Just The Way You Are(54)

But no – I looked on in horror as my supposedly faithful companion leapt up at the man’s knees, tail wagging like a helicopter rotor, nose sniffing and whuffling in delight, not a hint of bared teeth or warning growls.

‘Well, hello!’ The man burst out laughing, bending to pat Nesbit’s head as he glanced up at me, and my heart didn’t know whether to soar with relief or plummet in shame.

I knew that voice.

Now he’d taken another few steps into the firelight, I knew that easy grin. Those broad shoulders. The warm, friendly eyes.

Dammit.

I mean, who else was it going to be, out here in the depths of the forest, at this time of night?

If my sprained ankle wasn’t currently twisted up in a rope, I might have tried to sneak behind the tent, wiggle my way in from the back and put on some clothes, then swear blind I’d been inside the tent all along.

As it was, I had to be content with folding myself into as small a ball as possible, deftly flicking my hair over my grubby bra and pretending that I camped semi-naked in the woods all the time. Just an ordinary Saturday night for a wild girl like me.

Just in case Sam hadn’t spotted me shrivelled up in the shadows, Nesbit helpfully ran from his leg over to me, did a happy bark, and then ran back to Sam again.

‘As lovely as it is bumping into you like this, I’m hoping you’ve brought some clothes with you?’ Sam said, his voice quivering with laughter as he spun around to preserve my dignity. ‘It gets pretty cold out here once the sun’s gone down.’

‘Well, of course!’ I did my best to free my leg so I could disappear into the tent and never come out again, but my hands wouldn’t stop trembling, my ankle was really sore and the rope was getting more and more knotted up the more frantically I tried to untangle it.

‘Dammit!’ I swore, out loud this time, causing Sam to jerk in surprise.

‘Are you okay?’

‘I was until you showed up. A thousand acres of forest and you happen to stumble upon my camp!’ I let out another grunt of frustration before finally admitting defeat. Taking a composing breath, I squared my shoulders and tried to chalk it all down to being part of the adventure. And for goodness’ sake, as mortified as I was that it was Sam, I shuddered to imagine how much worse it would be if it wasn’t him, and some other forest ranger had popped up.

‘I’m tangled up in the guy rope…’ I said, in as dignified a voice as I could muster.

‘Oh. Right,’ Sam replied, still facing away.

There was a potent pause.

‘Do you want some help?’ he eventually offered, his voice sounding strained.

‘Yes. Please.’

‘Are you absolutely sure, can we be completely clear, because I’m on duty right now and I do not want this to be potentially misconstrued by anyone. You want me to turn around, approach you, and untangle you from the guy rope. Myself. With my own hands.’

I swallowed back a flood of I don’t know what. Hormones, probably.

‘Well, there’s a penknife in my rucksack. If you pass me that I could hack myself free.’

‘And ruin your tent?’

‘Okay then. Yes please, I am asking you to please do whatever it was you just said so that I can go inside my tent and get dressed as soon as possible.’

In three ranger-length strides, Sam was crouching by my side, his breath slow and controlled as he deftly worked at the knots, eyes firmly fixed on my ankle, hair dangling over his forehead.

I closed my eyes to avoid seeing his gorgeous face close up, and tried to focus on something other than his fingers brushing my bare skin and the faint warmth of his body heat, despite only wearing a green T-shirt. I caught a hint of his scent, like the depths of the forest spiked with male perspiration, and the breath caught in my throat in response.

Every nerve in my body was taut. It was disturbingly and wonderfully intimate all at the same time, and I wanted him to take forever to get the knots undone, even as I couldn’t bear for the intensity to last another second.

I felt as much as heard him sit back, a sudden emptiness in the atmosphere, as though a huge weight had been lifted.

Sam paused to clear his throat. I opened my eyes to find him a couple of metres away, looking intently at the scrubby grass by his feet. ‘All sorted.’

‘Thanks,’ I mumbled, reverse-scrabbling into the tent because turning around so that he had a full view of my barely-covered backside felt even more exposing. I took a few seconds to choke on the utter horror of what just happened, got dressed and spent another long moment with my hands pressed over my face, shaking my head and wishing I was anyone but me, before shuffling back out again.

‘Hi,’ Sam said, with a quirky smile, hands in his shorts pockets as he rocked back on the heels of his walking boots.

‘Hi. And thank you. Who knows how long I’d have been trapped there if you hadn’t stepped up. Although, if you hadn’t snuck up on me, I wouldn’t have got caught up in the first place, so… maybe instead of thanking you I should be asking what you’re doing creeping about my clearing?’

‘I wasn’t creeping! I entered the clearing in a perfectly relaxed manner.’

‘Okay, but back to the thousand acres of forest, and why you happened to be in this one?’

Sam glanced over his shoulder, rubbing his jaw.

‘As the ranger on call tonight, I was notified that a member of the public had pitched a tent in an unsuitable location. While the unofficial line is that we leave campers to it as long as they aren’t presenting any risk to the forest or leaving their rubbish behind, in this case I have to move you on.’