Chapter Two
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“It’s crazy to run an obstacle course in this weather,” Regan said when everyone trooped out to the starting line after lunch. They had all bundled up against the cold, but once they reached the two sets of monkey bars where the course started, Dan began to strip off his outer layers.
“You don’t have to get naked until I beat you,” Sarah said, pushing past him.
“You can kiss me right now; I won’t even make you chase me first,” he retorted with a grin.
“Don’t you two think you should look the obstacles over before you begin?” Ella said.
“Baby, these are both trained members of the United States military. Have a little faith.” Austin squeezed her shoulders. “My money is on Sarah.”
“Go, Army!” Ella agreed, snuggling into her husband’s embrace.
“I’ll gladly take that money when I win. Twenty bucks?” Dan got into position. So did Sarah.
“No bets!” Regan said.
“Twenty bucks,” Ella said. “Deal.”
Regan threw her hands up in the air. “I give up.”
Mason moved to stand between Sarah and Dan. “On your mark, get set, go!”
Dan leaped for the monkey bars and went hand over hand as fast as he could to reach the other side. When he jumped down, he heard a thump to his right that told him Sarah had kept pace with him and was dashing for the climbing wall just like he was.
He put on a burst of speed, flung himself toward the top of the wall and gripped it, swinging his legs up. Something crashed into his shoulder just as his feet reached the top of the wall.
“Fuck!” Dan lost his grip and fell to the ground, landing in the snow. Sarah’s laughter rang out as she scrambled up and over the wall and dropped to the other side.
“She kicked me!” She must have swung her legs up and booted him for all she was worth, but he regained his feet, leaped up and caught the top of the wall again. SEALs didn’t whine—not even when soldiers cheated.
By the time he landed on the other side, Sarah was through the tire course that came next and was diving under the first length of barbed wire stretched across her path. As she army-crawled under fifteen feet of criss-crossed wire over a layer of slushy snow, Dan put on a spurt of speed, determined to catch up.
The rest of the family kept pace with them on a path that bisected the obstacle course.
“Go, Dan!” Mason called out. “Show that soldier how it’s done!”
“Go, Sarah!” Austin joined in. “Army rules!”
Dan finished the tire course and dove under the barbed wire, but Sarah had already regained her feet and was dashing toward a rope swing. Dan crawled for all he was worth and seconds later he too was running for his rope swing. Sarah, on the other side of the frozen creek, disappeared among the trees as she hit more obstacles, her dark curls bouncing as she moved.
He picked up the pace again. He’d never live it down if he lost to a mere soldier.
A mere female soldier.
Sarah raced on, proud of her steady breathing and her controlled strides in her heavily-treaded winter boots. Under the trees, the snow wasn’t as deep, and while the conditions weren’t optimum for running, she’d handled far worse.
She thanked goodness for the extra training she and two other soldiers engaged in every day. All three of them female, all three of them denied the chance to join the Special Forces, they’d agreed that they’d keep their bodies in tip-top shape, just in case that ever changed. As competitive as she was, Elsa and Janie had kept her on her toes and they’d taken turns beating each other’s records and pushing each other to the limit.
All that was paying off now. She was sure Dan would complain about her kicking him on the climbing wall, but all was fair in love and war and she’d made sure to make it look like an accident when her feet had connected with his shoulder on the way up. The onlookers wouldn’t be able to say for sure what had happened, and she’d do her best to play up her innocence.
Sarah blinked as she rounded a curve and took in the next obstacle; a balance beam made from an enormous log nearly ten feet off the ground. She kept running and made it halfway up the inclined log placed to give her access to the beam before she slipped on its icy surface. She fell heavily on it and clutched the slippery log tightly to keep from sliding right off.
Dan’s laughter echoed behind her. “That was graceful!” He ran right up the inclined log to his balance beam, but hesitated at the top. Sarah, managing to scramble up to the top of hers, saw why. The logs that formed the beams were wide enough that traversing them shouldn’t have been a problem. Except they were covered with snow.
Dan took a step and wavered. “Shit—it’s icy.”