Page 5 of Researching the Pole

He finished zipping me up, then leaned in dangerously close. His face hovered inches from my face. Was he…was he going to…?

“Checking the seal on your collar,” he whispered as if he could hear my mind screaming.

Oh, right. Of course. The seal. That word suddenly took on new meaning for me. Now every time I would say or read seal, which would be very often since my entire research was around leopard seals, I would be instantly brought back to this moment.

“How’s that feel? Any pinching?”

“It’s fine,” I managed to speak.

“You’re shaking.” His brow furrowed. “Are you still cold?”

Cold was not the problem.

“Just nervous,” I lied.

Grant’s expression softened. “Hey.” He put both hands on my shoulders, ducking his head slightly to catch my eyes. “You’re gonna do great out there. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

I believed him. That was the problem. I believed every word he said, trusted him completely, and apparently my body had decided that made him the most attractive man on the planet. And how was a man attractive in the first place?

“Ready to head to the dock?” he asked.

No. Absolutely not. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

3

Chapter 3

We took one of the bigger boats and launched into the dark waters, leaving white foam trails in our wake.

I sat near the bow, watching massive ice chunks drift past us. Grant stood near the center of the boat, one hand braced on the metal console, talking with Viktor—our Russian dive officer—and Sam, the Alaskan boat operator who’d been working Waypoint Station for six years.

Viktor was tall and lanky, all limbs and energy, with hazel eyes that glittered with enthusiasm. He couldn’t have been much older than Grant and me, mid-twenties maybe, with a blindingly sunny disposition that seemed to brighten up even the Antarctic dull skies.

Sam was his complete opposite. Weathered face, dark eyes that watched everything and revealed nothing, he looked like he’d been carved from the same gray stone as the coastline. He was older—thirties, maybe—and spoke about as often as those rocks did. He studied me like I was a specimen under a microscope for long moments. I must have passed whatever test it was because afterwards he only looked at the waters and focused on navigating the boat.

I watched Grant laugh at something Viktor said, his whole face transforming. God, he was handsome. Not just objectively attractive in that high school basketball star way, but genuinely, devastatingly handsome. The way the wind caught his long dark curls, how his shoulders filled out that drysuit, the easy confidence in his solid stance, powerful thighs spread apart on the rocking boat.

When had I started thinking about men like this?

I wrenched my gaze away from them and looked towards the floating ice chunks. Victor’s voice blended with the engine noise and wind. He was talking nonstop about last season’s dive and how he had certainly seen a mermaid and how he was most concerned about her lack of a wetsuit underwater. Despite my inner turmoil, I couldn’t help smiling at his goofy stories.

Suddenly, a seal surfaced, just thirty yards out—a leopard variety—and I forgot all about attractive men for a moment. “Holy shit!” I yelled.

In my excitement, I stood up so fast I almost toppled right over the edge. Grant was at my side immediately. The boat’s engine cut to idle, and Sam called out, “This is the spot, Doc?”

“Yes! Can we…?” I turned to Grant, bursting with excitement. My research subject in its natural habitat. This was surreal.

He was smiling at me, something tender flashing in his eyes. He nodded and gave me a thumbs up. My heart rate doubled up for reasons that had nothing to do with the dive.

“Let’s get these on you.” He took my right hand and slid a glove over my fingers with careful precision, then secured the seal at my wrist. Then the left hand, the same meticulous attention.

Then he crouched down in front of me, bringing us eye-level. He locked eyes with me. “You good, Doc?” His tone was soft. Not teasing like it had been in the cabin. It made my heart flutter. “I’ll be right next to you. We’ll be able to talk via our radio and our crew up here will be monitoring us all the while.”

“Yeah,” I said, and meant it. “I’m good.”

“I don’t need to remind you about the apex predators that leopard seals are, right?” The teasing was back.

I chuckled. “Everyone knows about their crushing bite force, but did you know that they have a secondary set of teeth behind the canines, specifically designed for filter-feeding krill?”