Chaos Theory (Nerds of Paradise #2)(13)
“Ha! I win!”
For the first time since the climb had started, Will was aware of Ed. He glanced to the side in time to see Ed’s hand touch the top edge of the wall. Well after Will had placed both of his on top.
“I win!” Ed repeated, shouting it down to the watching crowd.
Will opened his mouth to tell Ed that no, he was at least a second behind, but quickly shut it.
“Woo!” Ed pushed away from the wall, arms outstretched like a boxer winning a match. “I win!”
The guys holding the line for Ed’s harness were taken by surprise, and Ed dropped a few feet before they caught the rope and lowered him the rest of the way at a slower pace. Ed didn’t seem to mind. He was too busy whooping and shouting about his victory to care. Will frowned and made eye contact with the guys holding the line for his harness. He nodded before letting go of the wall so that they could lower him. By the time his feet hit the ground, his scowl was firmly in place and his shoulders were bunched with anger.
“Better luck next time,” Jonathan said as he helped Will out of his harness.
Will thought about telling him that Ed hadn’t won, but there didn’t seem to be any point. It was just a training exercise. There was nothing at stake. The skills were more important than the victory at this point in the game. Besides, judging by the look Howie wore as he watched the whole thing from the side, he knew which way the wind was blowing.
Are you going to let that loser cheat his way in front of you in line? His dad’s voice sounded in his head.
“Yes,” Will answered it, barely audible.
“Wow, that was incredible.” Katrina was the first to bounce her way over to him once he was free from the harness. “I sure hope we get paired together for the competition.”
“That looked really, really dangerous,” Melody said. Her face was paler than when he’d left her to climb the wall, and genuine fear tightened the lines of her face.
“Don’t be stupid,” Katrina told her. “He was wearing a harness. And it wasn’t that high. Plus, there was a mat at the bottom. You were really great.” Her tone shifted back to over the top admiration at the end.
“I’ve had practice,” he said with a polite smile, then turned a concerned frown to Melody.
“Are we going to have to climb cliffs or something in the park?” Jogi asked from the side of the group that had gathered to congratulate Ed and condole with Will. “Because she’s right, that did look dangerous.”
Howie chuckled. “I can assure you that there’s nothing truly dangerous within the area where the event will take place.”
A few other people laughed outright. “Howie, your definition of dangerous isn’t the same as most people’s,” someone said.
“Yeah, who knows what we’ll end up facing out there,” someone else added.
Howie brushed away the teasing with the same level of humor as the people making the comments.
“I’m not scared,” Katrina said, slipping in front of Melody to grab Will’s arm. “I bet you know how to take care of a woman.”
An embarrassed flush heated Will’s face. It wasn’t nearly as titillating as the kind that came over him when Melody made suggestive comments. Katrina’s innuendo made him squirm.
Well, so did Melody’s, but not like that.
“Excuse me.” He pulled his arm out of Katrina’s reach. “I need a shower.”
He walked away before the situation could get any more embarrassing. As he reached the door, he turned to check on Melody. The group that had gathered to watch the competition had dispersed. Katrina had moved on to a group of women dressed more to be seen than to work out. But Melody had barely moved a muscle. She stood where he’d left her, the genuine look of concern still on her face.
Chapter Four
By the end of the week, Melody was ready to admit she’d underestimated a lot of things.
“Do you have any idea how long it takes to improve your strength?” she asked Sandy as the two of them worked side-by-side on pieces of equipment designed to build up muscles in your arms.
“Depends on what you see as improvement,” Sandy answered with a bit of a pant. Unlike Melody, Sandy knew what she was doing. Even in drab workout clothes, mocha skin sheened with perspiration, hair in a braided bun at the nape of her neck, Sandy managed to look elegant. “I’ve only ever worked out for tone and weight loss,” she finished.
“Well, I suppose I have nowhere to go but up.” Melody sighed and slipped her arms back into the padded armrests of her machine, pulling forward. The muscles at the top of her arms and her shoulders registered strain, but she still wasn’t certain if she was doing it right.
She was, however, determined to do things right. She knew enough to guess that three weeks wasn’t nearly enough to turn her into a rugged, Amazonian warrior, but it was plenty of time for her to make an improvement. Because Will had been right—she hadn’t gone into the whole event with enough seriousness. Granted, she didn’t go into anything with much seriousness, but it would be a fantastic character-building exercise to set herself a goal and reach for it.
Those thoughts sent her eyes wandering around the room in search of Will. Jonathan had enlisted him to help demonstrate ways to build shelters with nothing but the materials the forest offered. The two of them had a nice little lean-to going, made out of a few logs, sticks, and branches that had been brought into the gym. Melody had learned all about building lean-tos from her parents on those childhood camping trips, but that didn’t keep her from watching what Will was doing as she powered through her arm workout. Then again, Will could be standing there picking his nose and she’d still be interested in watching him.