Every step was excruciating, but Celeste would have died rather than admit how much pain she was in. Admitting it out loud would have meant stopping for the evening, and that would have meant that she was losing the bet. She was still in the lead of the pair as they made their way up the trail, higher and higher in elevation. She was pretty sure that was on purpose. He was expecting her to fall again. She saw it in the way he’d watched every step she’d taken since they’d left the cars behind.

When she’d finally gone down, she could feel the heat rising in her cheeks in embarrassment while he came to her rescue. It made her feel like everything he expected her to be — a spoiled city girl who wasn’t going to be able to pull her own out here on the trail. Then when he’d caught her from the second fall and kept her close to his chest, she felt the heat travel from her cheeks down into the rest of her body. It was like she forgot how to walk for a moment.

And there he was calling her Princess and acting like she couldn’t walk on her own. It just made her more determined not to give in to the stupid urges the cave woman in her head kept droning on about and focus on making sure she showed him exactly what she was capable of out on the trail even if that meant every step sent a shock of burning pain from her ankle up her calf. She’d walked in heels that made her wish she could cut her feet off at the ankles at plenty of parties. This wasn’t much different than that. At least that’s what she kept telling herself, but as the day wore on, it became increasingly clear that she was going to be the one who gave up first. Drake wasn’t out of breath, didn’t seem winded in the slightest, and here she was struggling to put one foot in front of the other until finally she just couldn’t take it anymore.

Celeste sank her entire weight onto one of the boulders at the edge of the path with a sigh. She frowned, furrowing her brows as Drake came to a stop in front of her. She wanted him closer. Denying that to herself would have been a lie, but he was just far enough away that she couldn’t feel the heat off his body against her now chilled skin. Even though she’d worn plenty of clothes, the late fall air up here in the mountains was colder than anything she’d ever experienced back in Los Angeles. Maybe she wasn’t as cut out for this as she thought.

“I quit. I give up. I lose…” Celeste threw her hands up in the air and let them fall limply down at her sides. She could already feel the aching setting into her muscles. She was going to pay for overdoing it tomorrow, and there wasn’t anything she was going to be able to do about it. Add to that humiliation the fact that she was sitting here and losing on her end of the bet for the day. She was well and thoroughly embarrassed, but she wasn’t going to let that show either. She was as good at hiding her emotions as she was at hiding the pain that she was going through until all became too much.

“You made it longer than I expected, to be honest. I figured you’d give up after that fall.” The smug look on his face made him even more handsome. Of course, he would be the winner, and of course he would be smug about it, and of course, it would make her insides melt to see it written all over his face. Celeste cursed her body for betraying her inside no matter how good she was at keeping a cool exterior. Much like being able to hide the pain in her foot, there was going to be a point at which the shell she had built up was going to crack, and she was going to wind up doing something stupid.

She hated and loved that grin he had on his face once she finally gave way, and she wasn’t sure what about it she loved and what about it drove her insane. She had that urge to kiss it off his stupid face again. That was going to get them both in trouble before all was said and done.

“Well, I’m glad I exceeded expectations.” She huffed and leaned back onto the boulder, staring up at the sky beyond. It was starting to turn pink around the edges as the sun sank beyond the horizon. It would be dark soon, anyway. They wouldn’t have been able to hike on through the night, so at least she had the consolation that she’d made it through the entire day, even if she wasn’t certain that was going to assuage her injured pride.

He laughed and pulled the pack off his shoulders, glancing around them as if he were surveying the area before he replied. His fingers scratched through the stubble that was already starting to show after only one day of not shaving along his jawline. He glanced back at her once he was done.

“This is a pretty good place to settle for the night. I can set up a camp stove and the tent over there, and we can tuck in after dinner for a good night’s sleep. I’m pretty sure we’re both going to need it after today.”

No matter how infuriated with him and the entire situation Celeste might be, she wasn’t going to argue with the fact that a hot dinner and a good night’s sleep was exactly what she wanted right now. Honestly, she would have given just about anything to be back at her apartment and sink into a full tub of hot water and a bath bomb, but this was going to have to do until then.

“Alright, just let me know what you need help with.” She didn’t want to move, but she was going to push off this rock as soon as he gave her the word that he needed her to do something. He put one hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down into a sitting position the second he tried to move.

“You sit right there, Princess. Rest that foot. I’m not going to be the one who makes you get up on a twisted ankle and set up camp even if you are a stubborn ass who refused to give up on hiking until you were aching like a ninety-five-year-old woman.” He grabbed the pack she’d dropped by the side of the rock and carried it to the nearby clearing while she sat and watched, a little in shock the he’d realized how much pain she’d been in all along.

It had probably been the longest day in Celeste’s entire life. She was absolutely exhausted, and camp wasn’t what she’d been expecting in the slightest. Drake had mentioned the fact that he’d brought a tent along for the two of them, though she couldn’t picture how a tent had fit into the two fairly small packs they’d been hauling along the trail all day.

When he went into her pack and pulled out a bundle about the size of a basketball, then unfurled it into the smallest tent she’d ever seen in real life, she realized exactly what he meant by a two-man tent. Two people were going to have to get really damned friendly to spend the night in a tent that size. She’d half expected him to pull out another one just like it and tell her they each had their own, but that didn’t happen.

“We’re seriously supposed to both fit in a tent that small?” She finally spoke up from the rock where he’d pushed her back down into a sitting position while he set up the tiny can of gas and burner that was their camp stove along with a tiny electric lantern he’d pulled from the pack to combat the fact that the sun was slowly sinking below the horizon.

“Well, I mean you can stay out here and pray it doesn’t rain, snow and no owls decide to use your nose as a perch if you feel like it. That’s a two man tent, and I’d be happy to have all the room to myself.”

“Two man tent?” She scoffed. “Two men would be sleeping in each other’s arms in that tent. Hell, I’m pretty sure you and I are going to have to spoon to fit in there, but I mean, if it’s that or sleeping with the coyotes… At least I’m pretty sure you aren’t going to eat me.”

The laugh that got from him sent the color rising into her cheeks again. She’d made a double entendre without intending to, but it was already out of her mouth before she could change her mind.

“Oh, Princess, I promise you’ll like it if I decide to.” He glanced up from his work at the camp stove with a wink and another laugh at the redness in her cheeks before he went back to lighting it up and balancing a small pot of water on top of the flame in the bracket that seemed perfectly made to hold it.

Celeste decided to keep her mouth shut from then on out. It seemed like every time she opened it she was just putting her foot inside it instead of accomplishing anything worthwhile. Every time she got one over on Drake, he made her pay for it. Maybe just staying silent for a while was the best option. She put all her focus on paying attention to what he was doing. He pulled a pouch from one of the backpacks once he got the water boiling, dumping its contents into the pot and stirring with a tiny spoon that he’d produced from one of the pockets of his pack.

It wasn’t long before the surrounding air was filled with the scent of stew. Celeste chanced getting up from her rock to move closer and watch him from a better vantage point. She regretted moving the moment she put all her weight on the ankle that she’d turned yet again.

She let out a tiny sound of pain and was half tempted to just sink back onto the rock behind her, but Drake was at her side before she could make a decision to move either direction.

“Come on, Princess, quit being a stubborn ass and let me help you over to the tent so you can at least have some dinner and get ready for bed, okay? I promise not to throw it up in your face that you needed my help in the morning, and if we wind up spooning in the tent over there, I won’t put it on my social media profiles or anything, I swear.” He laughed again, and Celeste decided to just give up.

“Fine, but only because I’m pretty sure I’m going to fall flat on my ass if I try to make it on my own.” He walked over to her after she agreed to help for the first time on the entire trip, offering her his arm to help her stand and letting her lean on him as she limped across the learning to where the tent was set up.

“At least you didn’t come hiking out here in those damned high heels. We’d both have fallen off the side of a mountain by now.” He laughed again, and she wasn’t sure if it was infuriating or endearing.

“I have more sense than you give me credit for, Drake. Besides, I’d like to see you try to walk a half a foot in them, much less all day.”

“I don’t think I’m cut out for heels, besides they’d make it hard to catch stray calves and the dogs would probably trip me up.”

They’d finally reached the campsite, and Drake lowered her to sit at the open end of the tent where he’d rolled out a couple of sleeping bags. The night air was getting cold, and when he brought over a cup of hot stew and a spoon to where she was sitting, Celeste wasn’t certain that she’d ever had food that tasted quite that good, even if she didn’t want to say so. It was bad enough that he was getting the satisfaction of having to help her through the trip. He was far more experienced than her. She had to give him that, but she was already mad at herself for not being able to at least keep up.

He settled down on a log near the tent, and tucked into his food without speaking, though she wasn’t sure why or if she’d done something to offend him. The sounds of the woods around them grew more noticeable in the silence, and the world slowly began to darken around them until the stars were erupting above them one by one. Celeste didn’t think she’d ever seen so many stars in all her life.

She got a little lost in looking up, so much so that she half forgot about the cup of hot stew in her hands.

“I know my cooking is bad, but I figured you’d be a lot hungrier than that, Princess.”

She shook her head at him before rolling her eyes.

“The food is fine, Drake. I just haven’t ever seen this many stars in my life. You can’t actually see any of them in Los Angeles. There’s too much light even late at night. It’s almost as bright in Denver, even if I’ve seen a few of them. I guess I didn’t even realize how many of them there were.” She glanced up again before returning her attention to the cup of stew in her hand.

“Yeah, that was one of the things I missed when I lived in LA.” He trailed off, putting his attention back on the food.

“Wait a damn minute? You lived in Los Angeles?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know my ex-wife. You’re my lawyer, so I don’t know what I’m paying you for if you haven’t done your research. She wanted to live there, so we gave it a go. It just turned out that it worked out better for one of us than the other.”

Celeste seemed to have half-forgotten that Drake had been married before, and that it had been to Vanessa Archer one of the bigger names around Hollywood these days. It had even further slipped her mind that he must have spent time in LA with her. It just seemed so out of character to imagine Drake in the city. She couldn’t really even picture him in Denver, much less in somewhere more metropolitan like Los Angeles.

“Yeah… I mean I know who she is, and where she lives and all the details. I think I’ve seen her around a time or two back in the city. It’s just… it doesn’t seem to fit you?” She stumbled over her words, not certain how to say what she was thinking without stepping all over his toes.

“That’s the understatement of the year.” Drake glanced down at the mug in his hand without any more commentary on whatever was running through his head. “So, I’m done eating. I’m guessing you’re pretty close. The sun is down, and there’s not going to be much of a moon tonight. Instead of sitting around in the dark and reminiscing, what do you say about us going to bed?”

He’d changed the subject, but she wasn’t going to push it any harder.

“Alright, Drake. I’m exhausted anyway, so I think a good night’s rest would do the both of us a world of good.”