At first, he thought it was a sastrugi or some other impermanent geographical structure.
“I see it! There. I see it!”
Please, God. Let there be food. A fucking cracker could hold them for another day.
The closer they got, the boxier the structure appeared, with a second smaller building close beside it.
Hope pushed his legs a little harder, lightened the load behind him.
This was it—the field research hut, built by Norwegians maybe a couple decades before.
The hope he’d kept tamped down strengthened into a lifeline, pulling him toward the place.
Ice and snow had piled up around the bigger building, so high that only one roof corner remained visible. Was the door accessible? Shit, where was it? Maybe on the other side? He dropped the sled line, kicked off his skis, and sped around the corner, Angel right beside him.
He stopped and stared at the mound of snow, with the barest peek of metal showing. How the hell were they supposed to find the door, much less get in?
Angel grabbed his hand, as naturally as if they did this every day. Which he guessed they did.
“What’s it for?”
“Field research camp, originally, but I heard trekking companies sometimes use it as a way station. Russians come out pretty much every year to run some tests.”
Silently, they stared.
“There, where it’s sticking out,” she said.
As good a place to start as any. He squeezed her hand before heading back around for the shovel and ice axe.
For ages, they chipped away at what revealed itself to be the door. Ford hacked and Angel hauled, their rhythm steady but slow. The last thing they needed was to break into a sweat.
He took a swig of water and looked around. Had it gotten darker?
“What’s it like in there?”
“Bare bones—just an insulated steel hut and a generator. Which is…” He pointed to the other building. “There.”
“You think…”
“I don’t know, Angel. I don’t know.”
There was a chance, after all this, that it would be empty, without a crumb, a lick of fuel, or a spark of hope inside. He remembered with surprising clarity that when he’d been here, someone had left one of those megapacks of cheese puffs. The little balls that melted on your tongue and provided absolutely no nutritional value.
His mouth watered as he let himself go a little, picturing all those foods he’d never gotten to eat as a kid. Dad was strict about junk food. Sugar, as far as he was concerned, was utterly useless. He shook his head and did his best to blink back the memory, which was harder than usual.
It didn’t make it any easier, knowing that this was hunger playing tricks on him. As if, while his body metabolized its own musculature, his brain turned to memories for sustenance. Big, fat, unexplored memories, so long-buried they felt new. So new, he could taste them.
Forty-five minutes later, they’d uncovered the door. It was frozen firmly closed. After a good fifteen minutes’ struggle, bringing into service their hands, then the axe, and finally the shovel, it still wouldn’t budge. Hopelessness had just started to settle over them when Angel disappeared and returned, holding one of her chef’s knives like a magic wand.
She chiseled away at the seam, he yanked, and…halle-freaking-lujah!
The door flew open to reveal…more snow. A three-foot pile of it right in their path. Angel groaned, but he’d expected this, since he’d seen storms shove ice through cracks in doors and windows. The layer of ice around the door was probably the only reason the inside hadn’t packed any fuller than this.
He didn’t care, though, because beyond the obstacle, the place was remarkably clear. And there, at the farthest end of the room, was a kitchen corner. On the shelves were boxes and cans and bags of food. He stepped over the mound and stomped across the snow-dusted floor, hoping against hope that the boxes weren’t empties left by some lazy asshole. He picked up a can. Full. A package of what looked like cookies or crackers or something—impossible to tell from the Cyrillic writing—also full. Beside it, some kind of dried stew, Indian food, curries in packets… Food for days.
He turned, startled to find Angel right beside him instead of back in the doorway. She’d come in so quietly.
His mouth opened and closed when he met those big warm eyes fixed not on the food, but on him. Him.
And her expression—he couldn’t explain it exactly, but it did something to him, made him feel…different. Alive and whole and responsible, somehow, for this miracle.
“I didn’t put this here,” he said, one hand up to keep her from putting too much faith in him. “Didn’t even remember this place.”
“I know,” she said with a funny half smile and a nod. She stepped around him and reached for a can, which she slapped onto the counter with a satisfying thud. “Let’s eat.”
Chapter 34
Day 13—Norwegian Field Research Camp, 142 Miles from Volkov Station
There was a strange thing happening in Angel’s body. Or maybe her mind.
The feeling, she thought, might be happiness.
They’d eaten first, scarfing crackers like animals in the frigid hut, then found the generator and fuel. Not a lot, but enough, maybe, to warm the place for a couple days and, probably most important of all, to charge up Ford’s sat phone.
He was out there now, hopefully getting the generator up and running.
She emptied the packet of freeze-dried whatever it was into the pot on their camp stove. Now that they’d slaked that first rabid hunger with some dry, bark-like crackers, they’d eat something hot.
A few seconds later, she groaned at the moist warmth wafting up to her. She had no idea what it was she was heating. It could have been dog food for all she knew. Didn’t matter.
Just as she spooned the contents into two bowls, an engine started growling, the sound so out of place it took her a dozen beats to realize what it was. Breath held, hope suspended, she waited for a few seconds for it to sputter out. When it didn’t, she put down the pan, turned—
And there he was in the doorway, like magic. He slammed the door shut and took a couple steps inside.
Holy crap, the generator worked.
But that wasn’t what made her heart clench. It was the smile on Ford’s face when he wrenched off his mask—wide and open and honest, an echo of that boy he’d described, fishing on the island with his brother.
That smile split his face and hit her with the blinding force of a gale.
It took every bit of willpower not to run and throw herself into his arms. And then, because willpower was for staying alive, not for fighting the inevitable or denying the truth, she tripped forward and let her body collide with his, wrap around it, sink into him. She wanted to celebrate every vital, warm piece of him, to revel in him as if he were the feast.
Speaking of which… “You need hot food.” She started to pull back.
“Yeah.” He didn’t let go.
“Ford.”
“Just…”
Just this. Just them. Here, holding each other up, breathing together. Just breathing.
Alive.
One of them pulled away, eventually, probably him since the man was an expert at denial. Or waiting or hiding or whatever he’d been doing all these years.
She led him to the room’s single table, where they sat, still suited up, and ate.
The first swallow was too quick, barely making it to her stomach before she went for another. This one laid a warm path, waking up taste buds while it made way for the third—a long, slow slide into bliss. She groaned.
“Jesus.” Ford sounded angry.
“What?” She lifted surprised eyes to his. “Don’t like it?”
“No. It’s good. Perfect.”
“Then—”
“
That noise. The sound you made.”
She watched him. “What?”
He blinked the fierceness away. “Never mind.”
“No. What was wrong with—”
“Forget it.”
“O-kay.” She went back to the stew…and groaned again. “Best thing I’ve ever eaten.”
“Right.” Even with his face half-covered in ice, he looked skeptical.
“What?”
“You’re a gourmet chef and this is the best?”
“It’s all relative, isn’t it?” She sucked in a deep breath and forced herself to take it easy. “I mean, the best thing I’ve probably eaten, taste-wise…” Holding the next warm, fragrant bite in her mouth, she put her head back, let it thaw her to life, and remembered. “Tomatoes. Fresh from the garden.”
He didn’t respond, so she went on. “Big beefsteaks, sliced, with nothing but a drizzle of olive oil. Dash of salt. Or better yet, those tiny sun golds. The orange ones? Right off the vine. One in the basket, one in your mouth. Warm from the sun.” She paused, her brain hitching on something. An idea or memory or notion that seemed obvious, though she couldn’t quite grasp it.
“When did you know you wanted to become a chef?”
“A chef?” She paused, that elusive thing just out of reach, like a scent she couldn’t identify, the way tomato stems smelled like summer, but the fruit itself provided the taste. “I never wanted to be a chef. I wanted to cook.”
“Not the same thing?”
She shook her head. “No. One’s about status and accomplishments. Who people think you are.” Hugh. Hugh was a chef. “The other’s about…” Understanding shimmered through her, real and pure and brand-new, but old as that first taste of Mama’s pupusas. “Cooking’s like making music.” She threw him a smile. “It’s the perfect storm of smell and touch and taste and even sound, you know? That sizzle in the pan, the pop of spices. The moment you turn the heat off and there, right there, the ingredients let off a warm, enveloping steam.” He watched her with a puzzled look on his face, like she spoke a foreign language that he wanted to understand. “Cooking is knowing to let that tomato speak for itself, to leave it alone instead of piling a bunch of crap on top.”
“When’d you start cooking?”
Her eyes shifted to the side. “Everyone else ate junk out of boxes, but Mama and I had a garden. Had to or we’d starve. Late summer, we canned, pickled, preserved. Everything we grew got put up for the winter. Worked till our hands were raw.” She squinted at the memory. “Weird.” Overwhelmed by something that felt an awful lot like loss, she shoved another bite in her mouth. This one tasted bitter and bland, cloying and salty.
“What?”
“Guess I lost it somewhere.” In that kitchen with Hugh, striving for something she’d never really wanted.
“I eat to survive,” he said matter-of-factly.
Something inside her clenched, hard. “Oh.”
“Why do you look like that?”
“It’s…sad.”
“Is it?” He truly seemed to be asking.
She opened her mouth, then shut it. Was it sad to eat for survival? That was exactly what they were doing right here and the pleasure of it was almost blinding. In a way, it fed directly into what she’d been saying—that the best parts of food and cooking were the basics—need, ingredients, a little chemistry. “Guess not.”
It put a sad spin on her previous life and an even sadder one on Hugh’s, with its layers of wants and needs, disappointments and other complications.
She must have sat there for a while, because when Ford finally spoke, she had to shake herself free from the sticky web of memories and regrets.
“You like making people happy.”
Her eyes flew to him. “Huh?”
“There’s the actual cooking, but there’s also the people part. That’s why you do it.”
Why would he say that?
Her first instinct was to deny it, because wanting to please people wasn’t all that flattering a reason to do anything. It made her feel stripped. Naked.
Another moment came back to her. “I grew up in rural Pennsylvania. Green, sweet, innocent.”
He nodded at her to go on.
“I remember being nine or ten. Second day of school, there was this new kid. He was different. Harder than most of us. Scruffy and lean. His clothes were worn, like mine, but not as nice. Mama wouldn’t let me out of the house with a hole or a ripped seam. He was one of the free lunch kids.” She shrugged. “Me too, technically, except Mama would never let me eat that stuff. I had my lunch box every day. Anyway, Travis—that was his name—sat at my table one day with a processed sloppy joe on his plate. I’ll never forget the way he stared. At a peach.” Just the word felt like biting into one—the hard p of teeth through skin, the tart, fresh, sweet blast to the tongue, and there at the end, a soft sink into flesh.
“You’re right,” she said, weirdly shell-shocked, like Ford had split her open and seen her own soft insides. “It’s not about the food. I mean, it is, but it’s about people. I used to have this fantasy, like, giving someone their first…I don’t know, perfectly cooked green bean with butter. You know?”
“Stop it,” he groaned. “My mouth’s like a fountain.”
“Thought you didn’t care about food, Ford Cooper.”
“Maybe I do now.”
She let those words sink in and then hardened her voice with a sly little smile. “Avocados with salt.”
“Don’t.”
“Mango.” She gave him an innocent look. “Fresh off the tree, so ripe you bite right in, juice dripping down your—”
“You’re evil.”
“No. No, you are.”
“How so?” he said, looking mock-offended.
“Come on. Last night. All that talk of warm nights and fishing with your brother under the stars when we’re in this constant daylight.”
“Wanna see stars? Stay here for the winter. Nothing but stars. The aurora australis, man, it’s…”
She couldn’t tear her eyes from him, but her mouth opened on its own, offering up a word. “Dreamy?”
“Like all your life, the sky’s been hiding in plain sight.” He put down his food and leaned back, giving her a rare shot of his neck, bisected by angry red scar tissue. “Wearing funeral clothes or something. Dark, thick fabric, with just a glimmer of diamonds. And suddenly, one night, you look up and she’s letting you in on her big secret, doing the dance of the seven veils. Wrapping them around you until you’re caught in her ephemeral net.” He swallowed, lowered his head, and met Angel’s eyes with his, and they were rife with the complexity and hidden secrets of this constantly shifting place. “That’s the ice, Angel. Infinite, ever-changing, magical.” She could get addicted to this man. Maybe she already was. “With depths none of us will ever get to plumb.”
A sound escaped her—half gasp, half sob. She covered her mouth, but not quickly enough.
“You okay? Angel?”
“Why’d you have to go and do that?”
“Do what?” he said with a puzzled smile.
“Be so…” Beautiful, solid. Good. She could only shake her head, finally tearing her eyes away. “Never mind.”
He rose. “Come here.”
Like a moth to a flame, mesmerized or hypnotized or something, Angel went to him, giving herself up to Ford Cooper’s ephemeral net.
Chapter 35
“Come here,” Coop said, shocked at his own words and the way he met her halfway.
Honestly, though, this wasn’t him. Ford Cooper didn’t hug. He shook hands or shared body heat. The one because society dictated it, the other to survive. And sex, of course, was peppered in there because his libido wanted it. But that was just the occasional itch he scratched.
None of it could have prepared him for what he felt now. Thi
s hunger was different, as strong as the one gnawing at his belly, but more widespread, impossible to pin down. It filled his head and lungs, only calming when she stepped into his arms.
He didn’t just want her body. He wanted her.
He’d denied it out there, turned it into something else, about survival and body heat and closeness that saved lives. But here, in the growing warmth from the heaters, with enough space to breathe, he couldn’t lie. Couldn’t look away.
He bent his head, let his eyes roam her soft features—a novelty after touching only in the dark—and, like a man still starving, kissed her.
For three long seconds, he felt nothing, as if the jolt was too much, the connection too hot, too electric, to register. And Jesus, it was. She was. Like defibrillator paddles to his chest. He sucked at her, took a life-giving breath from her lungs, gave his own.
Don’t blink. Don’t forget a second of this.
Watching her kiss him, watching her watch him, was one of those never-ending mirror portraits, with no beginning and no end. He was lost in it. Like he’d fallen into a maze. Ensnared. No way in, no way out.
No way out.
With a gasp like a drowning man, he stumbled back a step and put his hand to his mouth—not to wipe her away, but to hold her there.
“You okay?” She was upset. He’d upset her.
He nodded. “Let me…” A blind look around supplied an answer. “Get water. For a bath.” He almost groaned at that image. Clean, fresh, warm skin. Shit, there was something wrong with him. He’d short-circuited himself with that kiss, blown some neural connections that he’d never get back.
“Be right back,” he mumbled, barely remembering to snag his mittens and pull on his hood before heading out.
With relief, he let the cold soak into him. Wake him up. Only it didn’t clear his mind the way it always did. It didn’t push the feelings back to where he could handle them, in the shadowed confines of a sleeping bag. It froze away the bullshit, let it crackle and fall, leaving nothing but the ice-cold core of reality.
Which was what? That he was an idiot? Scared of a woman because she let her emotions show? Because she lured out his own?
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