Not Just For Christmas: A Holiday Romance (Love at Christmas) Read online

  ‘And you are an incorrigible flirt. Honestly, I’m old enough to be your mother,’ she said, the lilt in her voice suggesting that it wouldn’t in any way have stopped her. ‘But seriously, though. Anywhere else in the world right now. Where would you be?’

  Luke paused. He sat forward in his chair, and a look of intense thought crossed his face. ‘Honestly?’ he said. ‘Somewhere kind of like this. Quiet. Out of the way. The snow coming down outside. No one else for miles around. A pantry full of food, a library full of books. That’s all I need. What could be better than that?’

  Deb grimaced. ‘Sickening,’ she said. ‘You spend half the year in a frozen wasteland, and now you’re dreaming about being in an igloo in the middle of nowhere?’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Honestly, someone needs to show you kids the value of a nice tropical beach sometime.’

  ‘You can keep your beach,’ he replied. ‘I’ll take a nice mountain cabin with a special someone any day of the week.’

  ‘Well, well,’ Deb said. She sat forward in her chair, suddenly intrigued. ‘Have you got anyone in particular in mind? Is there a Mrs. Abs you’ve been keeping quiet all this time?’

  Luke grinned. ‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ he said, and despite Deb’s best efforts he wouldn’t be drawn on the topic any further.

  Amy stayed quiet. For some strange reason, she found herself wishing she had taken Kenny up on his offer of charades instead.

  ~~~

  In her bunk, Amy pulled the blankets close, but it did very little to keep the chill away. No matter what she tried, she just couldn’t seem to get comfortable. The night was cold – colder than usual, even – but even though she could hear the storm battering the outside of the facility, she knew that wasn’t the cause of her discomfort. Lane-McArthur was never what you could call balmy, but it wasn’t like it was a tent out in the wilderness either; it was a solidly-constructed building, and the heating system was more than adequate.

  No, the chill was something different this time. The chill was loneliness, pure and simple and unmistakeable.

  She reached her hand under her pillow and felt the coarse scratching of the scarf her mother had knitted for her against her skin. Despite the roughness, she found it comforting; somewhere out there, beyond the snow and the dark of the near-perpetual winter, someone cared for her. Had she ever doubted it? No, not really – her family had always been supportive, almost to a fault; there was never any question of the way George and Patricia Marsh felt about any of their daughters – but having a tangible reminder of that so far from home helped. It wasn’t much, perhaps, but it was a little something that she could grab on to whenever she needed it.

  Except tonight, apparently, it wasn’t working.

  It’s just that it’s Christmas, she tried to convince herself; that was the only reason she was feeling the sting so acutely. It had nothing to do with what Luke and Deb had been talking about earlier, no way. How lame would that be?

  Is there a Mrs. Abs you’ve been keeping quiet all this time?

  Well, was there? It didn’t matter, obviously. Realistically, there was no way he wasn’t seeing someone. It was just… well, was there?

  Luke was famously private. He had been there since July, at least a month before Amy had arrived on site, and even in those few short weeks he had established a reputation for secrecy – not easy to do, in a place where you were surrounded by the same people, day in and day out. Everyone seemed to know everything about everyone else within about a week, but Luke… well, Luke had always just had a wry little smile and a charming joke right on hand to disarm any questions he didn’t want to answer (seemingly all of them) that made it impossible to get annoyed at his evasiveness. Even Deb had failed to crack him. ‘Honestly,’ she had said to Amy about a month after she arrived, ‘the boy’s like a bank vault. I mean, he’s pretty, sure, but who knows what’s lurking away in there?’

  Pretty was an understatement, of course. He was the only person Amy had ever seen who could take off a snow-hat and still have a perfectly coiffed head of hair. It as an unspoken rule of the arctic circle that no one – no one – looked good in the thick, high-visibility jackets and gloves and snow pants they wore whenever they were outside doing fieldwork… but somehow, Luke managed it.

  He stood out from the rest of the engineers like a sore thumb – well, like a perfect thumb on an otherwise distinctly-average hand. On site, the engineering labs had been informally dubbed ‘Moria’, a name that was extremely fitting (and had been enthusiastically adopted by its residents; you could say what you liked about the residents of Lane-McArthur, but they were the kind of crew where a good Lord of the Rings reference was always going to go down a storm). Luke was the only one younger than forty, for a start; the only one over five-foot-five, the only one who didn’t have a beard that seemed to be perpetually filled with crumbs.

  It had taken Deb all of three days to start calling him Legolas. It had taken her until the first time she saw him working out in the gym to start calling him Abs – and with damn good reason. (‘Like granite,’ Deb had confided in Amy over a late-night cocoa. ‘It’s like Michelangelo’s David took up CrossFit and got himself an engineering degree. It’s unnatural.’)

  Well, that had been that. Luke was whip-smart, beautiful, charming. It wasn’t anything as shallow as love at first sight, perhaps, but it wasn’t far off. Amy hadn’t been at Lane-McArthur long before she had found herself daydreaming about him. Nothing much, not to begin with – just how much she hoped she’d see him in the break room that night, or that their schedules would sync up and they’d end up seated at the same table in the mess hall when it came to breakfast or dinner. Before long, she started to notice that her days seemed a little brighter when he featured in them, and a little darker when he was out repairing one of the base’s external weather stations and had to do an overnight stay in the wild.

  It was ridiculous, of course. You’re the new girl on base, she told herself. What would it look like if you hooked up with a co-worker? Not great, that’s for sure.

  Besides, he’s probably not interested in you anyway. He’s nice to everyone. It’s just the way he is. Anyone can see that.

  Besides, he probably doesn’t look all that great. You’ve just got your snow-goggles on, that’s all. Anyone would look like a catch if there was no one else for hundreds of miles around. Even Kenny might start to seem like a viable option.

  Besides, besides, besides.

  She had tried to talk herself out of it in a thousand different ways, but none of it had managed to stick. All she knew for certain was that when she saw his name on the sign-up sheet to stay on base and maintain its operations for the winter period – basically, to act as a caretaker in case anything went drastically wrong – she had found herself signing up right alongside him. What was the harm, anyway? It wasn’t as though the stipend they were offering was bad – and if it came down to it, she’d at least get her work finished more quickly with no distractions. She had months of data to work through, more than enough to keep her occupied until March… and besides, this way she could use the computer bank on-site, and wouldn’t have to fight with teams of other researchers for lab time. Even without Luke, staying was the right call. The fact that he would be there was really just the icing on the cake.

  That was the theory, anyway.

  Is there a Mrs. Abs you’ve been keeping quiet all this time?

  She had managed to ignore the idea up until now, even though she knew it was a possibility – damn Luke and his secrecy; anyone else would have mentioned a partner by now, but with him you couldn’t take anything for granted – but after seeing the look on his face when Deb had asked, there was no doubt left in her mind. A nice mountain cabin with a special someone. Well, Amy didn’t need to be an expert in body language to pick up on that one. Luke had already had someone in mind before the question had even been asked.

  She pulled her pillow down around her ears and tried to make the image of Luke with another w
oman disappear, but no matter how tightly she scrunched her eyes closed it seemed to be burned onto her retinas. She’d probably be tall, and blonde – a real Viking beauty. Or a fiery redhead, perhaps; she could see that. Vibrant green eyes, perfect teeth, and a high little laugh like a tinkling bell. They’d be there, curled up in front of a roaring fire, snow gently falling outside as they laughed and kissed and read French poetry to each other – and then they’d slip into an elaborate four-poster bed in the next room, and they’d find other delightful ways to keep warm.

  Amy hated her already.

  With a frustrated moan, she tossed the blankets off herself. She wasn’t worried about anyone hearing her grumble, particularly; now that base was running on a skeleton crew, her room must have been at least ten doors away from anyone else. With just the four of them on a base built to house fifty, she could have sung an aria at the top of her lungs in the middle of the night and no one else would have been roused from their sleep.

  No wonder she felt lonely. Two months of this already – and another three months to go – and pretty much anyone would have been at their wits’ end.

  She checked the clock on the shelf next to her head: five minutes past four in the morning, not that that made much difference so far north. The sun had set in the middle of November for the last time, and it wasn’t due to make a reappearance until February. What difference did it make if it was four in the morning or four in the afternoon, without any sunlight to guide you? The base kept to roughly normal hours, but she wasn’t the only one who had trouble keeping to a regular schedule without the regular day-and-night cycle she was used to. Maybe one of the others will be up, she thought as she pulled on her shoes and a dressing gown. Kenny was probably a lost cause – he was efficient enough as to be almost robotic; his cycle was as dependable as the tides – and it was probably too much to hope that Luke would still be up and about, but she had found Deb still awake and ready for a chat a couple of times. It was probably for the best. A friendly face and a hot drink. That was all she needed.

  It wasn’t until she closed her bedroom door behind her that she noticed something was amiss. Hooked around the handle was a small paper hexagon, about the size of her palm, dangling on a piece of red ribbon; had it swung ever-so-slightly differently as she pulled the door closed, it would have been trapped and crushed flat between the frame and the wood itself.

  She turned it over and over in her hands, marvelling in the dim glow of the hallway’s security light at how intricate it was. At first glance, it looked like a paper snowflake, the kind of thing she and her sisters had made when they were in elementary school – take a piece of thin cardboard, fold it into six, snip out various shapes and voilà: your own uniquely personal bit of winter for Mom and Dad to coo over and stick on the fridge, every one slightly different to the others and yet all basically the same. It was only at closer examination that she saw that this wasn’t really like that at all. It hadn’t been cut, for a start; instead, the holes between the ice stems were just indentations, folded into delicate shapes. The whole thing felt light and wispy in her hands, barely there at all – almost like a real snowflake, except big enough to hold; if she moved her fingers quickly enough, she half-expected that it would fly away from her, dancing up into the air until it was lost forever.

  Threaded onto the ribbon, there was a small piece of paper, heavier than the thin leaf that made up the rest of the snowflake. In small, neat print, someone had written her a note.

  CHIN UP, it read. THREE MONTHS TO GO. YOU’VE GOT THIS.

  Oh, Deb, she thought. A tear rose up in Amy’s eye as she imagined the older woman pressing the paper into that well-practiced shape, for no reason other than to give her some small bit of comfort on a day when she was feeling particularly bleak. That was Deb through and through – if there was anything that could be done to make someone feel a little brighter, if there was any small gesture that would make the world a better place, she’d do it without question.

  Amy headed back into her room, closing the door quietly behind her. She pressed a small pushpin into the wall at the top of her bed, and hung the snowflake just above her pillow like a dreamcatcher – and almost as soon as she wrapped herself back into her blankets, she found herself falling into an easy, restful sleep.

  ~~~

  ‘Morning, sleepyhead,’ Deb said, already bright and breezy by the time Amy managed to drag herself out of bed and down to the common area; even on a Sunday in Lane-McArthur, half past eight was considered to be a lie-in, and Deb showed all the signs of being ready to roll with whatever the day had in store. ‘Feeling a little better today?’

  Amy nodded, and was almost surprised by how true it was. She had only managed to cobble together about four hours of unconsciousness, but she felt positively invigorated. A smile crept across her face that even the oppressive darkness of the arctic winter couldn’t do a damn thing to dampen.

  That didn’t, however, mean that coffee was out of the question.

  ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it,’ Deb said as she poured out two steaming servings so strong she could have stood a teaspoon up in it, and tried – almost successfully – to hide the twinge of pain she felt when she pushed the cup along the counter with her strapped-up hand. ‘You had me real worried for a little while there.’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to. I was just…’

  ‘Homesick. Yeah, I know the feeling. It’s rough, being up here on your own. You just have to remember that you’re not on your own, if that makes sense. You’ve always got me as a friendly ear. And Kenny and Abs, too.’

  ‘What was that?’ The voice came from the doorway, before Amy had a chance to respond. When she turned around, Luke was standing there, a glint in his eye and his hair still tousled – perfectly, irritatingly tousled – from a night of sleep. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who had decided to make it a (relative) late start. ‘Am I being volunteered for something against my will again?’

  ‘I’m starting a harem,’ Deb said, without breaking a stride. She reached another mug down from the rack with her good hand and poured it full to the brim.

  ‘Sure thing,’ Luke replied. ‘Am I supposed to be fanning you with a palm frond first, or will I be jumping straight to peeling your grapes?’

  ‘Recruitment. Sorry. All the good jobs were taken. That’s what you get for sleeping in.’

  ‘Aw, shoot.’ He stretched theatrically, letting his shirt rode up just far enough to prove to Amy – as if she were in any doubt – that his nickname had been well-earned – and then let his arms collapse back to his sides. ‘Well, it was worth it. I haven’t slept like that in weeks.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Deb smirked. ‘You and Amy both, it seems. There must be something in the air, eh?’

  Amy shot her a look that was half reproach and half daggers. She had never told Deb outright that she was interested in Luke – hell, she was keeping that one as close to her chest as possible, even if it killed her – but it was hard to miss her knowing wink. Jesus Christ, Deb, she thought. Why don’t you just put up a Bat-Signal and let everyone north of Toronto know?

  She was saved from whatever Luke’s answer might have been by Kenny barging through the door to the breakroom with a face like a storm cloud. ‘We’ve got a problem,’ he proclaimed loudly, as though addressing the entirety of a fully-staffed base despite the fact that his underlings currently numbered three. That was how Kenny started every announcement, no matter how mundane; everything was always the end of the world. He lived his entire life as the final holdout against the forces of chaos, the last bastion of responsibility and good sense in a world forever teetering on the edge of ruin. No one said anything, which seemed to disappoint him tremendously. He doubled down. ‘Neptune is offline.’

  Neptune was one of Lane-McArthur’s five mobile research platforms. The pods were dotted around the ice shelf at various distances, theoretically moveable but mostly just bolted into place to serve as exterior scientific platforms when necessary. Each
one was equipped with a fraction of the tools that the main base had, but if your work took you right out into the wilderness – as Amy’s often did – then it was a lot easier to use them for analysis rather than schlepping all the way back home.

  It was an annoyance to have one go offline, perhaps, but no one was using them. All the external research projects had wrapped up for the winter break. As far as Amy was aware, they were basically little more than weather stations at the moment.

  ‘Oh, is that all?’ Luke grinned. ‘We called Comcast already. They said they’ll send a guy around sometime in March. From what I can gather, that’s what passes for quick service for them.’

  Kenny wasn’t amused.

  ‘I suppose you think that’s funny?’ he said, balling his hands up into fists. ‘Need I remind you that maintenance of the external platforms is your job? Maybe if you’d damn well bothered to–’

  ‘Easy, easy.’ Luke put up his hands like a lion tamer slowly approaching a wild beast, eager to show that he meant him no harm. ‘Relax, Kenny. You know what the stations are like. It’ll just be a signal blip because of the weather, that’s all. Check again in an hour and it’ll all be back online.’

  His subordinate’s optimism didn’t do a lot to smooth out the creases in Kenny’s brow. ‘That’s a two-hundred-thousand-dollar research platform, Luke,’ he said. ‘And currently we have no way of knowing if it’s still operational. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m not really in the mood for jokes right now.’

  ‘You think it’s that bad?’

  ‘I think it might be. The data feed cut off suddenly at a little after six o’clock this morning. I’ve never seen anything like that before.’

  ‘Power failure, maybe?’

  Kenny shook his head. ‘The backup generator would have kicked in, you know that.’

  ‘Then what? You think it just vanished?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s on an ice shelf. Who’s to say the ice didn’t just… split?’

  ‘What, right by the platform? The odds would be one in a million, to start with, and even then we would have caught something from it. Something would have showed up on the seismograph before it went down. It would have had to.’ He paused. ‘It couldn’t just have disappeared.’