Romancing The Ice (Polar Love Stories #2)

Chapter 1

Waypoint Research Station

Antarctica

‘Austral Summer’

I sat on my bunk and watched the light move across the wall. Rose gold. The color of Antarctic morning light. I should have known it from my photography skills — I did not. I knew it from Apple. Years ago, when I was still in Russia, the rose gold iPhone model from America was all the rage.

“What are you sitting there moping about?”

I turned. The station doctor was in our dorm’s doorway, fixing his sleeves. I pointed a finger at him. “I was not moping. I was contemplating.”

He smiled and shook his head. He picked up his wristwatch from the table and put it on.

“And what does a penguinologist contemplate on a Friday morning?”

“The fact that I walk across the buildings every day to fetch Sam, and yet he chooses to take a dormitory in that building every year. We have been coming here for years now and not one time have I managed to convince him to room in this building.”

The doctor simply raised an eyebrow. He held my gaze, steady, as he shrugged on his white coat — the last step of his morning routine, followed in exact sequence every day. Unlike me.

I had tried to build a morning routine for twenty-five years. At some point I should probably accept that routines and habits were not in my DNA. Maybe it was a Russian thing, I chuckled to myself.

“Well, if you don’t move and get ready, he may already be in the cafeteria and your precious morning walk with Sam will not happen. And then you will mope around even more and I cannot deal with that.”

I barked a laugh. “You are making me sound like a lovesick teen. I do not mope. In fact I want to file a complaint. This is discrimination against Russians. You are being discriminatory.”

The doctor rolled his eyes, his smile leaking through. He turned and left our shared dorm room with one last parting message over his shoulder.

“Get up and get moving.”

The door banging shut jumpstarted my system.

Daniel was right about Sam’s punctuality.

Sam was my polar opposite in every possible way.

Where I kept forgetting things, he was a stickler about times.

Where I talked too much and blurted out everything that came to my mind, he hardly opened his mouth, especially in front of other people.

Where I was a stack of limbs with no muscle tone, he was a walking, talking underwear model.

The thought of Sam getting exasperated, waiting for me, and then walking by himself to the cafeteria was enough motivation to speed through my morning routine. Soon I was running down the stairs.

Waypoint Station was a small research station. During austral summers we could get as big as 45 people, but during the winter it was down to 10 or 12.

I passed the chef who waved at me. I ran into Grant, who was followed by Adrien. The two had been inseparable lately.

I was mildly jealous, if I was honest. It had been just a few days since they had gotten together, and the only reason I knew was because Grant and I were longtime friends. They had not yet publicly come out to the rest of the base — and they might never.

“What’s the hurry?” Grant asked as I skidded around him, running toward the front doors.

I flipped my name tag from the IN slot to the OUT slot — that was how we kept track of who was in the building at a given time.

Very old school and basic, but very effective.

In case of a fire or emergency, the station chief needed to know who was in a building at any given moment.

“I am late,” I yelled back over my shoulder. “Sam will be waiting for me and he is probably going to yell at me.”

As the heavy insulated door slowly swung shut, I heard Grant’s reply from behind me.

“Then maybe you should give up being his escort.”

I laughed and yelled back just before the door closed, trapping the heat inside the building.

“Never!”

There were two major buildings on the station base.

One was the R&R building where Sam’s room was, and the other was the Main building where I roomed with the station doctor, Daniel Park.

The cafeteria and the lounge were in my building, so honestly there was no reason why Sam would choose the other building every year.

But he was stubborn like that. He liked his solitude, apparently.

He was senior enough that he usually got a private room and did not have to share with anyone, but if the station was at maximum capacity he would get assigned a roommate no matter what.

I walked across the wooden boardwalk that connected all the buildings.

It was a clear and beautiful austral summer day.

There had been years in the past where I had taken this same path and the boardwalk railing was all I could see — during the famous Antarctic blizzard conditions, whiteout usually set in and you could not see your own nose.

The boardwalks were lifesaving. In a matter of minutes you could lose your orientation otherwise, and there was nothing else for miles on this white desert continent except these tiny clusters of buildings around the station.

I did not even need gloves. That was how warm it was today.

According to Marcus, the glaciologist and probably the most senior researcher on the station, the weather on the Antarctic Peninsula had become milder and milder over the decades.

Just a few decades ago the glacier behind the station used to be so close that the meltwater would be piped in as the humans’ drinking water supply.

Now it had retreated so far back that we used desalinated ocean water instead.

I glanced to my side. The dark waters of the ocean were speckled with chunks of ice.

It was not too bad this close to the station, but the further out you went the more the broken chunks of ice were everywhere, making navigating the Zodiac a nightmare sometimes.

Further out on the water it looked like we were floating in a giant glass of Coca-Cola.

I had read that description online somewhere and it had stuck with me ever since.

At the R&R building I flipped my name card from OUT to IN before I walked down the corridor toward Sam’s room.

“You are late today.” The station engineer passed me in the hallway.

“Why does everyone have to remind me,” I grumbled under my breath.

You would think that the station being in one of the most remote places on the planet it would be an introvert’s dream come true, but it was exactly the opposite.

I had met people from other research bases like McMurdo, which was the largest one, and it seemed the culture was very different there.

Those bases operated more like a little village whereas at Waypoint we were like one very large family.

Everybody knew everybody’s business. There was no privacy, and you certainly could not be a loner introvert because nobody would leave you alone.

Still grumbling about the station engineer, I flung the door open to Sam’s room and promptly forgot everything — the station engineer, the weather, the ocean.

Sam was standing in the middle of his room dressed in nothing except a pair of jeans.

My brain instantly went offline. This man had been torturing me since I was fifteen with his dark eyes, his brooding looks, and his sculpted physique.

Even though we worked as partners I tried to stay away from moments like this one, because of what was happening to me right now.

He had no right to look this good. He was a boat operator and logistics guy in this godforsaken remote place.

Why did he have to look like a Calvin Klein model.

“Close the door,” he said in his deep voice, and ignored me while he pulled on a skintight white t-shirt and then a sweater over it.

“Huh?”

I was having trouble processing language. All my blood had rushed south. The number of times I had been in danger of sporting a full hard-on in the presence of this man was too great a number to contemplate. He had always had this effect on me, which was really unfair.

Fifteen-year-old me had met him and developed the most massive crush ever, and it had only gotten worse as I grew up and he became even more attractive to me.

“Close the door,” he repeated, his back toward me.

“Oh right,” I mumbled as I finally got my bearings and stepped inside his room.

“Everything okay?”

“Sure. Why — but why — why were you changing?” I stammered like an idiot.

He glanced at me over his shoulder, probably noting my uncharacteristic stuttering.

“I went diving with the B14 team,” he said.

“You already went diving and you are back?”

“I waited for you,” he replied calmly, turning back toward me and sitting down on the bed to fasten his boots.

I was suddenly dismayed to realize he had already had his breakfast. I knew that sounded ridiculous, but this was my ritual every morning — I trekked down from the Main to the R&R building, then we walked back together and had breakfast in the cafeteria.

No matter how bad it was outside, how cold, how miserable, I always made the walk. The whole station knew.

I was late today, sure, but couldn’t he have waited for me? After years of doing this? I supposed I was attached to this stupid morning routine, which was admittedly my idea. Not that he had ever asked me to do it. But he wouldn’t stay in that building, so what else was I supposed to do?

My expression must have been all over my face because suddenly he rose to his feet and crossed the distance between us until he was standing right in front of me.

“Hey,” he lifted a hand and rested it on my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

I shook my head. What could I say — that he shouldn’t have eaten breakfast? That he should have just kept waiting for me? I was not a fifth grader.

Even though I was usually the class clown, I did have my pride, especially in front of him. I wanted him to take me seriously, and he did. He treated me like the professional I was. He respected me as a diving partner and as a researcher. But it was always with this air of taking care of me.

Just because when we met I was new to the US, having recently immigrated from Russia, and had needed his help to get acclimated in that tiny town in Alaska didn’t mean our relationship was locked in that dynamic forever.

Sure, he was a few years older than me, but he seemed to think I was still somebody he needed to mentor.

I was twenty-five now and I desperately needed him to see the man I had become, because how else was I ever going to convince him of the attraction I felt toward him.

“Come on, let’s go eat. I’m starving,” he said, moving toward the door.

Hope bloomed inside me like a helium balloon and then burst with incredulous joy.

“You didn’t eat breakfast yet?”

I followed him out of the room. He cast a sideways glance at me. “Of course not.”

My heart grew five sizes larger and I forgot all about my complaints.

My mood soared right up to the stratosphere.

If he noticed my abrupt mood switch he didn’t comment.

Possibly because of all the people on Waypoint Station, he knew me better than anybody else.

We had been together through so many ups and downs, so many adventures, so many different jobs before we landed stable gigs here at Waypoint.