Seven Nights with Her Ex (7 page)

She'd only ever seen joy...

How could he ever tell her that he'd seen something different? How could he tell her that if he'd married her it might have been okay to start with, but then there would have been little differences of opinion? Silences and resentment and screaming arguments. How could he say he had known how their fallouts would turn into sleeping in separate rooms? That they would go without talking for days or, if they did talk, would only snipe at each other and resent the other person for making them feel so bad? How could he tell her that he saw slamming doors and broken plates as well as broken hearts? How could he begin to tell her that he wouldn't have—
couldn't
have—brought a child into all of that?

Marriage had meant something different to them both and she'd had no idea. There'd not been any way for him to tell her that marriage for him meant torture and ruination. How could you show that sort of vision to someone who viewed everything as though the world was only full of good things? Of hope and promise and happily-ever-afters.

Beau had been the light to his dark. The sun to his shadow. She had always been better than him. She'd had such a pure outlook and he hadn't wanted to spoil her beliefs. Dilute her sunshine and make clouds cover her world.

He'd walked away that day, knowing he couldn't face marriage. That he just didn't have it in him to stay and say those vows when he didn't believe they could be true. To love and to cherish? Maybe to start with. For better, for worse? Definitely too much of the latter! Until death do us part? Why would he want to put either of them through
that
?

Marriage to Beau should have been the greatest thing, but he'd been unable to see past his dread. He'd been a child of a loveless marriage. He knew what it was like to be forgotten. Unwanted. Not loved as a child should be loved, but
used
.

He could almost feel another wound ripping across his heart at the thought of it. His love for Beau had meant he'd tried to do the decent thing. He'd wanted her to be married. Happily. To someone who could give that to her and who stood an equal chance of believing in the same possibility of happiness. There had to be a man out there who thought the same as Beau. Who wanted the same things.

And yet... And yet Beau was still single. Alone. Her career was her shining light. Her joy.

They were both in their thirties now, and Beau still hadn't any children. What was that doing to her? It had been her dream to have kids...

Gray closed his eyes wearily and rested against a tree for a moment to catch his breath. His leg—his
foot
—hurt physically. Trying to ignore it, trying to gather his mental strength, he opened his eyes to carry on—but stopped as he noticed that Beau had come to stand by him.

‘Are you okay?' she asked.

He tried to gauge if she really was concerned. But the look in her beautiful eyes was enough to convince him that she was truly worried. Her brow was lined with worry. She'd even reached out her hand to lay it on his upper arm.

He nodded. ‘'Course. Just trying to ignore something that's not there.'

Beau looked puzzled. ‘Are you in pain?'

He shrugged. ‘A little.'

She tried to make him hold her gaze. ‘Anything I can help you with?'

Gray let out an angry sigh. He was angry with himself. Angry at having got everything so wrong. Angry at hurting Beau. For still hurting her even now. And she was being
nice
to him. Showing care and concern when she had every right in the world to be ignoring him still.

But when he looked into her eyes, he got caught. He was trapped and ensnared by her gaze. Her concern and worry for him was pushing past his defences, sneaking around his walls of pretence and bravado, reaching around his heart and taking hold.

Hesitantly he reached up and stroked her face. ‘You're so perfect, Beau.'

She stiffened slightly at his touch. Was she afraid? Shocked? But then she began to breathe again. He saw the way her shoulders dropped, her jaw softened.

She gazed right back at him. ‘Just not for you.'

‘But we were so close, weren't we?'

She nodded, a gentle smile curling her mouth. ‘We were.'

He took a moment just to look at her. At the way the sunshine reflected off her hair, at the way the tip of her nose was beginning to catch the sun. The way the smile on her face warmed his heart...

Gray looked away. He had no right to enjoy those feelings any more. He tried to cast them aside, to stand straighter, to concentrate on the task ahead—the walking, the hiking. He couldn't start to feel that way for Beau any more. He'd only ended up hurting her in the past. He'd not been able to offer her what she'd needed then—and now...? Now he had even less. He wasn't even a whole man. He was broken. His mistake had been to think he had been whole in the first place.

He stepped past her, feeling her hand on his arm drop away as he moved out of reach. His heart sank. He had to be firm with himself. It was at moments like these when he might all too easily slip into thinking about another chance with Beau.

What would be the point? Where would it lead?

To a relationship again?

No. We'd just end up in the same place.

Gray almost let out a growl of frustration. Instead he gritted his teeth and pushed through the pain he was feeling.

CHAPTER FIVE

T
HE
RIVER
GENTLY
flowed from east to west and was about twelve feet wide, with gentle ripples across its surface. On the other side their campsite waited for them, taunting them with its closeness.

They were all tired. It had been a long day—first hiking up the mountain and then their rapid descent, with the medical scenario on the way down. Beau was beginning to see how people might make mistakes with their decision-making when they were tired, hungry and sleep-deprived. It would be easy to do when you just wanted to be able to settle down and rest but knew you couldn't.

Now Mack stood in front of them, before the river, giving his safety lecture.

‘Whenever you need to cross water, my advice is to always travel downstream until you come to a bridge.
That's
the safest way. But sometimes there may be an occasion where you need to cross without one, and you need to know how to do this safely. I would never advocate that you do this alone. It's always best to do this with someone else, and if possible with ropes.'

He pulled some ropes from his backpack and lay them out on the forest floor.

‘Basic instructions are these—when you cross, you cross the river by facing
upstream
and slightly sideways. You lean
into
the current, because this will help you maintain your balance. You do
not
want to be swept off your feet.'

Beau glanced at the water. How deep was it? It looked pretty tame, but she guessed that there might be hidden currents, rocks beneath the innocent-looking water or even a drop in the riverbed's level.

‘You shuffle your feet across the bottom. You do
not
take big steps and lift your feet out of the water. You do
not
cross your feet over, and your downstream foot should always be in the lead.' He demonstrated what he meant before turning around and staring intently at them. ‘Do you all understand? Okay—practise that step on dry land.'

Beau imitated what he'd shown them. It seemed simple enough, but she could imagine that in the water it would feel different. She glanced at Gray and could see a worried look on his face. Why was he so concerned? Surely this was a thrill for him? The kind of thing he found a challenge?

‘If there is a long stick available—a tree branch, a walking pole, something like that—you can use it for extra balance and to feel beneath the water for obstacles. If you find an obstacle, you'll need to put your feet upstream of it, where the water will be less powerful.'

She was getting nervous now. This was a lot more complicated than she'd thought.

‘With a stick or pole, you can place that upstream, too. You move the pole first—then your feet. If the water gets higher than your thighs, and there is more than one of you crossing, you'll need to link arms and lock your hands together. This is called chain crossing. The biggest team member should be upstream, the smallest member downstream. You'll then move through the water using the same principles, parallel to the direction of the current.'

‘What if it's too deep for that?'

‘Then we use ropes, if available.' He began to lay out the instructions for using rope to cross water. He showed them how to anchor it, how to use a hand line, how to use a second rope as a belay and all the safety concerns involved.

It all got quite serious, quite quickly, and they were soon forging into the water to test its depth.

Considering the warmth of the day, the water felt cold, and Beau gasped as it came to just above her knees, soaking through her brand-new boots and socks and quickly chilling her to the bone. It was an odd sensation, being so cold below the knee but quite warm up top, and the sensation made her shiver and shake a little.

The water's current was deceptively strong, and she could feel it pushing and shoving hard against her legs like a persistent angry child. She was now shaking so much it was hard to tell where her feet were in the water, and feeling a rock beneath the water, she instinctively lifted up her foot to step over it, forgetting Mack's warning.

In an instant the current took her—unbalancing her, sweeping her off her feet.

She was down, with the water closing over her head in a frightening wave, filling her mouth, and she felt the cold suck at her clothes and body as the current tried to push her downstream. Gasping and spluttering, she tried to rise upwards, to find her feet and grab hold of something—anything—so that she could regain control and stand up. But the sheer coldness of the water, the disorientation she was feeling from being hungry, exhausted and sleep-deprived, meant she didn't know which way was up.

She opened her mouth to breathe, but it just filled with water. Beginning to panic, she splashed and opened her mouth even more to call for help—only to feel two strong arms grab her around the waist and pull her upwards.

‘I've got you!'

She blinked and spluttered, gasping for air, wiping her wet hair from her face, and saw that Gray had her in his arms. She was pressed against him, soaking him through, but the joy of feeling her feet against the solid riverbed floor once again, and being upright and out of the cold, stopped her from feeling awkward.

She coughed to clear the water from her throat and clung tightly to him. ‘Thanks.'

‘You okay?'

She pulled a piece of river grass from her mouth and looked at it for a moment, disgusted, before throwing it away. The other hikers were looking at her with concern, still making their way across the river. It was then that she realised just how up close and personal she was with Gray.

Pushing herself away from him, she felt heat colour her cheeks—before she shivered slightly and recoiled at the feel of her wet clothes clinging to her body.

‘I'm fine.' Why was he looking at her like that? There was far more than just concern in his eyes and it made her feel uneasy.

Anxious to get out of the water and to the campsite to dry off, she made her way across the river and clambered onto dry land with some difficulty. Her boots were full of water and her backpack had got soaked in the water, too. It would take her ages to dry everything off! Though she supposed the hot June weather might help, if she laid her things out on some rocks...

Once the others were all safely across, Gray insisted on putting her tent up for her quickly so she could get changed. As she'd suspected, everything in her pack was wet, but Claire kindly lent her some spare clothes to wear whilst her own were drying.

Mack was stern, giving her what felt like a lecture, and feeling like a naughty child, she sat by the river alone, her chin against her knees as she looked out across the innocent-looking water and thought about what might have happened.

She didn't have too long to think about it before Gray came to sit alongside her.

‘How are you feeling?'

She shrugged, not willing to answer right away. Her fall in the river had disconcerted her. She
never
got things wrong. She always got things right—picked up new things quickly, learnt easily. Fording the river had shown her that control of things could all too easily be taken away from her when she wasn't expecting it. She'd thought she could handle the river—she'd been wrong.

And she'd thought she could convince herself that her feelings for Gray were those of uninterest and anger. She'd told herself that she didn't care about him any more. She'd been wrong on that count, too.

The way he'd rescued her in the river...the way she'd felt talking to him again...it was confusing. This was a man she should be
hating
! A man she should be furious with. Not even
talking
to. But being around him was stirring up feelings that she'd told herself she would
never
feel for a man again.

Gray jilted me! Rejected me!

And yet it had felt much too good to be in his arms again. Much too comfortable to be pressed up against him...much too familiar and safe and...and
right
to be that close to him again.

He'd felt solid. Sturdy. Strong. A safe haven. A certainty. And for a long time she'd tried to tell herself that Gray was an
un
certainty. An unstable individual who had always been a risk to her security and happiness.

How could she be getting this so wrong? Why was she so confused about him?

Even now, as he sat next to her on the rocks, she could feel her body reacting to him. To his presence. It was almost as if it were craving his touch again, and to be honest it was making her feel uncomfortable. It wasn't just the discomfort of being in someone else's clothes, or the knowledge that she'd made a mistake in the river and might have drowned, but also the discomfort of knowing that the chapter in her life which concerned Gray was not as closed as she'd once thought it was.

Somehow he was breaking back in and opening that door again.

‘I was really worried about you.'

She didn't want to hear that from him. ‘Don't be.'

‘I saw you go under. I... My heart almost stopped beating. You just disappeared under the water like you'd been swallowed up by a beast.'

She could hear the pain in his voice. The fear. It was tangible. Real. She had no doubt he meant every word he said.

But I can't allow myself to react to him. Gray's no good for me.

‘But you caught me, so everything was all right in the end.'

She refused to turn and face him. She couldn't. If she did turn—if she did see the look in his eyes that she knew to be there—she would be lost. She needed to fight it. Fight
him
. And her reaction to him. Her desire to feel him against her again. It had to go.

She stared out at the water, cursing its calm surface, knowing of the torrent below.

‘If you had been swept away—'

‘But I wasn't! I'm okay.'

She glanced at him. Just briefly. Just to emphasise her words—she
was
here, she
was
safe. Then she turned back to the river, her stomach in turmoil, her whole body fighting the desire to turn and fling herself into his arms again.

He didn't speak for some time and she could sense him looking out at the river, too.

‘Are you cold? Would you like my jacket?' he asked eventually.

His jacket? The one that would carry his scent? What was he trying to do? Drown her in
him
instead? How would she even be able to
think
, wrapped in its vast depths, with the echo of his warmth within them?

‘No, I'm good, thanks,' she lied.

‘You're still shivering.'

‘I'm not cold. It's just...just shock. That's all.'

‘Well, shock isn't minor, either. We need to keep you warm, hydrated. Come and sit by the fire—we can get some hot tea into you.'

‘Honestly, Gray, I'm fine.'

It was killing her that he was trying to take care of her. It would be easier if he left her alone for a while. Allowed her to gather her thoughts. To regroup and rebuild those walls she'd built for the past eleven years. Because somehow, in the last few hours, they'd come crumbling down and she felt vulnerable again. Vulnerable to
him
. And that was something that she couldn't afford.

‘Come and sit by the fire, Beau. I insist.'

He grabbed her by the arm and gently hauled her to her feet. His arm around her shoulders, he walked her over to the fire and sat her down on a log next to Barb. Then he disappeared.

Just as she thought she could relax again, he came back. She tensed as he wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.

‘How's that?' He rubbed her upper arms and knelt before her, staring into her eyes.

He was close enough to kiss.

She tried not to think about it—tried not to look down at his mouth, at those lips that she knew were capable of making her shiver with desire. She tried not to notice the way he was looking at her, the way the lines had increased around his green eyes, the way his beard emphasised his mouth—his perfect mouth—the way his lips were parted as he stared back at her, waiting for her response.

I could just lean forward...

She closed her eyes and snuggled down into the blanket.
No.
She couldn't allow herself to do that. It was wrong.
He
was wrong. What the
hell
was she doing, even
contemplating
kissing him?

Beau scrunched up her face and gritted her teeth together before she opened her eyes again and looked directly back at him. She nodded to indicate that she was fine, but she wasn't.

She was fighting a battle within herself.

And she really wasn't sure, at this moment in time, which side would win.

* * *

Rick was next on the rota to make a meal, and Mack provided him with a small amount of rice and some tins of tuna. It wasn't great, but it was protein and carbohydrates—both of which they all badly needed—and despite its blandness, despite the lack of salt and pepper, they all wolfed their meal down, hungry from restricted rations and exhausted from the long, tiring day.

Except for Beau.

She toyed with her food, pretending to eat, but in reality she was just pushing it round her dish, trying to make it look as if she was eating.

Gray sat next to her, put down his dish. ‘You need to eat.'

‘I'm not hungry.'

‘You've had a shock. You need to eat for strength. You're too thin as it is.'

She could hear in his voice that he was concerned about her. Could hear that he had good intentions. But she didn't want to hear them from him. She didn't want to be reminded that he cared, because if she acknowledged that, then she would need to accept that
she
still cared about
him
, too.

‘I'm fine.'