct supervision of the support staff and close coordination with the senior scientist on station to ride herd on the other researchers. No easy task given the diversity of their research projects and often unique support requirements. The scientists kept Brent’s carpentry, power plant, materials, medical, communications, food service and boat dock personnel jumping.
Now he had a station full of stranded tourists to add to the mix…including Number 112.
Shoving the mental image of a seductive, nearly nude Mia Harrelson to the back of his mind, he told Allen, “I talked to Janie in GWR a few moments ago. She gave me her count.”
“Yeah, she contacted me, too. With her tally and mine, I make the total at two hundred eight passengers, thirty-five crew.”
That tracked with Brent’s mental count. He knew from monitoring the Adventurer’s distress calls that a Ukrainian resupply ship en route to Vernadsky Station had picked up the remaining passengers and crew.
Now all he had to do was engineer the return to civilization of those stranded at Palmer. Just their luck the reinforced-hull scientific research vessel that supplied the station had already made its January run and was back at its home port in Argentina. They’d have to rely on the other ships in the area to pick them up. With that in mind, Brent mounted the stairs to the second floor and made for the communications room.
His comm tech sat surrounded by the racks of equipment that included both low and high frequency radios for short- and long-range communications, as well as a full spectrum of satellite voice and data uplinks. Hovering at his side was an anxious officer fro
m the Adventurer. After introducing himself to the officer, Brent peered at the satellite monitor.
“What’s the latest, Jack?”
The thin, wiry comm tech tapped a yellow blip on the monitor. “This is the Chilean navy cruiser that was out on a training mission. They’ve diverted to Palmer and can take seventy souls on board.”
“ETA?”
“Three hours, twenty minutes.” He tapped a second yellow blip. “Next closest is the Sea Lion.”
Brent smothered a curse. Another cruise ship. Too big to dock at the station. They’d have to ferry the remaining passengers out to her.
“She was down peninsula at Trump Island. She’s coming about but her skipper radioed that he’s worried about the ice buildup.”
SO WAS BRENT.
He watched it carefully while he coordinated relief activities between the station’s two main buildings. As its name implied, the BioLab housed biological laboratories on the first floor. The comm center, admin offices, storage areas, kitchen and dining room were on the second. The third provided coed living areas.
A wooden walkway connected the BioLab to the Garage/Warehouse/Recreation Building. The GWR contained the power plant, additional storage, the library, a workout room, a lounge and additional, open-bay berthing.
Both buildings were now full to overflowing with stranded tourists. They took turns using the station’s communications media to let folks at home know they were safe, then lined up for hot showers and wrapped themselves in blankets or borrowed gear while their wet clothes tumbled in the dryers. The doc kept a close eye on several individuals with known heart conditions, and the station’s two cooks were scrambling to prepare hot meals.
When Brent swung by the kitchen for an infusion of hot coffee before going back outside, he discovered Mia Harrelson and her sister had volunteered to bus tables between waves of hungry diners. Mia glanced over at his entrance and immediately colored up. Red staining her cheeks, she bent to attack a table with a damp cloth.
Well, Brent thought wryly, that reconfirmed her alter ego as Number 112. He found her reaction interesting, though. He would have thought a fun-loving party girl who let herself become the subject of those kind of photos would enjoy the notoriety they brought her.
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