Page 17 of Past Tents

He nodded but he didn’t smile. His hazel eyes heated until they looked like twin discs of coal. The way he was studying me made me feel naked. And slightly unnerved. I glanced down to be sure I hadn’t shed my clothes without realizing it. Not that it would have mattered. Clay looked like he might incinerate anything flammable simply by looking at it. And looking at him, I wanted that superpower for myself.

“So, you deflected earlier. Why were you leaping over hurdles earlier?”

“Oh. Right. I planned to tell you Pin Dick wants me to chaperone the retreat with you.”

I waited for him to groan. Or grimace. Or look for a parachute on his back that could whisk him out of here. Instead, he looked...pleased?

“Okay, works for me.”

I waved my hands like erasers. “No, no. Not okay. I know nothing about camping. That’s the ridiculous part of the whole thing. I’m the last person you’d want in the woods, trust me.”

He pressed his lips together and I felt his eyes rake over my face. It made me blush, which had never happened in his presence in all the years we’d worked together. I shouldn’t be reacting to him that way just because he’d carried me in his muscular arms like a stray kitten.

“Let’s agree to disagree on that one. Assuming you’re healed by the weekend after next, we should figure out a time to go over things.”

He seemed so calm. So innocent.

A laugh barked from my chest. Or more like an unhinged cackle. “No. I’m not going.”

His eyes narrowed. “What?”

I gestured between us. “Me. The retreat. Not happening.”

He held up a hand and dropped down onto my porch swing. I’d been ambivalent about installing it a year ago because, although it looked cute, I couldn’t imagine anyone sitting on it. My house was small. It didn’t take me so long to come to the door that a person would need to sit and wait, take a load off. But right now I felt grateful for it because Clay looked as unsteady as I felt.

“I mustn’t have heard you right. You went to all the trouble of making a bigSwan Lakeentrance during my track practice in order to taunt me about chaperoning and now you’re not going?”

Pacing in front of my door, I nodded and prattled on, making sure he understood exactly why choosing another chaperone made sense. “I did it totellyou about the chaperoning and seek your help getting me out of it. This is just Pindich trying to torture us both. I’m not a wilderness girl. I’m scared and inexperienced out there. Trust me, you don’t want to be alone on the side of a mountain with me.”

“Try me.”

My mouth opened but no sound came out. The last thing I expected was that Clay Meadows mightwantme on the retreat. No. I must have misinterpreted him. I regained my ability to prattle. “It was a momentary case of poor judgment on behalf of Principal Pin Dick. You can convince him as much, and you and your students will be spared another great embarrassment of having to scrape me up off a mountain trail when I step on a log and trip.”

“You shouldn’t step on a log.”

Squinting at him, I took a step forward, bringing us toe to toe and stopping the swaying of the porch swing. “What?”

“You stepoverthe log, but use a walking stick to check the other side for snakes hidden in the grass. If you steponthe log, you could get hurt if it’s slippery or rotten.”

I waved my hands in his face. “See? This is what I’m talking about. This is why I don’t belong on this trip.”

“But you’re trained in wilderness first aid.”

“So what? Anyone could do that.”

“Anyonecould. Youdid. And no one else will have time to get certified before that weekend. With half the faculty out with food poisoning, we don’t have a lot of options.”

I cursed under my breath, hoping Clay wouldn’t be able to make it out. Because it was very unladylike.

“What’s that?” The corner of his mouth tipped up into the hint of a smile. He was toying with me. That’s what this was. He didn’t want me on his rugged retreat any more than I wanted to be there.

On this, surely, we could agree.

“I’m not a wilderness girl. I don’t like bugs. Bears will want to eat me. And I don’t know anything about tents or campfires or snakes hiding beneath logs.”

“Now you know about the logs. The rest I’ll teach you.”

“Ha. Even if we had all the time in the world, it wouldn’t be enough.”

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