Page 43 of Fight

“No,” she agreed.“He shouldn’t have.”

There was a long silence during which Lena was worried that Jake would jump out of the sleeping bag and immediately go on the hunt for Daniel.

“What happened when you got here?” he asked, thankfully moving on.

“Well, we got started and even though I think he was still pouting from what happened in the car, we really didn’t have much time to talk. This hike is, um, difficult, which is something I may or may not have been told in the past week or so.”

Truth be told, Lena and Daniel had both struggled with the stamina the Kodiak trail eventually required of them. It had started off as a paved path that formed a wide zig zag up the base of the mountain. This went on for about a mile and while it was steep, it was manageable.

However, the paved section of the path had disappeared after some time and turned to a narrow, dirt path, which had further dwindled to a steep, rocky uphill climb. They’d both fallen and slipped multiple times, and Daniel was constantly saying that he wanted to turn back. Lena had talked him into forging ahead though, which had further added to his annoyance with her as the day progressed.

The only positive thing about hiking with Daniel was that, like her, he was interested in multiple opportunities to rest and take breaks. She’d stopped at a couple of different areas and started some rough sketches of the view of the lake and surrounding mountains that she planned on filling in later. The last stop, where she and Jake now camped, was the one that ended the whole trip, though.

“It was Daniel’s idea to stop here. He was ahead of me on the path and could see the overlook that the boulders provided. You know I’m always up for a break, so we came out here and sat on the boulders. I started sketching, but he asked me to stop—he said he brought me up here to talk. When I put down my sketches, I knew I wasn’t going to like what he had to say...”

Lena petered off as she finally looked up and made eye contact with Jake. He was looking down at her intensely from just a few inches above her face. She couldn’t help but think how surreal it was that she was having this conversation with Satan himself, while half naked and sharing a sleeping bag. The most shocking part of this was how normal and natural it felt. Her day spent with Daniel by contrast had been awkward and…messy.

“What did he say?” Jake pressed, shaking Lena out of her rambling thoughts.

Lena sighed loudly and the rest of her words came out in a rushed voice.“He said that he was interested in me, that he liked me, and he could tell I like him, too. When I told him I only thought of him as a friend, he was…displeased and tried to storm away. I went after him and fell off the boulder, twisting my ankle. Hedidcome back when I fell,” Lena emphasized this part to Jake’s alarmed facial expression.

“But I barely had a chance to catch my breath before he took off again. He said I was in no position to walk and that he would walk down and call Annie. Honestly, I knew my ankle wasn’t that bad, but I was so happy to get rid of him, I didn’t care,” she admitted ruefully.

“I thought I could sit here for a bit and sketch, then go down on my own and text Annie to pick me up when I had service again. But I got too into my drawing and before I knew it my phone died and not long thereafter, the storm started. When I went to check out the path, it was a mudslide. There was no way I could scale it all the way to the bottom of the mountain. So I built my hermitage and decided to stay put until I could get down the path.” Lena finished recounting her tale breathlessly as she rubbed the sleeping bag furiously and tried to look anywhere but Jake’s serious face, hovering above hers.

He didn’t say anything for a couple seconds. She just knew he was going to scold her for staying behind, for wasting time on the boulder, or, heck, not even finishing the climb on her own when the path had still been dry.

She winced as he opened his mouth to reply.

“You built a what?” he finally said.

Opening her eyes, she looked at him questioningly. “Huh?”

“What did you call that thing you built? Are you talking about the blanket you tied to the trees?” he said, gesturing to the door of the tent with a laugh.

Lena stopped fiddling with the sleeping bag and looked up at him dubiously. “Yes, it’s my hermitage,” she squeaked out.

He laughed then, loudly as he threw his head back. Lena reluctantly smiled up at him and couldn’t help it when a couple snickers slipped out between her pursed lips.“Don’t you know what a hermitage is?” she asked.

“I can’t say that I do,” he admitted with a smile.

“I think it can either be a place for refuge and reflection, and/or a place where a hermit lives,” she explained simply.

This caused him to lean back and laugh again—almost uncontrollably.

“Haven’t you ever read a regency romance novel?” Lena pressed. “There’s always an abandoned hermitage on some manor house property and the hero and heroine escape from a house party, get stuck in the rain, and then are forced to spend the night…”She trailed off awkwardly as the realization of her current predicament hit her.

After chatting with him so casually for so long, she suddenly felt very aware that his large body was pressed so closely to hers, radiating both warmth and those damn pheromones of his. His muscles pressed against her soft curves, and the light hairs on his chest and legs tickled her. Her skin felt prickly and a molten heat dripped down into her core as she looked up at him nervously, her lips parted.

He looked down like she was something precious and moved his hand off her waist to stroke her cheek gently. Her breath caught in her throat as she waited for what he would do next. Was he going to kiss her? She’d made the first move last time, so by her account, it was his turn.

Finally, he broke their silent staring contest as his right eye dropped in a gentle wink. “Maybe this can be our regency romance hermitage,” he whispered. The words came out deeply before his body fell back, consumed by his deep chuckles.

The heat left her body as Lena groaned loudly and she feigned trying to move away from him in the sleeping bag. “Nowhere to escape to,” she moaned dramatically as she flailed her arms back wildly and fell back in a faux swoon.

He chuckled as he reached over and unzipped the side of the bag and climbed out. Lena felt the loss of his warmth immediately and watched him as he crouched over to the pile of stuff and started digging through it. He pulled out two collapsible lanterns and opened them up to shed brighter light in the tent.

“What are you doing?” she asked, squinting her eyes and reaching up to touch her hair.

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