Chapter 12
CHAPTER
TWELVE
A fter Clay and I returned from our stroll under the stars and cleaned up from dinner, we said an awkward good night and settled into our respective tents. Clay was only a few feet to the left of me, but no shuffling or unsettled movements came from his direction. Just silence. But there were other noises...
The longer I lay in my tent, the more certain I became that we were not alone in his yard. For one thing, the crickets wouldn’t shut up. Their chorus sounded like tiny tambourines played by tiny insect hands.
After straining my ears against their sound for a while, they faded into the background. A kind of forest white noise. Then I heard other things. The whisper of wind tickling the pine needles on the trees. The crunch of a branch brushing against its neighbor in the breeze.
And maybe the footfall of an animal. A small animal like a ground squirrel?
No, definitely something bigger. With bigger feet. And correspondingly bigger teeth. A bear?
I’d spent so much time talking about bears and worrying about bears that my mind was probably playing tricks on me, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Clay?” I called out futilely. I listened some more, trying to talk myself down. I was safe in my tent. It was all fine.
Except that I was pretty sure I heard a growl.
“Clay?” I called again, this time louder. And more panicked.
Within moments, he was pulling open the zipper on my tent and peeking his head in. “You okay?”
“Get in here!” I insisted, waving my hands, unzipping my sleeping bag a few inches so I could scoot toward the back of the tent to make room. He obliged, crawling inside on his knees before turning around and carefully removing his shoes to keep my tent clean.
“What? What’s wrong?”
I held up a hand to silence him. “Just listen,” I whispered. We sat in silence as my eyes darted around, following the hint of a noise here or there. But I heard nothing like the scratching branches and footfalls I’d heard earlier. “There’s something out there. At least, there was...”
Straining to hear any evidence of an animal, I tipped my head and leaned to the side, not realizing until I heard the soft timbre of Clay’s voice that his lips were right next to my ear. “I think you have an active imagination.”
I could do nothing to stop the shiver from rolling down my spine from the soft caress of his breath against my skin. “I—I’m pretty sure I heard an animal.” Knowing how close I’d leaned toward Clay, I should have pulled back, but I couldn’t move.
We sat in the silence for another thirty seconds. The only thing I could hear was my heart thumping in my chest.
“Do you still hear it?” Clay asked.
I shook my head, still listening.
“It was probably a bird or a ground squirrel. Nothing to worry about.” He gestured for me to lie back down, and I tried to zip the sleeping bag shut, but a large tuft of nylon was stuck in the zipper. Yanking it in both directions, I tried and failed to get it to budge.
“Ugh, it’s stuck. Don’t worry, I’ll deal with it. I’m good.”
Sitting in the tent with Clay’s gaze bearing down on me was unnerving. He shook his head. “No, I don’t want you to freeze. Do you mind?” He moved right next to me. The space suddenly felt much smaller and a hundred times more intimate.
The roof of the tent only hung about three feet high, so all movement inside had to be done on all fours. Clay sat cross-legged, his knees wedged up against mine, and I scrambled out of the sleeping bag in order to hand him the stuck zipper.
His fingers grazed my hand as he took the lumpy sleeping bag from me. I felt my skin heat where it touched his, and the warmth spread down my arm, quickening my pulse and sending an involuntary shudder through me.
Clay tugged at the zipper but it refused to give way. “Fabric’s stuck.” He pointed at where a chunk of red nylon was intertwined with the zipper, jamming it in both directions.
“See, it wasn’t just me,” I said, waiting until he looked away to mop a rivulet of sweat from my forehead. The air in the tent was heating up with his presence like someone had turned a thermostat to a hundred. I contemplated crawling outside and letting him work on it while I sat in the cool, dark yard. Leave it to Clay Meadows to make me want to be alone in the wilderness.
“It’s really jammed, but I don’t want to tear the fabric.” He wrestled the metal tab up and down carefully. “Hang on, I just need to...” I watched his forearms flex under his shirt. Easily a hundred fifty degrees in here now. My eyes stayed riveted to his hands. His strong fingers applied pressure to the zipper, but it wouldn’t give. A part of me hoped it stayed stuck for hours. The muscles on display in these close quarters were hotter than an August beach vacation.
“Can I help?” I asked, trying to repurpose myself from simply sitting there and gawking.
Clay grunted as he tried once more to strong-arm the zipper into submission. It was giving me ideas. Filthy, delicious ideas about him strong-arming me into submission.
“Here. I think I need to slide it down before I can get it back up.” My mind was busy having sex with his words when I realized he was holding the sleeping bag out to me.
“Oh. Right. Okay.” Grasping the fabric, I watched Clay drag the zipper down a couple millimeters and I quickly pulled the fabric free.
“Yes! Just like that.” His voice strained as he tugged harder at the zipper, our hands touching as he repositioned his to get a better grip. Moving so he was sitting directly in front of me, Clay knelt down and wrapped his fingers around my hand to position it, so he had better leverage on the zipper.
Surprised by the instant spark of electricity, my eyes shot to his. His equally startled look told me I wasn’t alone in feeling something.
But there was no time for examining feelings because Clay was putting all his muscle on the zipper and I was pulling equally hard on the stuck piece of fabric. Slowly, the zipper began freeing itself and I tugged even harder. So hard, in fact, that just as Clay finally yanked the zipper all the way down, my leverage on the fabric toppled me over, where I landed indelicately on my side, face bumping on the dark blue denim stretched across Clay’s thigh.
“Oh shit,” I spat, scrambling to right myself as Clay dove forward to help me back into a sitting position. Now I was upright, one hand on Clay’s firm thigh, which I very much did not want to stop touching.
But I had to.
Tearing my hand away like his thigh was ablaze, I tried to make some space between us, but in the tiny confines of the tent, I only succeeded at smashing my head against the tent wall, which immediately created enough static electricity to stand my hair on end.
Silently, Clay reached up and tamed the crazy strands, smoothing them down. Then his hand returned to where it had been a moment before, and I realized that both of Clay’s hands lay atop my shoulders. He didn’t seem to be in any rush to remove them either.
When I dared to meet Clay’s eyes, I saw them laced with the hazy recognition that we could close the gap between us with so little effort. And that maybe we should.
I watched the Adam’s apple bob in Clay’s throat as he swallowed hard and searched my face, his eyes moving from mine down to my lips. Unconsciously, my tongue swept along my bottom lip to moisten it. He leaned a tiny bit closer as I sat frozen, taking in the campfire smell of him and the tiny yellow flecks in his eyes that I’d never noticed before.
Because I’d never been this close to him before.
I’d always been slightly intimidated by his chiseled good looks, but after spending the past few hours with him cooking and looking at the stars, I’d never see him that way again. Not that he wasn’t still intimidatingly good-looking. But he was so much more.
His eyes searched mine, asking for permission. Agreement that I wanted him to kiss me. And I did, but...
“A date! I have a date,” I blurted right before backing away as far as I could. I felt the canvas of the tent pull again at my hair, but it didn’t matter. Actually, it was good. If I looked ridiculous, Clay would lose that gleam in his eye.
He pulled back, startled.
“Oh. Okay.” His brow creased and he rubbed his hands on his pants. “You mean right now?”
Befuddled by my own admission and the yarn I was about to spin, I initially nodded. “Yes.” Then I realized. “I mean, no. Just...soon. I have a date. With a boring-but-stable architect with no pets. Doesn’t like animals, actually. Or reading. He lives in Knoxville.” I recited these details for no sensible reason, except for the fact that I’d memorized them, all the while detesting the idea of a man who disliked animals and reading.
I would not go on the date, despite my beer-induced softening the other night. Architect Louie sounded as wrong for me as wrong got. But he was the pretext I needed to extinguish the budding romantic moment.
“Okay, well...good?” Of course I’d confused Clay with my flowing fountain of information, but I was an unstoppable train, freed from my braking system on a downhill track.
“It’s good. So very good,” I confirmed, swaying around in celebration of my impending date with the boring guy.
Scooting back, Clay crossed his arms and watched me. His initial look of confusion morphed into one of amusement, which made me realize how ridiculous I looked. My movements pulled to a stop.
“Anyhow, just thought you should know.”
He nodded slowly, keeping his distance and his guarded stare. “And now I do.”
“Right, so...” What was I doing? I was following the script that seemed to make sense when I thought I needed a list of reasons not to kiss Clay Meadows, but now I couldn’t remember a single one. “I think I can get this zipped up now. Thank you so much for helping with it.”
Clay had already backed up and flipped around so he was sitting in the tent opening, lacing up his shoes. “Of course. Bound to be a kid or two with a stuck zipper. More good training for the retreat.”
“For sure.” I had my back pressed against the far wall of the tent, the almost-kiss long forgotten.
Except . . .
Hours later, once I heard only silence again in the tent next to mine, I found myself straining to hear any sign that he was still awake. Wondering if he was thinking about me.
Because sure as hell, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. More than once I debated calling him back over, but each time, I talked myself down.
Over and over again for several hours until I finally drifted off to sleep.