Damn, she was beautiful. Thinner, but gorgeous. Her cheeks sharper, her dark eyes sunk a little deeper in her skull. Was she sleeping? She looked exhausted. Haunted. It was hard to tell with the apron she wore, but he thought her frame might be slighter. Which he didn’t like at all.
He wanted to wrap himself around her, to keep her safe.
“Here.” She threw him a towel, which he caught one-handed. “I wash, you dry.”
He nodded and rolled up his sleeves. “Let’s go.”
She was good at her job. He knew that. He’d known it the second she’d shown up in that South Pole kitchen, clearly overqualified. They’d never eaten so well as when she’d been in charge. She’d spoiled them with the tastes and smells and sight of her. How had he thought for a second that he could live without any of it? Like an addiction, he needed her to survive. His oxygen.
But seeing her here, doing grunt work in this most unpretentious of kitchens, was like looking deep into her soul. She didn’t mind working hard. But then he knew that already.
For the next hour, he wore himself out, wiping and scrubbing dishes and stoves, fryers and floors, until everything sparkled. Every time he tried to talk to her, she gave him another job to do. And then, when they’d done everything they possibly could and he was beyond ready to tell her how he felt, she took the oven apart and had him scour the inside.
When she finally handed him a glass of water, he was out of breath, exhausted, pouring sweat, while Angel was flushed and alive-looking. Every bit of him ached from the movements. Possibly also from the proximity to her and the too-large space between them. Except that space had shrunk at times when she’d passed behind him, putting a hand to his back to let him know she was there. Or when she’d pointed out a hard-to-get-to spot behind the sink.
Everything about her was so perfectly competent, her body a testament to who she was, covered in years of burn scars, the nails neat and short. For a few lost seconds, he’d pictured those fingers wrapped around him, the hand tight on his hip or scratching furrows down his back.
In the last hour, he’d learned how to clean an industrial kitchen from top to bottom. He’d also learned that working alongside this woman made him feel more alive than anything in the world.
There were so many things he should have been saying to her from the beginning. He’d never been particularly eloquent, but maybe a part of him had been building them up, piece by piece, thought by thought, just for her. And he needed to get the words out—he needed totell her.
“Ange—” He gave an annoyed sigh. “Abby.”
She turned the water on full blast.
“Hey.” He went over and turned it off. “Will you listen to me? For just a minute?”
She huffed out a breath and met his gaze, hers so full of hurt that it almost felled him.
He inhaled and finally forced the words out. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. In my life. Hands down.”
Her eyes grew big and round, and her head was shaking side to side, like she knew what he was about to do and she needed him to stop.
He went on. “As far as I’m concerned, you outshine everyone. Everything. In the kitchen and out.” He ignored the tight, flat line of her lips and carried on. “And, you know…you were right.”
Her exaggerated eye-roll made him smile. Shit, he’d take that from her any day. She was listening at least. It was a start.
“I was a jerk. I was frozen through. Until I met you.” He moved toward her, close enough to touch, but he’d let her take that last step. If she chose to. “And now we’re about to start new lives, after everything, and…well, you’ve ruined me, melted me down and made a new man of me. Except I’m useless without you. Useless.” The words were spilling out of him now, faster and faster. “You’re magnificent, Angel. You’re bigger than Antarctica, stronger than the ice, more magnetic than the poles. I’d do anything to be with you. Be anyone. Go anywhere.”
“Ford, you don’t have to—”
“Iwantto. I want to show you how much you’re worth.Everything.Absolutely everything I am, everything I have is for you. Tell me where, tell me when, tell me how, and I’m there.”
“No.”
No? Christ. He put his hand to his chest.
“I won’t take you away from the ice.”
“You wouldn’t be taking me away.” He leaned in and whispered. “I was hiding there. You heal me more than the ice ever did.You’remy home. And I want to be yours. Will you let me be that? Can I be the place you come home to?”
* * *
Her skin burned, her eyes watered, and she couldn’t stop shaking.
It wasn’t fair of him to catch her off-guard like this, after a long shift volunteering at the soup kitchen.
But he’d done it and she knew this was hard for him.
