Loving Our Heroes

Tilly flushed in the darkness, imagining him grunting with effort as he manhandled her out of her clothes. No wonder he had stopped! The poor man had probably been exhausted.

That was the story of her life, she thought glumly. An attractive man undressed her and she wasn’t even awake to appreciate it.

She didn’t bother to lace her boots. It sounded like a wild night out there and she wasn’t planning on being very long.

Yelping at her sore muscles, she took the torch and struggled out of the tent only to find herself staggering against a gust of wind that slashed rain across her face. Straightening as best she could, she saw that it was very dark, and she began to wish that she had hung on after all. There might not be enemy soldiers lurking behind the outcrops, but it took her imagination no time at all to sketch out the beginning of a horror story. The sooner she got back into the tent, the better.

Tilly did her business as quickly as she could, which wasn’t very fast, given that her fingers were numb with cold. The skiing dungarees might be warm, but she had forgotten just how long it took to unfasten them. It was all right for Campbell, with his no doubt highly trained bladder.

She was wet and shivering by the time she scrambled back into the tent and zipped up the entrance once more. Then she had to go through the whole business of taking off her jacket and boots again. She put the torch on the sleeping bag where the beam was promptly buried until Campbell picked it up and held it for her so that she could see what she was doing. Tilly was grateful, but very conscious, too, of how close he was. It felt very intimate, being together in such a confined space, and, although she did her best to stick to her sleeping bag, it was impossible not to touch him.

‘I can’t believe people do this kind of thing for fun,’ she grumbled through chattering teeth. ‘Who’d want to camp when you could be tucked up in an nice, cosy B and B? God, I’m freezing!’

‘Your hair’s wet,’ said Campbell. Incredibly, he had a smallish towel in his hand. ‘Turn round and I’ll dry it for you.’

‘Where on earth did you find that?’ Tilly asked to distract herself from his nearness as he rubbed her hair vigorously.

‘In my pack.’

‘That’s not a pack—ouch!—that’s a bottomless pit!’

‘I came prepared for the conditions,’ he said. ‘I knew there was a good chance we’d get wet somewhere along the line.’

‘Pity you didn’t bring a hot shower,’ muttered Tilly. ‘You seem to have everything else in there.’ Her ears were sore and she tried to pull her head away, but Campbell kept a firm grip on her. ‘Ow!’ she protested. ‘That hurts—and God knows what my hair’s going to look like in the morning.’

‘It’s more important that you don’t go to sleep again with wet hair,’ he pointed out, giving her hair a final rub before tossing the towel aside. ‘There. Get back in your sleeping bag and you’ll soon warm up.’

Shuddering with the cold, Tilly clambered back into the bag and pulled the covers tight under her chin. ‘How soon is soon?’ she asked, unclenching her jaw after a few moments. ‘I don’t suppose you thought to bring a hot-water bottle?’

She heard a sigh through the darkness, and the next moment Campbell had rolled over and was pulling her bodily towards him, sleeping bag and all, making her squeak with surprise. ‘You’ll have to make do with body heat,’ he said. ‘You can’t beat it when you’re cold.’

He shifted to make himself more comfortable and put an arm over her, tucking her firmly into the curve of his body. ‘Now, have you quite finished fidgeting?’ he asked, his astringent tones at odds with the warm reassurance of his hold.

‘Yes.’ Tilly’s voice was huskier than she wanted.

‘Then perhaps we can both get some sleep?’

Sure, but how could she be expected to sleep when his arm was heavy over her and she could feel his breath stirring her hair? Even through two sleeping bags, she was desperately aware of his solid male warmth.

In spite of her exhaustion, Tilly had rarely felt less like sleeping. All her senses were on high alert and fizzing away as if they had had ten coffees apiece. She could hear the rain drumming overhead while the wind plucked angrily at the canvas. The tent smelt of canvas and hillside and wet jackets.

It was strange to be lying next to a man again, and Tilly was surprised at how right it felt with Campbell’s arm around her. There had been no one since Olivier.

Olivier … How desolate she had been when he had dumped her! Tilly had done her best to hide her humiliation behind a bright and breezy exterior and she thought she had done a good job of convincing everyone that she was over him, so it had come as something of a shock to realise that even her brothers, never very perceptive when it came to emotions, had realised how miserable she was inside.

‘You need to meet someone new,’ they had told her. ‘It’s time you got out there and started looking instead of hiding away in your kitchen.’

‘I’m not hiding away! I’ve got a business to run, and it happens to involve a lot of time in the kitchen, that’s all.’

Even her friends had started. ‘Olivier wasn’t the one for you. The right man is out there somewhere, Tilly, but you won’t meet him stuck at home. You’ve got to go out and find him.’

Tilly hadn’t believed them. She knew none of them had liked Olivier particularly, but she had been so in love with him, so utterly convinced he was The One. What was the point of looking for Mr Right when she had already found him, and discovered that she couldn’t have him? Tilly hadn’t wanted to meet someone new. All she’d wanted was for Olivier to come back and tell her that it had been a terrible mistake, that he did love her after all. That was all she had dreamed about for months now.

The odd thing was that now when she closed her eyes, she couldn’t picture him clearly. Tilly frowned into the darkness. Oh, she remembered what he looked like, of course she did, but his image was strangely two-dimensional, like a photo in a magazine. When she tried to bring it into sharper focus, all she could see was Campbell: Campbell looking exasperated, Campbell shaking his head in disbelief, Campbell smiling that unexpected smile that made her pulse kick just remembering it.

Perhaps the boys and all her friends would shut up now, Tilly hoped. They had got their way. Between them, they had bullied her out of the kitchen and halfway up a Scottish mountain, and sure enough she had met someone new, even someone available.

But Campbell was no Mr Right, and even if he had been looking for Ms Right, which she doubted very much, it was clear that Tilly wasn’t at all what he would have in mind.

How could she be? She had known him for less than twenty-four hours, but it took a lot less than that to realise that he was a man determined to have the best of everything. She hadn’t been at all surprised to hear that his ex-wife was dazzling. Campbell Sanderson would never accept that anyone else could do better than him. So any woman on his arm would have to be the most beautiful, the wittiest, the cleverest, the best-dressed.

Tilly was none of those things. No way would a man like Campbell ever want someone who muddled through life and looked a mess most of the time while she was doing it. Olivier hadn’t wanted her either.

No, she should just accept that she was never going to be a woman men desired or cherished. She was resigned to being good old Tilly now—the good friend, the one men went out with if they wanted a break from adoring their high-maintenance women and needed an evening of fun with no strings attached.

Not that Campbell would even want that. He was too chilly and driven to relax with a jolly evening in the pub. He wasn’t the type to want a shoulder to cry on either. Look at how he had clammed up the moment she had suggested that he might have loved his wife.

How he must have hated losing her to another man. Of course, anyone would find it devastating, but it would be the losing that would really rankle with a man as competitive as Campbell. He wasn’t the type to shrug his shoulders and accept a situation. He certainly wasn’t the type to make do with second-best, Tilly decided, and that was the most she could ever be. Frankly, she would be lucky to make second-best. Those keen green eyes missed nothing, and she wouldn’t be at all surprised if she had ranked as a non-starter.

Well, that was OK, Tilly told herself. He didn’t have anything she wanted either.

All right, maybe that wasn’t quite true. He had a great body and an unexpectedly attractive smile, but any Mr Right of hers would need a lot more than that. Tilly had no intention of humiliating herself any further by not reaching Campbell’s impossible standards. She had never matched up to her father’s, had failed to meet Olivier’s, and she was sick of feeling inadequate, she decided. There was only so much rejection a girl could take.

No, if Harry and Seb thought their plan to drag her out of the kitchen would lead her to Mr Right, they were in for a disappointment.

Tilly was prepared to admit that she found Campbell attractive, but that was as far as it went. She wouldn’t be letting her defences down or getting her expectations up.

On the other hand, since she was here, being held tight against that hard body, it would be silly not to enjoy it, wouldn’t it? Tilly closed her eyes and snuggled closer to Campbell. She might as well make the most of it.

‘Time to get up.’ Campbell touched Tilly on the shoulder to wake her, but she only groaned and turned away from his hand to bury her face in her sleeping bag.

He shook her harder. ‘Come on, wake up. We’ve got a mountain to climb.’

Tilly groaned louder. ‘Climb it yourself,’ she mumbled.

‘Unfortunately, I can’t do it without you,’ said Campbell. ‘Come on, get up. I’ve made you some tea. You can drink it while I’m packing up the tent.’

Tilly was tempted to tell him what he could do with his tea, but Campbell was already rolling up his bag and stuffing it into his pack. Clearly he wasn’t going to let her rest until she was up and out.

Grumbling, she climbed blearily out of the tent and straightened, only to freeze as she found herself staring at a view that was literally breathtaking. The rain had stopped some time in the early hours and the chilly wind had blown away all the clouds, leaving a pale luminous sky suffused with sunrise. Great golden brown hills rolled away into the purple distance, without a single sign of human habitation. No roads, no telegraph poles, no electricity pylons. Just rocks and heather and a lone bird calling somewhere above them.

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘Quite something, isn’t it?’ Campbell poured tea into an enamel mug. ‘Now, aren’t you glad you got up?’

‘Ecstatic,’ said Tilly sourly, grimacing as she tried to straighten her back. Awe-inspiring it might be, but it would take more than a view to improve her mood. ‘I love being bullied awake at the crack of dawn and dragged outside to drink tea in the freezing cold halfway up a mountain when I’m so stiff I can’t even stand up straight! I mean, it’s the perfect way to start a day. Who wants to wake up in a big, wide bed with sun striping the crisp white sheets as some gorgeous man brings in a tray laden with fresh coffee and croissants and apricot jam when you could be here?’

Campbell handed her the mug of tea with a mixture of incredulity and amusement. ‘You’ve only been awake two minutes, woman! It’s too early for fantasies.’