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even sounded lame in my fantasy, which wasn’t a good sign.
    I suddenly realised that Phin had stopped talking and was looking at me enquiringly. ‘So what do you think?’ he asked.
    ‘Um…sounds good to me,’ I said hastily, without a clue as to what he’d been talking about. ‘Great idea.’
    His brows lifted in surprise. ‘Well, that’s good. To be honest, I didn’t think you’d go for it.’
    ‘Oh?’ I regarded him warily. That sounded ominous. ‘Er…what exactly didn’t you think I’d like?’
    ‘Staff development in Cameroon,’ he prompted, but his eyes had started to dance.
    ‘What?’
    Phin tried to look severe, but a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. ‘Summer, is it possible you weren’t listening to a word I was saying?’
    I squirmed. ‘I may have got distracted there for a moment or two,’ I admitted feebly.
    He tutted. ‘That’s not like you, Summer. After I gave you sugar, too! I’ve just explained about my plan to take a group from Head Office to Cameroon for a couple of weeks, to help build a medical centre in one of the villages I know there. It’s a great way to start forging links between the company and a community, and everyone who goes will get so much out of it. But you don’t need to worry about it yet. You’ll have plenty of time to prepare.’
    ‘Hold on,’ I said, alarmed by the way this was going. ‘Me? Prepare for what?’
    ‘Of course you’ll be coming, too,’ said Phin, with what I was sure was malicious pleasure in my consternation. ‘We’re a team, remember? This is our scheme. It’s important that you’re really part of it. What better way than to go as part of the first group, to find out what it’s like out there?’

CHAPTER THREE
    ‘Y OU ’ RE not serious?’
    ‘I’m always serious, Summer,’ said Phin. His face was perfectly straight, but I’ve never seen anything less serious than the expression in the blue eyes right then.
    I stared at him, aghast. ‘No way am I going to Africa!’
    ‘Why on earth not?’
    ‘I don’t like bugs.’
    ‘There’s more to the rainforest than bugs, Summer.’
    ‘The rainforest?’ My eyes started from my head. How much had I missed here? ‘Oh, no. No, no, no. The jungle? No way. Absolutely not.’
    ‘You’d like it.’
    ‘I wouldn’t,’ I said, still shaking my head firmly from side to side. I’d seen him leading those poor people through enough rainforests on Into the Wild to know just what it would be like. They spent their whole time struggling through rampant vegetation, or slithering down muddy slopes in stifling humidity, so that their hair was plastered to their heads and their shirts wringing with sweat.
    There was almost always a shot of Phin taking off his shirt and rinsing it in the water. Anne’s favourite bit, in fact. Whenever they reached a river she’d sit up straighter and callout, ‘Shirt alert!’ and sigh gustily at the glimpse of Phin’s lean, muscled body.
    I didn’t sigh, of course, but I did look, and even I had to admit—although not to Anne, of course—that it was a body worth sighing over if you were into that kind of thing.
    But I certainly wasn’t prepared to trek through the rainforest myself to see it at first hand.
    ‘It sounds awful,’ I told Phin. ‘Hot and sweaty and crawling with insects…ugh.’
    He leant forward, fixing me with that unnerving blue gaze. ‘You say hot and sweaty, Summer,’ he said, rocking his hand in an either/or gesture. ‘I say heat and passion and excitement.’
    Heat. Passion. Excitement . They were so not me. But something about the words in Phin’s mouth made me shift uneasily on the sofa. ‘And what on earth makes you think I would like that?’ I asked, with what I hoped was a quelling look.
    ‘Your mouth.’
    It was a bit like missing a step. I had the same lurch of the heart, punching the air from my lungs, the same hollowness in the stomach. My eyes were riveted to Phin’s, and all at once their blueness was