Page 25 of Puck Love

“Is it far?” Ray paused to take a swig of water with one scuffed Nike perched on a boulder.

“No, just a few miles.” I signaled for Denny to go ahead, hoping Trinsky would join him, but he stopped in the middle of the dirt path and tapped his watch meaningfully.Asshole.

“Miles?” Ray croaked.

I smiled kindly. “It goes fast. There’s a swimming hole with a rope swing at the next ridge. We’ll have something to eat there and run a few games for the kids. Nothing too crazy. From there, we head inland, away from the lake. The trails thin out and the forest gets pretty thick as we climb to the vista point. From there, it’s downhill. Kind of steep, but the views are spectacular. If you don’t get any good footage of Trinsky and me, that view alone will make it worth your while.”

Ray sealed his water bottle and sighed. “I have some decent footage already. Probably more than enough, actually.”

“Oh?”

He wiped sweat from his brow. “Mostly of you bickering.”

I frowned. “About what?”

“You name it. Which camper had the best backstroke, Red Sox versus Dodgers, how to toast a marshmallow…”

“You recorded all that?”

Ray nodded. “That was the job. Thanks for making it easy. I don’t think you agree on anything, and that’s what the PR firm was looking for, so they should be happy.”

“Oh. Right.” I fiddled with my sunglasses and inclined my chin. “We should continue.”

He didn’t seem excited by the prospect, but he shoved his water bottle away and gamely trudged toward Trinsky, who greeted us with a tight smile and ushered Ray to move ahead of us.

“Denny and his team didn’t stop. We’re gonna get lost if you don’t keep up, Milligan.”

“No, we won’t,” I snapped. “I’m the guide here, remember?”

“Hmph. What’s with the slowpoke?” he whispered, tickling my earlobe and sending an unwelcome spark of awareness along my spine.

The memory of my clandestine midnight session with my right hand hit me out of the blue.

I chewed on my bottom lip, gaze forward. “He’s fine. He’s just…running out of steam.”

“We’re supposed be in this together, so maybe we should take turns hanging with him,” he suggested.

Wow, that was…unusually considerate.

“Good idea. Stick with him for a while, and I’ll lead the way.”

“Let’s do this, Magellan,” he snarked.

“Magellan?”

“Yeah, don’t you know your history? Ferdinand Magellan was Portuguese, but he led the Spanish expedition that discovered the strait that makes it so you can pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Don’t ask me where it is, but?—”

“Chile.”

Trinsky raised a brow. “Oh, look at you. Guess you know shit too.”

This was where I’d make a snide comment about remembering basic junior high history, but I went with the truth instead. “It was a recentJeopardyquestion. My dad and Smitty love that show, and I can’t escape it when I visit them.”

“Ahh. Well, I’m a history genius on the side.”

“Really?”

“Nah, my kid brother is my history dealer,” Trinsky said offhandedly, turning with a nod to Ray, who’d circled back to us. “You ready to hike?”