Jessica Hart - Loving Our Heroes

[Yawns again, belatedly covering mouth] Anyway, he wasn’t so bad this afternoon. In fact, he was really quite nice, especially the last few miles. [Pauses again, remembering] Yes, surprisingly nice. And now he’s making me supper. I’m not sure what this stew is going to be like, though. Dehydrated doesn’t sound very nice, but I’m so hungry I’ll eat it. I ought to offer to help, but I really don’t think I’ve got the energy to get out of the tent. [Slides out of view of camera] Perhaps if I just closed my eyes for a moment, and then I’ll go and give him a hand…

Campbell looked up from the pot he was stirring, suddenly alert. He could hear the wind whistling around the crags, the canvas flapping, the hiss of the gas, but when he listened, he realised there was something missing.

No Tilly. How long was it since he had heard her voice?

‘Tilly?’

He bent down to peer into the tent. She had crashed out over both sleeping bags, and appeared to have simply toppled from where she had been sitting talking to the camera and was sound asleep.

Shaking his head, Campbell turned off the camera.

Tilly was still fully dressed apart from her boots, and he contemplated her slumped form with a slight frown. How was he going to get her into her sleeping bag? He had no intention of undressing her, but she would be better off without her jacket. Its stiff fabric was digging into her face as it was. It would certainly be uncomfortable if she did wake up and, besides, she would need the jacket as an extra layer to put on in the morning.

‘Tilly?’ he tried again, but she was dead to the world and didn’t even stir when he lifted her up to pull her arms out of the sleeves and get rid of the jacket.

It was like dealing with a very large floppy doll, although he imagined dolls weren’t usually that warm and soft. Not having had even a sister, Campbell’s experience of dolls was negligible, but he was fairly sure they didn’t smell faintly of…what was it? He sniffed. Some flower. Roses, perhaps? He had never been very good on flowers but something about the fragrance of Tilly’s hair reminded him of his mother’s garden on a summer evening long ago.

The thought made Campbell frown. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about things like that. Unzipping one of the sleeping bags, he manoeuvred Tilly inside it, not without difficulty. Quite a bit of manhandling was required and he was very aware of her lush body even through the layers of clothing. It was all very well staying focused but it was hard not to be distracted by the fact that, whatever else Tilly might be, she was all woman.

An exasperating one, Campbell reminded himself. At least she was quiet now that she was sleeping. He had never met anyone quite so chatty. Lisa had been mistress of icy silence, and he wasn’t at all sure which was worse.

Tilly stirred and mumbled something as he tucked her legs into the sleeping bag and zipped her up. The next moment she was turning and snuggling down like a child with more unintelligible mumbling and some smacking of her lips before she sank back into a deep sleep.

Campbell sat back on his heels and watched her for a moment. It was the first chance he had had to look at her properly, he realised, and without that challenging blue gaze fixed on him he could see that she had lovely creamy skin and beautiful eyebrows. The heart-shaped face was slack with sleep, but her generous mouth still had a humorous curve to it, as if she were on the point of smiling.

Even now, sound asleep, there was something disorderly

about her, Campbell decided. She was all softness and curves and curls, and it made him twitchy. There were no straight lines with Tilly, no logic, no control. She talked the whole time and her imagination was so vivid he wasn’t sure whether she was talking nonsense or not half the time.

His eyes rested on her mouth almost unwillingly. Tilly might be high-maintenance, but there was a warmth and a sweetness about her, too, offset by an intriguing tartness and a stubbornness that had kept her climbing all day. No wonder she was tired!

Without quite realising what he was doing, Campbell reached out to smooth the tumbled hair from Tilly’s cheek. The silkiness of her curls and the smoothness of her skin were like a physical shock, and he withdrew his hand sharply.

Better have that stew, he told himself.

He took the video camera with him as he backed out of the tent. God only knew what Tilly had been saying to the camera before she had fallen asleep. Knowing her, it might have been anything! He had better make sure there was something sensible on there.

Campbell finished the stew, cleaned out the pot and his plate, and turned his attention to the camera. Clicking it on, he cleared his throat.

‘This is Campbell Sanderson. We’re camped on the shoulder of Ben Nuarrh, so if we leave at zero six hundred tomorrow morning we should be in a position to make it to the summit in good time. It’s been a successful day, after a slow start. I didn’t feel that Tilly was taking things very seriously to start with, but she’s done well this afternoon. Very well, in fact.’

There, that ought to do it. Campbell decided that he had been concise, accurate and generous. He hadn’t said anything about how long it had taken to coax her down the abseil, or about the stupid fuss she had made about jumping over a few stones to cross the river. He had carefully refrained from commenting on her lipstick or on how unfit she was. He had said nothing about her bizarre flights of imagination.

And nothing about her smile, nothing about the teasing humour in her dark blue eyes, or her infectious laugh.

Nothing about her enticing softness as she’d pressed up against him on one of those boulders.

No, he wouldn’t be saying any of that. Campbell switched off the camera with a sharp click.

‘OLIVIER?’ Tilly struggled out of a deep sleep to find herself pressed up against a solid male body.

It was pitch dark. Disorientated, she tried to prop herself up on one elbow and her stiff muscles screamed in protest, jerking her properly awake with a gasp.

Campbell was instantly alert. ‘What’s the matter?’

That wasn’t Olivier’s voice. Tilly blinked at the darkness for a moment until her brain kicked in and she remembered where she was, and just who she was cuddled up against.

Campbell Sanderson.

‘Ouch!’ Her sore muscles pinched again as she moved hastily away from him. Between her stiffness and the sleeping bag, it was hard 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.’