It was a strangely intimate moment.
She held me against her like that until I could wiggle my toes. As soon as I could, I pulled away.
“Good?” she asked.
“Better,” I said. I stood then grabbed the jeans draped over my shoulder and put them back on. She handed me my boots then went to tie the boat to a nearby tree. I considered it a show of respect that I didn’t check her knot to make sure it was secure. My feet still felt like blocks of ice, but the good news was that I could feel them.
“You have the walkie-talkie?”
Her face went slack, and I knew that wasn’t a good sign.
“I dropped it,” she said, then bit her thumb again. “I was so focused on not dropping your boots when you lifted me over your shoulder that I had an awkward hold on it. That first step you took…it fell out of my hand.”
Swell. That meant we were here with no communication. What would Cal think when we didn’t make it to the shore? That we stayed on the rig most likely. He would wonder why he couldn’t reach me, but it’s not like he would be able to do anything about it until this storm let up anyway.
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s go find that cabin.”
“Find it? You mean you don’t know where it is?”
“Olivia, this island isn’t more than a half mile long. I don’t think we’ll have too hard a time. It’s basically in the middle of it.”
“Will it have a fireplace?”
I shook my head. “It’s a cabin in Alaska. Of course it has a fireplace.”
“Stop treating me as if I’m stupid. This is my first time getting marooned on a small island in the middle of an Arctic snowstorm in Alaska. I told you we should have stayed on the rig!”
“Oh no, you don’t,” I fired back. “I told you why it wasn’t a good idea and you agreed. I had no way to know that the ice would come in that fast. We should have been able to make it back.”
“Only we didn’t.”
“No, we didn’t. Now, do you want stand out here and fight about it or go find a cabin that absolutely has a fireplace?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and didn’t retaliate. Point one to me. I led the way through the thicket of trees and bushes, my only thought to get farther into the center of the small island. That’s where I had found it last time.
If this was the right island. There were at least ten or fifteen clustered in this area off the coast. But my gut said that, based on my position relative to where the rig was and where the shoreline was, this had to be the one.
I wasn’t an engineer for nothing. Details mattered.
Fifteen minutes later, my gut paid off when I spotted the cabin among the trees. Covered almost totally by snow it would have been easy to miss if I hadn’t known it was there.
I had to clear away a bunch of drifted snow in order to open the door. Cautiously, I pulled it back. Any animals native to this island might use the cabin as a shelter.
However, a quick look inside showed it was empty.
“We’re good.”
I stepped inside, and Olivia followed me closing the door behind her. The lack of noise was the first thing that struck me. We’d been out in that wind, both on the water and on land, for so long it felt like that sound was my new soundtrack.
The fact that the sound of the storm was so muted meant the cabin had been built by someone who knew what they were doing.
“Thank you, Zeke.”
“Zeke?” Olivia asked.
“The badass in town who carries his baby around in the sling.”
“Oh, that guy! Yeah, I didn’t know what his deal was. His wife seems nice, except the time she offered to fight you in my place, I really think she meant it.”
