Loving Our Heroes (Help for Heroes)

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.’

‘It’s never too early to fantasise about food,’ she told him. ‘Especially when you missed supper. Is there any breakfast? I’m starving.’

‘Well, I can’t provide coffee and croissants, but otherwise I can fulfil all your fantasies,’ said Campbell, and Tilly looked hopeful.

‘Really?’

‘Here.’ He produced a cereal bar from his pocket and offered it to her.

She took it suspiciously. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s a high energy bar. You’ll need it to get you up to the top.’

Unwrapping it, she took a cautious bite. ‘Disgusting,’ she pronounced, chewing madly.

‘Hey, you wanted breakfast, I gave you breakfast.’

‘You’re going to have to work on the fantasy thing,’ said Tilly, still chewing.

‘I will if you’ll work on the getting going thing,’ said Campbell pointedly. ‘Roger and Leanne are probably already on their way.’

‘I bet they’re not. I bet Roger is being nice and letting Leanne have a lie in after walking so far yesterday.’

‘More fool him.’ Campbell bent back to the tent and hauled the two packs outside before starting to pull out the tent pegs. ‘He’ll never win by being nice.’

‘No chance of catching you making that mistake,’ Tilly said acidly, and he looked up at her with a fleeting grin.

‘I never make that mistake,’ he said.

Jarred anew by the effect of a smile on that wintry face, Tilly looked away. She almost wished he wouldn’t do it, especially not when she had just decided that he was impossible and how glad she was that she wasn’t his type.

She busied herself looking in her pack for a toothbrush instead, and took her empty mug to the burn so that she could clean her teeth. She felt a little better after that, at least until she found a tiny folding mirror.

Aghast at her reflection, she went back to Campbell, who was dismantling the tent poles with his customary efficiency. ‘Why didn’t you tell me I looked like a dog’s breakfast?’

He glanced up briefly. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Look at my hair! That was you messing it up last night,’ she accused him. ‘And my face!’

Dismayed, she peered into the mirror once more, hoping that the red welt across her cheek might have miraculously disappeared. She had obviously been lying with her face pressed against the zip of the sleeping bag. It didn’t make for a good look, particularly not when combined with eyes that were piggy with tiredness and hair that resembled a straggly bird’s nest. There were probably things nesting in there already.

And the final touch—a smear of mud left over from her splat landing on the river bank. She rubbed at it grouchily but that only seemed to make it worse.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Campbell, not knowing what all the fuss was about. She looked fine to him. A little tousled, maybe, but he thought that dishevelled, just-fallen-out-of-bed look suited her.

Unfortunately, his attempt to sound soothing didn’t appear to have worked. ‘It does matter!’ Tilly was scrabbling in her pack for a hairbrush. ‘There’ll be cameras at the other end. I don’t want to go down in posterity looking like this!’

Campbell sighed. ‘Can we worry about that when we get there? Look, I promise you can have a primping stop on the way down, but let’s just get to the top first.’

Forcibly removing the hairbrush from her hand, he made her put everything away again. By the time she had finished, the tent was neatly folded up and stowed away in his rucksack. He picked up her pack, helped her into it and adjusted the straps for her as if she were a child.

‘OK,’ he said and pointed up to the summit that loomed above them. ‘Let’s get up there.’

Tilly craned her neck to follow his finger and her heart sank. ‘I’ll never be able to do it! I can hardly walk!’

Campbell swung his own pack on to his back. ‘You’ll feel better when you get going.’

Annoyingly, she did. It was steep going, though, and they had to scramble up the last bit.

‘I can’t do it,’ Tilly kept wailing, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she clung to a rock or clutched at a clump of heather, but Campbell wouldn’t listen.

‘You can.’

And, in the end, she could. It was an amazing feeling as she climbed the last few feet and stood on the summit, looking down at the magnificent hills spread out at her feet. Tilly felt her heart catch with awe.

‘Wow,’ was all she could say.

Campbell was watching her face. He had deliberately waited so that she would get to the top first. ‘See what you can do when you try?’ he said as he joined her.

‘It’s amazing!’

It was. It was like discovering yourself poised on the edge of a brand new life—one you never imagined you could have. A smile spread over her face and she stretched out her arms as she spun slowly, savouring her achievement. ‘I can’t believe I did it!’

‘And you got here first,’ he reminded her.

‘Unless Roger and Leanne have been and gone?’ Tilly suggested. She looked innocent, but the blue eyes were dancing with mischief.

Campbell didn’t rise to the provocation. ‘They’re still on their way up,’ he said with satisfaction, and pointed down to where they could make out two tiny figures toiling up the slope.

‘Looks like Leanne got a lie in after all,’ said Tilly. ‘We should wait and say hello.’

‘We’ll do no such thing,’ said Campbell. ‘We haven’t won yet. We’d better get something on camera to prove we were here, and then we’re on our way down.’ He got the camera out and checked it. ‘Ready?’

‘Hang on, just let me put some lippy on …’

He rolled his eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Jenkins!’ he said impatiently. ‘We’re on top of a mountain. This is no place for lipstick!’

‘It is if I’m going to be on film.’

Tilly peered into her mirror, squinting so she didn’t have to look at her hair or the smudges of mud, and carefully outlined her mouth with her favourite cherry-red. It was extraordinary what a bit of bright lipstick could do for the morale. She had always wanted to be able to do the natural look but the fact was that she suited bright colours.

Campbell had been setting up the camera on an outcrop and was squinting through it while he waited impatiently for her to finish. ‘If we sit on that rock, it’ll get us both in. Might be a bit of a squash, but it’ll be quicker than two separate sessions.’

They perched together on the rock, and Campbell put his arm round her to keep them both in frame. ‘Smile!’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth. ‘And say something for the camera.’

Burningly aware of his arm, Tilly smiled. ‘Here we are on the top of Ben Nuarrh and it feels as if we’re on top of the world,’ she told the camera and gestured around her. ‘It’s the most beautiful morning.’

She drew a deep breath. ‘I can’t believe that we got here at last,’ she confessed. ‘I feel incredible! I never believed that I could do it, and I probably wouldn’t have done if Campbell hadn’t bullied me all the way,’ she said with a glance at him. ‘I’m glad you did,’ she added almost shyly.

‘That’s not what you said this morning!’

‘No, well, I was tired this morning,’ said Tilly with dignity. ‘I hardly slept at all.’

Campbell pretended to gape in astonishment. ‘You most certainly did!’

Forgetting the camera, she turned to look at him. ‘I didn’t snore, did I?’ she asked anxiously. She had been worried about that.

‘I wouldn’t call it a snore, exactly. There was quite a bit of snuffling and grunting and smacking of lips. It was like sharing a tent with a rather large hedgehog.’

‘Charming!’ Tilly made to thump him but she was laughing, elated by the morning and the mountain top and the fizzing awareness of his presence.

‘Other than that,’ he said, ‘I very much enjoyed sleeping with you.’

That was when she made the mistake of looking into his eyes. They were the same pale, piercing green but alight with humour and something else that made Tilly’s laugh falter suddenly.

She moistened her lips. ‘Do you think that’s enough for the camera?’ she asked, and Campbell’s gaze held hers for a moment longer.

‘I think it probably is.’

For the umpteenth time, Tilly rearranged the wooden spoons by the hob and then snatched back her hand with an exclamation of annoyance. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ she said crossly. She was driving herself mad!

The television crew were due any minute. Tilly told herself she was just worried about having cameras in the house, zooming in on all the undusted mantelpieces, but deep down she knew that the prospect of seeing Campbell again was the real reason she was feeling so jittery.

It was three weeks since they had stood on the top of Ben Nuarrh. Campbell had marched her down the mountain in record time to make sure that they won the first stage, so they were ahead on points. Winning, however, was by no means a foregone conclusion. He still had to complete his challenge first, and then the viewers would have a vote after seeing clips from the video diaries and filming, so they wouldn’t learn the final result until a grand awards ceremony later in the year.

Remembering Campbell’s frustration at realising how much depended on the vagaries of the viewers’ reactions, Tilly smiled wryly. He was so obviously a man who liked a clear goal, a definite mission that he could go out and accomplish. Want a bridge blown up? A hostage rescued? A mountain climbed in record time? Campbell was your man. But all this waiting to see what people thought and felt was not for him. Having started, though, he was committed to finishing now or it really would feel like failure.

And failure wasn’t something Campbell Sanderson was prepared to contemplate, that was clear.

So he would be arriving any minute now to learn how to design and make a wedding cake, and he would be determined to succeed, however little he might enjoy it.

Well, she hadn’t enjoyed abseiling, Tilly remembered, or crossing that river. Or being bullied up and down that mountain! It had been wonderful at the top, of course, and she was very glad that she had done it in the end, but she wasn’t at all anxious to repeat the experience. She had been very happy to come back to her cosy kitchen—or rut, as Harry and Seb would call it—and she was looking forward to being the one who knew what she was doing this time.

How was Campbell going to react to that? Tilly didn’t see why she should make it too easy for him. He had made her suffer, after all.

After the elation of making the summit, he had been brisk on the way down, and clearly couldn’t wait to tie up the formalities at the end and get away. Tilly had been a little hurt by that, even though she knew it was silly. It wasn’t as if either of them had wanted to be there. Nothing had happened.

It was absolutely ridiculous to be missing him, in fact.

‘So, what was he like?’ her best friend, Cleo had asked, brushing aside details of Tilly’s traumatic abseil and homing straight in on the man assigned to partner her. ‘Attractive?’

Tilly thought about the glint in Campbell’s green eyes, about his mouth and that smile and the strength in his hands. She had barely known him forty-eight hours, and it was vaguely disturbing that she could still picture him in quite such detail.

She decided to downplay all that, though. Cleo would never let her forget it if she thought Tilly had found herself alone in a tent with an attractive man and done absolutely nothing about it.

‘Quite,’ she said, deliberately casual. ‘In an I-could-show-some-emotion-but-then-I’d-have-to-kill-you kind of way.’

‘Ooh …’ Cleo brightened. ‘He sounds gorgeous!’ Her eyes sharpened. ‘Available?’

‘He’s divorced,’ Tilly admitted reluctantly.

‘I think you should go for it.’

Tilly felt oddly ruffled. ‘I wouldn’t stand a chance. Besides, he wasn’t really my type. He wasn’t anything like Olivier.’

Which was true. Olivier had been dark and passionate, while Campbell was all cool containment. It was hard to imagine two men more different, in fact.

‘All the better,’ said Cleo, who hadn’t liked Olivier. ‘Someone not like Olivier is exactly what you need.’

‘I don’t need Campbell Sanderson,’ said Tilly definitely. ‘I’ve never met anyone so competitive—unless it’s my father! All men like that care about is winning,’ she went on with a touch of bitterness. ‘Never mind whose feelings they might be trampling on their way to success.’

‘You don’t need to spend the rest of your life with him, just have a bit of fun. Boost your confidence after that toad, Olivier.’

Tilly shook her head so the brown curls bounced around her face. ‘I can’t imagine anything less likely to boost my confidence,’ she said frankly. ‘Campbell is someone who has to have the best of everything, including women, and I don’t see me falling into that category, do you?’

‘You are the best,’ said Cleo loyally. ‘You’re funny, generous, warm, caring and sexy, if only you’d admit it. And you’re a fabulous cook. What more does a man want?’

‘A size six with legs up to her armpits?’

Cleo clicked her tongue. ‘You are so screwed up about your weight, Tilly! Listen, you are not overweight, you’re just curvy. That’s the way women are meant to be, and that’s how most men like them if the truth be told. Why do you think their tongues hang out whenever they spot a cleavage? You’re never going to be a stick insect, true, but you shouldn’t just accept that, you should celebrate it!’