He forced a smile for the woman. “Yes, I’m Dillon.”
She held out her hand. “Melanie Armstrong.”
When he took her hand in his, she squeezed hard, as if she had something to prove.
Dillon returned the pressure, a degree lighter. “Nice to meet you.”
“Same. Thanks for picking a public location. You never know who you’ll meet with dating services.”
Dillon raised his eyebrows. “You do many of the dating apps?”
She shrugged. “I’ve tried a few. Leslie says hers is different. I hope so.” She tilted her chin toward the tents, fire trucks and equipment displays. “This looks like fun. Leslie said there’s games and competitions. I wouldn’t mind joining. Where can we sign up?”
“They usually have the signup sheets at the fire station.” He looked over her shoulder in the direction he’d seen Ariana. She was gone.
Just as well, he didn’t need to ruin her date by staring at them all day.
“Come on, I’ll show you where it is.” He led the say to the station where they signed up for the tug of war, adding their names to a team halfway full. They also signed up for the three-legged race and the egg race.
“The tug of war is first,” Mel said. “We should go find our team. We’re on number five.”
They found Team 5 and lined up alongside a rope stretched across a pit of mud.
“I didn’t know they were going to get serious about this.” Dillon looked skeptically at the pit. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
“I read the descriptions of the events and came dressed to play.” She smiled and lifted the rope. “Let’s do this.”
The other team fell in beside their end of the rope. When Dillon looked across at their competition, he had to swallow a groan.
Ariana and her date were in the middle of the team, holding the rope.
Her date gripped the rope like he knew what he was doing.
Dillon sized up both teams and smiled. His team had it in the bag. At the last minute, a woman joined his team. Okay. They had this, no problem.
The referee stepped up to the rope and settled a whistle between his lips. Before he could blow, another man approached the opposing team.
Dillon and his team groaned.
The man had to be six feet seven, if not taller, and probably weighed over three hundred pounds. He took a position at the end of their line and grabbed the rope in his big, meaty hands.
“It’s about to get interesting,” Mel said with a grin. “I hope you don’t mind getting dirty.”
The referee blew the whistle, and the teams leaned backward, digging their feet into the ground.
With the big guy on the other end, Dillon’s team didn’t stand a chance.
Inch by inch, Team 5 lost ground, although they fought valiantly.
The front member of the team soon approached the mud pit.
The big guy in the back of the other team, turned around, readjusted his grip and marched away from the pit, dragging along his team and Team 5. He didn’t stop until all of Team 5 toppled into the pit, sinking into mud up to their knees.
Mel laughed, wiping mud from her face. She smiled at Dillon. “You’re not muddy enough.” She slung mud at him.
He ducked and the mud hit one of his other team members, and a mud fight ensued.
When he looked around for Ariana, she and her date had disappeared.
“That was fun,” Mel said, mud in her hair and on her arms and light blue tank top. “What’s next?”
“I believe the egg race is next.” He wished they hadn’t signed up for so many. He had to stay to finish the games when all he wanted to do was apologize to Mel, tell her it would never work out between them and then leave.
He walked with Mel to the next station where the egg race was to take place.
Mel leaned in as the referee explained the nature of the game.
One of a pair of competitors would place an egg between his or her chin and chest, run twenty yards to the other member of the pair and pass the egg without using their hands. The other person would run back to where the first person started.
Couples lined up on either side of the short field. Ariana joined the opposite line, picking a spot next to Mel. Her gaze met Dillon’s as her date stepped into position beside Dillon.
Mel and Ariana were given raw eggs. They tucked them beneath their chins and waited.
The referee blew the whistle, and the ladies were off, running with their heads down toward Dillon and Ariana’s date.
Others along the line dropped their eggs and fell out of the competition.
Ariana made it across the twenty yards to where her date stood a few seconds before Mel arrived in front of Dillon.
The swapping of the egg from one person to the other meant getting close. Really close, in order to get chins and chests in the game to make the transfer.
Dillon tried to focus on the egg beneath Mel’s chin, but he was distracted by Ariana’s date laughing as he tried to grab the egg with his chin.
“You got it?” Mel asked.
Dillon grabbed her shoulders and leaned sideways to get his chin beneath hers. “I think I have it,” he said between gritted teeth.
Had Mel been Ariana, he would have stolen a kiss before he grabbed the egg. Hell, he might have said screw the egg and thrown the race just to get to kiss her longer.
He heard Ariana’s squeal beside him and lost his concentration at the same time as Mel released her chin-hold on the egg.
The egg slipped.
Dillon grabbed for it with his chin and crushed it between his chin and chest getting raw egg goo all over his polo shirt.
Mel laughed. “Good effort,” she said. “Now, we’re a pair,” she said, waving a hand toward his egg-covered shirt and hers, which was
