48 First Dates (Seeking Romance #1)

The Prince with No Name

9

Hiking on the trail,

Stings, crawls, and ankle got turned—

rescue had no name.

T he third morning on the Appalachian Trail did not begin well. Yet another rough night of sleep in a tent. Mitzi snored. Cynthia whistled through her mouthguard all night.

Who knew those perfect teeth required such sonorous ugliness at night?

I tossed and turned most of the night. A rock in my... umm... in places it shouldn’t have been, did nothing to help my attitude.

The morning greeted me with all its glorious sunshine, and my poor demeanor answered it with, Why oh why did I agree to go on a seven-day hike? We should have done the typical beach week for our senior trip.

I had had enough, but that didn’t matter in the woods. The lingering smell of a campfire and the rumble of my stomach told me there was work to do. Grumpy or not, someone had to collect the firewood and cook breakfast.

And I got to do the loathsome morning task.

All.

By.

Myself.

While they slept peacefully with rocks in all the right places.

I loved my friends. We girls were having an amazing trip. But I’m not Suzy Sunshine when I stink like Shalane Flanagan after she won the New York City marathon. Add to that the fact that snores, rocks, and whistles prevented my slumber, and it’s not pretty. Plus, I missed Sebastian. The pained sound in his voice when he agreed we should go our separate ways cut deep into my heart.

As I stoked up the fire, I cleared my mind of Sebastian’s face. I started thinking about the tough hike ahead and what was at the end of the trail.

Tonight. Lovely tonight.

Tonight, I was going to sleep in a shelter. I was going to be by a lake. I was going to have a swim-shower.

Tonight, the magic wand was going to wave, and a prince would appear.

Well, maybe not the last part.

But tonight, it would all work out. The dirt would be washed away, and I would make sure that Mitzi or Cynthia got to the side with the rocks. Kill two birds with one stone—pun totally intended.

I snickered to myself as I finished making breakfast. The aroma of rehydrated cinnamon oatmeal and instant coffee relaxed me. I smiled—this day would be the turning point in our Appalachian adventure.

After we ate and packed up our gear, we set out on the trail. I had put my bathing suit on under my clothes in anticipation of the upcoming shower-swim at the end of our hike. The first part of the trail was easy, and the woods opened out to what looked like a pleasant meadow.

Looks can be deceiving.

It turned out that the meadow was home to a nest of yellow jackets who were living right next to the trail. The faint buzzing should have been a tipoff. But it didn’t register above the bird calls.

When I stepped off to let the girls pass, I inadvertently invaded the home of the stinging beasts. The insects came out, stingers blazing.

We ran. We ran cheetah-fast.

Until we reached the trail up the hill, which was more of a bear crawl up the mountain. Later on, we found out that we didn’t have to take that route. We missed the side trail in our escape from the yellow jackets. So, instead of rolling switchbacks, we brutalized our hamstrings, glutes, and calves.

My anger, along with the thought of a shower and the promise of a night on smooth wooden slats, pulled me forward. I knew the girls would catch up to me at the lake, and I needed to get there. I kept putting one foot in front of the other, looking up as I went and praying for a glimpse of my liquid salvation.

I know to keep my eyes on the trail when there are lots of rocks and tree roots. But I needed to see it. I needed to see that luxurious lake and its sumptuous shelters to keep going. I came around the last corner near the top of the ascent. I saw the lake and its mirage of cabins. I gasped with delight and took off in that direction.

And that’s when it happened.

The toe of my boot caught a root and stuck fast while the rest of my leg attempted to continue its forward motion. My ankle was a casualty. The pain was immediate, and I had to pull my body over the final hump.

I lay there, thinking my ankle would not let me get up. Feeling the welts swell from the pleasant meadow insects and the pain in my foot.

The exhaustion caught up.

I finally broke.

The trail had won.

I dissolved into a puddle of dust, sweat, and tears. And wouldn’t you know—this is the moment when the wand waved. A magical group of guys appeared out of thin air to find a stinky, mud-puddle version of a human smack dab in the middle of their trail.

My fairy godmother has a twisted sense of humor.

“Are you alright?” a gravelly voice with a hint of Irish brogue asked.

I shook my head back and forth.

“Okay, I’m just going to check for obvious injuries. You’re in capable hands. My friends and I are all EMTs, and our mommas would kill us if we ever hurt a lady or left one in the woods without helping her.” I felt a warm, strong hand travel over my body to check for injuries.

I didn’t want to look all the way up. The calf muscles that peeked out of their boots told me all I needed to know. The warm hand moved the hair off my neck and rested there, gently probing. His fingers sent jolts of electricity down my spine.

“I’m fine,” I said with a groan.

“Okay, look, we don’t see any obvious injuries, so my friends and I are going to take your backpack off and pick you up. I’m going to carry you over to the shelter so we can better see how to help you.” The voice at my head said.

I nodded in agreement. The rest of my body was frozen in embarrassment. My eyelids glued together. I had an idea of how I looked at that moment, something resembling the Mysterious Mud Creature.

I knew that if I turned over and opened my eyes, I would see a group of gorgeous, muscular guys. Ones who belonged on the cover of this year’s Men of Emergency Medicine calendar. So, I let warm hands remove my pack, which they did with surprising gentleness. As he worked, a delicious brand of trail musk mixed with the nostalgic scent of my grandfather’s leprechaun soap enveloped me.

So unfair. Especially since my nose knew I did not smell like honeysuckles or princess perfume.

Once my pack was off, a pair of muscular arms picked me up and carried me. My eyes remained firmly shut as we walked to the clearing by the lake. My rescuer set me down, and it sounded like he stepped back. I decided to face the music.

I opened my eyes to find a guy with very defined arms standing next to me. His black hair licked at the edges of his hat. The baseball cap obscured most of his face because he was staring down at the ground. Even so, Ruairí, the prince’s name from my favorite fairy tale, pushed against my lips. I didn’t dare to say it out loud. I already looked foolish enough at this moment.

I turned to another boy next to me, my hands resting on the log bench under me. His mouth was open and moving. I stared into his beautiful ocean-blue eyes. I drank in his blond surfer hair and tanned muscular skin. “... where... hurt?”

“Ankle,” I said. Anything more was impossible at the moment.

My head swiveled back to see the strong, hat-wearing guy twist the cap backward as he turned his back to me. Out of the corner of my eye, I also noticed a lanky, brown-haired guy on his left. My attention went back to blue eyes as he touched my ankle and asked if it hurt.

It didn’t, so I shook my head.

He moved it a bit, and I winced. “Okay, that looks like it hurts a bit. I have some tape that I can use to stabilize it. It doesn’t appear to be broken.”

I nodded in understanding.

He looked down as a flush crept across his cheeks. His ears turned red. He coughed. “Umm... we need to wash off the dirt before we wrap it... umm... is there anyone else with you?”

“I can take off all my clothes,” was what my brain thought would be the right thing to say. The throat-clearing and eye-bulging eyes told me it wasn’t.

Thankfully, that’s the exact moment that Mitzi and Cynthia walked up. They gave me a what-the-heck-have-you-gotten-yourself-into glance.

“My friends. My friends can help!” I gestured in their direction as they nodded hello to the boys. Mitzi and Cynthia set down their packs. Mitzi snort-laughed as the hot guy, and his hat-wearing friend helped me get up.

“What happened to you?” she asked as we hobbled together toward the water.

I briefly relayed the story as they helped me up from the log bench. Blue eyes and the hat guy acted like crutches on either side of me as we walked the short distance to the lake.

When I was done talking, the tall, skinny guy said, “I’m Tom Wilson, but everyone calls me Stretch.”

Mitzi took it upon herself to introduce the three of us. “I’m Mitzi, and this is Cynthia. Hobble-horse over here is Adelaide.” My head shot up. I gave her a what-did-you-just-say stare.

The hat-wearing one said in a deep voice with a hint of dreamy Irish accent, “Brenn O’Conner.”

My gaze swiveled from Mitzi straight into his emerald eyes for the first time. Mix that with his coal-colored hair, and the Irish prince from my favorite fairy tale stood right in front of me in modernized male form.

The real-life version was so much better than I had imagined. My eyes roamed, drinking in the details. But that was a mistake. Because at that exact moment, Brenn was taking off his shirt.

Disappearing V.

Six-pack abs.

Sculpted chest.

Celtic band tattooed around his left biceps.

The Irish prince has a tattoo. And it looks very nice. I would totally be turned into a rock if it meant that he would rescue me.

I reached up to check to see if I was drooling, and I realized the guy with blue eyes was speaking. By the time I drew my focus back to his words, I totally missed his name... again.

The Hot Guy with No Name, as I now called him in my head, suggested that my friends help me clean up so he could wrap my ankle. That’s when I got the chance to explain that I had a bathing suit on, hence the taking off of clothes comment. He smiled as he gave me an understanding nod.

The swim was refreshing. After we got out, Hot Guy with No Name wrapped my ankle as my friends set our gear up in the shelters.

We ended up all sitting around the campfire, eating our dehydrated dinners. We shared stories of our journey so far. The guys were through-hikers who had met at an Insta-Medic course. They had been friends ever since. They figured a summer hiking half of the AT together was the perfect way to spend the time before college.

We were on the shortened version of the same dream. Seventy days on the trail for them as opposed to the seven we had planned—so, in other words, not the same at all.

When we were done eating, Brenn got up to turn in early. That left Tom sitting down between Mitzi and Cynthia. I sat next to Hot Guy with No Name.

We talked the night away. I told him about my dad and the year of cancer. I shared the stories of how Mitzi, Cynthia, and I had become friends. I revealed how Tyler had ghosted me and the nasty bet Zack and his baseball boys had made. I told him about my dream of being a wildlife biologist. I explained to him how I had to decide where I was going to go to college before we got back. I shared with him how I would never go to Montana because Libby, my nemesis, was going there. I told him how I couldn’t decide between New York College, which was better for my major, and Frogmore University, which was only two hours from home.

He listened to all my ramblings and offered points to ponder rather than “you-should.”

I was a new person. I had a shower. My belly was full. And there was a Hot Guy with No Name listening to my every word. I looked up and realized that the fire had died down.

We were the only ones still out there.

“We should go to bed,” I said, hoping he would get the telepathic no I was sending as I stared into his eyes.

“Mmm hmm, but I think I need to check your ankle first.”

Oh, he was good.

Hot Guy with No Name reached for my ankle. He set it in his lap and palpated along it, spending more time massaging my foot and calf than medically needed. “There’s not much swelling,” he murmured. “Let’s get you up and see how it feels.”

He grabbed my hands and pulled me up, moving his hands to my elbows to support me. “How does that feel?”

I tested my ankle a bit, moving it back and forth. It was tender but not as bad as I feared it would be when I collapsed earlier on the trail.

“It’s good, I...” I drew my gaze from my foot up to his eyes. Whatever else I had planned to say was lost in the dim outline of his eyes. The firelight highlighted them in an intoxicating blur.

He leaned in and kissed me. His hands tightened around my waist, and I reached up, nestling my fingers into the hair at the back of his neck.

I have no idea how long we stood there kissing each other.

All I knew was that I was kissing some guy whose name I couldn’t remember in the middle of the woods.

And I was enjoying every minute.