And yet here I was, walking along the dock of our station, alone under the twilight of the Antarctic night sky. The dock planks were slick under my shoes, a thin rime of moisture coating the wood from the afternoon melt. Below, the water was black and still, small chunks of brash ice knocking softly against the pylons.
I rubbed a hand over my forehead. Headaches were a rarity for me, but I felt a massive one coming.
Why, for fuck’s sake, was I such a coward when it came to him?
Just open my damn mouth and be done with it.
It was only paperwork.
Men like Reed were free spirits. He broke Guinness records as a side hobby. Why did my heart think I was somehow the exception?
I walked aimlessly along the boardwalks connecting the various buildings. The cold air hit my skin like needles through my starched white shirt. I had no time to grab a parka. I didn’t even have proper outdoor shoes on. Another gust of wind cut straight through my thin shirt.
I shivered.
Where could I go? I had just left the main building, but I couldn’t go into the R&R building either. There were people everywhere.
My gaze landed on the outcrop of smaller buildings at the edge of the station area. One of them was the workshop.
Perfect.
There would be no one there except the station carpenter, and I knew Garrett was a man of few words.
I kept walking, rocks and ice crunching under my shoes, slipping at one point where the path dipped but catching myself on the red metal railing before finally pushing through theworkshop’s open door, which was propped open even on a cold night like this.
“Garrett?” I called out. I wasn’t in a mood to socialize, but in a space like this, I didn’t want to surprise a guy either, especially one who might be wielding some monster tool straight out of a horror movie.
The garage was a vast single-story structure with a high ceiling and thick walls, the kind of space that swallowed sound. The air smelled of machine oil and sawdust.
I walked past the enormous cutting stations that lined one wall, searching for Garrett. Larger precision machines occupied the center of the floor. Their housings were thick and industrial, the kind of equipment that could shape metal or timber to exact specifications.
“Doctor Park?” Garrett’s grizzled face appeared from behind a station at the far end of the workshop. He looked shocked. I had never ventured into this place before. It was always others who came to me in my clinic.
Behind him, carpentry tools hung in rows on pegboards—chisels, clamps, hand planes arranged by size. I carefully stepped over the wood shavings curled on the concrete floor and made my way to him.
“What are you doing here at this hour? And where’s your parka?” He wiped his sweaty forehead with his sleeve, holding a giant saw-like thing, exactly as I had feared.
“Uh.” I cleared my throat. This was awkward. “Can I take shelter for a few minutes?”
“Shelter?” His thick eyebrows rose high.
“There’s… someone out there.” I gestured vaguely toward the workshop entrance. “If you see someone big and huge, could you just… I just need a place to hide.”
He blinked at me in confusion and looked at the entrance, then back at me.
“Like a yeti?”
“Well, he’s from Australia,” I muttered.
“An Australian yeti?” he asked incredulously.
I snorted a laugh despite everything.
“No.” I sighed. “Just a man.”
He straightened up to his full height, and his nostrils flared. “What the heck? Who the hell would be after you, Doc? I’m gonna put him in his place.” He lifted the heavy guillotine-like machine and started marching toward the entrance.
“No, no.” I ran after him. The last thing I needed was a Texan farmer-turned-carpenter and an Australian outback hand-turned-pilot duking it out.
