Edwina and the Seven Snowed-in Scientists (11 page)

into the Antarctic wind.

* * * *

Edwina watched two of the brothers hightail it out of the cabin

like their asses were on fire. She didn’t quite understand how talk of their home had ended an otherwise pleasant dinner. Granted, Kieran

was busy brooding over something, and Jake kept watching her like

he expected her head to spin around several times, but it was Gary’s

overbearing attitude that was starting to irritate her.

Geez, how did she end up in the middle of four guys with no sense

of fun?

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75

“What?” she asked irritably as four sets of eyes watched her

closely. When none of them answered she answered for them. “This is

about the sex, right? You’re pissed at me for fucking you?”

“You could put it that way,” Kieran ground out through tightly

clenched teeth.

“I don’t get it,” she said angrily. “We had fun. What does that

have to do with me meeting your family and freezing my ass off?”

Having sexy fun with Kieran and Jake didn’t mean she belonged to

them—no matter what Gary had to say.

“Just fun?” Gary said thoughtfully. “So you didn’t feel any

attraction? They were just a convenient way to pass the time? A way

to keep warm?” She swallowed and nodded, hoping like hell that

she’d managed to hide the wince Gary’s words caused. Edwina didn’t

have casual flings, but what else could this be? As soon as the

summer rolled around she was out of here, never to return, so even if she did have feelings for the brothers, nothing could come of it

anyway.

She heard a grunt of annoyance come from Kieran but decided to

ignore it. If she had to look into his eyes, she might just blurt the truth—that what they’d done together had been life changing but

could never be more than a brief fling. It didn’t help that she’d felt a pang of loss when Evan and Simon had left, or the fact that she

missed Calvin despite her only real contact with him having been in

yeti form as he’d hidden her in the snow and later carried her to

safety. None of it made sense. One woman should not be attracted to

so many men, and so she chose to think of it as fun. She had eight

months with seven gorgeous guys, why shouldn’t she act on her

attraction to them? When she got back to the real world, she’d have

pleasant memories of Antarctica.

“I’m going to bed,” Kieran said as he pushed away from the table.

He managed to leave the room without making eye contact with

Edwina, and for some reason that irritated the hell out of her.

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Jake was a little more polite. He leaned over, pressed a kiss to her

lips, and whispered, “Good night.” She nodded, hurt by their

withdrawal, despite it being exactly what she wanted.

Brian seemed to be waiting for her to say something. She had no

idea what.

Gary, as usual, appeared to be quite pleased with the way things

had worked out. He stepped over to Edwina, titled her chin up with

his hand and gave her a kiss that would’ve curled her toes if she’d

been a cartoon character. Holy moly, the man could kiss.

“Good night,” he said with a brilliant smile. “You two have fun.”

Before she could ask him what the hell he meant, the infuriating man

had slid his coat on and stepped out the door. She shivered at the cold breeze that whistled into the room.

“Are you warm enough?” Brian asked as he reached for a thick

wool blanket that hung over the back of a chair. He didn’t wait for an answer, just wrapped the material around her and then sat back in his chair.

She snuggled into the blanket, her brain still trying to interpret the actual meaning to Gary’s words. “Does he expect me to have sex with

you? Is that what he meant by ‘have fun’?”

“Pretty much,” Brian said with a neutral expression.

“Seriously?” Her voice had risen several octaves, and she was

pretty sure she’d have set the neighborhood dogs howling if there had been any nearby. As it was, Brian winced, and she started wondering

just how good a yeti’s hearing actually was.

“Did Kieran or Jake tell you anything about yeti mating?”

She shook her head, pulling the blanket tighter around her. Brian

seemed like a nice guy, but since she’d only just met him, she didn’t want to send out the wrong signals. Although, considering Gary’s

“suggestion,” the wrong signals had already been sent.

“So, other than the fact that we turn into big, white, furry yetis,

you have no idea what the hell is going on.” She nodded again,

pleased to have someone agree with her assessment of the situation.

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77

She was beginning to wonder just how many details Kieran and Jake

had left out. They’d said their brothers would want to sleep with her too, she hadn’t realized it would be assumed that she would agree.

“Yeti social interaction is probably very different to what you’re

used to.”

“No shit!” she said without humor. He smiled kindly but frowned

when she shivered.

“Are you still cold?”

“Yes. No. Oh, fuck, I don’t know. I’m sitting here in the middle of

nowhere, and I’ve just been informed that I get to be the town bike everyone gets to ride. So, no, I’m not cold. I’m pissed off, but I’m not fucking cold.” She could feel adrenaline burn through her system, and she welcomed the heat it brought with it, but she couldn’t quite hide the way her teeth were chattering.

“It’s not like that,” Brian said as he turned her chair around so

they sat face to face. He touched her cheek with a warm hand, and she turned her face into his heat, struggling to hold onto her anger. She didn’t want Brian to be a nice guy. She wanted him to be an asshole,

so she could yell at him.

“Yetis aren’t like humans. We don’t find partners, we live in

family groups.” She shook her head, not really understanding what he

meant. He smiled and added, “All of the brothers mate with one

woman.”

“Why?” It seemed a pertinent point, but Brian seemed surprised.

He shrugged. “Tradition, I guess. I’m not really sure, but yeti

brothers always fall for the same woman in the end.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. She was beginning to

wonder if he was playing with her, but he seemed sincere. “What

about all the yeti girls? Wouldn’t that leave most of them single?”

Brian smiled and sat back in his chair. “That’s the thing. There are

no female yetis. At least there haven’t been any born in the last four or five generations.”

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“So where do baby yetis come from?” Did she
really
just ask that question?

“We mate with human women.”

“Well, there’s a romantic word—
not
. Animals mate. People

don’t.”

“Ah, yes, people just fuck. Isn’t that what you said?” Edwina

cringed at Brian’s succinct statement. That was pretty much what

she’d said. Brian had no way of knowing she didn’t really mean it.

“Yeah, well, it still means I get a choice.”

“Agreed,” Brian said easily. “Would you like to watch a DVD?”

“Um…sure,” she said, trying to catch up with the abrupt change

of subject. Or was it? “Movie about what?”

Brian laughed as if he’d read her mind. “No, sweets, we don’t

have a propaganda video on why you should mate with yetis.” She

laughed a little too loudly, trying to hide the fact that she’d been thinking exactly that. Brian gave her a knowing smile but continued

talking. “I have a few action flicks, a couple of comedies, a

documentary on the migration and mating habits of geese—”

“Hell, no,” she said to the geese video. “Mayhem and destruction

sounds good.”

Brian walked over to the desk in the corner, grabbed a laptop, and

shuffled through a handful of DVDs. He set it up on the coffee table

and then offered her a hand so that she could stand up without losing her blanket. She glanced at all the unwashed dishes that had been left on the table.

“I’ll get to them later,” Brian said as he guided her over to the

sofa. “I’ve got a couple of days free, so it’ll give me something to do tomorrow.” It was kind of nice to realize he didn’t expect her to do them. Too many men she’d known had just assumed she would do the

“women’s work” without complaint. It didn’t matter that she was

college educated or an experienced helicopter pilot. When it came to

domestic matters, most men simply assumed she would be happy to

do them. At least the yetis didn’t seem to have the same hang-ups.

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79

She tried to smother the giggle as she mentally gave them a tick on

the plus side.

Brian looked over at her, smiled, but didn’t comment. He set the

DVD going, stretched out across the sofa, and patted the space in

front of him. Edwina eyed him warily but eventually decided it

wouldn’t hurt to lie down in front of him. She also kind of hoped to

absorb some of the warmth that Brian’s yeti blood managed to

produce.

“Shouldn’t you save the batteries?” she asked, concerned that her

watching a DVD might affect their work later on.

“We charge the batteries using solar power so we may as well

enjoy while the sun shines. In a few more weeks we’ll need to be

more careful, but for now we’ve got some spare power.”

She nodded her head and snuggled into Brian’s embrace. He

rested an arm over her waist but didn’t try to pull her closer or try anything she expected one would try if trying to seduce her. Edwina

made it about halfway through the movie before she fell asleep.

* * * *

Brian noticed Edwina relax but didn’t realize she was asleep until

she rolled over and pressed her face against his chest. Her cheeks

were cold, so Brian pulled her closer in the hopes of warming her up.

She was an unusual woman. All of the brothers were attracted to

her. It was something none of them had thought would ever happen—

despite their heritage—yet here they were, all falling for the same

woman. Except that said woman hated the cold and wouldn’t even

consider meeting their family let alone becoming part of it.

Brian could still smell his brothers’ scents clinging to her, and the primitive part of his psyche growled at him to make her his as well.

But the human side knew you couldn’t force someone to love you,

and despite what she’d said about “fun,” he really didn’t want to have sex with a woman who didn’t feel the same way as he did. A brief

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affair or happy fling was fine when both partners had no expectations.

But with Edwina, at least for Brian, things were different.

She snuffled softly and started to snore, and he smiled at the

reminder that she wasn’t perfect. She was real and opinionated and

sassy, and she challenged them at every turn. Life with Edwina would

never be dull.

His thoughts drifted to an unlikely future, but he couldn’t help but

picture Edwina swollen with their child. As brothers all involved with one woman, they wouldn’t know who’d actually fathered the child,

but he knew their son would be loved wholeheartedly by all of them.

And his parents would be thrilled to finally have a grandchild.

“Asleep?” Kieran asked from the doorway.

Brian glanced briefly at his brother, nodded once and then went

back to watching the woman snoring softly in his arms. “She’s the

one, isn’t she?”

Kieran stepped into the room, switched off the movie that was all

but forgotten, and then sat down on the coffee table where he could

see Edwina’s face. “Yes, she is,” he answered quietly. “But I’m not

sure we’ll ever be able to convince her of that.”

“Maybe we need to try harder,” Brian said as a plan began to form

in the back of his brain. “We have eight months to convince her that

she belongs with us.”

Kieran nodded but didn’t look very hopeful. “Either way, win or

lose, I suspect it is going to be a very long eight months.” Brian went back to watching Edwina’s face. Considering some of her earlier

comments, they were going to need every one of those eight long

months.

* * * *

Edwina woke to the smell of frying bacon. She sniffed

appreciatively and only then realized that her head was resting on

someone’s thigh. She wriggled until she could see the owner of the

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81

muscular appendage but frowned when she realized it belonged to

Kieran.

“Relax,” he ordered as she tried to sit up. “I’m not going to attack.

You just looked uncomfortable the way you were laying.”

She wanted to melt at his bossy tone, and that just pissed her off

even more. “Yeah, well next time grab me a pillow.” She managed to

wriggle into a sitting position despite his halfhearted attempt to hold her down.

He watched her for a moment, as if choosing his words carefully,

but then something seemed to snap and he growled, “How about next

time I just spank your ass instead.” He stood up and stalked from the room without looking back. Edwina closed her eyes and thanked

whatever deity was looking out for her. If Kieran had gotten one good look at her, one small inkling on how much the idea of being spanked