“Taylor—”
She shrugged off the blanket and stood. “I need to gather firewood.”
“We’re not building a fire,” he reminded her.
“Then I need to go to the bathroom,” she said as she took off for the toilets again.
Let him think she had a tiny bladder, or irritable bowel syndrome, or whatever.
You aresucha coward!
Fine, so she was a coward. She’d wear the label this one time if it meant evading talk about that kiss. Taylor knew she’d have to face the implications of it sooner or later, but she was willing to do all she could to avoid it for as long as possible.
She walked around for twenty minutes, collecting twigs and other kindling that could be used to start a fire if they really were stranded in the forest. If Jamar asked why she’d been gone for so long, she could use the excuse of wanting to give clients a more authentic experience by gathering fire-making materials.
She returned to their campsite to find an orange and gray tent that resembled a space pod set up near the downed tree sofa. Jamar was nowhere in sight, but he had unfolded her army-green tent and laid it on the ground, its metal poles and stakes strewn across it. Was this his way of telling her that she was sleeping in her own tentandshe had to assemble it herself?
Taylor was upset at just how upset she was. Sure, she’d told him that she wanted to do this on her own, but it was the principle of it. He was her pretend boyfriend, for crying out loud!
“Hey, you’re back,” he said.
She whipped around and tracked him with her gaze as he made his way to the orange tent.
“I did try to put yours together, even though you wanted to do it yourself. But it was too complicated.” He hooked his thumb at his tent. “I had this overnighted from Amazon too. It’s even bigger than I thought it would be, and only about the size of a roll of paper towels when it’s stored away.”
“Hmm, how nice,” Taylor said, walking to her tent.
“Where are you going? I’m not sleeping in this tent by myself. Body heat, remember?”
“So you want me in there with you?” Taylor asked.
He gave her a look that said,What do you think?
The rush of relief and exhilaration she felt was so annoying. She wasn’t supposed towanthim to want her.
Taylor took a step toward the tent, then stopped. “I shouldn’t have to say this, but I’m saying it anyway. Nothing is happening in there except for sleep.”
“Is talking allowed?” he asked.
Smart-ass.“It depends on what you want to talk about.”
“Fine, Taylor. Can we please just go in there before the hypothermia sets in?”
“It’s not even that cold out here,” she said. Once again, the elements chose that moment to prove her wrong as a stiff breeze whipped up the leaves around their feet.
Taylor grabbed her thermal blanket and scrambled inside the tent’s arched opening. Jamar crawled in behind her, bringing the battery-operated heater.
“What now?” Taylor asked.
“I would tell you my suggestion, but I don’t want an elbow to the gut,” he said as he arranged his unzipped sleeping bag on the floor of the tent, making a bed for them. He stretched hers out on top of it.
“I know what we can do,” he said. He slipped between the sleeping bags and turned down the top edge so that she could get in. “I have season two ofStranger Thingson my phone. We can watch that.”
“Don’t you need Wi-Fi to stream TV shows?” She held both hands up. “Please don’t tell me you brought a Wi-Fi hub.”
“I did, actually, but we don’t need it. I downloaded it to my phone.” He patted her side of their makeshift bed. “Come on.”
Taylor knew she should feel more reluctance at crawling underneath the covers with him, but the fluffy sleeping bags looked too inviting for her not to do it. She settled in next to him, taking care not to brush against him. He immediately negated her efforts by shifting over a few inches so that their arms touched from shoulder to wrist.
