Page 15 of Wild About You
I look for the words to defend myself, but I don’t really have any beyond, “Oh. I didn’t know.”
“I should’ve noticed sooner,” he mumbles, seemingly to himself, as his eyes stay trained on his hands. Which are still moving all around my hip/pelvic region. I try to stand perfectly still.
“Okay, let’s see if these work….” His voice is a soft rumble awfully close to my ear as he bends to hoist my whole pack a few inches higher up my body, pulling the lower straps tight around my hips before clipping them into place. “Does that feel good?”
Oh? My? God??? Another shiver courses through me. Indecent is what it feels!
Finn takes a half step away, his eyes tracing back and forth from one of my hips to the other, and even though I know he’s entirely concerned with the fit of the straps there, and also that there is barely a cordiality between us, let alone anything more friendly, it still seems like there should be some sultry background music floating out from the trees.
“Your hips are supposed to carry most of the weight and the shoulder straps should just keep it upright. Is this comfortable at your hips?”
I really need him to stop saying “your hips.” It’s doing things to me—making me hear his gruff, grumpy voice in a very different way. A way unbefitting of a teammate who doesn’t like me all that much.
“It’s fine,” I grit out quickly, then shift from side to side and realize that it actually is. Not just okay, but a lot better already. Like, a totally different pack than I’ve carried the whole time so far. “It’s much more comfortable.”
“Good,” he says firmly, and ope, the weird indecent feelings haven’t totally left the premises yet. Snap! Out! Of! It! Natalie! His eyes rise to my shoulders, hands following as he grabs for one of the upper straps and starts to pull it tighter. “Now for these…”
I can’t do much but stand there and flop side to side like a rag doll as Finn tugs the adjustable straps on one shoulder, then the other, then the first again. Finally he sets his hands lightly on my upper arms, then leans away to look back and forth at his handiwork. “Do those feel more comfortable?”
Before I can answer, his hands drop and he steps around me, presumably to look at the fit from my side and back.
“Looks good from back here.”
“I bet you say that to all the girls,” quips the devil on my shoulder who’s apparently using me as a mouthpiece. My jaw clamps shut as soon as the words, so breathily, flirtatiously spoken, are out. I want to smack my own forehead. No choice but to own it now. “But it’ll take a lot more than pretty words to get into my sleeping bag, big guy.”
“Jesus,” I think Finn says, but it’s muffled by his hand running down his face. “I meant the pack. Looks good. In how it fits. Looks like it fits how it’s meant to now, so you won’t break your back and get us both sent home.”
I laugh, feeling the tension and any other weirdness I was sensing in the atmosphere between us shifting back into nothing but fresh air. “Relax, Finn. I know you’re not complimenting my ass, though it is objectively compliment-able. And you’re right—the pack feels infinitely better already, so thank you for fixing it.”
He gives a jerky nod of acknowledgment, and it feels like that’s the last we’re going to speak of it. Any of it.
Good, I think definitively. And if the word echoes through my head in the exact low, gruff way Finn said it, that’s nobody’s business but mine.
Chapter Six
“Co-EdVenturers!” Burke Forrester calls when we’ve gathered together to film a short, final segment for the day. He raises his arms in a two-handed wave and starts to back away from the shelter. “Congratulations on making it through to the next leg of your journey! I’ll meet you back here in the morning. Enjoy today and rest up, because there’s a lot of adventure ahead of us!”
We cheer and clap with hardly any prompting, getting the hang of how this goes. When the cameras are lowered from their operators’ shoulders, though, Burke’s entire TV-ready demeanor drops too. He doesn’t spare the group another glance before barking out, “Where’s the car picking me up? I need a beer.”
I pull the sat phone out of my pocket. It’s barely noon.
Some of the crew assembles a lunch buffet they appear to have brought out straight from a real kitchen somewhere, a couple of catering trays with gas heaters under them, no less than seven bags of different kinds of chips, and coolers with drinks inside. I zone out a little as I wait.
“Are you in line for food, or did you just choose a weird spot to practice your mannequin impression?”
My head jerks toward the voice, then to the food table and back, and I realize lunch has been fully set up while I experienced the human version of airplane mode. I blink and focus on the face of the person talking, paper plate in one hand. It’s the girl who helped me up after The Trip Heard ’Round the Woods, her expression, like her voice, flat but not quite irritated.
“Oh,” I say with a shake of my head, blinking again. “Sorry, lost in thought. I’ll just…”
I pick up a hot dog bun and wave it at her, in case I haven’t made myself look strange enough yet. But her mouth quirks up at the corner, a breath of fresh air after spending all this time with the stone statue that is Finn.
“No worries. I’m Harper. We were in too much of a hurry to cover that yesterday.”
She holds out her free hand, and I shift my plate so I can return the shake. “Natalie. Yeah, thanks again for the assist.”
“Of course.” She gives my hand a squeeze before returning her attention to the food and starting to fill her plate. “So who’d you end up with as your partner? I can’t keep track yet.”
“Oh, I’m with Finn.” As I reach for some plain potato chips out of one of the bags, I say a mental thanks to the hygiene gods for letting me be first in this line. So many grubby, unwashed camper paws are about to be all over this spread.