THE STORMRIDERS

By Donna Ball

Copyright 1991 by Donna Ball Inc

Digital edition published by Blue Merle Publishing July, 2010

One

A bitterly cold gust of wind followed Meg Forrest through the door, generating shouts of protest from several of the half dozen or so people gathered around the common room's nineteen-inch television set. She quickly closed the door and began to peel away the layers of scarves that covered her face, stamping her booted, snow-frosted feet on the rubber mat that lay just inside the door as she had done every morning for the past two years. This is the last time I'll be doing that, she thought in satisfaction, but the satisfaction faded somewhat as she realized this was the last time she would be doing a lot of things.

It was called a common room, instead of what a more structured organization might have called a reception area, because the front room of the Carstone Industries' Adinorack, Alaska, subsidiary was where everyone gathered when they had nothing else to do— which in Meg's opinion was far too often. It was furnished like a living room with two cheap plaid couches on sagging frames, several badly upholstered chairs and a television. The only indication that this was a place of business was the desk by the front door, which was unoccupied at present and, as usual, cluttered with file folders, circulars and unanswered mail. A gallon coffee urn was kept filled all the time and for that, at least, Meg was grateful. She went to it now and filled her mug.

"Oh, hi, Mrs.—I mean, Ms. Forrest." Sadie, whose title identified her as the office manager but who was in fact a barely adequate secretary, came through the swinging doors that led to the lab and private offices. The mail sack she carried indicated the nature of her errand.

"Good, my plane's here," Meg said, nodding briefly at her. " Where's the pilot?"

"In the radio room with Joe." Sadie gave her a hesitant look as she opened the sack and began to scoop the contents onto her already overflowing desk. "Urn, Ms. Forrest, I think-"

Meg cut her off. "Good. Tell him I'll be ready to leave in about an hour. I've got some things I want to tie up here first." She picked up a stack of envelopes and began quickly sorting through them. "No, never mind, I'll tell him myself. I don't know how long I'm going to be."

"Hey, Sadie, anything for me?" one of the men called from his position in front of the television set. Five of them were watching a Godzilla movie with all the rapt attention of die-hard football fans in the last quarter of the Superbowl.

"Mail call is at ten-thirty," Sadie retorted. "You know the drill."

The man gave her a grin and waved with his coffee cup. "Never hurts to try."

Meg directed a cool stare toward him, but he just continued to grin and turned back to the television set. It irritated her beyond measure to see half of Car-stone's staff lounging around the television at ten o'clock in the morning, and even more than usual today because it seemed to her they were doing it on purpose, just to see if they could get one last rise out of her. She refused to give them the satisfaction.

Instead, Meg collected the envelopes that were addressed to her and turned back to Sadie. "Sadie," she said patiently, "as my last official act as your boss, I'd like to ask you a question."

Sadie glanced up from the slow, methodical job she was making of putting the mail into alphabetical order. "Sure, Mrs.—I mean, Ms. Forrest."

"Why," asked Meg, "when we only get mail delivery once a week, are you always two weeks behind in answering our correspondence?"

Sadie looked surprised. "I always get the mail out the very morning it gets here. You know that, Ms. Forrest!"

"Those are personal letters. These—" she gestured to the stacks that cluttered the desk "—are business letters. This is a business, Sadie."

Sadie looked at her for a moment as though she did not quite understand the problem, then replied politely, "Oh." She went back to sorting her mail.

Meg closed her eyes briefly, trying to take some comfort in the fact that, after today, it would no longer be her problem. After today, she would leave this godforsaken, permafrosted piece of wilderness behind forever, and with any luck at all she would be lying on a beach in Waikiki in another two weeks. The thought should have made her feel better, but it didn't. She wasn't exactly sure why.

Meg Forrest was thirty-two years old, and one of Carstone Industries' top design engineers. Everything about her, from the way she wore her hair to her long-legged, aggressive stride, proclaimed the fact that she was a woman to be reckoned with—as well it should have, for she had spent years perfecting that look. She was tall and naturally slim, which was an advantage. Her heart-shaped face, large brown eyes and wide, expressive mouth were also an advantage, because too often men mistook the delicate, feminine face as indicative of the woman to whom it belonged, which was not necessarily the case. Customarily she wore her brown hair clipped above her ears, but the lack of a decent hairdresser had forced her to allow it to grow long over the past two years. She compensated for that inconvenience by pulling it into a severe chignon that was pinned at the back of her head in a style that was neat, serviceable and out-of-the-way. No one looking at Meg Forrest could mistake her for anything except what she was: The Boss.

And it still irritated her that, after two years as head of the Energy Research Station, the male eyes that followed her across the room were focused inevitably on her backside.

She had prayed for release from this little scrap of hell from the moment her plane had touched down on the dirt landing strip two years ago; she had marked the days off on her calendar; she had counted the hours. She had hated everything about the village, a dot on the map hardly worthy of even a name.

An ugly, barren collection of concrete block huts in the heart of nowhere, the place had an average January temperature of minus thirty degrees Fahrenheit, and it was windswept, ice-locked and thoroughly inhospitable. The night spots were the Blue Jay Bar & Grill and Brownie's Video, which carried over a hundred titles for rent, none of them less than five years old. Haute cuisine was a venison burger with cheese. There weren't more than twenty books, other than technical manuals, in the whole village and most of them Meg had brought with her. And her staff—technical engineers, mechanics, specialists and clerical personnel, the very backbone of this outpost society—were misfits, outcasts and ne'er-do-wells to a man. That was Adinorack, Alaska, population seventy-five.

Seventy-four after today, she thought grimly, hanging her coat and scarves on a hook by the swinging door on the way to her office. Then why wasn't this the happiest day of her life?

Adinorack—affectionately known as Hell Annex by those who through one misfortune or another had been forced to call it home—had been established twenty years earlier as part of a support facility for a military outpost. The military base had closed down, but the village itself had survived. When Carstone needed a spot to test its government-funded alternative-energy project, Adinorack had been the perfect place.

There had been no reason, however, for the presence of the head engineer on the test site. Meg Forrest had designed the system to be flawless, and flawless it had been. She had told the paper pushers at Carstone it would be, and that, of course, was why she had been sent here—she had insisted once too often, far too loudly, to the wrong person. Mistake number one. She was being punished.

After the first few months of setup, her presence here was superfluous. The mechanics and engineers handled the maintenance and day-to-day fluctuations required by the system, and all that was left for her to do was stand around and give orders to which no one listened. Two years later, and still no one listened. Meg Forrest was used to being in charge, to having people stand up and take notice; assuming she could whip this ragtag bunch of dropouts and comic-book addicts into some semblance of a disciplined organization had been her second mistake.

She reached her office, which was as stark and unwelcoming as the rest of the building, and set her coffee cup and her mail on the desk. That was when she realized the real reason for her ambivalent feelings about leaving this place. She looked at the coffee cup solemnly.

It was a plain white ceramic mug, with an etching of a cartoon Red Baron and the slogan "Flying Ace" in red flowing letters around the circumference. It was his cup. The chip on the rim was from the time she had thrown it at him in the midst of an argument she couldn't even remember anymore. Six months later, and she was still drinking out of his cup.

He knew she was leaving today; he must have known. And he hadn't even called to say goodbye.

"Mistake number three," she murmured.

Then, mentally shaking off the shadows that had become more of an annoyance than a pain of late, she sat down behind the desk and went through the mail. There was nothing of interest that demanded her personal attention; she had wound up her involvement in the project a week ago. There was a note from her father advising her to let him know the time of her flight in Washington so that he could have someone meet her at the airport. She took note of the "have someone meet you" instead of "I'll meet you" with little emotion. The General was a busy man and could not be expected to take time out of his schedule to run back and forth to the airport, not even for the daughter he hadn't seen in two years.

Meg tossed most of the letters into the trash, saved a few for Sadie to answer—when she got the time— and tucked the letter from her father into her purse. Then she leaned her elbows on the desk and sipped her coffee, looking absently around the room. There was nothing to keep her here. So why didn't she leave?

The room looked just as it had when she'd first entered it two years ago: cheap plywood paneling, two steel filing cabinets, a drafting board, a black Naugahyde sofa where she had spent many uncomfortable nights when the weather was too inclement for her to traverse the block and a half to her apartment, which was just as inhospitable and utilitarian as her office. Of course there had been other nights on that couch, nights not quite so uncomfortable, nights when she was not alone....

She quickly jerked her eyes away and glanced toward the window. The Venetian blinds were firmly closed, as they always were, against the depressing view of frozen wasteland. Now, idly, Meg opened them a little, and the view was just as demoralizing as ever. Frozen tire tracks in the muddy snow, patches of bare earth where the wind had blown the snow away, the squat shape of the Blue Jay across the street, shadowed by a rusted-out, abandoned water tower that should have been torn down years ago. A twilight gloom hovered over everything, even though it was March and the days were supposed to be getting longer.

"Land of the midnight sun," Meg muttered, and let the blinds fall back into place with a rattle. She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she had seen the sun since she'd been here.

Furthermore, she had noticed heavy-bellied gray storm clouds building in the east, signaling the definite possibility of snow. There was no point in hanging around here any longer. Any bush pilot worth his name in these parts could negotiate his way through a snowstorm, but it was a four-hour flight to Juneau and Meg didn't want to make it any more difficult than it had to be. The best thing to do was to leave now.

He wasn't going to call.

She slung the strap of her purse over her shoulder and started for the radio room, stopping in the common room on the way to refill her coffee cup. She might have noticed a few odd, brightly interested looks from the television viewers as she opened the connecting door to the radio room, but she didn't pay much attention. She was already speaking as she walked inside.

"I'm Meg Forrest," she said briskly, "and if you're fueled up I'm ready to go. Looks like we're going to get some snow and I want to outrun it."

There were two men in the closetlike room that served as communications center and weather-tracking station. Joe was at his usual place in front of the radio, headphones draped around his neck, joking with the pilot, who sat on the edge of the desk. His laughter faded when Meg entered, and the pilot slowly turned around.

"You," she breathed. "I might have known."

Meg was face-to-face with Red Worthington. Mistake number three.

Had she been paying any attention at all, she would have recognized him even from the back. The Dodgers baseball cap perched atop his curly brown hair, the faded red sweat jacket with its broken zipper, the all-too-familiar cocky way he held his head... Who else could it have been? She might have known.

Few people would have called his a handsome face or even a memorable one. With cool, analytical precision Meg had decided long ago that he was, in fact, quite ordinary-looking. Undistinguished features, plain hazel eyes, completely forgettable. Except for that little-boy grin that somehow managed to cause a flutter in the heart of any female over the age of six, that rueful way he had of rubbing his chin and glancing at a woman sideways that made her want to forgive him anything, the way his jaw hardened into a bulging knot when he was angry, which was more often than not when Meg was around... except for the way he moved and the way he spoke and the way he had of looking at a person, steadily and mildly, until that person wanted to either squirm away from his gaze or run into his arms... except for the fact that Meg's heart, even now, had picked up a skipping, breathless rhythm from no more than simply looking at him, he was the most perfectly forgettable man she had ever met.

His eyes went over her once in that familiar, all-too-intimate way, from the crown of her head to the pointed tips of her boots, tracing the curve of her breasts beneath the bulky sweater and the shape of her thighs beneath the snug-fitting jeans. She hated it when he did that. And loved it.

He grinned and saluted her with his plastic cup of coffee. "Why, Mrs. Worthington," he drawled, "as I live and breathe."

Meg glanced pointedly at the cup and said coolly, "You're killing the planet with those things, you know."

He shrugged and sipped from the cup. "Don't have much choice. You've got my mug."

She hesitated, then closed the door, sparing a stern look for Joe. He couldn't have been more than twenty, an absolute genius with any kind of electronic equipment but not very bright when it came to anything else. Meg had no idea how he had ever ended up here; she only knew that his curious, blond-bristled young face in this room at this particular moment made her uncomfortable.

Joe immediately tried hard to look invisible, but nothing on earth could have persuaded him to leave his station now, that much was clear. Not that it mattered, Meg decided after a moment. She and Red had nothing to say to each other now that the whole world couldn't hear.

She struggled to get her heartbeat under control as she crossed the room. "What are you doing here?"

He feigned surprise. "This is my route, isn't it?"

"Not for the past six months it hasn't been,”she pointed out. Her pulse was beginning to settle down to normal. Ordinary, she assured herself. A perfectly ordinary man.

He merely grinned over the rim of his coffee cup. "Well now, little darlin', I could hardly let you ride off into the sunset without even saying goodbye, could I?"

And just when she thought she was perfectly under control, her heart started stuttering again—from anger this time. "Of course," she replied briefly. "You're the only man I know who'd fly halfway across a continent just to escort his wife to the state capital so she could file the divorce papers."

He leaned back, eyes twinkling. "Right now," he replied, "that's the only thing I can think of that's worth flying halfway across a continent for."

Meg's lips thinned.

Red put down his cup and got to his feet, holding his arms out wide. "Come on, Megan, give us a little kiss. For old times'sake."

She stood perfectly still as he advanced on her, never mind that swift hot tightening in her stomach, that leap of excitement in her throat, that flood of memories the words, even in jest, could evoke. Never mind that just for a moment she actually considered it—no, more than considered it. She wanted it, with the desperate hunger of a condemned woman at a feast. When he was two feet away from her she pushed her hand against his chest and stepped coolly away.

"I hate that name," she said. Except when he used it. He was the only one who had ever called her Megan without making her want to punch him in the jaw.

Red chuckled infuriatingly.

Meg glanced at Joe, who had replaced his earphones and was fiddling earnestly with the dials on the radio. But the earphones did not quite cover his ears, she noticed, and he was sure not to miss a word.

She said, "You left some things at my place. I packed them up, and I was going to mail them to you. They're out in the trunk with my bags."

Red picked up his coffee again. "I don't carry bags." Then, he asked casually, "You got someone to take care of your car for you?"

As long as he was teasing her, prodding her, making her angry, she could take it and give back her own. But that simple inquiry—polite, distant, the kind of thing one casual acquaintance might say to the other-was almost her undoing. It sounded so final and so emotionless. As though nothing was left between them but the mundanities.

Which, she supposed, was probably the case.

She had to swallow before she could answer. "Dancer's going to try to sell it for me."

"Maybe I'll take it off your hands."

"As part of the settlement?" she shot back before she could help it.

"Hell, I ought to get something."

"For all those years of constant devotion?"

"Now sweetie,, I was devoted—"

"You don't know the meaning of the word!"

"And you do?"

' 'At least I tried to be a wife!"

"Talk about not knowing the meaning of something. I hope you packed up a dictionary in those bags of yours, because it looks to me like you've got a lot of studying to do."

"And now that I don't have to waste my time on you, looks like I'll have plenty of time to do it!"

"Wasting your time? I like that. You never had it so good."

"Oh, right, every girl's romantic fantasy. To be stuck in an arctic wasteland with a husband whose idea of fine entertainment is watching a three-week-old boxing match on television—when he bothers to come home at all!"

"Oh, so we're going to get personal, are we?"

Meg's face was hot and her hands were clenched around the coffee mug and her stomach was tight, and the most infuriating thing of all was that Red wasn't even angry. Sure, his eyes were beginning to take on a spark and if she pushed him much further he would be angry, but he could throw those barbs at her without even working up a sweat, and that was what infuriated her. He had always been better at fighting than she was. Why did she keep letting him do this to her?

She set the mug down with a thud on the corner of the desk and said tightly, "You're a jerk."

"Jerk, Megan?" He lifted his brows, his eyes dancing with amusement. He was enjoying this. "Is that the best you can come up with? Jerk?"

"That," she told him deliberately, "is what you've reduced me to."

He laughed, and if she had not already put the mug down she probably would have thrown it at him again.

Meg glanced at Joe, who was now watching them with bright-eyed interest. "I hope you got all that, Joe. Now, radio Juneau and give them our flight plan. I'm out of here."

Joe glanced at Red as though for confirmation, and Red tried to cover his grin by rubbing his chin. "Well now, about that..." he said.

Meg glared at him. "Don't start your little games with me, Red Worthington. I'd rather spend two weeks in a cage with a giant iguana than four hours in that cockpit with you, but we're going to Juneau. You knew when you took this run what the return fare was, so don't jerk me around. Get your hat and coat and let's go." She turned on her heel.

She had her hand on the door when Red's voice stopped her. "Believe me, sweetheart, you can't be any more anxious to get this show on the road than I am, but it looks like we might have a little problem here."

Meg turned back around slowly to look at him, every muscle in her body defying him to give her bad news.

He did, anyway, and with a cheerful ease that made her want to launch herself at his throat. "Seems there's a little storm front moving in from the north," he said. "Flight advisories from here to Juneau." He hooked his foot around the leg of a chair and pulled it out. "Looks like you and me—" he sat down and leaned back, crossing one arm over his chest as he sipped his coffee, looking very pleased with himself "—are going to be stuck with each other for a while longer."

*************

Two

Meg could not believe that less than an hour ago she had actually felt regret about leaving this place; she had been looking for ways to delay—hoping Red would call. Red hadn't called, he had come, and now he was keeping her here and she knew she couldn't stand this place one minute longer. He couldn't do this to her, she couldn't stay here another second...

Crazy, she thought a little dazedly. That's what he's done to me. He's made me completely crazy.

She strode across the room and snatched the top sheet from Joe's Out basket, where he routinely placed all incoming weather information. Her eyes scanned the paper. Low pressure system...winds forty knots... heavy snows...

She looked from the paper to Red to Joe accusingly. "You're making this up!"

Joe protested, "Now wait just a minute, Ms. Worthington—"

"Forrest," Meg snapped. "My name is Forrest!"

"Not yet, it's not," Red reminded her mildly.

Meg stepped around Joe's chair to examine the radar screen on his left for herself. Even she could recognize the steady blip that tracked a storm front—and a front of considerable size, it was plain to see.

She turned on Red. "All right, even if it's true, what's the problem? The storm is over two hours away! You've flown in worse weather than this—you make a damn career out of flying in worse weather than this! What are you trying to pull? Get out there and start your instrument check. I'll get the bags."

She headed for the door again, and Red replied simply, "Nope."

Meg turned and leaned against the door, fixing her gaze on him and trying to count to ten. He was sprawled in the chair, jeaned legs comfortably apart, hat tilted at a cocky angle, looking relaxed and unconcerned. Perhaps one of his most irritating habits was that ability to make himself perfectly comfortable no matter where he was, to remain completely at ease no matter what the situation.

Meg said, "You're doing this on purpose."

"Right. I woke up this morning and I said to myself, now what can I do today to make Meg's life miserable? I know!" He snapped his fingers. "I'll conjure up a storm so she'll miss her flight home!"

Meg pushed away from the door and advanced two angry, controlled steps toward him. "You know damn well what I mean. You're sitting here wasting time arguing when you know you could outrun that storm if you left right now—and you would leave right now if it was anybody but me telling you to!"

He just grinned.

Meg turned to Joe with a snap of her head. "All right," she demanded, "what's the delay time? How long am I going to be stuck here?"

Laconically, Joe flipped a few switches on the radio, turned a few dials. "Well, I been monitoring it up and down the line. Lots of damage already, and it's gonna get worse when it crosses the tundra. They're talking about closing down the Fairbanks airport, wouldn't be surprised if they did the same to Juneau." He looked up at Meg. "Could be a couple of days if we get iced in."

Meg fixed a cold, accusing gaze on Red. "I turned in the key to my apartment," she said, trying very hard to keep her voice even. "I don't even have a place to sleep tonight."

"There's always the couch in your office," he reminded her cheerfully. Putting aside his coffee cup, he got to his feet. "Of course, that doesn't leave any place for me to sleep, but we never had much problem working that out before, did we?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Meg saw Joe smother a grin, but she ignored him. "You are so predictable," she told Red coldly.

"Why, Megan, I'm hurt."

He started toward the door of the common room, but Meg grabbed bis arm. "Let me tell you something, hotshot," she said. "One of these days you're going to go too far. The FCC has rules that were made just for people like you, and I've got enough dirt on you to have your license jerked in a heartbeat."

He regarded her with twinkling eyes and made no effort to pull his arm away. "I love it when you talk tough."

"Just because you can fly doesn't make you God, and somebody's going to catch on to you someday— you and every other little Caesar like you, sitting up there so high and mighty in your cockpits, calling your own shots, making your own laws—"

' "There never was but one way to shut you up,'' Red said, and pressing her face hard between his hands, he covered her mouth with his.

Meg's fingernails dug into his arm, but only for an instant, and then all the strength left her body and was replaced by a wave of heat—no, flame—that started in her toes and swept upward to her brain and she hated herself for it but couldn't stop it because Red had always been able to do that to her and after all this time he still could.

All of her was infused with him: the smell of warm cotton and Old Spice-- no one wore that anymore and no one but Red could get away with it-- the coarseness of his slightly stubbled chin against hers, the calloused hands pressing into her cheeks, fingers threading their familiar way into the hair at her temples ...

And his mouth, possessive and sure, weaving its heat through her throat and her breasts and her stomach in shivering, breathless waves, making her want to part her lips and drink him in, making her want to wrap her arms about him and draw him close, to be filled and possessed and completely overwhelmed by him... Red.

She thought she had missed him as much as it was possible for a woman to miss a man, longed for him and ached for him to the fullest extent of her body's capacity for craving, but not until this moment had she realized what hunger really was. Nor how great was the power he still wielded over her.

And yet, when he released her, she managed to stiffen her muscles despite the fine trembling that coursed through her, to ignore the heat that burned her face and the dizziness that still swirled in her head, and to face him without gasping for breath. Because she could feel Joe's appreciative, delighted grin as he unabashedly watched the master at work, because she could still feel Red's breath on her cheek and taste him in every pore of her body and she was furious with him, because he could still make her want him, because he had deliberately started what he had no intention of finishing and because she knew, suddenly and without a doubt, that this was what he had flown three hundred miles for.

What she really wanted to do was slap his face, but she would not be reduced to that kind of childish dramatics, nor would she give him the satisfaction. So she hardened her face, looked him straight in the eye and said mildly, "Funny. And to think I used to believe you'd improve with practice."

She saw the muscle in his jaw start to knot, and that was all she wanted. She turned on her heel and strode out of the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

Red watched her leave the room, shoulders back, head high, legs stretching in the peg-legged jeans, and it was with as much self-control as he had ever exercised in his life that he stopped himself from going after her. He used to accuse her of walking like a military commander charging into battle, but it wasn't until this moment that he realized her walk was one of the things he missed most about her.

"Damn that woman," he muttered, and didn't turn away from the door.

Her walk? Hell, he missed everything about her. Her blazing eyes, her quick mind, that sharp tongue of hers that could cut him to ribbons without half trying... her hair, when it was loose upon the pillow, and the way she looked just before bedtime, in one of his old flannel shirts and wool socks, a pair of heavy glasses perched on her nose as she studied a pile of papers. He missed just being able to turn around and see her there, to say something to her and hear her retort, he missed fighting with her and making love with her. One would think that a thirty-eight-year-old man who had done as much living as he had would have figured out by now how to get over a woman he was sure he had never liked very much in the first place.

He swung around and snatched up his half-empty coffee cup, but he forgot it was disposable and his tight fist crushed it. He cursed again as lukewarm coffee spurted through his fingers and down the front of his shirt.

Joe commented, "You could have, you know."

Red shot him a dark glance as he mopped at the front of his shirt with a handful of paper napkins.

"Outrun the storm," Joe explained. "You've done it before."

"Yeah, maybe." Red scowled as he tossed the soggy napkins at the trash. "But I should risk my plane for a witch like that?"

Joe nodded sagely, understanding. He wouldn't have understood if Red had told him the truth. If it had been cargo Red was transporting to Juneau— mail, packages, electronic parts, even contraband booze and cigarettes—he wouldn't have hesitated; he would have thrilled to the challenge. If it had been a doctor with life-saving serum in his bag, he wouldn't have thought twice about the risk and he would have damn well gotten him through without so much as a wrinkled suit to testify to the hazards of the journey. But the truth was with Meg it was different. With Meg he just didn't have it in him to take chances.

Robert "Red" Worthington was one of the most notorious bush pilots of the Alaskan frontier. He had built a reputation on the kind of daring that bordered on recklessness, and he had done it for nothing more than the sheer fun of it. He had set his plane down in places a chopper wouldn't even go; he had skimmed between mountains with ice caking on the wings so thick he could see it; he had flown through the blackest of nights with a dead instrument panel and nothing but static on the radio and had loved every minute of it.

He loved the rush of adrenaline, the heart-stopping, dry-throated fear, that moment of certainty when he knew he wasn't going to make it and that little voice inside that urged him to push a little further, challenge a little higher, just take one more insane chance...and he loved winning, cheating the odds, triumphing over the impossible, getting that chance to do it all over again. Some said he was the kind of pilot who looked for trouble, and he guessed maybe they were right because he sure didn't turn away when trouble found him. Playing it safe, to him, was not much different from playing dead.

But when Meg came along, things began to change. Gradually at first, so that he hardly noticed it, and then more alarmingly. No one but another pilot would understand how much of flying was done on instinct; instruments were fine and the tower was someone to talk to when you got lonely, but the real flying was done by feel—the throb of the engines, the response of the controls, even the weight of the air. The plane became an extension of his own body and nothing should matter up there except the pilot and his machine.

But when someone was waiting at home, other things mattered. He was no longer alone in the air, he wasn't sure he could trust his own instincts, and the plane was no longer his only lover. The edge was gone, and so was the thrill. That was why he couldn't take chances with Meg in the plane, but Joe wouldn't have understood that. And worse, neither would Meg.

Still scowling, he made one last brush over his damp shirt, then spied the coffee cup Meg had left on the edge of the desk. He picked it up, and it was still warm. Somewhat mollified, he resumed his chair and settled back, sipping the coffee. She took it black, the way he did. And she never left lipstick stains on the cup. That was one thing he had always liked about her.

Joe jotted down a message from one of the radio channels, then pushed the earphones down around his neck. He turned the swivel chair to look curiously at Red. "Say, Red, can I ask you something?" „

Red looked up quickly. He had almost forgotten about Joe, and he was grateful for the distraction because he had been contemplating doing something crazy—such as going after Meg and trying to talk to her. "Yeah, sure."

"Why did you marry her?"

Red's lips curved into a rueful half smile. "If I had a nickel for every time I'd asked myself that question..."

He dropped his eyes to the coffee cup, as though studying its depths for an answer. After a moment he shrugged. "She was the smartest woman I'd ever met. And the meanest. And the sexiest..." He managed a grin, but it faded, because there was more, and those were the things he couldn't tell Joe. He could barely understand them himself.

Because being with her made fighting a storm at three thousand feet with a sputtering engine seem like a ride on an amusement-park carousel. Because she was thunder and lightning, fireworks and high tide, and he could get high just looking at her. When she walked into a room he could feel it, static electricity tugging at the hairs on the backs of his arms, a low thrumming in his blood, the taste of excitement in his throat. She consumed him, day and night; he hungered for her, literally and figuratively. Why had he married her? How could he not have?

Or at least, that was how it had seemed to Red at the time.

He glanced at Joe, who was still looking at him expectantly, waiting for the rest of his answer. Red smiled. "For her cooking," he explained. "I married her for her cooking."

That Joe understood. He nodded, satisfied, and turned back to the radio, lifting the earphones as another message came in.

The expression on Meg's face as she came out of the radio room must have been enough to The expression on Meg’s face as she came out of the raido room must have been enough to remind even the most depraved of the curious onlookers of their manners, because the occupants of the common room quickly turned their attention away from the radio room—where they had no doubt heard every word, as well as studied with fascinated attention the shadows on the frosted panel of the door—and back to the television. Meg observed sourly that they had probably had a pool going on who would strike whom first, or which one of them would come out bleeding.

She swept them all with a look of contempt laced with the fury she now felt for the whole world, and she snapped, "There's a storm moving in. Gilly, check the fuel levels. Shark, you and Lewis get me an emergency inventory. The rest of you secure the area and don't forget the hangar. Come on, move it!"

"Yes, ma'am," Gilly drawled, and leaning forward for one last look at Godzilla before switching off the television set.

Meg glared at them until they all got to their feet with the kind of shuffling indifference that could only be appropriately compared to inmates of a cell block being mustered out to the exercise yard. Meg knew, of course, that her orders were not a matter of life and death; storms such as this were routine to them and they had more than an hour to prepare. But none of that was the point. When she gave an order she expected obedience, period.

"Guess this means you'll be staying on a while," commented Lewis innocently as he passed. Then he grinned and elbowed his companion. "Guess so," he said, and both men laughed. Meg didn't see what was funny, but then she had never understood male humor—or anything else about this particular group of males.

Meg did not even notice that Dancer was in the room until she hopped down from the desk on which she had been perched. "Hi," she said. "Just came by to pick up the car."

Dancer was a long-legged, impossibly angular woman dressed in bright orange, sweater-knit leggings, a tight leather skirt and a rhinestone-spangled satin shirt. Her spiked, peroxide-blond hair showed dark roots, and she was never without a wad of gum in her mouth. She paid the rent by working part-time at the Blue Jay, and the rest of the time she... had a good time. Dancer was what, in another century, might have been called a "light-skirt." Meg wasn't sure what the appropriate term was in this century, except to say that in a town where the population was three-quarters male, Dancer had a very good time indeed. It sometimes worried Meg that Dancer was one of the few women she had ever really liked.

But at the moment she was not in the mood for Dancer, or anyone, for that matter, who was on speaking terms with any man. She said curtly, "The car's parked out back."

Meg pushed through the swinging door that led to the corridor of offices, and Dancer followed. "So," she said. "Looks like you're going to be stuck here for a while. Tough break."

"You're telling me."

' 'Hubby's back, too. Cozy.''

"Right. Cozy as two snakes in a sleeping bag."

Dancer giggled. "You're really crazy about him, aren't you?"

Meg chose not to reply. She pushed open another swinging door, turned left and reached into her pocket for the key that unlocked the big metal door at the end of the hall. Turning in her office keys had been last on her list of things to do—fortunately, as it turned out.

The overhead fluorescent lights came on automatically when the door opened, and Meg descended a flight of metal stairs into the heart of the complex. Sterile light gleamed off the network of pipes and tubes, engines throbbed like a warm heartbeat, and almost immediately Meg felt a calm steal over her.

"Wow," Dancer's voice echoed behind her. "Kind of spooky, isn't it? Am I allowed to be down here?"

Meg crossed to a control panel, her heels making a satisfying click-click on the concrete floor, and checked a series of gauges. "It's not top secret. I'm surprised one of your boyfriends hasn't brought you down here before.''

"Yeah." Dancer still sounded a little awed. "Me, too. What is all this, anyway?"

Meg could not prevent an almost maternal smile as she looked out over the vast, machinery-filled enclosure. Everything in its place, everything serving its purpose, working in perfect synchronization, nothing wasted, nothing lost. Dancer thought it was spooky. Meg thought it was beautiful.

"This," she told her, "is what heats and cools and brings electrical power to every building in this town. What's more, it's only working at a fraction of its capacity right now. It could power up a town ten times this size without even blowing a fuse."

Dancer tilted back her head to examine the web of pipework overhead. "So that's what you guys do here."

Meg laughed.

Dancer looked at her, obviously impressed. "And you designed all this?"

Meg shook her head regretfully, making notations of the gauge readings on the clipboard that was always left nearby. "No, not entirely. This project had been going on ten years before I joined it." She copied down the final reading, which she would compare with others when the storm was at its height and the town's demands for energy rose, and set the clipboard aside. "This," she said, leading the way across the room, "is what I designed. Or part of it, anyway."

She laid her hand on a compact metal box, about three feet by four feet, with its own series of gauges, wires and tubes that was connected to various pieces of other equipment throughout the room.

"Oh." Dancer tried to look appreciative, but fell a little short. "It's nice. What is it?"

"It's..." Meg struggled to put it into words for a layman. "Well, it's kind of a solar battery, I suppose you might say."

"Like the kind they put in calculators?"

"Sort of." Meg hated to hear her darling described in such mundane terms. "Not really. For one thing, it can collect energy even on cloudy days, which is a big advantage up here. For another, it's a lot more efficient and powerful than your average photovoltaic converter, and it's really more of a generator. Most of what all the rest of this does—" she waved her hand around the room, her voice gathering enthusiasm as she explained "—starts right here. There are two of them, actually, but it only takes one to run this complex. One can stay in the collecting mode while the other is on output. But I'm already working to modify that, so that it would only take one to run the average household—much smaller, of course. That's the whole point, you see. If we could put one of these in every household in America, we could be energy independent in a generation—and it would cost practically nothing!"

It was clear that all of this went over Dancer's head, and she grinned. "You sure get turned on by the weirdest things."

Meg shrugged, a little embarrassed. She did have a tendency to get carried away by her work, and she kept forgetting that most people weren't in the least interested.

"So why don't you?" Dancer inquired.

"What?"

"Put one in every household."

"Well," she admitted, "right now it's too expensive. And the initial switch-over costs would be astronomical. And there are political reasons, I suppose, and we don't really know what problems might develop down the line, which is one reason Carstone will keep the project going until somebody figures out a way to do it cheaper and easier. Of course—" the regret in her voice surprised her "—that somebody won't be me."

"Got canned, huh?" Dancer said sympathetically.

Meg looked at her in surprised amusement. "Who told you that?"

"Well, nobody ever said why you were leaving. I just figured..."

"That since I was such a bitch to work for the guys upstairs decided to pull my ticket," she supplied dryly. She could well imagine how a rumor like that could get started, and it annoyed her that she hadn't heard it before now. "No, I didn't get fired. I only signed a two-year contract for frontier duty, and now it's up. I'm leaving of my own free will.''

"What’s going to happen to your thingamabob?" Dancer gestured toward the generator.

"I'll leave it here."

"I thought you were still working on it."

The lump of regret that came into Meg's throat caught her completely off guard and took a moment to overcome. "Somebody else will get the assignment, I guess."

"You don't look like somebody that's leaving of her own free will," Dancer commented shrewdly.

Meg scowled. "Look, I hate this place. I've always hated it. It's cold and ugly and the people here hate me as much as I hate them, and I'm glad to be getting out."

''Not everybody hates you," Dancer corrected easily. "I like you. Sometimes. Most of the time. But then—" she grinned "—I like most everybody."

Dancer's humor was infectious, and Meg lost the battle with her own grin. "Well, everybody knows you're strange."

Dancer lifted herself up onto a metal worktable, swinging her long legs. "Anyway, I think the real reason you want out of here is sitting upstairs in the radio room right now."

"Refusing to do his job," agreed Meg, ''and making my life miserable as always."

"So why did you marry him, anyway?"

Meg gave an unladylike grunt. "Cabin fever. It had to be. Temporary insanity. Why else would I marry a man I'd only known six weeks and live with him for eighteen whole months before I finally figured out he was a certifiable maniac?"

"Well, you're both maniacs if you ask me," Dancer said frankly, examining a minute chip in the fuchsia-colored polish that adorned her index fingernail. "I mean, I never saw two people who belonged together less than you two. Talk about your cats and dogs..."

"Temporary insanity." Meg caressed a length of eight-inch piping absently, enjoying the soft purr of energy coursing through it. Then she said thoughtfully, "I don't know. It was all so strange, and so sudden—like a whirlwind, almost, or one of these crazy Alaskan blizzards that sweep in from the coast."

She turned around to look at Dancer, leaning back against a support post. She was aware that she was speaking as much for her own edification as for her friend's, and putting her feelings into words was not something that came easily for Meg. But that was probably the main reason she and Dancer got along so well; Dancer would listen to anything, and she never made Meg feel sorry afterward for what she had said.

"I never expected to get married, you know," she went on. "I never pictured myself doing it, I never even wanted to. Most women do, no matter how much they say they like being single and aren't looking for a man, deep inside they're really just waiting to get married. But not me. I always used to say that when I found a man who was stronger than I was and smarter than I was, I'd marry him. I knew I never would, so that was just fine. It made me feel secure, in a way, because I didn't have to worry about it anymore. Then I met Red."

"Hoist with your own petard," Dancer commented, and Meg looked at her in surprise.

"Hey, I read," Dancer protested.

Meg chuckled, but the amusement faded into a smile that was choked with pathos. "He was... something else," she said softly. "He's the only man I've ever known, except maybe my dad, who wasn't afraid of me. The only man who could ever stand up to me in a fight. And, God, was he sexy."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Dancer murmured.

Meg looked at her sharply, caught off guard by the knife point of jealousy that went through her.

"No way." Dancer quickly held up her hand in self-defense. "I never slept with Red, I swear on my life. Not," she added with her typical do-or-die honesty, "that I wouldn't have if he'd so much as ever even hinted he might be interested, and not," she confessed further, "that I didn't try once or twice. Before you came, of course. But a funny thing about Red, he was always real choosy. He's the only man who ever turned me down. That's why you could've knocked me over with a feather when he married you. No offense, of course. I just never figured him for the marrying kind."

"He wasn't, believe me."

"I think he was really crazy about you."

Meg was ashamed of that childish part of her that leapt at that small reassurance, like a puppy begging for scraps. "Do you?"

Dancer nodded wisely. "I think a lot of things. Like your biggest mistake was getting married. You'd've been just fine if you'd just kept on sleeping together. What did you want to go messing it up with all that legal mumbo-jumbo for? And then when you broke up, you wouldn't have to go back home and Red wouldn't have had to spend the past six months flying a route he doesn't even like just to keep from bumping into you. You really screwed up. And if you'd asked me before you did it I could've saved you both a lot of trouble."

Meg chuckled. "I'll remember that next time. What else do you think?"

Dancer jumped down from the table and dusted off her hands, despite the fact that every inch of the room was as spotless as the inside of an operating room. "I think you're not over it yet, either one of you. And I think you got luckier than you deserve with this storm, and if you don't take advantage of it you'll hate yourself the rest of your life."

Meg stared at her. "Take advantage of it? What in the world are you talking about?"

Dancer rolled her eyes in a display of impatience. "Well, if you don't know, you're in worse shape than I thought. Can we get out of here? This place is giving me the creeps."

Meg followed her toward the door.''Dancer, I know we don't always see eye to eye, but until now I always thought we were at least having the same conversation. First you tell me nobody ever belonged together less than Red and me, that we made a big mistake by getting married, and now you want me to make up with him? Are you crazy?"

Dancer cast her another one of those impatient, condescending looks. "Not make up with him, bird-brain. Have sex with him. That s the only way to get a man out of your system. Didn't your mama teach you anything?"

For a moment Meg was so stunned she actually stopped in her steps, staring at Dancer. Fortunately, however, Dancer didn't notice and kept on walking, because in the next moment Meg's cheeks were flame red—not with embarrassment, but with the kind of guilt that comes when a secret truth is exposed when one least expects it.

From the moment Red had kissed her—no, even before—hadn't she been thinking the same thing? It was ridiculous of course. If she did a thing like that there would no longer be any doubts about her sanity; she could skip lunch with her father when she got to the mainland and proceed directly to Bellevue for intensive psychiatric treatment. She had spent six of the most agonizing months of her life trying to get over him and now had she actually considered—even for one desperate, hormone-induced moment—really considered starting it all over again? It was crazy.

"I'd rather take a screeching, hairy, flea-infested baboon to my bed," she muttered, following Dancer up the stairs.

"Suit yourself," Dancer replied good-naturedly. "But you'll be sorry." She pushed open the door. "I guess if you're going to be staying, there's no point in me taking your car.''

"No, that's okay," Meg replied distractedly. "Just let me get my bags out."

''How are you going to get home?"

"I turned in the key to my apartment. I don't have a home."

"Say, that's too bad. You need a place to crash?"

Meg smiled at her as she locked the door. "Thanks, Dancer, but I'll just sleep on the couch in my office tonight. That way I can leave as soon as we get clear sky."

"Okay, sure. But take my advice." She winked at Meg. "Don't sleep alone. Who knows when you'll have another chance?"

Three

Meg spent the next hour in her office, trying to rearrange her travel plans. The Adinorack telephone system was temperamental at best—unsurprising, considering the fact that until Carstone had moved in, there had been no telephone system at all—and it would have been faster to use the radio. But not on penalty of her life would Meg have gone back into the radio room.

The next available flight to Washington, D.C. was three days hence, and that was assuming the storm lifted by then. Meg spent a good five minutes cursing Red, his airplane, the pilot who had switched routes with him, the mother who had birthed him and anyone else she could think of who could in any remote way possibly  be construed to have a hand in her present predicament.

Of course Red wasn't responsible for the storm. Even if he had gotten her to Juneau, there was a strong possibility that she would have been stuck there indefinitely. But none of that mattered. Meg was a woman of strict routine, definite plans, concrete certainties. She did not like to have her plans thrown into disarray. And from the moment Red Worthington had entered her life he had shown an uncanny knack for doing just that.

When her anger had worn itself out, she set about the complicated business of trying to send a cable to Washington. Three times Sadie interrupted her by buzzing the intercom, causing her to lose the connection. At last Meg punched the intercom button herself, snapped, "I'm on long distance, damn it!" and disconnected. Sadie didn't bother her again.

When she had finally gotten a cable off to her father and another one to Carstone headquarters, advising them of the storm and her delay, there was nothing for her to do but look around the bleak little office and contemplate yet another night spent on the lumpy sofa listening to the wind howl. Alone.

But she refused to brood about it. She had endured worse disappointments than this—in fact, one might say the entire past two years of her life had been a worse disappointment than this—and she was not going to be reduced to a sniveling pout just because her trip home had been delayed. Or because she had to spend the night on a sofa instead of a bed, or because Red would be only a few dozen feet away and she did not see how it was going to be possible to avoid him for the next twenty-four hours, or forty-eight, or seventy-two, or even longer....

Impatiently, she punched the intercom button. A blast of wind screeched against the window and she shivered. "Sadie."

No answer.

She pushed the button again, then several times in succession. "Sadie, where are you?"

A timid voice came back. "Ms. Forrest?"

"Who else would it be?" Meg replied in exasperation. She rubbed her arms against a sudden chill as she spoke into the microphone. "Get Lewis or Reese to go out to my car and bring in my bags, will you? It's unlocked."

"Urn... they're not here."

Meg scowled. "Where are they?"

"Over at the Blue Jay, I think."

"What the hell are they doing there?" Despite her rising temper, Meg shivered again and it wasn't just in sympathy with her surroundings this time. There was a definite chill in the room.

"Well, they didn't say but-"

"Sadie, it's cold in here," Meg interrupted. "Why is it cold in here?"

"Why, I don't know, Ms. Forrest—"

"Where's Gilly?"

A male voice drawled, "Right here, ma'am."

"Gilly, it's like a refrigerator in my office! What are you guys doing, sleeping at the switch? Those of you who aren't at the Blue Jay, that is!"

"No, ma'am. Just following your orders. Emergency preparedness, remember? Close off all unnecessary areas.. ."

She stared at the intercom, hardly believing her ears. "What emergency? Who declared an emergency?"

"Why, Red did. We tried to buzz you—"

Meg burst through the swinging doors of the common room almost before he had finished speaking. Her eyes were blazing and her face was flaming and her hands were clenched into fists. Sadie immediately scurried into her chair and found something to type, and even Gilly, a two-hundred-pound ex-marine, took a startled step backward.

"Who the hell," she demanded lowly, "gave Red Worthington the right to declare an emergency on my compound?"

Gilly recovered himself in short order and picked up a sheet of teletype paper from the corner of Sadie's desk. "The National Weather Service, I reckon," he said, offering it to her.

Meg snatched the report from him and scanned it quickly, fury warring with professional detachment, which warred with concern at what she read. The storm had indeed gathered sufficient strength and speed to meet her criteria for a Phase One Emergency. The worst of it was still more than an hour away, but she had to admit that if she had read this report she would have done exactly what Red had. And that was precisely what enraged her.

"Why. wasn't I given this the minute it came in?" she demanded.

"Mrs. Worthington," Gilly replied plainly, "you don't work here anymore. Red and Joe, they was in the radio room when it came in—"

"Where is he?"

"Joe?"

"Red!" she practically roared.

Gilly shrugged. "Seems I heard him say something about going over to the Blue Jay."

Meg stalked across the room and grabbed her hat and coat from the rack, stuffing the crumpled report into her pocket as she donned her outer gear. She stopped only once, to consult briefly with Joe about further weather information, and then she plunged out into the storm.

The cold literally took Meg's breath away. She drew her scarf up over her mouth and immediately felt it go stiff with frost. Only a few dry snowflakes whirled through the air, but the wind was strong enough to threaten to knock her off her feet when it gusted. Someone had strung a lifeline—a length of bright yellow marine rope—between the office complex and the Blue Jay, which was also part of the emergency plan. In the event of a prolonged siege, the Blue Jay could be their only source of food and bottled water, and it was not impossible for a man to get lost within three feet of his own front door without a lifeline. Meg gripped it gratefully to pull herself along against the wind, and noted with a small measure of surprise that the men had managed to remember this detail without being told. Then again, considering that the Blue Jay was their only source of a great deal more than food, perhaps it wasn't surprising at all.

She entered the vestibule of the bar, gasping and working her stiff fingers, routinely stamping her feet to restore the circulation. The drone of a country-and-western tune and the sounds of laughter were only slightly muffled by the thick door that guarded the interior. She peeled off her outer clothing, found a hook on which to hang her coat and pushed open the inner door.

The room was thick with cigarette smoke and cooking grease, the female singer on the jukebox wailed her heart out about the man who'd done her wrong, and fully half her staff was gathered around the pool table, laughing and joking and lifting mugs of beer. Among them, of course, was Red Worthington. Meg just stood there, planted before the door with her arms crossed and her mouth set, until they noticed her.

It took approximately thirty seconds. Then somebody began to whistle under his breath "Ding-Dong the Witch Is Dead" from The Wizard of Oz; in a moment another picked it up, and then another, until everyone around the pool table—those who weren't choking back laughter, that is—was whistling.

Meg let them go a full chorus and then she said coldly, "I'm in no mood, gentlemen. Would someone like to tell me why, in the middle of a Phase One Emergency, I have to go combing the bars for my staff?"

Lewis chalked up his cue. "Well, for one thing," he said, "we're not exactly your staff anymore. For another, it's lunchtime."

Meg looked at her watch. "It is precisely 11:45 a.m. Lunch, as I recall, doesn't officially begin until noon."

Red said, "Eight ball in the center pocket," and bent to make his shot.

Meg reached the pool table in two strides and caught the ball before it hit the pocket. It stung her hand and elicited a loud clamor of protest from the players, but she ignored both. She faced Red with anger straining in her muscles.

"And maybe you can tell me who gave you the authority to declare an emergency behind my back," she said.

Red straightened up lazily. "Please, dear, not in front of the children."

"You did it on purpose," she accused, lowering her voice only fractionally. "You knew my office would be the first to be cut off and you thought it would be cute!"

He tried to look innocent, but it was difficult with mischief glinting in his eyes. "Hey, I didn't make the rules."

"And I wouldn't care to bet that you're not the one who saw fit to declare an early lunch hour, too!"

"Man does not live by bread alone. Put the ball down, sweetheart. You're holding up the game."

Meg's hand tightened on the ball while she mentally reviewed several creative possibilities as to where to put it, and Red's eyes danced with amusement as he read her mind. Then with amazing self-control, she swept the group with a measured glance and said, "I hope you enjoyed it, fellows. Because in approximately one hour, we go to Phase Two and anyone who isn't at his post gets his walking papers. I don't care if I have to fly back from Washington personally to deliver them."

She pushed the ball toward Red with a force that caused it to bounce off the side of the table, then she turned and stalked to the bar.

She sat down on a stool and Maudie placed a glass of bourbon before her. Maudie, manager and proprietor of the Blue Jay, was a big woman of indeterminate age whose native heritage was evident in her broad forehead and dark skin and eyes. They said she had been a beauty in her day, but now she was merely formidable. She wore a skinning knife strapped to her waist and kept a sawed-off shotgun under the bar. Needless to say, there was very little trouble in the Blue Jay.

Meg took a deep swallow of the bourbon, wincing a little as it went down. It was early to be drinking, but time had little meaning in this place. "Did you ever see such a bunch of shiftless, worthless sots in your life?" she demanded. "If they worked for free, we'd be overpaying them. What the hell's the matter with them, anyway?"

Maudie, who was not known for her reticence, looked as though she'd be glad to tell her, but just then Red slid onto the stool beside Meg. "For one thing," he supplied easily, "they don't like you."

She shot him a dark look as she lifted her glass again. "Thank you for that late-breaking news flash."

Red slid his empty beer mug across the bar, and Maudie immediately supplied him with a fresh one. "You've got a good crew working for you, Megan," he said. "Your trouble is you just can't leave them alone and let them do their jobs.''

She made an incredulous gesture toward the pool players.'' This is doing their jobs?"

Red said, "Look, we've got a killer storm coming. Nobody'd blame those men if they packed up and went home to their families right now, and you couldn't stop them. But they won't. They'll stay, all knight, all day and who knows how much longer until the next shift can get in. A dozen men cramped together in that rabbit warren you call a compound for God knows how long.... If you'd just stop to think about that, you'd be ordering them to let loose and have some fun while they can, instead of giving them hell for taking an early lunch."

And that, of course, was why Red had taken matters into his own hands. Meg's grip tightened on her glass as she tossed down another swallow of bourbon. She hated it when he was right, particularly since, when it came to people, Red was almost always right.

Meg Forrest could work a complicated logarithm in her head, she could recite enough facts and figures to fill an encyclopedia, and she could look at a malfunctioning piece of circuitry and tell at a glance what was wrong, but when it came to the human race she was forever baffled. She did her job; she expected other people to do theirs. She saw every problem in black and white; she did not understand why no one else shared her vision. Subtlety was not a characteristic she had been born with; persuasion to her was a waste of time. She wished she had Red's ability to understand people, his humor, his charm—whatever it was about him that made people like him so much—but she simply didn't. And that hurt her as much as it frustrated her.

But she certainly was not about to admit that to Red.

She said, "You certainly don't make it any easier, flying in here and encouraging a mutiny in the middle of a crisis."

He was unfazed as he lifted his beer. "Lighten up, sarge. You're not running a military barracks here, and no matter what Daddy says, not everybody was cut out to be a soldier."

Meg scowled. Her father, the General, had been the axis about which many an argument had revolved, and Red knew he could always get to her by bringing that up. She was not going to fall into that trap today.

She wished that bar stools were not made to fit so closely together, or that Red did not take up quite so much of his in that comfortable, sprawling way he had. His feet were hooked around the rungs on either side of the stool and his knee pressed quite unselfconsciously against hers. When she lifted her glass to drink, her arm brushed against his, and though she could have shifted away, she would not.

She wished Dancer had never said what she had about the quickest way of getting Red out of her system. Because now, when she glanced down pointedly at Red's knee pressing against hers, all she could really see was the way his thighs strained against his jeans, and the way the denim faded over his fly. And even when Red politely rearranged his feet so that he was no longer touching her, she could still feel his warmth. Not even the bourbon could erase the memory of the way his skin tasted against her tongue, the tangy bite of his after-shave.

He sipped his beer, and the movement of his arm brought his shoulder into contact with hers again. She thought he did it on purpose.

"What are you doing drinking beer at this hour of the morning, anyway?" she said. "You know it gives you heartburn."

"Easy to see you don't have that problem, slugger." He glanced meaningfully at the glass of bourbon. "Better eat something or you'll be falling over your own feet. Might be a while before you get another hot meal."

Meg took a swallow of her drink. "I'm not hungry."

"Hey, Maudie, bring us a couple of those buffalo burgers, will you? And go easy on the onions." He grinned at Meg. "Seeing as how we're going to be spending so much time in close quarters."

''In your dreams." She lifted the glass again.

Red's eyes followed the movement of her hand, and she saw he was looking at her wedding band. She put her glass down quickly and fought the urge to hide her hand in her lap. "I tried to get it off," she told him. ' 'It was stuck. My finger must have swollen.''

He smothered a grin. "Yeah, that happens in these damp tropical climates."

She glared fixedly at his own hand, and he shrugged. "Hey, no excuses. I'm keeping mine. I hear it wards off the sharks, and it makes bad women badder to think they're doing it with a married man."

"You're disgusting."

He saluted her with his mug. "You taught me everything I know, babe."

She started to push away from the bar, but he caught her arm. "Hey," he said.

Nothing but the look in his eyes stopped her. It was quiet, sincere, stripped of all facetiousness or malice; a rare look lately but heartbreakingly familiar. He said, "I was faithful to you. All the time we were married. Even now."

Meg's heartbeat switched gears abruptly, pumping out a slow heavy rhythm. She stared at Red, wanting to examine his eyes, but he turned his attention back to his beer and released her arm. The pressure of his fingers left a gentle imprint on her flesh beneath the sweater, like the memory of a caress. She had never had any doubts about Red's fidelity during their marriage; she knew him too well. But they had been separated six months now. He had been free, and she had endured agonies, wondering...

He wanted her to know there had been no one else. That was what made her heart start beating so strangely, swelling so heavily in her chest. That was the first personal thing he had said to her since.. .since he had said goodbye. He wanted her to know.

Meg forced her muscles to relax, and she settled back down on the stool again. She took another sip of bourbon to clear her tight throat. Still, it was a moment before she could speak. "Why did you tell me that?"

He looked embarrassed, even sorry, that he had. "I don't know. Just didn't think I deserved another bum rap. No point in being blamed for something I never had the fun of doing."

He was trying to needle her and doing a fairly good job of it. She fought back her temper. "I never," she said deliberately, "accused you of that."

"No, just everything else you could think of. You would've gotten around to it eventually."

"Oh, so now I'm a screeching shrew! That's a refreshing role."

There was satisfaction in his glance. "Typecasting."

Meg lifted her glass again, but it was empty. She set it down on the bar, hard.

Maudie appeared at that moment with two hamburger platters, complete with a pile of greasy French fries and one limp pickle apiece. Meg nudged her glass, and Maudie took it away for a refill.

"Water it down," Red called after her. "The lady seems to be getting a little testy."

"You haven't seen testy yet," she warned him.

He laughed and picked up his burger. "Believe me, I could write a book on the subject."

Meg looked with disgust at her plate. The hamburgers weren't really made of buffalo meat, of course; they had simply earned that nickname for their tough consistency and gamy taste. But as much as she hated to admit it, Red was right: it might be a while before she got another hot meal. She picked up the hamburger and forced herself to eat, grateful when the bourbon arrived to kill the taste.

"The first thing I'm going to do when I get home," she muttered after a time, "is check into the Georgetown Hotel and order the biggest, thickest, juiciest steak on the menu from room service."

"Yeah, well, have one for me, babe."

He said it casually, lifting his hamburger to his mouth again, and there was no reason the words should have gone through her like a knife. Except that in all the times she'd had that particular fantasy in the past two years—the plush, modern hotel room, the big bed with crisp white sheets, room-service trays stacked on every available surface—this was the first time she had pictured herself doing it alone. He was supposed to have been there.

There was a lump in her throat suddenly and she put down the hamburger. Damn it, he was supposed to have been there.

He said, "It'll be spring in Washington. Cherry blossom time."

She struggled to put the emotion aside. It was stupid to miss a man before he was even gone. "Not for another month yet. It's still cold in March sometimes."

"I guess so. It's been so long since I was in the lower forty-eight forget. You still going to Hawaii?"

Another fantasy. Sun-drenched beaches, the smell of coconut oil, his naked legs beside hers on the beach blanket, sunshine glinting off his chest... That was supposed to have been their honeymoon. Was she going to spend the rest of her life stumbling over dreams of which he was a part, dreams that had never come true?

"Yep," she said, and determinedly picked up her hamburger again. "I've got plenty of leave coming, so as soon as I check in with the office and get my gear together, I'm off to the South Pacific."

She could feel his eyes on her, and she wondered if he was remembering, too. She did not know how she would react if she looked at him and saw her own sad memories reflected in his eyes, or worse, if she looked and saw nothing at all. So she kept her eyes fixed straight ahead.

Silence fell.

When she couldn't stand it anymore, Meg put down her burger, swallowed hard and said, "You're doing it again."

"What?"

"The look."

"Oh. Sorry." He turned his eyes away and picked up his beer. "I was just thinking, you'll need to buy a whole new wardrobe.''

That was not what he had been thinking and Meg knew it. But she was grateful, in a way, for the lie.

She pushed her plate away. "If I have to smell this another minute, I'm going to throw up. Maudie, is there any pie?"

"No pie today. I only got two hands." Maudie came to take the plate away, but not before Red helped himself to the remaining fries. "You want pie, you send that no-account girl over here to help me bake."

"Dancer?"

"She's late."

"I doubt she'll be coming in today. There's a storm on the way."

Maudie snorted. "You think I don't know that? She's cuddled up cozy somewhere with some man, that's what she's doing, instead of over here earning an honest living. We got some banana bread left from yesterday, that's all."

"Where'd you get the bananas?"

Maudie looked at her as though she must be the stupidest woman in the world. "From a mix, all dried up in little chunks. You want some or not?"

Meg tried not to grimace. "Sounds tempting, but I guess not. Thanks."

Maudie turned away with another snort.

"What's the latest weather?" Red asked between bites of French fries.

"Looks like a big one," Meg admitted. "A lot of wind damage in Little Falls, and they closed down Highway 12. Sixteen inches of snow in the past hour."

"That'd build a hell of a snowman," Red said, and Meg smiled in spite of herself.

To cover it, she turned to Maudie. "How are your supplies?"

"Red brought in a shipment just this morning. Got plenty to last."

"We might be needing some before this is over."

"How do you think I make my profit? You pay for it, you got it."

"At suitably inflated prices," Meg murmured.

Maudie's sharp ears missed nothing. "You whine about it, you get nothing."

The corners of Meg's lips turned down in a dry apology. "Mind if I check out the supply room?"

Maudie looked at her suspiciously. "What for?"

"To see what you've got," Meg explained patiently. "How else can I know what to buy?"

Maudie still looked skeptical. Then she decided reluctantly, "Red'1l show you. He knows where stuff is."

"What do you think I'm going to do, steal it?"

"Red will show you," she repeated firmly, and turned her back.

"Oh, for Pete's sake," Meg muttered, pulling a couple of bills from her jeans pocket to pay for lunch. "I never met a more disagreeable woman."

"I have," Red said cheerfully, and swigged the last of his beer. He pushed the money back across the bar to her and stood. "This one's on me, ace. Come on, let's check out that supply room."

*****************

Four

Red draped his arm around her shoulders as they pushed through the door to the kitchen, and Meg was sure he did it just to irritate her. Knowing that did not stop the warmth that tingled through her with his touch, however, nor the tightening of her stomach muscles that was the inevitable result of his closeness. And she waited a few moments longer than she should have before she shrugged away.

"What do you want?" Red inquired, gesturing broadly toward the two doors that led off the kitchen. "Dry goods or refrigerated?"

She moved toward the door on the left. "How do you know where things are, anyway?"

"I unloaded most of them myself."

She slanted him a dry look as she pushed open the pantry door. "You never unload anything for us."

"That's because you're not a helpless female."

They stepped into a large room, two walls of which were lined floor to ceiling with canned goods while the remaining space, with the exception of a few narrow aisles for walking, was packed just as tightly with cartons of every description. "Good God," Meg exclaimed softly. "She's got enough here to see her through World War III."

"That's Maudie," agreed Red affectionately. "Always prepared."

Meg edged between a stack of what appeared to be military-surplus blankets and a tower of cartons marked Napkins. Red followed closely—so closely, in fact, that Meg could feel his warmth against her back. She tried to ignore it.

"Do you think we could talk her out of some of these blankets?" She nudged the stack with her toe. "If the guys are going to be stuck overnight, sleeping space will be at a premium."

''Like the lady said, for a price." His voice was just as casual as hers, but it seemed to Meg he had moved closer. She refused to turn around to see.

"I was hoping she'd loan them to us."

"Not likely.'' He leaned his arm on the shelf in front of her, trapping her between the napkin tower and wall-to-wall corned-beef hash. "Kind of cozy in here, isn't it?" he commented. She could hear the mischief in his voice. "Remind you of anything?"

Meg knew exactly what he was referring to, and her cheeks went hot with the memory. The first party they had attended as husband and wife had ended up with the two of them in a coat closet much smaller than this making love.

She said curtly, "No," and pushed his arm aside, edging down the aisle.

"Come on, Megan, where's your sense of romance?" There was laughter in his voice as he caught her hips and turned her around. Then they were face-to-face and thigh-to-thigh, and the teasing on his face faded.

Her pulses pounded as though struck by an electric charge; her entire body felt electrified, as it so often was with Red, as it almost always was when they touched. She could feel her breath grow shallow in her throat and her stomach tighten with the surprise of sensations she had almost forgotten—awareness of him, the closeness of him, the possibility of him.

And she could see it on his face, too: naked surprise, something not planned that had gotten out of hand. Desire. Awareness. Need.

Possibilities.

She said a little unsteadily, "Take your hands off me."

He agreed huskily, "I guess I'd better."

But he made no move. He just kept looking at her. Her skin began to tingle and dance with the power of his eyes moving over her.

She swallowed hard. "Red, let me go."

"Okay."

His eyes were dark and glinting with specks of jewel green; she could see his chest rise and fall with slow steady breaths. His scent seemed to creep into her pores, warm and familiar, making her fingers tingle with the need to touch him. It would be so easy just to lean into his arms, to melt into his embrace, to drown in him one last time.

She jerked her head away from his hypnotic gaze and abruptly turned to push past him. But she didn't push past him at all. Somehow her hands were on his waist—perhaps she had meant to push him out of the way—soft flannel against her fingers, tight muscles beneath the material, and her pelvis was against his, her breasts brushing his chest and she knew she wasn't going to move another step.

She drew in a deep breath that was meant to be steadying but was in fact helpless, wondering, resigned. She felt his gaze on her, drawing her in, but except for the slight quickening of his own breath he did not move. Her hands slid upward along his torso and she thought dizzily, One last time...

His mouth met hers as she lifted her face, and she was lost. His fingers tightened on her hips, pressing her to him; she felt his hardness and smothered a moan at the sudden responsive ache between her own legs. His breath swallowed hers, and weakness throbbed through her limbs.

He pushed his hands inside her sweater and they were warm even against her flaming skin; bis hands were always warm. Rough, calloused caresses over her torso, deftly unsnapping the catch of her bra... She couldn't breathe. Her heart was shattering her rib cage. She whispered, "Stop. This is crazy...."

"I know." His lips pressed kisses along her neck, his unsteady breath like waves of fire on her damp skin.

Her hands moved urgently over his back, her chest, his waist and the shape of his buttocks, and he pulled her closer, smothering her with his mouth again.

"We can't!" she gasped, yet her fingers were now working the buttons of his shirt, tugging at the soft knit of his undershirt, seeking the heated flesh beneath.

"We're married...."

"Someone—" she gasped as his hands slid inside her jeans, fingers tightening on her naked bottom " —could come in...."

He hesitated only long enough to drag her forward a step, reaching out with one arm to pull the door closed, and then his mouth was on her neck, the hollow of her throat, pressing heat and moisture into the tightening flesh of her breast through the material of her sweater.

"We can't do this...." she whispered weakly one last time, and he agreed breathlessly, "No, we can't," just before his mouth covered hers again and they both knew it was too late.

One last time, she thought. One last time for all those lonely nights ahead, for all those dreams that never came true, for what should have been and never could be. One last time, that's all....

And when their mouths separated she whispered, "We can do this...." Her fingers were already tugging at his belt, working the snap of his jeans.

''No one will ever know...."

"It doesn't mean anything. We're adults...."

"Lord, Megan..."

"Nothing will change...."

"Nothing."

"Just sex. We can do that."

"Liar."

She looked into the dark, heated blur of his gaze, his flushed, passion-softened face, and she whispered,"Yes..."

And somehow their clothes were pushed aside and she felt the soft-scratchy texture of the blankets beneath her and she was lost in him, dissolved by him into a melange of heat and color and glorious purpose. His breath, his taste, the blur of his face, the brilliance of his eyes, and all she could think was his name, over and over again, with a kind of desperate, grasping certainty. Red. The way it was meant to be. The only time she was complete. Red, who would never be any thing but a part of her. Red...

A long time after the shudders of explosive fulfillment had left them, they remained gasping for breath, thundering heartbeats shaking in their chests, their arms locked so tightly around each other the grip was painful. Meg's mouth was open against Red's shoulder, her fingers pressed into his back, her eyes squeezed tightly closed in a desperate effort to hold on, for just a moment longer, to what would never be hers again. She could feel his face, hot and damp against hers, and his unsteady breath, and she thought fiercely, Don't leave me, Red, don't...

But in the end it was she who forced her muscles to loosen and who shifted away. Silently, with shaking hands and jerky, hasty movements, they began to rearrange their clothing. Maudie would be wondering what had happened to them. Someone could come in at any moment.

There was no sound except his breathing and hers, and the muffled movements they made as they dressed. Meg's hands were shaking, and she felt shattered inside, stunned. This was it, then, their final farewell: a frantic tumble in a musty storeroom, dressing hastily before someone found them. They deserved better than that. They used to be better than that. She pressed her lips together against a sudden urge to cry, and she couldn't look at him.

This was supposed to have made things better, but it hadn't. Instead the hurt was deeper, the longing more intense, the loss more acute. She kept thinking, Say something Red. Touch me, hold me, say something, anything. And then fiercely, No, don't. Don't say anything. Don't do anything. She did not know how she could stand it if he did.

What was he thinking? What was he feeling? Was he hurting, too, was he missing her, was he wishing it could have been different?

Of course not. Men didn't react that way after sex; they weren't bothered with those foolish sentimental feelings, and in that way they were a lot smarter than women. They took everything in stride, they accepted whatever came their way at face value, and that was the only sensible way to deal with something like this. That was exactly, Meg resolved, determinedly swallowing back the thickness in her throat, what she was going to do.

What they had done was crazy, reckless, almost adolescent in its irresponsibility, but Meg refused to be embarrassed by it. She refused to feel regret. They were consenting adults. It meant nothing. People had sex in storerooms all the time and the world didn't change. She wasn't sorry. It had meant nothing. Men got up, put on their clothes and walked away every day of their lives; why couldn't she do the same?

She could. She could.

She belted her sweater, missing the notch twice, and ran her hands over her hair to smooth it. "Is my hair okay?"

He took a moment to answer. "Yeah. Fine."

She stood up. Her knees felt weak and she was still shaking, quivering inside. Her face was hot, abraded from the contact with his, and his heat was still inside her, everywhere. But she was managing, with a great effort, to bring her breathing under control.

She said, "I'll go out first." She still couldn't look at him.

Red stood up. His voice was curiously blank as he said, "So that's it, then?"

She didn't know why those words pierced her so, why they jangled across her nerves like pieces of broken glass. She didn't know what she had expected from him, nor why she had any right to expect anything at all. But she could be just as cool as he was. She could.

Her voice sounded brittle and a little too high as she replied, "What do you want me to say? That it was good? It was always good with us, Red." She gave him a forced smile. "That's why I married you, remember?"

For a moment there was something in his eyes—a flash of anger or even hurt—but it was gone so quickly she might have imagined it. Casually, he looked around for his hat, found it, and his smile was perfectly natural as he arranged his hat on his head. "Well, hell, sweetie," he replied lazily, "if I had known that, I would've made sure I was getting paid by the hour."

Meg turned sharply for the door.

"Wait a minute."

She caught her breath as she felt his touch, but he only straightened the twisted belt of her sweater, then stepped away.

Her voice was husky, but she managed, "Thanks."

"Anytime."

She waited, stiff-muscled and aching, for him to say something, or do something—what, she didn't know. She only knew that she wanted, and the wanting was big enough to fill an Alaskan plain.

But he only stepped in front of her, made a deep bowing gesture and opened the door. "After you," he said.

Meg swallowed hard, squared her shoulders and walked through.

Red waited until the kitchen door swung closed behind her, then he drew a deep, unsteady breath, swung around and did his best to put his fist through the wall. The wall was less resilient than he had supposed, and the blinding pain was enough to cause him to choke back a shout and, for a moment, almost blotted out the deeper pain she had left the minute she pushed him away. But not quite.

He screwed up his face against the throbbing in his hand, squeezed his eyes closed and leaned his head back against the wall. "Damn!" he whispered. Damn her, and him, and whatever crazy gods had brought them together in the first place. How long were they going to keep doing this to each other? Would it everget any easier?

He had handled it all wrong, he knew that. He never should have let it go this far, he never should have let himself be alone with her, he never should have come back to Adinorack for that matter. What was it about him that wouldn't leave well enough alone, that insisted on finding new and improved ways to torture himself?

It was simple. With Meg, common sense deserted him, good judgment was a thing of the past, and he never, ever managed to do the right thing. Maybe, when it came to the two of them, there was no right thing.

But he had set himself up for this one. Maybe he had thought, if he had been thinking at all, that making love to her would make things better—if what they had done could be called making love. Still, he could have done something, or said something afterward to make her feel less bad, to draw her close again. He knew he could have. But when she looked at him, so crisp and in control, as though what had just happened between them was nothing more than a minor interruption in her day... Didn't she know by now that every time he made love to her he left a part of his soul inside her?

Didn't he?

"Damn," he whispered again, and opened his eyes, looking bleakly around the room. His hand was throbbing less severely now, but the ache inside his chest was there to stay.

And the storm that trapped him here had not even begun yet.

The Arctic wind was searing, numbing, and for the three and a half minutes it took Meg to cross the street she couldn't think anything, or feel anything, except the cold. She slammed the door behind her and went through the routine of trying to work circulation back into her limbs as she pulled off her outer garments. But as soon as the bite of the icy air had left her she could smell Red on her skin again and taste him, still, against her tongue.

But if her face was flushed it was only from the cold, and the brightness of her eyes could very well be due to the sting of the wind. No one seemed to notice anything unusual. There was a card game going on in the common room; apparently the television reception had gone out. At any other time she would have upbraided the men for their goldbricking, but when she opened her mouth she heard herself saying, "Gilly, you guys take the next couple of hours off. It looks like it's going to be a long night. And send somebody back when you get over to the Blue Jay so I don't have to run this place by myself."

The six players gathered around the card table stared at her as though they weren't sure they had heard correctly, then there was an abrupt scramble of chairs and tossed-down cards.

"Whatever you say, boss."

"But what about..." Joe gestured toward his radio equipment, looking uncertain.

"I'll monitor it. Go on."

"Well, sure." He disentangled himself from his headphones and stood, still looking a little unsure—or perhaps just surprised.''If you say so.''

At the door he turned back. "By the way, we brought your stuff in." He gestured toward the corner. "We didn't know where you wanted it."

Meg glanced at her luggage, two suitcases and a cardboard box, all that was left of the past two years of her life. And the cardboard box wasn't even hers.

She had to clear her throat before she could answer, "Thanks, Joe."

"Sure thing."

He closed the door behind him, and Meg unplugged the radio earphones, turning the volume low, so that she could monitor messages without being tied to the station. She checked the radar and the satellite internet, which seemed to have died along with the telephones. None of that was unusual in an isolated spot like Adinorack, particularly with a storm approaching. This part of Alaska was for the most part still a vast and brutal wilderness, and technology fought an ongoing battle trying to tame it.

At last she turned, as though drawn by a magnet, to the luggage in the corner. The two suitcases were leather, expensive and embossed with her initials, MPF. She ignored them. Instead she knelt beside the cardboard box and, hesitating only a moment, lifted the flaps open.

A few days after Red had left for the last time, before she fully realized that he really wasn't coming back and while she was still angry enough to be spiteful, she had gone through the apartment and gathered up everything he had left behind, everything that reminded her of him, and dumped it all into the box, planning to present it to him at the door if he ever showed his face again. He hadn't, the box had been consigned to the back of a closet, and she hadn't thought about it in months. She looked into it now half fearfully, half longingly, but with a compulsion she couldn't stop.

There wasn't much. He had always traveled light and he had taken his clothes and most of his personal belongings when he left. A fishing lure, a crumpled hat, a paperback adventure book he had been reading about spies and lost Nazi treasure. A photograph of the two of them taken at Sadie's Christmas party. He was leering at the camera and she was laughing. She looked at the snapshot until her eyes stung, trying not to remember, and then she hastily put it away.

There were other things. A single sock, a comb, an unmatched glove. A golf ball she did not know where he had picked up or why he kept, because he didn't play golf. A screwdriver, a pocketknife with a broken blade. The discards and forgotten junk of a man's life, the things he had left behind as easily and as carelessly as he had abandoned their marriage. Or maybe all that had been left of the marriage by that time were bits and pieces, like the junk that filled this box.

At the bottom of the box was a shirt, red-checked flannel. She used to sleep in it because the feel of it against her skin reminded her of him and because it always, no matter how often she wore it, seemed to smell of him. Warning herself not to, knowing she would regret it, she slowly pulled the shirt out. And then, because she simply couldn't help it, she brought the material against her cheek.

It was as soft as she remembered, and as warm. Red was a tough man, his body was hard and his hands were rough; there was nothing gentle or muted about him at all. But whenever she thought of him she remembered softness, like this shirt. And the only time she had ever been warm in the past two years was in his arms.

The shirt still held his scent—and hers. The two of them, intermingled and interwoven, so that she couldn't tell where one left off and the other began. The same scent was in her clothes now, and in her hair, and on her skin. Helplessly, shamelessly, she buried her face in the shirt and let the memories come.

She did not even realize her face was wet with tears until she heard the door open behind her. She quickly turned her back to the door, stuffed the shirt into the box, and stood.

"Uh-oh," Dancer said. "He made you cry. Men are such pigs."

"Don't be silly." Meg surreptitiously wiped her hand across her face and turned, moving in a very businesslike way toward the radio center and knowing perfectly well Dancer wasn't fooled. "Maudie was looking for you. You'd better get to work."

"Yeah, I'm going. I just stopped by to see if you wanted to walk over with me, maybe have some lunch."

Meg busily scanned the radio channels. "I've eaten, thanks."

Dancer hoisted herself onto the corner of the desk, swinging her legs, regarding Meg frankly. "You can't let 'em get to you, you know."

Meg twisted another dial. "Nobody's getting to me."

"It happens all the time. Some guy dumps all over you, treats you like trash, you feel like trash, pretty soon you start thinking you are trash... There's only one thing to do," she said decisively. "You've got to perk yourself up, give yourself a treat, do something fun, you know?"

"Oh, Dancer, for heaven's sake—"

"I know just the thing. It always picks me up.'' She swung down from the desk, pushed aside Joe's papers, pens and earphones, and before Meg knew what she was doing, Dancer was unloading the contents of her gargantuan purse all over the desk.

"Fix yourself up," she said. "Hair, nails, makeup. Fuss over yourself, give yourself a little attention. It'll make you feel like a million bucks, I promise." And she grinned. "Won't hurt your sex life any, either."

"Dancer, will you cut it out?" Meg tried to twist away as Dancer grabbed for the pins that bound back her hair. "The last thing in the world I need is—"

"Wow, you have pretty hair. I always thought you did, but who can tell? Nobody ever sees it."

"Come on, I'm not in the mood for this."

"You know," Dancer confided, "I always thought I'd make a good beautician. Even started to go to beauty college once. But—" she shrugged, tugging open Meg's chignon " —in a place like this, there's not much call for a beauty parlor, you know what I mean?"

Meg grabbed at her hair. "You're making a mess! Stop it."

"I am not. You're going to love it. Say, you don't have anything pretty to wear in that suitcase, do you? We could really knock the guys' eyes out."

Meg let her head fall forward in resignation as Dancer began to pull the tangles out of her hair with a wide-toothed comb. "No, I don't have anything pretty to wear. I don't want to knock anybody's eyes out."

"Well, that's okay. When I'm done you're going to look good enough to eat no matter what you're wearing."

Dancer made a few fluffing motions with the comb around the ends of Meg's hair and stepped back, admiring her handiwork.

Meg looked at her patiently. "All right? Are you finished? Can I put it back the way it was now?"

"No, you can't! It looks great."

"Come on, Dancer, I don't have time for this. I don't want anybody to see me with my hair falling down all over my face."

"So who's going to see you? The place is deserted." She scrambled around on the desk among the contents of her purse. "Wait—just a little eye shadow, and here's the perfect lipstick!"

"This is a place of business, not a pajama party."

"Don't talk. Hold your mouth still."

Meg had no choice as Dancer began to outline her lips with a lip pencil. And Meg had to admit, despite her mood and despite the silliness of it all, that it was kind of fun. She had never done things like this as a girl. She had never had a friend set her hair as they gossiped and giggled into the night, never painted her toenails bright red for a beach party, never even lingered at a department store cosmetics counter trying one fragrance after another. She had always been too busy, too sensible, too... driven. Just as she still was.

"You know," Dancer said, leaning back to examine her work, "you might be a big-shot executive with a lot of people jumping when you snap your fingers, but I bet you'd enjoy it a lot more if you didn't work so hard at it."

"I'm sure you're right." She held up her hand and twisted away in protest as Dancer tried to make one more swipe with the lip pencil.

"I mean, why does life have to be so hard, anyway?" She put the pencil away and examined the contents of an eye-shadow compact critically. "Things happen. Why not just let them?"

"Don't put that junk on my eyes. I'll look like a Halloween witch.''

Dancer rejected the first compact and opened another. "So," she said, loading a small cosmetic brush, "is Red staying here tonight or what?"

"Of course he is. Where else can he go?"

"No, I mean here."

Meg was so taken aback by the question that she forgot to protest as Dancer leaned forward with the cosmetic brush and she instinctively closed her eyes. Adinorack was by no means big, but it had more than an adequate supply of rooms—and beds—for one lone man. There was no reason for Red to spend an uncomfortable night camped out on a concrete floor when he had plenty of time to make other arrangements.

It was simply that, from the first day they had met—literally—they had not slept apart when Red was in town. When he was here, they were together, whether it was on the couch in her office or the bed in her apartment or wherever they happened to be. It had not occurred to her, even now, that he might have other choices.

Which only proved how very, very muddied her thinking was when it came to Red.

"I don't know," Meg replied. "That's his business."

"Well—" Dancer stepped back with a satisfied look to examine her artistic efforts on Meg's eyes "—I'm not one to push a point, but I know where there's a nice warm bed just his size. If you're finished with him, that is."

Meg stared at her, her muscles stiffening, and for a moment she was completely unable to form a reply. And she never knew what she might have said, because at that moment a male voice spoke up behind them.

"Thanks for the offer, Dancer," Red drawled, "but I guess I won't be needing it."

He stood leaning against the doorway, coffee cup in hand, observing them with dry mirth sparking in his eyes. He made his smile perfectly innocent as he pushed away from the doorjamb and strolled inside. "Not that I don't appreciate it," he added, and Meg clamped her lips together as she watched him give Dancer an affectionate pat on the bottom. "But you know how it is." Still smiling, he looked deliberately at Meg and explained, "I don't like to leave my plane."

Five

Red had not intended to seek Meg out or even make his presence known. And the truth was, he had been giving some serious thought to finding another place to wait out the storm—maybe in Maudie's spare room or in the apartment of one of the men who had to work tonight. He had plenty of choices and it was clear to see Meg didn't need—or want—him here.

But then he passed by the open door of the radio room and saw her sitting there, with her hair fluffed out around her shoulders, playing with makeup like a schoolgirl, and the picture entranced him. He rarely saw Meg doing silly things. And he hadn't seen her with her hair down since... since the last time he had taken it down with his own fingers.

Dancer might be a little coarse and had certainly never been known for her sensitivity, but she could be surprisingly tactful when the situation called for it. As Meg sprang to her feet, searching for a napkin with which to scrub the makeup from her face, Dancer began to rake the cosmetics back into her purse.

"Guess I'd better be going," she said. "I'm late for work."

"Yes," Meg agreed tightly, wiping off the lipstick. "You are."

"Be careful crossing the street," Red advised. "It's a bear out there."

Dancer paused by the door to give him a grin, which he couldn't help returning. Then she waved gaily and was gone.

"I never liked you in makeup," Red commented as Meg tossed the lipstick-soiled napkin into the trash.

"And I never cared what you liked." She found a rubber band on the desk and pulled back her hair, fastening it into a loose ponytail at the nape.

"I noticed that."

He took the place on the corner of the desk Dancer had vacated and sipped his coffee. "So," he inquired, eyes twinkling mildly, "are you finished with me?"

When Meg looked up, his face was less than six inches from hers, and his eyes, it seemed, even closer. He hadn't bothered to tuck his shirt in after... Meg jerked her eyes away quickly before the memories caused her to do something foolish, such as blush. That meant nothing. Red often went around for days at a time without tucking in his shirt or even buttoning it over the thermal knit undershirt. Meg used to find that sexy.

She still did.

She said abruptly, "What do you want?"

"Gilly said you were running this place by yourself."

"I should have been more specific when I told him to send somebody back."

"It's not like you to be so careless. You must've had something else on your mind."

Meg's teeth ached with the effort of biting back words. She was not going to be drawn into this. She was not.

She began to straighten the papers Dancer had disarranged. When she caught the edge of one that Red was sitting on, he refused to move, and when she gave it a mighty jerk, it tore in half.

"Temper, temper," he admonished. He stood up, retrieved the other half of the paper and handed it to her. "I brought back some blankets," he went on, "some canned stew and a case of beer. If you want anything else, you're going to have to get it yourself."

Meg sucked in her breath through her teeth and when she released it found she had nothing to say. Seeing to the supplies was her job. She had forgotten, and Red had stepped in to cover the oversight. She couldn't be angry at him. He had done her a favor. Although she didn't want any favors from him, he had no right to do favors for her, it wasn't his responsibility anymore.

She said,''Good thinking, ace. A case of beer is just what we need to get us through the night."

He shrugged. "Like I said, if you want more, get it yourself."

A gust of wind rattled the metal shutters that protected the windows, and it had hardly died down before another one gathered force and screeched around the corner of the building. Meg suppressed a shudder. She hated the sound of the wind, and it looked as though the storm had arrived.

She glanced worriedly toward the front door. "How is it out there?"

"Just your typical little spring blizzard. Starting to snow."

"I shouldn't have let the guys go. They're going to get stuck over there."

"They know how to watch the weather. They'll be back."

Red went over to the window and turned the crank that lifted the outdoor shutter. He was looking at the hangar, a leftover from the military post, which was made of sheet metal and was the flimsiest part of the building.

"That hangar's been here for twenty years," Meg said impatiently. "It's not going to blow away now just because your plane's parked in it."

"The way my luck's going today, it just might."

She decided it might be best not to respond to that and instead sat down at the desk and picked up the radio microphone. She spent a few moments checking in with stations down the line, and the news was not encouraging. The heaviest damage was from the winds, but drifts up to eight feet high were reported. It was beginning to look as though they would be stuck here a lot longer than overnight.

When Meg signed off she sat there for a moment, sipping coffee, trying to remember if there was anything she had overlooked. Thanks to Carstone, Adinorack was far better equipped to weather a storm, than most other settlements of its size; thanks to Meg's emergency preparedness program everything had been done that could be done. Now there was nothing left to do but wait.

She hated that.

Red said, "That's my coffee."

Meg had not realized he was standing over her until he spoke, and his voice startled her. So did the sight of his thighs leaning against the desk beside her, close enough to caress without even lifting her hand. She set the coffee cup down with a thump. "Go find something to do, will you?"

"I thought I was."

"You're in my way."

"Like I was at Maudie's?"

Meg couldn't believe he had said that. The words hit her like a broadside blow, first flaming hot, then cold, then gripping her with a paralysis of hurt and shock that left her speechless.

She pushed up from the desk and he caught her shoulders, turning her to him. There was no warmth in his eyes, no seduction, just a bitter, calculating gleam. "Come on, baby," he said. "We've got the place  to ourselves, nothing to do. We should be able to find a way to pass the time."

Blind with fury, she struck out at him with all the strength her arm possessed, but he was used to her moves and the blow glanced off his shoulder harmlessly. Meg broke away, her eyes glittering.

"You had to say it, didn't you? You just couldn't let it go!"

"Damn right I couldn't," he returned. His voice was tight with anger and contempt. "I guess that makes me human. But you wouldn't know about that, would you?"

Red didn't know how it had happened; he never did. But suddenly it was there, rage flaming between them like a brushfire, a spontaneous combustion of frustration and hurt, hateful words, low blows, each of them grabbing for any weapon in their considerable arsenal with which to wound the other. He hadn't come in here to start a fight, but he must have known he wouldn't leave until he had done so. And he wasn't sorry. Damn it, he never was.

She forced a harsh laugh. "So that's it! You're feeling used, abused, neglected. Next time I'll try to remember to spend as much time stroking your precious male ego as I do your—"

"You've got a filthy mouth on you, lady."

"It comes naturally after living with a sewer rat for two years."

"Go for the jugular, Meg," he taunted. "God knows you know where it is. You've had enough practice."

Meg looked at him for a moment, her fists clenched and her chest heaving, and it took all the effort at her command to keep her voice even. "Oh, I know where it is, all right. I'm just not sure it's worth my time."

She started to push past him but he grabbed her arm. "What's the matter, Meg? Losing your edge?"

She jerked away. "The only thing I'm losing is you, and it's long overdue.''

"You could have fooled me about that an hour ago," he jeered. "I never saw a woman less eager to lose a man. Hell, if I could find more women who wanted to get rid of me that badly I'd be—"

"You just can't take it, can you? You just can't deal with the fact that a woman can be just as nonchalant about sex as a man can. That's what this is all about! What an enlightening experience this must be for you! It's different when it's you who's the one forgotten about the minute you pull your pants up, isn't it? Not much fun when you're the one who's tossed aside like yesterday's newspaper!''

He grabbed her shoulders when she tried to push by him again, whirling her around, gripping her hard. He could feel fury pulsing in his head.''What the hell are you talking about? I never treated you like that!"

"You did it every time you left me to go up in your damn airplane!" she cried.

Red had no answer for that. He hadn't expected it, it caught him off guard, and he had no answer. And that only made him angrier.

She was right. Everything she said was right and that infuriated him. Her eyes were glittering and her face  was flushed and her taut muscles were straining beneath his hands and he wanted to shake her, he wanted to kiss her... He wanted to kiss her until she melted like wax in his arms. He wanted to caress her the way only he knew how to do, to lower her to the floor and remind her how different it once had been, to love as only they knew how to love. He wanted it so badly that his jaw ached and his chest burned  and he hated himself for it.

He released her arms abruptly and turned away. "God," he said on a breath, "we're sick. Both of us."

Meg had to lean against the desk to support her trembling legs. She felt drained, seared, every nerve raw and every muscle throbbing. Her own hateful words and his echoed in her head, and the memory of his face when he looked as though he didn't know whether he wanted to hit her or kiss her and she, in turn, did not know which she preferred... We're destroying each other, she thought distinctly. We're tearing each other apart piece by piece like jackals at a feast and we can't keep on doing this. But she did not know how to end it.

He walked to the window, leaned his head against the frame and looked out, despite the fact that there was nothing to see. The silence was long and heavy, still heated with the residue of emotion that filled the room. Meg cupped her fist against her lips, trying to quiet her breathing, still her quivering muscles.

At last Red said, without turning around, "We used to be so much better than this."

"Yes." And that one word of quiet agreement seemed to encompass all the sorrow, all the loss, all the bleakness of what was never meant to be. It hurt, deep inside, like a knife twisting into her vital organs. She said softly, without meaning to speak aloud at all, "What happened to us, Red?"

He made a soft, grunting sound, almost like an attempt at a laugh. "Isn't that a million-dollar question? We married in the heat of passion—or maybe just in heat. I couldn't stand your nagging. You couldn't stand... hell, almost everything about me. I was never there for you. You wanted to tie me down. I kept trying to change you, you kept trying to change me... What went wrong? It'd be easier to say what went right."

"I never wanted to change you," she replied, subdued.

He turned on her incredulously. "The hell you didn't! Nothing I ever did was good enough for you. Not that any man would have a better chance than I did, with Daddy as the standard—" At the expression on her face, he interrupted himself, raising his hands in self-defense. "No, I didn't say that. Forget I said that. I'm not going to start it again."

"Damn you, Red, you just can't let up, can you?" She drew in an angry breath, caught herself and pressed her fingers hard against her temples. "You make me crazy." She forced her voice to remain calm, deliberate. "We're getting a divorce. That's supposed to fix everything, but we can't even have a simple conversation about why we're getting a divorce without going for each other's throats again. Damn it, Red, how long are we going to keep doing this to each other? When is this going to be over?"

His expression was sad, and bitter. "It's never going to be over,'' he told her simply. "We're welded together, like—" he smiled a little ruefully "—a bad traffic accident. And if you think a piece of paper is going to fix that, you are crazy.''

Meg closed her eyes briefly, trying to hold back her temper. "It's not all my fault, you know," she said. "I know you like to think it is, but you walked out on me. Remember that."

"So what was I supposed to do? Wait until one of us got hold of a deadly weapon? Damn it, Meg, it was impossible with you. You know that!''

"It was impossible with you, but I didn't walk out!''

"Just cut it out, okay? Just stop it. We both know it wasn't my leaving that bothered you—it was the fact that you couldn't stop me! That's the only thing that really got to you, isn't it? One husband more or less, what's the difference? But let somebody get out from under your thumb, do something you can't control, that's when you sit up and take notice!"

She wanted to shout at him that it wasn't true, to deny it at the top of her lungs, to fling back accusations that were just as hurtful, just as sharp, but she couldn't. And he knew she couldn't.

She clenched her fists, trying to bring her anger under control. "You enjoy this, don't you? I mean, I really think fighting is some kind of recreational sport with you."

"As opposed to you, of course, who's been a perfect little martyr from the very beginning."

"There you go again! Always jabbing at me, a push here, a shove there. You're just not satisfied until you draw blood! Why do you do that, Red? Why can't you just leave things alone?"

"Can you?" He shot back. And then he drew a breath, and the struggle on his face was obvious as he bit back more hasty words. He lifted his hat long enough to run his fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustration, then he turned back to her.

"Do you want to know why I do it?" he demanded. "I'll tell you, Meg. Because you're like this frozen tundra you hate so much. There's something good locked under all those layers of ice, something worth having maybe, but a man has to work like hell to get at it." He took a step toward her, his face taut with a dozen conflicting emotions. "There's a woman underneath the ice, but she's buried so deep sometimes I wonder if it's worth all the work."

His voice gentled slightly and so did his eyes as he looked at her. "There are only two times I ever get to see that woman, Meg." He lifted his hand, pulling her ponytail over her shoulder, caressing it. "When we're making love and when we're fighting. And then I think, yeah, it's all worth it, just for that moment. ..." He let his hand drop, and weariness crept into his eyes. "But in the end, it's never enough. Because just when I think I've finally found you, just when I think there's a chance I could really hold you, I dig a little deeper, and there's nothing but another layer of ice."

No, she wanted to cry. No, that's not true. You don't understand....

She almost said it out loud, and there was a moment—one of those rare and desperate moments when they looked into each other's eyes and almost touched the truth, needing, wanting, hoping even now, when hope was gone—it might have made a difference. But she couldn't. Because that was the problem. He had never understood, and she had never been brave enough to open herself up to him so that he could understand. She had wanted so much from him, counted on so much from him, expected him to be perfect. . . and in the end he hadn't understood. He had let her down, just as she had let him down, and it was too late now.

She pressed her lips together. He was so close. Strong arms, broad chest, warmth and quiet strength, and even then if he had reached for her, if he had drawn her close and held her, everything might have been different. Why was it that she still wanted to turn to Red for comfort even when it was he who hurt her?

The wind howled around the building, a bleak, secretly terrifying sound. Meg hugged her elbows against a sudden chill, even though the temperature in the building remained as efficiently constant as she had designed it to be.

She couldn't quite meet his eyes and her voice was a little thick as she said, "Listen, I'm sorry about... before." She made a weak, absent gesture, and she did not have to explain further. "I didn't do it to punish you."

"Yeah." His voice was heavy and he sighed. "I guess I knew that."

Then he cupped his hand around her neck in a brief, familiar gesture of affection and forced a lightness into his tone. "Well, at least this is a new one for us, slugger. We never fought about sex before."

She managed a weak smile. "That's what I like about you, Red. Always an adventure."

The pressure of his hand on her neck gentled fractionally, and so did the expression in his eyes as she looked up at him. There was longing there, and tenderness, memories that flitted like clouds across the sky on a blustery day. She felt every one of them.

She wanted him to kiss her. One kiss, and nothing more. It would be enough to live on for a lifetime. But it had to come from him this time, and he would not make the move. She didn't blame him.

After a moment he smiled in that wry, regretful way of his and said huskily, "Hell, baby, we never had a chance."

His fingers caressed her neck one last time, like a goodbye, and he turned away.

The wind was almost a metaphor for the awful, sweeping bleakness that went through Meg as it howled against the building again. Suddenly it gusted and slammed with the force of an explosion, filling the room with icy air, and Meg knew that was not her imagination.

She looked quickly to Red, who turned in alarm toward the common room. And then a hoarse voice shouted, "Miz Worthington! Red! God, somebody come quick!"

Six

They both rushed for the door, but Red was closer and his legs were longer, and by the time Meg stumbled into the common room Red was already struggling to close the front door against the gale-force winds and the blur of snow that was pouring through. Lewis was slumped against the wall, frosted with snow even to his eyelashes, his teeth chattering between blue-tinged lips.

"I was crossing the street," he choked out. "Saw it. Water tower... blew right down... the Blue Jay... people... tried to go back, help..."

Red had already cranked open the shutter and was peering out into the snow. His exclamation was inarticulate with shock. "Looks like it went right through the roof," he said tightly, spinning around. "Injured?" he demanded of Lewis sharply.

Lewis, shaking convulsively, could only nod.

Almost before Red had finished speaking Meg was running for the control room, where she turned off the switch that supplied power to the Blue Jay. Despite the abundance of cheap electricity supplied to her by Carstone, Maudie insisted upon cooking with propane, but electrocution could be the least of their problems if one of the tanks ruptured. On her way back Meg flung open the door of the storeroom, dragging out flashlights, a coil of rope, the emergency first-aid kit. By the time she returned Red had donned his polar jacket, ski mask and gloves, and was stuffing blankets and another first-aid kit into his emptied duffel bag. Lewis pushed himself weakly away from the wall to help.

"You stay here," Meg commanded sharply, tossing him a blanket from the pile Red had left in the middle of the floor. "Get out of your wet things and check for frostbite. Then get on the radio and see if you can get us some help.''

She pulled on her coat and stocking cap, buttoning the hood up over her mouth, then hurried to help Red with the supplies.

"I'll take the point, babe," he said as she helped him to slip the strap of the duffel bag over his head and across his shoulder, securing it against the wind. "You ready?"

She nodded as she pulled on her gloves and handed him a flashlight. Without another word he opened the door and they plunged into the storm.

Almost immediately Red, who was only a few steps in front of her, became little more than a shadow, lost in the blur of driven snow. Her feet felt the cold first, and graduated in a matter of seconds from icy pain to numbness. Then it was her lungs the first time she tried to take a breath through her nostrils. She buried her face deeper inside the fur-lined hood and breathed shallowly through her mouth. The wind was steady and painful, but it was the gusts—like the one that had overturned the water tower—that were dangerous. The first time Meg met one her feet went out from under her and she almost lost her grip on the lifeline. From that moment on she forgot about following Red's shadow and concentrated on holding on, pulling herself along. And she thought about the men and women trapped in the accident. If any of them had been caught outside, there was no chance. They would succumb to exposure before she and Red could even reach them.

She wanted to close her eyes against the sting of the wind but didn't dare for fear her eyelids would freeze shut. Nonetheless, her vision was so obstructed by the wind and the snow that she didn't even know Red had stopped until she bumped into him.

He was struggling to shift a piece of metal that had blocked the door. Meg edged around him to lend her weight to the effort. For endless moments they battled the wind and the snow, lungs bursting, muscles burning, until finally were able to move the blockage enough to form a narrow opening. Red ducked through and forced open the door. Meg followed on his heels.

The first thing she noticed was the overwhelming physical relief at the absence of the wind. And almost at the same instant was the shock of what she saw. The only light was dim and it came from the windows and from a gaping hole in the roof through which wind and snow poured, rapidly dropping the temperature inside to match that of outside. The room was foggy with smoke and she could see the lick of flames from a small fire in the kitchen area. Tables, chairs and stools had been overturned, girders hung drunkenly from the ceiling. Red's flashlight beam picked up shadows moving dazedly through the fog, but more forms were on the floor, trapped beneath tables and pieces of collapsed wall. When Meg's ears were able to filter out the roar of the wind she could hear the murmur of stunned voices and low moans of pain.

And then it hit her. Dancer, Joe, Gilly, Maudie, Shark... They were all here, everyone she knew was here, and any one of them, or all of them, might be lying somewhere in the dark and smoke, bleeding to death or... And then she thought of Red. A few moments one way or the other and he would have been here— "Hey!" somebody shouted. It sounded like Gilly. "Give me a hand!"

Red pulled off his ski mask and shrugged out of the duffel bag, and Meg, galvanized out of the paralysis of dread and horror that had seized her, reached for the bag. "I'll get the first-aid kit," she said. "Go on!"

She dropped to her knees as Red's flashlight beam picked its way across the cluttered room, and she began to drag out the contents of the duffel bag. It wasn't enough. It wasn't nearly enough for all these people. Coats, she thought suddenly. None of them would have been wearing their coats and the temperature was already so low her breath frosted on the air.

She got to her feet, turning toward the vestibule where the coats were stored, shouting, "Red! You okay?"

"It's Joe!" he called back. "He's trapped under the bar. Hey! Anybody who's on his feet, we need some help over here!"

And somebody else called, "Man, we've got a fire in the kitchen!"

And somebody else, "Please help me! I can't move my legs!"

For a moment the wave of paralysis hit her again, horror and helplessness and an awful, intense urge to just cover her head with her arms and squeeze her eyes closed and make it all go away. But the feeling lasted only an instant. Meg's ordered, precise mind took over as it was trained to do in times of crisis, arranging priorities, reviewing disaster procedures, making her feet move even though she couldn't feel them touch the floor. Evaluate the injured. Contain the damage. Provide shelter and warmth. Get medical aid.

And when she tripped over something, her heart lodged in her throat and she could barely choke back a scream, because she knew it was a body.

She sank to her knees, her wavering flashlight beam traveling over the slim, familiar form. No... God, please no...

Rubble was scattered across the girl's shoulders, and her blond hair was matted with blood. Holding her breath, Meg carefully turned her over.

"Dancer," she whispered brokenly.

"Damn fool girl." Maudie stood over her, and when Meg looked up, she noticed the glisten of tears in the cracks of the big woman's face. "Never did have sense enough to get herself in out of the rain. Damn fool..."

And then Dancer moaned.

Meg's breath dried up in her throat as she quickly bent over the girl. "Dancer!" She stroked her cheek, then rugged off a glove with her teeth, searching for the pulse in Dancer's neck. It was strong. "Dancer, you're okay. Open your eyes, look at me..."

Dancer's eyes fluttered open. Her gaze seemed weak and unfocused, and it was a long time before she murmured, "Oh, hi, Meg." She rolled her eyes around, wincing as she did so. "What a mess, huh?"

Maudie dropped to her knees and drew Dancer's head into her lap while Meg scrambled for blankets and the first-aid kit. She managed to wipe away the worst of the blood and get a gauze bandage on Dancer's head wound, but someone else was calling for help nearby. She squeezed Dancer's hand. "I've got to go. I'm sorry..."

"Go. I'm fine." Dancer winced as she touched her head. "Just got a killer hangover."

Meg glanced at Maudie. "Stay with her. Keep her still."

Maudie nodded, and Meg knew that her friend couldn't have been in better hands.

Reese, the day-shift control engineer, was trapped beneath the overturned jukebox. He was barely conscious, moaning weakly, and Meg did not have to examine him very closely to know that he had several broken ribs at least. On a foolish impulse born of panic she tried to lift the jukebox, but it wouldn't budge. When she started to move away, Reese grabbed weakly for her leg. "Can't... breathe," he whispered hoarsely.

"I know, hold on," she replied, and thought distractedly that she couldn't remember his last name. She had worked with these men for two years, she signed their paychecks every week, she should be able to remember their full names. "I'll be back, I've just got to find some way to get you out. Just.. .hold on."

She searched frantically through the rubble until she found a sturdy board—one of the legs of the pool table, she thought—and positioned it underneath the comer of the jukebox, using the leverage to pry the corner of the jukebox up so that she could get a grip on it. Her arms were trembling with the effort, and she had only been able to lift the heavy machine a few inches. "Reese," she gasped. "Can you..."

And then someone was beside her, and the weight was a little easier. "I got it, babe," Red said, grunting a little as he lifted it higher. "See if you can pull him out."

Meg dropped to the floor and caught hold of Reese's shoulders, pulling him as quickly and as gently as she could to safety. Red let the jukebox drop amidst a shower of sparks.

"Whoever started that story about terrified mothers lifting cars off their trapped babies was full of bull,'' he gasped, kneeling beside Reese.''Being scared has got nothing to do with it. How're you doing, bud?"

"Better now," Reese managed, guarding his mid-section carefully as Meg and Red helped him sit up against the wall. His face was white and shiny and contracted with pain.

"Here, this ought to take the edge off." Red produced a small flat bottle from his coat pocket and twisted off the lid. "One of the advantages of being trapped in a bar."

''You don't have to ask me twice," Reese said, and took the bottle from him with a shaking hand.

"It's all we can do for pain now," Red explained to Meg quietly. "You better keep one on hand, too."

She nodded. "How's Joe?"

His face was sober. "His leg's busted up pretty bad. Gilly's trying to splint it. The fire in the kitchen's out.''

"Maudie's okay. Dancer... I think she may have a concussion, but she's conscious."

Red turned to Reese and took the bottle. "Don't be greedy, friend, I've got other patients." And he clapped him gently on the shoulder.' 'Take it easy. You need anything, yell. We've got to get moving."

“Sure, Red. Thanks."

Meg looked at Reese, torn with helplessness and concern. "Red..."

Red got to his feet, and when she hesitated, he extended his hand to help her up. After a moment, she took it.

"Honey," he said quietly, "there must've been thirty-five people in this bar. We've got two first-aid kits and maybe five men on their feet, most of them hurting. We do what we can and we do it fast, because if the temperature gets much lower in here we're going to have exposure to deal with on top of everything else. Okay?"

She knew he was right; of course he was right. It was just that, for the moment, the enormity of it all overwhelmed her and she thought about Dancer and Joe, and Reese who might be bleeding internally or have a punctured lung, and she remembered there wasn't a doctor in the whole town and the nearest medical center was almost a hundred miles away, and she didn't see how they could deal with this, she just didn't see how they could...

"Hey," Red said sharply, gripping her arm.

"I sent them here," she said in a small, trembling voice. "Even Dancer, she didn't want to go but I—"

Red's grip tightened painfully and she could see his jaw harden. "Stop it. It was my idea, remember?" he said quietly. "So just stop it. Can you do this? Are you going to be okay?"

She sucked in a breath, shook away the fog and with an enormous effort managed to pull herself together.

She looked at him. "Yeah," she said. "Okay." And, because he still looked worried, she forced a smile. "Hell of a party."

He smiled back. "That's my little soldier."

He squeezed her arm briefly, then he was gone.

Meg started moving then, and she did not know how long it was before she stopped. She distributed coats and blankets, she helped the injured away from unstable areas, she broke boards into splints and bandaged what she could and measured out carefully rationed portions of brandy to the worst cases. She knew that, at some point, she would have to stop and tell herself how much worse it could have been, how lucky they all were. But with blood staining her coat and strong men, who only hours ago had been laughing at her and making her furious, now weeping with pain and white-faced with shock, she did not feel very lucky. And neither, she thought, did they.

She stopped counting the injured. She stopped worrying about head wounds and internal injuries. Once she pulled a six-inch piece of splintered wood out of a man's arm without even flinching, and afterward she just stood there, shaking and trying not to be sick. But no one had been killed, and they easily might have. No broken necks or spines, no lacerated arteries. It could have been so much worse.

At last she looked around and there was no one left to help. They were cold, they were in pain, they were all dazed, but the worst of the injuries had been bandaged, broken bones immobilized, and they were, for the moment, safe.

Red stood beside her. "How cold do you think it is in here?"

Meg cupped her hands around her mouth, breathing on them to warm them, shivering inside her down-filled coat. "Five below?"

"Not yet, but close." He looked up at the ceiling, where no daylight penetrated at all now, just cold wind and blowing snow. "If we could shore up that roof, patch the windows, what do you think the chances are of getting the heat back on?"

She shook her head. "Can't risk it. Too many broken wires. I could trace them down, patch them back together, but by then—"

"It'd be too late." He sighed. "Looks like we've got no choice."

Meg knew very well the dangers entailed hi trying to get these injured people across the street in this blizzard. She and Red, in perfect health, had barely made it. She said, "How many can walk?"

"Maybe half. Of those—" he shrugged "—maybe two or three can use the guide rope."

Meg thought rapidly for a moment. "Okay," she said. "You and Gilly and whoever else can start building a stretcher. We can swing it between two ropes like a hammock, and set up a pulley winch on the other side. I'll go out and start stringing the other line."

"Wrong." He caught her arm as she started to move away. "I'll go out and string the line."

She pulled away impatiently. "You don't even know what I have in mind."

"Darlin'," he returned with deliberate calm, "I may be just a poor boy from Arkansas, but I think I can manage the mechanics of a pulley without busting a brain cell. Besides, I outweigh you by sixty pounds even with your 20-carat engineering degree, so I go. That wind would knock you off your feet before you cleared the door."

"Red, use your brain! There's a—" She started to say there was a blizzard out there and caught herself just as she realized how stupid it sounded. There was a blizzard out there and Red could get hurt; she didn't want him out there and that was the bottom line. Only she couldn't think of any way to stop him.

So she said abruptly, "We both go."

"Megan-"

"No arguments, Red." She pulled on her gloves. "We travel in teams. It's the only safe way to negotiate a storm like this. I'd say the same to any one of my men, so just shut up and let's go."

"Meg." He caught her shoulders and turned her around.

Her mouth opened for an angry protest, but the words died unspoken because she was struck just then by how beautiful his face was, and how precious to her, and how much she had depended on seeing that face again. The familiar shape of his mouth, the tight flesh around his cheekbones etched with weathered lines, unruly brown curls shadowing his forehead, hazel eyes tender and understanding—a face that was as much a part of her as her own reflection. Her husband, the only man she had ever loved.

He  brought his hands up to cup her face, his thumbs gently caressing her cheekbones. He looked at her as though there was nothing more important in the world than looking at her, thoroughly and with leisure, savoring every detail—just as she looked at him. And then he kissed her.

It was a gentle kiss, a sweet profusion of warmth and tenderness, a simple melting together, one into the other, an exchange of breaths and a sharing of warmth, a blending. It was slow and sure and lovely, like the sun pushing its way up into a predawn sky, and Meg sank into it as gratefully, as inevitably, as she would have turned her face toward that sun. She slid her gloved hands around his neck, and she knew, if she had never known before, why she had loved him, why she had married him. Because of moments like this, when they were perfect together. And no one in the history of the world had ever loved as perfectly as she and Red, when they did it right.

The kiss ended with a slow reluctance, and it seemed not to end at all. They stayed together, holding each other yet still inches apart, and Red brought his forehead down to rest against hers. They looked into each other's eyes. He smiled at her. "That," he said softly, "was for teamwork."

Then they moved apart and prepared to face the storm once again.

Seven

With Lewis's help, they had the pulley and winch in place in less than half an hour. The hardest part had been the struggle across the street against the deadly wind and cold. When Red had stumbled, Meg helped him to his feet. When she fell, he did the same for her. By the time they reached the shelter of the Carstone building, Meg was sobbing with pain and exertion, but that was all right because Red was, too—though neither of them had the energy or the breath for real tears.

Lewis reported he hadn't been able to raise anyone on the radio.

For the return trip they fastened themselves to the lifelines with hastily constructed harnesses and safety clips, much like those used for mountain climbing, and it was that same rigging they would use to transport the mobile injured. The snow had begun to drift up to their knees in some places, so they each donned a pair of snowshoes before they left and carried extras on their backs. Meg cursed the fact that there wasn't a single polar suit to be found in the complex, but at this time of the year they did very little outdoor work and no one had expected to need one.

They left Lewis behind to work the winch and brought the first victim to safety a little more than an hour after they had left. Only five of them were capable of holding their own in the storm, and Maudie, Meg, Lewis, Red and Gilly worked in ten-minute shifts, alternating turns at the winch and assisting the injured across. The tough restrictions on exposure were necessary, not only because the temperatures were deadly, but because the snow and wind worked quickly to impair judgment and slow down thought processes. Every minute in that whited-out world seemed like an hour; time moved with glacierlike sluggishness, as though it was as frozen as everything else. After only a few moments outside, disorientation set in and then confusion, and more than once Meg found herself unable to remember why she was there, or what she was supposed to be doing. She thought it would be a horrible way to die, freezing. It would take forever.

And she did worry about dying, not for herself but for the others. The worst moments were when the stretcher—or sled, as it might be more appropriately called—was brought across. Even though it had been her design, Meg held her breath every time it was hoisted into the air and fastened onto the lifelines. It looked so fragile, swaying and snapping in the wind, a half-thought-out idea that could never work. But it did. The ropes didn't break, the wind didn't pull it apart, the victim didn't overbalance. One by one, they were all brought to safety.

It was after five o'clock when the last person was transported, and it was pitch-black outside. The snow on the floor was almost as deep as it was outside, despite Maudie's diligent efforts to keep it swept away and despite the fact that the door was opened for only a few seconds at a time. The wind continued to howl, and Meg began to think she would never be warm again.

Those who had worked as rescuers were as exhausted as the injured; it showed in their faces and in their stiff, jerky movements as they pulled off their outer garments and checked each other for frostbite. Meg was no exception, but the adrenaline was still pumping, and it seemed the real work had hardly begun.

She turned up the heat as high as she dared and set Maudie to work warming water and drying blankets on the small stove in the kitchenette off the break room. Lewis she assigned to the radio. Meg rerouted the heat to the front of the building, including the corridor and front offices, which would be used as an infirmary, and sealed off the rest of the building. Although she had no concern about a power failure, she simply did not have enough men on their feet to keep the system operating at maximum efficiency for the whole town, and conservation was a necessary evil.

Many of the injured could walk and just needed a place to rest for a while, but Red and Gilly carried the others, making them as comfortable as possible on sofas and chairs and blankets spread on the floor. Meg went behind them, checking for frostbite and doing what she could to clean the wounds.

"We're going to need more antiseptic," she muttered, not knowing if anybody was listening. "And something we can tear up for bandages."

Red said, "You make quite a little nurse. I never knew you had it in you."

Meg glanced at nun. She was aware not for the first tune during that endless afternoon of how comforting it was to look up and find him there. His face was wind-chapped and lined with exhaustion; there was a scratch on his forehead and another on the back of his hand where he had bumped into something or something had struck him, and Meg knew he was no more indestructible than she was. But just looking at him, just feeling his presence in the middle of whatever crisis she had found herself in throughout the day, made her feel stronger.

She turned to wring out a stained cloth in a pan of warm water.''Ever notice how it's always the women who get stuck with the dirty work?"

"Have you checked the storeroom for antiseptic?" Red asked.

"There's a whole case of rubbing alcohol—I saw it last week. And some hydrogen peroxide. See what you can find," Meg said.

''Yes, sir.'' Red stood up.

Gilly said, "Man, we're going to need some painkillers. The cold helped us some, but in a while those people with broken bones are going to start feeling it and then they're going to go into shock if they don't get some help."

Meg looked at him, but noticed in surprise that Gilly was addressing Red, not her. In fact, the two of them seemed to be having a private conversation.

Red lowered his voice as he replied, "I've got some morphine in my emergency kit. Not much—not nearly enough—but—"

"Get it," Gilly answered grimly. "It's Joe I'm worried about. He's the worst."

Meg got to her feet, twisting her head around to look from Gilly to Red. "What do you mean, morphine? What are you doing with— "

"Survival supplies," Red told her with an infuriating half grin. "You know, for when I crash in the mountains and have to amputate my own leg?"

Meg jerked her head back to Gilly. She hated it when he talked like that. "You can't just go around dispensing morphine—"

"Gilly was a medic in the marines," Red interrupted mildly. "Didn't you know? So I suggest you turn this part of the show over to him."

Meg stared at Gilly. She hadn't known. She should have known that about one of her own men, and having him here now could make all the difference. She swallowed back her relief and said, "Well, that's good. You can be a big help. But still—"

Red's hand fell heavily on her shoulder. "Let the man do his job, Meg."

His voice was mild, but she saw the warning in his eyes. She held his gaze for just a moment, then dropped her eyes awkwardly. She looked at Gilly. "There's plenty of aspirin," she said. "And I've got some stuff for cramps in my purse.''

"Muscle relaxants, that's good," he agreed. "Anything we can get."

Meg raised her voice and addressed the room at large. "All right, who has dope?"

Coughs and murmurs ceased abruptly and over a dozen pairs of eyes turned to stare at her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Red and Gilly share a startled, disbelieving grin.

"Come on, gentlemen," she said impatiently. "You're not going to tell me in a group like this nobody's carrying anything. We need it, so turn out your pockets. Let's see what we've got."

Ten minutes later Gilly had collected half a bottle of diazepam, some penicillin, a few other prescription drugs with varying degrees of usefulness, as well as an assortment of other materials that had never been prescribed by a physician. That, along with the precious hoard of morphine Red brought from his plane, should ease the worst of the suffering until help arrived.

"Good call, chief," Gilly told her absently, and Meg realized with a surprising flush of pleasure that that was the first time he had ever said anything nice to her.

Turning the responsibility for the injured over to Gilly took some of the burden off Meg, but it wasn't nearly enough. The common room, the corridor and the offices were wall-to-wall with the exhausted and the injured; those who were lucky enough to have only broken arms or ribs moved around carefully, doing what they could to help, but the air was thick with muffled moans and the barely disguised murmur of panic. The wind continued to roar and the snow continued to fall. What if help didn't arrive in time? What if one or all of them took a turn for the worse? It was not unheard of for villages like Adinorack to be cut off for weeks. How could they survive that long without medical aid?

Meg knelt beside Dancer, offering her a cup of tea. "Maudie made it," she said, forcing a tired smile. "God knows what's in it."

Dancer was propped up in a sitting position against the wall, the white bandage across her forehead making her pale face seem even paler. "I feel stupid sitting here," she said, accepting the cup. "Like I should get up and help. But every time I stand up my head goes all cuckoo on me."

"You've got a concussion," Meg said. "You're supposed to rest. There's nothing you can do, anyway."

"Yeah."

Dancer looked around bleakly until her eyes rested on Joe, who was stretched out on the sofa across from her. He was shivering under several layers of blankets, and his face was white and drawn with pain despite the medication Gilly had given him. He tossed his head and murmured in a semiconscious doze.

Dancer's voice was subdued as she said, "He's pretty bad off, isn't he?"

Meg could only nod.

"I always liked him. Kind of weird, you know, like all you guys are. But sweet."

Meg shivered convulsively as another gust of wind shook the building. "God, I hate this place!"

Dancer sipped her tea. "Well, it's not high on my list of resort spots right now, either."

Meg smiled at her, curiously. "How did you end up here anyway, Dancer?"

"Some guy, what else?" She shrugged. "He was going to make my dreams come true. Instead he dumped me in the middle of nowhere without bus fare. Story of my life."

"Haven't you ever thought about going home?" And then it occurred to Meg that she did not even know where home was for Dancer. The woman had been her only friend for two years, and Meg did not even know where she was from. But the past was not something anyone seemed to talk about much here; the subject just never came up.

Dancer answered, "I guess it crossed my mind once or twice. But you know, it's funny. After you've been here awhile things start to change. Not that this place seems less bad—it doesn't—but it's just that every place else seems, well, less real. Do you know what I mean?"

Meg's eyes moved around the room until she found Red, who was sharing a bottle of brandy with a man whose arm was in a sling. She murmured softly, "Yes. I think I do." Then she smiled at Dancer and patted her knee. "You just sit here and rest, but try not to fall asleep. Let me know if you need anything."

Dancer grinned, looking more like her old self. "Girl, what I need you can't give me."

Meg chuckled as she got to her feet.

She had gone perhaps two steps when a cramp seized her left calf muscle. It was so severe she actually cried out loud. She caught herself against the wall to keep from falling, and Dancer said in alarm, "Hey, Meg, what—"

"It's okay!" she assured her, but her voice was strangled and breathless as she bent to try to massage the knotting muscle. "Just a charley horse. So stupid-"

"Sure is." Red's hands closed around her waist as he helped her out of the flow of traffic to sit on the floor. "Always keep your legs warm while exercising. Any good ballerina can tell you that." He sat across from her, elevating her calf on his upraised knee as his strong, deft fingers dug into the cramped muscle.

She gasped with pain and tried to push his hands away. "Stop it! That hurts!"

"Good. It's supposed to."

She didn't answer because her lips and her eyes were pressed tightly together to suppress tears. She felt foolish and embarrassed for having been disabled by such a minor incident, but that didn't make it hurt any less.

Red unzipped her boot and pulled it off, working his fingers beneath her jeans, against the bare flesh of her calf. "See there, serves you right. Where's your thermal underwear?"

"In the.. .trash," she gasped, making another futile grab at his hand. "Where's yours?"

His eyes twinkled. "I'm wearing it. Didn't you notice?"

Another time she would have been embarrassed, because the truth was she had not noticed, and angry with him for being crude enough to remind her. But just then his fingers found the most painful knot and it was all she could do to keep from crying out.

"Do you want me to get you a hot towel?" he asked after a moment.

"No," she answered, releasing a shaky breath. "It's a little better."

Red lowered his knee so that her leg rested across his thigh, continuing to knead her calf firmly. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, going out so unprepared. The General would be disappointed."

Meg closed her eyes in sheer relief as the cramp at last subsided, leaving behind a dull ache that Red's expert fingers did a great deal to soothe. "The General," she said, "would be disappointed in a lot of things."

"How are your toes?" He pulled off her sock. "Frostbitten?" He cupped her foot in his hands on his lap, massaging her toes. "Damn, you always did have the coldest feet of any woman I've ever known."

On a mischievous impulse Meg could not quite explain, she moved her foot just a fraction to press firmly against his crotch. And though Red smothered a yelp and jerked away as her icy foot met his most sensitive parts, there was a sparkle of appreciation in his eyes for her unexpected playfulness as he snatched up her foot again. "I'll get you for that."

"You already did," she reminded him. "I've probably got bruises on my leg."

"Just trying to help."

He lifted her other foot onto his lap and removed her boot and sock, warming both her feet in his hands. Meg should have protested, but she couldn't; it felt too wonderful to be catered to, even for a moment. She leaned her weight back on her palms and enjoyed it.

"Your socks are a little damp, slugger," he said. "You should've taken care of that before now."

"Sorry. I've been busy."

He took her right foot in his hand, massaging the ball with his thumbs, stroking her toes, rotating the ankle with familiar expertise. Nothing had ever felt quite so wonderful as one of Red's foot massages, and he knew how much she loved it. The pleasure spread up from his touch in one low, long wave, and Meg could barely repress a moan of delight.

"I feel guilty," she murmured after a time, "getting all this attention when there are others who need it more."

He switched to the other foot. "Baby, you couldn't pay me to massage any of these guys' feet.''

She laughed softly, and his eyes smiled back. It was a good moment between them, warm and secure, the way they used to be. The way, it almost seemed, they had always been. Meg leaned back and closed her eyes, thinking how strange it was that good things were so often found in the most unexpected places. And how different everything seemed now than it had this morning.

And how sad it was that it probably wouldn't last.

Then Red said quietly, "Meg, somebody's going to have to go back for supplies before long. What we've got isn't nearly enough."

She stiffened and opened her eyes. "Not you."

The fierce adamancy in her voice did not surprise him, and he simply looked at her patiently. "Who then? Who are you going to send?''

"I don't know. I don't care. Just.. .not you. You've done enough." The stubborn resistance that seized her was childish and unprofessional, but she couldn't help it. He had been lucky so far—they both had—and against all odds. That storm could kill, and she could not go through it again. "You're not going back out there,'' she repeated firmly.

He dropped his eyes. "I guess we can wait awhile. Nobody's going to be very hungry tonight, anyway, and maybe the wind will die down by morning."

She tried to relax. "What's coming in on the radio?"

He rested her feet in his lap, covering them with his hands. Warmth tingled through her, lush and rich. "The frequencies are scrambled by the storm. Lewis picked up Chicago some time ago, but he can't get Brownsville, sixty miles down the road." He smiled at her. "Your hair's a mess. You really ought to do something with yourself."

"You don't look so hot yourself, ace."

Meg wished she could stay like that forever, smiling at him, being comfortable with him, feeling strengthened by his warmth. I'm glad you're here, Red, she thought. I don't know how I would have made it without you.

But somehow she couldn't bring herself to tell him that.

She lowered her eyes and reluctantly withdrew her feet. "I guess I'd better check the control room. With the temperature dropping like this, the last thing we need is to blow a fuse."

"Change your socks," he advised easily, and got to his feet.

She reached for her boots. "Yes, Mother."

"Meg."

He touched her waist lightly as she stood up, and when she turned there was an expression on his face that made her nerves flutter in surprised anticipation. She waited, trying to read what was in his eyes and knowing it wouldn't matter unless he said it, and then he simply shook his head.

“Nothing." He gave her a crooked smile and a pat on the bottom as impersonal as the one he had given Dancer. "Get back to work."

*****************

etched out the canned stew, with generous use of an expander Meg strongly suspected was Maudie stretched out the canned stew, with generous use of an expander that Meg strongly suspected was alcoholic, to feed all those who felt like eating. There was plenty of coffee, and Red produced a carton of chocolate bars—frozen but edible—from his plane. He had always had a weakness for chocolate; Meg should have known he would have had a cache stored away for traveling.

They gathered in the common room, sitting on the floor and the few available raised surfaces, and for a short time the meal was a distraction from the anxiety that, Meg knew, was the biggest threat to morale. Someone had even discovered a portable CD player, and though the heavy metal music grated on Meg's nerves, it seemed to cheer everybody up.

She sat beside Joe on the sofa and tried to get him to eat something. He was too weak and in too much pain. He kept worrying about the radio.

"We've got someone on it all the time," Meg assured him, and forced a smile. "You may be indispensable but not completely irreplaceable. We'll manage."

"What a bummer," he mumbled, and sank back onto the cushions again. "I’m real sorry, Miz Worthington..."

She smoothed his damp hair away from his forehead and tried to tell herself that his skin really wasn't any wanner than hers, at least not much, and they were doing everything for him that they could... and it wasn't enough. He was so young. Why wasn't he home with his family where he belonged? Safe in some nice obscure farmhouse in the Midwest with nothing on his mind but girls and cars. What was he doing here? What were any of them doing here?

She felt Red's eyes on her, even though he was across the room and had done nothing to draw attention to himself. When she turned there was an odd, thoughtful expression on his face, and when he saw her watching him he quickly dropped his gaze.

"You know what I miss most about home?" Red said casually to the man next to him. "Charcoal. The way it smells on the backyard grill on the Fourth of July just before you throw that steak on. It never smells quite the same here.''

"Hell, I'd settle for a good charbroiled hot dog," said his companion. "I damn near set my apartment on fire year before last trying to get a good barbecue going."

"With me, it's swimming pools," put in somebody else. "There's not a decent outdoor pool in this whole state."

"My wife's cooking," Gilly said, looking dubiously at a spoonful of stew. "That's what I miss.'' ,.

Meg stared at him. "You're married?"

He looked a little surprised, not by the question, but by the sound of her voice. Meg realized this was a conversation that had not been meant to include her, the way so many were not meant to.

He  turned back to his stew. "Sure."

"But... where is she? Why...?"

"She wouldn't make it through a winter up here." He shrugged.' 'Triple pay is hard to turn down, and I figure in another year we'll be able to afford that little house in the San Fernando Valley we've got our eyes on."

Somebody joked, "Hey, I know that house. I'm going to buy the one next door."

They went back and forth, talking easily about their plans and their dreams, their homes, their backgrounds, the ones they'd left behind—or in some cases, brought with them. Occasionally, when the thread of the conversation threatened to take a depressing or demoralizing turn, Red would nudge it back on course with some unobtrusive comment, deftly manipulating them to forget their troubles for a while, to remember who they were and why they were here; to make it, somehow, all seem worthwhile.

Meg listened, amazed and subdued, as bits and pieces of the life stories of the men she had worked with for two years began to emerge, and they began to take shape before her very eyes as full-blown, three-dimensional human beings. Shark had been kicked out of West Point. Reese had once worked with NASA. Most had been married, many had girlfriends "back home." Some of them considered this home, but even among those who did not there was a common thread. They had come here for the money, true, but they had stayed for something else. It took a special kind of man to make his way on the frontier, to deal with the isolation and the hardships and sometimes the deprivation; they knew that and took satisfaction from it. They knew what they had signed on for and they stayed because they liked it. They were all misfits, stubborn independent spirits with no intention of ever submitting to authority, but that was exactly the kind of person it took to survive here. People like Red—and like Meg.

Dancer touched Meg's shoulder. "Why don't you go get something to eat? I'll sit with him for a spell."

Meg tried to shake off the disturbing feeling that settled over her as she looked up at Dancer. "Are you sure you're up to it?"

"I can sit here as well as I can over there," Dancer said, taking the bowl of stew from her. "I'll try to get him to eat if he wakes up. Go on."

"Okay, thanks."

Red watched Meg leave the room, and he determined he would not follow her. He had made sure that he chose a place to sit well away from her and had kept the conversation going so that no silences would fall during which he'd feel compelled to go over to her, but all the while he had not been able to keep his eyes off her. You think you know a woman... he thought dimly. Meg Forrest was the only woman in the world he had ever wanted to know, to study, to absorb and memorize inside and out, and he thought, after the past two years, that he knew her better than anyone in the world. Perhaps he did. But she could still surprise him, and watching her with Joe, watching her grow smaller and smaller inside herself as she listened to the other men talk around her... she surprised him.

It was not that he had not known her capable of the kind of tenderness she showed to the injured boy; he knew that side of her, shown so rarely, all too well. Nor was it her capacity for compassion that intrigued him; he had seen her struggle to hide just that emotion far too often. It was her vulnerability that reached out to him, for that was something he found completely unfamiliar. Her face was pale with exhaustion, her eyes circled, her shoulders tired. And as she listened to the good spirited banter that went on around her she looked alone and unsure for the first time that Red could remember. And watching her made him want to find a private corner somewhere, draw her into the protective circle of his arms and legs and just hold her until they both were strong again.

After a moment he got up, crumpled his paper plate into the trash and followed her into the kitchen.

Meg did not glance around; she didn't have to. She always knew when he entered a room, just as he did with her. She was sponging off the counters, tossing out empty cans and generally trying to straighten up the mess Maudie had left.

"Well, well," Red said. "First a nurse, then a housewife. What other talents do you have I don't know about?"

"Can't you do something about that music?" she complained. "It’s giving me a headache."

"It's good for you. Gets the blood pumping, keeps the adrenaline going. Everybody knows that."

"I think we've got enough adrenaline pumping. Let's switch to elevator music and put these people to sleep."

He chuckled.' 'You might have a point.''

She turned to look at him and leaned against the sink with her hands braced behind her. "How do you do it?" she inquired earnestly. "Here we are in the middle of a disaster, people are hurt and bleeding and we don't know where our next meal is coming from, and you've practically got them singing around the camp fire. How do you do that?"

He leaned his hip against the counter, folding his arms. "I don't know. Natural talent, I guess. No big deal."

She shook her head in subdued wonder. "I never knew those guys. I practically lived with them, day in and day out for two years, and I didn't even know anything about them. But you did."

He shrugged, feeling a little uncomfortable for no specific reason. "We've got different styles, that s all."

"No, it's more than that." Her voice sounded tired. "I mean, I took all those management courses, I know the right things to do, but I just don't seem to be able to do them. It's not that I don't want to. I just can't."

"Hey," he told her lightly, trying to coax a smile. "It's hard being a tough broad in a man's world, and you do it better than anybody I know. That was one of the first things I liked about you."

She did smile, though weakly.' 'You're the only man I've ever known who liked me because of what I am, not in spite of it."

He held her gaze as gently and as carefully as be held on to that moment of unguarded truth between them. He said softly, "I still do."

The distance that separated them in the small kitchen was less than four feet. If either one of them had moved they would have been in each other's arms. Red could feel the need stretching between them as distinctly as he could hear the music and the voices from the room outside. And he stiffened himself against it as instinctively as she did. Because this time it would be more than an embrace, and they both knew that. And they were both afraid.

Meg turned to dry her hands on a paper towel. "I'd better relieve Lewis on the radio so he can get some chow."

"Honey, you're never going to raise anybody on that radio." There was a note of frustration in Red's voice. "And even if you do, so what? Medevac can't even get a chopper in the air until the storm clears, much less land it here. What do you expect to do, call in the marines? Daddy's not going to come riding to the rescue this time, believe me.''

She glared at him, but she was too tired to display more than a semblance of the anger such a remark would have customarily evoked. "Daddy," she told him, "is in the army."

"I know that."

She tossed the paper towel in the trash. "Why do you hate him so much, anyway? You've never even met him."

"I don't hate him," Red answered. "I hate what he's done to you. Making you think you've got to be better than everyone around you, refusing to let you give yourself a break, setting up this standard that no one could ever measure up to—not you, and certainly not me."

She looked startled, confused, as though she was searching for something to say but couldn't quite find the words. Red held his breath, feeling as though they were on the verge of a breakthrough he wasn't even sure he wanted to make.

And then the wind blasted against the shuttered window, rattling the saucepans and glasses that were stacked in the sink, and the moment was gone.

"God, I hate that wind," Meg muttered, moving toward the door.

"Of course you do," Red replied, forcing his muscles to relax as he leaned back against the counter. "It's one of the few things in life you can't control."

She gave him a sharp look and pushed past him.

"Hey." He caught her arm and took a chocolate bar from his pocket. "Eat this. It's going to be a long night, and you need the energy."

She glared at him for a moment, but she took the candy. And then she left him.

Eight

Red knelt beside Dancer, who was holding Joe's head in her lap, stroking his hair. "How's he doing?"

"Quieter. Gilly gave him something."

The whole building was quiet. The lights had been dimmed and those who could were sleeping. Maudie sat behind the desk with her feet propped up, her chin sunk into her chest, snoring loudly. Even Gilly had dropped off. Red hadn't seen Meg in hours.

Dancer followed his gaze toward the radio room and smiled.' "That woman's really got you tied up in knots, hasn't she?"

Red looked down at his coffee cup. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You made a big mistake coming back here, you know," Dancer went on easily, stretching a little to rub the small of her back.''Once a woman's got her hooks into you the worst thing you can do is give her a chance to get a better grip."

Red sipped his coffee. "Well, I wouldn't doubt you're right about that."

"'Course I'm right. Whatever happened to you two, anyway?"

He gave an uncomfortable laugh. "That's a dumb question."

"No, it's not. You stuck it out for a year and a half, and the pool around here said two weeks. You must have had something going."

"We had a lot going."

"So?"

Red looked at her. "Tell me something, Dancer. What is it about women that make them marry a man and then try to change him? Why couldn't they just marry somebody that's already the way they want him?"

"I could ask the same thing about men." She shrugged. "Nobody gets to pick who they fall in love with, I guess."

"I guess not." He dropped his gaze again. "I don't know. She had these ideas about me that were all wrong. She wanted me to be a commercial pilot, teach at flight school, something... Hell, if I'd've wanted to do that, I could've stayed in Arkansas. And I got tired of arguing about it, so finally I just left."

"She wanted you to build a nest. Same thing all women want."

Red was surprised. He had never thought of Meg as a nest builder. Automatically he shook his head. "No, it wasn't that. Meg doesn't think like that."

"Of course she does," Dancer said impatiently. "Everybody does. Why else do you think we put up with you men? God knows you're not good for much, but if a woman's going to have a nest, some man's got to build it. That"s just the way it is."

Red shook his head again, half amused, half disturbed. "Well, all I know is she picked the wrong bird. I wasn't about to let her—"

"Clip your wings?" Dancer suggested.

He frowned into his coffee. "Yeah."

Dancer smiled. "I got news for you, sweet thing. She already has."

Red looked at her, steadily and unamused, for a long time. Then he got to his feet. "See you, Dancer."

He went to refill his cup and couldn't help glancing toward the radio room again. Lewis was asleep, and Meg hadn't come out to wake him. She had probably fallen asleep, too. Red shouldn't disturb her.

He picked up his sleeping bag, started to spread it out on the floor, then changed his mind and slipped the carrying strap over his shoulder. He opened the door to the radio room.

She was sitting at the desk, her head resting on her folded arms. Her hair was loose and spread out over her shoulders, hiding her face, glimmering with soft highlights of red and gold in the fluorescent light. But she wasn't asleep. She sat up immediately when he came in, pushing her hair back from her face.

"Brought you something." He offered the coffee cup to her.

"Thanks." Her voice was hoarse with fatigue as she took it.

"And this." He tossed the sleeping bag into the comer. "If you want to get some sack time, I'll watch the radio."

Meg grimaced as she sipped the coffee. "What is this? Tastes like bourbon."

"Good guess. I brought you a little present from Maudie's after lunch. Almost forgot about it until now."

"It's awful."

"I know." He sat on the edge of the desk. "Whatever it takes to get you through the night."

She leaned back in the chair, rubbing the back of her neck. "How's everything out there?"

"Most everybody's asleep. What's the temperature?"

Meg glanced at the gauge. "Fifty-three below."

He grimaced. "Well, there goes my first idea."

"What's that?"

"Taking a little stroll in the moonlight to clear my head."

She smiled in spite of herself. "No moonlight."

He got up and walked toward the window. "Anything on the radio?"

She shook her head. "I raised Little Creek a while ago, but they're in just about as bad shape as we are. Nothing from the weather service."

"Where are the good guys when you need them, hmm?" he murmured. He leaned against the window frame, studying the window as though he could see out, though he didn't bother to raise the shutter. The space between the glass pane and the metal shutter was solid ice.

"Do you know," he said thoughtfully, "if I could get above the cloud cover—"

"No," Meg said sharply, spinning her chair around.

"I don't mean now. But the wind's got to die sometime..."

"Maybe here, but who knows what it's like a few miles out? Not to mention the metal stress in these temperatures..."

"Come on, Meg, I know what my plane can do. I've flown in lower temperatures than this—"

"And lost an engine!"

"I got it started again, didn't I?"

"Forget it, Red." Her hand tightened around the coffee cup, and all semblance of fatigue left her. "This is not an option, so just put it out of your mind."

He turned back to the window without answering.

Meg sipped her coffee, hoping the bourbon would have some effect on her tensing muscles, the tightening knot of anxiety in her stomach. It didn't. And why did she even try? It was futile to argue with Red; he would do what he wanted no matter what she said, whats she wanted, what she needed. She couldn't control him. She had never been able to.

She said, keeping her voice as matter of fact as she could, "Do you think there was ever a time when we didn't fight?"

He turned around, and she could see his taut muscles visibly relax. "Not that I recall. Your first words off the plane the day I brought you here, if I remember right, were four-letter ones."

She smiled reminiscently into her cup. "You were a maniac. I thought you were going to kill us both before we ever landed, the way you were flying."

"You were such a bossy little know-it-all I couldn't help it. It was about time somebody shook you up a little."

"You did that.

And in more ways than one. Barely twelve hours after her feet had touched terra firma, she was lying naked in Red's arms, and nothing had ever seemed more right. Six weeks and uncounted fights later he had gripped her face between his hands and said simply, "Marry me." It had never occurred to Meg to do anything else.

"Anyway," Red said, coming over to her, "they say fighting's good for you. Clears the air."

"It doesn't appear to have been very good for us. We're getting a divorce."

He helped himself to her coffee cup and took a sip. "But neither one of us has ulcers."

"Great." She slumped back in the chair, rubbing the back of her neck. "Save your health, lose your marriage."

His eyes were mild and steady as he sat on the edge of the desk. Quiet, beautiful eyes. Not judging, not arguing, not expecting anything, just watching her. The Look.

Meg shifted her gaze away. "I'm not very good at this, Red," she said, her voice a little muffled. "I mean, I'm not used to being bad at anything. To failing."

"Yeah." He dropped his gaze. "Me, neither."

"It's just that—" she made a helpless gesture with her wrist "—it wasn't like I expected. Being married."

His glance was alert and curious. "What did you expect?"

Meg had to think about that for a minute and was surprised to discover no clear answer. "I'm not sure," she admitted, frowning. "I never really thought about it. I mean, with my parents it was so...civilized. Cocktails at six, dinner at eight..."

His eyes twinkled. "No hot sex on the laundry-room floor?"

Meg must have been more tired than she realized, because she laughed. "Right. And my mother never threw a single dish in her life."

''You went through a whole set in two weeks."

She sobered a little, regarding him curiously. "What did you expect, Red?”

“Hot sex on the laundry-room floor," he answered immediately. And then the levity faded, and he glanced around the room as though he expected to find the answer floating in the air. "I never expected to get married, for one thing."

"Me, neither."

He took another sip of the coffee. "I don't know. What most men expect, I guess. A place to come home to, somebody waiting..." A frown crept over his features as he stared into the coffee cup, because as hard as he tried, the only things he could think of were the things she had given him. Somebody to love. Somebody who mattered more than anything else in the world. Somebody to make him feel important when he was low, to make him feel like a fool when that was exactly how he was acting, to stand up to him and stand beside him and give him a reason for being. Meg.

She sighed tiredly. "We never thought about it. If we had thought about it for even a minute, we would have known it wouldn't work. Neither of us had the faintest idea what marriage was all about."

"Maybe we made it too hard," Red said slowly, a little confused by all that was going through his head. "Maybe...I don't know." He lowered his gaze again. "Maybe marriage is no more than—" he smiled a little and put the cup on the desk "—drinking from the same cup."

He stood up, aware of the hesitancy and question in Meg's eyes, and put his hand on her shoulder. "Go on, get some shut-eye. I'll take over."

After a moment, she pushed away from the station. Her voice was subdued and a little distracted. "Thanks, but I can't sleep. I need to check on some things, but I'll be back. No point in us both staying awake all night."

Meg walked quietly through the common room, trying not to disturb the sleepers. Dancer had fallen asleep with Joe's head in her lap, and both seemed to be sleeping normally. A few people were awake, and they nodded to her when she passed. Some even smiled. Meg smiled back. Nothing like a disaster, she thought, to bring people closer together. And she wondered if that was what had happened to Red and her over the past few hours. If that was all it was.

But that couldn't be the case. Their entire marriage had been a disaster, one crisis after another, storm and riot and high adrenaline rush; they functioned best in a state of emergency. Maybe, she realized slowly, there was nothing wrong with that.

She left the common room and the heated corridor, where people had made pallets for themselves wherever they could find the room, and slipped through the swinging doors into the closed-off part of the building. Though no part of the building was ever completely unheated, there was a distinct chill in the air as she entered the dimly lit hallway. She welcomed it. She needed to be alone, and maybe the cold would help clear her head of the feverish, uncertain thoughts racing around in there.

She had always known that the things that attracted her to Red were the things most women would call faults: his stubbornness, his temper, his fierce independence, even his harshness and what some might even call his crudeness. She always knew where she stood with Red, and she never had to hide anything about herself from him. They never bothered to pretend with each other. And there was something good and solid about that, something worth preserving; instinctively she had always known that. But was it enough on which to base a marriage?

Without her realizing it, her footsteps had taken her to the end of the corridor, and she found herself facing the metal door to the regions below. She took out her key and unlocked it, carefully descending the steps. It was warm here, and the pulsing of engines provided a soothing, secure insulation from the rest of the world. Perhaps that was why she had always liked it so down here. Because here, alone with her machinery, she felt safe, capable, in control.

She released a long breath and leaned her forehead against one of the low pipes, trying to take comfort from its familiar life-giving pulses. Why did she have to keep beating herself up over this, going over and over it in her head, trying to find answers? Did she think that if she could figure out what had gone wrong between Red and herself  she could somehow fix it? Wasn't it too late for that?

A marriage wasn't like an overloaded circuit. You couldn't just reset it, rewire it, wrap it up and turn it on again. Not when so much had gone wrong.

Only now she was beginning to wonder just how much had really gone wrong and how much was her imagination.

Of course if she analyzed it the list of what had gone wrong was enough to fill a marriage manual. They had nothing in common and they were too much alike, their goals and their values were poles apart, she couldn't live in this god-awful place and he wouldn't leave it... And there were other things, deeper and far more complex things, things that she had not, until now, been able to tell even him. She might have, but he never gave her the chance.

What had gone wrong? The fighting, the instability, the loneliness and anxiety when he was gone, the desperation of passion when he was near, all that was part of it. But she had lived with those things and loved him in spite of them, loved him so much that she had finally driven him away, for that, in the final analysis, was what had really happened. He had left her. He had walked away before she was ready to let him go and no one had ever done that to her before; she couldn't forgive him for that. That was when love had turned to hate—or so she thought.

Because he had also come back.

"Oh, Red," she murmured out loud. "What a mess."

She pushed away from the pipe and looked around the room solemnly, a little wistfully. That funny little pang of regret that had struck her this morning when Dancer had reminded her of how much she would be leaving behind was back again. It was crazy, but  she really would miss this place. She had done some of her best work here. Not the work she was contracted to do, of course, but the perfections and improvements she had made on the generator, the new designs she had started on her own. She had never had that kind of creative freedom in Washington. She wondered if she would even fit in there again. The tailored suits, the nine-o'clock meetings, the sterile labs and the endless bureaucracy. The truth was, she had never fit in there in the first place, which was why she had ended up here in exile.

God, she thought, I'm getting as crazy as everybody else around here. I'm actually starting to like it....

Which wasn't much different from the way she felt about Red.

Her life had been so simple only this morning. She'd known exactly what she wanted and exactly where she was going; everything had been in order and she was on her way. But now... even the hum of the machinery, which had for so long been her only friend, seemed somehow changed. This was a workplace, not a refuge, and the machines were just machines. Her life was upstairs, just out of her reach.

She closed her eyes, fighting back the confusing, conflicting emotions gnawing at her. "What's the point?" she whispered. "He's never going to change." So why couldn't she let him go?

Because she loved him, as blindly and desperately as the day she had first met him, and it was just that simple. She loved the man who had made love to her in the storeroom at Maudie's, and she loved the man who could take a roomful of frightened, injured people and make them forget for a moment how much trouble they were really in. She loved the daredevil bush pilot and the tender lover and the man who could make her forget her anger with a chocolate bar. She loved him in the heat of anger when he said cruel and hateful things to her that he didn't mean, and she loved him because he understood without being told that she never meant the things she said, either. She loved him fiercely and helplessly, and she had no more control over that than she did over the flow of blood in her veins or the beating of her heart.

And that, she knew, was the only thing that wouldn't change.

When she went back upstairs, Lewis was awake and so was Gilly. She spoke briefly to Gilly, who had no encouraging news, but neither did he have anything disturbing to report. When Lewis volunteered to go back and man the radio, she hesitated, then shook her head.

"Go back to sleep," she said softly. "I'll take care of it."

She went inside the radio room and closed the door behind her.

Red had spread out his sleeping bag on the floor and was sitting on it, his back resting against the wall. The contents of the box that held his personal belongings was disarranged, and the snapshot of the two of them was in his hand. She did not have to read his face  to know what he was feeling; she had felt the same things when she looked at it.

He let the photo drop back into the box when she came in and forced a smile. "Checking up on me?"

''I thought it might be smart."

He lifted his eyebrows. "Who, me? Desert my post?" He gestured toward the radio. "Nothing. I guess everybody's in bed."

The attempt at levity fell short, and they simply looked at each other. Meg could feel her heartbeat, slow and heavy, filling her chest with heat. She said, "What were you thinking just now?"

He hesitated. "The truth?"

She nodded.

He leaned his head back against the wall, and the smile that crossed his lips was rueful and fleeting, almost embarrassed. "It sounds crazy in the middle of all this...." He gestured toward the outer room. Then he looked up at her. "I was thinking about the way you look in the morning, " he told her softly, "with your hair all messed up and coming out of its braid, and your eyes kind of sleepy and easy, and the way you smile when you first wake up, without even thinking about it, almost like a little kid.    And that ratty old red bathrobe of yours, and the fuzzy socks you wear to bed.That's what I was thinking." And he shifted his gaze away with a shrug. "Like I said, crazy."

Red had hung his jacket on the hook over the door, obscuring the frosted window. Meg leaned back and pressed the door lock with her thumb.

She unbelted her sweater and slowly drew it over her head. Red watched her steadily as she unfastened her bra and let it fall to the floor. Her skin prickled as it met the room temperature, and she came to Red, kneeling between his legs.

His hands caressed her back, a lighter-than-air circling embrace, then drifted over her shoulders, tracing her rib cage, the length of her waist. His eyes were brilliant and they never left hers.

"Darlin’,” he said softly, "are we making another mistake?"

"Probably."

She looped her arms around his neck, bringing her forehead down to rest against his. His eyes filled her vision, his warmth encompassed her. She slipped her fingers inside his collar, drawing in a long deep breath as his hands cupped her breasts.

"Red," she whispered, "take off your clothes."

His eyes crinkled with a slow smile.' 'All of them?"

"Every stitch."

Completely unclothed, they wrapped themelves around each other, folding themselves each into the other. For the longest time they simply held each other, not moving, not caressing, wrapping each other in a silent communion of warmth and surity. The urgency of physical need was put aside in the face of a deeper, more demanding need, the desperation to hold this moment, frozen in time, forever. Every part of his body became a part of her. And more than his body, his very essence seemed to flow into her, just as all that was good and right about her flowed into him, as it was always meant to be, as it had always been.

No words could intrude, no caresses could deepen the emotion. They simply held each other, a fierce, silent union of bodies and minds and hearts that had been denied too long but could never be broken again. And though the joy that flooded her made her almost delirious in its intensity, it was a little frightening, too, because the love they made now would last longer than one night. She had known that from the beginning. And so had he.

They made love as though it were the first time, knowing it was the last.  Understanding, finally, that the physical passion that had always flamed between them was, in the end, nothing more than their souls’ yearning for each other, and it  always had been. She clung to him as they turned together on the sleeping bag, exhausted,  content, and Red pulled up its folds to cover them. He drew her onto his shoulder and she insinuated her legs between his; he entwined his fingers with hers and held her hand against his lips. She could feel his heartbeat, his heat, his dampness, the unsteady rhythm of his breath against her fingers. She could feel her own weakness, the shock of her heart pounding against her ribs, the fever that still invaded her skin. But all of that faded into the background against the depth of what she felt inside.

She was helpless, as she always was in his arms; she was stronger than she had ever been before; she was awed and shaken by the enormity of what they could create together, of what they, together, became. How could she ever have thought, even for a moment, that she could live without him? Without him she was only a shadow of what she was meant to be, and having once loved him she could never settle for less again. She had always known that—which was why it was so hard to let him go.

And, having rediscovered in his arms all that she had almost lost, how could she ever let him go again?

She spread her fingers over his chest, aching inside with all she wanted to say to him and the words that wouldn't come. She lifted her eyes to him, loving him so much it hurt, needing him so much she could taste it.

"Red," she whispered, "it wasn't... it wasn’t ice you thought you saw in me. It was fear."

His eyes were tender and confused. "What, darlin'?" Gently he pushed a strand of hair away from her face. "What were you afraid of?"

She buried her face in his shoulder. "Of... loving you too much, needing you too desperately. Losing you."

His arms tightened around her.

"You never took me up in your plane," she said tightly, unable to look at him. "After that first time.. .you never did. It was as if that part of your life was closed to me. You pushed me away—and it scared me."

She felt his slow, long release of breath, the tautening of his muscles. After a long time he replied huskily, "I guess... I was afraid, too."

She closed her eyes tightly, squeezing back tears. "Oh, Red, what are we going to do?"

His lips brushed her fingers, his grip tightened on her hand. But he had no answer.

And neither did she.

Nine

Red thought Meg was asleep when he got up carefully to turn out the light. She was lying on her side, her hair half shielding her face. The corner of the sleeping bag covered her legs and hips, but left her upper body exposed to the air. Red spent a moment watching her, thinking how beautiful she was. The slope of her torso was strong, slim and athletic, yet delicately feminine. Her arms were firm, sparely muscled where a woman's arms could develop muscles, for she did more than her fair share of the heavy work around here. She would pitch in to move a piece of machinery or steady a grounding pole in a high wind just as though she had forgotten she was a woman, as though it had never occurred to her that,with more than a dozen strong men standing around all she had to do was bat her eyelashes to have them tripping all over themselves to help. The truth was, knowing Meg, it had never occurred to her, and the first time Red realized that, it was with incredulous amusement and a kind of awestruck wonder over just what a special woman he had stumbled upon.

He couldn't believe he had almost let her get away. Nor could he imagine, now, how he was going to be able to hold on to her.

He arranged his shirt over her shoulders to keep off the chill and climbed back into the sleeping bag beside her, gently easing his arm around her again. The wind had died down; the storm had moved on. It might be a few more days before he could safely get back in the air, but they both had known it wouldn't last forever.

He kept thinking everything should be different now, but the only thing that was changed was the way he felt inside: emptier, more anguished, more frightened than ever. He had known from the beginning he could never hold on to her, just as he had known, from the moment he had first seen her striding out onto the runway in Juneau, snapping orders and swinging her briefcase like a deadly weapon, that he would never get over her.

Even after the night he had walked out for the last time, he hadn't intended for it to be over. He kept expecting to come back, every week, every day, but he battled to keep from coming back, up until the minute she had sent word that she intended to file for divorce, and then he had gotten drunk and stayed drunk for a long time. He had set about convincing himself it was good, it was about time; anybody could see that they had never had a marriage, they'd had a war zone, that he was well rid of her and now he could get on with his life. Only without her, there was no life to get on with.

He knew the mistakes they had made. He had spent six months of sleepless nights counting them, fuming over them, grieving over them, calling himself every kind of fool and calling her worse. They had both been selfish, intractable and single-minded, like racehorses harnessed to buggies, each pulling in his own way with the same fierce go-for-broke determination. He and Meg couldn't live without each other, but the last thing either of them wanted was to be married.

And nothing had changed. She was leaving as soon as she could get a flight out, and how could he ask her to stay? Her life was back in Washington, just as his was here. He still couldn't give her what she wanted and she had never understood what he needed—perhaps because he hadn't, either.

There was no way out, no answer, and things were no less complicated now than they had been a day ago, a month, a year. Why couldn't he just let her go?

She said softly, "Red?"

He glanced down at her, wondering how long she had been watching him. The room was lit only by the green glow of the radio dials, but her eyes were quiet and luminous, her skin the color of moonlight. He did not think he had ever told her often enough how beautiful she was to him.

"Go back to sleep," he whispered, stroking her hair. "You're exhausted."

"I wasn't sleeping. And neither were you."

He smiled in the dark. "I'm a man. I can take it."

"And other fairy tales."

She started to sit up, but met the gentle resistance of his hand on her shoulder. "Stay awhile. Everything's fine. Nobody needs you."

"Sounds suspicious to me," she murmured drowsily.

But she settled against him, resting her hand on his bare hip in a warm, familiar way, nudging her knees between his legs. It felt good. Wifely.

He said, knowing he probably shouldn't, "What kept you awake?"

She hesitated. Her voice sounded uncertain and a little strained as she answered, "Wondering... if I'd ever make love to you again."

Red slowly turned over, so that he was a little above her, resting his hand beside her head, looking down into her eyes. "Megan," he said quietly, "I want to ask you something. And I want you to tell me the truth."

She looked a little wary, but she held his gaze. There had been very few times in her life that Meg was unable to meet his eyes.

"When you married me, did you expect me to build a nest?"

"What?"

"Cocktails at six, dinner at eight," he insisted. "Is that what you wanted?"

She shook her head against his hand. "That's not a nest—that's a cage. You know me better than that."

"No," he said slowly, "I'm beginning to think we never knew the important things about each other. What did you want, sweetheart?" he urged gently. "Just tell me."

She closed her eyes briefly, sliding her hand over his shoulder. "Not a nest," she said softly. "But maybe...a perch. Some place to be safe from the storm."

"And I brought the storm right home to you."

She shook her head slowly. "No." Her hand moved over his neck, slipping into his hair. "The only time I ever felt safe was with you, Red. You were the only thing I could ever be sure of."

Red realized slowly that he had always felt safe with her, too. But before now, he had never considered that a good thing.

She whispered, "I love you, Red."

“I know." He drew in a deep breath that was filled at once with both joy and despair. "I've tried to stop loving you, God knows I have. I can't."

She touched her finger to his lips in a caress as tender as a kiss. "I know," she said softly.

Her hand moved down his face and curled around his neck. She closed her eyes. After a long time she slept.

Even later so did he.

The crackle of radio static was a soothing background noise, like the distant sigh of the ocean, and Meg dreamed of white sand and azure waters. The radiant heat of the sun baked into her pores, glowing orange behind her closed eyes, and Red lay next to her, his naked thigh pressed against hers, his body slick with oil. She could hear his breathing, slow and relaxed, and then she realized they were both naked, naked on some secluded beach with the sun pouring over their bodies, so perfect, so wonderful...

In an instant she was awake. She was on her feet, pushing her arms into Red's shirt and drawing its folds around her, stumbling across the room before she fully realized that the sound that had awakened her was a voice from the radio. She grabbed the microphone and pushed the transmit button.

"Yes, this is Adinorack Base! Repeat! Over."

The voice crackled back like a song from heaven. "Adinorack, this is Bixby One. Do you copy? Over."

"Yes!" she practically shouted. "We copy. What's your situation? Over."

Meg could hear Red behind her getting to his feet, pulling on his pants. She sank into the chair, pushing her hair back from her eyes, suddenly weak with relief.

"No worse than anybody else, I guess," the voice drawled back. "That storm hit us like a ton of bricks. We've been receiving you, but our transmitter was out. So how's the weather down there? Over."

"Calmer," Meg replied. Her heart was still pounding with the abrupt awakening and the sheer wonder of hearing another human voice out of the emptiness. "We've got injured. Is anything flying? Over.''

"Hell, lady, all that's left of our chopper pad is a pile of twisted metal. We were hoping you had something. Over."

There was a cold sinking feeling in the pit of Meg's stomach. Dimly she was aware of Red standing beside her. "We've got some pretty serious cases here. You're the only medical facility within a hundred miles. How soon—"

"The good news is," the other operator interrupted, "we got doctors up the kazoo. The bad news is we're going to have to start evacuating ourselves inside twenty-four hours. The clinic's running on emergency generators now, not even enough juice to run the OR. We're starting to feel the hurt. According to what authorities we've been able to contact—" his voice was tight with frustration and concern "—it could be as much as a week before we're back on line. What do you hear? Over."

Meg made a split-second decision, the kind that came naturally to her in times of stress. She made it automatically, without emotion or even much rational thought; it was at the moment the only decision, in fact, that anyone could have made, and it seemed very clear to her at the time that she had no choice.

"We can get you power," she said. "Just hold on for..." She glanced at Red, and his mind was already working in the same track as hers.

"Six hours," he said. "We don't know what shape the runway's in."

"Six hours, outside," she repeated into the microphone. "Clear your airstrip and have a doctor ready for the return trip. We'll be back in contact. Adinorack out."

Meg switched off the microphone and leaned back in the chair. It was perhaps ten seconds later that the full consequences of what she had done struck her.

She had committed Red to a trip that only a few hours ago she had adamantly refused to let him make. A trip that might well be impossible, and that at the least would be hazardous, perhaps life-threatening. She had done it without consulting him, the position of the storm or the conditions outside. She had done it because it was necessary, because lives could very well be at stake unless the Bixby Medical Center received the electrical power she could provide, and because personal danger, in a situation like that, did not seem to be a factor.

And she had done it because if she had not, Red would have.

She lifted her gaze to Red, and they regarded each other in silence for a long moment. Her heart was pounding with belated alarm, and she wished she could have read more of his expression in the dark.

Then he said mildly, "Even I would've checked the radar first, ace."

He moved around her chair to do just that, and she swiveled around to study the screen for herself. "Looks pretty good from what I can tell," he commented after a moment. "Of course, this little machine was designed to hide a multitude of sins."

She swallowed hard. "Like what?"

"Upper-atmosphere turbulence, wind sheers, and the only snow you're going to track with this is the kind that comes down in buckets."

"So it means basically nothing."

His tone was absurdly cheerful as he agreed, "In a word. Of course," he added in an offhand attempt at reassurance, "they would've told us if there were any problems between here and there."

"If they knew about them." Meg released an unsteady breath. "The last time I did anything that impulsive was when I married you."

He glanced at her, a half smile curving his lips. "Bad example, babe."

For a moment his presence was so intense that it was branded on her brain: his bare chest with its light dusting of hair, his flat abdomen above the unfastened snap of his jeans, the lean swell of his biceps as he braced his arm on the back of her chair; his scent, that peculiar mixture of him and her and warmth and intimacy, his wayward curls and his strong neck and the muted spark of amusement in his eyes. A sudden fierce protectiveness seized her and she thought, No.

No, she couldn't let him do this, she was crazy to have even considered it. There was another way, and she would think of it if only she gave herself time. It wasn't really a matter of life and death; no one was making her do this. If Red hadn't been here some other solution would have been found. If she hadn't had the only portable, self-supplying generator in this part of the state, if Bixby hadn't gotten their transmitter repaired, if no one had answered their call for help...

Then the injured people who crowded the offices and corridors of Carstone would have continued to suffer, perhaps to worsen or even to die from lack of a physician and adequate medical supplies. The Bixby Medical Center would have been without power in twenty-four hours, endangering the lives of all who were already there and many more who would be coming. And the only question she had to ask herself now was, at what point did the risk become acceptable?

Perhaps for the first time she knew what it was like to be inside Red's skin.

He moved away from her chair and crossed to their pile of clothes, searching for his shoes and socks. She could feel the excitement in him as though it was a physical thing, giving off a glow of heat and energy.

"How many people will it take to get that generator of yours on board?" he asked. His voice was crisp, his mind busy.

"You and I can handle it." Meg went over to him, untangling her own clothes from his.

"Good. We'll need somebody on the snowplow. Hell, we might have to dig our way out of the hangar. God knows how high the drifts are."

He handed Meg her panties and she stepped into them, suddenly seized by an irrational annoyance. "You enjoy this, don't you?"

He pulled the long-sleeved undershirt over his head. "Don't start, Meg."

"I mean it." Even she could hear the shrewish note of insistence in her voice, but she couldn't help it. Didn't he realize what he was doing? Didn't he care? She snatched up her jeans and pulled them on. "You love this. Any little chance you get to risk your life-"

"For God's sake, Meg, listen to yourself! You're the one who volunteered me quicker than I could get my pants on!"

"I had no choice!"

He took her shoulders firmly and moved her aside. "Exactly." He bent to pick up his other shoe.

She could feel herself sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of illogic, but she couldn't seem to stop it. It was the same fear, the same insecurity, the same sense of helplessness, the same anger because he didn't understand ... the same fight.

"All right," she said tightly. She stalked to the door and grabbed her bra off the floor, shrugging out of his shirt. "All right, maybe I didn't have a choice, but even if I had would it have made a difference? You would have taken the choice out of my hands. You know you would have! Anything to get you back in the air again!"

"What the hell are you getting so fired up about? We both know what has to be done and you're damn lucky I'm here to do it."

''That's not the point!''

"Then what is?"

"That you just can't wait! That the more dangerous it is the more you like it, that you don't even stop to consider—"

"Of course I like it. It's my job! Do you think I do it for the pay?" As she struggled to fasten her bra he turned her around impatiently and did it for her. "You're talking like a woman, Meg. God, I hate it when you do that."

"I am a woman!" she cried, and jerked away from him. "I'm the woman who loves you and I don't see why it's so hard for you to get it through your thick macho head that every time you go up there I go up there, too! You can't do something to yourself without doing it to me, Red, and every time you risk your life you're risking mine! And—" she caught a breath that sounded horribly, suspiciously like a sob "—what makes me mad is that you don't even care!"

Red stared at her. A dozen fights, a hundred, just like this had been enacted between them over the  past two years. The same angry words, the same careless accusations. Maybe after a while he had stopped listening. Maybe he had simply been afraid of the day when he would no longer be able to refuse to listen. Because suddenly it was all very clear.

That was what made the difference. From the moment he had first loved Meg, he was no longer one person but two. She was always with him. He no longer thought for one, felt for one, experienced for one, but for two. She was beside him in the cockpit, telling him to be careful. She was beside him on the ground, telling him to check twice. He had hated that, fought against it, done everything in his power to outfly her shadow. And when that hadn't worked, he had left her. It was as simple as that.

He dragged his fingers through his hair and released a short, stifled breath. The cautious realizations and half-formed truths that were running through his head were too much to take in at once; he felt stunned, a little dazed, very unsure.

"Meg," he said, struggling for words, straining to make her understand—and forgive. "It's. ..I don't know how to tell you how it is with me. All my life there's been this thing inside me—this need to keep pushing, to force the odds, to climb that next mountain. I don't know why. It's just something I was born with, like some people are born with two different-colored eyes or one arm half an inch longer than the other. I just have to keep proving things—not to anybody else, but myself. I know it's not right, I know it's not healthy, but I can't help it, any more than you can help being bossy and argumentative. Honey—" he took a hesitant step toward her "—I do care. But sometimes..."

"If you tell me a man's got to do what a man's got to do," she said, her eyes glittering, "I'll spit in your face."

He smiled. "I wasn't going to say that. But—" and the smile faded as he looked at her "—flying airplanes is what I do. That's not going to change. And what it really boils down to is that when I'm up there in the sky I'm out of your control. Everything there is out of your control. That's what you hate, not that I do it, not that I like it—that you can't control it. And the bottom line on that is trust, isn't it? Just letting go and giving me some credit."

Meg drew in a breath, suddenly robbed of words. When he said it like that it made her sound so harsh, so selfish, so... true. He was her husband, the man who was as much a part of her as her own cells, and she would have trusted him with her life without hesitation—but she couldn't trust him with his own? Was that what it was? Was she so power-crazed, so compulsive and demanding that she felt she had to be in charge of every phase of the lives of those she loved, that if she let go for one minute the entire world would collapse? Was she that small, that childish, that insecure?

The answer was absurdly simple, abundantly clear.

She turned abruptly to pick up her sweater. "I guess I have to trust you this time," she said. She pulled the sweater over her head. "Because I'm going with you." She tossed his shirt to him and opened the door.

Red's hand hit the door and slammed it shut before it had cleared the frame by more than a couple of inches. His face was filled with incredulity and his voice was low as he demanded, "What did you say?"

"You heard me. Somebody's got to hook up the system—"

"Not you, lady!" He took a step away from the door, still looking at her as though he didn't know whether to laugh or rage. "Not you!"

"Who then?" she returned angrily. "You?"

"You've got a whole building full of men—"

"Only two of whom can walk!"

"Fine!" He was practically shouting now. "I'll take Gilly!"

"And what's going to happen to all these sick people if he doesn't—"

He wouldn't let her finish. He wouldn't even let her think it. "Lewis, then. He's—"

"A mechanic! Damn it, Red, I'm the best engineer on this project and you know it. And even if I weren't, I wouldn't let anybody but me handle my system—"

''Of course!'' He slapped his forehead in mock dismay. "How could I forget? Nobody in the world knows how to do anything right but you!"

Meg ground her teeth together to bite back hasty words, then managed tightly, "That's right." She turned sharply for the door.

He caught her arm, hard. "Damn it, Meg, I'm not taking you up. This is not an afternoon sight-seeing tour, it's..."

She looked at him coolly. "Dangerous?" She pulled her arm away deliberately. "I believe I mentioned that, Red."

He couldn't stop her this time, and she strode out the door.

Ten

When Meg walked out into the common room, most people were up and moving around. Apparently it was later than she had supposed, and an entire night had passed in Red's arms. There were curious, knowing looks, mostly from Dancer and Gilly, and what might have annoyed her at another time now only struck her with a breathless stab of pain in her chest. Yes, she had spent the night making love with her husband; she didn't regret it, even though it felt like the biggest mistake of her life—and yet she would have done nothing differently, because now she knew it had been for the last time.

She felt as though he had reached deep inside her, taken her soul and wrung it dry, then cast it aside when there was nothing left for him to take. She had given all of herself to him, she had opened herself up to him as she had never done before, and in the end... nothing had changed. In the end there was still that one barrier he refused to lower, that one part of himself he insisted upon keeping separate from her, and the hurt was sharper, more intense and encompassing than anything she had ever known before.

And as always, the hurt turned to anger, because the only way she knew how to deal with any unpleasantness was aggressively, and because after everything they had shared Red still refused to understand. He was right about a lot of things, and in the past twenty-four hours he had made her face up to truths whose existence she had never even suspected before. Then why couldn't he understand this? It wasn't the flying; it wasn't his long absences from her or even his recklessness and her fears. It was the fact that he refused to share it with her. It was knowing that, no matter how close they were or how inseparably bonded in other ways, there would always be one part of his life—the most important part—in which she wasn't welcome. He didn't want her there.

Dancer grinned at her. Her eyes were dark-circled, and an ugly bruise was beginning to spread beneath the bandage across her forehead, but her face had regained some of its color and she seemed to have her strength back. She said innocently, "Morning, Meg. Sleep well, did you?"

Meg saw a chorus of smothered smiles go around the room, and she knew that a distraction from their own problems was probably good for them, but she simply couldn't take the teasing in good grace. She said curtly, "Has anybody checked outside?"

"Some of the shutters are frozen shut," Reese volunteered. ''But we got a few open on the back side of the building. The worst of the drifts are on the south, and they're up to the damn roof."

Meg nodded acknowledgment. At least they weren't trapped inside the building, which had been the worst of her fears. She went over to Gilly, who was bending over Joe.

"How is he?" she asked.

Gilly looked worried, exhausted with strain. "His fever's up. He's starting to cough. Pneumonia sets in fast in a case like this."

He lowered his voice, and anxiety seemed to weigh down his face, making it look old. "Look, boss," he said quietly, "it's been a lot of years since I had to do anything like this. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing or not doing what I should be doing, and even if I am I'm out of my league once we get past broken bones. We've got to have some help."

Meg patted his arm and forced a reassuring smile. "It's on the way."

She wasn't sure whether the expression that crossed Gilly's face was relief or simple surprise from the friendly touch of her hand on his arm. Could it be that she had never touched Gilly before, even in an impersonal way, never complimented him on a job well done? She felt a pang of shocked regret for that and resolved it would not go uncorrected a moment longer.

She squeezed his arm briefly and added, "We're not going to forget what you've done, Gilly. And you can expect a hell of a Christmas bonus in your stocking this year." She smiled. "That's a personal promise."

She left Gilly speechless and turned to the room at large, raising her voice. "All right, listen up. We've been on the horn with Bixby and they've promised to send us a doctor." A round of clamorous excitement rose up and she held up her hands for silence. "The only catch is we've got to go pick him up. As soon as we're physically able we'll start transporting those of you who need to go to the Medical Center, but in the meantime we're going to need lots of help. Reese, can you handle the radio for a while?"

Reese, sheltering his bandaged ribs with one arm, gave her a shaky grin as he got to his feet. "Ready and able, chief."

"Good. I need all the weather information you can get, and see if you can raise some of the houses around here. See what they need and if anybody's able to get out and give us a hand. Lewis, I need you on the snowplow. Dancer—" Meg could feel Red's eyes boring into her back all through the speech, and she refused to turn around or even glance at him "—come with me."

Red did not move from his position at the radio-room door as he watched her leave, his eyes dark and his stomach churning. Gilly came over to him.

"So," he said quietly. "Do you think you can make it?"

Red glanced at him briefly. "I don't know."

The two men stepped aside as Reese entered the radio room. Red took his cap from his back pocket, pushed back his hair with a terse, angry gesture  and put it on. "Bixby's running low on juice, and they need a generator. She—" he nodded in the direction Meg had gone "—has got some damn fool idea she's the only one who can hook it up."

Gilly merely nodded. "She's right."

Looking surprised and betrayed, Red swiveled his gaze to the other man. Gilly, in turn, looked confused. "So what's the problem?" he said. "It's her machine, and who else can we spare?"

Red's jaw tightened. "She's got no business up there. And I don't need a woman along on a flight like this."

Gilly grinned. "Superstitious?"

Red glanced at him darkly. "Yeah."

Gilly shook his head in a mixture of amusement and disgust. "You two are the craziest couple I ever saw. Even when you're doing something you both want to do you have to fight about it." He shrugged. "Maybe that's how come I managed to stay married so long— I don't have to live with her. But then again—" he gave Red an encouraging slap on the back'' —neither will you, for too much longer."

He started to walk away, then hesitated, his expression confused and a little embarrassed. "But you know something? I can't believe I'm saying this, but the truth is I'm going to miss the old battle-ax, when it comes right down to it. Funny, isn't it, how some people grow on you."

Red mumbled, "Yeah." He watched Gilly walk away, but he wasn't really thinking about him at all. The last thing he remembered hearing Gilly say was Neither will you, for too much  longer.

Was this how it was going to end between them, then? The same way it had started, with passion and fireworks, anger and confrontation? Hadn't they learned anything in the past two years?

Maybe there were some people in this world who really lived best when they lived apart, and maybe he and Meg were two of them. He tried to convince himself of that, but damn it, he had been trying to convince himself of that for the past six months and in all that time apart from her, he hadn't been living at all. He had simply been waiting for Meg.

Why couldn't she understand what this was doing to him? Did she think that he was refusing to take her along just to spite her? Just getting airborne would require all his skills as a pilot, and who knew what he was going to find once he got up there? Who knew what shape the Bixby runway would be in or whether he'd even be able to bring the plane down at all? Didn't she have any idea of the risk? Didn't she realize that he was doing this not because he wanted to push her away, but because he loved her and because she was the only thing in this world he couldn't afford to lose?

But he was losing her. And it was all because, for the first time in his life, he knew how Meg must have felt every time he went up without her.

How long were they going to keep doing this to each other?

The answer was painfully, exhaustingly clear. Just until one of them, or both of them, got smart enough to stop it.

It was cold in the hangar, despite the minimal heat supplied to keep the fuel from freezing, and Meg wore her heavy coat and gloves as she helped Gilly load the generator into the light plane's expanded cargo hold and secure it down. "That should do it." She sprang to the ground, rubbing her hands together against the chill, which seemed to come more from inside her than without. "We'll radio as soon as we land. Meanwhile, remember to monitor the control room, and if-"

"I know what to do," Gilly reminded her gently.

Meg fell silent. Of course he did. It was his job, after all. She smiled at him. "Okay, then, it's in your hands."

She looked around. Everyone who possibly could had gathered in the hangar to see them off, their faces filled with excitement and hope. Meg doubted that even Lindbergh had received such an enthusiastic bon voyage when he set out to cross the Atlantic. Red was making his final walk-around check of the plane, and he had not spoken to her once since they'd left the radio room. The runway had been cleared of drifts and debris as much as possible, and Bixby reported they were ready to receive aircraft. Meg had not been able to make much sense of the sketchy weather information they'd gotten, but Red didn't appear concerned. Then again, he never did.

"Dancer," Meg called, and walked over to the girl. "Remember—"

"For heaven's sake, you're as bad as my mother," Dancer interrupted. "What do you want to do? Leave me a list?"

Meg had to smile. She had spent more than an hour briefing Dancer and Maudie on what to do for those staying behind and how to prepare for any eventuality. She was leaving things in capable hands; there was nothing to do now but go.

Dancer said, looking a little disturbed, "Say, I'll see you again, won't I?"

Meg was confused, and Dancer added quickly, "No, I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I just meant, well, you're not taking your suitcases or anything so I just figured you were planning on coming back."

The truth was, the question had not even occurred to Meg. Bixby was one stop closer to Juneau, and there was no reason to come back here. The storm was over, and so much was different now—yet so much was not. She was, in fact, right back where she had started yesterday, and there was nothing to keep her here.

She admitted honestly, "I don't know, Dancer. I'll radio when I get there and.. .1 guess I can send for my things if I need them."

Dancer's lips tightened. "Be smart," she advised crisply. "Come back. Don't let him get away with this."

Meg was honestly confused, as she so often was with Dancer. "Get away with what?"

Dancer rolled her eyes in exasperation. "With winning! Lord, girl, do I have to tell you everything?  If you let him chase you away now it'll be a blow against women everywhere. And that's what you're doing, you know—running away. The least you ought to do is stand and fight. Get it over with one way or another."

Meg smiled tiredly, shaking her head. "I think it is over, Dancer."

Dancer looked at her with a mixture of impatience and sympathy on her face. "Now I know you've got to come back. You have an awful lot to learn about men before you can be let loose on the world again, and I'm just the girl who can teach you.''

Meg wanted to laugh, but she really didn't feel like it, and just then both women shivered at the blast of cold air that swept through the hangar as the doors creaked and rumbled open. Meg stepped back and saw for the first time in twenty-four hours the world outside.

The air was foggy with ice crystals and bathed with a muted glow that seemed to swirl from pink to yellow—the refracted rays of a brave sun trying to break through the clouds. The runway was a narrow expanse of packed snow guarded on either side by sloping snowbanks that glittered in places where the sun struck them as though they were lined with diamonds. The world was blanketed in pristine white yet seemed at the same time to be alive with soft, sighing colors. Nowhere on earth did the light celebrate itself so joyously as it did in Alaska, and Meg spent a long time just looking at the view, memorizing it, storing it up like a precious treasure to be hoarded for bad times.

"You know," she said softly, "I forget sometimes how beautiful it can be here."

Dancer squeezed her hand. "You come back," she repeated.

And then Red was standing beside her. Meg felt all her muscles tense for a fight, but he didn't say anything for a long moment. Then he said flatly, "You know I don't want you with me."

He couldn't have wounded her more deeply if he had used a knife. For a moment Meg had one of those flashes that are commonly accredited to people in their last few desperate seconds of life—a collage of pictures, touches, whispers, glances, all of Red, and all she had left of him. Because overlaid there were the stark and blaring words  I don't want you.

Her voice was hoarse but her tone curt as she replied, "I know." She strode toward the plane.

In three steps he caught up with her, grabbing her arm, and when she tried to jerk away he wouldn't let her.

"You can't stop me," she said in a furious, shaking undertone. "After today you don't have to worry about me again, but right now, this last time, you can't stop me."

''Don't you think I know that?"

"Then let me go! People are staring."

His grip only increased. "Not until you listen to me." His eyes were dark and his face was tight, but there was something in his expression that she had never seen before—a kind of stubborn desperation, an open vulnerability that was not like the man she knew. That was what startled her enough to make her listen.

“You were right, okay?" he said on a breath. "I wanted to keep you out of the cockpit because I was afraid you'd take over. Because I wanted to keep one part of me safe from you, in case I ever needed it again...in case I ever had to live without you. But it's no different from what you did to me, Meg. We were both planning escape routes from the minute we met, because it's a scary thing, losing yourself completely in another person, and because the thing that scared us most was losing each other."

He dropped her arm. "I just wanted you to know that it didn't work. You were always with me. Just like a part of me was always on the ground with you. I don't want to lose you, Meg."

It seemed all of the breath went out of Meg's lungs in a single low rush. The cold, the people watching, the foggy pastel day outside all faded into the background, and there was nothing left but Red and the way he looked at her.. .but no promises had been made. No promises could be made, no solutions offered, no miracles wrought, not just like that on the spur of the moment with only a few words. It couldn't be as simple as that.

She said, searching his eyes, "Red, I.. .1 don't want to lose you, either."

And perhaps it was as simple as that. Because as they looked at each other there was nothing left to hide. No more secrets, no more fears, no more anger. And if that was not the solution, then it was at least a beginning.

Red placed his hand lightly on her back. "Come on, then," he said huskily. "We've got a job to do.”

The cheers and applause of well-wishers startled Meg out of her daze as she took her seat in the cockpit beside Red, but she recovered herself long enough to turn and wave. Red watched her with an odd little smile, and then he turned to his controls.

She watched him transform from the man who was her husband into the pilot, his eyes scanning the instruments, his hands switching levers and pushing buttons. She could feel him withdraw into himself, almost slipping inside the skin of another man as all his concentration was focused on the job at hand. The change frightened her a little, but she discovered to her surprise that it also fascinated her, and excited her.

The plane taxied slowly out onto the snow-packed runway, the skis of its landing gear gliding smoothly over the surface. "Hold on tight, babe," he murmured. "Eighty percent of all air accidents happen during landing or takeoff."

The engine geared up with a whining roar, the snowbanks began to speed by, and Meg held on. It was all she could do to keep from squeezing her eyes shut.

It was as though they were accelerating through an underground tunnel. There was nothing on either side but a blur of white, and she couldn't see the end of the runway until it was right in front of them, and then she had to smother a cry because it was much too short; it was impossibly short. And just when she knew they were going to plow off the runway and into the drifts ahead something struck them so hard that it knocked her back against her seat; Red swore out loud as the plane shuddered and seemed to lurch sideways, and Meg did close her eyes then, squeezing them tightly shut as she thought, This is it, this is—

She couldn't even finish the thought before they were airborne. She could feel the lessening of drag, the smooth glide of air rather than snow beneath the skis, and when she opened her eyes nothing but wisps of fog skated past her window.

Red drawled, "Take your fingernails out of my leg, darlin'. You're drawing blood."

Meg looked down and saw that her hand was, indeed, clutching his jean-clad thigh. With an effort she loosened her grip. She swallowed hard and tried to keep her voice steady as she inquired, "What... was that?"

"I think we tipped a snowbank. You want to look out your window there and see if that wing's still in one piece?"

She actually turned to do it and then she caught his grin. "Very funny, Sky King."

She watched as he made a slow ninety-degree turn away from the head wind, nudging the altitude up a little in the process. But when Meg looked out the window she could still see the roofs of buildings between patches of snowy fog, and trees that looked much too close.

"Aren't we flying a little low?"

He guided the control wheel back to center. "You're starting to remind me why I don't like women in the cockpit. Back seat drivers."

Meg tried to relax, removing her gloves and loosening her coat in the plane's warm interior. "Yeah, well, I guess it does give you some kind of power thrill to think you can do something better than I can."

"I can do a lot of things better than you can. Of course, you can do a few things better than me, so I guess it evens out."

He leaned forward and tapped a gauge, and Meg's eyes snapped to the movement in alarm.

"What?" she demanded. "What's wrong?"

He straightened easily without glancing at her. "You know something, Meg? You've changed since you've been here."

Meg looked again at the gauge, but she could see nothing wrong. She focused instead on his statement, thinking back over the changes that had taken place in her within merely the past twenty-four hours. She agreed softly, "Yes, I think I have. I hope I have."

"I mean," he went on easily, "if those suits in Washington thought you were hardcase before, they're not going to believe you now. You're going to end up in Siberia next time, if not worse."

Meg scowled sharply, deflated. "How can you see in all this fog?" she demanded. "Do you know where you're going?"

"It's not fog, darlin', it's snow. And there's nothing to see for another thirty minutes."

The plane suddenly lurched upward and then sank dramatically, and Meg thought it was his way of getting back at her for criticizing him. But when she saw how quickly he moved to level out the craft she knew that his sense of humor, at least on this occasion, was not responsible for the state of her nerves.

"Just a little turbulence, ladies and gentlemen," he murmured, watching his gauge again. "Nothing to be concerned about."

Meg leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath, and Red glanced at her. "Don't look so worried, slugger. It hurts my feelings, and the last thing you want is a depressed pilot, believe me."

She said tightly, "We should have waited. At least until you had better weather information. God, Red, why didn't you stop me?"

He smiled and patted her knee. "I couldn't, remember?"

She smiled at him hesitantly. "I'm not really worried," she said. She'd meant her words to come out lightly, but the moment she spoke she knew she was telling no more than the truth. "I know I'm with the best pilot in the business. It's just, you know, I have a little trouble letting go."

"Now that you mention it, I have noticed that."

They shared a smile that was simple and good, and for Meg it was one of the best moments she could remember. And then she dropped her gaze. "Can I tell you something?"

"As long as it's not how to drive."

"You were always my hero, Red," she said, looking up at him again. "And I don't mean all that daring bush-pilot lore that you like to surround yourself with. I mean.. .just you. The way you always know the right thing to do and say and you never let anything get by you. Just you. I'm sorry it took me so long to tell you that."

He was silent for a few moments, his face in profile to her as he looked straight ahead at the blur of sky beyond. And then he said quietly, "Funny. I always wanted to tell you the same thing."

A heartbeat passed, perhaps two, and the only sound was the steady hum of the engine, the rush of air over the wings.

And then Red said matter-of-factly, "There's something kind of strange about the people who come here. Maybe you've noticed. They're all stubborn cusses, independent, meaner than grizzlies when they have to be... Maybe it takes that kind of person to get on out here. Maybe way out here in the wilderness is the only place they can get on. I'm that kind of person, Meg. And so are you."

He looked at her. "You'd be miserable in Washington, babe," he said simply. "You don't belong there anymore, if you ever did."

Her heartbeat slowed down, suspended in the moment as she looked into his eyes. She saw the question there, but she wanted to hear him say it; even though she didn't, up until that very moment, know what her answer was going to be, she needed to hear him say it.

The plane suddenly lurched again and it seemed to Meg there was a slight stutter in the engine. Red turned his attention back to the controls and the plane settled back into a slightly rocky, though basically steady altitude before Meg's heartbeat had even caught up with the crisis. Belatedly, her heart started pounding in her chest.

"So," Red said abruptly, his eyes busy on the gauges and dials, "here's the deal. I've got a buddy who’s been trying to talk me into opening up a flight school with him. That doesn't mean I'll be giving up my route—not right away and not ever completely, so you'll still get a chance to bitch about me leaving you alone every once in a while—but most nights I'll be home by dinner and it'll give me something to fall back on in my old age. You know you're not finished with your work up here and you won't be able to get nearly as much done back home—you told me so yourself. So we take a two-week honeymoon in Hawaii, and then give your boss an early Christmas present and tell him you're staying."

Meg's head was swimming. Possibilities leapt at her and dodged her grasping fingers. There was so much to consider and so many details to be worked out, but... "Stay here?" she repeated incredulously. "But I hate it here!"

"You don't know what you hate," he replied impatiently. "That's your trouble. You thought you hated me for six whole months—longer than that, if we get right down to it. But I've got that worked out, too. We both make damn good money, and there's no reason we have to spend every winter ice-locked if we don't want to. Pick a place, any place. I'll build you a cabin."

She felt a little breathless. "But...but I don't know if they'd go along with it back at Carstone. I'd have to talk to them. But I've been thinking for years that what they really need is an expanded testing program, and if I could head it up... And if they say no, who cares? I'm good enough to work for anybody I want.I'm good enough to go independent and sell to the highest bidder...."

"Make up your mind, babe. This is only a thirty-minute flight." And then he muttered, "Maybe shorter than that."

Almost before those words had registered, he had taken hold of her arm and was pulling her out of her seat. "Here, do me a favor for a minute."

And before she knew it he was out of his seat; before she could draw another breath he had pushed her into the pilot's seat and placed her hands on the control wheel. "Here," he said. "Keep your hands on this. Watch the little airplane. Keep it level."

"Red, is this some kind of joke?" she cried, but she knew it wasn't even before she twisted around to look at his face. And then she jerked her head around again, scanning the panel. "What little airplane? Red, what's wrong?"

"Either that bump we took on the ground knocked a hell of a hole in our fuel tank, or I've got a dead gauge. If it's a gauge, I can fix it from here.''

She could hear him scrambling around behind the seat for tools. Desperately she searched the panel again and finally found the artificial horizon with its little airplane, marking the position of the real plane in relation to the ground. Panic filled her throat. "Red, I don't know how—"

"There's never been a machine invented you couldn't operate." His breath was warm on the back of her neck and his voice soothing as he rested his hand briefly on her shoulder. "Pull the wheel toward you to raise the nose, away to lower it. Just keep adjusting to keep it level and go easy. Get her too high and she's gonna stall, and we don't want that, do we?"

Meg swallowed hard and shook her head, her eyes fixed on the artificial horizon. Red dropped to the floor beneath the instrument panel.

"What..." The plane bumped over an air pocket, and the artificial horizon tilted abruptly up; she gasped and pulled up on the wheel, overcompensated and quickly pushed down again. Gradually the horizon leveled out.''What would you have done without me?"

Red's voice sounded muffled beneath her. "Ever hear the expression 'a wing and a prayer'?"

Sweat was beginning to form on her upper lip. "I think you're doing this to punish me."

"Any little chance I get."

The horizon began to tilt again, but this time she was ready. She eased back slowly on the wheel, every muscle in her body straining.

"At least," she managed, when she could get her breath again, "if we go down, we do it together."

"That was always my plan, darlin'."

Meg pressed her lips together and determinedly tried to make her insides as calm as Red sounded. She said, "But...flight school. You always hated that idea. Red—" she dared to take her eyes off the controls just for an instant as she looked down at him "—don't do this for me, it doesn't matter."

"It matters to me." She could see the shadow of his face, part of his torso and his arm as he plied a screwdriver to the underside of the panel. "I only hated the idea because it was yours. Because it made me feel old. Well, let's face it, slugger, I am getting old. We both are, and we've got to think about the future. Kids, maybe. I'd like to spend some time with them, and have a little time to myself where I don't have to prove anything. Maybe that's one of the advantages of getting old—or growing up. You don't have to prove anything anymore."

Meg swallowed back a hot lump in her throat. "Any kid of ours would be a menace to society."

She could hear the grin in his voice. "That's why it would take both of us to keep him under control."

The horizon line tilted alarmingly and she cried, "Red! What's happening?"

"Keep it steady." His voice was low and soothing, but she could hear the undertone of tension there, a kind of breathlessness he fought to disguise.

"What's wrong? What do you see? For God's sake tell me!"

"I can't tell you anything if you don't keep this damn airplane from rolling all over the sky!"

"It's not rolling!" She fought to bring the horizon line steady again, dragging in several deep breaths. "Okay, okay, I've got it. Red, what's happening? Is it the fuel tank?"

He took a moment to reply. "Have we got a deal or not?"

"A deal?" she repeated blankly. Panic was fluttering up inside her and it was all she could do to fight it back. "What are you talking about, a deal? Red, for God's sake-"

"Will you stay?"

It's the fuel tank, she thought. He would have told her if it wasn't, and they were going to die up here, both of them....

She took one long, cabling breath, then another. She flexed her fingers on the control wheel, trying to work out the tension. She said, "A month in Hawaii. A month, and you've got a deal."

"Done."

He sat up, grinning, holding a snippet of blue-and-yellow wire between his fingers. "Loose connection," he said.

Her mouth fell open and her muscles went limp and she didn't know whether to laugh or scream at him. Then he stood up, grabbed her shoulders and solved the dilemma by kissing her hard on the mouth.

"Welcome to my world, babe," he said softly, pushing a strand of hair away from her eyes. Then he grinned. "And get out of my chair."

Red stood off to the side of the hangar area of the Bixby airfield, his hands stuffed into his pockets against the cold, watching Meg supervise the unloading of her generator.

"Watch it, you ape!" she shouted to one of the two men who were maneuvering the machine out of the cargo hold. "This is not a toy! Are you blind? Do I have to paint little arrows on your butts saying This Side Up? Get out of my way!"

She shoved forward, pushing one of the men aside to do the job herself. Red thought he had never seen anything more beautiful in his life than Meg in a temper. Meg giving orders, Meg pushing in where  she didn't belong. And the best part was he had the rest of his life to enjoy it.

"Watch it, for God's sake! Up, I said. Up!" She got the machine safely to the ground and relinquished her hold on it to another assistant. "Is there anybody in this sorry outfit who can turn a wrench?" she demanded, following them across the tarmac toward the hangar. "And where is that doctor who's going back with us? Tell him to get his gear together and be ready to move out in two hours!''

A man stood beside Red, gazing at Meg uneasily. "Who is that woman?"

Red glanced at him. "My wife." Then he grinned. "Bossy, isn't she?"

He walked over to Meg and draped his arm around her shoulders. Together, they walked into the hangar.

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoyed your ride with Meg and Red through the stormy skies of Alaska.  If you liked THE STORMRIDERS, here are some other titles from the land of romance and happy endings you might enjoy:

MATCHMAKER, MATCHMAKER

He was a cowboy looking for a wife.  She was a lady specializing in brides.  They were made for each other...  They just didn't know it yet.

A MAN AROUND THE HOUSE

He made the beds, did the dishes, repaired the roof and managed her finances.  He was the answer to a busy working woman's dreams.  But was he too good to be true?

FOR KEEPS

He's an animal trainer who lives by one rule: never get attached.  She's a social worker who knows all too well the price of getting involved. It may take an entire menagerie to bring them together, but eventually they both must learn that sometimes it's for keeps.

STEALING SAVANNAH

He was a reformed jewel thief now turned security expert and her job depended on his expertise. But could he be trusted not to steal the most valuable jewel of all-- her heart?

CAST ADRIFT

She was a marine biologist on short deadline to find a very important dolphin, with no time to waste on romance.  He was a  sailor who knew there could only be one captain on his ship-- himself.  But two weeks at sea together  could change everything...

UNDER COVER

He was one of the most notorious racketeers on the East Coast, and she was a cop determined to do her job.  But just how far was she willing to go to get her man?

If you enjoy these books, let me know at www.donnaball.net. Meantime, happy reading!

Donna Ball

Also by Donna Ball, in print and e-book editions:

A Year on Ladybug Farm

At Home on Ladybug Farm

Love Letters from Ladybug Farm (October 2010)

***** pre-order now!*****

for every woman who ever had a friend... or a dream

and

The Raine Stockton Dog  Mystery Series

Smoky Mountain Tracks

Rapid Fire

Gun Shy