Page 64 of Wild About You

‘A bit.’ I checked my phone, then started to manoeuvre myself into the bag. Fi had replied to my first message, but I wasn’t sure the second one had got through. ‘Don’t you have a sleeping bag?’

He grinned sheepishly. ‘No. The emergency kit is packed for one. It’s fine – you have it.’

I paused, midway through zipping it up. ‘That’s not fine! Let me give it to you.’ I began unzipping.

‘No, Anna. I mean it.’

His voice was so firm, I stopped in my tracks. ‘I daren’t disobey your Hugo voice,’ I said.

He laughed.

‘Shouldn’t we…’ I took a breath. ‘Share it? If you get pneumonia and die, I’ll never find my way out of here.’

He paused in the firelight. He looked unbelievablyhandsome. We’d both drunk whisky. And now I was offering him my bed – or the nearest equivalent.

In my mind: sirens, red flags, red traffic lights. All totally ignorable.

‘Best not,’ he said, after a gap that was too long to be disregarded. ‘But we can sit close together for a while, if you like.’

Awkward. I shuffled my bum along until I was sitting against his left side. Nothing elegant about it, and I almost shoved him as I landed next to him, but he seemed to find it amusing. ‘Did you know,’ he said, ‘beagles lean against each other to show friendliness. To show you’re part of the pack.’

‘Really?’ I fought the urge to huddle against him. ‘I suppose Lucinda wouldn’t like it if I said I’d been cuddling up to her boyfriend.’

‘I’m not her boyfriend.’ He looked down at me in a way that was meant to be imperious but looked straightforwardly comical. ‘We’re just – spending time together. Nothing serious.’

‘Uh huh,’ I said.

‘We’re not sleeping together,’ he insisted, so strongly that I patted him on the arm in a motherly way.

‘None of my beeswax, anyway,’ I said.

‘That whisky’s gone to your head,’ he muttered.

‘Aye aye, captain,’ I said sleepily.

I was more tired than I thought. Before long my eyes were closing of their own accord and my head was nodding forwards. Then I woke, out of a mini-sleep. ‘Was my headon your shoulder?’ I said, jerking up. I felt his hand briefly touch my head.

‘Easy there. Kind of.’

Just as long as I wasn’t sniffing him. Because he did smell delicious.

‘Mmm.’ I opened my eyes properly, sat up. ‘Not sure if this is going to work. I’ll end up drooling on you or something.’

‘You can do whatever you like,’ he said, and something about the quality of his voice made me look up, and into his eyes.

This wasn’t a normal look. This was the look that I had been hoping to keep at bay all evening. That buzzing electricity that had crackled between us. I told myself to look away, but I couldn’t. About a dozen red flags waved giddily in my brain. And all of my No’s, my hold-backs, my just-be-an-ice-queens were fading out to the sound of pieces falling into place and cogs clicking into gear.

I wanted to kiss this man. I wanted, very much, to do more than kiss this man.

‘Just out of interest,’ he said carefully, finally dragging his eyes from me and looking at the dwindling fire. ‘Why am I in no danger from you?’

I tried to steady my breathing, but there was no disguising the blush that was seeping its way into my face.

‘About a thousand different reasons,’ I said.

‘Name them,’ he said, and his voice caught on the words in a way that made me close my eyes and send up a little prayer to the gods of chastity.

‘It’s just, if we got together,’ I scrambled, ‘which we’re obviously not going to do, it would be fine for a month or two, but then we’d start to get irritated with each other. You’d get annoyed I don’t know the rules to polo or lacrosse.’ He was shaking his head. ‘Or I’d curtsey wrong at an event and all your mates would laugh at me. I call them mates, you would refer to them as friends. A thousand things like that.’

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