Against All Obstacles by Jennifer Safrey

Author:Jennifer Safrey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Older Woman Romance, Obstacle Course, Competition, Race, Sports, Sports Romance, Second Chance Romance, Small Town Romance
Publisher: Inkspell Publishing
Published: 2023-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

HE GAVE HER A MINUTE, then twenty-nine more. At that point, Rachel was ready to throw her own box against a tree. The code had her baffled. She was smart, but she wasn’t a trained codebreaker. Without any clues, she couldn’t narrow down the number of combinations from infinite to less than infinite. She twisted each strap to see if any clues were on the undersides, but no luck. She considered cutting the leather straps with a Swiss army knife, but the rings connecting the straps would prevent opening the box. The combination code needed to be cracked, and she had no idea how.

“Okay,” she finally said. “I’m at a loss.”

Evan lay on his back on the grass. “I’m sorry. I’m preoccupied thinking of pints and chips at the pub. I can’t concentrate. You said you’d do it.”

“Argh, I can’t,” she said. “I was sure there was some way I could get around using a combination because we have no clues. I thought there must be another way to spring this thing. But if there is, it’s about the most brilliant thing ever.”

“I don’t give Justin enough credit for crafting a puzzle that would stump a Mensa science teacher. He’s more of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get guy.”

“I agree.”

“In that case,” he said, “maybe it’s something we’ve already seen. Any idea how many kilometers we’ve run so far? Or miles?”

“I could estimate it but there’s no way for me to know without a phone app.”

“Okay.” He sat up. “What else have we encountered?”

“The monkey bars,” she said. “How many were there?”

“I think six, plus six hanging balls, that was twelve.”

“That doesn’t give us a three-digit number.”

“We did it ten times. Maybe one-twenty?”

She spun the numbers. “Nope.”

“What about those damn burpees?”

“One hundred, three times. That’s three hundred. Then three two-hundred-meter sprints. Nine hundred. That’s twelve hundred total. But we need a three-digit number.”

They looked at one another. “The pushups,” they both said at the same time.

“I didn’t count them,” she said.

“Neither did I. We’ll have to figure it out. They were sets of one hundred and fifty. First set was without weight. The second set was with twenty pounds. The third was twenty-five, then the fourth and fifth were thirty. Then we went back down, twenty-five, twenty, and then last one was no weight.”

“Say it again,” she said and counted on her fingers as he did. “Eight,” she said.

They both stared into space a moment, then almost at the same time, grabbed their boxes, spun numbers, and then both locks popped open.

“Four hundred!” she said.

“I’m going to emotionally eat to forget I did four hundred pushups today,” he said. “And we still have about twenty minutes to eat lunch.”

“Great job,” she said. “You’re the one who cracked that.”

“You would have.”

“If I did, it would have taken me too long. Give yourself credit.”

Evan smiled and Rachel knew that expression—the one she’d seen on countless students’ faces after getting an A on a test they’d lost sleep worrying about, proving a hypothesis they’d come up with in the lab, or winning a ribbon for their science fair presentation.

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