Lupa

Chapter 2

It was a couple of days later when he arrived at the meeting point for his new contact. It was a bookstore on the outskirts of town. He was dressed rather differently now. The weather had plummeted overnight and he was wearing heavy jeans, hiking boots and a thick jacket.

As he went into the bookstore a quick glance around showing him there were very few customers. An elderly man looking at newspapers. A young mother trying to interest a toddler in a book and another woman with her back to him scanning the paperbacks. He went up to the counter and waited for the woman there to notice him. When she did, her mouth dropped open. Not used to such attractive men frequenting the bookstore she stammered a bit before she got herself under control. He smiled at her.

"Hi, my name is James. I am supposed to be meeting a guide here who was recommended to me. His name is Nat Sylvane?"

The woman said with a laugh
"Well Nat is certainly the best guide there is but I am pretty sure she will have an issue with being called a man!"

James raised his eyebrows. "She?"

The woman smirked and said "Yep. Come with me and I'll introduce you." She moved around the counter and motioned him to follow her. They walked over to the woman near the paper backs.

"James, I'd like you to meet Nat. Nat, your new client is here!"

The woman turned and James started in surprise. His gaze sharpened, standing in front of him, dressed in a very similar way to himself, with her hair tied back in a long braid was the woman he had not stopped thinking about for the last couple of days.

She was equally taken aback. Then a slow smile came over her face. His lips quirked up as he looked at her quizzically.

"Nat?" he said with a raised eyebrow.

He saw her eyes shift quickly to the saleswoman, then back at him.

"James? I'm pleased to meet you."

So, he thought, they were meant to be strangers. He held out his hand to shake hers. As he held her hand, she nodded to the saleswoman. "Thanks Stephanie, I'll take it from here" and waited for the woman to turn back to a new customer.

James still had her hand and he shifted the handshake so he had his fingers around her wrist to pull her a little closer then lift her hand to his lips. Her breath hitched feeling his touch on her skin as she remembered very clearly the way his lips had felt on other parts of her body.

Trying to drag her thoughts back to the present she said.

"So, you are looking for a guide, are you?"

"Yes" he said, till holding onto her hand and smiling.

"Where exactly is it that you need to go?" She asked

"I need to get up to the pass at Col de Montgenevre"

She pulled back an looked at him. "Col de Montgenevre? At this time of the year? Do you have any idea what it is like up there? It's no walk in the park"

"Tell me?" he said.

"It's a three-day hard hike, there will be snow. You can't take a helo up there with the weather patterns that blow in and it is so thickly forested that there is nowhere for them to land. There are cabins along the way but it's a difficult path. What on earth do you need to go up there for?"

He let go of her hand and pulled on his jacket.

"Well," he said. "I made a bet with a friend of mine who is one of those, adventure junkies, that I could do something equally as difficult as he normally does, the bet involves a very old bottle of wine and a stay in a chalet in the French Alps as the prize." He looked at her deprecatingly to see how she took this. "If I win, you could always join me?" He said smiling.