Save the Last Dance (8 page)

And there lay the problem.

Crush and opportunity had collided, and now she was reaping the consequences. Unfortunately, sleep was nowhere to be found and in the silence and darkness consequences were hitting her fast and hard in the middle of her forehead.

She breathed out slowly and lay very still.

She'd done it now. There was no going back. She'd have to live with those consequences. Even the fact that Finn McLeod thought she was a hopeless substitute for the hot tennis player who should have been lying beside him in the shelter instead of her.

In the midst of all the doubts and fears swirling inside her, something happened. Something small hardened. A tiny seed. A kernel of determination and perseverance. The very thing that had helped her survive ballet school and the early days of the company and had rocketed her to where she was now.

She'd show him. She'd ace every task, follow every instruction to the letter.

Come morning, she'd show Finn McLeod—and the surly cameraman—exactly what she was made of.

CHAPTER FIVE

A
NOISE
 
startled Allegra from a shallow sleep. She'd been dreaming of being made to walk a tightrope over a deep, dark chasm, only the tightrope had morphed into an endless succession of bamboo poles. Somewhere below her she'd heard Finn McLeod, urging her to jump, telling her he'd catch her, but he'd been hidden in the darkness. She'd had no idea where he was or how far down she'd have to fall before he saved her, so she'd just kept walking the bamboo poles until her feet had throbbed and her soles had bled.

She sat up quickly—too quickly—to rub her feet and check they were okay, but the unexpected discovery of a heavy hiking boot where she'd expected to find tender flesh meant she jammed one finger backwards in an awkward direction and had to stifle a yelp of pain.

She shook her head and rubbed her eyes. Those boots made her feet feel like foreign objects. Heavy and dull and stiff. None of the clothes she was wearing—bar her underwear—were her own. Not the cargo trousers stuffed into her backpack or the shorts, vest top and beige long-sleeved shirt she was wearing now. The decision to come had been so last-minute and she'd had nothing remotely suitable in her wardrobe, so the production company had kitted her out. Sparsely.

Consciousness returned enough for her to glance around and orient herself—not that she had totally forgotten where she was. The poles beneath her were a too-constant reminder for that.

She was alone in the shelter, and outside it was light. Not
too
bright, but definitely light. Carefully, very carefully, she bottom-shuffled her way to the edge of the shelter and peered out.

Oh, wow.

This morning the beach looked a totally different place. The sand that had seemed a dirty beige yesterday was now a shimmering pale gold, and the churning grey sky had melted into the soft blue of a baby's blanket. She was still cold, though. They'd made their camp at the fringes of the jungle, where sand and earth met, and the long shapes of the trees reaching down the beach meant the shelter was still shrouded in shadow.

Her legs were as stiff as if she'd done three performances of
Swan Lake
back to back, and they creaked as she swung them over the edge of the shelter's sleeping platform and let the weight of her boots pull her feet downwards onto the sandy earth.

She stretched a little—an unbreakable habit from her training—stood up and walked away from the shelter, further down the beach, wondering where her fellow castaways were. There were footprints in the sand leading off to the right and then curving towards the jungle, but none coming back the same way.

She was completely on her own. Nobody to tell her how to behave or think or even move. There was a whole beach of virgin sand, swept clean by the morning's tide, waiting for her. She could lie down and make sand angels if she wanted, or cartwheel down to the shore and plop into the sea.

She didn't, of course.

After staring at the vast expanse for a few seconds, she turned and followed the footprints, placing her feet carefully inside the larger dents in the sand.

She hadn't paid too much attention to her home for the coming week the evening before. Too busy trying to get the shelter up to worry about the scenery. Their camp was on a wide strip of sand that filled almost all of a gently curving bay with low rocky headlands at either end. At the left edge of the bay, maybe only thirty feet out to sea, was a small island. Well, a large rock, really. But its top must have been above the high tide line because a small tree grew on top, giving just enough shade for some scrubby grass to flourish underneath.

Away from the shore, the land was covered with dense green vegetation, and rose gently until it peaked in a rocky hill. Not exactly mountainous, but with the lack of any other geographical features, it seemed enormous.

It struck her that she didn't even properly know where she was—except the surf on the beach was the Pacific and the nearest land mass was Panama.

She stopped walking and turned on the spot. Where had Finn and the cameraman got to?

Even though the rising sun was now starting to warm her face she shivered. Her clothes were still damp from the night before and her stomach was very, very empty. It was beautiful here, to be sure, but she had a sudden overwhelming sense of her own vulnerability.

She was saved from pondering a slow and nasty death from starvation by a crashing sound. She'd reached the end of the tracks in the sand now, where they disappeared into the undergrowth, and before she could decide whether she should freeze or run, Finn burst through the bushes and was standing before her, dragging what looked like half a dead tree behind him. Dave appeared a few seconds later, puffing and muttering things under his breath that she was glad she couldn't hear.

‘Great! You're up,' Finn said, and smiled at her.

She nodded, suddenly unsure of what to say. The whole of the English language was at her disposal. All she had to do was pick a word. And what did she do? She nodded. Pathetic. But there were too many words. There was too much choice, and faced with so many overwhelming options she'd backed away and chosen nothing.

‘First things first,' Finn said, marching back towards the camp, obliterating his own footprints as he went. ‘We need to build a fire and get warm, and we need to worry about food and water.'

Worry? Allegra almost laughed out loud. When did Fearless Finn worry about anything? He seemed to be glowing with strength and health and confidence this morning, as if the night battling the elements had revitalised him somehow.

She sighed and scurried after him.

No wonder the TV cameras ate him up. No wonder a whole army of women back home had linked themselves on the internet through blogs and social networking sites and referred to themselves as ‘Finn's Fanatics'.

But the camera didn't catch all of him. It didn't catch the raw energy that pulsed from every pore, the sense that anything and everything could and
would
happen around him, even—as the show's tagline hinted—the impossible. It definitely didn't catch the way his throwaway smiles turned a girl's knees to chocolate.

Allegra flicked a look across at Dave. While she'd been admiring the rear view of Finn dragging the tree across the beach, he'd trained the camera back on her.

She wanted to growl. Instead she swallowed.

Cameras might not catch all of Finn, but she knew they were very good at catching all sorts of things that people didn't think they'd given away, and the last thing she wanted was the camera noticing
her
noticing Finn. That would be far, far too humiliating.

Finn watched carefully as Allegra struck his knife on the flint he'd given her. Not even a spark. And there wasn't likely to be one if she kept
stroking
that knife against the flint. The fluffed up coconut husk underneath would never catch light. It was her first go at something like this, though—that much was obvious—so he bit his tongue and sat back on his haunches and watched. For now. She'd get it eventually; she just needed to find her own rhythm with it.

Far from moaning about being cold and damp this morning, she'd hardly said a word. She'd just stared at him with her doll's eyes, listening intently to every word that had dropped out of his mouth about tinder and kindling and fuel, and then she'd helped him gather exactly the right stuff, no further guidance necessary. And when he'd explained how to build the fire, she'd watched and then reproduced, following his instructions to the letter.

Far from being a diva, this little ballerina was turning out to be a pleasant surprise.

The only thing lacking now was a spark.

She paused her efforts and glanced up at him, a questioning, slightly panic-laced expression in her eyes. It was the first time that morning he'd seen her show any emotion at all.

‘In the wild places of this planet, fire is everything,' he said quietly, and her eyes grew the tiniest bit wider and rounder. ‘Without fire, we couldn't survive. We need it to purify the water, to cook, to provide protection and warmth. I'll give you plenty more opportunities to learn, but for now I think we're cold enough for me to take over.'

She blinked and her chin rose an almost imperceptible amount.

Finn let a half-smile pull one side of his mouth upwards. A little bit stubborn, too, this girl. Good. She'd need that if she was going to pass the challenges this week would bring—especially the final surprise challenge he put all his celebrity guests through in the new programme format.

She handed the knife and flint over to him and he set about starting the fire.

‘Actually, there's one thing that's even more important than fire in survival situations,' he said.

The coconut husk was smoking now. He picked the ball of fluff up and blew on it gently, coaxing the flame to life. Making a fire took practice, but it also took instinct—knowing exactly the right time to trust the almost invisible sparks to do their job, when to blow, how hard and for how long.

A tiny orange flame sprang from almost nowhere, and he turned the ball of fibres in his hand, letting it grow, and then he placed it gently on the fire pit they'd created and starting stacking the kindling around it. He couldn't help himself; he had to smile. He always got a kick out of this, no matter how many times he did it. He glanced up at Allegra and found her smiling back at him.

At least, he
thought
that was Allegra. The soft, barely-there smile completely transformed her, lighting up her face more than the growing flames could have done.

Ouch.

He dropped the twig he'd been holding and sucked at his fingers. The flickering heat had got a little too close for comfort. That didn't happen very often any more. He obviously hadn't been paying proper attention. Time to get back to the subject in hand.

‘More than anything—more than survival skills, plant knowledge, physical strength or navigational ability—the thing that keeps us alive out here where mankind doesn't normally dwell is
spark.
'

‘Spark?' she said, lines in her forehead banishing the curve in her mouth. ‘Isn't that the same as fire?'

He shook his head as he shuffled back and reached for some larger branches and put them on the fire. ‘No. I mean the spark
inside.
That something…that flicker of human spirit that keeps us from giving in, that keeps us struggling for the next breath. If you've got that, you can survive against the odds, even if you are stuck in alien territory.' He shrugged one shoulder. ‘The survival training makes it easier, but with
spark
nothing is impossible.'

She nodded, but she didn't look very happy about what he'd said. In fact, that eager, open look she'd been wearing since they'd crouched down to build the fire disappeared.

‘You mean something like
soul?
' she said quietly, her eyes fixed on his face.

‘That's it.'

She looked at the sandy earth beneath their feet. And then she stood up and walked a few paces further down the beach and looked out to sea. Her arms came around her front and she hugged her elbows tightly.

Hmm. Maybe this compliant-seeming woman had more of the touch of the diva about her than he'd first imagined. He shrugged to himself and chucked another log on the now roaring fire. He wasn't pandering to it, though. She'd have to learn
that
quick-smart as well.

‘The next important thing to do is to get dry,' he said over his shoulder. And then, just because he couldn't resist, ‘It's a real morale booster.'

She twisted her neck to look back at him, and then she turned and walked up to the blaze, extending her arms until they were rigid and flexing her palms back.

Finn gave a chuckle. ‘You'll spend all day trying to dry those clothes like that.' And then, as the little ballerina's eyes grew the roundest and bluest he'd ever seen them, he began to strip off.

Well, it seemed her prophecy that anything could and would happen when Finn McLeod was around hadn't been far off the mark. Allegra wasn't sure whether to pull up a metaphorical chair and enjoy herself, or slink off into the shelter to protect them both from embarrassment.