How I Met Your Father by L.B. Gregg

Author:L.B. Gregg [Gregg, L.B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2013-11-12T05:00:00+00:00

Jack immediately began scaling the cliff like GI Joe. Apparently, the prospect of time alone with his future son-in-law had him running for the hills. I dried my palms on my shorts—not that I achieved more than smearing dirt everywhere—and took a deep breath. I could do it. If I could fly through turbulence yesterday, I could climb a simple rope today.

He had shimmied halfway to the top. “Piece of cake.”

“You say that a lot.” I could see straight up his shorts from my spot. “Nice underwear, Mr. Basinger.”

A mosquito landed on my wrist, and in true Lord of the Flies style, I pinched it between my fingers. Then I flicked a leggy blob of canary yellow from my shirt into the ravine and reached for the next hold. Two feet down. Fifty to go.

“Check please,” I said, and Jack chuckled. “Heights aren’t really my strong suit.”

“I recall.”

“Well, I hope so. It was only yesterday. How old did you say you were again?” Old enough to be a grandfather.

“Old enough to know it’s about to piss rain on us if you don’t get a move on. C’mon, shake a leg.”

He nailed the weather exactly right. Jack vaulted the lip, and within seconds, the first fat raindrop splattered on my nose. Another one rolled down my forehead as I scrambled toward the top. My lungs pumped through the thinning air. Damn, that fucking ledge was high. And the first of how many more to the summit? What the hell were we doing?

What the hell was I doing?

Canny as ever, Jack called down, “Why didn’t you head back?”

“The hell if I know,” I said under my breath as my shorts snagged on a branch. I didn’t look down; I just concentrated on the next grip.

Jack waited in the drizzle, staring out over the treetops. “I think it’s time to vote your pal TJ off the island. We should’ve played golf. But keep Matt. He seems sensible enough.”

“He’d climb to the moon and back for a sandwich—he’s not sensible. He’s starving. I just hope they save us something to eat.”

A blast of hard rain peppered my eyes like shrapnel as the heavens opened.

“Get moving.”

“I’m on it.” Squinting heavenward, I couldn’t see a thing until Jack’s callused hand wrapped around my wrist, and he tugged me over the ledge with a yank. We landed together on wet, squishy moss, our legs tangled, his slippery chest briefly in my grasp. “Why didn’t you do that sooner?”

“Because I liked watching you. Scoot.” He landed a stinging smack on my ass, rolled to his feet, then dashed under the canopy.

I stood with considerably less finesse. “Wait. Why are you running? There’s no place to go.”

The clouds answered. In a split second, a curtain of gray water soaked me to the skin. The brim of my hat dripped. Mud squished under my Keens as I tromped after Jack. Hard rain sluiced from the rocks above, marooning us from the others. A thickening stream snaked over the cliff’s edge, and I realized the rope we’d climbed was dangling in a channel cut from millennia of runoff.

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