by Milly Taiden
He held her gaze long enough she felt the heat of it down into the deepest places within her. What was he telling her with his eyes? That he truly wanted her? That his kiss was for real? She was afraid of what her own gaze betrayed about her—that his kiss swept her right off her feet, that if he swam any closer she’d meet him halfway and betray herself and her furry charges for just a few more moments pressed against him. A smile curved his lips again and she knew he must have seen some of that in her expression.
“Fair enough,” Evan said. “Our cards are on the table. You know what I want.” He paused, his smile widening. “And I know what you want. May the best man win.”
“Best woman,” she called out after him as he swum away.
But she had a feeling he won that round.
*
The warm glow within Evan stayed with him until the SUVs dumped them at another campground—this one on flat ground. He stood next to Bella and eyed the small pile of equipment. She bent to pick up the tent.
“I think this is even smaller than last night’s,” she said.
“Yep.” Damn Madelyn.
She handed him the single, rolled-up sleeping mat. “Here—you might as well take this since I get the tent.”
“What do you mean?”
“We both know you can’t sleep all night in something this small—not with me beside you. That’s it, right—why you don’t stay with women through the whole night? They give you claustrophobia just like small spaces do?”
He hesitated, rattled by her insight, but shook his head. “Whatever. I’m sleeping in that tent tonight.”
“I’m not sleeping outside!”
“I didn’t say you were.” With more bravado than he felt, he flopped the ground cloth down, took the tent away from her and pulled it from its protective sack. He popped out the tension poles and threaded them through their sleeves. “Do those ends, will you?”
Together they lifted the tiny structure into position on top of the ground cloth.
“That’s got to be a one man tent,” Bella said disgustedly.
“Yep.”
It was getting dark, but well after they’d both brushed their teeth and used the nearby outhouse they sat on logs around an empty fire pit, saying little. The day crew packed up and left, and the night cameraman installed his tent-cam, and retreated to the edge of the clearing, his assistant in tow.
Was there any chance he’d make it through the night in that…cocoon…pressed up against Bella? Just the thought of climbing into that little orange nylon excuse for a tent made his hands sweat. He regretted now he’d never taken Amanda’s advice to find a shrink—a therapist—to talk about his claustrophobia. Maybe if he had he wouldn’t be sweating like a pig right now.
“I’m turning in,” Bella said finally. She crossed the campground, took off her boots and left them neatly side by side to the left of the door flap, before bending to crawl into it on her hands and knees. For several minutes he heard her rustling around. Then all was still.
Ten minutes later, he finally worked up the courage to approach the tent himself. Mimicking Bella, he shucked off his shoes first, and bent to unzip the flap. Taking one last deep breath of air, he pushed himself into the small opening.
It was worse than he thought.
Even on hands and knees his back scraped up against the fabric ceiling and the whole tent shook as he inched his way to a prone position beside Bella. She held up one side of the sleeping bag and he slid beneath it, almost instantly tossing it off him again as the familiar suffocating feeling descended on him.
He heard Bella’s exhaled breath. “You really have this claustrophobic thing bad, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Pretty bad,” he wheezed.
“Are you going to be okay?”
He curled onto his side, his back to her, arms crossed over his chest. “Probably not.”
“Look, you don’t have to prove anything to anyone. You can sleep outside.” She sounded like she’d prefer it.
“I kind of do,” he said, fighting to keep himself from tearing the tent apart with his bare hands—anything to get air into this tiny space. Any second the fabric walls would wrap themselves around him, tightening until they’d squeezed every inch of air from his lungs. He didn’t think he could stand it for another minute. But he had to.
“Why?”
“Because it’s true—I find it just about impossible to spend an entire night with a woman. It’s…really screwed things up for me. That’s not how I want to be.”
He felt her turn to face him, felt a tentative touch on his back. “If you have a phobia, it can take time to overcome. You don’t do it all at once.”
“What do you know about it?” Her hand felt good on his skin. She stroked him lightly and he wondered if she knew she was sending streaks of heat straight through him to his groin.
“Sometimes I work with people who are afraid of animals—usually dogs. There’s a counselor in town who calls me up and I bring a really gentle dog to her office when her patient is ready for it. At first I stand with the dog near the patient—just for a minute or two. In later appointments I bring the dog closer. Finally the patient touches the animal. It’s not all at once—it happens over time.”
Her touch mesmerized him, and in a moment he wouldn’t be able to leave the tent without shocking their national audience. He reached for the sleeping bag and covered his traitorous body. Thankfully, Bella didn’t stop her ministrations. “So you’re saying I should only stay in the tent for a few minutes.”
“I’m saying you shouldn’t feel bad if you can’t overcome a lifelong phobia in a single night.” She caressed his back, his shoulder, his bicep, running her hand up and down his skin until he wanted to turn over, scoop her into his arms and make love to her until the sun came up.
But he couldn’t. For one thing, there was a camera ten inches above his head capturing all of this, and it was bad enough the whole world would know about his phobia when these episodes aired; they didn’t need a front row seat to his lovemaking, too. For another, he never struggled to stay in bed with a woman while they were having sex. It was afterwards, when they snuggled up and he felt their desire to snare him forever, keep him tied to their sides, like his mother had all throughout his youth.
He thrashed to a sitting position. Bella’s hand fell away from him. “Sorry,” he said. Damn it, he could do this. He had to do this.
“It’s okay, Evan. Everybody has issues. You aren’t any less of a man because you’re claustrophobic.”
So why did he feel like a worm when he pushed his way out of the tent and went to sleep outside on the ground?
*
The pang of loneliness she felt when Evan fled the tent unnerved Bella. She supposed it was natural to bond to someone you’d just spent two straight days with—especially while being filmed the whole time—but she was surprised by the depth of his claustrophobia. While it had been funny on the tram, and giving him a hard time had definitely paid off in spades when she gained three points in the next challenge, watching him struggle against his fears right next to her in the tent made his pain too real to ignore. Evan obviously had demons. She wondered what made him so afraid to be close to people.
When Madelyn had taunted him about his inability to spend the whole night with a woman she thought he’d face her down by bragging about his conquests and claiming indifference to cuddling after the deed was done, but now she saw this wasn’t about machismo at all. Evan was afraid—no, terrified—of being close enough to a woman that she might take advantage of him when he was vulnerable. He couldn’t spend the night with a woman because that would expose him utterly. He couldn’t fall in love with a woman and get married in a normal way because that would literally tie him down and he couldn’t bear to be restrained or confined in such a manner.
She knew the textbook definition of claustrophobia, of course, but had always considered the fear to be based on a physical state. She understood why Evan freaked out in the tra
m car, for example; it was an enclosed space he could not leave while they were en route.
There was another aspect to Evan’s claustrophobia, though—he was just as afraid of close connections with people as he was of close quarters. If he couldn’t even date a woman, what did that mean for his other relationships? Did he have close friends? What about his family?
Strange to think that someone as rich and successful as Evan could be as damaged as someone as poor and dumb as her.
She woke hours later tangled in the sleeping bag. When she unzipped the tent flap, the cool air was a welcome antidote to her groggy mind, but when she looked at the sky, she groaned. It didn’t take a weatherman to know they’d see rain before the day was done.
“Morning,” Evan grunted at her as he returned from the campground outhouse. He looked disheveled, and when a crew member handed him a cup of coffee, he accepted it and paced to the far side of the fire pit to drink it alone.
*
“Good morning, contestants!” Jake said with an enthusiasm that made Evan want to belt him. What, exactly, was good about it? He’d barely slept for the second night running, and he was so stiff he felt like he’d aged a decade. Worst of all, rain was coming. Stomping around all day and getting soaked wasn’t his idea of fun. “Today we have a new type of challenge that starts now and will run for most of the day. You’ll each need one of these babies,” Jake handed them each a state-of-the-art GPS unit, “and a set of directions. You’ll be on your own today, however. You’ll each travel to your next destination by a different route.” Evan scowled. How was he supposed to clandestinely help Bella win if they weren’t even in the same place? “Along the way you’ll use your GPS units to discover ten geocaches. Each one will contain directions to the next one. You have until sundown to get all ten and navigate your way to the next campsite.”
“What if we don’t?” Bella asked, looking at her GPS unit worriedly. Evan cursed inwardly. He’d used the things a thousand times—if she’d never used one before, he’d have a hell of a time not beating her ten times over to the final destination.
“Don’t worry, your GPS unit comes complete with a homing beacon. If you don’t find us, we’ll find you, but any geocaches you dig up past sundown won’t count toward your point total.” Jake flashed his trademark smile.
Bella didn’t look reassured.
“It’s not that hard,” Evan said, reaching out to show her. “You just push these buttons to set…”
“I can figure it out,” Bella snapped at him.
Whoops. That’s right—he was supposed to be clandestinely helping her. “Sorry. My bad. So, are we all set here? Can I get going?”
“Here are your first coordinates.” Jake handed them each a small, plastic-coated card. The show must spend a mint on lamination, Evan thought. “And here’s a shovel. It just might come in handy today.”
It took Evan all of two seconds to program the coordinates into the GPS, stow the shovel in his daypack, and head off in the right direction. He made a show of rushing out of the campground but after a quarter mile slowed down. “No need to hurry,” he said aloud for the benefit of the cameras. “She doesn’t even know how to program the thing.” He sat down on a handy log, untied his shoes and retied them, as if he’d done a poor job the first time around. Afterwards, he set off at an ambling pace punctuated by frequent stops.
He might be in for a boring day, but at least he’d lose.
*
Once she got the hang of the GPS, it wasn’t hard to stay on track. Bella decided the product placement of the units was probably more important to the show than making this challenge particularly hard. It made sense when she thought about it. The company that produced the GPS units would want them to seem easy to use and accurate. If she got lost, they’d look bad.
As she moved along the trail she checked the unit from time to time to see if the dot that represented her was indeed getting closer to the dot that represented the first geocache. Yep, right on target. She’d stuck the little shovel through the flap of the day pack where it was easy to carry, but definitely made the pack heavier than on previous days. Ten geocaches seemed like a lot. She wondered just how much hiking she’d need to do before the day was over.
Evan was right; they ought to bill this show as a weight-loss vehicle, she thought some time later as she reached the spot where her GPS told her the first geocache would be. Her clothes definitely felt bigger today, and the muscles in her legs were more defined.
She looked around the little clearing for a sign of where the geocache was hiding. Was she supposed to just start digging? A few months ago, a little boy at her clinic with his cat had regaled her with a story about geocaching with his family. According to him, the canisters he’d found were hidden—not buried—so people could find them, open them up, sign a log and possibly retrieve a prize, then hide them again for the next seeker.
This was different, she told herself. No one else was going to look for these geocaches—just her. Of course Madelyn would make it difficult by burying them.
She spotted an area where the dirt looked different from the rest of the ground—like it had been disturbed recently—and started digging. Moments later she heard a satisfying thud and bent down to push the rest of the loose dirt away from the metal canister buried in the ground. She pulled it out triumphantly, unhooked the lid and dumped out a laminated card, a stuffed animal that vaguely resembled the marmot she photographed the previous day, and an energy bar.
Hey now, if the geocaches all contained treats, she was on it!
Bella stuffed the marmot in her daypack, programmed the new coordinates into her GPS and unwrapped the bar. This was going to be a cinch.
*
“Could you go any slower?” Chris said behind him.
Evan turned around. “You’re not supposed to talk to me, remember?”
“The camera’s off. So what gives?”
“I twisted my ankle.” Hell, he’d made a huge production of it back there after he’d found his third geocache in the first half-hour of the day. He’d been limping ever since. Was this guy dense?
“Twisted it, yeah. You’ll get an Emmy for sure for that bit of acting.”
Anger tightened Evan’s jaw. “Look, I don’t need your…”
“Fine, fine. Stop talking to the camera and get a move on,” Chris said.
“You’re the one holding me up now,” Evan said, but he resumed his hike, going just a bit faster. Losing points today was going to be harder than he thought. How was he supposed to fake getting lost when the trail was so clearly marked and the GPS took him right to the caches?
He wondered how Bella was faring. Surely she’d have to have found at least five or six by now. He was moving at a snail’s pace. If she was walking as fast as she normally did, she’d have a big lead on him.
As long as Madelyn hadn’t stacked the odds against her in some way.
Evan stopped in his tracks and Chris swore behind him. Could Madelyn be using their separation as a way to sabotage Bella? Was her hike longer, or her caches buried more deeply? What if Madelyn gave her the wrong coordinates and led her astray completely?
He couldn’t think of any way to find out.
Except….
“I’m beginning to think you guys have it out for me,” he said out loud.
“What do you mean?” Chris said. “You know you’re not supposed to talk to us, right?”
“I mean, what’s with the tiny tents? What about the gondola? What’s next—a night in a cave? It’s obvious you guys know I’m claustrophobic, and you’re using it to make me lose the contest.”
“You’re only losing by a couple of points,” Andrew pointed out. “If you hurried up a little bit, you’d make them up in no time.”
“How? If Bella’s course is as easy as mine, she’ll get full points, too.”
“Dude, if you don’t hurry up, you’re not going to get full points,” Chris said.
“Dude, no matter how slow I go,
I’m going to finish this course before noon. Obviously today isn’t the day you’re going to screw me over. But tomorrow…I bet tomorrow Madelyn’s got something up her sleeve that will totally mess with me.”
Andrew snickered. “You’re not the one who needs to worry about that.”
Chris elbowed him. “Shut up, man.”
“Sorry.” Chastened, Andrew put a hand on his hip and addressed Evan. “If I were you, I’d just do my best to complete every challenge as quickly and carefully as I could. Don’t worry about Bella.”
“Whatever.” As he resumed walking, Evan hoped his act fooled them, but he was worried about Bella. More worried than he’d been before, in fact. If Madelyn felt no compunction about using his worst fears against him, even though she wanted him to win, what might she do to Bella?
What was Bella’s worst fear?
And where was she now?
*
“This can’t be right,” Bella said for twentieth time as she bushwhacked through thick underbrush, following the GPS directions to her next geocache. She’d found the first four easily enough, but her new coordinates took her right off the trail and into the woods.
She should have known they wouldn’t all be that easy. The show wouldn’t expect viewers to watch two episodes of the contestants simply walking down a trail. Still, this was brutal; she needed a machete to get through this undergrowth.
A half an hour later, she was hot, sweaty, and no closer to the cache if her GPS was to be believed. She shook the gadget, convinced something was wrong with it. Shouldn’t she have reached the next one by now? She squinted at the sun that was climbing higher in the sky by the minute, peeking out through billows of ever-thickening clouds. Evan was probably far ahead of her by now, even if his route was as rough as hers. He knew how to operate a GPS far better than she did, and she was beginning to think her earlier successes were simply luck.
