“He asked so many stupid questions. ‘Do you have a boyfriend? What’s a pretty girl like you doing in such a rough sport? Is this your contribution to the Battle of the Sexes? Do you really think women can compete with men?’” Megs laughed. “My answer made you and the dirtbags laugh—and shocked the hell out of him.”
Since a penis doesn’t work as climbing gear, yes, Idobelieve that women can compete with men and come out on top.
The photographer had watched her send White Lightning, heard the story about how she’d climbed it first, and had taken more photos before driving away.
“I thought that was it.” She’d had no idea that the story had been published in a major paper and would start a feeding frenzy.
A trickle of reporters became a flood, all of them wanting to interview the girl climber. The attention had scared the hell out of Megs. She’d been afraid her stepfather would see the coverage, show up in that ugly green Dodge Charger of his, and try to drag her away as he’d once threatened to do outside her high school.
“You got all protective. You didn’t know about my stepfather yet, but you saw that the reporters made me nervous. You took me hiking to get away from it all, and that was our first kiss. Remember?”
She turned the page to see if he’d written about it and found that his entry went on for three whole pages, all of it about her. “You’re going to like this.”
She reached for the recorder.
Mitch hiked alongside Megs,leading her through the forest to one of the high mountain tarns he’d stumbled on last summer. Surrounded by glades of aspen and open meadow, it was the place he liked to come when he needed to be alone. He’d suggested the two of them hike up to the lake to ditch the reporters who’d been hanging around Camp 4 all week. In truth, he just wanted to be alone with her.
Lately, he’d been getting signals from her that she liked him the same way he liked her. There was something in the way she looked at him, a softness she didn’t show the other guys. She sat by him in camp, shared food with him, and asked him to climb with her. But her attempts to flirt with him—if that’s what she’d been doing—were shy and uncertain, lacking her usual confidence. Then again, she couldn’t be much older than eighteen. She probably didn’t have much experience with men.
She stepped over a tree root, her legs mostly bare, her denim cutoffs dangerously short, her shoulders and back bare apart from the ties of her halter top. She wasn’t wearing a bra, either, though he supposed she was small enough that she didn’t need one.
Stop thinking about her breasts.
“Those reporters act like seeing a woman rock climbing is like finding a giraffe on the moon.”
Mitch chuckled, but he understood her frustration. “They think we’re all crazy, but they sit at desks all day. Not a single one of them took us up on our offer to try climbing. They don’t know a damned thing about it.”
“Good point.”
“Watch your step.” He took her hand, drew her to the side so she wouldn’t step on a hornet nest in an old ground squirrel burrow.
“Those little bastards.” She held onto his hand a little longer than was necessary. “Thanks.”
It took them almost two hours of hiking off-trail to reach the tarn. Just as he’d hoped, there was no one else there. The lake sat in the middle of a wildflower meadow, its waters almost turquoise, pine and hemlock forest surrounding it, no sound but birds in the trees and the buzzing of insects. It was his special place.
“It’s beautiful!” A look of wonder on her face, she walked slowly to the lake’s edge, almost as if she were entering a church. “Look at all the flowers!”
Warmth blossomed in his chest at her reaction. By bringing her here, he was sharing a secret part of himself, offering her something that he loved. “This is where I come to read and be alone.”
Megs sat on a nearby boulder, then took off her hiking boots and socks and set them aside. “You like to read?”
Was that so strange?
“I do. I always keep a book in my backpack.” Mitch removed his boots and socks, too. “I get to travel the world and experience all sorts of things I wouldn’t otherwise. How about you? Do you read?”
“I read when I had to in school.” She walked into the water up to her ankles, moaned, the sound sending a jolt of lust through him. “Oh, that feels good.”
Mitch rolled up his bellbottoms and followed her in, the cold water soothing to his feet, soft mud squishing between his toes. “Do you have any favorite authors?”
She shook her head. “I just have a GED.”
Mitch bit back a smile at her assumption that being well-read meant being well-educated. “Hey, a GED is cool.”
But he hadn’t brought her here to talk about books.
She kept walking until the water reached her knees. “How deep is the lake?”
“I’ve gone in up to my chest before.”
