Wicked Games
Page 5

“I guess the budget must have been cut for this season,” I joked. “No four-star resort for us.”
“This is about endurance and surviving against the elements,” Dean replied in a scathing voice. “What did you expect?”
I glared at the back of his head as he tromped off through the bushes. “Asshole.” This was going to be the longest two months of my life, easily.
Despite the jerkoff that was my partner, they couldn’t have picked a lovelier location for the filming. Gentle waves lapped against the shore, and the sand that edged the water was smooth and pale and seamless. Palm trees rustled overhead, swishing in the wind coming off the water, and all around me was the green of vegetation and the blue of the ocean. It was lovely.
Dean was nowhere to be found. Our cameraman had run down the beach to try and find him—it was just me.
Paradise. I smiled and drank in the air.
Of course, the whole ‘paradise’ realization left me when, after admiring the setting sun for a few minutes, I noticed rain clouds in the distance. And realized that as pretty as our small cove was, there was also zero shelter to be found. My stomach started to growl.
We had no fire. No shelter. My small bag of clothing was soaked, my shoes were squishing on my feet, and I was terribly thirsty. Time to set up camp, I supposed. I picked a somewhat-protected spot with a few overhanging trees and used a fallen branch to rake the sand, trying to clean out a wide enough spot that was clear of debris for a fire and a shelter. By the time that was done, I was sweating and dirty and gross but had managed to clear off a decent-sized area.
Dean sauntered back at some point and stood in the distance, watching me. He held a crude bucket in his hands. “I found the water well.” He held it out to me. “Brought you a drink.”
I eyed him uneasily. That was almost too nice of him to be believed. “Thanks,” I said in a cool voice, and took the bucket from him. “Is it safe to drink?”
“I’ll find out in about a half hour,” he said with a half grimace.
Fair enough. I took a few cautious sips, then returned it to him. “We should try and boil the rest, just to be on the safe side.”
“And what are we going to boil it with?” he asked, taking the bucket back from me. “Our hands? Magic?”
“How about that nasty temper of yours?” I snapped back. “It seems to be boiling over a lot lately.”
“Well, can you blame me?” He gave me a disgusted look and gestured at our pathetic camp. “I was gone for over an hour and I come back and you haven’t even attempted to start a fire of any kind. What exactly have you been doing?”
“Setting up camp!”
He took a quick, over-exaggerated look around and spread his arms wide. “Wow, it looks amazing. I especially like the lodge you’ve set up. That’s incredible.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, you ass. I was clearing off the sand so we’d have someplace decent to actually set up. If you want to sleep on a bunch of rocks and branches, you’re more than welcome! I, however, am going to finish making a decent shelter.”
“Finish! You haven’t even started, sweetheart.”
“And I never will if you don’t leave me alone!” By this time, I was shouting, gesturing in his face as much as he was gesturing in mine. “Why don’t you go do something manly and go kill something for dinner?”
That seemed to surprise him. “Why don’t we just eat your peanut butter?”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not. That’s mine. You got an axe, I got peanut butter.”
His mouth curled into a sneer that still made him sexier than he should have been. “Is that how we’re going to do it then? What’s yours is yours and what’s mine is mine?”
“If that’s how you want to be, fine! That is exactly how we can do it,” I huffed. Fuck him if he thought I was going to share my peanut butter with him, when all he did was yell in my face. “You keep to your side of the camp and I’ll keep to mine, and we’ll see who’s better off, won’t we?”
“Works for me.” Dean stomped off to the middle of the small area that I’d cleared and dug his heel down in the center. “We’ll build our fire pit here. You can stay on that side, and I’ll stay on the other.”
“That’s fine with me,” I said in my iciest voice. “And are you going to make a fire?”
“Why, no I’m not,” he said with a drawl. “I’m going to go see if I can find myself something to eat.”
“Fine then!”
“Fine!”
We glared at each other for a minute longer and then he stormed off again, tearing through the brushy leaves at the outskirts of camp and spraying sand with each furious step he took. As he left, I caught a glimpse of the cameraman, a delighted look on his face as he filmed me standing in camp.
Hell, he’d just caught everything. How embarrassing. My cheeks flushed with color, I turned away and began to head into the brushy jungle to see what I could find.
Dean had taken the axe with him, so I was forced to do everything by hand. I’d managed to find a few fallen tree branches that would be large enough and straight enough to serve as baseboards for the bed I was going to create. I used some more equally long wood that I placed crosswise, forming a really sorry, hard, and uncomfortable bed two feet off the ground. But at least it was off the sand (which I suspected would be crawling with sand fleas and crabs as soon as the sun went down).
To make up for the discomfort of my bed, I grabbed as much loose greenery and palm fronds as I could, stacking them all into a makeshift bed. When I had several feet of padding on the bed, I climbed onto it and tested it out. Just as I had predicted, the palm fronds flattened within an inch or two, and I was left with a moderately fluffy bed. It’d do for now.
By the time the sun had set entirely, I had gathered enough wood for a fire and dug out the fire pit, but I was too tired to even attempt fire on my own. I lay on my narrow bed (just wide enough to fit my body) and stared up at the intensely beautiful stars overhead, using my bag—hard can of peanut butter and all—as a pillow.
It was unnerving to lay in the darkness, all alone, with things inching and creeping and rustling as things on a deserted island were wont to do. I tried not to think about how I didn’t have a roof over my head, or any real protection from anything. I supposed I could drag a palm leaf over my head if it rained, but if anything tried to attack? I was pretty much laid out to snack on, a human pu pu platter.
The underbrush rustled in an alarming way and I glanced up from my bed to see Dean returning to camp, flipping the axe in his hands in an almost-frustrated fashion. I couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders seemed tense, and I was a little more gleeful than I should have been. He hadn’t found anything to eat, either. I patted the jar of peanut butter under my ear. I was hungry right now, but not so hungry that I’d break into my stash. It could wait until tomorrow.
He fumbled around in the darkness. “No fire, I see.”
“Nope.”
I’m sure he wanted to say more, but he didn’t. In the distance I saw the small red dots signifying that our cameraman was still there, filming, and I glanced over at Dean again. He was shaking out something long and thick and it rustled like fabric… a blanket? I sat upright on my hard, rustling bed. “Where did you get that?”