Jessica Hart - Loving Our Heroes (Help for Heroes)

If only he wasn’t so determined to make her lean back over the void. Why couldn’t he be intent on whisking her away for a fabulous weekend in Paris instead?

‘Come on, Jenkins, make up your mind.’ Impatience was creeping back into Campbell’s voice. He glanced along to where the other contestants were almost at the bottom of the rock face. ‘We haven’t got all day here. It’s time to stop messing around and just get on with it.’

Tilly sighed. Obviously he wasn’t keen on the clinging together for eternity option. She couldn’t really blame him. If Campbell Sanderson was going to spend the rest of his life with anyone, it certainly wouldn’t be with a panicky, overweight cook.

‘You’ll be absolutely fine,’ the production assistant had reassured her when breaking the news that her original partner had had to drop out. She’d lowered her voice confidentially. ‘Campbell Sanderson is ex-special forces, I heard,’ she’d whispered enviously. ‘You couldn’t be in better hands.’

Tilly looked at Campbell’s hands on the rope. They were strong and square and very capable. The sort of hands that would ease the strap of a sexy nightdress off your shoulder with just the right amount of frisson- inducing brushing of warm fingers. The sort of hands that under any other circumstances it would be a real pleasure to find yourself between, in fact.

More importantly, the sort of hands that wouldn’t drop or fumble with a rope when you were dangling on the end of it.

‘Jenkins …’ he said warningly, and Tilly dragged herself back to the matter in hand.

‘All right, all right …’

She was going to have to do it, Tilly realised. She had to do it for her mother and for everyone who needed the care she had had, but Tilly’s stomach still turned sickeningly at the prospect.

Trust me, Campbell had said. She risked a glance into his face and saw him in extraordinary detail. The pale green eyes, the dark brows drawn together in a forbidding frown, that mouth clamped in an exasperated line … Funny how she hadn’t noticed him in the same way when they’d been introduced.

Then, he had simply struck her as taciturn. Now, he seemed cool, competent, unsmiling. She could just see him in a balaclava, parachuting behind the lines to blow up a few tanks before tea. He clearly wasn’t the type to fool around. Unlike some males of her acquaintance, Campbell Sanderson wouldn’t pretend to drop her for a lark, just so he could chortle at her squeals of terror. No, he would do exactly what he said he would do.

In return, all she had to do was lean back, walk down the cliff.

And trust him.

Tilly drew a breath. She was going to have to do something.

Very, very cautiously, she loosened her hold on Campbell’s neck.

‘If I do it will you stop calling me by my surname?’ she asked.

‘Whatever you want,’ said Campbell, one eye on the other competitors, who were already packing up and getting ready to head down the hillside. ‘Just do it.’

‘OK,’ said Tilly bravely. ‘Let’s get on with it then.’

In spite of her best resolution, it took a couple of attempts before she had the nerve to let go of his neck completely and put her hands on the rope instead.

‘Good,’ said Campbell, and she was ashamed of the tiny glow of warmth she felt at his approval.

He explained what she needed to do. ‘Off you go, then,’ he said briskly.

Tilly inched her way back to the edge. ‘You won’t let me fall?’ Her voice was wavering on the verge of panic again and Campbell looked straight into her eyes.

‘Trust me,’ he said again.

‘Right,’ said Tilly and, taking a deep breath, she leant backwards over the empty air.

It would be too much to say that she enjoyed her abseil, but the hardest part was that first moment of leaning into the void, and once she was making her way down the cliff, gradually letting out the rope, it didn’t seem quite so terrifying. Campbell was at the top, letting out the rope as she went, and very quickly, it seemed, her feet touched the grass and she was collapsing into an untidy heap.

The next moment, Campbell had abseiled down in two easy jumps and was gathering up the equipment. ‘Come on,’ he said briskly, barely sparing a glance at Tilly, who was still sprawled on the grass and recovering from the trauma of her descent. ‘We’re behind.’

Reluctantly, Tilly hauled herself upright. Her legs felt distinctly wobbly but when she looked up at the rock face, she could see that it wasn’t in fact that high. Campbell had been right, damn him.

‘What now?’ she asked.

‘Now we have to get down and across the river, and we have to do it before the others, or we can’t be sure of getting through to the next round.’ Campbell coiled the last rope and stowed it away in his rucksack. ‘Come on.’

He strode off, leaving Tilly to trot after him. ‘Are you sure you’re going the right way?’ she asked a little breathlessly, and pointed over her shoulder. ‘Everyone else has gone that way.’

‘Which is why we’re going this way,’ said Campbell, not breaking his stride in the slightest. ‘It’s a tougher route, but much quicker.’

‘How on earth do you know that?’

‘I looked at a map this morning.’

Tilly stared at his back. ‘Boy, you really do want to win, don’t you?’ Her father was the only person she knew with that kind of drive to win at any cost.

‘Why are you here if you don’t?’ he countered. Just as her father would have done.

‘I was tricked into it.’ Tilly’s blue eyes sparkled with remembered indignation. ‘My twin brothers decided that it was time for me to get out of my rut and entered me in the competition. The first I knew of it was when people who work at the hospice started coming up to me and telling me how thrilled they were that I was taking part and what wonderful things they would be able to do with the money if I won. So I could hardly turn round then and say it was all a terrible mistake, could I?’ she grumbled.

Campbell glanced down at her. Her heart-shaped face was pink with exertion and she was vainly trying to stop the breeze blowing the mass of curly brown hair into her eyes. She looked cross and ruffled and vibrant in her red ski-suit. It seemed a bizarre choice to wear for a weekend walking in the hills, but at least there was no chance of her getting lost. You could see her coming a mile away. Perhaps the television people had told her they wanted her to be noticeable—although it was hard to imagine not noticing her.

‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘If you didn’t want to do it, you could have just said so.’

Of course he would say that, thought Tilly. It was easy for people like Campbell Sanderson and her father, who only ever focused on one thing. They didn’t worry about what other people would think or whether feelings would be hurt. They just said what they thought and did what they wanted and it never occurred to them to feel guilty about anything.

‘It would have seemed so selfish,’ she tried to explain. ‘The hospice is a really special place. It was so awful when we knew my mother was dying. She was in pain, my brothers were very young, my stepfather was distraught … I was trying to hold things together but I didn’t know what to do.’

The dark blue eyes were sad as she remembered that terrible time. ‘I was so afraid of Mum dying,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how any of us would have got through it without the hospice. It wasn’t that we were any less bereft when she did die, but when she was there we were all calmer. They were so kind, not just to Mum, but to all of us. They helped us to understand what was happening, and accept it in a way we hadn’t been able to do before.