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Hah. Not.

Alicia crouched to block the wind from her hands—and conveniently block Josh from sight until she steadied her heart rate. She tugged her mittens off with her teeth one at a time to reveal her fitted flight gloves underneath. The green stretch fabric and leather cut some cold, but she couldn't count on that for long.

Lightning fast, she scraped birch bark, jammed it inside her parka. Rustling sounded inside the branches overhead, startling her, reminding her of hidden threats beyond just the cold. Birds broke free, white-tailed ptarmigans, almost invisible to the eye against the snow with their winter plumage. So beautiful, like one of the ornaments she'd planned to place on her Christmas tree.

She shook free from frivolous thoughts and stuffed pine needles into her parka on top of the bark.
Ouch.

If they didn't luck into some heavy-duty wood inside, they could come back out. Wrist-size tree trunks snapped easily when frozen. They'd have a good fire to warm them. All night in a cave—alone.

Her traitorous eyes glanced over her shoulder. Josh still shoveled, boots braced. Broad shoulders dipped and rose.

Gulp.

Alicia jammed her stiff fingers into the Polartec mittens again. She straightened to find Josh stepping away from a crawl-hole opening to a dark tunnel. He tugged free the flashlight they'd been issued with their gear, then reached for his survival knife.

"That should be enough to let us in without admitting all the wind and blowing snow." He unsheathed the knife, jagged edges glinting and reflecting moonlit sparkles off icicles. "Let's pray no one else is snoozing inside."

Bears.
Unease prickled over her, for Josh more than herself, because she knew all equality of service aside, he would throw himself between her and any threat in a heartbeat. This wasn't like in their airplane where they were both strapped into the cockpit with their designated roles.

She slipped her knife from the leather holster as well, following Josh as he ducked to enter. Crisp fresh wind gave way to air heavy with musty mold.

The murky cave greeted them. Dank. Dark.

Empty. At least near the front, anyway.

Tension dissolved from her kinked muscles. Exhaustion too long ignored roared to life faster than the camp-fire she would soon build. Not in a garland-and-bow-bedecked hearth, but she wasn't feeling all that picky anymore.

Josh pivoted, strobing the flashlight beam ahead. "Looks clear. We can explore once we have a fire to make a torch."

They would need to stay on guard, but at least they wouldn't freeze to death. Away from the wind, her body began warming to life with painful tingles. "Fire?" She swept off her goggles. "No problem. I've already got the tinder."

"You make a good partner, Renshaw."

His words echoed and bounced around her, mocking her with how she'd failed at just that. "Thank you, but it's my job."

"Yeah, right. I'll scrounge around outside for something to eat, some ice to melt, before the storm gets any worse."

And he was gone, swallowed by the sheets of snow rippling and twisting like linens on a line. The cave doubled in size without his shoulders and booming voice. So much for professional distance to carry her through this night alone.

She dropped her mittens to the slick black ground. She unzipped her parka and released the bark and needles into a pile near the mouth of the cavern to vent the smoke. From a pill bottle, she extracted a Vaseline-soaked cotton ball and dropped it on top of the kindling.

Kneeling, she struck her survival knife against the magnesium stick, launching sparks. She swooped again and again until the cotton ball poofed with flames. Kindling crackled, warmed. Acrid smoke singed the air and her lungs. Once the fire roared, she clicked off the flashlight to save the battery.

The entrance sealed closed. She startled, knife drawn, then relaxed.

Josh filled the entryway again, logs in his arms. "I set traps. We'll shoot hoops to decide who cooks.

Loser skins Thumper."

How could she not smile at the reference to their old hoops ritual? All the same, she could have done without the reminder of Josh's better qualities. Smart. Funny. Hot. Air sense in the plane that left people of all ranks bowing in worship. And oh yeah, hot.

Her traitorous gaze skipped over to him as he dumped the wood. Hard, angular features gave him a raw appeal, softened just short of scary by long dark eyelashes. A scar along his jawline provided a touch of humanity to his godlike perfection.

Perhaps it was his humanity that scared her most of all. "Left or right side?"

"Pardon?" He squatted down in front of the fire, stripping off his mittens.

"Left or right side of the rock bed? After we eat."

Josh glanced up at her, eyes clear with understanding of her unstated boundaries. He flipped back his hood. "Right side, by the light, so I can read myself to sleep."

He obviously wanted an easygoing tone, too, like with the shooting-hoops comment. Still, tension lines radiating from the corners of his eyes sprinkled guilt all over her. She couldn't squelch the desire to smooth her fingers over them.

Danger zone. Back off notions of touching.

She opted to be up front. Dodging the obvious wasn't helping, anyway. "Kinda tense, huh? Being here together. Things will be better once we're both settled at work. We won't see each other so much. Ops officer duties will have you hopping, being called out to the flight line every time there's an emergency. I'll be busy giving check rides and filling out form eights. Even when we do see each other, we'll both be too exhausted to notice."

Liar.

"Sure. Sounds great." He brought a longer log down over his knee. The frozen brittle wood snapped in half, the crack echoing. Crouching, he dropped one piece, then the second onto the fledgling fire.

Sparks showered up, blazing higher to throw dancing shadows along Josh's beard-stubbled face. He so didn't deserve the pain she'd brought to his life.

She inched closer to him, woodsy smoke teasing her nose on its curling path outside. "You can have the apartment if you want. I'll look for somewhere else to live. I know you'll be busy keeping everyone current and spun up in case things flare in Cantou again."

He grunted, still staring down into the fire.

"Josh? We have to learn to be civil. This isn't the only time we'll be working together."

"Fine." His face snapped up. "Glad you're ready to talk. Let's start with why the hell we ever got married."

Whoa! Scream on the brakes. Blood rushed to her head as if she were pulling G-forces. She was thinking more along the lines of "You get the blender and I'll take the food processor."

She opted for the simple answer. "Your biological clock was ticking."

He snorted. "A guy's clock doesn't run down."

"Whatever." He'd wanted babies and she'd wanted to give them to him. So why hadn't she been able to just go for it?

With a long stick, he prodded the fire, stoking. "So why did you marry me?"

"My biological clock was ticking." Partial truth.

His incredulous look shouted a louder answer than any he could have shot her way. Okay, so she'd delayed having children. Again. And again, even though originally they'd agreed to start a family right away, both of them impatient.

Then their final explosive argument while unpacking in their new apartment had ended everything. She'd turned the spare bedroom into an office. He'd been planning more along the lines of a nursery.

She couldn't stop thinking how damned scared she was to take that final commitment step, because someday he would demand answers to questions she saw crowding his eyes about her past. She hadn't told him, but she suspected he knew at least a part of the story thanks to her blabbermouth younger sister.

Josh pitched a final branch into the fire. With deliberate, predatory intent, he leaned forward. She should move away, but couldn't find the will. No surprise around Josh.

He stroked aside her hood, exposing her face to the grazing knuckles of his caress. "It's a damned shame we couldn't get our clocks in synch, because you know there's nothing I would have enjoyed more than giving you a baby for Christmas."

Alicia held herself still under his touch, unable to pull away, unable to move forward. Her heart twisted with longing. She'd had such hopes for their first holiday season as husband and wife. Her gift for him remained wrapped, hidden, an antique sextant for her navigator husband.

The heat of his fingers scorched her chilled face, stirring the hunger that simmered inside her anytime he touched her. She couldn't ignore it, but she refused to act on that hunger. "You really need to stop with the sexual innuendos. It's going to be uncomfortable enough sleeping next to each other tonight."

He stared back at her, inscrutable thoughts scrolling across his eyes. Would he push?

Finally, he just smiled, letting her off the hook for now. "I'd much rather sleep beside you than a bear."

"Thanks, I think."

His hand fell away. "But you're right. This sucks, being stuck out here together. I'm sorry it had to be this way."

She didn't want him to be nice, especially not now when they faced a final night together. She'd already cheated him of so much. He deserved better.

From the start, she'd known he was only getting half a person after what happened eight years ago. She'd hoped that maybe if she loved him enough, went through the motions of normalcy, everything would work. He would never know that she couldn't give him a hundred percent of herself.

She'd been wrong.

Alicia rocked back on her heels, suddenly certain she could not curl up next to him and hold firm to her resolve. "Maybe we shouldn't sleep at the same time after all. Once we finish eating, we could take turns sitting guard to keep the fire going. You should sleep first since you walked the lead."

With some luck, they could take turns sleeping until morning, never awake at the same time for long. And somehow forget that they were stranded together during one of the longest nights of the Alaskan winter.

Ten hours later on the longest night of his life, Josh held a branch-rigged torch overhead to add to the flashlight rays. Still, the beams barely pierced a dark deeper than outside. While Alicia slept, he wanted to scout around the cave. He needed to work off restless energy after his four-hour power nap.

They'd eaten, drunk melted ice, all silently. The talk of babies for the holidays had axed right through any hope of joking away the evening.

So her biological clock was ticking, which meant she just didn't want
his
babies. That delivered a kick in the seat of the pants harder than an afterburner.

He focused on the task at hand, surveying their surroundings, scouring for anything that might help their survival situation, like animal furs or food. So far, he'd only found an empty rabbit's nest and a few rats.

And a surprising lack of anything else.

Other wildlife should have taken up residence in this shelter. Yet he couldn't find so much as a footprint.

The cave floor looked as immaculate as his mother's fresh-mopped kitchen.

No one was here now, but his instincts blared that someone had been recently. And that someone didn't want anyone else to know.

"Hello?"

He jerked to look over his shoulder, torch swooshing around to light an empty corridor.

"Josh? It's just me." Alicia's voice bounced around a corner a second before her flashlight beam ricocheted off the wall.

He turned before she could draw closer. "Careful about sneaking up on me."

"Sorry."

Soft regret carried on her single word, the sentiment obviously for so many more things between them.

Her sleep-husky tones tempted him to hold her, shake her, kiss her, insist they give things another chance. But did he really want to keep trying to repair their broken relationship?

Not if she wasn't willing to be straight up with him.

He'd had a bellyful of people holding back from him. Hell, it wasn't like his brain made him a mind reader. Yet even while he mainstreamed enough to fit in, people always kept up walls with him as if his intelligence allowed him an understanding of their inner secrets.

If he could do that, then he wouldn't have his crap dumped at the BOQ. "Go back to sleep. It'll be an ex hausting trek with the extra snowfall. You've got maybe four hours left before we start out." He raised his torch to illuminate her.

Big mistake.

She stood silhouetted by the halo of light, her hood flopped back to reveal blond hair, spiky, tousled, as if mussed from his hands during sex. Her unzipped parka flapped open to her sides, revealing soft curves encased in her flight suit.

Heat surged south with unerring navigation.

Hitching the torch ahead, he charged past toward the last corridor left unexplored. Four steps in, his instincts blared an undeniable warning. He eyed the irregular hacks in the cave walls, fresh indentions that had nothing to do with nature and everything to do with human intervention. The mine wasn't abandoned anymore.

White suits dangled from pegs in the wall beside a tarp-draped mound no bigger than the new dining room table he and Alicia had bought the day before their split.

"Josh? Is something wrong?" Alicia asked from a step behind him and, hell, but he hadn't even heard her approach this time.

"I'm just hoping I'm not seeing what I think I'm seeing." And now he intended to keep Alicia plastered to his side until he knew for certain. "Stick close."

Illumination swelled in the small rock chamber as they walked deeper inside. He strode past the canvas-covered bulk to the white suit bags dangling like ghostly apparitions from a Dickens tale.

Holy crap.

Alicia's gasp behind him echoed his realization. "Protective clothing and breathing apparatus. God, Josh, these are better quality than the chemical gear we're issued and new. What the hell's going on here?"

He swept aside the tarp to reveal boxlike machinery with levered doors and gauges. And thanks to a stint at the nuclear-weapons officer course at Sandia Labs at Kirtland AFB in New Mexico, he knew exactly what he was seeing. None of it good.