Reunited In The Snow. Amalie Berlin

and equipment, then returned to his office.

      “Get your boots on and your outdoor suit,” West directed, then pivoted to grab a bag from the wall and headed for the inventory room again, where he’d been all day. “Meet me here in fifteen.”

      Right. Great.

      She looked over to find Jordan hurrying to her side. “Are you sure you’re okay with this? It probably shouldn’t be all three of us, but if you don’t want to make the trek alone with him, you can bow out and I’ll take you up there tomorrow. So you know where it is.”

      The question alone would’ve alarmed Lia back home, but here it just confirmed that she wasn’t pulling off her quiet strength act as well as she’d used to, no matter how easy it was to talk to Jordan again.

      “It’s okay. I said I was after adventure, right?”

      “Yes, but I’m not sure spending time with him means adventure, just…suffering.” Jordan kept her words quiet, and the gentle assertion of support had that tingling returning to Lia’s eyes. She shook her head and gestured to the door, eager to escape before that awful leaking came back. “I need to get my suit. It’ll be fine. I’m not going to let him make me dread any part of my adventure. I’m here to revel. R.E.V.E.L. And climbing a frozen, snowy, almost-mountain is the kind of adventure I can’t have in Portugal. Don’t worry.”

      She silently repeated the words to herself. Don’t worry. Don’t worry because he couldn’t say anything worse than he already had. And that stare of his hadn’t said he wanted to talk to her about anything, just like him hiding out in the storage room all day said he didn’t want to be in her presence any more than she wanted to be in his.

      “I’m going to worry, anyway,” Jordan muttered, still looking uneasy with the concept, but apparently with enough confidence in Lia still to say, “Call me for dinner when you get back. Zeke and I will meet you in the galley.”

      “Okay. Don’t worry,” she repeated. “We’re just going to work. Said everything we needed to last night.”

      “You did?” If possible, Jordan looked more alarmed.

      Suddenly, Lia didn’t want to uphold any masks with her. She could shrug it off, she would’ve before, but she probably couldn’t pull off the unaffected face. Not when she knew that her eyes were still a little red, which might become a chronic condition.

      “I don’t think I can talk about it yet,” she said after a hard pause that made a little line appear between Jordan’s brows.

      Jordan squeezed her hand once and nodded, accepting. “When you’re ready.”

      She had to swallow down another rise of emotion, but glanced toward the door. “If I’m late, he won’t wait for me.”

      God knew West found it too easy to leave her behind.