Page 1 of Ruining His Smirk

1

Nate

Polar Research Ship Icebreaker

Weddell Sea, Antarctica

Austral Summer

Dec 9th

I stood on the deck of the ship as it shuddered beneath me. The vibration traveled through the soles of my boots into my very bones. A deep, eerie moan filled the cold Antarctic air as our ship—a polar icebreaker—climbed onto a sheet of sea ice.

For several long seconds, the ship continued to glide up, weighing down on the ice below with its massive bulk.

Then a crack split the air.

The ice surrendered. I looked down from the deck and watched the crack in the ice as it raced outward beneath the ship and across the white expanse, branching into darkfractures before the sheet below us buckled from the pressure of thousands of tons of steel.

I smiled into the bitter wind. I would never get tired of watching an icebreaker do what it had been built to do: this enormous beast of metal crushing a path through the remote, desolate corner of the planet and taking us farther into the depths of the Weddell Sea.

I twisted to look behind. The ship had left a dark blue channel of freshly exposed water cut through the frozen sea.

Ahead of me stretched an endless white plain. There was no other ship for miles and miles. We were the only human beings and we were completely dependent on this ship to keep us warm, safe, and alive. I turned back to my sketchbook and braced it against my forearm before the wind could tear it from my hands. The page ruffled beneath my frozen fingers.

I had been on deck sketching the scenery for half an hour, and my fingers were just about frozen.

The side door opened behind me with a heavy metallic thud. Keith stepped outside and pulled the door shut against the pressure, his shoulders hunched inside his heavy jacket and both hands buried firmly in its pockets. He crossed the deck toward me, the collar of his heavy jacket turned up and a thick woolen beanie pulled over his head.

He came to stand next to me and looked down at my bare fingers. “It’s too cold today.”

That was his way of saying I should wrap it up. I stuffed my pencils in my pencil pouch and closed my sketchbook.

“What did you draw?” he asked.

“Seals. Icebergs,” I replied, pulling my gloves over my stiffened fingers. Restoring the circulation was going to sting.

“Is this for your next book?” Keith rested both forearms on the railing, staring across the ice. We’d worked together foryears. Before I met him, he’d served with the Navy SEALs, and now his primary role was our ship’s medic and rescue specialist.

“Yeah. I’m thinking of a baby seal story or maybe a baby whale. Not decided yet.”

“You’re a whale researcher, so why not baby whale?”

“We won’t get to see too many whales until we leave the sea ice area. It’s still early in the season. Most of my whales are still en route from warmer waters. Meanwhile I have plenty of seals to draw here.”

He nodded as he looked out at the passing scenery. Another shudder rocked us.

“I thought you were mooning over your cowboy out here all by your lonesome self.”

My mood immediately nosedived. “He’s not my cowboy.”

“But you’d like him to be yours.”

I glared at him. “I met the man once.”

“Exactly. A whole year ago.”

“I hardly think about him.”