Laura's Big Break (3 page)

“Holland it is, short stuff,” he said at last. “We leave in the morning. Better get your gear ready. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

Her eyebrows arched.

“We’re driving there?”

He could feel laughter bubbling up within him all over again.

“How else will we get the bikes over the Channel?”

The look on her face was priceless. One thing was clear; she wanted this interview pretty badly. He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed so hard. Charlie rubbed his palms together in anticipation. This could turn out to be the best holiday of his life.

CHAPTER TWO

Charlie hadn’t felt even a pang of guilt about abandoning Laura for the first day of their trip. At least not until he’d arrived back at the campsite after an evening with a pretty, but vapid, blond girl. With a sinking feeling, he elbowed his way through the crowd that had gathered around the spot where he’d pitched his tent. He stopped beside two young British guys who handed him a bottle of beer without comment.

“How long has she been like this?” Charlie asked as he screwed the cap off.

“She conked out about half an hour ago.”

Charlie nodded.

“Anybody help her?”

“Naw man, it was too entertaining to watch.”

He could believe that. Facing him was the sorriest excuse for a tent that he’d ever seen. It was a brand new two layer dome and Laura obviously had no idea how to put the thing up. She’d managed to join the rods together and get most of them into the slots in the corners, but nothing was fastened to the ground and at some point her bike had fallen onto the tent making the whole thing squish to the left. Outside the tent was a tiny camping stove with a pot on top of it, the flame still burning beneath it.

“Anybody tell her there’s a camp kitchen?” Charlie asked, although he knew the answer already.

One of the young guys grinned at him.

“That’s the second gas canister. The first one blew up in her face and made her hair go funny.”

He motioned that it went straight in the air with his hands.

“We think she’s cooking beans,” the other said helpfully.

Charlie pointed to the tent and the current fascination for the crowd.

“And how did that happen?”

“Well,” the guy with the floppy hair said. “We think that blowing up her air bed was too much for her. She disappeared inside the tent without a pump. We could see her struggle to get the thing in the right position.”

“Yeah, it was obvious she was blowing it up, you could hear her sucking in air,” the other one said helpfully.

“Then she just sort of keeled forward,” the first one pointed to the tent.

Charlie studied the view. Gaping through the tent door was Laura’s backside, looking fine in denim shorts. It looked as though she had been kneeling and then slumped forward onto her face.

“She’s alive man,” the floppy guy said. “Madge checked.”

He signalled to an older woman, who waved back when she heard her name.

“We’re waiting to see what happens next,” the other kid said. “I think the whole tent is going to come down, but Mark here thinks she’s going to wake up and freak out.”

“Or the food will go on fire,” Mark nodded solemnly.

Charlie let out a deep sigh. It was his own fault. He shouldn’t have left her alone. He told her their agreement was for her to come on the trip, not for him to spend time with her, and then he’d cycled off leaving her to breathe a dust cloud in his wake. He sighed heavily. As tempting as it was to leave her as entertainment for the crowd, he couldn’t do it. Knowing Laura she’d find some way to blame him for this fiasco and make him suffer. A scheming Laura was a dangerous Laura. He drained his beer and handed the bottle back to the boys.

“Show’s over folks,” he said to the small group. “Unfortunately, that sorry excuse for a camper belongs to me.”

There were groans of disappointment along with one ‘way to go man, great ass,’ which came from an American guy.

The little group wandered back to their tents while Charlie went to sort the mess - but not before taking a picture on his phone. With a shake of his head, he turned off the stove before the base of the pot burned through. What was she thinking? There was a McDonald's ten minutes down the road.

Then he looked at the rest of the mess and didn’t know where to start. As he bent to pull back the tent flap he kicked something. A book.
The complete idiot’s guide to camping
. Well - he looked at the bum sticking out of the floppy tent - they obviously never had Laura in mind when they wrote it. He tossed it in the direction of the rubbish, along with most of the other kit he could find. The woman had brought gas lanterns. To Holland. There were no words for it. He stuck his head into the tent. Sure enough, she’d managed to get the mattress blown up before blacking out on top of it. One look at the tube of cream for muscle pain, which lay beside her, explained the fact her backside was in the air. He bet it hurt too much to lay any other way.

With the cliché about disturbing sleeping dogs - or was it bears? - in his head he was careful not to wake her as he moved her. He needn’t have worried, she was out cold. He picked her up, placed her on her belly on the air bed and covered her with her opened sleeping bag. He rolled his eyes at the weight of it. It was the kind they sold to serious adventure types who were going to Antarctica. The guys in the camping store must have loved dealing with her. One hour with her and they would have made enough on commission for the year. There was nothing else to do except move the bike away from the side of her tent, stick a couple of pegs in the ground so she wouldn’t blow away and leave her to it.

As he backed out of the tent a tiny little groan escaped from her lips, making him stop dead in his tracks. Her cheeks were burned from the sun, which made the freckles on her nose darken. Her golden hair had come loose from its tie and brushed across her cheek. His breath hitched. Her pink tongue flicked out to lick her lips and in her sleep she reached for a drink. When her hand settled on something, she pulled it to her. It was the tube of muscle cream. Her breathing slowed as she sank back into a deep sleep.

Charlie started to breathe again as he hastily retreated from the tent. After he’d secured it, he picked up the cooking equipment and headed for the bin. Obviously he needed to keep a closer eye on her. If there was going to be another campsite show, he didn’t want to miss it.

Laura woke in pain. Her first thought was that she had to engineer things so that Charlie didn’t dump her again and cycle off into the sun. At this rate she’d never get her interview. Her second thought involved the words bike and never again. She had no recollection of getting into her sleeping bag, well under it at least, but she was grateful that she’d managed to blow up her bed. Her belly rumbled reminding her that she never made it to dinner. Even if it was just a plate of beans.

“Oh no!” She threw herself off the mattress and out of the tent.

The stove was missing.

“Good morning, sunshine.”

She spun around in the direction of the voice, immediately regretting that she’d moved so quickly. Charlie’s face peered at her through the slit of a tiny triangular tent that looked suspiciously like a black Toblerone box. It was only tall enough to sit up in, with barely enough space for one person to lie down.

“That’s your tent?” She pointed at it as though there was something suspicious about it.

“It’s a one man tent.” He pointed at his bare chest. “One man. One tent.”

Laura bent over to peer inside. He was wedged into a sleeping bag as thin as a sheet and lying on the kind of mat people took to yoga class. And he appeared to be naked. He unzipped the flap and leered at her.

“Want to climb in and get a better look?”

“Where’s your camp light, stove, your cooking gear?” she asked before a thought hit her. “Now that I think about it, where are mine?”

He leaned up onto an elbow, making his shoulder muscle bulge.

“Now that you bring it up, I had a little clear out while you were sleeping. Got rid of the stuff you don’t need. You should ride a lot lighter today.”

Laura spun towards her tent. She stalked as best she could towards her gear. Although the bags were still there, most of her stuff was gone.

“I spent money on that gear. I needed it.”

“You needed a state of the art first aid kit? You were planning to do your own dental work, or stitch up your leg?” He waved around. “We’re in Holland. The country is the size of a postage stamp with the population of South England. If you need a dentist, we can find one. And if you need something stitched, you have me.”

“But I don’t have you, do I? We’re not exactly cycling side by side.”

She raked through her bag.

“I threw your book out too.” He told her.

Laura gritted her teeth. How was she supposed to put up her tent now?

“As for food,” the Neanderthal continued, blithely unaware of how close he was to death, “you’ll never be more than an hour from a fast food place on this trip. And seriously Laura, you brought water?”

Her eye began to twitch. She put a finger on it to stop it.

“Don’t touch my stuff again.” She infused the words with every unsaid threat she could think of.

He held up his hands in a gesture of innocence.

“Thank you would have been enough.”

Laura grabbed her towel and toilet bag, something he’d thankfully left untouched, and headed towards the showers, painfully aware that she was walking bowlegged from the tenderness in her rear end.

“Don’t forget your magic cream,” Charlie called behind her and something new happened: both eyes began to twitch at the same time.

Laura had half expected to find Charlie gone when she got out of the shower. After all that was his M.O. – dump her and run. Instead she found him sitting on the fold-up chair she’d brought with her, scoffing a McDonald’s breakfast. There was an unopened bag beside him which drew her attention and made her mouth water. He jerked his head in its direction and Laura took that as an invitation to eat.

“Up,” she ordered when she had her hands on the bag.

“Come on, I bought you breakfast.”

“Up.”

He rolled out of the chair to sit on the grass. Laura gently lowered herself into the soft fabric seat. Bliss. Coffee and sausage muffin. She bit into it with the kind of groan she usually reserved for pure pleasure.

“We need to set some ground rules.” Charlie’s words cut through her joy and ruined the moment.

“You’re embarrassing me,” he said.

“You’ve always embarrassed me,” she told him through a mouthful of food. “First there’s your obsession with empty headed bimbos, then there’s your refusal to take anything seriously. Don’t even get me started on your juvenile sense of humour or the fact you still technically live with your parents.”

He shook her chair making her wobble precariously.

“Focus, short stuff, we’re talking about you.”

Laura wasn’t surprised that he didn’t take issue with anything she said. Who could argue with the evidence? It made it all the more maddening that she was supposed to get a serious article out of the imbecile.

“Ground rules,” he reminded her.

“Fine, rules, got it. Carry on.”

Honestly. She tuned him out as she polished off her food. At least he was talking to her, which was a step up already.

“One,” he counted off on his fingers. “I will stay near you for the rest of the trip, mainly to stop you injuring yourself, but you’ve got to stop cycling like an old person and speed up.”

Laura searched the bag for more food. Nothing. Charlie rolled his eyes, reached into his pannier and threw a chocolate bar at her.

“Two, no endless questions as we ride or I’ll leave you for good.”

“Wait a minute,” Laura protested. “We had a deal, I come with you on your stupid excuse for a holiday and you give me an interview.”

“That doesn’t mean you get to ruin my trip by badgering me all the time.”

“So when do I get my interview?”

“At the end.” He smirked at her. “If you make it.”

“And what are we supposed to talk about until then?”

“I’m kind of hoping that there will just be silence.”

“Well, what was the point of me coming with you if I don’t get to interview you until the end? I could have waited until you came back home.”

Or not, since her deadline expired before his holiday ended. Charlie shrugged.

“Not my problem. This was your plan.”

“So why did you agree to it?”

“You’re the entertainment, short stuff,” he told her as he jumped to his feet. “And just so you know, I updated my Facebook page while you were sleeping.”

He flicked his phone in her direction. The caption above the photo said: having a great time with Laura. And there was her huge backside poking out of her tent for the world to see.

“Well,” Laura said as she stood in front of him, hands on hips, “just so
you
know. I’m keeping score.”