So Now You're Back Read online

  Armour she needed now more than ever as a defence against Luke’s dark arts of dishabille.

  She’d already reduced the half hour she gave herself in London each morning to apply her make-up to a measly ten minutes, because it seemed like a rather daft indulgence to go hiking or geocaching in the middle of the Smoky Mountains. But this morning she’d been forced to go cold turkey, when Luke had taken one look at the bulky make-up case and announced, ‘You’re not taking that. Perfume scents can attract bears. And, anyway, you don’t need it. You look great without it.’

  How would he know? Seeing as he hadn’t seen her without since she was twenty? But as she could hardly point that out without making it seem as if she was wearing make-up for his benefit, she had been forced to leave the case behind. She hadn’t even been able to take some portable concealer or lip gloss on pain of a flipping bear attack.

  Then again, a day without make-up and the risk of a bear attack might be the least of her worries. After all, there was no guarantee that she’d even get to this campsite alive.

  ‘How long did you say it would take to get there?’ Halle asked as she double-checked the fastenings on her PFD for the tenth time.

  ‘Between five and six hours,’ Chad replied with an easy smile. ‘It’s only twelve miles to the camp island from this location.’

  ‘Six hours to paddle twelve miles! Wouldn’t it be quicker to walk?’

  Chad seemed confused by the question. ‘I guess, but you get a great view of the landscape from the water. And the hiking’s—’

  ‘Stop moaning and get in the bloody boat.’ Luke interrupted Chad’s earnest explanation.

  ‘If you don’t mind, I’m trying to ascertain how long this is going to take.’

  ‘It’s going to take a heck of a lot longer with you standing on the shore. And if we don’t put up our tents before nightfall, you’re going to be sleeping in the open with the bears.’

  ‘Stop bullying me,’ she said, but she scrambled into the boat, the mention of bears having the desired effect.

  She shrieked as she put her second foot into the boat and the kayak dipped on one side, obviously planning to toss her out on her arse.

  Chad grasped her arm above the elbow to steady her. ‘Don’t worry, ma’am. It’s real hard to roll a kayak,’ he reassured her, as if he’d read her mind. ‘They have a much lower centre of gravity than a canoe.’

  ‘Thanks for that.’

  Stop calling me ‘ma’am’. I’m not your grandmother.

  She held on to another shriek as she gripped the sides of the boat and settled into her cockpit behind Luke.

  ‘Your paddle, ma’am.’

  She sent Chad a caustic smile as she took the short lightweight pole.

  ‘OK, folks, you’re all set. Enjoy your trip.’

  Chad gave the boat a hefty shove, jogging the kayak off the sandbank and propelling them into the water. Luke wheeled his paddle in a smooth arc that sent them into the current, the corded muscles of his upper arms flexing and stretching with each stroke.

  Halle attempted to match her strokes to his rhythm.

  Eventually, they settled into an even glide, the bright blue two-man kayak carried along by the current. Halle absorbed the sunlight on her skin, and the slight drift and pull of the river, managing to relax a little now that they hadn’t immediately capsized.

  Riverbanks crowded with shrubs and trees let off a resinous perfume to go with the cool fresh scent of the water, any signs of human habitation vanishing as they left Chad and the drop-off location behind. The Tuckasegee River took a smooth sinuous course through the landscape. The swift current more manageable than she had expected as the water rippled over the stony riverbed.

  Halle relaxed into their journey, clipping the surface with her paddle, while letting Luke do most of the work—with six hours to go she planned to conserve her energy.

  He rotated his torso, rocking his hips to dig the double-ended paddle into the water. His shoulders lifted and tilted with each stroke, the muscles bunching against the arm-holes of his life vest.

  She got a tiny bit transfixed.

  Apparently, there was only so much scenery you could admire when you had a man of Luke’s physique displaying his natural athletic ability two feet from your nose. Especially if you hadn’t gotten laid in over a year.

  ‘Hey, look over there.’ He pointed towards the bank. Halle spotted the hawklike bird perched on the top of a hawthorn tree, regal and serene as it stared at them.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked as it launched off the branch and swooped into the sky.

  ‘An osprey, maybe. I have an e-book on the local wildlife on my iPad. We can check it out later.’

  Halle smiled at his response. Luke had always been inquisitive, enthusiastic about discovering new things. ‘Since when did you become a twitcher?’

  He glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow cocked. ‘I’m not the one who asked what it was.’

  ‘True.’

  He nodded at her paddle, which she’d placed on the hull to watch the bird. ‘Start paddling, you freeloader. There’s no passengers allowed on this boat.’

  ‘Aye aye, Captain.’ She began paddling again, maybe exhaustion was the answer to curbing the liquid tug of the muscles in her abdomen.

  Exhaustion was definitely the answer, followed by extreme boredom. For, however magnificent the Smoky Mountain scenery and its raw, primal overwhelming beauty, or Luke’s very flexible, very expansive shoulders, there was only so much of either one you could appreciate when your arms were about to drop off.

  By hour three of their kayak adventure, the scenery—both natural and man-made—had become completely beside the point.

  The only thing that had kept her going this far was that she didn’t want to give in first. She’d been on the receiving end of Luke’s superior look rather frequently in the past eight days while trying to keep up on various hikes and horse rides, but he showed no signs of tiring whatsoever.

  She steeled herself for the familiar raised eyebrow. ‘Isn’t it about time for lunch?’

  He lifted the paddle out of the water, swivelled round. ‘You knackered already? We’ve only been at it for a couple of hours.’

  Hello, superior look.

  ‘I’m not knackered.’ Much. ‘I’m starving. It’s got to be about four hours since breakfast. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to eat before I start gnawing off my own arm. Or get third-degree sunburn.’

  He tipped up the peak of her baseball cap. She struggled to match his superior look under the inspection, although it probably wasn’t that effective given that she was totally knackered.

  ‘Did you put the sunscreen on? Your nose looks pink.’

  She wrinkled the nose in question, making it sting. ‘You’re not actually the captain of this little expedition, you know. That was just a joke on my part. Which I would never have made if I had realised you were Captain Bligh in a former life.’

  He flipped her cap off. ‘He who does the lion’s share of the work, gets to do the bossing about.’

  ‘Who says? And give me back the cap. It’s the only protection I’ve got.’

  ‘I say so.’ After dipping the cap into the river, he plopped it back onto her head. ‘There you go.’

  Water soaked her hair and splattered onto her nose and face, dribbling into the neck of her T-shirt.

  ‘I thought you wanted to cool off,’ he said.

  She tilted the peak up to glare at him. ‘That’s not what I had in mind.’

  ‘Effective, though, right?’

  She couldn’t deny the lake water felt glorious on her frazzled skin. But she wasn’t ready to be grateful. ‘You look pretty hot yourself.’ And in more ways than one, she thought, her pulse skittering at the dimple in his cheek as he smiled.

  He whipped off his own cap and presented it to her. ‘Be my guest.’

  Scooping up enough water to fill the cap to the brim, she slapped it onto his sweaty hair and drenched him.
r />   Wiping his eyes, he smiled at her. ‘Cheers. Now let’s go get you fed before you start cannibalising yourself.’

  Her stomach rumbled on cue, audible above the gurgle of water, and her accelerated breathing. ‘Actually, I’m more likely to eat you after that stunt.’

  The quick grin turned the twinkle of mischief to something potent and provocative before he turned back to steer the kayak towards the pebbled cove ahead of them.

  The muscles in her abdomen knotted into a tight ball of need.

  Whose idiotic idea was that bloody kiss again?

  ‘How much further is it?’ There was no biting off the whine this time. Not after five hours and counting of beautiful never-ending Smoky Mountain wilderness.

  She was so over this now. Her arms hurt, her fingers had calluses the size of dirigibles, her stomach had begun to cramp from hunger after two energy bars and an apple two hours ago, and even Luke’s flexing shoulder muscles held no appeal whatsoever. She wanted to be back in her house in Notting Hill, preferably with her feet up, on her four-seater Heal’s sofa with a gargantuan glass of chilled Pouilly-Fuissé in her hand. Not crossing the Smokies by canoe.

  The going had been slow and sluggish, the river dragging beneath the kayak’s hull like a pool of treacle. She’d happily embrace the danger of some white water now if it would get them moving a bit faster. To their destination. Any worries about sleeping in the same campsite with Luke had been well and truly quashed because nothing short of five well-oiled male strippers dancing naked on the hull was likely to rouse her lust now.

  ‘Stop asking me that. You sound like Lizzie when she was three.’ Luke’s cranky reply proved what Halle had suspected for several hours. He wasn’t enjoying this excursion any more than she was. He was just better at hiding his discomfort. As he’d always been.

  ‘I never made Lizzie kayak until her arms dropped off when she was three.’

  ‘I wish your tongue would drop off.’

  ‘Tough. My tongue’s the only thing that still moves without pain.’

  ‘Believe me, I know that.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  ‘Can you see a fork in the river ahead of us?’ Luke replied. Doing that annoying thing he had perfected in his teens when he didn’t want to answer a question, of simply asking another one.

  Halle leaned to the side to peer past his broad back. The kayak swayed but didn’t tilt. At least she was now confident that nothing short of Godzilla would be able to tip this bloody hunk of fibreglass over. ‘No, all I see is more trees.’

  ‘And that’s exactly what I see. Which means the campsite’s probably a ways yet.’

  ‘I feel like I’m paddling through molasses, though.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I feel like I’m paddling through molasses with an annoying little bird on my shoulder trying to peck my ear off. So count yourself lucky.’

  ‘If she had the strength, this annoying little bird would clout you around said ear with said paddle.’

  She swung the paddle in an arc for the five-millionth time to plough it into the sluggish river. Luke’s paddle dug in ahead of hers. But then he held it in the water, swinging the boat across the current towards the opposite bank.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Halle said, alarmed. Maybe they wouldn’t capsize, but after five hours, she didn’t want to test the theory.

  ‘See those peaks over there?’

  She nodded, noticing the frothing whitecaps chopping up the glassy surface of the water. ‘What about them?’

  ‘It’s a faster current. If we get into it, we can relax for a bit and just steer.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ she shouted above the rumble of the approaching rapids as he navigated towards the rocky outcrops. The far bank looked a lot less benign, made up of sheer slabs of granite that rose out of the water in a jagged wall of death.

  ‘Wait!’ she yelled as the kayak got sucked into the stream and jolted over the swell. The scrape of rock on the hull jarred her feet.

  ‘Too late.’ Luke’s cry got lost in her shriek and the rush of water as she noticed the escarpment ahead. The fork in the river Chad had told them to look out for. The calm sedentary stream they had been in before veered to the right of the island.

  Luke shouldered his paddle to steer the boat to the left of the island. The kayak shot forward, fully engaged in the surging waves slapping at the boat.

  He whooped as they gathered speed. And Halle yelped, the shot of terror accompanied by the shimmer of exhilaration.

  Water sprayed her sun-stung cheeks and lapped into the cockpit, drenching her shorts. Her cap flipped backwards off her head. Wind lifted the ponytail that had stuck to her neck with sweat, shooting tingles of excitement into her stomach.

  Terrific, I’m going to die.

  Even so, her next shriek sounded suspiciously like a whoop.

  They barrelled down the river together whooping and shouting and going at what felt like a hundred miles an hour. She followed Luke’s lead, the muscles of her upper arms screaming as she clung to her paddle and dunked it in the water to counteract the flow and keep the boat on course. Her life vest bumped her chin, but the smile split her face. All the pain, the stress, the strain, even the boredom sped away, until all that was left was an intoxicating rush of adrenaline …

  The next delighted whoop cut off in her throat, though, as she spotted the fallen tree, its gnarled trunk hanging over the bank, its branches spearing up through the fast-moving water. Ready to capture and devour them in its clutches.

  ‘Luke, watch out.’

  ‘Fuuuck!’ His shout reached her ears just before an angry crunch, as the boat slammed into the thicket of grasping wooden fingers and spun round on its tip.

  Suddenly, they were racing down the river at a hundred miles an hour, backwards.

  Her next shriek sounded nothing like a whoop.

  Another crunch as the kayak caught fast in the branches of another felled tree. Water flowed over the bow. Luke swore copiously in front of her. And Halle’s life flashed before her in terrifying Technicolor as the unflippable kayak threatened to flip over and drown them both.

  ‘Right,’ Luke shouted over his shoulder. ‘Paddle on the right.’

  She did as he ordered, but her paddle lifted out of the water. Rocks smashed against the bow as they shot free, then lurched into the bank. Dipping branches scratched at her face, tangled in her hair, wrenching it out at the roots. Luke ducked to escape losing an eye. The boat listed and began to tilt, surging sideways against the current. Luke dumped the paddle and grabbed an overhanging branch to yank himself out of the cockpit.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Was he planning to jump? And leave her to die on the boat alone? ‘You can’t leave me here!’

  He didn’t reply, but he kicked the bow hard, spinning the kayak round into the right direction, then dropped down, straddling the hull behind her. Suddenly, his arms banded around her waist, the kayak’s bow lifted out of the water and she had visions of them tipping over backwards. But the weight of their gear in the front compartment counterbalanced Luke’s weight on the hull and they skimmed along. Sinking low at the back, but not going over.

  Whisking the paddle out of her numbed fingers, his knees digging into her sides and his feet dragging in the water, he steered them out of the thicket of roots and branches, and back into the main current.

  ‘Climb up front,’ he shouted.

  She scrambled out of her cockpit and crawled to land knees first in the seat Luke had vacated. Throwing herself into a crouch, she bumped her chin with a loud thud, which zinged into her temples, then flattened herself on the hull, using her hands to paddle.

  ‘There it is. Head to your right,’ came Luke’s shout.

  She lifted her head with an effort to see a clearing on the far bank, across what looked like about ten miles of fast-flowing river.

  After five hours of work, they were going to miss the bloody campsite entirely if they didn’t get across the cu
rrent.

  She picked up her pace, wheeling her left arm wildly as she scooped water. She could hear frantic splashing as Luke paddled furiously behind her.

  The next few seconds felt like hours. Luke’s grunts matched her pants as they both expended every last ounce of their strength to hit the bank before the river drew them past to who knew where.

  The sound of scraping gravel on the kayak’s hull answered all her prayers as they hit the pebbled beach. She heard the deep splash as Luke leaped into the water and grabbed the line at the bow. He dragged the boat the rest of the way onto solid ground.

  She sank face down, gripping the edges of the kayak with cold numbed fingers, attached like a limpet to the solid, un-moving hull. The gear hatch dug into her chest, exhaustion flowing over her. But the warm solidity of the fibreglass under her cheek felt too wonderful to relinquish.

  A hand gripped her upper arm and lifted her. She pitched off the hull to find herself straddling Luke’s lap. He cradled her head, one arm wrapped around her back. She buried her face in the fresh damp skin of his neck.

  He sat cross-legged on the small beach of pebbles and silt, his boots still in the water. The smell of wet man and the salty taste of sweat backed up in her throat.

  ‘Bugger me, that was a close call.’ The gruff murmur rumbled against her ear.

  ‘I thought we were going to die.’ Fatigue and relief made her a tad melodramatic.

  He chuckled, the husky rumble turning into a laugh. ‘Great way to go, though. Killed by a dead tree.’

  His laughter loosened hers and a chuckle popped out, fuelled by the renewed spurt of adrenaline and relief. They were alive, and undrowned by dead trees. Life was a truly wonderful thing.

  ‘Who knew dead trees could be so dangerous?’ she sputtered past rising hysteria.