Though the campfire was large and blazing and the food that Alfonso had cooked was just as warm and tasty as every other night, she continued to lose body heat. She was chattering within minutes. Maxence and Father Booker exchanged glances, and then Father Booker insisted that she sit in her tent to finish eating.
It didn’t help. The shaking got worse.
Dree didn’t take off her ski suit before she slipped into her sleeping bag, zipping all the way up to around her face.
The shaking of her muscles intensified.
Maxence crawled into the tent a few minutes later, saying, “What a day that was. Are you all right?”
“Y-Y-Y—”
“Mon Dieu, chérie.I can hear your teeth chattering. I thought Father Moses sent some of those hand-warmer packs with you.”
“I have one. It warmed my hands for a few minutes, but I would need, like, fifty of them to warm my whole body up. Aren’t you cold?”
Maxence said, “I am bigger than you are. Size matters.”
Dree snorted. “I wish I were bigger. I’m freezing.”
Her body seized with the cold, nearly flopping with trying to get warm.
Maxence sucked in a breath. “Dree, you’re going into hypothermia.”
Chapter Thirteen
Necessity
Maxence
Maxence paused because he knew that he absolutely should not do this, and yet Dree’s teeth were chattering so hard that they sounded like castanets.
He lowered his voice. “We could zip the sleeping bags together, and I could warm you up.”
Dree didn’t answer for a few of Maxence’s stuttering heartbeats. He’d gone too far. She thought he was offering something he wasn’t, even though it was something he so deeply desired.
She said, “I thought you weren’t supposed to do that. You took vows or something.”
“I’m not suggesting we have sex. I wouldn’t,” he lied. “I won’t take advantage of you.” That was true. “You’re freezing. I don’t want you to get sick. Just for practical matters, if you get severe hypothermia, I’m not sure what we would do. We only have motorcycles to get you into town, but riding a motorcycle is not good for someone with hypothermia.”
Dree didn’t answer for a few minutes, and Maxence considered that she might be wrestling with her conscience.
He was undoubtedly wrestling with his.
Finally, she said, “I’m really cold. I would appreciate it if we could zip the sleeping bags together for a while.”
“Don’t unzip your sleeping bag yet. Let me think about how to do this.” His mind mulled over various combinations of ways to unzip and re-zip the mummy bags together. “Okay, this is what we’re going to do. Let me get mine completely unzipped and myself ready, and then we’re going to unzip yours and re-zip them together as fast as possible. Wait just a minute. And, we’re going to need some light to fit the zippers together. We should point the flashlight toward the back of the tent. Otherwise, our silhouettes will cast right on the sides of the tent, and it will be obvious what we are doing. I’m not ashamed, but we don’t need those guys to talk about it.”
Dree turned on her flashlight to a medium setting and aimed it toward the back of the tent, where the boxes of vaccines and other temperature-sensitive medical supplies were stored.
Max opened the zipper that wound around his sleeping bag and wrestled his bag into position next to hers. He stripped off his riding leathers and clothes down to his tee-shirt and underwear. The frigid air in the tent poured over his skin, instantly chilling him. “Okay.”
“I’m wearing my ski suit,” she said, still chattering.
“You should’ve taken that off.”
“I’mso cold.”
“You’ll warm up faster if we’re”—he felt like he was choking because his throat closed—“skin to skin.”
