“I’ll be okay in a moment.”
A light touch landed on her back. “We’ll wait.”
Seconds ticked by, and despite her mortification, she eventually recovered. “I’m better now.”
“Good,” Jack said briskly. “But please tell me if that changes. This second part is a bit harder.” He aimed his headlight further into the cave and raised his voice. “Behind me, you’ll see that there’s a pile of rock that reaches nearly all the way to the cave ceiling. What you’ll need to do, if you want to go on, is climb over the rock pile, and from there we’ll be crawling.” Was it Brooke’s imagination, or did he look pointedly at her when he said that? “So, who’d like to go first?”
“Me,” she said, so softly no one seemed to hear. “Me,” she repeated, more loudly.
Jack’s face twisted in concern. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
She stood firm. She didn’t want to give him any reason to look at her with pity. On top of everything, she didn’t think she could handle that. She wanted him to see her as a desirable woman, an equal, not someone he needed to fuss over.
“You won’t have to carry me out, I can promise you that.” It was a bold promise, but one she intended to keep. If she couldn’t leave under her own steam, she’d hide in a corner and hibernate until she recovered.
“Okay,” he said, clearly dubious, but willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. “Away you go. I’ll be right here. If you run into trouble, yell out.”
Brooke summoned her strength—what little of it she possessed—and clambered up the pile of rocks, which shifted and wobbled beneath her feet. It was hard work. By the time she reached the top, her breathing was shallow and her arms and legs felt weak.
“Are you okay up there?” someone asked. Not Jack.
“I’m great,” she replied, then dropped over the other side of the rock pile, where they couldn’t see her, and switched her light off while she rested.
When she heard another person scaling the rocks, she flicked it back on and scrambled down until she reached the cave floor. At this point, it was about four feet high—enough to crawl comfortably, but not enough for a grown person to walk upright. Shuffling to the side, she waited. First over the pile was the man she’d bumped into. His wife followed, and then the younger couple. Jack came last. Mavis and Nell must have opted to wait on the other side.
Jack crawled to the front of the group. “Nice and roomy over here, eh?”
Someone sniggered. Meanwhile, Brooke thanked her lucky stars she hadn’t been cursed with claustrophobia as well as every other malady.
“The tunnel continues for another hundred meters,” he told them. “It opens up into a cavern at the end, so you’ll be able to stand again.”
With that, he started into the dark. Brooke trailed close behind, recalling her promise not to venture far from him. She was so caught up in the wonder of the place that she hardly noticed her palms scrape on the ground as she moved, or her knees knock into pointy stones. She was in a cave. Surrounded by rock on all sides. Adventuring. She laughed. It echoed around them, sounding slightly maniacal. Jack glanced over his shoulder.
“It’s so awesome,” she said by way of explanation.
He grinned. “Sure is.”
After a while, they came to a low-hanging rock, and she had to drop to her belly to fit beneath it. On the other side was the cavern Jack had mentioned. It was easily the size of the communal living room at Sanctuary. She got to her feet and strode around the perimeter. After a few minutes, Jack called them to attention.
“Everyone, turn off your lights. Three clicks.”
Brooke felt for her button and did as he said. The lights flickered out, one by one, leaving them in total darkness. Wow. Even in the dead of night, with the forest on one side and the sea on the other, she’d never been in darkness quite as inky and perfect as this.
“Amazing,” a female voice said.
“Nowhere else is as dark as the inside of a cave.” This voice was Jack’s, deep and rumbly. Strange, how she’d never noticed how sexy a voice could be. It matched the man. Unfortunately, however sexy he may be, he was also a jackass.
Trying to put him to the back of her mind, she focused on the darkness cocooning them. If she stared into it for long enough, she imagined she could see patches of light and the outline of shapes, but she knew that was just her brain filling in the blanks, deceiving her. The flashes of texture in the dark reminded her of the 1915 painting, The Black Square, which was quite literally a square painted black. Something she’d never understood, until now.
“Lights back on.”
Reluctantly, she switched hers on, and the cavern was illuminated once again.
“Everyone ready to go?”
They headed back the way they’d come, over the rock pile to rejoin Mavis and Nell, then out into the bright sunlight. Brooke couldn’t stop smiling. They’d gotten off to a bumpy start, but aside from a few moments of awkwardness, she’d had the best time.
Halfway down the hill, Nell complained that she couldn’t carry her bag any longer, and Brooke took it from her, ignoring the woman’s protests. She was exhausted, but also on cloud nine. Nothing could stop her. At the bottom of the hill, she handed the bag back but didn’t sit with her friends. Her legs were like jelly and she was afraid that if she did, she wouldn’t be able to get back up again. Instead, she waited for Jack to thank the group and instruct them where to leave the equipment, then lingered midway between her friends and the lodge. Jack glanced her way and she found herself hoping he’d come over to chat.
But then Tione emerged from his cabin, his Chihuahua, Pixie, tucked into the crook of his arm and his cross-bred bull terrier, Zee, on his heels, although his other two dogs were nowhere in sight. Jack waved him over. The two men started chatting, and even though Brooke edged closer, under the pretense of pulling a weed from a flowerbed, she may as well have been invisible.
2
Jack noticed Brooke lingering nearby. She glanced his way a few times, and he wondered if she wanted something. But when she didn’t approach, he decided he must be mistaken, and took the opportunity to evaluate her instead. Brooke intrigued him. She was pretty, and stubborn to boot. He found he liked her very much, but he wouldn’t let himself act on that attraction. With her designer activewear, sun-kissed hair, and graceful movements, she was too much like Claudia, and regardless of whether or not she seemed nice, he’d learned his lesson about staying in his lane when it came to women. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something familiar about her, beyond her simply being Kat’s friend.
When she reached for a weed in the garden, he noticed that the porcelain-pink polish on her fingernails was chipped from scrabbling around in the cave. Those delicate nails and her pale skin screamed of long days spent inside. Claudia had always been perfectly manicured—including in the dozens of Instagram photos where she appeared to be rock climbing or caving or hiking. That should have been a red flag from the start. And okay, maybe it wasn’t fair to compare the two, considering how little he knew about Brooke, but she struck him as the kind of girl who wouldn’t understand his choices. Eventually she straightened and hustled away. Jack looked from her to Tione, and caught his friend frowning at him.