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She dropped onto the sofa, still not taking her eyes off him.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. ‘Shouldn’t you be taking pictures of something?’
Oh, he definitely thought she was Lara. And shallow and thoughtless as well, it seemed. Well, if he wanted to think the worst of her, and of Lara, then who was she to disappoint him? She whipped out her phone without thinking and snapped a shot of him, wrapped up like a cocoon, woolly hat and all.
‘My followers really love authentic content. It’s normally me showing my vulnerable side, but it’s great that you want to get in on the act.’
‘Post that and I’m turfing you out in the snow.’
‘Ha, I’d like to see you try. You could barely stand up half an hour ago. I reckon I could still take you.’
His eyes narrowed and he suddenly looked serious, as if realising for the first time that the two of them seemed to be very much stranded out here, and it would be perfectly reasonable for her to be freaking out about being trapped with a strange man.
‘You know I was joking, right? You’re completely safe. I give you my word.’
She examined his face as he stopped speaking. The lines around his eyes that showed genuine concern, the sudden tension she could see in his body, even through the layers of blankets and furs. He was genuinely concerned for her, and she melted, just a fraction, even against her better
judgement.
‘That’s a pretty crappy old phone.’
She glanced down at the screen, and the grainy shot that she had managed of him wrapped in front of the fire. It had coped terribly with the low light, and the battery was looking dangerously low even though she’d plugged it in in the car on the way over here. And now of course the power was out and she had no way of charging it.
But more to the point, if she was going to reveal to Rufus that she wasn’t in fact her social media starlet friend, there was going to be no better time to do it than now. His mistake had been genuine, and understandable. And her failure to correct him so far equally understandable, given that she had had a life-threatening emergency to attend to. But if she kept it up any longer she would be moving from smudging the truth to outright lying.
If she hadn’t already guessed that his business was probably riding pretty heavily on the investment that he’d made in hiring Lara, she might have been a little less forgiving of his terrible manners, but, all things considered, she knew that she had to fess up.
‘Ha, so, about that...’ she started, and saw a new line form between Rufus’s eyebrows as he watched her. She fidgeted with her hair, tucking some longer strands behind her ear then smoothing her fringe forwards.
‘Did Lara happen to mention that she was bringing a friend with her this weekend?’
The line turned into a full-on frown, and she pulled one of the sofa cushions onto her lap, crossing her legs and letting the couch cocoon her a little deeper.
‘Meaning you’re not Lara?’
She gave a half-smile and shrugged.
‘I assumed the friend was male. Not...’
‘Me?’
‘Right. Of course, it was stupid of me to assume.’
‘I’m not her girlfriend,’ she said quickly, and then wondered why she had been so keen to clarify that particular point. ‘We’re friends, and we haven’t hung out in a while, and we wanted...’ She trailed off, not quite sure why she was explaining all this to Rufus. ‘Only, I know how much Lara charges for this sort of thing, and now she’s not here, and you’re stuck with me and my crappy phone. And I’m sorry about that.’
It hit him in waves, she saw. She wasn’t here. Lara wasn’t coming. His business wasn’t going to get the boost it so urgently needed. And then... She didn’t know him or his business well enough to know what the end point of that chain reaction was, but, judging from his expression, it wasn’t anywhere good. She shuffled to the end of the couch and let her feet drop, untucking one of the blankets that he was struggling against until his arms were free.
‘You okay?’
‘Yeah,’ he barked, and then looked apologetic. ‘I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I just need to think.’
‘I’ll message Lara,’ Jess said, trying to think the whole thing through. ‘I’m sure that there must be something we can do. Even with this piece of junk.’
‘I have a decent camera on my phone,’ Rufus said. ‘It’s not bad. I use it for the marketing shots for the website.’
‘Then I’m sure we can manage something. But Lara’s the expert. She’s been stuck in an airport for getting on for twenty-four hours and I can guarantee she’s spent every single one of them coming up with a plan. All we need is some power so we can get the Wi-Fi router working.’
‘I told you I should be looking at that.’
