While every instinct screamed at him to get away, he used his height to scan the bodies for Cortez.
The closeness, the noise, the smell, all of it made him want to head back into the cold, where he could breathe unimpeded. Andthink.
He shook his head to clear it, blinked away the tunnel vision threatening to take over, and did his best to respond to the greetings thrown his way, all while trying desperately to find Cortez. He couldn’t get that bloodstain out of his head.
“Hey, Coop!” Someone slapped him on the arm and another thrust a drink into his hand. Coop blinked at it for a few seconds before setting it on a table.
On the tiny stage, Jameson looked like a youngish, demented Santa Claus with his flaming-red beard and hefty frame. He stopped singing abruptly and pointed Coop out with a whoop. “Coop’s in the house! Let’s open her up!” Jameson yelled before throwing his guitar and mic to someone else and stomping toward the bar, where he grabbed his bottle from the place of honor it had occupied these past couple years.
With a sigh, Coop gave in and concentrated on fighting his way to Jameson instead.
Just before he reached the bar, his eye latched on to something, sending his breath into overdrive before his brain registered what it was.
Angel Smith.Dancing.
By some sort of witchcraft, his gaze separated her out of the faceless bodies writhing on one side of the room. He focused on her sinewy movements alone, while everything else blurred away into background noise.
He half acknowledged Jameson thrusting a drink into his hand and clinking their glasses together, caught just a whiff of the shot’s smoky fumes, and barely registered the peaty burn of barrel-aged booze as it slid its way down his throat. All his senses were pointed at the place where Angel turned and twisted to the rhythm of the music—bare, glistening arms stretched high, head swinging back, river of dark hair cascading behind her. Her face…
“Good to see you here, my friend. Been a while.”
“Mm-hm.” Coop blinked back the haze and squinted at Jameson. What was it he wanted to ask again?
“So, listen to this, Coop. I’ve got a plan for the 300 Club that you’re gonna love. We’re gonna do freaking margaritas or some shit and get someone to take pictures like we’re in goddamn Club Med. I’ll wear my hula skirt, Pam’s got that…”
No way was he running around the South Pole buck naked after sitting in a two-hundred-degree sauna. Coop shifted his head, doing his best to listen to all the ways the winter-overs would freeze their nuts off in the spirit of macho stupidity.
It was a lost cause, since he was only able to focus on one thing: her. Part of it was normal—the single-focus part. It went along with the other traits that separated him from the crowd, literally: his issues with outside stimuli, discomfort with closeness, inability to handle certain sensations or touches or smells. Not to mention the noise.
It was a sensorial processing thing. He knew that, had spent ages researching it, since research was his solution to most things—how he grasped ideas, solved problems, answered questions.
It was too loud and too crowded here, which was why he never came to the Nest with the summer crew in residence. He didn’t mix with the horde, didn’t even attempt to blend in.
Out on the ice was where he belonged, his only company snow and sky. Not standing in a crowded bar, staring at a woman who might as well be a different species.
He’d just decided to take off when she turned and caught his eye.
Chapter 3
In a split second, Angel went from breathless and happy on the dance floor, to…she didn’t know what to call the thing that Ford Cooper’s intense scrutiny did to her. Torn open? Seen?
Her feet faltered, making her stumble and grab on to Pam, who giggled and helped her upright, saying something about mixing booze and tunes. But Angel’s reaction had nothing to do with either of those things and everything to do with the hungry look on the Ice Man’s face.
She shut her eyes tight and felt the room spin around her.
Oh, she thought with something like relief.Pam’s right. I’m drunk. That’s all this is.When she looked again, expecting him to have disappeared into the crowd, he was still there, head and shoulders above the others, eyes fixed on her, drawing her in with their tractor-beam pull.
Instead of ignoring him as she’d done since her first week here, she let thatnow or neverthrill take hold. She’d never seen anything aside from irritation on his face, but at this moment, he looked like he couldconsumeher. For some reason, that hint of interest pushed her to forget every one of the unfriendly one-sided conversations they’d ever had. Every curt “no salt,” “too spicy,” or just plain “no” he’d thrown her way, without a single hint of a “please” or “thank you.”
What if Pam and Jameson were right about Ford Cooper? What if he was misunderstood? A good man who deserved another chance?
What if that thick veneer of cool disdain hid an actual person, with thoughts and feelings?
Someone slid a drink into her hand—a clear liquid in a shot glass—and rather than worry about her 4:30 a.m. wake-up or the packing she still had to do, she let the unexpected thrill of the man’s interest goad her into toasting with the rest of the crew and slinging it back.
She barely heard the round of cheers, barely felt anything but the sultry rhythm of the bass thrumming through her veins.
This was it. One chance to scratch the Ice Man’s flash-frozen surface before she left this place forever.
