Edwina and the Seven Snowed-in Scientists (3 page)

horizon, things were going to get nasty very quickly.

If they’d still been in the helicopter, the storm would’ve caused

some serious concerns for Edwina on the return trip to the base, and

because of that detail, Jake couldn’t quite shake the feeling that

Edwina was the target. Granted his family had a few unusual

secrets—what family didn’t?—but they weren’t the type of secrets

that would get them killed. No, it was more likely their foul-mouthed companion had an enemy without even knowing it.

Talking about foul-mouthed…

“Edwina! Shut up!” Kieran yelled over the wind.

“Why?” she asked, sounding like a child who was pouting, but at

least she stopped swearing and throwing unfounded accusations at

him and his brother.

“Because it’s time to choose which one of us you want to sleep

with,” Kieran said without a trace of humor.

“Ch–choose,” she stuttered as if she had no clue what subject they

were on.

“Yes, Eddie,” Kieran said, emphasizing the shortened version of

her name, “which one of us is going to get the pleasure of your oh-so-sweet company?”

Wow. First his temper, and now sarcasm. The woman sure got

under his brother’s skin.

And the woman seemed lost for words. Another incredible first.

Enjoying the tension between his two companions a little too

much considering the circumstances, Jake finally moved to intervene.

“Edwina, you can sleep with me.” He held up his hands in surrender

when she turned on him. She was practically lost inside his snow coat, but somehow she managed to convey just how pissed off she was

with a single look.

“Where is my bivvy bag? It was stowed with the rest of the

equipment? Why didn’t you grab it?”

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19

“Because it was covered in some type of glue like everything

else,” Kieran said, sounding completely worn down by her constantly

argumentative stance. Obviously completely out of patience, Kieran

took the coat off Edwina, threw it to Jake and pointed at the bivvy

bags. “Get in or freeze to death.”

Edwina must’ve finally realized how serious his brother was

because she slid into the bag nearest them without even asking whose

bag was whose. Jake laughed quietly as Kieran rolled his eyes, took

one last look at the approaching storm, and headed for his bivvy bag.

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Rachel Clark

Chapter Two

Edwina shivered as the temperature seemed to drop even more. At

least she was out of the wind. But now that she wasn’t yelling at

them, the adrenaline in her system was dropping, and she was feeling

the cold even more. She shivered as someone climbed into the bag

beside her and zipped the top closed. It was a tight fit—this sleeping bag cross dome tent was only meant for one person—so she wriggled

as far as she could to the side without tipping the thing over and

prayed that these guys knew what they were doing.

She didn’t realize her teeth were chattering until a gruff voice

said, “Come here,” a moment before she was pulled against a solid,

warm chest and engulfed inside a snow coat.

Amazed at how warm the man felt, considering they’d just spent a

couple of hours in the wind and snow on this ice cube of death,

Edwina snuggled closer, not really caring which brother she was

cuddled up to but fairly certain it was Kieran. A fifty-fifty chance of getting the wrong bivvy bag and she had to choose the one belonging

to the brother who hated her.

Of course, she hadn’t really given him much reason to actually

like her. She’d been pissed off at her boss for sending her, then

seriously annoyed at crashing her helicopter—a first for her—and

then terrified that she was traveling with two men it seemed someone

was trying to kill. Collateral damage was not the way she’d expected

to go out of this life.

“Take your jacket off,” he said as he helped her to do just that.

She didn’t really have time to protest because the first touch of his warmth against her back without the bulky jacket in the way was

Edwina and the Seven Snowed-in Scientists

21

complete and total heaven. The man was like her own personal

electric blanket, and she sighed and relaxed against him.

Her jaw ached but at least her teeth had stopped clicking together,

and she snuggled closer, wishing she could turn and bury her cold

face in the warmth of Kieran’s chest. He must’ve been wearing some

fabulous heat retaining material because she was sure she could feel

the sculpted planes of his chest and abdomen through the thin

clothing.

“I’m sorry,” she managed to whisper as she finally stopped

shivering.

“I know you’re scared,” he said, cutting right to the heart of the

matter. She wanted to protest that she wasn’t scared just majorly

pissed off, but considering that Kieran had already seen through her brave front, she decided to let it go. For now. “We’ll take care of you, Edwina. You just have to trust us.”

She nodded. She didn’t really have any choice but to trust them.

With her chopper down, her radio dead, and all of her emergency

equipment sabotaged, she would not have survived this long without

them. Well, she might have if she’d stayed with the wreck of her

helicopter, but if someone was trying to kill her, then sitting and waiting for them to show up seemed really stupid.

Was somebody trying to kill her?

Granted, she hadn’t exactly been pleasant company in the last

three months. And she certainly hadn’t gone out of her way to make

friends. Almost from the moment she’d stepped onto Antarctica,

she’d regretted her decision to come here. She never had any intention of coming back, so she hadn’t bothered to try and make lifelong-bestest-buddies with the rest of the personnel on the Mawson base.

She quickly ran a list of her workmates through her head and

realized with a small jolt that she really didn’t know anyone well

enough to cross them off as suspects.

But being unfriendly certainly wasn’t a reason to kill her. She was

due to go home in two days. That alone should have negated the need

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for someone to want her dead. Why commit a crime when the

problem would resolve itself?

She snuggled closer to Kieran and realized that it had been nearly

a year since she’d let anyone touch her. She’d almost forgotten the feeling of peace a cuddle could bring, and it felt like the first time she’d been truly warm in months. How ironic that she was in the

middle of nowhere with a storm approaching snuggled up to a guy

who didn’t actually like her.

Edwina tried to shake off the melancholy and get back to the

matter at hand. Chances were that the base would send a rescue crew

soon after she didn’t return from her flight. They’d probably be

delayed by the storm, but Edwina had followed all the protocols so

that everyone who needed to know knew where she was. Well, sort

of.

“Was the GPS functioning properly?” she asked suddenly as an

awful suspicion clanged in her head. “Is it possible someone

sabotaged that as well?” She could feel adrenaline starting to pound through her once more.

“I don’t know,” Kieran said quietly. “It’s certainly possible for a

GPS to malfunction.”

“What if we’re nowhere near where we’re supposed to be?” Panic

crawled over her. How would rescue teams find them? It was almost

mid-February. Soon the weather would get so bad that most of the

personnel left the base and didn’t come back until October. She’d be

stuck here. Hysteria bubbled up her throat as she realized that their emergency supplies would only last a few days anyway. Fucking hell,

she was going to be one of those frozen corpses they find perfectly

preserved years later.

“Shhh,” Kieran said as he rolled her over in his arms and pressed

her face against his warm chest. “Jake and I know this area well. Even if we went off course, we’ll be able to find a way to the nearest

permanent shelter.”

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23

“Really?” she asked. It wasn’t that she doubted his word, but

rather that she wasn’t certain she’d heard him correctly. In times of stress the brain played tricks on people—she’d read that

somewhere—so she could simply be hearing what she wanted to hear

and not what he was actually saying.

She felt him wriggle a bit and realized he was yanking one of his

gloves off with his teeth. A moment later strong, warm fingers slid

through her hair and caressed her temple. She leaned into the touch

like a flower to sunshine. How on Earth was he so incredibly warm?

“Get some sleep,” he said in a soothing voice.

* * * *

Jake wandered the area, looking for familiar landmarks, until the

wind and snow cut visibility to practically nil, and he retreated back to their emergency shelter. The trouble with this part of the world was

that quite often one area looked nearly identical to another. They’d

have to explore thoroughly before they could figure out where they

were. It was possible his brothers would come to find them, but with

the storm closing in he refused to hold out that hope at the moment.

They’d hunker down for the duration of the storm and hope things

were clearer when it passed. He made it back to their sleeping bags,

relieved to find all seemed quiet in Kieran’s bivvy bag. Hell, half of him had expected the bag to be alive with movement as Edwina

fought Kieran’s attempts to keep her warm.

Of course, the current peace and quiet didn’t discount the

possibility that Kieran had smothered the woman out of frustration.

“Everything okay?” Jake asked, hunkering close to the small

ventilation opening.

“Fine,” Kieran said quietly. “She’s asleep. Did you find

anything?”

“Nope,” he answered, not trying to hide his own frustration.

Kieran would’ve realized by now that they hadn’t been anywhere near

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Rachel Clark

the course they were supposed to have been on, so there was no need

to sugarcoat his words.

“Get some sleep,” Kieran said in his bossiest older brother voice.

Jake rolled his eyes, yet was unable to think of any reason not to

follow his brother’s order, so he climbed into his bivvy bag and

zipped it closed. It felt good to be out of the wind, but he was itching to search the area so that they could find a way to more permanent

shelter.

“As soon as the storm passes,” Kieran said through the bag vents,

“you can babysit the princess, and I’ll find out where we are.”

Jake knew his brother well enough to know that he was beginning

to care for Edwina, despite her prickly personality, but also that

Kieran disliked that he was beginning to care for a woman at all more than the actual caring for Edwina. Hell, with thought processes like that, Jake was starting to wonder if his brother was the only one

Edwina threw off balance.

The wind chose that moment to double in strength, and the noise

made communication without shouting impossible. Since neither of

them really wanted to wake Edwina, they fell to silence. Jake knew

that his brother would stay awake, so decided to follow instructions and get some sleep.

* * * *

Kieran held the most annoying woman he’d ever met close to his

chest. He could feel the caress of her warm breath through the thin

material of his thermal vest, and he found himself wondering why this one would affect him so much. It wasn’t like he’d been a monk. His

life in the last few years had been rather adventurous, but of course he’d found this irritating and intriguing woman at a time when he had no opportunity, or even the will, to explore the connection further.

It wasn’t until a particularly strong blast of wind rocked the small

dome above him that he realized that she might be with them a lot

longer than a few hours or even days. It was quite possible that

Edwina would need to stay with them until the summer months

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25

allowed them to move about more freely. In fact, with someone trying

to kill her, maybe he should be thinking about hiding her until they could figure out exactly what was going on.

She was completely relaxed in his arms, even snoring softly, and

he found himself wondering how long it had been since she’d had a

decent night’s sleep. Considering the current circumstances, he could only guess that she hadn’t felt warm for a long time, and it was his body heat that finally helped her to relax.

Kieran shook his head sharply, tired of his ridiculous thoughts.

The woman, by her own admission, hated the cold. He planned to live

and work in the Antarctic for at least the next three years, so there was no middle ground. Even if she was around long enough to explore the

strange attraction he felt growing for her, she would never, ever

consider living his lifestyle.

And then of course, there was his family. It took a special woman

to deal with the way they lived, and it was the specific reason he’d never encouraged more than brief flings with the women he’d been

involved with.