“I know. I appreciate the help.” Ross sat down on the bench next to the ramp and began to unlace the boots.
“So what’s the verdict?” Kelsey bit her lip as she studied his feet. “Maybe you should leave one of these on one foot while you try the last pair on the other foot.”
He shook his head. “Maybe we should just load this stuff into my car and get a cup of coffee.”
He didn’t really want a cup of coffee. He really wanted to go somewhere—anywhere—that he could wrap those long legs around his body and dive into her like she was breath and he was air. But coffee was the next best thing.
She took the boots from his hand and arranged them back in the box. “I need to get on the road.”
“Then take me with you,” he said, horrified by the words escaping his lips. After talking to Stagefeather, he’d known he had no choice but to call Kelsey and beg for her help. But he hadn’t expected the sense of relief he’d felt when she’d agreed to help him. Or the way his body had reacted when he saw her again.
She laughed. “I don’t think so.”
He sat up straighter, annoyed by her easy dismissal of his suggestion. “Why not? You keep saying I need to break in my boots, right? And learn how to use a compass? Why not start teaching me now, without the kids around?”
She stacked up the three other boxes of boots he’d tried on and offered them to Cedar-Aspen, who had appeared to collect the unwanted items. “I need to go hard today, Ross.”
He bristled. “I can go hard.”
Was it his imagination, or did her cheeks pink at his words? “I’m doing three thousand feet of climbing. You’re barely adjusted to the elevation.”
“I ran five miles yesterday,” he protested. “I think I’m adjusted.”
“Where are you headed?” Aspen-Cedar asked. “I just listened to the weather and they said that the storm they thought was avoiding us had turned. Could be some lightning. You might want to stay below tree line this afternoon.”
“Shoot.” Kelsey scowled. “I really needed this afternoon.”
“Tell you what,” Ross suggested. “You take me on some god-awful but short hike up a mountain. You wear lead weights and jog up and down the trail while I walk. If I get tired enough, you can carry me. We check out the view, then come back down and have lunch somewhere with a lightning rod on the roof. Then later tonight you can go to the gym and put in another three or four hours while I sit on my ass and drink a beer.”
The corners of her mouth twitched. “You have a way with words.”
“I know.”
She looked down at her hands, made a fist, and then slowly released it. “I’m a junkie,” she said, under her breath.
He cocked his head in confusion. “What’s that?”
“Nothing,” she replied. “You’re on.”
…
Kelsey had done a lot of stupid things in her life, but going hiking with Ross was one of the stupidest. Hiking with him meant driving together in her car, because it was absurd to take two cars to the trailhead, and she knew where she was going and he didn’t. It meant spending hours on the trail talking about everything…and nothing. Admitting that she liked rom-coms and bad reality TV and hated cooking. Laughing when he said he did, too.
It meant sharing a water bottle and forcing herself to look away from his lips, pursed around the edges of the rim. It meant leaning against a rock to catch her breath at the summit and finding him staring at her, watching the rise and fall of her chest.
It meant feeling her heart race when he was doing nothing at all.
She hadn’t realized just how unaccustomed she was to hiking with a companion until he stopped to admire a particularly stunning view of the Flatirons. She paused, looked, and then started walking again, not even realizing he hadn’t followed. She got a few hundred yards down the trail before she heard him clear his throat and turned to find him watching her, arms crossed over his chest, a smile on his face.
“You’re a piece of work,” he said, not bothering to hide his amusement.
“What are you talking about?” she demanded, walking back down the trail to the spot where he stood waiting.
“When’s the last time you hiked with a mere mortal?” he said in response. “I mean, someone who doesn’t go for jogs wearing fifty-pound backpacks?”
She stiffened. “I told you I needed to go hard today.”
His gaze assessed and probed. “Seriously, I’m curious. Do you ever go hiking with Marie? Or anyone else who doesn’t do this for a living?”
“Marie isn’t much of a hiker,” Kelsey admitted. She didn’t want to say that she didn’t really have many other friends. At least, not the kind of friends you went for a casual hike with on the weekends. She’d always been a bit of a loner, but things had gotten worse since she graduated from college and started working on her own. Now, if it weren’t for Marie, she wouldn’t get out much at all.