Reunited In The Snow

Instinct said give her time. Trust Jordan to be there for her to lean on as he was sure she had done at the start. But it also said keep an eye on her. Because he just wasn’t sure how bad this could get. He prayed not as bad as it had with his brother, but then Lia wasn’t an addict. She had Jordan looking out for her. Maybe he should quietly ask her to keep a closer eye…

He opened the digital inventory and sent it to the office printer. Working on paper would be easier on his fried brain, and anything he could do to make today easier, he would. Including throwing himself into monotony, testing the status of everyday machines used for testing and upkeep. Centrifuge, autoclave and irradiator for sterilizing equipment that would be reused—something he’d never encountered in any other hospital but was in Antarctica. Everything brought onto the continent had to be shipped out again, including all forms of garbage.

He left in nine days.

“Are we having fun yet?” Jordan asked after throwing away the last bits of a stitch kit Lia had used on a butter-fingered galley cook, her second patient of the day.

As part of her first day on the job, Lia shadowed Jordan to learn her way around and get a crash course in station medicine, which was like some cross between a small hospital and field medicine. “Oh, sure, nothing like stitching up a hearty thumb slice to get the party started.”

“Or an asthma attack.”

“That was the first party of the day,” Lia corrected her thumb party joke, finishing up the file entry for the thumb.

She’d expected to struggle to find the old Lia, the version of her that Jordan knew, but a few minutes with her almost maid of honor had her stepping into London Lia’s shoes once more, the ones she hadn’t been strong enough to cram onto her metaphorical feet with West last night.

Not that she had to try too hard in that regard. Of all the people in her life, Jordan, who’d known her since medical school, was the most likely to be accepting of changes to the Lia she knew. But it was just one more thing on an already overwrought mind and Lia didn’t have it in her yet to try and sort out who she was supposed to be while trying to sort out everything else. While still hollow and cold from last night’s official breakup. Breakdown. Whatever. From feeling him very close by, but knowing she wouldn’t be welcome if she spoke to him, that she shouldn’t even want to speak to him, that he’d never smile for her again or cuddle under a warm woolly blanket with her to watch some silly movie with more special effects than story.

If being London Lia made it even a tiny bit easier, she’d stick to it for now. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t tell Jordan the truth about her situation, it just meant she had to be strong about it. No matter how helpless and heartbroken she might be on the inside.

“But I guess this is just my life now.”

“While you’re here, you mean?” Jordan asked, her tone saying she’d picked up on the undercurrent of dismay. “It can get more exciting here. Fieldwork can be pretty dangerous—not that you’ll be doing any of that over the winter. Are you nervous about staying?”

“For the winter?” Lia popped her head out of the treatment room to make certain no other patients had come in while they stood there chatting. “Not really. I’ve decided it’s adventurous and as my life is no longer going to be neurosurgery exciting, and even if my cabin is freezing compared to the rest of the station, it’s adventure time and I should enjoy the memory-making.”

“I’m going to come back to that whole life-without-adventure thing, but right now…your cabin was really that cold last night?” Jordan asked. “Inside the station never seems much colder than being at home.”

She had a point. Lia didn’t feel colder in the clinic, but no, her cabin had been colder. “Maybe I was just really tired. But honestly, I was always a little bit cold when I worked in London, and that was before I spent time in Portugal. Maybe the warm temperate climate had made me go soft.”

Jordan snorted her disbelief, a testament to how well Lia had played the self-assigned role of all things unsinkable. “You’ll do more than waste away in a little village. Maybe you can work part-time in Porto.”

All Lia could think to do was nod. “Maybe.”

But even if the authorities were still unsure if her father would return and take over the vineyard, she wasn’t confused about it. Once he lost interest in something, that was it. Her mother. His second and third wives. Her—not that she could remember him ever having interest in her. Just the opposite. Disappointment that she wasn’t male, and all the assurances that she’d never inherit. A point that had left her further confused when the lawyers had said, with him gone, she was the one indicated in his paperwork to manage Monterrosa Wine.

But that strange surprise had faded when they’d informed her that as soon as she married it would be her husband who actually inherited the vineyard. At that time, she’d thought that would be West. Now she might never feel comfortable enough to marry, not if she could be as wrong about West as she had been. A man who wanted her to believe he loved her? She’d probably fall for it without a drop of sense.

“But considering the village is called Monterrosa, I feel my first responsibility is to them, the people who have been loyal to Monterrosa Wine since the time of titles.”

“Who was assigned Nigel Gates yesterday?” The question came from the lobby area, immediately shifting both of their attention from the spiky conversation.

“Tony?” Lia mouthed the question to Jordan, not yet able to identify people by voice.

Jordan nodded, then mouthed back, “West had him.”

They both eased off the counter where they’d been leaning and drifted out to the lobby in time to see West coming out of the room where the autoclave and irradiators lived.

“I had him, but he never showed. It’s in the file,” West said, glancing toward the two of them, but focusing again on the medical director. “I was here with a broken arm an hour after end of shift, and he never made an appearance. Called up to the BAT twice before that, no answer.”

Nigel was being uncooperative. Figured.

“BAT?” she whispered to Jordan, staying out of the conversation between Tony and West, despite staying to listen in.

“Big-ass telescope,” Jordan filled in. “There are a lot of goofy acronyms around here.”

Lia nodded, but as it now all made sense, she had to join in the conversation. She could be an adult about this. She had to learn how to coexist with West at the station for several more days, couldn’t spend the whole time avoiding him.

“Nigel is in a big hurry to get the telescope calibrated before the night sky appears. I guess it takes a lot of time and effort,” she said, because she had picked up that much from the man’s single-minded but strangely nonconversational conversation. “He’s not going to take time away from that telescope without being forced.”

“Why do you say that?” West asked, his voice growing quiet and sober enough that she had to look at him.

“We spent two days traveling with each other, talking and getting to know one another.” Even if it was more like she was just there, listening to him talking to himself about his plans, she’d heard enough. “He’s got a fire in his belly.”

She immediately heard how it sounded—like she and Nigel had developed more of a connection than they had, and while seeming less pathetic, like someone who was still able to connect to another man appealed, West only had to meet Nigel to know how inaccurate that assumption would be.

“What’s the goal? A study of some kind?” Tony asked from the doorway of his office where he continued to loiter.

She could only shake her head. “I couldn’t tell you. He told me. In detail. But it was more like me listening to him thinking out loud than conversation. I mostly understood his drive. He said he’ll never get this kind of unrestricted access to a large telescope again, and his future plans ride on proving some theory. He’s not coming out of there without pressure. And it’ll probably get worse once the night sky arrives.”

West moved on. “I’ll call up there again, and if he doesn’t answer, I’ll take equipment and go.”

The way he turned his body away from her made it clear her part of this conversation was over, and she turned to Jordan, and tried to pretend she didn’t see worry in her friend’s eyes.

West got on the radio, and after a moment, he was speaking into the mic, calling Nigel by name, but no response came but static and silence.

“He can hear it broadcasting over the whole building?”

“It’s basically a big dome with a room built on for entry. If he’s with the telescope, he should be able to hear the radio.”

And why would he answer West today when he hadn’t yesterday?

She stepped away from Jordan and, although the last thing she should do was get close to West, stopped a couple feet down from where he stood with the radio. “Let me try. He might answer me.”

A few moments after she made the call and announced who it was, Nigel answered.

“Lia, busy right now.” He mumbled something else, something about cycling and whatever that was, but it was an opening.

“It’s really important that I get your baseline and type your blood, just in case there is some kind of emergency this winter and we’re all cut off from evacs. Maybe you can make up the time later.”

“Time is fixed, it cannot be made up.”

“Okay, but it can be saved. If I get dinner delivered to you later, you won’t have to come down to the galley and take time away, just keep working.”

He was silent a moment, and then agreed, “Fine. But be quick.”

Right. She rang off and then looked back to Jordan. “Want to come with me?”

Jordan nodded, but West interrupted, stepping over to take the radio from her hand. “He’s my patient. I’m going. You don’t need to go. Just send the dinner later.”

“If he’s going to be a problem child for the winter,” Tony interjected, “Lia needs to reinforce her relationship with him and learn where to find him when he refuses to come down.”

West’s answering grunt had all eyes on him, but he stared at Lia for several long seconds before he nodded. “Lia can come with me if she wants to.”

She definitely didn’t want to, but she also didn’t want to let him keep affecting all her decisions, making her less than she had the potential to be, as she’d been since she’d found him missing.

One look around provided a befuddled-looking Tony Bradshaw, who clearly did not understand the angsty undercurrent flowing between them all, but didn’t ask for clarification. He just gave final directions about blood typing and equipment, then returned to his office.

“Get your boots on and your outdoor suit,” West directed, then pivoted to grab a bag from the wall and headed for the inventory room again, where he’d been all day. “Meet me here in fifteen.”

Right. Great.

She looked over to find Jordan hurrying to her side. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? It probably shouldn’t be all three of us, but if you don’t want to make the trek alone with him, you can bow out and I’ll take you up there tomorrow. So you know where it is.”

The question alone would’ve alarmed Lia back home, but here it just confirmed that she wasn’t pulling off her quiet strength act as well as she’d used to, no matter how easy it was to talk to Jordan again.

“It’s okay. I said I was after adventure, right?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure spending time with him means adventure, just…suffering.” Jordan kept her words quiet, and the gentle assertion of support had that tingling returning to Lia’s eyes. She shook her head and gestured to the door, eager to escape before that awful leaking came back. “I need to get my suit. It’ll be fine. I’m not going to let him make me dread any part of my adventure. I’m here to revel. R.E.V.E.L. And climbing a frozen, snowy, almost-mountain is the kind of adventure I can’t have in Portugal. Don’t worry.”

She silently repeated the words to herself. Don’t worry. Don’t worry because he couldn’t say anything worse than he already had. And that stare of his hadn’t said he wanted to talk to her about anything, just like him hiding out in the storage room all day said he didn’t want to be in her presence any more than she wanted to be in his.

“I’m going to worry, anyway,” Jordan muttered, still looking uneasy with the concept, but apparently with enough confidence in Lia still to say, “Call me for dinner when you get back. Zeke and I will meet you in the galley.”

“Okay. Don’t worry,” she repeated. “We’re just going to work. Said everything we needed to last night.”

“You did?” If possible, Jordan looked more alarmed.

Suddenly, Lia didn’t want to uphold any masks with her. She could shrug it off, she would’ve before, but she probably couldn’t pull off the unaffected face. Not when she knew that her eyes were still a little red, which might become a chronic condition.

“I don’t think I can talk about it yet,” she said after a hard pause that made a little line appear between Jordan’s brows.

Jordan squeezed her hand once and nodded, accepting. “When you’re ready.”

She had to swallow down another rise of emotion, but glanced toward the door. “If I’m late, he won’t wait for me.”

God knew West found it too easy to leave her behind.

CHAPTER FOUR

WEST STOOD AT the door of his cabin, a rigged heater in his arms, ready to take it next door to Lia.

She didn’t know he was coming. Probably wouldn’t want to see him at her door for the second night in a row, but he had to do something.

No matter how sound his reasoning, West knew he’d abandoned her. And he knew how bad that felt. How it wormed down into places you didn’t even realize were there, and came out when you least wanted. Over the years he’d seen it from every angle—from the slow-motion abandonment of his mother, to Charlie’s withdrawal into substance abuse, and even from the other side and the many times he’d walked away from friendships or half-formed relationships to outrun Charlie’s problems.

Until Lia.

Until West had met Lia and was no longer willing to start over anywhere she wasn’t. And in his fear of losing her, he’d hidden his biggest weakness from her—his addict brother. She knew he had a little brother, but he’d hidden the bad parts. To keep her from asking to meet Charlie, West had concocted a story about an adventure in the States, working his way across the continent, like some romanticized vagabond.

That was the first in a string of unforgivable sins that led him here.

If he’d told her the truth back then, he might have never felt the need to make Charlie choose. Or maybe he would’ve done it gentler, and actually listened to the words his brother said. West had heard “Have a nice life” as another passive-aggressive jab of guilt. It wasn’t until much later that he’d understood it to have been a more final goodbye.

He needed to pay attention to Lia right now. Make sure she didn’t have a Charlie reaction to his choices. She was still his responsibility, and if anything happened to her…

Not that he thought Lia suicidal, but he’d once thought her made of iron, stronger than anyone else he’d ever known. Strong or not, she’d still cried herself to sleep last night, and he’d heard every sniff and hiccup through the paper-thin cabin walls. He’d seen the evidence of it all day in her still-puffy eyes, and it ate at him.

He stepped out of his cabin, closed the door and took the two steps separating them to lightly knock on hers. Unlike last night, she didn’t take long to respond.

With the door held half-open in front of her like a shield of protection, she met his gaze and some of the burning in his chest eased when she didn’t flinch or look away. Of course, that meant he could see fresh redness in her eyebrows that contradicted the flash of strength. And still wearing the pink pajamas, but she hadn’t been sleeping, at least not yet.

No greeting, no deep longing looks and no hope in her voice, she glanced at what he carried and back up. “Flower pots?”

“Heater,” he said softly, tapping the terra-cotta pots with one finger. If the promise of heat didn’t buy him admittance, he had no words to ask. No words for anything. There was a time when he’d always had something to say to her. Waited, saving up thoughts throughout the day to tell her at night. Stupid things to make her smile, or things to spark debate. Teasing. Challenging. Playful. But now, every word he uttered could give him away. He couldn’t afford to overshare.

“How?”

“I’ll show you. It’ll warm the cabin, those at the end of the pods are exposed to more outside walls than those stacked side by side. They don’t retain the heat as well.”

She considered the pots for another several seconds, door still in place, then simply let go of the door and moved back inside.

He closed the door behind him, then wordlessly stepped to the bedside table to clear it off while she burrowed back into a mountain of blankets on the bed.

Explaining how the pots functioned as a heater while he assembled it was easy at least. He lit four tea-light candles for the bottom layer and stepped back to mention safety; even if she didn’t need to hear not to touch hot things, it was easier.

“But I guess you don’t need to be warned about the danger of fire.”

“Not really,” she muttered. “Things I need to be warned about never come with a warning. Or I’m just really bad at picking up on hints.”

So was he. Charlie had proven that.

And she didn’t need to know that. “Hints?”

“Do you really want to know?” she asked, pushing down the blankets to her lap so she could sit up straighter, but stayed tucked into the bed.

He was suddenly sure he didn’t want to know, but he said, anyway, “Tell me.”

One purposeful nod, and she asked, “When did you know you didn’t love me? Because I’ve had months of wondering what happened while I was gone. The last thing you said to me at the airport that day was ‘I love you.’ Did I miss something? Did you know then?”

Hell.

No more circling the problem. This was more like the Lia he knew than the sad-eyed woman he’d seen every time he’d looked at her since she’d arrived.

And he didn’t have an answer. He never considered that he’d need to have more of an answer.

“I figured it out after,” he said. “Probably good you didn’t want me to come to Portugal with you.”

“What does that mean?”

“You didn’t want me to go.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why would I invite you to Portugal when you had no idea what you were going to be walking into? Because what is going on there? It’s a mess, above what you’ve probably realized.”

“Mess how?” he asked. “What’s going on at Monterrosa now? Are you avoiding going there?”

“That seems to be your MO, not mine. I don’t run away from pain—apparently I run toward it.” She nodded once to him, then pointed to the door. “I think we’re done. I understand exactly where you’re coming from. You didn’t love me, you figured it out as soon as I was out of sight because something mysterious happened. I’m guessing she had red hair.”

“Lia.”

“I don’t suppose I need more details.” She waved a hand toward the door.

He didn’t move. He was finally starting to feel a little hopeful that she would get over him, that he wouldn’t ruin her, too. “Are you finally getting angry?”

“Is that good, too?”

“Yes,” he immediately answered, maybe a little too loudly.

“Why?”

He lowered his voice a little and shook his head. “Because I hate seeing you with red eyes.”

“Sorry I’m disappointing you by being human.”

“The Lia Monterrosa I know wouldn’t let—”

“Maybe that’s the problem, then.” She cut him off. “You don’t know me. And I’m tired of cleaning up messes of the men who should’ve loved me, but didn’t. You left me to call off the wedding, after I figured out you weren’t coming back, and I waited up until the last minute. Nine days after my father burned down half of the estate and dropped off the face of the earth so I’ve had to clean it up for the hundreds of people who rely on the vineyard for their livelihoods. Then I had to cancel my wedding because my fiancé disappeared, too. It was a great week.”

He hadn’t thought about the timing back then, but now seemed a good time to ask, since all information about her emotional state was of value. “Did you get it repaired?”

“Does it matter?” she asked, then stretched out in the bed, rolling to face the wall. “Thanks for the heater. You’re still a babaca.”

Final words if he’d ever heard them; even if he didn’t understand the actual last one, he could read between the lines. Jerk. Ass. Something like that. And a little bit angrier, thank God. Anger was fire, and fire meant the will to fight. That was better than just curling up and taking whatever life had thrown at her.

But staying out of her way as much as possible until it was time to go was the right call. He definitely should go on that day trip into the field tomorrow. Even one day of distance had to help.

“What’re you doin’?”

The familiar cadence of West’s nearly tamed brogue stopped Lia midstick.

She lifted her gaze from the butterfly needle she’d been fishing for a vein with at the crook of her elbow to see him in the doorway, leaning, rough from a prolonged field mission, still wearing the thick red thermal suit, large duffel bag hanging on his shoulder.

It had been three days since she’d last seen him. Three days since their really awesome and definitely not soul-crushing discussion. Of course he’d be the one to find her performing a sneaky blood draw on herself.

“Trying and failing to get some blood.”

He dropped the bag outside the door and meandered into the small exam room. “Maybe because you’re right-handed and trying with your left.”

“I have tiny veins, they’re hard to hit, and the best one is on the right elbow crook.” She halfway withdrew the tiny butterfly needle again, tilted it slightly and pushed forward again, gritting her teeth. Somehow it hurt more having to watch the needle, and when she was doing the steering, she definitely had to watch.

He headed for the sink, washed his hands and stepped to her side. “Stop.”

He didn’t swat her hand, but she heard the reprimand coming as he pinched the butterfly above where she’d held it, and she let go.

“You just had panels run six days ago.” Dr. Obvious held the needle still and used his free hand to lightly palpate the vein above, considering his next move.

“I know. I was there.”

“You could’ve had Tony do this for you, or anyone else in the department.”

“I know that, too.”

He didn’t try to press the needle into the vein again, just took it out and watched as absolutely nothing happened. No blood. No extra firmness when he prodded the vein, which would indicate she’d at least perforated it and would have an unholy bruise. Nothing.

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