As much as it may have hurt, she figured it was just as well. It left her all the more determined to complete her assignment as soon as possible and return home. The first day back she had made it down the mountain as the snow stopped. It had taken a while and she had gotten very little done beyond digging her tent out and restoring a work area and the fire pit, but she decided that some progress was better than none. In the days since, she had barely felt the snow or the bite of the cold. And she had done her damndest not to allow thoughts of Captain Elaine Thomas to enter her mind. She focused solely on her research, her nightly reports and her pregnant sister that she needed to get home to. While she instinctively knew that if Elaine would let her in she would be worth it, she couldn’t dwell on that because it seemed that the good captain didn’t want the walls around her shattered. It didn’t matter that the kisses they shared were amazing. She knew that Elaine wasn’t immune to them.
