This right here. This was what she’d known would never happen.
“Pretty, isn’t she?”
A heavy headset protected Zoey’s hearing from the loud chopping of the helicopter propellers. Through the headset, she could hear Graham’s voice in her ear, a slight buzz distorting his words.
“How long has it been since we’ve been out here, Ash?”
With a casual shrug, Ash made a second, lower sweep over the river of solid ice, blues and iridescent rainbows reflecting across the surface of the glacier below.
“Since we’ve been here? Not since Jenna. Since I’ve been here? Last week.”
“Have you been sight-seeing without me? I’m crushed.” Graham’s teasing tone came through clearly, but when Zoey glanced over her shoulder at the man in the back seat of the helicopter, he gave her an amused look. “Jenna’s my cousin, in case you were burning alive with jealousy.” A warm voice came through the headset. “I know you have it bad for me.”
“Zoey, let me know if you want to leave him out here. I wouldn’t mind.”
“Do you think a polar bear will eat him?” Zoey quipped.
“This far south? Naw. But he might die of despair without someone to pay attention to him.”
“Ouch.”
“And he’s sensitive.”
“I’m actually sitting right here, ladies.”
“And I heard he’s got a short—” Graham whistled loud enough to cover whatever she was going to say. Voice filled with humor, Ash continued, “Temper. A very short temper.”
“Please, I’m the epitome of laid-back.” Stretching out his feet as far as the cramped quarters would let him, Graham tipped his head to the window. “You’re missing the view, Zo.”
They made another pass, so close to the glacier Zoey could almost taste it. “Aren’t we getting too low?”
“We’re setting down.” Graham nudged her seat with a knee. “You wanted to see a glacier, right? Well, here it is.”
A squeak of excitement escaped her throat as Ash landed the helicopter on the glacier and killed the engine. “Take your time. Just don’t do something stupid like carving your initials in the ice. No one wants to read Graham loves Zoey for the next thousand years.”
“The next million years,” he grunted as he swung out of the helicopter, for once flushing at the teasing. “Read a book.”
“Global warming, five hundred years at most.” Ash smirked. “Kiss my ass, baby doll.”
“Not with a lady present.”
As they started out across the ice, Zoey glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Are you sure you two weren’t ever…?”
“A couple?” Graham shook his head. “I’m more the annoying older brother type. Besides, Easton terrifies me.”
“I thought he was your best friend.”
“Ulysses is my best friend.”
“He just likes you for your buns.”
Graham nodded sagely. “Can you blame him?”
As Zoey scooted forward on the ice, careful to keep her balance, Graham followed, hands stuffed in his pockets and shoulders relaxed. He never seemed this calm at work or on the boat, she noticed. Maybe it was the isolation. Out here, it felt like they and Ash were the only people in the world.
“So all you had to do was pick up a phone, and suddenly a private helicopter glacier tour appeared.”
“Small towns are like that. Oy, Zoey. Stay to the left. You’ll want to see that.”
Bearing to the left as suggested, she gasped in pleasure at the shallow pool of brilliant blue water in front of them. As they knelt by the glacier pool, cupping handfuls of ice-cold water, Zoey nearly thrummed with excitement.
She pulled out her phone. “Graham, will you take a picture with me?”
Hesitating, she glanced at him, curious at his pause.
“Of course I will, gorgeous,” he murmured. So he held up the phone and let her move it around and add all the filters she wanted before clicking away. He didn’t even grumble when she added the puppy dog filter, giving them both wriggly noses and puppy ears as they leaned their heads in close to fit in the photo.
Zoey bounced forward, still snapping pictures for all she was worth, then suddenly, she hit the brakes. Her eyes widened, her jaw opening in shock.
“Graham. It’s an ice cave.”
* * *
There was a reason he’d asked Ash to take them here specifically, and it was worth every favor he’d have to trade for the inconvenience just to see the look on Zoey’s face and hear her breath catch in her throat.
Now, for the record, Graham knew far too well ice caves were dangerous. But this ice cave had been there since he was a child, and the shifting climate patterns had yet to cause any noticeable structural integrity losses this far up the glacier.
“There’s a climbing rope.”
“Hold on, Zo.”
It was adorable how excited she was, but the idea of a med evac for a broken neck was far less exciting for Graham. But there was joy in her eyes, and no matter what else he did or didn’t do, Graham was not going to be the one to take that from her. If Easton thought he was crazy for the whale watching, who knew what he’d say about this. Selfies, ice caves, letting Ash have a first-row seat to his insanity…Graham would never hear the end of it.
“I weigh more than you,” he told her, tugging on the rope to check it. “Let me try it first.”
“That’s nice, but you have a better chance of pulling me out if I fall than I have of pulling you out if you fall. Plus, I’m a better climber.”
“How do you know that?”
“The same way I knew I was the better pool player.”
“Tell me how you really feel.” Chuckling, Graham knelt next to the stake securing the climbing rope, gripping it securely. “Okay but try not to fall. We lose tourists every year, but you’re more enjoyable than most.”
More enjoyable. Funnier. Sweeter. Basically, she was the last person who Graham wanted to lose life or limb because of an error in judgment on his part. She couldn’t have been any happier. Zoey was practically bouncing with pleasure. Graham wasn’t immune to the beauty of the glaciers in his home, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“Be careful, Zoey,” he added gruffly, looping the rope around his hand a second time and feeling the tension of her weight dig the heavy nylon braiding into his skin. She climbed quickly, then held the rope steady as he climbed down to join her.
“Graham. Look. It’s amazing.”
Over the course of his lifetime, Graham had watched a lot of strangers ooh and aah over his corner of the universe. He’d spent a significant portion of those years mentally or physically rolling his eyes. But as he stood there, watching Zoey turn in a circle, her face alive with sheer joy, it occurred to him that familiarity too often bred contempt.
Surrounded by walls of ice, something inside Graham thawed, leaving him unable to keep from closing the distance between them.
She caught him watching her, looking far too pretty to be with a guy like him. It wasn’t the first time Graham had been off his game in this place.
“I lost my virginity here.”
Which wasn’t the best conversation starter he’d ever had.
“What? No.”
Graham couldn’t keep the sheepish expression from his face. “It was awful. I’m assuming it was awful, but on my end, it was amazing. All thirty-three seconds of it.”
“At least you didn’t have time to freeze your dangly bits.”
“My dangly bits are made of steel. It comes with the territory of living up here.” He scratched the back of his head, adding, “And maybe there was one dangly bit that didn’t escape unscathed.”
“Your dangly bits have had a tough life.”
“So they remind me regularly.”
When he winked at her with what he hoped was sexy roguishness and probably more like prepubescent awkwardness, Zoey blushed again. Then she slipped her hand into his, and Graham was a goner.
As they stood in the corner of an ice cave, Graham allowed himself the luxury of enjoying how much Zoey Caldwell was enjoying herself.
“Show me where.”
“There.”
“Right there?”
“Right in that spot. Although it technically started over there.”
“That’s a lot of ground to cover.”
“Especially when you’re trying not to let anything important hit the ice.” Graham squeezed her fingertips in his. “Zoey? How long are you here?”
He’d never asked anyone before. He’d never wanted…or needed…to know.
“Eight more days. This was a two-week vacation.”
“You leave next Sunday?”
“Sunday afternoon,” she corrected him. “I’m planning on making those couple hours count.”
Eight days wasn’t enough time for anything. If Graham was the kind of guy for whom just over a week was enough, he wouldn’t be standing there with the kind of woman who had no clue he couldn’t stop staring at her.
“Zoey? If I asked you to go somewhere with me tonight after work, what would you say?”
Glancing at him shyly, Zoey bit her lower lip, worrying at it. Graham wanted to kiss her and steal that lip away, make it his for a while and treat it better than she was currently doing. But eight days just wasn’t enough time.
“I’d say yes. But on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
Her eyes reflected the blue glacier ice like stars in the night sky. He was waxing poetic. It was a bad, bad sign.
This time, Zoey was the one who winked, flashing him a naughty grin.
“You have to tell me which dangly bit.”
Chapter 10
Climbs back up always sucked more than climbs down. At least Zoey had a great view.
Graham went first, climbing with the competence of a man who was used to this sort of activity. When he reached the top, he whistled loudly to signal to Ash they were ready to start back. Then Graham turned and knelt by the rope ladder as Zoey followed suit. She climbed up more slowly than Graham had climbed, taking one last look around to memorize the moment.