Last-Minute Proposal

‘I’m sure he’d have been perfect,’ Campbell agreed. ‘But he wouldn’t have got you to the river ahead of everyone else.’

‘He’d probably think there were more important things than winning,’ said Tilly loftily.

Campbell looked at her as if she had suddenly started talking in Polish. Clearly it had never occurred to him that not coming first might occasionally be an option.

‘Then why would he have been participating?’

‘Perhaps he was the victim of emotional blackmail, like me. This might come as news to you, but some of us think that it’s enough to take part.’

‘Tell that to the people hoping for a bed in the new hospice wing,’ said Campbell brutally.

Tilly winced. He was right. She mustn’t forget about why she was doing this, but if only there was some other way of raising money that didn’t involve her being stuck in these freezing hills with the ultra-competitive Campbell Sanderson!

‘Your company’s sponsoring this whole show,’ she said a little sulkily. ‘Why don’t you just hand out a few cheques instead of making everyone jump through all these hoops?’

‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ he said, to her surprise. She would have bet money on the fact that they would never agree about anything. ‘I would much rather write cheques than spend a weekend messing around like this, but PR isn’t my forte.’

‘No?’ said Tilly, feigning astonishment. ‘You amaze me!’

Campbell shot her a look. ‘Keith tells me programmes like this one are the way forward, viewers want to be engaged in the process of giving money, blah, blah, blah. The long and short of it is that I pay him a good salary as PR Director to know about these things and he assures me this is what will work best for Manning Securities.

‘If it’s the best thing for Manning, it’s what I’m going to do,’ he told her, ‘and if I’m going to do it, I’m going to win it. In order for me to win, you’ve got to win, so you might as well get used to the idea. Any more questions?’ he finished with one of his acerbic looks.

Tilly sighed and gave up. ‘Did they say anything about lunch?’

For a moment Campbell stared at her, then the corner of his mouth quivered.

‘No, but I imagine there’ll be something to eat at the checkpoint across the river.’

Tilly looked away, thrown by the effect that quiver had had on her. For a moment there, he had looked quite human.

Quite attractive, too, her hormones insisted on pointing out, in spite of her best efforts to ignore them. That body combined with the undeniable frisson of a mysterious and possibly dangerous background was tempting enough, but if you threw in a glint of humour as well it made for a lethal combination.

She could do without finding Campbell Sanderson the slightest bit attractive. This whole weekend looked set to be humiliating enough without lusting after a man who would never in a million years lust back. That whole hard, couldn’t-give-a-damn air gave him a kind of glamour, and Tilly was prepared to bet that there would be some lithe, beautiful, stylish woman lurking in the background.

Tilly could picture her easily, pouting when she heard that Campbell would be spending the entire weekend with another woman. Don’t go, she would have said, tossing back her mane of silken hair and stretching her impossibly long, slender body invitingly. Stay and make love to me instead.

Of course it would take more than a sultry temptress to deflect Campbell’s competitive spirit, but it would have been easy for him to reassure her. There’s no danger of me fancying the woman they’ve paired me with, he would have said dismissively when she’d threatened to be jealous. The television people have deliberately picked someone fat and dowdy to give the viewers a good laugh.

Tilly could practically hear him saying it, and she scowled. No, she wouldn’t be gratifying Seb and Harry by finding Campbell Sanderson attractive.

Well, not very attractive, anyway.

‘Let’s go, then,’ she said. Campbell wasn’t the only one who could do a good impression of don’t-give-a-damn. ‘I’m starving.’

She followed him down to the river’s edge, where he walked up and down for a while, sussing out the situation while she eyed the river with some misgiving. It was wider than she had imagined, and the water was a deep, brackish brown and fast-flowing. It looked freezing.

If Campbell hadn’t trailed the possibility of lunch on the other side, she would have been tempted to have given up there and then.

‘Now what?’ she asked as he prowled back. ‘Surely they’re not expecting us to throw up a pontoon bridge?’

She was joking, but Campbell seemed to think it was a serious suggestion. ‘That’ll take too long,’ he said. ‘Let’s try further up.’

Still boggling at the idea that anyone would know how to build a pontoon bridge, let alone how long it would take, Tilly trotted after him.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To find a better crossing place.’

Perhaps lunch might not be such a distant possibility after all. Tilly brightened. ‘Do you think there might be a bridge?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Campbell. He stopped abruptly as they skirted a bend and his eyes narrowed. ‘Ah…that’s more like it,’ he said with satisfaction.

Tilly stared at the river. ‘What is?’

‘There,’ he said. ‘We can cross here.’

She stared harder. All she could see were a few boulders just peeking out of the rushing water. ‘How?’

‘Stepping stones,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t be better.’ He jumped lightly out on to the first boulder. ‘We don’t even need to get our feet wet.’

Leaping nimbly on to the next stone, he stopped and looked back to where Tilly was still standing on the bank. ‘Aren’t you coming? The sooner you get across, the sooner you get lunch.’

Did he think she couldn’t work that out for herself?

‘I’m terribly sorry.’ She offered a sarcastic apology. ‘Didn’t they tell you I can’t actually walk on water? I’ve been practising and practising, but I just can’t get the hang of it somehow!’

‘Look, it’s just a step,’ he said, impatience seeping into his voice once more.

‘It’s a step if you’ve got legs that are six feet long, which I haven’t, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

‘OK, it’s a jump, but you can do it easily.’

‘I can’t.’

‘That’s what you said about the abseil, and you did that.’

‘Well, I really can’t do this,’ said Tilly crossly. ‘I’ll fall in.’

Muttering under his breath, Campbell stepped back on to the bank. ‘Look, it’s really not that far between each stone. Why don’t I take your pack? You’ll find it easier to balance without that.’

Tilly had to watch him stepping easily from stone to stone with an ease your average mountain goat would have envied before dumping both packs on the far bank and making his way back to her while she was still trying to formulate an excuse.

‘Now it’s your turn,’ he said, waiting on the first boulder and stretching out a hand. ‘All you need is a little jump and I’ll pull you the rest of the way.’

‘Oh, yes, I can see that working!’ scoffed Tilly, with visions of her taking his hand and promptly pulling him into the water with her.

‘Or shall I come and carry you across?’

‘Don’t even think about it!’

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see a cameraman approaching on the far bank. The crew had obviously spotted their approach from an unexpected angle and were hurrying to catch some entertaining moments on film. What a terrific shot it would make: Campbell trying to lift her, staggering under her weight, collapsing into the water with her. Ho, ho, ho. How everyone would laugh!

Over Tilly’s dead body.