Be Mine at Christmas(27)
Author: Brenda Novak

At least the physical nature of the work kept them somewhat warm. They covered their hands with the sleeves of their coats and took turns using a metal piece from the plane to scoop snow.

Adelaide had fallen silent almost as soon as they’d begun. Maxim knew her legs and feet must be even more frozen than his, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Not until they had some way to block the wind.

“I wish we had supplies to build a fire,” he said. It was a lame comment, but he wanted her to interact with him.

His efforts to draw her out didn’t help. She said nothing. He only knew she was still alive because he had to let her take over with the shovel every now and then or he’d begin to sweat, heightening the danger of acute hypothermia. She needed to keep moving more than he did, anyway.

She attempted to further their progress, but her movements grew slower and more uncoordinated as the minutes ticked by. He was losing her.

The panic that struck at that thought didn’t correspond to the way he felt about her in regular life. In the campaign, he’d forced himself to stick to the issues, but it hadn’t been easy in the midst of her more personal attacks. Especially because her husband had done some unconscionable things and no one knew it, except Maxim and Harvey Sillinger, his campaign manager. Harvey was angrier than a junkyard dog that he wasn’t allowed to expose what he’d learned. But Mark Fairfax was dead. The only person who’d be hurt by his duplicity was the wife he’d left behind.

Destroy the squeaky-clean image of her late husband, and you wipe away her power. This is a fight, man! Go for the jugular! She’s running on the popularity of a man who pretended to have integrity but didn’t. Harvey made this argument almost daily. Maybe they could remove the threat Adelaide posed by leaking a few carefully chosen details. But it would also destroy the positive memories she had of her husband, and Maxim refused to stoop that low. He knew what Mark’s death had cost her. At the time of his funeral, he and the Fairfaxes had been political allies.

“Keep digging!” he snapped, hoping impatience would have some effect since persuasion hadn’t. “Now! Hurry up!”

The added intensity seemed to work. At first. After the next few scoops, however, she grew completely unresponsive no matter how much he shouted.

“Shit!” he yelled to no one in particular. They were out of time.

Maxim gauged the depth of the hole. It wasn’t as deep as he would’ve liked. They couldn’t be too close to the walls or ceiling, or the snow would melt, and he couldn’t have that. They had to stay as dry as possible. But staying dry would be a moot point if Adelaide couldn’t make it long enough to take advantage of the shelter.

Stripping off his raincoat to cover the floor of the cave, he set their makeshift shovel near the opening so they could dig their way out if they got blocked in. He was supposed to leave a hole, but the metal plug was the best he could do under the circumstances.

If Adelaide had considered the possibility of being buried alive, she didn’t mention it. She backed inside when he told her to and didn’t resist when he began stripping off her clothes.

“Stay with me.” Going by touch alone, he fumbled with the buttons on her suit. “I’ll get you warm. Do you understand? Are you aware of what I’m telling you? Hang on.”

The shallowness of her breathing alarmed him. He could barely feel it against his cheek. And what he felt wasn’t as warm as it should’ve been. He was afraid her core temperature was dropping. He’d never felt a woman’s skin that was so cold, so deathlike. Even Chloe had been warm when he’d found her….

“The outside temperature can fall to seventy below in a storm like this.” He hoped his voice would give her something to concentrate on in the dark. “This cave should make it a whole hundred degrees warmer.” He carefully removed her wet skirt. “That sounds practically tropical, doesn’t it?”

Shivering, she held her arms close to her almost naked body. “N-no.”

It wasn’t the answer he’d been hoping to hear, but it proved she was coherent. “Talk to me, Adelaide. You can’t go to sleep. You know that, right?”

He didn’t think she’d respond again, but more words came…after a long delay. “That’s all I w-want to d-do.”

“If you sleep, you die,” he said. “And we’ve got to get back home. We have an election battle to wage—against each other.”

“S-somehow…the n-nomination doesn’t…m-matter…anymore.”

“I’ll remember you said that once we’re both safe and warm.”

Thanks to the narrow confines of the cave, Maxim had trouble taking off his suit jacket. His button-down shirt wasn’t any easier because his numb fingers couldn’t seem to loosen his tie.

“W-what…are you…doing?” she asked.

“Only what I have to.”

At last, he untied the damn knot. He wrapped his tie around his wrist, in case he saw some use for it later, and started to peel off the rubber boots that protected his Italian leather shoes.

“M-Maxim?”

“I think that’s the first time you’ve ever used my first name,” he said.

“Are you g-getting naked?”

“Yes. As fast as I can.”

“Okay.”

He laughed. “Somehow that wasn’t what I expected you to say.”

He took off her sensible pumps, which seemed anything but sensible in this situation, and slipped his socks, which were dry thanks to the overboots, on her feet. Then he put the overboots on over them, to insure they stayed dry, and pulled his leather shoes back on his own feet.

“Does that help?” he asked.

She didn’t answer.

“Adelaide?”

“I’m f-fine. We’ll be fine.”

“That’s the attitude,” he said, but he sensed it was more of a capitulation than anything else. She didn’t want him to bother her anymore. She preferred to be left alone. So she could drift into unconsciousness?

“You can’t sleep,” he reminded her and wondered what to do about her bra. Leave it on or take it off? It didn’t seem wet, but if he was going to die, there were worse ways to go than pressed against the soft body of a woman.

In the end, he couldn’t justify taking that liberty.

Leaving the bra on, he drew her into his arms.

“Oh! That feels g-good.”

Her comment made him wish he’d removed her bra. Then it would’ve felt that much better. Having her even partially undressed was enough to bring his libido roaring to life. It’d been too damn long since he’d been with a woman, and he wanted to live while he could. What else would they do for the next several hours? They couldn’t sleep—and nothing else had as much potential for distraction.