Chapter 4
My stomach dropped.
Grant read over my shoulder, then quietly reached past me to open the door. Inside, he grabbed his duffel bag. “I’m going to change.” He disappeared into the bathroom.
The door clicked shut, and I stood frozen in the living room. It seemed I did that a lot in this room.
My brain spiraled. I’d shared beds with friends before on camping trips, at conferences. It was not comfortable, but it was fine. But usually the beds were king or queen sized. The bed in this cabin looked like a full. How would we fit without being mashed together?
Maybe I could just think of it as body heat transfer.
It was godawful cold in Antarctica despite the cabin being heated.
It could just be totally normal. But so far my reaction to him had been anything but.
The way my heart kicked up when he looked at me.
How I’d watched water run down his chest during the hosedown.
The flush of heat every time he called me Doc in that low voice.
I forced myself to move, pulling out my laptop and the portable hydrophone receiver kit.
Work. I needed to focus on work. Water ran in the bathroom sink, the sound of Grant washing up.
Walls were thin here. I set up the equipment on the small dining table.
While I connected the cables, I was acutely aware of the water stopping, the bathroom door opening, the sound of him moving through the bedroom.
It took me an hour to finish setting the cables and finally I launched the monitoring software.
Everything booted up fine and a breath of relief and exhaustion passed my lips.
I slumped on the chair staring at my laptop screen.
Would the seal start vocalizing in the next seven days?
Would Grant be able to deploy the hydrophones accurately?
Would all this work be for nothing? No one had captured male seal vocalizations this extensively before.
“Doc?”
Grant’s voice startled me from my half-doze state. I had almost fallen asleep sitting.
He was dressed in thermal nightclothes. I had seen Grant in jeans, in diving suit, in basketball shorts but never like this. In soft clothes. His big frame looked inviting instead of imposing.
He would be perfect to share body heat with, and he could be the big spoon—What! Where did that thought come from?
“I’ll…I think I’ll stay up…I need to set up some more.“
He shook his head and walked up to me. Gently he removed my hand from my keyboard and closed the lid. “C’mon. Time for you to hit the bed. You’re exhausted. You flew in today, then the long boat ride, and you went diving in below freezing temps. You need rest.”
I stared up at him helplessly.
“Should I carry you to bed, Doc?” He raised an eyebrow, that damn smirk was back.
“No!” I shot to my feet and scurried out of his reach straight to the bedroom.
He chuckled and followed me inside. I came back from the bathroom after brushing and changing into my thermal pajamas—navy blue with little white seals printed all over them.
My sister had given them to me as a joke when I’d told her about the Antarctica assignment.
That was when I didn’t know I would be sharing a bedroom with anyone.
And not in my remotest dreams that anyone would have been Grant Reeves.
Grant was already in bed, propped up on one elbow. He’d pulled the thick blanket down on my side, leaving space. Waiting.
As I approached the bed awkwardly, his eyes traveled up my body slowly, then down again. They paused at my crotch.
“Cute,” he said.
Heat flooded through me. My body responded immediately, blood rushing south, and I felt myself getting hard. Right there. Standing next to the bed while Grant looked at me like that.
His gaze stayed fixed on the growing evidence for another long moment before lifting back to my face.
“I like the seals on your PJs,” he said casually. “Get in, Doc.”
My face burned. He’d seen. And now he was pretending it was about the pajamas, and I wanted to die.
I climbed into the bed stiffly, keeping as close to my edge as possible.
Grant pulled the thick blanket over both of us.
The mattress was small enough that our shoulders touched despite my best efforts to minimize contact.
The room was filled by a silence heavier than the blanket over me.
Just the sound of my breathing felt deafening—too fast, too shallow.
Grant’s warmth radiated through the small space between us.
I could feel every point where our bodies made contact through the layers of clothing and blanket.
Shoulder. Hip. The outside of my thigh against his.
I was still hard. God, I was still hard, lying in bed next to Grant Reeves, and I couldn’t make it go away, couldn’t think about anything else.
“Remember Mr. P’s rabbit?” Grant’s voice cut through the silence, low and sleepy.
I blinked at the ceiling. “What?”
“Mr. P. Our senior year biology. He had that rabbit he swore was male.”
Despite everything, a laugh bubbled up in my chest. “Oh my god. Yes.”
“We came in one morning and there were like six baby rabbits in the cage.” Grant’s voice carried warm amusement. “Mr. P standing there in complete denial, trying to explain it to the class.”
“‘This can sometimes happen in nature,’” I quoted, and Grant laughed beside me.
“‘Spontaneous reproduction is rare but documented in certain mammalian species,’” Grant added in a terrible impression of Mr. P’s squeaky professor voice. “Meanwhile, we’re all sitting there like, ‘Mr. P, you just got the sex wrong.’”
“He never admitted it,” I said. “The whole rest of the semester, he kept insisting it was a scientific anomaly.”
“Peak Mr. P energy.”
Grant shifted slightly, his shoulder pressing more firmly against mine. “You were the only one who wasn’t laughing.”
I turned my head to look at Grant, surprised. “You remember that?”
His eyes met mine in the dim light. “I remember a lot of things about you, Doc.”
My breath caught. The hard-on I’d been trying to ignore came rushing back to my attention.
“Why didn’t you laugh?” He asked, his eyes full of want. Wanting to know?
I cleared my throat. “He was trying his best. I…I knew how it felt to be laughed at. Scientists are human, too.”
His expression became pained. “Oh…Adrien.”
I shrugged, the gesture lost under the covers. “It’s okay. I’m an adult now. All grown up.”
“Yeah. You definitely are. I’m still sorry. We were stupid teens.” He sounded more upset than someone who had barely known me years ago should be.
I realized then that Grant had known exactly what he was doing bringing up Mr. P, making me laugh. He was pulling me out of my spiral. But now it felt like he was going into his own spiral. I was seriously over the feeling of being laughed at but Grant was taking it too seriously.
“How do you know Dr. Webb? It seemed like you both were on comfortable terms.” I asked, wanting to change the topic.
Grant snorted. “Marcus? He’s a horny bastard. We’ve run into each other whenever I’ve been here in the past years. Been trying to get into my pants for years.”
I choked on nothing, sputtering. “What? He’s a very distinguished scientist!”
“So?” Grant’s eyebrow arched. “Are you saying scientists can’t be horny and gay?”
“Wait—he came onto you?”
“Yep.” Grant’s tone was casual, like we were discussing the weather.
Jealousy flared hot and unexpectedly in my chest. “What did you say—” I cut myself off. “Sorry. None of my business.”
In one smooth motion, Grant shifted, rolling onto his side to face me. He propped himself up on his elbow and stared down at me. Our faces were inches apart.
“I said no,” he murmured, his voice dropping lower. “I already have someone in my heart.”
“Oh.”
The single syllable deflated out of me. Of course he did. Of course Grant Reeves had someone waiting for him somewhere. Probably had for years. That’s why he could be so casual about Marcus’s advances, so comfortable in his own skin, so—
“What about you, Doc? A brilliant, rising star like you with movie star looks must have a girlfriend back at home. Is she a scientist too?” Grant’s gaze dropped to my mouth, then slowly traveled back up to meet my eyes.
Movie star looks…?
A nervous laugh bubbled out of me. “No one. I never dated. No time. And I just…I dunno. I was just busy.”
“Would you be interested if Marcus propositioned you?”
“What! No!”
“Because he’s a man?”
“I…uh…not that. I just don’t…am not into old men.”
He relaxed and dropped back onto the bed.
I couldn’t stop from blurting out. “You?”
“I am into men. But not old geezers.”
“You’re into…men?” My voice sounded embarrassingly high.
“Hmm. I am gay.”
Grant Reeves was gay?
“But all those girls in high school?”
A low laugh rumbled through his chest, and because we were squished like sardines, it traveled right through my body too.
“What about them?”
“You…I thought you would have tons of girlfriends.”
“Nope. Never. Always been gay. And like I told you, I had someone in my heart.”
“Since high school?”
“Yeah.”
He fell silent after that. My heart was pounding so hard I was sure he could hear it. Soft snores soon filled the room. The sound of Grant sleeping beside me was oddly soothing.
Someone since high school.
He was gay.
What did it all mean?