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Panic caught in her throat, making breathing difficult for one long second. Clara put her hand to her stomach and took a deep breath, purposefully clearing her mind, filling her lungs, allowing herself a moment to calm.
This isn’t real, she told herself. This is work.This is my business. I’m happy to clean loos, I’ll stock shelves, I even pick up dog dirt. I should be looking forward to a few weeks of socialising instead. Any of my staff would kill to swap with me.
She could do this.
But a part of her would much rather be scrubbing a room out from top to bottom, picture rail to skirting boards, than spend any more time alone with Raff Rafferty.
And the other part of her was looking forward to it just a little bit too much.
* * *
‘Relax, this is supposed to be fun.’ Raff threw an amused look over at his passenger. Clara sat up ramrod straight, clutching the seat as if it were her last hope. ‘I’m a safe driver.’
‘In a very old car.’
‘She’s not old, she’s vintage.’ He patted the steering wheel appreciatively. ‘These Porsche 911s were the It Car in their day.’
‘In the middle of the last century.’
‘She’s not quite that old. This is a seventies’ design classic.’ It was the only car Raff had ever owned. She might be red, convertible and need a lot of loving maintenance but she was a link to his father, the only link he had.
‘The seventies,’ Clara scoffed. ‘The decade that taste forgot.’
Raff grinned. ‘Sit back, Clara. Enjoy it—the wind in your hair—if you’d let me put the top down that is, the green of the countryside flashing by. What’s not to love?’
Clara was twisting the silver bangle she was wearing round and round. ‘A date, you said. I thought you meant a drink in The Swan or, if you wanted to go crazy, a meal at Le Maison Bleu. This isn’t a date. This is kidnap.’
‘We are supposed to have been together for a few months. Mad about each other.’ Her body got even more rigid if that was at all possible. Raff suppressed a smile. ‘So, we need to create a relationship full of memories in just one day. Now we can do this the easy way and actually enjoy ourselves or we can endure a torturous afternoon full of monosyllables and long silences.’ His mouth quirked. ‘Now, if we were faking a marriage then the latter would be fine.’
Was that a smile? An infinitesimal relaxation of all those rigid muscles?
‘What’s your favourite colour?’
‘My what?’ That made her move. Her head swung round so fast he thought she might get whiplash.
‘Your favourite colour?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t even...why on earth do you want to know that?’
‘I’ll go first.’ He leant back into the leather seat, enjoying the cold of the steering wheel under his hands, the purr of the engine. ‘Okay, my favourite colour is sea blue, the sea on a perfect sunny day. Favourite food is a good old-fashioned roast dinner, which is the boarding school boy in me, I know, but there are times when just the thought of Yorkshire puddings keeps me going. I didn’t think I was a cat or a dog person but after three days of Mr Simpkins I am definitely veering towards the canine. You?’
He sneaked a look over at his passenger. She was still gripping onto the seat but her knuckles were no longer white. ‘If I’d known there was going to be a quiz I’d have prepared,’ she said, but her voice was less frosty.
It took a few long moments before she spoke again. ‘Okay, green, I think. Spring is my favourite season. I hate it when the trees are bare. I grew up with cats so I’ll stick up for Mr Simpkins. What was the other one? Food? It’s not sophisticated but when I was travelling and eating all this amazing street food I craved cheese sandwiches. My dad’s cheese sandwiches. Home-made bread, cheddar so mature it can’t remember being young and his patented plum chutney.’
‘Just a simple sandwich?’
‘As simple as it gets in my house. Dad’s a foodie.’
‘You went travelling?’ That was unexpected. Maybe they had something in common after all. ‘I can’t exactly visualise you with a backpack! How old were you?’
There was a long pause. ‘Eighteen,’ she said finally.
‘Where did you go?’ As Raff knew all too well, most people jumped at the opportunity to recount every second of their travels. It could be worse than listening to other people’s dreams. Clara Castleton was obviously the exception; her silence was so chilly it was as if he’d asked her to recite The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Backwards.
‘Thailand to start with,’ she said reluctantly after the pause got too long. ‘Cambodia, Vietnam and then Bali and on to Australia.’ She paused again. ‘I was there for two years.’
Raff shook his head. ‘When I was eighteen I could barely find my own way to university, let alone travel halfway across the world. Your parents must have been worried sick.’
She laughed, a dry hard laugh with no humour in it. ‘I was so sure I was invincible I think I had them fooled too.’
Fooled? Interesting word.
‘I planned for so long I don’t think there was room to worry, really.’ She wasn’t really talking to him, he realised, more lost in the past. ‘My grandfather was in the merchant navy and he had always told me all these stories of places he had been to. I wanted to see it all. Other kids have posters of pop stars on their wall, I had maps and routes and pictures of magical places I wanted to go to. I was babysitting at thirteen, running errands for neighbours and every penny went into my travel fund. I was going to start out in Asia then Australia, New Zealand, on to Japan then South America, finishing off with a Greyhound trip round the States.’
He could picture her. Intent, focused, planning on conquering the world. ‘Did you get to go? Did you see all of those places?’
‘No.’ Her voice was colourless. ‘I had Summer instead.’
‘Hang on.’ He turned and looked at her rigid profile. ‘Did you have your daughter while you were away?’
‘She was born in Australia.’
He whistled softly. ‘That must have been tough. So you cut your adventures short, flew home and became the responsible, capable woman you are today.’ He shook his head. ‘Quite some achievement.’
He thought he was such a tough guy but his adventures were orderly by comparison. He always knew where he was going to sleep that evening even if it was in a sleeping bag in a shared tent; he had a ticket back arranged, plans for a month of surfing and partying organised. He even got a wage, for goodness’ sake. Clara had taken off at an age most people were still figuring out the Tube and had spent three years travelling. Even a pregnancy and a baby hadn’t slowed her down.
When she didn’t answer he turned to look at her; she was looking out of the window but her body was slumped. It wasn’t the posture of someone who had achieved something remarkable. It was more like despair.
‘Are you going to tell me where we are going?’ she asked, straightening and turning to him with a polite smile.
The confidences were obviously at an end.
‘I don’t need to tell you,’ he said as he smoothly turned the car through a pair of metal gates, the only break in a sea of barbed-wire fencing that ran along one side of the road screening off the fields beyond. ‘We’re here.’
‘We’re what?’ Clara twisted in her seat and looked around her, horror on her face as she took in the barbed wire. ‘You are kidnapping me. Where are we? What is this?’
‘This is one of the premier activity sites in the country.’ Raff flashed her a smile. ‘I hope you like mud.’
* * *
‘You want me to do what?’
Clara wasn’t sure what was worse. She ticked the offending items off on a mental list. Lists usually were soothing, bringing order and meaning.
She wasn’t sure anything could bring meaning to her current situation.
First, the mud. There was certainly a lot of it, all greeny-brown, glutinous and deep. Second, the outfit. All that time spent wondering what to wear, turned out she needed baggy camouflage trousers, desert boots that had been worn by who knew how many other smelly, sweaty, muddy feet and a shapeless T-shirt that was the exact colour of the mud. Yep, it all came back to mud.
Mud that she, Clara Castleton, was supposed to be trampling, running, heck, apparently she was supposed to be crawling in it. On her belly.
Which brought her to number three. Men. Smirking men. Okay, toned, built men, the kind that actually stretched out their T-shirts in all kinds of good ways, who filled out the baggy trousers with bulging thighs, who wore the mud on their faces with aplomb. Men who belonged here as she most definitely did not.
The most annoying of the men, ‘Call me Spiral’, as if that were really his name, began to repeat the instructions in the same loud bark. ‘Run through that trough, climb that rope, go over that bridge, swing across the ravine, crawl under the net, slide...’
‘I heard all of that the first two times.’ Clara folded her arms and glared up at him, deliberately ignoring the fourth and most annoying thing of all: a palpably amused Raff Rafferty. ‘I’m still not clear why.’
‘Because I told you to,’ Spiral said with no hint of irony. ‘Now get your butt over to the starting line.’
‘Come on, Clara.’ Raff was openly grinning. ‘This is supposed to be fun. Where’s your sense of adventure?’
Back in Australia. Left behind with her backpack, her travel journals and her well-thumbed traveller’s guide.
‘This is your idea of a date?’ She rounded on him. ‘What’s wrong with a walk, a picnic, doves and flowers?’
‘Too obvious. Besides, I had the chance to try this place out and see if I want to hire it for a staff conference. I’m multitasking. I thought you’d approve,’ he said with a self-righteous air that made Clara want to smack him—or tip him into the mud that suddenly looked a lot more tempting.
‘This isn’t just a lousy date, it’s a cheap date?’
Raff leant in close, his breath sweet on her cheek. ‘It’s a fake date and you are on triple time. Enjoy it. Think about what a lovely story it makes.’
Clara gritted her teeth. ‘One for the grandkids?’
‘In our case one for my grandfather. Do you want to go first or shall I show you how it’s done?’
Eying the long trail of ropes, platforms, nets and pits, Clara felt her stomach drop. This was going to be incredibly undignified. But there was no way she was going to look weak in front of him. ‘I’ll go.’
She refused to look back as she walked to the start line, painfully aware that all the conversation had stopped and every khaki-clad man was staring at her, lips curled with amusement. They were waiting for her to fail. To give up.
They were in for a surprise. She hoped.
‘Come on,’ Clara told herself fiercely as she stood at the rope marking the beginning and stared out at what looked like miles of hell. The trail started with a long, shallow trough that Clara was supposed to run through. Correction, wade through. The trough was filled with the ubiquitous mud and led to a cargo net that she was sure was higher than her house.
That was just the start.
Weekly Pilates might be good for her stress levels but it hadn’t prepared her for this.
‘On the count of three,’ Spiral roared. ‘One, two, three!’
Clara hesitated for less than a second and then, with a muttered curse, pushed herself forward, managing not to yell as she sank calf deep into the cold, gloopy mud.
‘Faster,’ Spiral yelled. ‘Are you a man or a mouse?’
Answering him would have used up more oxygen than he was worth. Clara set her mouth mutinously and forged on. Too slow and she would prove the smirking men right, too fast and she knew she’d pitch face first into the mud. She set herself a steady trot, trying to ignore the cold, clamminess on her lower legs and the sucking noise as she pulled her leg out of the mud and put one hand onto the rope net, ready to pull herself up the impossible height.
Her eyes were focused on each obstacle; there was no room in her mind for anything but the task. Spiral’s encouraging shouts, the cheers of the other staff were just background noise. Clara was aware of nothing but the hammering of her heart, the pounding of the blood in her ears, the burn in her thighs and her arms as she pulled, swung, jumped, waded and crawled. She had no idea how long she had been there. Minutes? Hours?
Heck, it could have been days.
‘Come on, Clara.’ How on earth had Raff caught up with her? He was breathing hard, his hair damp with exertion, the dark blue eyes alight with life. She should be mad with him; she was absolutely filthy, totally exhausted, every muscle hurt and people kept yelling at her. And yet...
Adrenaline was pumping through her so fast she was almost weightless; the whole world had contracted to this place, this task. She was alive. Really, truly alive.
She reached out for the rope swing, and missed. Immediately Raff was there, one arm steadying her as she leant further forward off the narrow wooden platform, reaching out into thin air.
‘Got it!’ Giddy with triumph, she grabbed the rope and pulled it back towards her. Putting both hands firmly on it, she wrapped one leg around it and tried to jump on it, slithering back down to the platform as she missed. ‘Darn it!’
‘Here, let me.’
Clara wanted to tell him no, that she had this, but he was too quick, steadying the rope and, as she jumped again, giving her a quick push up. A jolt of electricity ran through her as his hand pressed against her back but before she could react he had pushed and she was off, swinging through the air.
Her limbs were trembling with the exertion as she reached the last obstacle, the crawl net. To conquer it successfully she had to lie down, fully face down, in the mud and wiggle her way under ten metres of tight net.
She took a deep breath, the oxygen a welcome tonic to her tired, gasping lungs, and flung herself down into the oozing depths, pushing herself under the net and wiggling through the endless claustrophobic dark, wet mud until she reached the final rope. Once her head was through she gulped in welcome, blessed, clean air before painfully pulling the rest of her out. She lay there collapsed in the mud for five seconds, too exhausted to try and get to her feet.
The mud didn’t seem so bad any more. She couldn’t tell where it ended and she began. She had turned into some kind of swamp monster.
‘That was a very good try.’ Spiral’s loud tones intruded on the muddy peace and Clara forced herself to pull onto her knees. ‘Well done, Clara.’
A glow of pride warmed her. ‘Thanks,’ she said, drawing her hand across her face, realising too late that rather than wipe the mud off she was adding to it. Spiral held out one meaty hand and effortlessly pulled her to her feet, wrapping a blanket—khaki, of course, she noted—around her shoulders and, grabbing a mug from a plastic picnic table, pressed it into her hands.
Tea. Milky, sugary, the opposite of how she usually liked it. It was utterly delicious.
‘You survived.’ Raff had eschewed his blanket but was cradling his tea just as eagerly as she was. ‘What did you think?’
‘That was...’ filthy, hard, undignified, unexpected ‘...exhilarating.’
He broke into an open grin. ‘Wasn’t it? Do you think my staff will enjoy it? I thought that it could be the performance award this year. Followed by dinner, of course!’
‘That sounds good.’ As the adrenaline wore off Clara was increasingly aware of how cold she was; she suppressed a shiver. ‘I hope you’re going to let them get changed before dinner.’
‘I’m kind like that.’ He eyed her critically. ‘Talking of which, you look freezing. The showers are back in the changing room. Go, warm up, get changed and then I owe you lunch, anything you want.’
Hot water, clean clothes, food. They all sounded impossibly, improbably good. ‘You do owe me,’ she agreed, putting the mug back onto the table before taking a few steps towards the low stone building where nirvana waited. She paused, impelled by a sudden need to say something, something unexpected.
‘Raff,’ she said. ‘I had fun. Thank you.’
* * *
It was the last thing he had expected her to say. Standing there completely covered in mud, the baggy trousers plastered to her legs, the filthy T-shirt clinging to every curve. Raff had expected sulking or yelling, even downright refusal. He didn’t expect her to thank him.
He’d known the challenge would shake her up, had secretly enjoyed the thought of seeing prim and judgemental Clara Castleton pushed so far out of her comfort zone—turned out the joke was on him.
‘I’m glad,’ he said, aware of how inadequate his response was. ‘I thought you’d enjoy it.’
Clara smiled. A proper, full-on beam that lightened her eyes to a perfect sea green, emphasised the curve of her cheeks, the fullness of her mouth. She was dirty, bedraggled and utterly mesmerising. The breath left his body with an audible whoosh.
‘Liar,’ she said. ‘You thought I’d hate it. And you were this close...’ she held up her hand, her forefinger and thumb just a centimetre apart ‘...this close to being right.’
