The wind started to howl just after noon.

You’d been warned—Antarctica doesn’t play fair—but nothing in your conservation biology textbooks prepared you for the kind of cold that gnawed straight through thermals and base layers, or how fast the weather turned when the continent decided she was done playing nice.

Your job had been simple: spend a week collecting ice core samples near the coastal ridge to monitor microplastic levels. Your professor had pulled strings to get you onto this research trip, and you’d been ecstatic… until the storm warning came in too late and your transport back to the station was grounded. That’s how you found yourself hunkered down in an insulated emergency shelter, stuck with the man assigned to keep you alive.

Jerry Shepard.

Wilderness guide. Dog sled expert. Human heater with a five o’clock shadow and eyes like a glacier’s edge—icy blue but somehow still warm.

You’d barely spoken when he first picked you up. He was all business: weather reports, route briefings, safety drills. But now, crammed together in the small bunker, things felt different. Less formal. The kind of quiet that demanded conversation if only to ignore the wind screaming against the walls like a banshee.

You were sitting cross-legged, clutching a cup of instant cocoa with frozen fingers, watching him roll up a sleeping bag near the heater.

“I’m not gonna freeze to death, right?” you asked, half-joking, your voice shaking more from nerves than the cold.

He looked over his shoulder, a flicker of a smile playing on his face. “Not on my watch.”

You swallowed hard. Of course he’d say that with a straight face. Jerry had the kind of calm you imagined special forces operatives had—like even if the ice cracked open and swallowed the shelter whole, he’d figure it out. Probably with duct tape and a snow shovel.

You tried to focus on your notebook, still half-full with field data, but the words blurred together.

“You ever get used to this?” you asked, nodding toward the rattling walls and white void beyond.

Jerry leaned back against his duffel, arms crossed. “The cold? Yeah. The quiet? Never. Makes you think too much.”

You glanced over at him. “And what do you think about?”

He hesitated, then shrugged. “Dogs. Home. Sometimes what I’d be doing if I’d stuck with college instead of dropping out.”

That caught your interest. “You were in school?”

“For about six months.” He smirked. “Turns out I liked snow more than sociology.”

You laughed. “Your loss. You could’ve been miserable in a heated lecture hall instead of freezing your ass off with me.”

“Hey,” he said with a wink. “Not miserable.”

The bunker was suddenly too warm, or maybe that was just him looking at you like that—half amused, half intrigued, all charm despite his rough edges.

Hours passed. The storm didn’t let up, but Jerry made sure the dogs were safe, checked the generator, kept the place running like he’d done it a thousand times. You watched him move, his hands sure, his expression relaxed. It was hard not to admire the way he handled the chaos with such quiet grace.

By nightfall, the heater hummed low, the shelter dim except for the battery lamp between you. You sat shoulder to shoulder, sharing a pack of freeze-dried pasta that somehow tasted better than anything you’d had in weeks.

Jerry nudged your elbow. “You’re a good scientist. Smart. You ask the right questions.”

You blinked at him, caught off guard. “Thanks. That means a lot… coming from a dropout.”

He chuckled, deep and soft. “Touché.”

The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. Just… charged. You tried to ignore the way his thigh brushed yours when he shifted or the warmth that radiated off him in waves.

Then, quietly, he said, “You scared?”