Page 27

“Good. We expect an apology when you find out who did do it,” Rosi said, slipping her hand in mine. “When you figure that out, let us know and maybe we can help.”

She dragged me from the room with quick steps, head held high until we reached the front of my room again. I ran a hand back through my hair and she twirled a lock of her own, staring back in the direction of Nicole’s suite.

“That did not go well,” she said.

We both laughed, releasing some of the tension. “I guess my notion you were innocent was flawed by the assumption that I was in the clear.”

“Unless you’re doing it with your mind powers, I doubt that.” Unable to keep from touching her, I rubbed her arms and smiled.

“No mind powers that I know of,” she said, refusing to look at me. Was that embarrassment?

“Let’s discuss the excursion,” I said, gesturing to my room. Why wait until right beforehand after all? If I was worried starting something with her would be bad in my boss’s eyes, I no longer had to worry since they already thought much worse of me.

“Okay,” she agreed. “I don’t want to impose, but Cora has at least two other people in our suite, and if I stay there, they’ll try and have sex with me again.”

I froze in shock as she continued inside the room and took a seat. If she was going to have sex with someone here, I hoped it would be me. I hurried to catch up and stopped at the kitchen to grab a couple of hydropods. I tossed one to her then sat near her on the couch. She’d already pulled a notebook out of her bag and was scribbling in it.

“The expedition—”

“Excursion,” I corrected.

She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Okay, excursion then, is one day. Is there any way to extend that if we find something?”

I shook my head. “It’s four hours. That’s all they could get approved for safety reasons. Anything longer would be a logistics nightmare for Nicole.”

“And that’s a bad thing because..?” Rosi grinned.

Laughing, I leaned back into the cushions. “Seriously. It’s officially part of the resort and your prize package.”

She tapped her pen to her chin thoughtfully. “Okay so four hours. That’s not a lot of time.”

Sipping on my water, I waited as she worked it out.

“What we need to do is target a specific area.” She stood and walked to the enormous, windowed wall and stared outside. “When I first got here, I thought I saw something out there by the fjord.”

I stood and joined her at the window, squinting toward the direction she indicated. The way the light played on the surface of the water and the shadows created by the ice caves nearby made the illusion of movement inevitable. But if she wanted to check it out, I was game.

“We can take the hellipod over it and take a closer look.”

“Hellipod?” she asked, head snapping toward me.

“Yes. We go on the hellipod ride to survey the area from above. You get to pick a location, and if I deem it safe, we can land, and you can take vids or whatever you want to do. Then we fly back.”

“That’s it?” The disappointment radiating off her tugged at my heartstrings. It didn’t sound like much to me either. But Nicole had assured me that whoever won the prize wouldn’t think that way. She seemed to be wrong about quite a few things.

“Think of it as a scouting mission,” I offered, gesturing at her mystery area. “We cover a lot of ground in the hellipod, but we stay thorough. Then we pick the most likely spot to find an Adlet and set down there.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You know what an Adlet is?”

I shrugged. “I looked it up after our talk.”

The notebook fell from her grip, and before I could blink, she leaped into my arms.

Stumbling back against the window, I caught hold of her ass as she wrapped her legs around my waist. She pressed against me, and the contrast of the heat coming from her and the cold from the AC glass behind me had all my nerve endings firing at once. Her lips found mine, and I opened to her immediately.

“Condom?” she breathed into my ear.

“I’m on the pill,” I answered. “First time in a year. I’m clean.”

Then her tongue was in my mouth again, and all thought flew out of my mind except putting one leg in front of the other to get us to my bed.