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“Spoken like a true Spock.”
He chuckled. “I do often get called ruthless. Unfeeling.”
“I do, too.”
“I’m sure some of it, in your case, is because you’re a successful, powerful woman. I’m sure Janeway got called all those things, too.”
She looked at him quizzically. “When I first got here and was trying to figure out what you had against me, I wondered if you were sexist.”
He made an involuntary, vague noise of dismay. He could not let that stand. “That’s—”
“That wasn’t it. I know that. I figured that out pretty quicklywhen you defended me against Noar at that first meeting. Not that I needed defending, but I appreciated it.”
“I told you ages ago that it wasn’t personal. It was the idea of you. You could have been anyone, and I would have felt the same.”
“Kind of like the king could be anyone?” she asked pointedly.
Another interesting, unsettling point. One he would think about, but not while she was staring at him. Not while he was sitting a few feet away from her in a swimsuit. “Ms. Delaney—Cara—I’ve grown overheated. Would you care to join me in a cool off?”
“Are you asking me if I want to go roll around in the snow with you?”
“I suppose I am.”
She grinned. “When in Eldovia...” She started to lift herself out of the water, but he held up a hand to stop her.
“If I may make a suggestion, it’s better to have a plan in place before you go.”
“A plan beyond ‘Find snow, roll in snow’?”
“Yes. Namely, what are you going to do after the snow? Right back in the water? Or into a sauna? There are also several heated buildings where you can relax at room temperature.”
“I am in your hands, Matteo.”
He liked the way his name sounded in her mouth. “All right. Snow over there.” He pointed to a relatively untrammeled patch nearby. “Then to that building.” He pointed again. “I also recommend that once you commit to this course of action, you truly commit.”
“It’s almost like you don’t know me at all.”
She was joking, but it made him think. They’d met less than a month ago. Yet in that time, they had almost come to blowsseveral times, shared very personal things about their pasts, and faced Daniel Hauser as allies. She’d met his family, and now they were sitting half-naked in a pool.
An unsettling truth arose: if he knew her, she knew him.
He cleared his throat. “All right. On the count of three, we get out, we run, we roll, we go inside. Fast, decisive, committed. It’s too terrible otherwise.”
“Understood.”
“One, two, three.”
She lifted herself from the pool, and steam rose from her skin. She was wearing a modest bathing suit, but still, there was something about all that skin. Something about Cara Delaney, corporate warrior, drenched and trembling that... got to him. He wished he could get a look at that mole again, but it only showed when she stretched her arms up, and she was doing the opposite, hugging herself against the cold.
“What happened to fast, decisive, and committed?” she asked.
What had happened indeed? Embarrassed, and hoping he hadn’t been ogling too overtly, he heaved himself up, and they ran.
She started shrieking the moment her feet hit the snow. “Oh, oh, oh!”
Matteo was glad it was so cold. He lay down on his stomach, just in case.
She flopped down next to him and flapped her arms in the same manner he was. It was as if they were swimming side by side. Except she was breathing heavily and occasionally omitting an “Oh!”
