Fiona Harper Read online

  The ambulance braked sharply and Fern catapulted off the trolley and landed on top of him. She giggled while he checked her for bruises, then pulled herself to stand.

  ‘Two minutes to spare. Bruce, you are truly a star!’ She blew him a kiss. ‘And I meant what I said about the prize money. If we win, the ambulance station charity box gets five hundred pounds.’

  They clambered out the back of the ambulance and ran into the abandoned station. The treasure hunt marshal standing by the door made another tick on his clipboard. He looked up at them.

  ‘The bad news is you’re the twenty-sixth couple to arrive tonight.’

  Fern looked as if someone had asked her to eat eels again.

  ‘But the good news is that seven of those teams have been disqualified for either visiting the wrong tube stations this afternoon, missing some out altogether or not having the required photographs in the right order. Congratulations! You’re still in the running.’

  Fern squealed and jumped up and down. Josh tried to look suitably triumphant, but inside he was wondering how he could stand another day and a half with Fern when he knew he was going to have to say goodbye to her again so soon.

  The thought of leaving her tore at him, but at least then they might be able to return to how they’d been. They’d pick up their friendship again and she’d be happy and safe. Much more terrifying was the thought of taking the unmarked road ahead, of loving her…and losing her.

  If she could sleep here, thought Fern, she’d probably be able to sleep anywhere. The remaining forty competitors were camped down on one of the disused platforms of Aldwych underground station. The teams, now deep in competitive mode, were keeping themselves to themselves and pairs of sleeping bags and foam mattresses were dotted along the vast flat concrete strip.

  During the day, tube stations were normally stifling with the heat of too many bodies crammed into too little space. Even the gusts of air that blew down the platform heralding the arrival of a train were warm—a stale version of a tropical breeze. But, at ten past midnight, in a station that hadn’t seen traffic in more than a decade, it was decidedly chilly.

  She wanted so badly for Josh to shuffle up against her again as he had done in the caves, but he was turned away from her, a good foot between them, even though their mattresses were butted up against each other.

  Taking a deep breath, she rolled over to face him. He was so still. Too still. He wasn’t asleep.

  She slid her legs towards him and moved her body closer, the slippery outer cover of the sleeping bag smoothing her way. Slowly, she slid an arm around him and pressed her face up against his solid back. A few seconds later she moved her arm again. It was difficult to find a comfortable place to rest it.

  Still Josh didn’t move. She closed her eyes, partly out of embarrassment. Why didn’t he touch her back? A few hours ago things had been very different indeed. What was it about her? Every time she kissed this man, he ran a thousand miles.

  She had a choice now. She could remove her arm and retreat to the cold edge of her mattress or she could stay where she was.

  There really was no comfortable way to lie up against six foot of solid male who obviously didn’t want to be cuddled. Still, she wasn’t giving up. Consciously, she relaxed her muscles and, before she settled into stillness, she kissed the broad warmth of his back through his T-shirt.

  He stopped breathing. Unable to do anything else, she held her own breath too while the wind whistled distantly in the abandoned tunnel. Then, all in one move, Josh turned towards her, collected her up in his arms and rolled her with him so they ended up facing the other direction, his large frame wrapped around her, cradling her.

  She stroked the arm that was clamped possessively across her front. This was where she’d wanted to be. Oh, yes, she thought as he nuzzled against her neck, his breath warming her cheek, this was definitely what she’d had in mind.

  Today, he’d been fantastic. He’d called the ambulance, done all the right things, hardly left her side. For once she’d been able to rely on him. In the dark she frowned. No, Josh wasn’t unreliable. It was just that his wandering nature meant that he couldn’t be counted on to be there when it mattered. But tonight she’d needed him—it had mattered, big time—and he’d been there.

  It couldn’t have been easy for him to watch her like that. If the tables had been turned, she’d have been a mess. At the time, she’d been too busy just finding the next breath to be scared, but Josh…He’d had to watch, helpless, as the paramedics had arrived and administered the intra-muscular injection that had flooded her system with chemicals that allowed her narrowed airways to expand.

  That must have killed him—Josh, with his dynamic, take charge, go-get-’em personality.

  She sighed. He lived life right.

  Now she understood why, after Ryan’s death, he’d been driven to move, live, explore. She’d let her parents teach her how to hibernate instead, always protected from the world by good common sense, relevant safety information and a whopping dollop of fear. Well, it was time for the tide to turn, for her to live, not to hide, as Josh had put it.

  His hand reached over her face and brushed away a section of hair that had fallen across her cheek. She lay there, giving in to the dizzying feeling of his touch as he stroked her hair, lulling her into a hypnotic state.

  It was more than just chemistry between her and Josh. With every touch, he seemed to be speaking a promise. And, for the first time in years, when a tiny candle of hope flickered into life inside her, she let it burn instead of snuffing it out.

  ‘I can’t hear you!’ Fern was now whispering so loud people walking past were turning to stop and stare. Josh, who was some distance away on the other side of the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, did some kind of sign language. None of it made any sense.

  They were getting nowhere, and that was not good news. As the last team to arrive at the checkpoint last night, they had some catching up to do. She pointed exaggeratedly at a spot halfway between where she was standing and where he was standing. He shrugged.

  She started jogging and kept pointing. Finally he got it and started to move towards a place where they could meet up and talk.

  ‘I thought this was supposed to be some kind of clever whispering gallery!’ he said. ‘I’m practically shouting and you’re still not hearing anything.’

  She shook her head slightly, biting her lip. ‘It should work. Let’s read the instructions through one more time and have another go.’

  He nodded and looked over her shoulder as she held the clue up. There were clear directions for the task. The gallery at the base of the dome of St Paul’s had an unexpected architectural quirk. How someone had discovered it was anyone’s guess. Supposedly, if two people stood diametrically opposite from each other and one whispered against the wall, the acoustics were such that the other person should hear it—only it didn’t seem to be happening for her and Josh.

  The challenge was simple. One treasure hunt marshal would hand one team member a card which they then read a phrase from. The other team member was supposed to repeat the phrase to a second marshal. When the received whisper matched the phrase printed on the card they could move on.

  Josh looked back to where he’d been standing. ‘Why don’t we swap places?’

  ‘Okay.’ It couldn’t hurt.

  When she reached the marshal, he made a great show of giving her a different card to read. She watched Josh get ready, placing his ear close to the wall, entirely focused as usual. It was less than twenty-four hours to the end of the race now and all the teams were feeling the pressure. At least, that was her guess at Josh’s quiet mood. He really wanted to win those vouchers for his parents and had hinted that he needed to concentrate on that for the moment.

  That was so like Josh. Thinking of other people first. And, knowing how much his mum and dad needed the break, she was prepared to wait a little longer to discuss the current state of their relationship. She’d waited twelve years to have
this opportunity. A few more hours couldn’t hurt.

  She paused. There was an odd sense of intimacy about this moment. They were at least fifty feet away from each other. Tourists wandered round the gallery, chatting, while they looked down at the chequered stone floor below and then up into the ornate dome. It was busy, full of people, and yet she and Josh were connected. If he spoke, it would seem as if he were standing right beside her.

  She looked at the words printed on the card. What would happen if she tucked it away and said what she really wanted to say?

  I love you. I’ll always love you.

  Would she see his eyes widen, his trademark sexy smile slowly curve his lips? And, more importantly, what would he say back?

  The words were on the tip of her tongue, ready to be carried to him on a breath. Her pulse quickened and she folded the card in her hand until she could no longer see the random fact about the cathedral.

  At sixteen she’d never really had the courage to tell him the strength of her feelings, had merely accepted his judgement that it wouldn’t work because he was going away to university. She should have fought harder, spoken up.

  But the girl she’d been back then had been incapable of that. Was the woman she was now any more equipped?

  Breath filled her lungs and a velvety whisper emerged. ‘At three hundred and sixty feet high, the dome of St Paul’s is the second largest in the world.’

  Coward.

  It was five o’clock in the afternoon and Josh was a bundle of nerves. He blew on the dice in his hands and said a silent prayer for sixes. ‘Come on,’ he whispered as he hurled them across the green felt.

  ‘Oh! Too bad.’ Fern’s gentle hand made contact with his arm and he jumped. She’d been doing this all day, finding reasons to touch him. It was not helping his resolve to keep his distance. He scooped up the dice, showing a two and a five, and rattled them in his hand.

  He’d never been one for regrets, but if onlys were haunting him now. If only getting together with Fern weren’t such a disastrous idea…if only he could manage not to break her heart. He sighed.

  ‘Never mind,’ she said brightly beside him. ‘We’ll just keep going.’

  She reached out to take the dice from his palm. He was lost in thought and giving her no help; the dice just lay in his half-curled hand. Her fingers tickled his sensitive flesh and the backs of his ears burned. She felt it too, he knew. That slight intake of breath, the subtle flush of colour spreading under her collar-bone.

  If only he could forget this stupid challenge, drag Fern away somewhere private and see if he could make that blush spread to her toes. The memory of her kisses the day before flooded through him. It was just as well he wasn’t holding the dice any more because they would have been dust in his hand.

  Funnily enough, he’d never once thought, If only we hadn’t kissed, in the last twenty-four hours.

  ‘Your turn again, Josh.’ Her hand raised and there was a slight hesitation before she placed a silent palm on his back. Once again she’d made contact. It was as if she was waiting for a signal, a sign that he couldn’t give back.

  Luckily, the dice were still on the table and he broke contact by leaning forward to pick them up. He was pretty pig-headed and he’d told himself he could handle this. He could smile and be pleasant and, ever so slowly, he would back off and let her down gently. But these little touches of hers brought tiny sparks of sensation that set his defences smouldering.

  He felt the two small cubes in his hand and looked around the ornate room, trying to absorb some of the luck that must have flowed here over the centuries. Black’s Gentlemen’s Club was legendary. Tucked away in the heart of St James’s, no one walking past the door would have guessed that the respectable-looking stone building had been one of the most outrageous gambling dens of Regency times.

  Fortunes had been made and lost in this very room. And now it was time to make his. All he needed was another double six.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a scream of joy from another team a few feet away. The two girls squealed and hugged each other, then collected their next clue from a treasure hunt marshal and left.

  So simple and yet so difficult. All his team had to do in this challenge was throw three double sixes to receive the next red envelope. No complicated games of dice or cards. He and Fern had started off well, rolling the first two pairs within a minute of starting, but for the last long ten minutes all they’d come up with were mismatched numbers.

  Fern’s heart jumped as the dice rumbled across the table. One came to rest with a single spot on top. The other bounced off the padded rim of the table, then rolled to land next to it. A four. She let out a nervous breath.

  The location must be getting to her, because she had her own secret bet going. Madness itself. If he threw double ones, she would tell him. Today. It had seemed such a good idea when it had first come to her, but now she was actually scared of the dice rolling that way. She needed more time.

  He looked so determined. His head was totally on the race today. More than once, when she’d wanted to bring up the matter of yesterday’s kiss, he’d returned to mumbling about his parents and had hurried her along to the next destination. She could wait. At some point today there’d be a lull and she’d have a chance to test the waters.

  ‘Yes!’ Josh punched the air with his fist. She’d been too busy day-dreaming to notice the two sixes face upwards on the now still dice. All day she’d been screwing up the courage to touch him, sending him silent messages, but this time thinking didn’t even come into it as exuberance replaced frustration.

  He seemed to have surprised himself out of his far-away mood too, because he wrapped his arms around her and twirled her around on the spot. When her feet touched the floor again they broke apart, grinning, laughing.

  Their eyes connected and she saw something true and deep reflected in the widening pupils. She loved this man. A cloud passed over his expression and she couldn’t name the emotion responsible. Doubt? Regret? It melted away as he lowered his head and kissed her.

  Their last kiss had been good—passionate, unrestrained—but this one was far sweeter. He kissed her softly, slowly, as if he were trying to tell her something and she sensed an answering ache in him, one identical to the dull throbbing pain she’d carried around inside for so many years that she couldn’t remember what it was like to live without it.

  She poured all the love and adoration she had for him into the kiss. Could he? Did he feel the same way? Had he been running from his feelings for too long as well?

  A gentle cough somewhere else in the room made them freeze. They disentangled themselves and turned to face a treasure hunt marshal holding a red envelope out to them, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘Thanks,’ Fern said shakily as she smoothed down her T-shirt and took the clue from the girl. Josh coughed and picked up the dice from the table and offered them to the marshal. He looked so totally adorable, all crumpled and at sixes and sevens.

  ‘Do you want these back?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘No, it’s okay. You can leave them on the table ready for the next team.’

  He leaned over and dropped the dice on to the green table top. It was only when Fern stood again, after heaving up her backpack from the floor, that she saw them and almost keeled over.

  A little dot was winking cheekily at her from the top of each cube.

  CHAPTER TEN

  FOR a London summer it was a mild night, but Fern was shivering in his arms. He’d managed to keep his hands off her all evening—which was practically a heroic feat—but this was allowed. This was different. She needed him to keep her safe and warm.

  The last night of the treasure hunt was definitely going to be the hardest. No sleeping bags tonight, only rough blankets.

  ‘Are you warm enough, Fern?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her teeth chattered as she spoke.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She let out an irritated little noise and burrowed further against
him. ‘Yes.’ The noise was muffled against his jacket.

  ‘Miss Fern Chambers, are you fibbing again?’

  A relieved breath whooshed out of her. ‘Yes.’

  He chuckled and pulled the grey woollen blanket further over them. Tonight they were experiencing a London that most people never saw, mostly because they blinded themselves to it. Tonight they were living like the city’s homeless, hunched on a bench in Victoria Embankment Gardens. The Savoy hotel, resplendent in its art deco glamour, was only a stone’s throw away, giving the scene a weird sense of contradiction.

  Of course, the Secret London teams weren’t the only ones huddling on the benches. He wasn’t sure their presence was welcomed by the handful of regulars. Even when he’d walked round the park earlier and dished out some of their hard-earned salsa and fruit market cash, some had eyed him suspiciously, although they’d still taken the money. A couple had smiled and thanked him.