Chapter 22
They hadn’t managed to kill the fish. At least that was another small thing they could agree on.
Teijo’s instructions had said something about bashing the poor thing on the ground before gutting and flame-grilling it. They’d looked the fish in the eyes before eyeballing each other, taking the requisite photo, and then unhooking it and placing it gently back into the water.
Night had fallen quickly after that, and suddenly it seemed too late to try and hike her way out of there.
As much as sharing a tent with Devan would be as irritating as a bad case of ringworm, it was mildly preferable to getting murdered in the deep dark woods.
There was still no phone reception, and she was rubbish without Google Maps.
Though now they were huddled around the campfire getting hungry, having released their last chance of dinner back into the lake.
Raiding the remnants of their backpacks had only unearthed a packet of stale wine gums and some dry old crackers.
‘If you promise to call a truce until Teijo picks us up tomorrow, I’ll see if I can work out where the coffee and cake hut is, for breakfast,’ Devan offered, as she crunched through her third cracker, doing her best not to think about cheese.
‘Wait. You think there’s a café nearby, and you only just thought to mention it?’ He knew how to make her blood boil.
He shrugged. ‘We’re meant to be sticking to the rules and working together with what we have – in the interests of proving whether ’Appy Together’s tasks work.’
And as much as she wanted to scream ‘cheat’ at him, she’d done enough sniping for one day, and maybe her thoughts would never stop spinning, trying to work out his odd suggestion that there was more to the story with him and Sylvie.
Why couldn’t he explain? Or was it all more smoke and mirrors to try and make it look as though he wasn’t a heartless, deceitful dickwad?
Maybe she would never know, and none of it really mattered.
When she’d seen out her duties, she’d take her earnings and get back to London, with far more opportunities lining up for her.
Now there was a faint hope of coffee and sweet treats, she could just about crawl through one night out here. Even if their tent felt dangerously small now they’d crammed all their stuff into it. At least she could use their bags as bolsters, so she didn’t have to touch limbs.
‘We scoffed tomorrow’s breakfast when we were fishing,’ he continued. ‘And neither of us could stomach being hunter gatherers. So …?’
‘Temporary truce,’ she agreed, with the emphasis on temporary. But mainly because of the cake. And by truce she meant she promised not to kill him in his sleep. ‘I’m going to investigate the bag of bedding. It’s not getting any warmer and I’d gladly hide in my sleeping bag until coffee time.’
‘That’s assuming our disorganised organiser has packed sleeping bags.’
‘Don’t even go there,’ she warned.
Though as she finished unpacking the last bag Teijo had left them with, her heart sank.
‘What’s worse than having no sleeping bags?
’ she asked quietly, her brain trying to work out how they’d get around this.
Her body was already starting to shiver, but she wasn’t going to play the I’m a woman card.
‘Two adult-sized shark onesies made from particularly flammable flannel?’
She snorted a laugh, even though none of this situation was funny. She hadn’t snort-laughed for years, before she’d come back here.
‘I love it when you do that,’ he said earnestly.
‘You mean you love that you think you’re hilarious.’
‘That too. Was I right about the shark onesies? No wait. I hope I got one of those mermaid blankets, because I think I could rock a fish tail. Though not practical if we need to get up in the night and leg it from wild Cotswold beasts.’
‘Devan!’ She grabbed a tissue for her snorty nose. ‘Will you take this seriously?’ The look on his face was doubtful. ‘What’s worse than no sleeping bags is one sleeping bag. Because then we have to decide who freezes in the night.’
He looked confused. ‘You get the sleeping bag. No question.’
‘I don’t need your chivalry.’
‘It’s not chivalry. It’s the basic law of Finders Keepers. You found it. Anyway, I have my layers of hunky muscle to keep me warm.’ He gave her a wink.
Her mind whizzed back to him stripping off at the allotments and she tried not to blush.
‘I’ll be fine, Alyssa. Seriously. Your concern for me is sweet, but I’m a big boy.’
She stood up quickly and busied herself taking the bedding to the tent, in case he was throwing out more of his nervous innuendos. It was safer to conjure up the imaginary vision of him hair-drying his pubes in a gym changing room.
Alyssa went to bed quickly after that. Being around the campfire was making her sleepy and she had a lot to process after the days’ events.
At least if she curled up in the single sleeping bag she could drift off before Devan got his head down.
There was nothing more awkward than trying to get to sleep in a confined space with someone you didn’t want to be close to.
Listening to each other’s breathing and being uber conscious of every movement was not her idea of fun.
Once she was tucked into the one sleeping bag like a glow worm, the only hot water bottle toastily inside with her, she pulled a line of bags across the tent to form a central barricade.
Surely this night would be over swiftly, and then there would be cake.
Only, the more she thought about the inviting prospect of sleep, the more it evaded her.
Minutes passed. And then tens of minutes.
It had probably been at least an hour before Devan came into the tent, burrowing himself under a pile of clothes on the other side of her great divide.
His breathing was calm at first, his body seemingly still warm from the campfire.
Though as the tens of minutes continued to pass, his breaths sounded more jittery.
His limbs kept moving, as though he was trying to create heat.
Or maybe he was just restless. It wasn’t easy sleeping under a sheet of flappy nylon.
If anything, Alyssa still felt a bit too warm.
She had thermals, thick pyjamas and a hat.
The hot water bottle, which Devan had helped her to fill with campfire water, was almost burning her leg.
In theory, she could invite Devan to her side of the barrier she’d carefully constructed.
It wasn’t that she was stingy about sharing her heat, as such.
It was just that if she agreed to let him into her personal space, what would that mean?
And where might it lead? She could absolutely keep her hands to herself.
Probably. But that sort of closeness with the man who literally showed up naked in her dreams might nudge her soul in ways nobody had any business poking.
To add to the weirdness, he was paying her to be a part of these tasks.
So if anything accidentally happened between them …
eww. She was not here to get paid for that.
Hang on. Was that the sound of his teeth chattering?
‘Devan, are you OK?’ She held her breath, using her senses to tune in to him.
‘I’m f-i-ine.’
He did not sound fine. ‘Here, let me give you this hot water bottle.’
‘No! I w-want you to have that.’
‘Why on earth?’ She was already shifting to pull it out for him. She was not having his death on her conscience. What if she went to jail for withholding a vital heat source?
‘If you pass the heat to me, t-then you get c-cold. How does that help us?’
He was probably right, but that didn’t mean she was going to let him turn into an ice sculpture. Who would show her where the coffee hut was?
She let out a long breath, barely believing she was about to say this. ‘Then come here. We’ll share the warmth. Strictly for survival purposes. That is all.’
‘I’m f-f-fiiiiine,’ he said again.
Did he sound a bit sleepier this time? Wait. What was it about not letting people fall asleep in extreme conditions when they were feeling cold? Not that they were in the North Pole, or anything. But that didn’t sound good.
‘Stop being Good Old Devan, you idiot, or you’re going to end up snuffing it.’
She wasn’t sure how true that was, but she wasn’t waiting around until the morning to find out.
With one gigantic heave, she pulled herself onto the top of the bag barricade and rolled herself over it, like a giant, slightly too hot caterpillar.
As she crash-landed next to Devan, she was relieved to hear his chuckle.
‘You never did treat me like G-good Old Devan, d-did you?’
‘Rest assured. You’ll never be G-O-D to me.’
‘It’s just a persona, you know. Like yours. Sometimes I wish I could drop it.’
‘I’m loving your honesty, but let’s just keep you alive.’
The humour helped as she began to do what might otherwise have felt overly familiar and painfully embarrassing.
Snuggling herself into Devan under his small heap of spare clothes, she unzipped the snug protection of her sleeping bag and wrapped half of it around him, allowing half of her heat to seep into him.
Feeling his chill, she instinctively pulled herself to him, the fronts of their bodies firm against each other, the hot water bottle at his back.
‘Ohhhhhh.’ He shivered against her as his body adjusted to her heat. ‘This is s-soooo good.’ His voice was deep and guttural, his cold lips softening against her neck. ‘I mean, for s-survival. N-nothing weird.’
‘Nothing weird,’ she repeated, quickly taking his cold hands and pushing them up under her clothes so they were touching her bare skin, worried he might get frostbite. Did people’s fingers fall off if they got cold? She did not want to be held responsible for a stumpy Devan.
And all of this should have felt peculiar.
Getting so absurdly close and almost intimate with her cheating ex-boyfriend – even if he was single now and he seemed adamant he hadn’t meant to hurt her.
She did not want to let go of her heart for anyone, because unguarded hearts got besieged.
Yet none of this felt strange. Just like earlier, when muscle memory had kicked in and they’d worked together in tandem, their bodies seemed to know what to do.
Except she was not going to let her body do a fraction of what it was traitorously whimpering for.
As he warmed against her, his shivers calming to contented sighs, his fingers curling into her back and tangling with her nightclothes, there was a heat building between her legs that could have kept them both sizzling all night.
Her nipples were hardening against him, even though she definitely wasn’t cold.
Her body was reacting to his. Longing for more of him.
Though if she dared to be honest, perhaps it wasn’t just her body that was falling.
But that was ridiculous. They were both tired, and probably a touch delirious from being out in the elements.
They were two semi-lost people, clinging to each other for survival.
Just for one night. She was not going to go taking advantage of Good Old Devan, just because the poor guy was freezing his knackers off.
‘You’re so warm,’ he whispered into her skin.
OK, so maybe he wasn’t at death’s door anymore. That didn’t mean she was going to get wild.
‘Just call me Good Old Alyssa,’ she whispered back.
‘You are good, you know,’ he said, after a pause. ‘In here.’
With a slowness that was almost agonising, he moved one of his hands from the naked flesh of her back, trailing it over her hip in a way that made her shiver, and up past her belly button until it landed on her ribs.
Just under her breasts. Polite, but utterly sensual.
How much she wanted to grab that hand and push it upwards, until it touched the nipples that were throbbing for him.
She was on fire – and he hadn’t even kissed her.
There was no way she could let him, or there would be absolutely no end to this.
She would be his. And she’d spent so many years making sure she would never be anybody’s again.
‘In here,’ he repeated, his hand dangerously close to her beating heart. ‘You’re so good. I wish you knew that. I wish you knew you’ve always been perfect, just as you are.’
Now he was definitely feverish, if that was a thing. Exhausted and rambling. Wasn’t he? Either way, he would forget all of this by the morning. Thank goodness.
‘I can’t explain exactly what happened back then, without betraying other people’s secrets. They’re not just my truths to tell. And I don’t expect you to trust anybody who can’t tell you the truth.’
His voice was low, his breath warm against her neck. Every inch of the flesh he was touching was rising up to him in goosebumps, aching to be caressed.
‘Though I do want you to know that it was always you. I never dropped my torch for you. Never will.’
She could feel her eyes welling up.
‘I can’t go on being Good Old convenient Devan forever. We all deserve our own true love story. Don’t we?’
Each word was getting quieter, as though he was falling asleep against her.
She guessed it was safe for him to drift off now his body was warm.
In fact, it was safer all round if he did.
Who knew what might happen between them if he stayed awake.
If he kept talking, even if it was surely nonsense.
If they kept holding each other so tightly.
Because something was shifting inside her, inside and out. And if things were allowed to move too far in unexpected directions, they might never be the same again.