other eye.
“Jesus, Georgie!” he bit out.
“Do you two need the first aid kit?” Buck asked, with an amused bend to his words.
Jordan pressed his hand to his eye. “No, we’re good.”
“We’re coming out,” Georgie called, unzipping the sleeping bag and then unzipping the tent.
The bright morning sun blinded her, and she waved her arm, attempting to shield her eyes only to knock Jordan in the face for the third time.
“Babe, watch your hands,” Jordan exclaimed.
“I can’t see anything,” she answered, blinking hard and turning away from the light as if she were a campground vampire—if those even existed.
Her trifecta shook their heads in disagreement. Of course, no respectable vampire would ever go camping. Georgie pushed her literary companions out of her mind as she crawled out of the tent. She blinked again as her eyes adjusted, only to look up to find a sea of hiking boots.
“Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey,” Buck sang out.
A wave of relief washed over her. “We get eggs?” she asked, staring up at the mountain man.
He frowned. “No, it’s an expression. You get deer jerky and pineapple chunks unless you’ve got a rabbit or a squirrel hidden in that heap of a tent you want to cook up.”
At the thought of that wretched can of tropical fruit, she pressed her hand to her mouth.
“Eat up and join us at the center of camp, sleepy heads. We’re about to get started,” Syd added over her shoulder.
Get started? She was ready for this nightmare to end.
Jordan helped her to her feet as she listened to the crunch of hiking boots heading away from them.
She scanned her fiancé’s face. “Are you all right, Jordan? I didn’t mean to hit you three times.”
He rubbed below his eye, which had already taken on a yellow-green tinge. “It’s okay, babe. I’ll survive.”
She cupped his face in her hands. “Want me to kiss it to make it better?”
His gaze darkened, but the man froze when a woman’s voice caught them off guard.
“Jordy Straws Marks? Is that you?”
Georgie turned to see a young woman wagging her finger at them as Jordan’s jaw dropped.
“Do you know her?” she asked her flummoxed fiancé.
“Of course, Straws knows me. We went to the same high school,” the woman replied.
“Camille Pruitt?” Jordan sputtered.
“The one and only,” the woman replied in a voice way too chipper for spending the night in a tent.
“Why are you here?” he asked, looking as if he’d seen a ghost.
“I’d guess the same reason as you, Mr. Straws. For the bridal wilderness boot camp,” she answered, flashing her left hand adorned with a giant diamond ring.
Georgie turned to her fiancé. Straws was the cruel nickname the kids from Jordan’s past had given him because of his gangly, pre-CrossFit body. He hated it. That nickname, accompanied by the thoughtless act of kids stuffing his locker with the damn things, had haunted him for years.
“He goes by Jordan now. That’s his name,” she corrected.
“That’s right! Silly me! I should know that by now. My fiancé and I love your More Than Just a Number blog,” the woman cooed.
“You do?” Georgie asked, crossing her arms and trying not to allow the avalanche of skepticism to seep into her voice.
“Yeah, and you even know my fiancé, and Straws, I mean Jordan, does, too,” Camille said, grinning like an idiot.
“I know your fiancé?” Georgie asked, completely stumped.
Camille gestured toward a man standing in the shade of an aspen tree. “Pooh Bear, come say hello! That CityBeat couple is here!”
Stepping out of the veil of darkness and wearing a ball cap with a Casey Pest Control logo, Georgie did a double take.
No, it couldn’t be!
“This is my Pooh Bear, Brice Casey,” Camille clucked.
“Hey, Virginia!” the supreme asshat and catalyst for her Own the Eights blog said with an idiotic grin.
She stared at the man. Of all the boot camps in all of Colorado, what were the chances of meeting this jackass here? Her usually loquacious trifecta could barely believe their fictional eyes.
“Her name is Georgiana or Georgie. Not Virginia,” Jordan said, finding his voice and joining the conversation.
Brice put up his hands in mock surrender. “Dude, sorry! Lucky for me, you don’t have a beer to dump on my head.”
Then, Camille and Brice giggled. They actually giggled.
The last time she and Jordan had seen Brice Casey, it was the night she’d inhaled a boatload of Jell-O shots and entered a wet T-shirt contest at a rowdy Denver bar. Jordan had dumped a beer on Brice’s head for making a Brice