Page 14 of My Heart to Find

CHAPTER SEVEN

Cara

“WE HAVE TO GET TO THEother side?” I stare at Damien. His face is flushed from the cool breeze, and it makes him look rugged. Like he’s stepped right out of a survival program.

“Uh huh.” He nods and narrows his eyes as he looks across the river—the far side has to be thirty or forty feet away. “And we’re not allowed to swim, and we can’t get wet.”

A little line appears between his eyebrows as he frowns, and I’m struck by how cute that makes him look. A warm, glowing feeling fills me. It’s the same feeling that filled me earlier, when Mrs. Mitchell divided us into pairs for this task. I’d assumed wrongly that we’d be able to choose them—of course I’d pick Jana—but when she said she’d already organized us into teams, I’d started to panic inside. Until I’d been paired with Damien, and he’d given me this little smile that somehow felt intimate and personal, just between the two of us, even though everyone else was milling about.

Now, all around us, the other competitors are jumping into action. Jana and her partner—a middle-aged woman called Freda—are talking furiously to my left. Jana’s covering her hand with her mouth, like she always does when she doesn’t want her idea to be copied. David and Donnie have already headed back up the mountainside. I heard Donnie say they can cut down trees to make a boat. Huh, as if that’s going to be the answer. This is a retreat, not a survival camp. And it would take days to make a boat, right? But the other eight couples are milling around, looking about as lost as Damien and me.

“So, we build a raft,” I say. Because, let’s face it, a raft is going to be much more practical and easier to build than a boat.

“With what?” Damien asks. “We’ve got no tools. We’ve got nothing.”

As if on cue, I look around. There’s a cooler a few feet behind me and Damien, containing bottles of water and bananas. “For energy,” Mrs. Mitchell had said, before disappearing back into the bus and driving away. That’s all we’ve got.

“Well, there has to be something obvious that we’re missing.” I shiver a little. I hadn’t realized it would be so cold here. Didn’t bring many layers or anything. Always thought Mallorca was supposed to be hot.

“Hey,” a woman in her late thirties shouts. Bianca. “Anyone get any idea what to do?”

Jana and Freda keep on talking, looking all secretive and mysterious. There’s a glint in Jana’s eyes, one she only gets when she’s plotting.

“No.”

“No idea, mate.”

“What’s to stop us swimming anyway? Or wading? Mrs. Mitchell isn’t even here.”

“Because that’s cheating,” Damien says, and the way he says it just makes me like him more—because he doesn’t want to cheat. He wants to do this properly. He wants our victory to be deserving—if, indeed, we do manage to win.

“Maybe we should all work together—all of us,” another woman says.

“But we’re divided into pairs,” Jana says. “So only two can win. And we’re going to win, me and Freda.”

Damien laughs and meets my eyes. His are a pale blue, and I find myself feeling warmer—forgetting about the cool weather, even though his irises are a cool color—as I drink in those gorgeous eyes.

“We don’t even know what the prize is,” someone says.

“Doesn’t matter.” Damien smiles. “Winning is a reward in itself. And this—” He spreads his arms out. “This exercise is about having fun and getting to know your partner.”

His eyes are still on me, and it’s almost as if the others aren’t here—because all I can concentrate on is Damien. I feel my face heating up as I smile, and I realize I’m stepping closer to him.

I just want to be close to him, and it surprises me because I’ve not felt like that before. But Damien’s like a bright star in an icy night, and I’m magnetized toward him. And being close—close enough I can smell the slightly spicy tones of his aftershave—just makes me want to be around him more.

“So, what are we going to do?” His voice is low now, a whisper meant just for me as he steps closer to me still. Mere inches separate us. “Because no matter what I said, I do want the prize. I heard it’s chocolate.”

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