Start With Me - Kara Isaac Page 0,29

him?

Three hands shot up, while Lacey’s remained folded. He could tell by the way her elbows stuck out like wings.

“Tell Victor what?” Might as well announce his presence before someone looked up and thought he was eavesdropping.

Three heads came up. Jen and Louisa fanned out to stand beside Cassie as Lacey slowly turned around, rocks crunching underneath her hiking boots.

She cast a defiant look at her smirking compatriots. “Nothing. It’s fine. We should get going.”

“O’Connor.” He drew out the last syllable of her name. Whatever it was, she had might as well get it out. They were going to all be here a few days yet.

“What?” She snapped.

“I’m pretty sure you were outvoted. Which means you have to tell me.”

“No one said this was a democracy.”

“Don’t make me start guessing. Because my first guess is that you are hopelessly and madly in love with me.”

At that, Jen laughed out loud.

“You think I’m terribly irresistible and want to ask to share my tent tonight.” Victor waggled his eyebrows at her, knowing entire ice ages would pass before that would be it.

Lacey crossed her arms. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

He took a step closer because it would unsettle her. And because his curiosity was now killing him. “Should I keep guessing, or are you going to tell me?”

She stayed her ground. “You’re going to be sorry.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Fine.” She cocked her chin. “You have a tampon up your nose. Happy?”

He had a what up his nose? His finger touched the circular cotton wad he’d found in the first aid kit. It had wedged in his left nostril perfectly. “This?”

“Yes.”

The three musketeers behind her were laughing so hard that two of them were doubled over. Must be an American thing.

“You’re going to have to fill me in on the joke, O’Connor.”

“It’s not a nosebleed stopper. It’s a women’s sanitary product.”

Something flashed back to him from Year 8 health class when a mortified teacher had taught them human reproduction.

“I have a sanitary product up my nose.” If he stopped and thought about this in any detail, he would be as embarrassed as Lacey. But watching her squirm was worth any and all embarrassment.

“Yes.”

He stepped forward. “It makes an excellent nosebleed stopper. Think of the cross-marketing opportunities.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Are you embarrassed by the miracle of the human body, O’Connor?” He pulled out another random fact from health class. “Did you know, you had all your eggs before you were even born?”

She looked him straight in the eye. “You seriously want to talk about my eggs, Carlisle?”

Um, nope. No, he didn’t. He had fallen into a trap entirely of his own making.

Lacey stepped forward with a hint of a smile on her lips and for a second—a foolish self-indulgent second—he allowed his gaze to linger on them. Then she reached up and yanked the cotton bud out of his nose.

“Ouch!”

She looked at his face for a second. “It’s stopped bleeding. You’re good. Let’s go.”

And another round to Lacey.

Losing was not a feeling Victor was familiar with. And it wasn’t one he planned on getting used to.

CHAPTER NINE

It had been the longest day possible, short of crossing the international date line. Starting with a three a.m. wake-up call and a red-eye flight and ending with canoeing. They had canoed and portaged and canoed some more. Now, the last peg had finally gone in the last tent, and camp setup was completed under the glow of flashlight, the sun long since having turned in. The one-hour time difference between New York and here felt like about ten.

Everything about Lacey was tired. Even her eggs were tired.

Lacey hadn’t given her eggs a thought in the last decade, except for when tech companies offered to pay for their employees to freeze theirs and a fierce debate had erupted between her colleagues as to whether comped egg freezing was the hallmark of a great employer or patriarchy gone mad.

Then Victor Carlisle had to go and make a comment about her eggs—one she knew from the glint in his eye had been purely to fluster her—and she had proceeded to spend the next hour wandering through the wilderness with a canoe on her head and contemplating how weird it was that all the mini-half-hers existed before she was even born.

Cassie and Jen had almost finished dinner. Preprepared food that appeared out of vacuum-packed bags. Thank goodness. She probably would have cried if Kelvin had pulled out a bag of vegetables and told them to start chopping. The Minnesota girl might still exist deep