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Dutifully, Jake ignored the protestations of his taut body and moved out to the farther set of trees, taking the bound-up tarp with him. He watched her smoothly unravel the cord from her own and began to copy. It didn’t unravel quite so smoothly. Which might have been his lack of technique, or it might have been the fact that his mind was still elsewhere.
‘Sorry.’ She didn’t make much of an effort to conceal her amusement. ‘I tried to make it idiot-proof, but I guess I should have made it urbanoid-proof, too.’
‘I’m glad I entertain you,’ he remarked wryly.
‘Okay, so loop it around one tree, as high up as you can reach, and tie it off using those knots we were practising with Brady the other night.’ She deftly tied one of hers down to demonstrate, then stretched the line out and tied the other end off on the other tree.
Now, watching Flávia tie off another knot on another tree, Jake copied, possibly a little bit clumsily, yet bizarrely he wasn’t hating the experience half as much as he’d feared he would. Especially when she crossed over to him to check his handiwork; the coconut scent of her hair, piled up on her head for practicality, pervaded his nostrils. His body went into overdrive yet again.
Good God, what the heck is it about this woman?
‘Not bad.’ She nodded. ‘Not bad at all. Now, you need to open out the basher—the roof—and tie it off on some other trees. I have extra cord if you’re missing a tree on one side and need me to make an extension.’
He looked around, trying to get a feel for it in his head, then set to work. Oddly, he was beginning to enjoy it. Whether it was because he could imagine teaching these skills to Brady or, more selfishly, because he enjoyed shaking Flávia’s image of him as a city slicker, he didn’t care to evaluate too deeply.
‘Done,’ he declared, looking up proudly. Where he had a roof—albeit a good one—she had a whole system in place, including a mosquito net, and what looked to be a hanging line for all her gear. ‘My God, have you finished already?’
‘I’ve been doing this a long time.’ She laughed. ‘Come on, we’ll work together. You take one end of the mosquito net and I’ll take the other. They can go below the tie-offs for the roof, but when you tie the tape ends of the hammock around the trees, they’ll need to go above the cord for your net and your roof. Got it?’
‘Got it,’ he agreed.
It was incredible watching Flávia work. Like poetry. And he, who was accustomed to all manner of dexterous operations, might as well have been putting up his sleeping system with his thumbs and his toes.
But then, suddenly, it was done. A roof, a mosquito net and a hammock, all complete.
‘Okay, here’s some extra cord. You can tie that off up near the apex of your tarp, but inside the mosquito net, then you can hang your gear off that during the night and nothing will get in there. And whilst you do that, I’m going to try and find some dry firewood so that we can light a fire.’
‘Using what? Two sticks?’ he teased.
Flávia arched her eyebrows at him.
‘I can, if I really need to. But I’m usually more organised than that, urbanoid. I carry a lighter and a few strips of rubber. That gets a fire started pretty nicely, even if the firewood is wet, as it so often is in the forest.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then you cook me dinner,’ she told him happily, grabbing her machete and heading into the jungle.
He lifted his head.
‘What are we supposed to eat?’
‘Rat,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘I’ll hunt them, you’ll cook.’
And he was left staring at her in disbelief as she plunged into the undergrowth, her sexy posterior practically wiggling at him as she moved.
* * *
In the end, she had lit a fire, taken a small pan from out of her rucksack and a couple of sealed ration packs, and they’d eaten a pre-prepared meal. But it had occurred to Jake that this prank-style Flávia was a different Flávia again from either the one with her family, or the one at the hospital.
And it had sent a bizarre sense of possessiveness through him that he seemed to be the only person—at least outside of her family—to see this side of her. Another layer to his fierce, strong selvagem.
The real Flávia Maura.
And when she looked at him, and laughed as though he was the only man in the world, he’d had to contend with a great fire roaring through his veins, proclaiming things it had no right to as he looked at her.
Mine. Only mine.
And telling himself it was sheer insanity did nothing to dampen the flames. They’d only been fanned the more she’d opened up her world to him. As though letting him in to another universe inside of her that no one else ever got to experience.
