Page 72 of Ruining His Smirk

For the first time since I had met him, nothing stood between us.

19

Nate

Garrett’s mouth was still against mine when the display nearest my shoulder flashed. A small amber notification pulsed at the edge of my vision, appearing and disappearing in the darkness. I ignored it for another second, reluctant to surrender the warmth of his mouth, the extraordinary peace that had come over me.

The light flashed again. I drew back just far enough to breathe.

“The probe has finished its first round of data collection.”

Garrett’s hand slipped from my hair and settled against the back of my neck, his thumb resting against the sensitive place below my ear.

“Okay.”

I turned toward the navigation panel and reached for the auxiliary display docked beside it. The unit was thin and rectangular, roughly the size of an electronic reader. Iunsnapped it, bringing it closer to our faces. My lips still tingled where his had been.

“Let’s see if my skeleton is okay.”

The terrifying thought that it had been scattered or, worse, crushed besieged me. What if the iceberg had fallen on it and it was back to being buried under tons of ice?

I remained seated across his thighs as he leaned over my shoulder so we could both study the data on the screen held in my hands. His chest curved around my back, enclosing me from behind.

I clicked on the first short video file and we watched the probe moving across the seafloor. It entered the little crevasse below the iceberg overhang and I could immediately see the displacement wave had caused some changes.

I opened another video. A skeletal shape emerged briefly at the edge of the light, one pale curve among the darker contours, before the probe corrected its angle and showed a full view of the bones. My eyes were glued to the screen as I held my breath. The force of the displacement was enough to rock our ship and send me overboard, but had it caused an equal disturbance here?

Garrett muttered something too low for me to distinguish.

“Something wrong?” I asked, anxiety pooling in my stomach.

“Just talkin’ to myself.”

“I want you to talk to me. I’m nervous, Garrett.”

He turned his head and his lips touched my temple. The kiss was unhurried, more affectionate than teasing, but it lingered long enough for warmth to spread through me. My anxiety eased and I felt like I could breathe again.

“Sorry, darlin’. Give me a few minutes.”

We continued looking through the videos and images. The more I watched, the better I felt. There had been some shifting for sure, but the skeleton hadn’t been impacted. The iceberg’soverhang seemed to have sheltered it. After the last set of images, I relaxed.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“It looks like I need to change some of my calculations. She has shifted a bit.”

“Is that bad?”

“No.” He kissed my hair. “Can I see?”

“Sure.” I let him hold the screen. He opened the final set of still photographs and spent several minutes moving backward and forward through them. He enlarged the same section of rock from two different angles, compared it with a wider video pass, and returned to an overhead image of the crevasse.

“Can your probe be rerouted to come along here?” Garrett’s finger traced a line beside the edge of the opening. “I want another pass from this direction.” He tapped a dark section near the base where a projection of rock concealed the area behind it. “And more coverage here.”

“Yes. I can do that. I need to enter a new set of coordinates and adjust the camera orientation. It should only take a few minutes.”

He passed the display back to me. I entered the additional imaging points, selected a slower speed for the section nearest the projection, and ran the complete route check.

Outside the transparent walls of our submersible, the probe hovered while the final command loaded, rotated in place, and then began moving along its revised heading.