Loving Our Heroes. Jessica Hart
to move at all.
‘It’s you,’ she said, dismayed.
‘I’m afraid so.’
Tilly was attempting to disentangle herself from her sleeping bag. The wind was howling and shrieking around the tent and she could hear an ominous drumming on the canvas. Rain. Just what you wanted when you were camping.
‘What time is it?’ she asked blearily.
‘Two-fifteen.’
‘How on earth do you know that?’ She had seen no tell-tale luminous watch face and there was no way he could have seen the time without a light.
‘I just do.’
Her silence was obviously eloquent with disbelief, for he sighed and switched on a pencil torch, pointing it at his watch. ‘Satisfied?’
Tilly peered at the watch face. ‘Two-sixteen,’ she read.
‘It was two fifteen when you asked me.’
His calm certainty riled her. ‘I bet you were checking your watch under the sleeping bag just before I woke up.’
‘Of course. I’ve spent all night awake in the hope that you would wake up and ask the time so that I could trick you.’
Her lips tightened at his tone. ‘Well, how did you do it, then?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve got a clock in my head. It’s years of training. There are times when you need to know the time but can’t afford to switch on a light.’
Tilly tried to imagine what it would be like to be in a situation where you couldn’t risk putting on a light. She would never be able to cope. She was a terrible coward.
‘Presumably nobody is going to ambush us up here, so can I have the torch again?’ she asked as she wriggled awkwardly out of her sleeping bag at last.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I thought I’d pop out and get a DVD.’
‘What?’
She sighed. ‘Where do you think I’m going?’
‘Oh.’ He sounded exasperated. ‘Can’t you hang on until morning?’
‘No, I can’t. My bladder hasn’t had years of training. I’ll never be able to get back to sleep until I’ve been.’ She groped around for her boots. ‘Can you point the torch while I put these on?’
With a long-suffering sigh, Campbell directed the beam of light. ‘You’ll need a jacket, too. It’s raining.’
‘What did I do with it?’ wondered Tilly, patting the end of her sleeping bag. It was hard to see anything with just a fine pencil beam of light. ‘I was so tired I can’t remember taking it off.’
‘You didn’t. I undressed you last night.’
It was Tilly’s turn to do a double take. ‘You did what?’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Campbell dryly. ‘I didn’t even enjoy it. You were dead to the world and I’m not into necrophilia. I stopped at your dungarees. I thought they might be a bit tricky to take off without some cooperation from you.’
Tilly flushed in the darkness, imagining him grunting with effort as he manhandled her out of her clothes. No wonder he had stopped! The poor man had probably been exhausted.
That was the story of her life, she thought glumly. An attractive man undressed her and she wasn’t even awake to appreciate it.
She didn’t bother to lace her boots. It sounded like a wild night out there and she wasn’t planning on being very long.
Yelping at her sore muscles, she took the torch and struggled out of the tent only to find herself staggering against a gust of wind that slashed rain across her face. Straightening as best she could, she saw that it was very dark, and she began to wish that she had hung on after all. There might not be enemy soldiers lurking behind the outcrops, but it took her imagination no time at all to sketch out the beginning of a horror story. The sooner she got back into the tent, the better.
Tilly did her business as quickly as she could, which wasn’t very fast, given that her fingers were numb with cold. The skiing dungarees might be warm, but she had forgotten just how long it took to unfasten them. It was all right for Campbell, with his no doubt highly trained bladder.
She was wet and shivering by the time she scrambled back into the tent and zipped up the entrance once more. Then she had to go through the whole business of taking off her jacket and boots again. She put the torch on the sleeping bag where the beam was promptly buried until Campbell picked it up and held it for her so that she could see what she was doing. Tilly was grateful, but very conscious, too, of how close he was. It felt very intimate, being together in such a confined space, and, although she did her best to stick to her sleeping bag, it was impossible not to touch him.
‘I can’t believe people do this kind of thing for fun,’ she grumbled through chattering teeth. ‘Who’d want to camp when you could be tucked up in an nice, cosy B and B? God, I’m freezing!’
‘Your hair’s wet,’ said Campbell. Incredibly, he had a smallish towel in his hand. ‘Turn round and I’ll dry it for you.’
‘Where on earth did you find that?’ Tilly asked to distract herself from his nearness as he rubbed her hair vigorously.
‘In my pack.’
‘That’s not a pack—ouch!—that’s a bottomless pit!’
‘I came prepared for the conditions,’ he said. ‘I knew there was a good chance we’d get wet somewhere along the line.’
‘Pity you didn’t bring a hot shower,’ muttered Tilly. ‘You seem to have everything else in there.’ Her ears were sore and she tried to pull her head away, but Campbell kept a firm grip on her. ‘Ow!’ she protested. ‘That hurts—and God knows what my hair’s going to look like in the morning.’
‘It’s more important that you don’t go to sleep again with wet hair,’ he pointed out, giving her hair a final rub before tossing the towel aside. ‘There. Get back in your sleeping bag and you’ll soon warm up.’
Shuddering with the cold, Tilly clambered back into the bag and pulled the covers tight under her chin. ‘How soon is soon?’ she asked, unclenching her jaw after a few moments. ‘I don’t suppose you thought to bring a hot-water bottle?’
She heard a sigh through the darkness, and the next moment Campbell had rolled over and was pulling her bodily towards him, sleeping bag and all, making her squeak with surprise. ‘You’ll have to make do with body heat,’ he said. ‘You can’t beat it when you’re cold.’
He shifted to make himself more comfortable and put an arm over her, tucking her firmly into the curve of his body. ‘Now, have you quite finished fidgeting?’ he asked, his astringent tones at odds with the warm reassurance of his hold.
‘Yes.’ Tilly’s voice was huskier than she wanted.
‘Then perhaps we can both get some sleep?’
Sure, but how could she be expected to sleep when his arm was heavy over her and she could feel his breath stirring her hair? Even through two sleeping bags, she was desperately aware of his solid male warmth.
In spite of her exhaustion, Tilly had rarely felt less like sleeping. All her senses were on high alert and fizzing away as if they had had ten coffees apiece. She could hear the rain drumming overhead while the wind plucked angrily at the canvas. The tent smelt of canvas and hillside and wet jackets.
It was strange to be lying next to a man again, and Tilly was surprised at how right it felt with Campbell’s arm around her. There had been no one since Olivier.
Olivier … How desolate she had been when he had dumped her! Tilly had done her best to hide her