While she blushed and swiped furiously, he introduced himself to her sister. “You must be Beth Harrelson. I’m Brent Walker, station manager here at Palmer.”
“Hi, Brent. Thanks for taking us in.”
She was shorter than her sister. Maybe five-four to Mia’s willowy five-six or-seven. Both women had shoulder-length black hair, but Beth’s was a wild mass of curls while Mia’s was smooth and slick from her shower. Almost begging for a man to run his fingers through it.
Well, hell! He was as bad as Allen. Slamming the door on that thought, Brent smiled at Beth.
“I see you’ve been introduced to gash.”
“Gash? I don’t…Oh, you mean cleanup duty. Yes, one of your people explained that you all take turns cleaning up the dining area and kitchen after meals. My sister and I figured that was the least we could do in exchange for your hospitality.”
“Do either of you need anything?” he asked.
“No, thanks. Everyone’s been terrific about raiding their closets and supply store. Haven’t they, Mia?”
Her sister had to raise her head and look at Brent then. “Uh-huh.”
Yep. No doubt about it. She was definitely 112.
And if the punch to Brent’s gut was any indication, it was a good thing she would be departing Palmer in a few hours.
OR NOT.
The situation looked decidedly grim when he bundled up and fought his way down to the boathouse. Neither he nor his boat manager liked the look of the ice piling up against the dock. Known as grease ice, the soupy layer could coagulate quickly to form a barrier impenetrable by anything other than ships with reinforced hulls.
Brent kept a wary eye on buildup until the Chilean navy cruiser arrived. He and his crew helped hustle the allotted seventy passengers aboard. They then held their collective breath until the Sea Lion radioed it was standing off shore and awaiting transfer of the rest.
Working with the crew of the Adventurer, they shepherded the next group of distinctly nervous passengers into a lifeboat. A second lifeboat followed shortly after the first, and both returned for another load. By then the ice had thickened so much the coxswains could barely bring their craft alongside the dock.
When the boats headed out to the Sea Lion again, Brent had to make a tough decision. Freezing temperatures. Knifing winds. Gray ice. Visibility down to less than a hundred feet. The lethal combination left him no choice.
Reluctantly, he radioed the Sea Lion and informed them he was halting transfer operations. The cruise ship captain agreed with the decision. He also indicated he would weigh anchor immediately to avoid becoming caught in the ice.
That left Brent with the unenviable task of breaking the news to the last seventeen passengers and three crew members still awaiting transfer. Trudging back up to the boathouse, he faced the group that had bundled up in anticipation of their imminent departure.
“Sorry, folks. We’ve had to discontinue transfer operations. You’ll have to wait out the storm here at Palmer.”
After a chorus of groans, one of the older passengers asked the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.
“What’s your best guess at to how long the storm will last?”
“Our weather gurus think it might blow through tomorrow. But…”
If his time on the ice had taught Brent anything, it was that Antarctica was like no other place on earth.
“Polar storms are pretty unpredictable. Depending on the ice buildup, you could be here another day.” His glance skimmed the group, snagged on a pair of emerald eyes. “Or week.”
Mia swallowed another groan.
Great! Just great! She’d heard the bearded scientist blurt out her notorious alter ego. Caught the subsequent, speculative glances from a number of his coworkers. And now she was stuck here with this crew. Indefinitely.
So much for getting away while the buzz over her entry into Don Juan’s hall of infamy died down!
Dismayed, she trudged back up to the main building with Beth. As she shed her borrowed parka, dismay segued into indignation, and indignation into determination.
Enough was enough. She’d taken a ration of crap from her own coworkers. No reason she had to take it from the crew here, too. Jaw tight, she waylaid Walker in the first floor corridor of the BioLab.
“I need to speak to you. Privately.”
He hooked a brow at her tone but gestured to one of the labs leading off the main corridor.
Once inside Mia skimmed a glance over the impressive array of equipment. She edited primarily history and social studies textbooks, but she’d attended enough meetings with the science editors to know they would salivate at the sight of all these ultra-high-tech microscopes and fluoroscopes. She let her gaze roam the lab, collecting her thoughts before she turned to face Walker.
He’d leaned a hip against the lab counter. He still wore his watch cap. Only a few strands of dark blond hair showed beneath the rim.
“About your friend in the University of Wisconsin sweatshirt…” she began.
“Right. Dr. Allen Barclay. He probably knows more about electromagnetic phenomenon in the ionosphere than anyone else on earth.”
Unimpressed, Mia crossed her arms. “Apparently he also knows quite a bit about the contents of a Web site maintained by a total scuzz-bag who calls himself Don Juan.”
“Scuzz-bag?”
“I have other, more descriptive labels for the guy. I won’t bore you with them, but I would appreciate it if you would ask your people to refrain from mentioning him or the number 112 anywhere in my vicinity.”
Walker studied her for several moments. Mia refused to squirm but could guess what he was thinking. An exhibitionist who posed for pictures had no right to complain about being ogled. He didn’t say so, however, he merely dipped his head in a brief nod.
“I’ll put out the word.”
“Thanks. And just for the record,” she added, hating that she had to defend herself, “Scuzz-bag took those pictures without my knowledge or consent.”
Walker didn’t let her off the hook that easily. His tone cool, he laid the blame right where it belonged.
“That is you, though?”
“Yes.”
“In his hotel room?”
“Yes.”
“Wearing only a black lace thong?”
She ground her teeth. “It was red.”
The thoroughly disgusted reply lightened Walker’s expression. A smile crept into his eyes, along with a hint of sympathy.
“I’m guessing you’ll conduct a room-to-room search for recording devices the next time you accompany anyone to a hotel room.”
Mia’s shudder wasn’t exaggerated. Neither was her fervent vow.
“There won’t be a next time! Not for the next ten years or so, anyway. One complete and utter humiliation per decade is my limit.”
His smile eased into a wry grin. “I hear you. That’s pretty much how I felt when my fiancée dumped me a couple of weeks before our wedding.”
The confession cut through Mia’s antagonism and embarrassment. She felt herself relaxing for the first time since she’d heard his buddy utter her number.
“When did that happen?”
“Three years ago.”
“So you’ve only got seven more years to go before you get back in the game?”
“About that.”
So he’d been inoculated, too. Good to know he was as immune to her as she was to him.
“Well, I guess I’d better go upstairs and find a place to bed down for the night. Or week.”
THE FOLKS AT THE RESEARCH station went all out to accommodate their unexpected guests. After opening the small store on-site to provide them with necessary sundries like toothbrushes and combs, Palmer’s residents rearranged their living quarters. Married couples squeezed in with other couples while singles doubled and tripled up.
As station manager, Brent Walker rated a private room. So did Jill Anderson and her husband, Doug, also a marine biologist and the senior scien
tist at Palmer. They vacated their sanctuaries, though, and made them available to older couples off the cruise ship.
Amid all this relocating, the on-site personnel took time to explain essential matters like mealtimes and protecting Antarctica’s eco-environment by carefully managing waste, human and otherwise. Mia and Beth got a quick briefing from the two women they were to bunk with.
Mary O’Neil had received a National Science Foundation grant to measure glacier flow rates. Tiki Fujiyoshi, a PhD candidate in seismology from the University of Hawaii, was almost as new to Antarctica as the passengers off the Adventurer.
“I flew into McMurdo two weeks ago and choppered up here,” she confided as she wedged her bed against a wall to make room for the sleeping bags they’d procured from supply.
“McMurdo’s the main U.S. research station in Antarctica,” Mary explained. “Their summer population can get up as high as twelve hundred. Two to three hundred winter-over.”
Mia was more interested in a possible alternate route of escape than the station’s census.
“You say it has an airstrip?”
“It does,” Mary confirmed. “They have regular flights during the summer, but about the only planes that can get in during the winter are ski-equipped military transports.”
Thoughtfully, Mia helped Tiki stash the bedroll. There had to be some way she and Beth could hitch a ride back to civilization on a nice, fast transport. If it was up to her, she would never set foot on another ship. Any ship. Large, small or in-between.
CHAPTER THREE
MIA’S SECOND DAY ON PALMER Station was pretty much a repeat of the first.
Vicious winds continued to lash the peninsula. Sleet pinged down, gusted up and whipped around. Both the windchill temperature and the visibility deteriorated to the point that Brent announced via an intercom system that he’d declared a Condition Two.
“That means everyone has to travel in pairs to do any work or research away from the station,” Jill explained at breakfast. “If it worsens to Condition One, you stay in whatever building you’re in and don’t go out at all until visibility improves and the windchill temperature rises above minus a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.”
“Minus a hundred degrees,” Mia squeaked, almost choking on her eggs Florentine. “It was in the high forties yesterday, before the storm hit.”
“That’s Antarctica for you,” the marine biologist said cheerfully.
Mia shared an incredulous glance with her sister and went back to her eggs. The breakfast buffet put out by the station’s two cooks lacked the visual artistry of the cruise ship’s lavish spread but more than matched it in flavor.
When Mia and Beth complimented the cooks and once again volunteered for cleanup duty, they were treated to a tour of the spotless, fabulously equipped kitchen. Afterward, Jill offered a visit to the science labs and a look at ongoing research projects for anyone who was interested.
“Can I take pictures?”
That came from Beth, who’d stuffed her digital camera in her jacket pocket before abandoning ship. Mia had been more concerned with saving their asses than the hundreds of photos they’d snapped in South America.
“I substitute teach at an elementary school,” Beth explained. “I’d love to show the kids pictures of an Antarctic research station when I get home.”
“We can do you better than that,” Jill said. “If you like, you can use one of our computers to set up a blog and send real-time pix back to the kids.”
“Omigosh! That would be fantastic.”
“Let me hook you up with Allen Barclay. He’s really into blogging and online videos and such.”
As Mia knew all too well!
When Jill called the stocky scientist over to their table, Mia braced herself. She hadn’t received a single snigger or knowing look so far this morning, but…
To her relief, the bearded scientist merely gave the group a friendly nod. Obviously, Walker had put the word out as promised.
Mia got a chance to thank him for that after Beth peeled off with Allen and Jill shepherded her laboratory tour group toward the stairs. When they passed the corridor leading to the administrative wing, Mia caught a glimpse of the station manager entering his office.
“I’ll catch up with you,” she told Jill and detoured in the other direction.
Interesting place, she thought as she passed the open doors. One office was decorated in early aviary. Ostrich and peacock plumage vied for wall space with seagull feathers crossed like swords and what looked like streamers of fuzzy penguin chick down. The office next to it contained a remarkable collection of Elvis memorabilia. Posters, DVD covers, bobble figures—even a guitar-strumming teddy bear in a spangled, flare-legged outfit.
Mia guessed the decorations were probably one of the few ways folks at Palmer had to express their personal tastes. With communal living, working and recreational areas, these small offices represented islands of individuality.
If so, Brent’s individuality ran along more retro lines. His office was maybe eight by ten and boasted a doublepaned, frost-rimmed window with a view of the boathouse and dock. The furnishings were strictly functional—file cabinets, a row of reports in neat binders, a large whiteboard stickered with notes and schedules, a workstation topped by a sleek computer.
Hung on the wall next to the whiteboard was a photo of the Palmer Station crew gathered together and waving at the camera. Right below it was another picture of the crew, looking wet and cold as they huddled under gray blankets. Wondering what that was all about, Mia rapped lightly on the door.
Brent was at the computer, his back to her, the ever-present radio clipped to his waist. At the sound of her knock, he swiveled around.
“’Morning, Mia.”
Damn! There it was again! That crinkly-eyed smile. Good thing she was completely immune to all things masculine right now.
“’Morning, Brent. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“No problem. I was just checking the weather.”
“How does it look?”
“Not good. Please, come in.”
He got up to sweep a stack of papers off the chair next to his desk. When he turned to deposit them on the file cabinet, Mia got a view of muscular thighs and a tight, trim rear encased in well-worn jeans. With the jeans he wore a blue plaid flannel shirt and black turtleneck.
Sternly, she repressed the traitorous thought that the blue in the plaid seriously deepened the blue in his eyes.
“How’d you sleep?” he asked as she took the chair he’d cleaned off.
“Fine. Better than fine, actually. It’s been a while since I bedded down in a sleeping bag. I think Beth and I were at Camp Winihaha last time. But this bedroll was really comfortable.”
“It should be. The National Science Foundation designed those bags specifically for folks at the South Pole. You don’t want to know how much they cost you as a taxpayer.”
“Probably not. Listen, I just…Uh…” The photo beside the whiteboard drew her fascinated gaze again. “Okay, I have to ask. What’s with the wet hair and gray blankets?”
“It’s a tradition. Those of us who are up for it take a ritual plunge into the sea when our last supply ship of the year leaves the dock.”
“Weird. Very weird.”
Grinning, he laced his hands across his belly. His very flat belly, Mia couldn’t help but note.
“That’s only one of many rituals we practice down here at the bottom of the world.”
“Like gash?”
“Like gash,” Brent confirmed. “And mouse house, our Saturday morning station cleanup. If you come to the lounge after dinner tonight, you’ll get to participate in another ritual.”
“It doesn’t involve ice baths, does it?” she asked with another glance at the photo of the stripped-down plungers. “Or taking off my clothes in front of a camera? Been there, done that, don’t plan to do it again.”
He had a nice laugh. Deep and rich and resonant. Mia found herself smiling in
response.
“None of the above,” he assured her, chuckling.
“Actually, that’s why I stopped by your office,” she explained. “To thank you for putting out the word about the pictures on Don Juan’s Web site. I haven’t been on the receiving end of a double take or elevated eyebrow all morning.”
“Good to hear. If it helps any, no one meant to embarrass you. Living in such close quarters, we’re all usually pretty careful about respecting each other’s boundaries. It’s just that it caught folks by surprise to have, ah, a celebrity in our midst.”
“Right,” Mia drawled. “That kind of celebrity status I can do without.”
He cocked his head. “You couldn’t get Don Juan to take your picture off his site?”
“I tried. Believe me, I tried. Unfortunately, the bastard’s an attorney. He covered every legal angle. Even threatened me with a lawsuit if I exposed him to the world.”
“Bastard is right.”
“Ugh. Just talking about him leaves a bad taste in my mouth.” Grimacing, she pushed to her feet. “Guess I’d better let you get back to the weather.”
He flicked a glance at the screen. “I’ve seen what I need to. How about I show you around the station instead?”
The invitation surprised Brent as much as it did the woman facing him. He’d been so busy making sure the stranded passengers were fed, provided whatever clothing they needed and bedded down that he’d caught only sporadic glimpses of Mia last night. Once he’d hit the rack himself, though, he’d thought about her. Hard not to with Don Juan’s vivid imagery floating around inside his head. Although…
He’d had to work to reconcile that sultry sex kitten with the shivering wreck he’d hauled out of the lifeboat. And both of those women bore only a superficial resemblance to the one here in his office.
The eyes were the same vibrant green. And the lips every bit as kissable. But this Mia was fresh-faced and well-rested and minus the chip she’d carried on her shoulder last night. With her hair caught back in a loose ponytail and her slender figure enveloped in baggy red sweats, she could have passed for one of the eager young grad students who came down to Palmer as research assistants.
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