‘What are you building a fire for anyway? Wouldn’t it be more sensible to stay in the car?’ The words emerged staccato and breathless.
Luiz gave a shrug. ‘Are you always sensible, Nell?’
She swallowed. His dark eyes felt as though they were eating her up. A man had never looked at Nell this way before and it excited and scared her in equal measure.
She ran her tongue across the outline of her dry, quivering lips. ‘Yes?’
It was a question that she was silently begging him to disprove. A nerve clenched in his lean cheek as Luiz struggled with himself. Knowing she would respond if he touched her made it harder to listen to the voice of reason that told him this would be a mistake—on so many levels a mistake. A mistake because he knew it would be uncomplicated sex, but would she?
‘Sleep where you like. I can’t make the decision for you, Nell.’
Nell fixed on some point over his shoulder. ‘That means I’ll have the car to myself.’ She turned and blindly ran.
By the time she reached the car Nell was panting as she struggled to catch her breath. It was nothing short of a miracle that she had only slipped once during her flight. She bent forward, brushed the loose earth from her grazed knees and examined the heels of her hands that had saved her from the ignominy of landing face first in the dirt—they were bruised.
She had escaped lightly, she reflected grimly. Bruised hands and scraped knees—it could have been a lot worse. Her thoughts drifted back to those tense, sexually charged moments when things could have got seriously out of control. With a sigh she leaned her back against the door and closed her eyes as she waited for her heart rate to slow.
Luiz hadn’t attempted to stop her or follow her; Nell hadn’t expected him to. He had been offering her casual sex, not a lifetime commitment, and no doubt he had just shrugged and said win some lose some—or the equivalent in Spanish—when she had bolted like a scared rabbit.
She groaned at the memory of her retreat. He probably thought she was insane. He might be right. Nell, unable to decide whether wanting to stay or not staying constituted insanity, gave a slightly hysterical laugh.
Nothing had happened, and there was no point agonising over it. It was well known that mental and physical exhaustion made people act totally out of character.
‘Sleep, that’s what I need,’ she told herself as she reached with a shaking hand into her shoulder bag to retrieve the car keys. With the talk of wild boar she froze at a sharp crackling sound in the undergrowth.
She stayed that way, ears straining, for several minutes and when she continued to sift through the contents of her bag she kept her eyes trained on the undergrowth.
She was as fond as anyone of wildlife, but she felt a little uneasy about face-to-face encounters. A car door between her and any nocturnal visitors would make her feel a lot more comfortable.
When the keys remained elusive Nell made a clicking noise of impatience with her tongue and, dropping to her knees, tipped the entire contents onto the grass.
She scanned the objects spread out feeling irritation initially, not concern, when the keys didn’t leap straight out at her. Muttering, ‘More haste less speed,’ she began to return the contents one by one to her bag. It was when their numbers were reduced by half that she felt the first stirring of genuine apprehension.
When all the contents were returned except the pencil torch that she held in a white-knuckled grip the apprehension morphed into full-blown despair.
She dropped her head into her hands and groaned. The thought of spending the night out here alone filled her with utter horror. But what alternative did she have? Crawl back to Luiz?
Nell shook her head from side to side. ‘Absolutely not—never!’ That simply wasn’t an option.
Face set in a frowning mask of determination, she tapped her forehead with her finger… Think, Nell, think.
Brow furrowed in concentration, she mentally retraced her actions. She had definitely put them in the bag, they weren’t there now so logically they must be somewhere… Her glance slid to her scratched knees and her glance swerved towards the trees that were now a dark sinister shadow in the fast-fading light. They must have fallen from the bag when she fell over.
She flicked the switch on the pencil torch and gave a hollow laugh as its feeble beam shone out. A needle in a haystack would be child’s play compared to finding the keys in there with this. With a snort of disgust she threw it over her shoulder.
A moment later, regretting the gesture, she felt around in the grass for the discarded torch. It wasn’t much but it was all she had. When her fingers closed over the torch she gave a sigh of relief and settled back on her heels, brushing the tears of self-pity from her cheeks with an impatient gesture.