She barely heard the round of cheers, barely felt anything but the sultry rhythm of the bass thrumming through her veins.
This was it. One chance to scratch the Ice Man’s flash-frozen surface before she left this place forever.
And because she never learned from past mistakes, Angel let the booze and the curiosity and the million foolish impulses drag her through the crowd toward where he stood, as tall and remote as an iceberg in a sea full of people.
* * *
“Missed you at dinner.” Jameson moved close again. “What convinced you to come out tonight? Was it the scotch or…” His eyes cut to Angel, then returned to Coop.
“You, of course.” Coop finally pulled his attention away from her, blinking hard as he worked to remember just what it was that had made him stop in here. “Actually, it was Cortez.”
“Yeah?” Jameson let out a sly laugh. “Somehow doubt that, man.”
“You seen him?”
“Uh. Hm.” Jameson ran a thick, blunt hand over his grizzly beard and cast an eye around the room. “Yeah. Feel like he was in earlier? Those are his students over there.”
“Right. You see if he was injured?”
Jameson gave him a funny look. “Pam didn’t mention anything.”
“Hm.” Coop scanned the little huddle of students. No sign of Cortez there. Hopefully his colleague had gone back to his room, because he couldn’t take another minute of this suffocating heat. “Gotta go.”
Jameson nodded and gave him space, knowing him too well to try to get in his way.
With grim determination, Coop shoved his way toward the group.
“Where’s Cortez?” he asked, ignoring the looks the students exchanged at his abrupt interruption.
“I think he was in his room,” said one of the women. “Sick.”
“I heard he hurt himself, out on the ice.” The voices layered up, two and three of them coming at him simultaneously.
“Didn’t someone say he was—”
“Phil talked to him. Nosebleed or something, he said.”
“I heard him hacking up a lung in—”
Okay. Okay. Throwing his hands up, Coop backed away. He’d heard enough. A quick check on the way to his quarters would put his mind at ease. But for now, it was time to get out of this swamp. What an idiot he was to have come to the Nest on the most crowded night of the year.
He made it about halfway to the door when a hand landed on his arm, stopping him in his tracks.
“Hi there.” Angel Smith smiled at him.
Was she drunk? She must be, judging from the slight sway of her body, even standing still, and the stubborn thrust of her chin. It was tilted high, squared off like he was a challenge to her. A nut she wanted to crack. He imagined she wore that expression when faced with a particularly large fish to gut or…a wild boar to butcher or something.
He lifted his own chin in a wordless greeting, but kept his eye on the coat pegs beside the door, wishing she’d go away.
“Hold on.” Her voice, warm and rich, almost melodic, should have been too low to carry over the din, yet somehow he heard it perfectly. “Don’t go yet.”
He blinked at the row of near-identical outerwear, then started pawing through the coats. His should be easy to find, since it was older than most, more worn. Bigger, too.
Where was it? Behind him, Jameson screamed into the mic and everybody went wild.
“Doctor Cooper?” Angel shifted closer. Too close.
“It’s not ‘Doctor Cooper,’” he said over his shoulder, his voice cracking in a dozen different places. “It’s Coop.”
He caught her wrinkling her nose. What was it about his name that made her do that every time? Or was it him? Probably him, though he’d barely said two sentences to her in the months she’d been here. If it was him, then why the hell was she bothering him now?
He bent to retrieve a coat. Not his. Shoved it onto a peg and grabbed another. Shit. Another and another, all too small. Breathe, dammit. He was about 3.5 seconds from squeezing into somebody else’s Big Red when his hand found the familiar rough nap of his patches. Thank God.
“Okay then. Coop. Wanna dance?”
Arms halfway into his sleeves, he stuttered to a stop, turned fully, and squinted down at Angel Smith, his features tightening in disbelief. After their few stilted interactions, this woman wanted to dance with him of all people?
He ignored the pull of that smooth stretch of lush-looking skin, the overly large dark eyes, and lips that had no right to be as plush as ripe fruit when everyone else’s were dry and flaky and shriveled up like old prunes.
“Dance?” Why? he almost asked, but that would open the conversation up to more—questions, discussion, even intimacies—and that was the last thing he needed.
She looked hesitant, like maybe she regretted whatever impulse had pushed her to ask in the first place. Good. Things were better that way.
“Of course not,” he finally said, doing his best not to notice the hurt in her eyes. He nodded once.
That done, he turned and pushed out into the cold night, where he blinked blindly at the sunlit sky and counted out his breaths, waiting for a sense of relief that never came.
It was Cortez, he thought. That was why he couldn’t seem to get rid of this tension.
He tromped back to the dorms and straight up to Cortez’s door. If he’d been thinking clearly, he’d have knocked lightly, but his brain felt scrambled, his cheeks overheated. The spot she’d touched on his arm itched like a rash, so he made a fist and pounded. “Cortez! You in there?”
“Who’s there?” The voice was scratchy and hoarse, the accent definitely English.
Relief washed through him like sun after months of austral winter. “It’s Coop. You, uh…” He sniffed, suddenly conscious of how paranoid he’d been. “You okay?”
A pause. “Why?”
“The blood, on the ice.”
“Nosebleed.” Another few seconds passed before Cortez coughed, hard, and went on. “Wouldn’t…stop.”
“Lot of blood for a nosebleed, man.” He saw the stain again, blossoming on the ice. It hadn’t been all that big, he supposed.
“Bloody Crud’s got me. I’m sick.” It was true, the Crud had hit Pole hard since the last group brought it from McMurdo. Out here, a simple cold could put a man down for a week.
“Right.” More hacking had Coop cringing and backing up a step. “Sorry to bug you.”