In Over Her Head: An Anchor Island Novel by Terri Osburn (reading eggs books .TXT) 📗

“Where will we put our IDs then?” asked Dodge Caldwell, one of the younger chefs.

“I’ve got my fanny pack,” Penny Lee offered, pointing to the bright-pink pouch on her hip. “Y’all can stick ’em in here.”

Of course Penny had a solution. She’d been working under Deborah in pastry for more than a year, having moved up within weeks of being hired to bus tables. When Axel’s apron had ripped the day before, Penny had retrieved a needle and thread from her car and sewed him up. When Deborah’s hair band had broken, Penny offered the spare one from her wrist.

Deborah called her the kitchen Girl Scout, prepared for anything, and the nickname fit.

“Are those chairs?” Brit Davenport asked as they started walking toward the check-in center.

“Chairs of death,” Mona answered. “Are we really doing this?”

“We are,” Lauren replied.

Fifteen minutes later, they were harnessed up with helmets in place, standing on the observation deck that was the last stop before entering the eye of the storm. Literally. That’s what the park called the center tower. Every pole sported a bright-red flag, all of which were whipping in the wind. In ground school—the quick training they’d gone through to prepare them for their day—they’d learned that the top-level course was closed due to the high winds coming off the water.

Jackson had breathed an audible sigh of relief, and Lauren echoed the sentiment, though silently.

“It’s time to break into teams,” said Everette, their escort.

Lauren had not been aware of this tidbit. “But we’re here to do team building exercises,” she reminded him. “As a whole team.”

“There are exercises you’ll do later on the ground that will include everyone, but for the courses you have to be in teams of three or fewer. As you learned earlier, there can be no more than two people on a platform at once.” He pointed up to a small disc-looking thing wrapped around the closest pole. “That’s a platform. And there can only be one person on the course at a time.” Everette indicated a series of blue half-barrels strung together between two poles. “Anything between the poles is an obstacle.”

“We have to walk across those things?” Deborah asked.

To which Mona mumbled, “Oh, hell no.”

Before Everette could answer, a child no more than ten years old breezed across the barrels and gave a whoop of joy on the other side.

“If a kid can do it, we can do it,” said Axel.

The group murmured their agreement with little conviction or enthusiasm.

“You three on a team,” the escort said, indicating Jackson, Penny, and Axel. “Then you three.” He pointed at Dodge, Deborah, and Brit.

This left Lauren and Mona as the final, two-person team.

“I’ll go with Deborah,” Mona said, physically edging Brit out of the way.

“Sorry,” he said, “that’s not how it works. You don’t get to pick your teammates.”

“Why not?” Mona demanded.

“Because you’re more likely to pick a person you’re already comfortable with and that defeats the purpose of team building.”

As much as Lauren would rather not team up with Mona, she couldn’t argue with the logic.

They made their way down the narrow pier-like walkway into the center tower, where they were connected to the belay system, the lifeline that ran through the entire structure and kept them from plummeting to their deaths. Only staff could disconnect them so there was no turning back now.

“The team who gets through their course the quickest gets an advantage in the ground challenges,” Everette said, “so keep that in mind.”

“We’re competing?” Brit asked.

“You are.” To Jackson’s team, he said, “You guys can start out that way.”

Axel was in the lead and as he stepped out, Jackson tossed one last save me look Lauren’s way. She gave him an uncharacteristic thumbs-up, as much for her own benefit as for his.

“Team two can head out that way,” Everett said.

Deborah went first, with Dodge and Brit close behind. That left Lauren alone with Mona, who looked more likely to throw her off a ledge than to work with her.

“You two start that way.”

Lauren was in front and before she took two steps, Mona asked, “What if we get stuck?”

Everette, who had clearly encountered plenty of scaredy-cats in his day, smiled as one would when trying to calm a spastic three-year-old on a sugar rush. “Keep putting one foot in front of the other and you’ll be fine, but if you decide you don’t want to continue at any point in the course, there’s a zip line from every post that leads right back here.”

Mona tugged on the strap that connected her to the belay. “This is going to hold my ass?”

His grin grew wider. “It will hold all of you.”

They moved into motion again and as Lauren set foot on the ledge that led to the barrels—because of course they’d gotten that one first—Mona leaned close and whispered, “If I go down, I’m taking you with me.”

Her competitive side coming alive, Lauren said, “If we go down, then the other teams win. Do you want that to happen?”

After a brief hesitation, her partner replied with a succinct, “No.”

“Me neither. Let’s do this.”

A week had passed since Nota’s doctor’s appointment and Nick hadn’t spoken to his grandmother since, but she’d left a message on his phone the night before asking him to come for lunch. The invitation had been more of a demand than a request. He hadn’t avoided her on purpose. As April progressed, more tourists arrived on the island. That meant more business at the restaurant, which extended Nick’s hours in both the kitchen and the office, making sure they had the supplies they needed to meet the demand.

He was still annoyed that she’d involved Alex Fielding in his personal business, but Nick also knew her intentions were in the right place. She cared about him. She wanted to see him happy. To her that meant with a wife and family, but that simply would not be his reality. The memory of the day his father