Page 46 of Bad Reputation

“Where are we, anyhow?” Maggie asked.

“The Allermuir Hill trail,” Cole explained. “It’s a loop, or nearly so. Phil’s going to pick us up in this village—”

“Swanston,” Phil supplied.

“Yup, that’s the place. We should be there ... in three or four hours.” Cole had originally planned to do the trail faster, but he added some time to account for Maggie.

“If you’re not, I’ll send out a search party.”

“Last chance to ditch me,” Cole said, getting out of the car and putting on the backpack of supplies he’d borrowed from his driver. “Phil can take you back to the hotel.”

Please don’t go back to the hotel.

But after a beat, Maggie unbuckled her seat belt and climbed out. “I don’t know if you’ve properly prepped me for this scene, James.”

“Do you have any hard limits?”

“Shoe spikes. We already went over that one.”

They stopped at the trailhead, and he snapped a picture of the map with his phone. Maggie did the same and texted it to someone.

“Savannah, my best friend,” she explained. “I’m telling her if I don’t text again in four hours to call the police. It’s our date protocol.”

“Date protocol, huh?” He rubbed the burn that had started in his belly.

“Can’t be too careful.” There was something faux chipper in Maggie’s tone, as if she didn’t like this subject any more than he did.

“That must be the start of the trail.”

“Wait.” Maggie followed his finger with her eyes. “It ... goes straight uphill.”

“The initial climb is supposed to be the worst part, at least if it’s not muddy. And according to Phil, it shouldn’t be muddy.”

She was still gawking. “Shouldn’t there be steps? Or a ladder? A funicular, maybe?”

“It’s not that much of an incline.” It wasn’t flat, either, though. Maybe this wasn’t really a novice hike.

Maggie still wasn’t moving. After a second, she said, “How am I going to do that?”

From a woman who’d remade her life after getting sucked into a bad publicity tornado, it was a puzzling attitude. “One foot in front of the other. You go first.”

With a humph, Maggie started up the trail. For all that she was skeptical, she set a punishing pace. He almost warned her to slow down, conserve some energy, but he was so glad she hadn’t turned back that he let her go.

When they reached the end of the first stretch of climbing, Maggie stopped and set her hands on her knees, breathing hard. “I’d like to file a—a complaint with ... the hiking board.”

“There’s no such thing.” Cole swung the pack around under his arm and began digging inside. He located two bottles of water, and he offered one to her.

She took it from him and tipped her head back, drinking deeply. He tried, and failed, not to notice some water that escaped her mouth and trickled down the length of her neck.

“There isn’t, like, the North Face Council?” she asked when she came up for air. “A Patagonia Principate? A Columbia Congress?”

“No, no, and no.”

“Then who the hell gets to decide if something is a hill or a mountain? Because, my dude, this”—she gestured with her hands at the geologic feature they were climbing—“is definitely a mountain.”

“It’s a hill. You saw the map.”

“It lied to us!”

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