“Holy crap.”
“What?”
“Did you just laugh?” She sat up, humor brightening her eyes.
“Huh?”
“That huffy noise you made. That was a laugh, wasn’t it?”
“Huffy?”
“Yeah. Like a grunt.”
“Wasn’t—”
“Itwas. You laughed. Halle-frickin-lujah. The man laughs.”
That made him frown. “Course I do.”
“Not with me you don’t.”
“What are you—”
“Oh, come on,Professor Ice Man, you know as well as I do that I’m the last person you’d want to be stuck with out here on the ice. Am I right?” The look she gave him was knowing and brash and close to the way she acted back on base. Except for one little difference—an almost unnoticeable moment of hesitation. Like she assumed she was right, but she really didn’t want to be.
He couldn’t answer right away. Partly because he didn’t want to have this conversation at all, but also because he wasn’t entirely sure of his own answer. Would he rather be here with someone other than her?
Whatever. No point wasting time worrying about things like that. If what-ifs had been his thing, he’d have started young with questions like,What if Mom were alive? What would life be like then?OrWhat if I’d stayed in school instead of joining the army to piss off Dad?
Those weren’t questions he’d ever bother asking himself.
“No point.”
“What?”
“No point worrying about crap like that.” He grabbed a bowl and spoon and handed it over to her. “Eat.”
Chapter 17
She shouldn’t have said thatdead weightthing. Because now that it was out, it hung between them like… Well, like a dead weight. A years-old salami, left too long to cure. Heavy, dry, hard as rock, obvious, and utterly pointless.
Right. Pointless, he’d said. Or, actually, “No point worrying about crap like that.” Such a practical way of looking at life.
She ate without tasting, which, frankly, was a good thing, given the slop they were shoveling in. Slop that felt pretty amazing going down, though. The heat and moisture revived her a bit, made her feel more human after the repetitive hiss of skiing had taken even that away.
She hurt in ways she’d never imagined after one day on the ice. What would it be like after three weeks of this?
“Thank you,” she finally managed, once she’d put away almost the entire bowl, barely taking the time to breathe.
He did another of those grunts—apparently his catchall sound—and lifted his head. Those blue eyes, close andhereafter so many hours hidden behind protective eyewear, nearly blinded her. “What for?”
“For dinner.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t thank you?” She blinked. “Why not?”
He shrugged and his already sunburned face got redder. “It’s normal.”
