Taking the Heat (Jackson: Girls' Night Out 3)

“Climbing,” she croaked. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Climbing!”

He responded to let her know that he was ready to support her weight, and she put her hands on the rock.

The first few feet were uncertain, but she quickly realized it wasn’t much harder than climbing a ladder. The rock looked smooth from a distance, but it was actually jagged. There were no steps carved into it, but she moved up at a fair pace. Gabe kept her rope nice and tight the whole time, so she knew that if she slipped, she’d fall only a few inches. Granted, she’d also smash face-first into the rock, but that kind of thing could happen on a hiking trail, too.

She was actually feeling pretty badass and confident when she reached the spot where Gabe had disappeared from her view. As she’d suspected, the rock angled slightly in for a few feet here, and she could see him about twenty feet above her now.

“There you are,” he said.

She beamed up at him. She couldn’t help it. He’d been right the whole time. She could do this. She was fucking amazing.

“Okay,” Gabe called down, “pause there for a second.”

That wasn’t a problem. Her feet were on a solid lip of rock and she could rest her arms on the face that angled away. Her thighs trembled like crazy, but she didn’t feel weak yet.

“I want you to do something for me now. Let go of the rock and lean back.”

“What?” The muscles that had just started to relax into the climb went tight as steel, shaking even harder now. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“So that you can feel what it’s like to rely on the rope.”

“No!”

“Come on. It’s standard training.”

Now that she’d started feeling kick-ass, she didn’t want to back down. She didn’t want to say that she couldn’t do it, because she knew she could. “What if you don’t catch me, though?”

He shook his head. “Do you think I’d let you up here if I couldn’t catch you? I’ve gotten pretty attached to you.”

That took her by surprise. Attached? Already? What did that mean? Maybe it had only been a safety-rope joke? Shit, she couldn’t even ask, because it would be weird, and she was not going to be that weird, insecure girl while she was clinging to the side of a fucking mountain. She was better than that.

He nodded as if she’d agreed to something. “Get a stable stance, legs a few feet apart so you don’t swing. Then let go of the rock and lean back.”

“Okay.” She watched her feet as she widened her stance, but then she made the mistake of turning her head and looking behind her. “Oh, shit,” she gasped. He’d been right about it being an easy climb. She hadn’t realized how far up she’d gotten. She was above the tops of the cottonwood trees, and they had to be at least thirty feet tall. “Oh, God,” she whispered.

She couldn’t lean back. She just couldn’t. But that was stupid, wasn’t it? If she didn’t trust the rope, what was she even doing up here?

“Okay,” she tried again, pinning her eyes to Gabe instead of the ground. “Are you sure you’re ready? I’m heavier than I look. I’ve got sturdy legs.”

“I remember that about you. I’m ready.”

She forced her hands off the rock and wrapped them around the rope. She had to override every single animal instinct she had in order to force her body to ease back, but she felt the pull on her safety belt and knew she was doing it.

“Hands off the rope,” he called.

“What?” she screamed.

“If you fall, you want your arms free and ready so you can hit the wall with your hands instead of your face.”

Okay, that seemed like a decent idea. She got one hand to let go and held it up next to her head. The other one refused to move no matter how hard she glared at it.

“Good enough,” he said. “All your weight is on the rope now. Look at me.”

She looked.

“Do I look like I’m straining?”

Amazingly, he didn’t. He looked totally comfortable, as if he were leaning against a brick wall instead of clinging to the side of a mountain. He held the belaying rope in one hand and watched her with a smile.