Melt

She banged her leg against his again and wished she had some decent high heels on so she could execute a sideways kick in the shins, too.

Grandma Bea had resumed her interview of Hunter. Ashe adjusted the screen for her, so she could get a “better look.”

Still smiling, still answering her questions with his all-American apple-pie polite charm, Hunter put his hand on Emma’s knee, pulling her leg against his and keeping it there so she couldn’t thwack against him any more.

He had a very big, very heavy hand.

Emma swallowed. His fingers were conveying a message all their own. He gave her knee a very firm squeeze when she tried to get another little dig in. And she was thinking all kinds of inappropriate thoughts about the size and weight of the rest of him.

She felt hot.

She either had to get away or give in. She wasn’t ready to give in.

“Gramms, I have to go now. I have work to do. ’Bye, Ashe. Thanks for helping her out. It’s really nice to see her.”

“K.” The monosyllabic answering must infuriate his teachers even more than his inexpressive face.

“I’ll call you back tomorrow,” Emma said to Bea. “Try to answer the phone, won’t you?”

“I’ll try. Sometimes I don’t hear it. Ashe has found some music I like on the computer.”

“What kind of music do you like, ma’am?” Hunter asked, as though he had all day to spend chatting with her gramms.

Out of sight of the computer camera, Emma curled her hands into fists.

“Sorry, Grandma, someone needs the computer. I’ll call you again in the next day or so.”

She disconnected the call and turned to glare at Hunter. “You don’t have family of your own to chat with?”

“None that I want to, no.” He smiled winningly. “Your grandma seems really nice.”

“She is really nice. And I don’t want anyone taking advantage of her.”

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about with Ashe there.”

That annoyed her. She liked to look after Grandma Bea—there wasn’t anyone else. “She’s sharp in her head, but she’s just had a fall and broken her hip. She’s far more fragile than she makes out.”

“Well, it seems like that kid is more interested in being nice to her than trying to pull a fast one.”

“Hmmm.” Emma didn’t want to concede that yet. She wished she could be there to check him out for herself.

“You don’t trust him?”

“It’ll be fine.” And she’d make sure of it when she got home.

Hunter smiled. “You’re one of those ‘has to do everything herself to make sure it’s a good job’ types, aren’t you?”

“I don’t have to do it all myself,” Emma answered. “But I do like to ensure it has been done properly, sure. Especially for those I care about.”

“Who else do you care about?”

The softness of the question intensified the intimacy between them.

“No one. I’m single and happy about it,” she breezed.

He laughed. “I meant other family? You don’t want to Skype with anyone else?”

“No.”

“Because there is no other family?” he guessed even more softly.

“No other family.”

“Oh.” He stood and walked toward the door. “So you want to see some highlights of this base?”

“You mean the bar?”

“Actually, I’m thinking somewhere else first.”

She followed him into a massive building and along a corridor, passing several doors until he stopped at one and knocked. Moments later it opened and an older guy who just had to be a “beaker” stood in the doorway—the computers and lab stations visible behind him gave it away.

“Hunter.” The bearded man beamed, stepping forward to hug Hunter and do the back-slapping thing.

Emma watched, fascinated as Hunter’s full-body, all-genuine happiness radiated out. She couldn’t help smiling, too.

“Emma, this is Tom, one of the best beakers on this base.” Hunter turned to introduce them. “You mind giving her the tour?”

“For you, of course.”

“Tour day is usually Sunday,” Hunter explained to Emma. “So you’re very lucky.”

“I really appreciate this.” Emma smiled at Tom. “Thank you so much.”

Tom spent almost two hours explaining the kind of research they undertook in the lab. She learned about how they took core samples of the ice, so they could analyze water that had fallen thousands of years ago. How they believed that below the miles of ice in one part of Antarctica was actually a series of islands, another was a mountain range. How some scientists get into dive suits and actually go under to explore life in the kill-you-cold water.

“Think nothing grows here?” Tom asked. “Look at the portions of rock revealed over summer, and you’ll see lichen. But there are actually some plants that grow inside the rock.”

“Inside it?” Emma asked.

Tom nodded. “It’s amazing how plants and animals will fight back to survive in even the most hostile environment. See those fish over there?”

A tank against the far wall held white creatures seemingly suspended in the water.

“They’re that ghost color because they have no hemoglobin. And they survive in almost freezing temperatures. The insects here actually have antifreeze in their bodies. They shut down through the worst of the weather, reawakening when it gets warmer.”

“Antifreeze,” Hunter murmured in her ear. “Bet you could use some of that.”

“Very funny,” she mouthed back at him.

She took her notebook and pencil from her pocket and quickly sketched the fish while Tom and Hunter talked. These were exactly the kinds of tiny detailed subjects she liked. Clearly Hunter remembered details of a number of projects they’d been working on in the lab because he asked for updates—not just the polite kind of updates, either, but some seriously complicated scientific questions.

Finally, though, he drew the conversation to a close. “Come on, Emma needs to see some other aspects of this base, and you’ve worked long enough for today, right?”

Tom laughed and led them through the “town” to the bar.

Several people came over to talk to them, pleased to see Hunter. All super friendly, they fired questions at her, too—who she was, what she was doing there, how long she was down for, whether it was her first time… She was so busy answering, she didn’t get to listen to what Hunter was saying to the others standing around him. She wished she could; she wanted to know more about him. But Hunter was a bit of a mystery. He smiled, joked, teased—but didn’t offer up all that much info as the others did.

What was it about his family that was so bad he’d come to the bottom of the earth to escape? Her curiosity burned.

But as he glanced over the heads of the other people and winked at her, she decided she was probably better off never knowing. Getting to know Hunter Wilson might be more dangerous than straying too far into the icy continent they were precariously perched on the edge of.

CHAPTER FOUR

EMMA WORKED REALLY, really hard—the hardest she ever had. It was a matter of pride—she wanted to show she deserved the award, but also everyone else on base worked phenomenally hard and she didn’t want to be the weak one.

“You always work in black and white?” Hunter asked her, unashamedly peering again over her plans that she’d spread on the table behind her.

“Mostly, yes. But I’ll be adding color to this once the design is penciled in.”

“Why black and white?”