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Forty-One
BROOKE
The night-vision camera was perched on a tripod, overlooking our beautiful crystalline room. It covered the frost-filled chamber wall-to-wall, and of course, the bed. Always the bed.
“Want me to knock that thing over on the way to the bathroom?” Devin mumbled from beside me.
“Nah. They’d only come in and set it up again.”
Normally there would be no footage shot during overnight hotel stays, but this wasn’t your normal hotel. And we weren’t your normal team either, so for both those reasons we were still under surveillance. Even while we were sleeping.
So far sleep hadn’t come. Relegated to our own private sleeping bags and our own side of the breathtakingly beautiful yet rock-hard ice bed, Devin and I hadn’t done much but stare at the sculpted snow-ceiling. And that was saying a lot, considering how tired we were.
“My ass is frozen!” I cried, considering turning over for a forth time. “Aren’t you cold?”
From his side of the bed, Devin laughed gruffly. “You’re forgetting, I’m from Minnesota. Remember?”
“Oh.”
“I’ve gone ice-fishing in huts twenty-degrees colder than this.”
I stiffened, curling the corners of my sleeping bag up over my shoulders. Living in the Arizona deserts for more than a year had apparently spoiled me for all things even remotely cold.
“Wanna zip our sleeping bags together?” Devin asked.
I flopped over to face him, suddenly hopeful and excited. “You candothat?”
“With this kind of bag, yeah.”
My eyes slid slowly over to the camera. “Can you do it without them really noticing?”
“No,” he admitted. “But do you care?”
My answer came quickly, with zero hesitation: “Not a single fucking bit.”
“Good,” grinned Devin. “Me neither.”
We shimmied out of our bags, with me huddling beneath the outer furs they’d given us to stave off the cold. Devin had everything done in under a minute. We slipped back inside where it was still warm and cozy, only now our bodies were touching as well.
“They’re gonna play this up when this episode airs, you know,” he said. “Though we obviously did it for body heat, the network will hint at some kind of budding romance between us.”
“So?” I replied. “Do you care?”
“Not a single fucking bit.”
“Me neither.”
We were face to face, nose to nose. Between the crystalline ice sculptures and the glowing blue lights, the setting was totally intimate. It would be nothing to just lean forward and kiss him. Only I knew if I started kissing him…
“You gonna be able to sleep tonight?” he asked abruptly.
“Well it’s like sleeping on a cold rock, but yeah, probably,” I said. “You?”
“Dunno. Maybe.”
I searched his eyes. Even half-lidded, I could see the stress and concern behind them.
“You’re still worried about home, aren’t you?” I asked. “The business?”
