She looked momentarily abashed. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Would it matter if I did?’ He smiled despite himself. ‘This is why we’re here, is it not? You want to show me the role you love.’
The brilliance of her smile punched through him. In all the time he’d known her—and, admittedly, it wasn’t that much—he’d never seen her smile like that. As if she was truly happy being back, despite the circumstances of their arrival. Her joy was truly intoxicating.
‘I’m sorry.’ She was already heading away from him. ‘They’ll want to get him into a quiet environment with little stimuli, so if I don’t go now then I won’t be able to go in afterwards.’
‘Go.’ He waved her away with his hand, even though he didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to do next.
‘Look for the big boss. She’ll tell you where your tukul is, and then we’ll compare house guests when we meet next. Mine has a hedgehog who likes to snuffle about in the middle of the night.’
Before he could answer, she had turned around and hurried off.
Everyone seemed to have a task, a purpose, hurrying around quickly. The sooner he was one of them the better.
* * *
It was a good couple of hours before Oti finally left the medical tent, making her way across the compound to the tukul where she’d been told Lukas was, still shocked that no one appeared to have recognised him yet. It felt like fate that he hadn’t shaved since their wedding, because it was amazing what a couple of weeks’ worth of facial hair and a baseball cap could do.
To her, it was still obvious that Lukas Woods was the man beneath, but to people who weren’t expecting him to be out here in the first place it was enough to cast shadows over the sharper contours of his face, to soften his telltale square jaw and to conceal the giveaway cleft in his chin.
She doubted they would get away with it for too long, but she would be grateful for every day they were able to settle in without too much scrutiny. Hopefully enough time to help them find a groove.
She could still hardly believe that he had agreed to come out here with her. As though he actually cared about her, as though she mattered to him. And it didn’t matter how much she told herself it was all deeply fanciful and ridiculous—every time Lukas watched her with those intense granite-grey eyes she felt as though he was seeing her for the first time all over again.
But right now she should check he was settling in before heading back to her own old hut for a bit of alone time. She could hardly wait.
Sure about that? a voice questioned silently in her head. Oti ignored it.
‘Knock-knock,’ she began as she reached the open door to one of the larger tukuls.
A grin pulled at her lips despite everything. No doubt he’d already realised how sweltering it was in those huts, until the temperature dropped later in the night.
‘Are you settling in okay?’
The hut was usually reserved for the main project managers or surgeons. It was about twice the size of her tukul, complete with a king-size bed and a new-looking mosquito net. She was used to an old one that had been repaired at least a couple of times, using silver tape. Why wasn’t she surprised the billionaire was being treated like royalty?
‘I’ve been...playing house, it seems,’ he replied drily, his head turning to look at her. ‘Unpacking as best I can, given that all clothes have to be bagged to keep any unpleasant insects or arachnids from crawling into them.’
‘It’s a bit of an art form,’ she agreed, laughing. Then she spotted her own half-empty rucksack. ‘Wait, why did you unpack my stuff? I have my own tukul—it’s just over there.’
Turning to point between a few other huts, she noticed a decoration on the door that she hadn’t left there. As though someone else was now occupying it.
‘You had your own tukul,’ Lukas corrected quietly.
Something flip-flopped inside her.
‘Well, it doesn’t matter.’ She forced a smile. ‘I’m sure my new one will be fine. Not as salubrious as yours, of course.’
‘This is our tukul, Oti.’
She blinked at him, a cold sensation rushing over her body as she stood statuelike, followed by a rush of heat which she preferred not to dwell on.
‘It can’t be. It’s too...’ she bit back the word intimate ‘...big. And it’s usually reserved for people more senior than me.’
‘Your project chief said it was going spare and she thought, as a newly married couple, we would appreciate it. I wasn’t about to lay out the details of our arrangement to her.’
‘No, obviously not.’ She bit her lower lip.