Sam checked his watch. ‘It’s quarter to ten on a Saturday night.’
‘I’ve had an eventful day to say the least!’
‘When’s the last time you had a hot drink?’
I thought about it. ‘I made one just before you arrived but it got knocked over. Before that, it was breakfast.’
‘So I owe you a hot drink?’
‘When you put it like that…’
‘Give me ten minutes. There’s a rangers’ hut not too far away.’
‘Sam, I’m supposed to be doing this challenge by myself!’ I called after the shadow where his rapidly disappearing figure had been two seconds earlier. I mulled over the boundaries of the No-Man Mandate while I waited for him to come back, pulling on a hoodie and changing into my thick socks. Having a professional forest ranger escort me to a safe area was totally within the rules. I decided that having him bring me a hot drink to replace the one he’d caused me to spill was also fine. Inviting him to stay while we both enjoyed a drink, under the stars, wrapped in my blanket… that was definitely nudging the boundary.
Sitting on one edge of the blanket, sipping a creamy hot chocolate, Sam perched on the other and Nesbit snuggled in between us, marshmallows roasting over a portable firepit, the moon and firelight waltzing together in his eyes as he attentively listened to the highs and lows of my day, I had to admit that this completely broke the No-Man Mandate.
It couldn’t have looked more like the picture in my head when I’d created the Dream List if I’d tried, even down to me borrowing a woolly hat from a forest ranger who was starting to bear a startling resemblance to my Dream Man.
18
I woke up with a fuzzy head, aching bones and no idea what time of day it was due to the tent’s blackout lining. Nesbit, however, repeated the bark that had startled me out of sleep, then followed it up with a barrage of nose nudges until I clambered out of the sleeping bag to let him out, and a beam of daylight in. Following him into the open, I blinked my bleary eyes and tried to shake the dregs of sleep from my brain before pausing to assess the location.
Oh, now this was lovely.
Pretty in the moonlight, it was perfect in the early morning mist.
Lush grass, speckled with daisies and other blue and purple flowers, with a wide stream that ran along one border of the clearing. A weeping willow hung low over the water, laden with catkins, and a pair of ducks were gliding upstream.
I inhaled a lungful of sweet, damp air, almost able to taste the sunlight, and stretched both arms above my head, my brain-fog swiftly clearing as my senses woke up.
Nesbit suddenly stopped sniffing about the grass and started staring past me. After a second’s pause, he sprinted over to the far border of the clearing, behind the tent.
I could immediately see why. Instead of a row of trees or bushes, this side was bordered with a white picket fence lined with chicken wire.
And behind that was the rangers’ hut that Sam had referred to the night before. Only this so-called hut was the house that I had spent far too much time dreaming about during the past few weeks.
Two collies stood on the other side of the fence. They both pushed their noses up to greet Nesbit, tails wagging.
No wonder Sam had been able to find this secluded clearing in the dark. It was right next to his house.
I felt a prickle of annoyance, immediately chased away by a swarm of butterflies flitting about in my stomach at the thought of him, firstly pitching my tent so close to his home, secondly quite probably being about to appear at any moment, and thirdly… well. Thirdly, the butterflies just seemed to appear at the thought of him. And that was enough to make me feel annoyed again.
While I was busy feeling annoyed and aflutter, Sam wandered out onto the decking behind his house carrying a plate and a pot of coffee, a book underneath one arm.
For reasons I would overanalyse later, I immediately ducked down behind the tent out of sight, waiting a few seconds, breath stuck in my throat, before inching my head around so that I could sneak a peek through the fence posts.
Sam was now sitting on one of his super-comfy hand-carved chairs, bare feet propped up on the decking railing as the sunlight glinted off the giant windows behind him. He wore a white T-shirt and aviator sunglasses, hair a rumpled morning mess as he sipped his coffee. There was a second mug on the table.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my Dream Life, right there in front of me.
Sam gave a cheery wave right in my direction then pointed at the second mug.
I would one hundred per cent, absolutely have gone and had breakfast with Ranger Sam if my phone hadn’t started ringing. I offered a quick wave back, as if it was perfectly normal for me to be peeking my head around the side of my tent, and went to answer it, buried in the bottom of my rucksack.