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KIM BALDWIN. Gable gently tossed the balloon underhand the few feet that separated them
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“Ready.”
Gable gently tossed the balloon underhand the few feet that separated them. Erin caught it without difF culty, as did all the other contestants on either side of them. They moved ten feet farther apart, and repeated the process, with Erin successfully tossing the red balloon back to Gable. Four other couples weren’t so lucky and were eliminated when their balloons broke.
Next they moved to twenty-F ve feet apart, a distance which eliminated more than a dozen other pairs of contestants. But Erin gently scooped the balloon into her outstretched arms, and they advanced to thirty feet.
“Great catch!” Gable encouraged, seeing there were only four other couples left.
Thirty feet looked incredibly far, but as they set up for the toss, Erin gave her a grin and a wink of reassurance. The balloon sailed through the air, and Gable cradled it like a baby, breaking its fall with her large hands, and suddenly they were one of only two pairs still in the contest.
The other was a duet of tall teenaged boys Gable recognized. They were fraternal twins, and the stars of the local high school basketball team.
“Nice hands there, Gable,” Erin hollered. “We can do this!”
They moved another F ve feet apart, a seemingly impossible distance, and the crowd began to cheer on their favorites.
“Okay, Gable, put it right here.” Erin cupped her hands in front of her chest.
Gable was distracted by the cleavage displayed just above those wonderfully delicate hands, and perhaps that was the reason she tossed the balloon a tiny bit too hard. It burst with an impressive splash, dousing Erin’s tank top. Erin gasped in surprise at the cold soaking, failing to notice that her top was now clinging to her, outlining her breasts and her suddenly rigid nipples. Gable, on the other hand, couldn’t pry her eyes from the sight until Tim came up behind her and slapped her on the back.
“Aw. You almost had it there, you two. What a shame,” he commiserated.
Erin F nally noticed that Tim and several of the other men standing around them were staring at her, and she glanced down and saw why.
“Oh my.” She crossed her arms over her chest as color blossomed in her
• 102 •
FORCE OF NATURE
cheeks. “I think I better go and try to dry off some.”
“Here, take this,” Gable slipped off the long-sleeved denim shirt she had on over her T-shirt and offered it to her.
“You’re always saving me, aren’t you?” Erin said as she took the shirt with a smile and headed off toward the restrooms.
“Dang,” Tim whispered under his breath as they both watched Erin leave. He turned to Gable and grumped, “Spoilsport.”
Despite herself, Gable had to laugh.
Things went steadily downhill after that.
When Erin emerged from the F rehouse wearing Gable’s shirt, she was immediately intercepted by Jerry DeYoung and led off toward the next event—the tug-of-war, which pitted the volunteer F reF ghters against men and women from the community they served.
Gable knew it was another event she’d better pass on, so she returned to the food tables to watch.
The thick rope was stretched over a muddy trench, six feet wide, which separated the two sides. Erin, as the rookie, was given the spot on the rope nearest the trench. If the F reF ghters lost, she’d be the F rst one to get F lthy, just as Gable had been the year before.
It was a slightly closer contest this time, despite the fact that the townspeople had drafted the same two big bricklayers who routinely anchored their team to victory. It lasted a full three minutes before the F reF ghters began slipping slowly but surely ever closer to the mud pit.
Erin dug in her heels all the way, the strain showing on her face, but when the inevitable happened and she was pulled into the quagmire, she took it with the same good humor with which she seemed to take everything.
After the tug-of-war came three events for the kids—the watermelon seed–spitting contest, the egg-in-spoon race, and the piñatas—one for the little kids, and one for the older ones. Gable was hoping that Erin might come over and watch with her, but she had obviously been corralled by the four men who were now crowded around her, vying for her attention—Tim Scott, Jerry DeYoung, and two others Gable didn’t recognize. Every now and then, she glanced through the crowd in Gable’s direction, but she seemed to be having fun if her smiles were anything to go by.
I should go home, Gable thought, her mood darkening further when a F fth admirer joined the group around Erin. She didn’t know
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