“Are we camping out?”
“Yup.”
She sighed. “I really screwed myself over by stealing your phone. I could have spent the night in that nice bathroom, where at least I had a flush toilet. Now instead I get to relive scenes from Friday the 13th.”
“Sorry about that, princess.” He grabbed his flashlight from the glove box and rummaged around in his truck for anything that might be useful in the woods. He loaded up his backpack with a few additional food items he’d found, a small tarp, matches, a hatchet—
“What’s that for?” she asked with some alarm. She stood quite close to him, watching his every move, apparently.
“Firewood.”
“Oh. Isn’t it risky, building a fire? What if someone sees it?”
“It’s gonna be a small fire. And if I hear any helicopters, I’ll douse it before they see it.” It was a risk; she was right. But very slight. Even if an air search was mounted, they couldn’t investigate every campfire they saw.
He just couldn’t see camping without the small comfort of a fire. It was un-American.
He grabbed his sleeping bag and gave it to Elena to carry. “Let’s go.”
“I can’t hike through the woods in heels. It’s ridiculous.”
She was right again, damn it. He set down the backpack. “Let me see your shoes.”
“Why?” she asked suspiciously. “You aren’t going to throw them away, are you? Because these are my favorite shoes. Do you know how hard it is to find a comfortable pair of heels?” But she took off one shoe and handed it to him.
He snapped off the heel and handed it back. “There. Flats.”
Fortunately, he couldn’t see the expression on her face. It had grown too dark. But he could feel the anger radiating from her.
“You are going to pay for that.”
“I’ll probably be in prison for twenty years. What can you do that’s worse?”
“Castrate you.” But she gave him the other shoe, and he made his alterations and handed it back. She put them back on without further comment.
Travis led the way into the woods, walking slowly, beating aside the brush with his work boots so Elena’s legs wouldn’t get scratched. At least the weather wasn’t horrible. Camping in August in south Texas could be brutal—you spent the whole night sweating and swatting mosquitos. But autumn was downright pleasant.
“How far do we have to go?”
“’Til I find the right spot.”
Every few steps Travis paused and scanned around him with the flashlight. About the tenth time, he spotted the platform, a rudimentary wooden structure you could at least spread your sleeping bag on, keeping it off the damp ground. And the ground was damp. It had rained quite a bit in the last couple of weeks.
“Thank God,” Elena groused when he announced they were stopping. “How did you even know this was here?”
“My brother and I camped here before, on a hunting trip.”
“What did you hunt?”
“Deer. Supposedly.”
She gasped softly. “You killed deer?”
He laughed. “We never even saw a deer. That hunting trip was just an excuse for a bunch of men to hang out without their wives, exercise bad hygiene, drink gallons of beer in the evenings and do the male-bonding thing. I was relieved I didn’t have to kill Bambi’s mother.”
Travis set the flashlight down and pulled the tarp out of the backpack, spreading it on the platform. Elena had already sat down on a corner of the platform. He took the sleeping bag from her and opened it, shook it out and spread it over the tarp.
“Your bed, princess.”
“My bed?”
“Well, yeah. You didn’t expect me to take the only sleeping bag for myself, did you?”
“Where are you going to sleep?”
“I’ll manage.” Truth was, he wouldn’t sleep. He hadn’t been sleeping well lately in general as he worried about how to help Eric. He’d like to blame the lack of sleep for his lapse in judgment, but that really wasn’t much of an excuse.
“Is there going to be dinner?”
“Well, let’s see...” He opened the backpack again and extracted the canned goods one by one. “Baked beans, chili con carne, carrots and...pumpkin pie filling.”
“You set the bar pretty high with that lasagna, you know.”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “That’d be good.”
“Baked beans. I can eat those cold.”
“But you don’t have to. I’ll build a fire and we can heat this stuff right in the can. Weren’t you ever a Girl Scout?”
“No. The places I grew up didn’t have Girl Scouts.”
Her voice had taken on an edge, and he decided not to pursue that line of conversation for now, though he was curious about her background. She’d said she was Cuban. Had she actually come from Cuba? Or was she of Cuban heritage but born here? Did people come here from Cuba anymore? He knew that at one time many Cubans had fled their homeland and entered the U.S. illegally and then were given asylum.
He made quick work of building a fire. Despite recent rain, there was plenty of dry wood to be found. He couldn’t find any stones the right size to place around the fire, but he cleared enough space so nothing close by would catch. He used his pocketknife to slit the can labels and remove them, and the knife’s can opener to open the chili and the beans.
The beans were ready first, steaming and burbling. He set the beans on a large, flat rock in front of Elena. “Ladies first. Be careful—the can is really hot.” He pulled his pocketknife out and extracted the spoon, but he hesitated before handing it to Elena. “Please don’t get ideas about stabbing me. It would make me grumpy.”
“Duly noted. What else does that knife do? Does it have a parachute? Maybe a bicycle?”
“It has all kinds of things—a screwdriver, a saw, a nail file—”
“Well, that’s useful.”
“Scissors, tweezers, toothpick, corkscrew—”
“If only we had a bottle of wine.”
“I could go for a six-pack myself.” Of course she was a wine drinker. Judith had tried to get him to drink wine, but after hours of instruction, he still couldn’t tell a fine Bordeaux from a cheap Merlot.
Elena held out her hand.
Reluctantly, he handed her the knife. If she went for the blade, he could get to her before she could fold it out, but he really didn’t want to go there.
She gave him a knowing look. “You’re never going to let go of that wrench episode, are you?”
“Not until the scar heals.”
He enjoyed the playful conversation way more than he should have. It was almost as if they were on a first date...flirting. With each snippet she revealed about herself, his admiration for her grew. How many women in her position would have the smarts and the gumption to fight back the way she had?
He suddenly fervently wished he had met her at some other point in his life, instead of this desperate moment. When was the last time he’d flirted with a woman? Had to be Judith. That women had soured him on the entire fair sex. Before her, he had loved women. Couldn’t get enough of them. After his spectacularly short and bad marriage, he had only interacted