Loving Our Heroes

‘Roses will be the least I deserve if I survive today,’ she said.

‘Well, if we win, you can have a dozen,’ said Campbell, looking for a way to get her to move on. Not that he wasn’t appreciating having a soft feminine body squashed up against him, but the minutes were ticking by.

‘Make that bars of chocolate and you’re on,’ said Tilly.

It would be too much to say that she was hot, stuck as she was on a rock in the middle of a freezing river with a chill wind whipping round her, but that was definitely warmth tingling in the pit of her stomach. This was one hell of a time for her hormones to start acting up.

‘Do you think you’re ready to try the next one then?’

She groaned a little. ‘God, must I?’

‘There’s a camera trained on us right now,’ Campbell pointed out. ‘It must be getting a little boring for the cameraman, just the two of us entwined on a rock.’

If her hormones had their way it wouldn’t be at all boring, Tilly thought. It could be extremely interesting, but knowing that a camera was pointing straight at her rather took the edge off any piquant little fantasies. Everyone knew that a camera added at least two sizes, and she didn’t want to look any more ridiculous than she did already.

‘OK, let’s do it, then.’

Boulder by boulder, Campbell helped her across the river until there was just one last jump on to the bank. He went first and, the moment she let him go, Tilly started teetering. Her arms windmilled wildly and she took a wild leap for the bank before she fell back into the water.

Unprepared for her sudden jump, Campbell had no time to turn and catch her, and she missed her footing as she landed flat on her face, half on top of the bank, half down it. For a moment she lay stunned and splattered with mud before realising that she had provided the cameraman with his perfect action shot.

Excellent. She was so glad she was going to provide so much light entertainment for the viewers tucked up in their nice warm houses.

Tilly lifted her face from the mud. ‘I want to go home,’ she announced.

‘You can’t go home now. You’re in the lead,’ said Campbell, putting a hard hand under her arm and lifting her to her feet as easily as if she were a size six. It wasn’t often that Tilly got to feel like thistledown, and she would have appreciated it more if she hadn’t been spitting out mud. ‘You’re doing fine,’ he told her.

‘I am not doing fine. I’m making a prize prat of myself,’ said Tilly bitterly, even as she bared her teeth in a smile for the camera which was zooming in on her.

‘The viewers will love you,’ soothed Campbell, helping her on with her backpack.

‘Do you want to try that one again?’ she enquired with a touch of acid. ‘I think you’ll find that the correct reply there was, No, of course you’re not making a prat of yourself, Tilly.’

The corner of his mouth quirked. ‘Would you believe me if I said that now?’

‘Obviously not,’ said Tilly crisply as she tried to quell her fickle senses, which were fizzing at the mere hint of a proper smile.

‘Then I’ll save my breath. Come on, we’re nearly at the end of the first section. You’ll feel better when you’ve had some lunch.’

Lunch wasn’t very exciting, but at least it was provided. As she plodded after Campbell to the checkpoint, a horrible thought occurred to Tilly. What if they were expected to take survival skills to the extreme? She wouldn’t put it past the television crew to make them catch their own rabbit or dig up worms for a quick snack.

In the event, the flaccid cheese and tomato sandwiches were a huge relief and Tilly devoured all of hers before Campbell, who had been in discussion with the producer, came over.

‘What happens now?’ she asked, her heart sinking at the sight of the map under his arm.

‘We were first across, so we’re definitely through to the next round.’

‘Fabulous.’ Tilly sighed.

Why couldn’t she have been paired with a loser? He would have been much more her style, after all, and she could have been waiting for the bus home right now, which would have suited her fine.

Then she remembered the hospice, and what it had meant to her mother, to all of them, and immediately felt guilty. She shouldn’t be wishing they could lose just so she could go home and get warm and comfortable.

‘What do we have to do now?’ she asked Campbell to make up for it.

‘We have to get ourselves to the top of Ben Nuarrh.’

‘Where’s that?’ Already Tilly knew that she wasn’t going to like the answer.

It was even worse than she had feared. Campbell squinted into the distance and pointed at a jagged hill just visible in the purplish grey haze on the horizon. ‘That’s Ben Nuarrh.’

‘But that’s miles!’ she said, aghast.

‘It’s a fair trek,’ he agreed.

‘We’ll never do that this afternoon!’

‘No, we’ll have to camp. They’ve given us a tent and supplies.’

‘A tent?’ This was getting worse and worse. ‘Nobody said anything to me about camping!’

‘You must have been told you’d be away all weekend, weren’t you?’

‘Well, yes, but I thought we’d be staying in some lovely hotel. A baronial hall or something, with antlers in the library and a fire and deep baths and clean sheets …’ Tilly trailed off. ‘I should have known.’ She sighed. ‘My fantasies never turn into reality.’

Campbell lifted an eyebrow. ‘What, never?’

Well, there had been Olivier. He had been a dream come true, at least at first, Tilly remembered, but the rest of her fantasy hadn’t come to anything, had it? It had been so lovely, too. Olivier would look at her one day and the scales would fall from his eyes. You’re beautiful, Tilly, he would say. Marry me and share my life for ever.

No, that fantasy hadn’t lasted, she thought a little sadly. Not that there was any need to tell Campbell Sanderson that. A girl had to have some pride.

She lifted her chin. ‘Hardly ever,’ she said.

‘Maybe you need to have more realistic fantasies,’ he said.

‘Like what?’

‘Like a tent that doesn’t leak, or a dry sleeping bag…or a bar of chocolate to have halfway there.’

Tilly was unimpressed. ‘The chocolate sounds OK,’ she conceded, ‘but otherwise that’s not really the stuff my fantasies are made of.’

‘What about the fantasy of winning this challenge?’

‘That’s your fantasy, not mine,’ Tilly objected, but she got to her feet, brushing the crumbs from her lap. ‘Still, may as well try and make your fantasy come true at least.’

‘That’s not an offer a man gets every day.’

His mouth was doing that infuriating, tantalizing half-smile again. Tilly averted her gaze firmly and tried not to think about what other fantasies he might have that would be a lot more fun to help him with than traipsing up and down bloody mountains.