Teddy Spenser Isn't Looking for Love - Kim Fielding Page 0,34
it’s an eight-mile loop.”
“What is?” asked Teddy despite a dawning realization.
“Your hike.”
“I don’t—”
“Ms. Alexander has requested that the two of you complete this hike today. I’ll be waiting for you here when you’re done.”
“This is the test?” Romeo asked. “What does this have to do with Reddyflora?”
“Sir, my job is simply to drive and give you her instructions.”
Well, shit. Teddy knew he could refuse. Even if that meant the driver abandoned him, they were hardly in uncharted wilderness. He could possibly even call for a Lyft back to the city. But that would surely mean failure. Joyce wouldn’t back the project, Teddy would lose his job, and Romeo...he’d be screwed too, wouldn’t he?
“Let’s go,” Teddy growled.
Remembering the toilet paper that Tish had mentioned, Teddy shuddered and stopped in the bathroom first. No spiders in evidence, but there were a lot of webs, plus a large beetle in one corner that might or might not have been dead.
They set out side by side, with Romeo reading instructions that led them down a short paved path, across a narrow road, over a quaint wooden bridge, and finally onto a dirt trail softened with leaves and fallen evergreen needles. The ground felt nice under Teddy’s new boots. Moss-covered trees reached into the blue sky, creating an intimate space on the trail, while oversized ferns and various little shrubs covered the ground. Teddy very much hoped none of those pretty leaves were poison ivy, poison oak, or anything else in the poison family.
“Do you do this often?” Teddy asked after a few minutes. “Hiking, I mean?”
“This is my first time.”
“Mine too. Unless you count when my parents took me to the arboretum when I was a kid. And that’s not the same.”
“I’ve never even done that.” Romeo stepped gracefully over a fallen tree branch.
Although it would have been nice if one of them had experience in the great outdoors, it was comforting to know that Romeo was as out of his element—literally—as Teddy was.
“No Boy Scouts for you, huh?”
Something tightened in Romeo’s expression. “No.”
“Me either. Dad tried to sign me up, but I did one bout of summer camp before resigning. I had, uh, other extracurricular interests.”
“Such as?”
Teddy didn’t usually discuss this, but he couldn’t exactly back off since he’d raised the topic. “Art classes, mostly. Some drama stuff. Guitar. And dance, but it turned out my balance sucks and I have all the grace of a drunken rhinoceros. That’s an exact quote from my ballet teacher, by the way.”
Romeo laughed, but not unkindly. “I hear the life of a dancer is pretty rough anyway.”
“Yeah, I saw Black Swan. And I don’t look good in a leotard. I’m too stubby.”
That made Romeo snort.
They proceeded steadily uphill—much to the disgruntlement of Teddy’s thighs—and came to a fork in the trail, with a weathered sign announcing they were at May Valley Loop. Romeo consulted their instructions. “We go left.”
“You know, we’re probably only a mile in. We could sneak back to the beginning, hide behind some trees, and then pop out in a couple of hours and say we did the whole trail.”
“What if Joyce quizzes us on what we saw?”
“Yeah,” Teddy sighed. He didn’t truly want to cheat anyway, but this exercise seemed pointless.
As it turned out, the left fork became steeper—so much so that Teddy’s breathing grew rough as he struggled to keep up with Romeo’s longer legs. What the hell was the deal with all the hills anyway? Why did Washingtonians insist on living and recreating on them, when they could instead find a nice, reasonable plain where you could see forever and you weren’t at risk of skidding on the damp leaves, tumbling down the slope, and breaking your neck?
“What did you do instead of Boy Scouts?” Teddy hoped his panting wasn’t too noticeable.
Romeo didn’t answer right away. “Most of the guys in my neighborhood played sports.”
“Did you?” Teddy could picture him speeding down a track or cutting through a pool in a pair of Speedos that barely—Nope. Don’t go there.
“Nah. I was the nerd who read science fiction and begged my teachers for extra computer time.”
For some reason that image appealed even more than Romeo the athlete. He’d probably gone through a gangly phase as a teen, before he grew into his body. And he’d probably been awkward and shy, unlike Teddy, who’d been awkward and belligerently extroverted, as if a loud voice and brash demeanor might protect him from bullying and boost his own self-confidence.