Page 18 of Ruining His Smirk

5

Nate

The wind toyed with the loose strands of my hair as I rested one boot on the bottom rail and balanced my sketchbook against my raised knee. The page had already filled with pencil lines.

A seal lay sprawled across the top of the iceberg, not more than fifty yards from the ship, perfectly content to ignore me. It was a Weddell seal, its species named after the sea surrounding us. It had lifted its head once when I’d first arrived on the deck, regarded me with those dark eyes, then decided I wasn’t worth the expenditure of energy.

Sensible creature.

I softened the line beneath its jaw with the side of my pencil before refining the folds where its neck disappeared into the thick layer of blubber beneath the skin. One foreflipper rested beneath its chest while the other had fallen lazily to the side, the short black claws almost disappearing against the ice.

I added the whiskers last.

The midnight sun hung above the horizon, bathing the entire Weddell Sea in that peculiar Antarctic light that never quite became evening. It should have been peaceful.

Instead, every few minutes, my thoughts wandered back to one man.

Landry.

I pressed the pencil harder than intended, darkening the line beneath the seal’s chin.

Of every possible man on the continent… every single one… the captain had somehow managed to land on him.

I still couldn’t believe it. Before he’d arrived, my memory had done me the kindness of softening details. Reality came with a rude awakening of forearms corded by years of physical labor, shoulders that filled every doorway he walked through, and Landry’s habit of standing close enough for me to become aware of exactly how much larger he was than I was.

My pencil strayed, ruining the sketch. Good Lord.

I was behaving like one of my own study animals. Every breeding season, I spent weeks documenting humpback males who abruptly lost every ounce of common sense. Entire migration routes became secondary to the presence of an attractive female. They competed, postured, sang until their voices carried for miles beneath the ocean, all while apparently forgetting food, danger, and every other sensible priority evolution had otherwise equipped them with.

Now look at me. One brawny guy walked onto my ship and my brain had immediately begun acting as though civilization had collapsed.

Pathetic.

Get a grip, Nate. You are a scientist. A grown man. Not a hormone-addled whale.

I glanced up at my midnight companion. He dozed on. The seal, unlike me, possessed the admirable ability to ignore things that weren’t worth its energy.

The door behind me opened. I didn’t bother turning around. Keith’s boots stopped beside me. A second later he rested both elbows on the railing and looked out toward the Weddell seal without saying anything for a while. Typical Keith.

“I know,” I said before he could start. “You don’t have to say it. Yes, I’m out here all by my lonesome self. And yes, I’m annoyed because of that… goon.”

A quiet laugh escaped him.

“To be fair,” he said, “I wasn’t expecting him either. The captain probably should’ve asked one of us before flying him halfway across Antarctica.” Keith shrugged. “But Birch told me there wasn’t anybody else with the same technical capability. Or the same reputation anywhere on the continent.” He glanced sideways at me. “Seems your cowboy really is the best at what he does.”

Crack. The sharp snap echoed louder than it should have. Half my pencil lead dropped onto the deck and bounced once before disappearing beneath the rail.

I stared at the broken pencil in my fingers. Keith wisely didn’t say anything.

“I hope,” I said with exaggerated care, “you enjoyed watching the violent death of perfectly good graphite.”

“Was it the phrase ‘your cowboy’?” He grinned.

I slid the broken pencil back into my sketching pouch and closed my sketchbook. Time to thaw my frozen fingers. I found the thick gloves in my pocket and pulled them on.

“It’s not funny anymore, Keith.” I looked back toward the seal, though I wasn’t really seeing it anymore. “I’m pissed. I am thoroughly, spectacularly pissed.”

Keith remained silent.