Page 27

Chapter Twenty-Six

S peculating that we would be spending possibly two nights—but hopefully just one—in the jungle, Andrew and I had bought extra supplies, and I took the opportunity to pick up trousers and a long-sleeved shirt. That morning, before the sun bloomed on the horizon while the last dying stars held to the sky, we loaded our car and left the hotel, driving north. We drove two hours past the Erizo at Las Loma retreat and the opposite way from the waterfall until we found a good place to abandon our Jeep and start our hike.

We were on our fifth hour prowling through the dense rainforest and still had another to go. The jungle’s complicated depth seemed more impenetrable the deeper we immersed ourselves. My heavy breathing mixed with the constant bird calls and hoots and monkey screeching and thrashing above our heads. Sweat ran down my temples, my neck, and between my boobs. My leg muscles ached, and the backpack somehow felt as though it weighed ten times more than it had when we’d started. Even if I wanted to whine and ask to take a short break, I didn’t. Thank goodness William was back at the hotel resting his ankle. He’d been desperate to come with us to find the treasure but in his state he wouldn’t have made it the first fifteen minutes. To make William feel he was still part of the treasure hunt, Andrew had entrusted him with the safety of the book we’d located in the San Antonio church and the box with all its contents we’d found at Erizo.

“We should be able to reach the ruins before dusk.” Andrew held my hand and helped me across a fallen tree. My right foot slipped off the trunk, and I stumbled. A thorny branch caught my sleeve, ripping the fabric and biting through my skin.

“Shit.” A wave of pain coursed through my left arm, and my body slammed forward into Andrew’s.

Losing his footing, he staggered backward and fell. His hat flew off his head, and I landed on top of him, my forehead crashing into his. Stars flew out from the corner of my eyes, and temporary light-headedness threw me into a fog of confusion.

Andrew grunted and cursed under his breath.

“Son of a gun, that hurt,” I mumbled, rising on my elbows and blinking at him.

“You okay?” he asked, smoothing hairs off my sticky forehead. “We might both have concussions now.” He chuckled.

I rubbed my thumb over a red spot above his right eyebrow. “Good thing I didn’t knock out any of your pretty teeth.”

“Will you still love me if I was missing a few teeth?” he asked, now running his fingers over the probably red bump on my forehead.

My heart gave an aching jab against my breastbone at his words will you still love me , and that caught me off guard. Fucking hell. This was maddening. This feeling. This thing that Andrew did to me. I knew he meant it as a joke—of course, he did, and I needed to joke back yes, I will . But would it be a joke?

This was silly. This wasn’t love at first sight. I didn’t believe in that.

Or maybe it was.

Well, not exactly at first sight. It was love from the third day. Or was it on the fourth day? Shoot, I couldn’t remember when I’d fallen for Andrew. Without a parachute.

Andrew’s smile dropped, and his eyebrows pulled together in deep concern. “What’s wrong? Are you going to throw up?”

Nice. Apparently I looked nauseated when I was thinking about being in love with him.

“Hollywood likes this head-hitting move in the movies,” I said, pushing off his chest and straddling him. I rubbed the sore spot on my face. “It hurt like a motherfu?—”

“Adriana, you’re bleeding.” Andrew gently caught my left wrist.

“What?” I peered at my arm, and oh wow, I had a nasty gash in my forearm and blood had soaked into the torn fabric. My Apple watch was also missing. “Oh,” I whined. “The stupid branch ruined my shirt. And where is my watch?” I scanned the ground, looking for the light blue band.

Andrew crouched next to me and took off his backpack.

“You have a deep cut, and you’re worrying about your shirt and watch?” Feeling around inside his bag, he found a first-aid kit. “Let me see it.” Andrew unfastened the button at my wrist and carefully rolled the sleeve up. He applied a dressing to stop the bleeding.

A monkey screeched above our head, probably laughing at my clumsiness.

“Do you think blood will attract wild animals to us?” I joked, and then it hit me. What if it was true? Bears can smell blood for miles. My panic hiked up. “Andrew, are we in trouble?”

“No. We’ll be okay.” He removed the soiled dressing and examined the cut. The bleeding had stopped.

“It’s not so bad,” I said. “I wouldn’t run to urgent care with it.”

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t get infected.” Andrew opened a new water bottle, angled my hand away from us, and cautiously poured water on the cut.

I sucked in a breath.

Andrew did the same and glanced at me, his eyes full of apology. “I’m sorry it hurts.”

“It doesn’t.”

It did.

He peered closely at the raw flesh. “Doesn’t look like it has any splinters.” Andrew took a pen and drew a circle at the perimeter of the redness.

“What are you doing?”

“Marking it.”

“I see that. What for?”

“If the redness spreads past the line, it means the infection has worsened.”

He applied antibiotic ointment on the sterile bandage and taped it around my wound.

“You seem like you know what you’re doing,” I said, watching his skilled fingers orbit my wrist as he firmly wrapped a dressing. “Have you done much booboo fixing?”

“I make it up as I go.” He smiled. “My medical expertise doesn’t extend beyond putting Peppa Pig plasters on Lulu’s scraped knees.”

My heart overflowed with warmth at the image of Andrew lovingly talking to his tiny niece, saying sweet and kind words to make her stop crying and gently wiping tears from her cheeks. He probably stuck a Band-Aid on his nose to make her giggle.

“What did the doctor give to a sick penny?” Andrew said as he secured the wrap and pulled me out of this other world.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

“Penny-cillin.” He grinned.

The joke was so unexpected I barked a laugh. He was utterly adorable. And I wanted Andrew to always be the one to take care of my scrapes.

His eyes glinted, and he leaned forward and nudged my nose with his. “Think you can continue our walk?”

“Yes.”

Andrew stuffed all the things back into his bag, and he helped me back to my feet. He snatched the hat off the ground and wiped his forehead with his sleeve before putting it back on. With a final (and failed) attempt to locate my watch, we continued our quest.

After walking a mile, we came out of the wild darkness to a spectacular, colorful vista. The sun barely touched the mountain edge, casting the warm light over a valley below that featured a river weaving its way through a green grassland and disappearing into a rainforest. Andrew navigated us down the hill, and we slipped into the jungle’s shadows again, the green canopy shielding the afternoon sun as we went deeper. Soon, like a dark, hunched animal, the palace remains loomed in the distance.

The construction had stopped when the first-floor walls were erected, but even at this early stage, the imposing size of the structure’s footprint grew ever more impressive as we moved closer. The eerie tranquility struck me. Ten thirty-foot-high pillars stood like guards clothed in dark green and tethered together by beefy ropes of vines. Dense moss smothered the structure’s walls, tree roots pushed up the front steps of the staircase, and thick vines like snakes looped around standing columns. Maybe some of them were snakes—yuck! The hairs on my back stood up, and I shifted closer to Andrew, my arm bumping into his. I wrapped my fingers around his wrist.

“This is a good stopping point,” Andrew said. “With the first morning light, we explore.”

* * *

Wet wood logs popped and crackled, sending wisps of smoke and flickers of light toward a full moon amid the starlit graphite canvas. The canopy of treetops blocked most of the skies, but I could see stars in some places. Andrew rested his back on a column, his legs outstretched toward the fire, his right hand on the hunting rifle, his left one entwined with mine. I used his shoulder as my pillow, enjoying the warmth of his body beside mine. He smelled of sweat, smoke, and bug spray, and somehow, I found it sexier than his usual bergamot and powdery coumarin cologne.

I tried hard not to focus on how petrifying the jungle became once night blanketed it in darkness, so I thought about what Andrew and I would do when this was over, when we returned to our everyday life.

“After this trip,” I said, “where would you want our first date to?—”

“Gordon’s Wine Bar,” he said, before I’d even finished my sentence.

“I was afraid you’d say The Museum of London Archaeological Archive or something boring like that.” I lifted my head and looked at him. His eyes were closed. The golden glow danced on his firelit face. “And hey, you didn’t even have to think about it. Is it like your go-to place for all of your first dates?”

“I’ve never been there, but I thought you might like it.”

His exceptionally kind and romantic heart stirred a flutter inside my chest. He needed to stop saying and doing all the nice things because I wasn’t sure if my ribcage could expand to fit all the feelings I had for him. I kissed his stubbled cheek, then rested my head back on his shoulder.

“When you visit me in Atlanta,” I said, squeezing my fingers tighter around his, “I’ll take you to my two favorite places. First, Savannah, and then the Biltmore Estate. I know you’re spoiled with beautiful European palaces, but I promise you’ll fall in love with the US’s largest privately owned house.”

“I also want to take you to Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. Lulworth Cove is where my parents met,” he said. “At the end of May, before it gets busy with tourists, you and I will go there for a holiday. We’ll stay in a fishing village, at a quaint B she can help you figure out how to get a business credit line.”

I rolled my eyes. Everyone who had never tried to open a business thought I could just waltz into a bank and they’d hand me everything on a silver platter. It wasn’t that simple.

My pulse hammered in my ears, and out of nowhere, my old insecurity snaked inside my head. I couldn’t see myself living among his sophisticated, educated relatives, friends, and colleagues. Just like Greg, they would be polite and friendly to my face, but behind my back, they would laugh at me and my upbringing.

I wanted to put space between us, but there was nowhere to go in the dark jungle. I scooted a foot from him so our bodies were not touching. Andrew tossed a log onto the fire, and hundreds of red sparks jumped into the night air.

“This was fun, but it won’t work out between us,” I said, my voice breaking on the last word.

Andrew turned to me, propping his shoulder on the wall. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed you would move. Why don’t we take things slow, visit each other when we can, meet in different places, and spend vacations together? We can decide later how to close the distance.”

I shook my head, swallowing a lump in my throat. Why couldn’t he understand?

“Why are you shaking your head?” he said, reaching for my hand.

I shifted out of his reach. “Because you’re some fucking national hero of history who goes to museum openings and fist bumps with royalty and?—”

“Are you kidding me?” Andrew’s palms went up, and he let out a bitter laugh. “Have I ever mentioned mingling with royalty?”

I blinked at him. No, he hadn’t.

“Well, your family have been professors at Cambridge for generations. You’re all educated and fancy… and I don’t even have a college degree. I make stupid financial decisions. And I was born into a white trash family. Your people would laugh at me.”

“Christ, you’re back to this.” Andrew laughed harder now.

“This isn’t funny.” I was on the verge of crying.

“Yes, it is,” Andrew said with a firm tone. “My people .” He returned to leaning his back to the wall, legs crossed at the ankles. He stared straight ahead. “You shouldn’t care if some twat thinks less of you because you didn’t finish college or grew up in a trailer.”

“It’s easy for you to say!” I said louder than I should have, but my old hurt was reaching its peak. “You were born into a highly respected family. Your blood and my blood don’t mix.”

Andrew glanced skyward and released a heavy breath. “I never knew my biological parents. Mum and Dad adopted me when I was a few months old. A year later they adopted Charlotte.” He looked at me, and the ever-present warmth was back in his gaze. “Now please, Adriana, stop using the excuse that we can’t be together because you don’t have blue blood. I don’t care about any of it. I want you for who you are.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “For all you know, I might have green blood.”

I hadn’t known any of this, and for unexplained reasons, I felt like a jerk. Andrew was right. I shouldn’t care what others thought, but I wasn’t sure how to convince myself I wasn’t damaged goods.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’re adopted?”

“Because I never think of it. I’m simply grateful I had loving parents.”

Leaves rustled and the snap of a branch somewhere in the distance pushed adrenaline through my body as my blood went cold. I shifted back to Andrew as he straightened, grabbing the hunting rifle.

“What was that?” I asked, barely hearing my words over the rushing blood in my ears.

A wild animal? Richard and his gang? Or someone else? A chill crept up my spine one vertebra at a time. Whoever or whatever was roaming in the jungle was probably watching us. I peered into the darkness, hoping not to catch the reflection of our fire in glowing eyes.

For many long minutes we sat motionless, scrutinizing the dark forest encircling us. My throat went dry, but the water bottle was in the backpack which was beyond arm’s reach.

“Probably an animal,” Andrew said, easing up his posture.

Shit, did it smell my dry blood? I’d forgotten about my forearm, and now it started to ache again. I had never been more terrified in my life.

A log in the fire popped, and I flinched. “Should we wave our hands like crazy and yell? Make as much of a racket as we can.”

“If it’s an animal, it will go away.” His fingers brushed off a small twig that had stuck to my face.

“Maybe it’s Richard.”

“I’d rather it was a jaguar,” Andrew said, his voice devoid of humor.

“I’m afraid I’d have to disagree with you,” I said.

Andrew chuckled. “Do you want to make a huge fight out of this so that we can have make-up sex?”

I huffed. “Not really.”

But my smile meant that Andrew’s comment had done what it needed to. Looking pleased with himself, he added another stick to the burning pile, sending yellow embers into the dark sky. My heartrate slowly returned to normal as we fell into silence, staring into the darkness and listening to the night creatures’ uninterrupted pulsating chirp. Perhaps whatever had made noise earlier had already left or had never been there in the first place.

“Once we’re back at the hotel and rested, let’s return to our earlier conversation.” Andrew leaned back against the wall and extended his arm, inviting me to snuggle into him. “We can work it out. I like you too much, Adriana Jones, to give up so easily.”

I eased into Andrew’s embrace, and he kissed my temple.

“I like you too,” I said with a yawn. “And if we aren’t eaten tonight by some large animal, we can figure us out later.”