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CHAPTER ONE
DRGIADAPARKERclutched her travel coffee mug, her eyes stinging a little as the Antarctic wind picked up speed and whipped across her face.
She smiled through the discomfort.
Her triple-insulated weather gear protected her from the worst of the freezing temperatures, and, if needed, she could retreat to the significantly less chilly staff quarters below deck of the research vessel she’d called home for the last four months.
This was her last chance to see this intensely breathtaking landscape before her stint was officially over and she wasn’t about to miss it.
She sipped her coffee, welcoming the scalding heat but not the reminder of what awaited her back home in London. Or Rome. Or wherever her mother decided they would spend Christmas this year. As of their last, terse conversation a month ago, Renata DiMarco hadn’t decided where she would be dragging Giada and her identical twin sister to for the festivities.
With every bone in her body, Giada wished she could be spared the ordeal. Perhaps it was blasphemy to admit it, but Christmas wasn’t her favourite time of year. Hell, she’d go as far as to say she detested it. Too many occasions over the years filled with too many harrowing scenes of Renata acting out after the inevitable several glasses of champagne had ruined the holiday for her. Her sister, Gigi, had weathered the storms better than she had, but then hadn’t their mother accused Giada of being too sensitive,too square, among her many sins?
‘You should be more like your sister. She knows how to enjoy life...’
That particular piece of unsolicited advice had been given when she’d sent her mother an invitation to her graduation. Predictably, Renata DiMarco had found somewhere else to be as her daughter had earned her PhD in marine biology.
Giada had assured herself she didn’t care that neither Gigi nor her mother had made it or that the father she could barely remember hadn’t even bothered to RSVP. But the thorns of anguish in her heart as she’d walked across the stage to collect her certificate had labelled her a liar.
She took another sip, more to calm her jangling nerves than for warmth. Staring across the blinding-white frozen tundra, she made a half-hearted wish for deliverance.
Then laughed in nervous shock as the vessel lurched, forcing her to reach for the railing to steady herself.
A warning that she shouldn’t tempt fate, perhaps?
She snorted under her breath.
Yeah, right. Fate had a habit of ignoring her most ardent wishes. Giada was sure she wasn’t about to start granting them now.
The only guaranteed thing was that she would at least get a few days’ respite in her London bedsit before the summons from Renata arrived. A few days to shore up her emotional defences against the parent who didn’t see anything wrong with denigrating her at every opportunity—
‘Giada?’
She turned her head, startled to see Martin, her boss, standing a short distance away wearing a concerned frown.
‘I’m sorry, Martin, I was miles away. Did you want something?’
The frown dissipated and a smile peeked through his months’ old beard. ‘I was a little worried you’d turned into a statue, you were so still. Anyway, you got a call five minutes ago. Your sister? I came to get you. She’s calling back in ten.’
A ripple of anxiety washed over her.
In the four months she’d been away she’d spoken to her sister three times, all calls Giada had initiated, not the other way around. Gigi habitually forgot she had a twin for weeks at a stretch, and, while Giada knew it was extreme absent-mindedness coupled with the hard partying her influencer sister indulged in, it occasionally sharpened that same pang of unhappiness Giada had lived with for most of her life.
‘Did she say what it was about?’ she asked Martin, her stomach tightening involuntarily as she followed him across the snow-covered deck to the stairs leading to the lower levels.
He shook his head. ‘She didn’t. If it’s helpful, she didn’t sound like something was wrong.’ He flashed a reassuring smile and gestured for her to precede him down the stairs. ‘It sounded like she was in a bar, actually. God, I’d give my arm for a pint in a warm pub right now.’
She smiled but didn’t bother to tell him Gigi would sound laid-back in the middle of a blazing apocalypse. Giada used to envy her sister’s ability to remain unflappable in the face of their mother’s melodramatic tantrums and the resulting angst-filled days Giada had endured.
Now, as she hurried after Martin, she sent another frantic prayer that she hadn’t inevitably invited one of those tantrums with her foolish Christmas wish.
By the time she reached the small, dank office Martin and a few of the senior crew used, she was willing her hands not to shake or her mind not to create wild scenarios. She took a fortifying sip of her coffee after Martin left, then almost jumped out of her skin as the phone trilled.
Calm down.
Taking a deep breath, she answered. ‘Hello?’
‘Gids, is that you?’ the lazy voice, gone sultry over the years from fits of smoking to sound uncannily like their mother’s, answered. Giada grimaced at the much-hated nickname Gigi had taken to calling her lately. There was no point asking her to stop. Her sister, like their mother, did what she wanted when she wanted.
