Chapter 8 #3
“Oh, wait!” Camellia vanished under the covers entirely. When she came out, she handed him his clothes, which had been a neatly folded stack and now were a wadded-up bundle. “I grabbed them when I got up to pee,” she said. “Figured they’d be nice and warm to put on.”
He must have slept through that. It worried him that he didn’t remember.
He took the bundle from her, and then she vanished beneath the sleeping bags again. “Go ahead and dress,” she called, her voice muffled. “I won’t peek.”
He got dressed, and she was right, the clothes were much warmer than they’d have been had they sat out in the tent all night.
When she popped out from the sleeping bags again, she came all the way out, wearing fresh jeans and a T-shirt with an unzipped hoodie over it.
She sat on top of their sleeping bags and pulled on a pair of socks, then her hiking boots.
And then she said, “So? Was that as hard for you as it was for me?”
He pretended not to understand what she was getting at, because he wasn’t sure he did. He knew what he thought she meant, but that had to be wrong.
“What do you mean?” he asked, pulling on a jacket and moving the grocery bags off to one side of the tent. “Is the coffee in here?” He knelt and dug until he found a pound of ground roast.
She hadn’t replied, so he glanced her way to find her sitting there looking at him oddly. She wore a slight frown and had her head tilted to one side. But she didn’t say anything.
“You think there are still coals in the fire?” he asked.
“Huh,” she said. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
She shrugged. “The fire’ll be dead, but the little two-burner cooktop is out there, and we hooked up a fresh tank of propane, so go for it.”
“Cool.” He grabbed the coffeepot, which was a blue metal percolator with white spots.
His mom’s kitchen had a shiny silver percolator that plugged in, and he figured this couldn’t be much different.
He headed outside, uneasy. Clearly Camellia had wanted to talk about…
what? Their kissing yesterday and then sleeping together without letting anything happen, he guessed.
And if she thought for one second that had been harder for her than it had been for him, then she didn’t know much about the male anatomy.
He poured water from a jug into the coffeepot, guessed at the amount of grounds to put into the basket, popped on the lid, and set it on the burner. Easy. He figured he’d let it brew until the color looked right in the clear glass bubble on top. The one at home timed itself.
Inside the tent, Camellia was moving around doing whatever women did.
He reviewed her question. Had it been hard?
Yeah, it had been hard all night, and he’d barely slept.
And he liked her more every minute he spent with her, and he’d told her he had no interest in getting involved, and that was the only reason she’d trusted him.
She trusted him.
And she had a stalker ex that made trusting difficult. He was not going to betray that.
She’d only agreed to come with him because he’d assured her sex was the last thing on his mind. If she woke up with a log poking her in the thigh, he figured she’d hightail it home and leave him on his own.
And he just wasn’t ready to say goodbye to her.
So, he did the only thing he could think of that was guaranteed not to send her into retreat. He made coffee, sat in his stubby camp chair to watch it brew, and kept his thoughts to himself.
Camellia emerged from the tent just as the percolator got to bubbling a light caramel color. She’d zipped up her jacket and pulled up its hood. “Five more minutes,” she said with a nod at the coffeepot. “Here.”
She handed him a jumbo-sized granola bar and an orange.
“Breakfast of champions,” he said. “Thanks.”
“Hm.” She sat in her chair and began peeling her fruit.
He opened his granola bar and figured he didn’t have to talk and risk screwing this up as long as he was eating, so he took his time and chewed slowly.
She said, “There were clues in that passage from your mom’s journal. The day she found Sage’s shack. I went back through it and made some notes.”
Her voice was a little lower than usual, he thought, and the cadence of her words didn’t have their usual lilt or underlying smile. “When did you have time to do that?”
“I stayed up a while. When I got up to pee.”
“How did I not—?” And suddenly his blood went cold. “Did I do something out of line? I swear, if I did, I wasn’t awake. It wasn’t on purpose.”
She was just looking at him, expressionless, unblinking.
“Hell,” he said. “Camellia, I’m—”
“You didn’t lay a finger on me, Wolf. Relax. Your honor is intact.” Then she hitched her chin and said, “Coffee’s done.”
“I got it.” He turned off the burner and reached for the two tin cups that matched the pot.
“Might as well fill the travel mugs,” Camellia said. “We can get an early start.”
Yeah, she was pissed. And he had no idea why. He filled their travel mugs, put on the caps, and handed hers over. “You’re good at this detective stuff,” he said. “I didn’t notice any clues in the journal.”
She didn’t say anything, just tilted her head to acknowledge she’d heard him and set off walking.