With the love of his life glaring at him and seated next to a woman who’d teased him about his skinny frame a decade ago, he blinked, taking it all in.
Was this hell?
“Isn’t this something?” Brice offered, then blew Camille a kiss—an actual air-kiss like children did from the school bus as they said goodbye to their parents or like some duck-lipped millennial social influencer.
“It is certainly something,” he replied.
Buck stood in the center of the circle as Syd handed a dry erase board and a marker to each of the men.
“Wilderness couples, get ready for some fun. We’re going to play How Well Do You Know Your Better Half.”
“Another contest? Awesome!” Brice announced with a fist pump in the air.
“We’ll be going off the questionnaires you filled out,” Syd continued.
“The couple with the most correct answers will win a night in the honeymoon yurt, and the couple with the least correct answers will spend the night out in the wilderness,” Buck finished.
Jordan frowned. “I thought we were already in the wilderness.”
Buck’s expression hardened. “The real wilderness, away from camp.”
There was a real wilderness? This wasn’t wilderness enough?
“First question, gentlemen. Name your special someone’s favorite book,” Syd began.
A spark of excitement ignited inside him. Now, he wanted to fist pump into the sky like a damn douche canoe. Instead, he wrote out the title of the book placed prominently on Georgie’s bookshelf at home.
Buck went down the line of men, asking for their response. One by one, the guys held up their dry erase boards with their answer. About half got it right, while the others got it wrong. His knee bounced as anticipation built, waiting for Buck to call on him.
He caught Georgie’s eye, and she smiled at him. Not a deranged pageant smile, but a genuine Georgie smile.
She could feel it, too.
Victory was within reach.
And even better than victory—that honeymoon yurt was going to be all theirs tonight, and boy, did he have a plan.
First, he’d give Georgie a solid six hours of sleep. But after that, it was going to be yurt sex city.
“Brice, hold up your board,” Buck directed.
The pest control VP grimaced and lifted his dry erase board with the words Little House on the Prairie written in all caps.
Jordan’s gaze darted to Camille, who gave a little pout.
“Why would you think that, Pooh Bear?” Camille asked with a scowl.
“It’s the last book I saw you reading,” he answered, shifting nervously on the bench.
Camille scoffed. “That was when we were ten years old.”
Brice took off his Casey Pest Control trucker cap and scratched his head. “Have you read a book since then?”
Camille sprang to her feet. “Brice! I read my horoscope every day! Every day!”
Brice looked from Camille to Buck and then back to Camille. Was Mr. Rodent Royalty going to have to tell his plunger princess that reading her horoscope didn’t count as reading an actual book?
Jordan bit back a grin. He loved watching Bricey Pooh squirm under the Princess of Plumbing’s angry gaze. Now, was it the height of asshattery to laugh at another guy when his girl was shoveling shit right in his face in public?
Yes, it was.
If he were writing a blog post about interacting with people who didn’t share your thoughts or values, he’d most certainly advocate for taking the high road and being the bigger person. That’s what they’d do in their More Than Just a Number blog.
But today, today, he was taking the low road and not looking back.
He met Georgie’s gaze, and she winked at him. Winked!
For a second time, the urge to fist pump into the air surged through him.
He was so getting yurt sex tonight—which would not be considered real sex and breaking the wedding frau’s rule. They could file this act of debauchery under the mental health emergency tab.
Yes, sir!
Mental health was no joke and maintaining it through whatever means necessary, otherwise known as doing the naughty until they forgot what deer jerky tasted like, was just what the doctor ordered.
“Brice and Camille, you do not get a point,” Buck said, then made a slash on his clipboard as Camille crossed her arms, and Brice hung his head.
“No biggie, man. You’ll get the next one,” Jordan said under his breath to the crestfallen Brice.
What did he really want to say to the ruler of rodent retirement?
Brice Casey, you are a loser, loser, loser, loser! Today, the Rodent Royalty regimen lives in shame. Take your plunger princess and forget about yurt sex.
Brice gave him a defeated nod. “Thanks, dude.”
“Jordan, hold up your board,” Buck said, moving on.
Jordan tried to maintain a neutral expression but could not help the corners of his mouth from curling into a cocky grin. He probably looked like Cruella de Vil, but he didn’t care.
“I wrote Pride and Prejudice,” he proclaimed as if he were the conquering force, preparing to take no prisoners.
Georgie let out an excited yip from across the gathering area.
“That is correct,” Buck replied, making a tick on the paper.
Okay, a slash was bad, and a tick was good.
He caught his fiancée’s eye, and she mouthed good job. He gave her a thumbs-up, and baby, they were back!
“Next question, gentleman. What is your special someone’s favorite food?”
With his cocky grin still in place, Jordan picked up the dry erase marker and scribbled out five words.
Again, Buck started at the other end, ticking and slashing as the men answered the question.
“Brice, you’re up,” Buck said, working his way down the line.
Bricey Pooh mopped his brow with the hem of his shirt. “Cheetos,” he answered with a wince.
“That is not correct,” Buck replied with a sharp slash.
“Brice Hannibal Casey! Why on earth would you think Cheetos were my favorite food?” Camille called for all of Colorado to hear.
Jordan pressed his lips together in a hard line, doing his best not to laugh his ass off at the mention of Brice’s middle name. What kind of parent named their kid Hannibal?
Georgie bit her lip, clearly trying to do the same thing.
Brice raised his hands defensively. “I wasn’t sure if you wrote down the fancy food you order when we’re out in public or all the stuff you eat when we get home.”
Camille gasped. “My favorite food is organic Pad Thai with extra carrots and tofu. I have no idea why my fiancé would ever think it was Cheetos,” she said, addressing the group.
“You did wolf down a bag in the car before we got here, Cammie. That’s why I went with Cheetos,” Brice offered apologetically.
Damn! The guy was striking out hardcore.
Camille’s eyes went wide.
“I mean…you only downed half a bag,” Brice amended, but to no avail.
Camille looked ready to knock her bean spilling, or in this case, Cheeto spilling fiancé into next week.
“Let’s move on,” Syd offered, patting Camille’s shoulder and helping her back to her seat.
Buck tapped the clipboard. “Jordan, what’s Georgie’s favorite food?”
Hello, sweet success!
“Vegan chocolate chip cookie dough,” he replied, showing off the dry erase board. He even drew a tube of it below the words to highlight his artistic flair.
Georgie patted her heart, and his heart went flippity-flippity-flop. Sweet Jesus, it was good to have his Georgie back!
“That’s right,” Buck replied with a delicate tick to the score sheet.
That’s damn right!
Nothing tasted as good as victory—not even raw vegan cookie dough.
“Since I’m down here, let’s start with you for the next round, Jordan,” Buck sa
id, glancing at the clipboard.
“Hit me with your best shot, Buck,” he answered, inhaling a lungful of fresh wilderness air.
Damn, maybe he was a wilderness aficionado after all!
“What’s Georgie’s favorite color?”
Georgie’s favorite color?
His cocksure expression faded.
Shit!
He had no idea.
Think!
She loved books, but books came in every color of the rainbow. What else did she love?
He snapped his fingers. “Two colors. Black and white because those are the colors of our dog’s fur,” he answered like the damn king of the mountain.
Buck slashed the paper. “No, that’s incorrect.”
He gasped. “What?”
“It’s rose,” Georgie called from across the gathering area.
His mouth fell open. “Rose? How could it be rose? Isn’t rose the same as pink? I thought you hated pink because your mom was all about that color,” he asked, needing some damn clarification.
Georgie’s cheeks flushed pink…rose. Whatever color it was, it wasn’t good for him.
“Rose is not pink,” she shot back.
He turned to Brice Casey. “Rose is pink, right?”
Brice glanced across the space at a sullen Camille. “Dude, my advice is to agree with Virginia.”
Jordan frowned. “Who?”
“Your fiancée, Virginia, she’s right over there,” Brice said, pointing toward Georgie.
This idiot!
And wait a second. Wasn’t he the idiot for asking for the rodent reaper’s advice?
“I’d like to respectfully disagree,” Jordan said, turning to Buck.
The wilderness boot camp leader cocked his head to the side. “You want to respectfully disagree with your fiancée’s favorite color?”
Jordan came to his feet and ran his hands through his hair. “I didn’t realize we were doing fancy colors.”
“Rose is not a fancy color,” Georgie replied, rising up from the log bench.
“It’s pink, Georgie! Rose is pink, and you hate pink!” he replied as Brice sucked in a tight breath and shook his head.
“Dude, just agree,” Mr. Rodent Royalty whisper-shouted.
Jordan glanced down at Brice Hannibal Casey. There was no way he was taking advice from this guy.
He shook his head. “I can’t lose a point for this. I didn’t even know rose was a color,” he said as Brice grimaced.
“Rose is the shade of color halfway between red and magenta,” Georgie called, looking to the women, who were all nodding.
He paced the length of the circle. “Okay, I get it, babe. But rose is a fancy color. I thought we were choosing from the Crayola box of eight crayons.”
Buck shook his head. “Sorry, Jordan, but when I asked you what Georgie’s favorite color was, at no time, did I say it was limited to the Crayola eight,” Buck added, totally not helping a fellow man out.
Dammit! This is what he got for savoring Brice and Camille’s dust-up, and that was nothing compared to the show he and Georgie were putting on for the group.
“Ask me the next question,” he said, reclaiming his spot next to Brice.
Buck and Syd shared a glance.
“All right,” the man began with a twist to his lips. “If Georgie were given the choice of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a peanut butter and honey sandwich, which one would she choose?”
He stared up at the man. Was this for real? His form didn’t have any of these bizarre questions.
“Well?” Buck pressed.
“Um…jelly,” he blurted, then watched Georgie’s cheeks go from pink or rose to scarlet.
Georgie’s hand flew to her chest. “It’s honey, Jordan. Of course, it’s honey! We wrote a whole blog post about the medicinal qualities of honey. Why would you think I’d choose jelly? What are you thinking?”
Jesus, what was he thinking?
He did a quick scan of the group to find all eyes on him.
“I didn’t think. I said the first thing that came to mind. I had a fifty-fifty chance, and jelly is good, too, minus all the sugar and preservatives.”
“Then why would you think I would have chosen it?” she shot back.
He couldn’t think straight. Between the couples staring and Georgie glaring, his brain had turned to…well, jelly.
“One more question, Buck! I’m sure I’ll get this one right,” he said as a bead of sweat trickled down his back.
Buck and Syd shared another look.
“Are you sure?” Buck asked with an uncharacteristically wary bend to his words.
Jordan took a few breaths. “Do it.”
Buck sighed. “What’s Georgie’s favorite way to unwind?”
“That’s an easy one,” he exclaimed, waving his hand in the air. “Sex!”
Buck slashed the page. “Nope.”
Jordan gazed wildly around the group. “No! How could it be no? Georgie and I did it in the car before we got here. It’s her go-to stress reliever.”
The color drained from his fiancée’s face. “My go-to stress reliever is to take a meandering walk!”
No, he couldn’t let this go! They had to win that damn honeymoon yurt.
“I call bullshit, Georgie,” he said as the entire female contingent gasped and stared him down.
No one spoke for what seemed like an eternity. Every pair of eyes bore into him from all angles. And Georgie? She’d been rendered speechless and stood on the other side of the gathering area with her lips parted.
Buck cleared his throat, then checked his watch. “It looks like we’re going to have to bring this bonding experience to a close. It’s time to send the losing couple out into the wilderness.”
“And which couple would that be?” Jordan asked, but he knew the answer.
Buck glanced at that godforsaken clipboard. “Why, that would be you and Georgie.”
9
Georgie
“I’m sorry! I don’t know what the hell I was thinking,” Jordan said for what seemed like the millionth time.
Georgie shook her head and glanced down at the map.
Of all the scenic wilderness on the planet, this swath of Colorado backcountry was the last place she wanted to set foot. She trudged forward, passing Weariness Way and headed straight for Exhaustion Junction.
God, help them! What a day it had been, and it wasn’t even close to being over.
And next to having little to no rest for the past couple of days, she and Jordan had lost…again.
Jordan had another Marks Perfect Ten meltdown, and now twenty people thought she was a sex maniac.
How could things have unraveled so quickly?
And they weren’t the only ones on the brink of losing it.
With disheveled hair and dark circles under their eyes, her literary trifecta slumped in a heap on the imaginary floor with no words of wisdom or pithy retorts at the ready.
Life with a shit shovel did not agree with them either.
Georgie rubbed her eyes. “We have to keep going. The map says there will be a red flag. That’s where we’ll find the tarp and the supplies for setting up camp tonight.”
“Georgie, yell at me! Call me the Secretary of Scat. Chuck the poop shovel at my head. Say something besides only giving me direction updates,” Jordan pleaded as she continued walking.
Muted by the thick blanket of clouds rolling in, the sun hung low in the sky, a hazy glowing circle. She used to love this part of the day. At about this time back in their real life, Jordan would be finishing up training his high school students, and she’d be tidying up the children’s area after the shop’s last story time. The butterflies in her belly would ready themselves, waiting for the bookstore’s door to open. She always knew when it was Jordan, and it wasn’t because of Mr. Tuesday’s excited yips or hearing one of her employees greet him.
She knew he was on his way over to see her even before he’d left his gym. She could feel him thi
nking about her. She could see the sweet hint of a smile on his lips the second before he opened the door and entered the bookshop. They’d had it all.
Perfectly in sync.
Magically in love.
And now, hopelessly lost—literally and figuratively.
Syd and Buck had given them a map to the private wilderness camping location, otherwise known as the loser lot, where they’d been relegated to make camp and spend the final night. She’d taken the map, grabbed her pack, and set off with Jordan a few steps behind her.
He’d been back there the whole time. It was not an easy feat for this man to walk at a tortoise’s pace, but that’s where he stayed, streaming apologies for the better half of the last ninety minutes.
He felt terrible. She knew this.
She shouldn’t have gotten so angry with him during the couples’ quiz. The man was used to ingesting green smoothies and fair-trade coffee. And to make matters worse, in a delirious fit during a sleepless night, she’d dug a hole and buried the can of pineapple, depriving him of even the most awful of canned fruits.
Would a hit of vitamin C have helped her fiancé de-asshat himself?
Thanks to her midnight trowel skills, she’d never know.
After days spent eating deer jerky and beef stew, anyone’s mind would be addled. He was out of his element as much as she was, but it wasn’t the bickering or the fights over jelly and cookie dough that had her worried. No, something darker scratched in the corners of her mind—a little voice planting seeds of doubt.
If you two can’t survive a few days without Wi-Fi, are you ready to pledge eternity to one another?
She stopped walking. “We need to do something, Jordan,” she said, still staring at the map despite not knowing where the hell they were on it.
“Are you talking to me? Like, really talking and not acting like a sleep-deprived navigation app?” he asked with the sweetest, hopeful lilt to his voice it nearly broke her heart.
She stuffed the map into her pack, then set it on the ground. “You need to kiss me,” she said as matter-of-factly as possible.
He observed her with a skeptical eye. “Is this a trick?”
After the last couple of days, she couldn’t fault him for asking.
“No, just kiss me,” she replied, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and doing her best to look kissable after going days without a shower, which was not an easy thing to do. Luckily, her pageant training kicked in, and, at least, she had decent posture.
Own the Eights Gets Married Page 13