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When measured in miles, the section of the river that comprised the rapids seemed almost negligible.

When calculated in breath-stealing seconds and heart-stopping tosses and turns, it seemed endless. All that was missing was a whirlpool.

During this leg of The Journey, it felt to Joe as if time had stopped and eternity beckoned.

Not today. He did his best to keep the latter at bay.

Every single muscle in Joe’s body felt as if it had come alive, straining to the limit as he paddled hard in order to keep the raft he and the other four people were on from capsizing.

Joe absolutely refused to be part of the first team to be disqualified in total.

He’d navigated rapids only twice before in his life. Once with his father and brothers, Max, Sean and Ryan, and once with Sandra on their first married vacation. Either his memory had gone sentimental, or it had just gone, he thought, because neither time had felt as if it were a life-and-death struggle against foaming water and rock formations that seemed to appear out of nowhere, ready to do their damnedest to tip the raft over, or worse, disable it.

His concentration so intent on the struggle, Joe was hardly aware that there were three other rafts around theirs in close proximity. For that matter, he was hardly aware of the people on his own raft.

Except for the woman.

The muscle formations on Theresa’s arms were prominent, fairly bulging as she fought with the river to hang on to her paddle.

Water kept crashing over them.

Her body glistened beneath the hot sun as the rapids waged a battle not only for control of the paddles, the raft and the people in it, but also to displace them within the raft with its own volume. All of them were drenched in a matter of seconds after they encountered the first set of rapids.

She looked good wet.

The thought burrowed its way into his head in between the strategies that were ricocheting through his brain. Strategies and random thoughts of not just failure but the dangers of miscalculation. It wouldn’t do to get too confident. The river could knock that confidence right out of you with a well-aimed wave.

Joe wrapped his fingers more tightly around the paddle. They already hurt beyond aching.

His concentration was shattered as he thought he heard a scream above the roar of the rapids. His head jerked around toward the sound in pure reflex.

Theresa looked as if she was suspended in midair.

In less than a heartbeat, her body would be over the side of the black rubber raft. Despite all the safeguards and precautions taken, she could be lost or killed in a matter of moments.

Joe didn’t think, he reacted. Hooking his arm around her waist the second he saw her leave her seat, he dragged Theresa back down.

For one horrible moment, she thought it was all over. She envisioned herself going down beneath the rapids, being pushed under by the swirling waters.

And then suddenly, she was being pulled back down.

She landed hard in the very space she’d vacated a second ago.

His arm still wrapped around her waist, Joe could feel how fast she was breathing. So fast he couldn’t even begin to count the breaths.

His own breathing wasn’t exactly moderate to mild, he thought. Adrenaline was doing double time through his veins.

Theresa turned her head and looked at him, horror and shock plastered on her face, along with the ends of her curls. He couldn’t quite fathom the look in her eyes, but there wasn’t time to ponder it.

All he knew was that it reached out to him where he lived. Something akin to an electrical shock had passed between them.

And was still passing.

“Breathe slower,” he ordered, “or you’ll hyperventilate.” The next second, he released her as the river became treacherous again.

Her paddle gone, Theresa used her hands to try to move the raft along. The action, he knew, was futile, but there seemed no sense in pointing it out. All his attention was diverted to keeping them from capsizing.

And then, as suddenly as the river had transformed into the spin cycle mode, it became calm. So calm that it seemed as if the whole section behind them was nothing but a mass hallucination.

They were to continue paddling until they reached the next checkpoint.

“Anyone know if there’re any more rapids up ahead?” The question was nervously posed by Jason, the pre-med student and easily the smallest of them.

David, the real estate salesman, nodded. His short blond hair already beginning to dry as he blew out a long breath.

“I think there’s another section up ahead a few miles.” He glanced at Joe, then at Theresa. “Nice catch.”

Ed, the unemployed engineer, carefully avoided looking at Theresa as he said to Joe, “You were supposed to let her go overboard. That’s how the game is played.”

They’d been assured that someone from the film crew would rescue any contestants who went into the river. Joe, on the other hand, wasn’t so sure. And when it came to a human life, he wasn’t about to hang back and play the odds.

“That’s not how I play the game,” Joe said firmly. He turned his mind toward business. “We lose anything?”

“A paddle,” Theresa said ruefully. “Mine.”

“Anything else?” Joe asked.

“A tent,” Jason called out, taking a quick inventory of the items that were clustered together in the center of the raft.

“Hey, weren’t those things supposed to be tied down?” Ed wanted to know.

“Yeah, well, so were we,” Theresa pointed out. “And my strap broke.”

Silently, she upbraided herself for having somehow miscalculated and taken the wrong seat. But she’d gotten turned around when the raft was being lowered into the river by the crew.

“Whose tent?” David asked.

Since she no longer had a paddle, Theresa checked the remaining tents to see what names were on them. She raised her eyes to look at Joe.

“Joe’s.”

They knew the rules. If a tent was lost, the person who it belonged to was disqualified unless someone on his team chose to share theirs with them. It was a way of winnowing down the contestants.

For a long moment, there was nothing but the sounds of the river. And the echo of more rapids directly up ahead in the distance.

Damn, Joe thought, for him the contest was over before it had hardly begun. What the hell was he going to do now?

Theresa looked at the other men in the raft. All three suddenly became taken with their paddles and the water, avoiding eye contact. She knew what she was supposed to do. But then, so had Joe and he’d chosen not to follow instructions.

Maybe she’d need him along the trail, she decided, trying to justify her next move. Knowing she was going to have to eventually.

“You can share mine,” she told him.

He didn’t seem to hear her. The offer had been made quietly and the river had stolen her words from her, swallowing them up whole as the volume went up around them.

Theresa put her hand on top of his.

The contact surprised him. That same sort of sizzling current passed through him. He looked up, stopping midstroke.

“You can share my tent,” she said, raising her voice to be heard as she enunciated each syllable.

He smiled his thanks as relief washed over him. The next moment, the river came alive again. They were headed for another set of rapids.

“Hold on,” he ordered. “Here we go again!”

Theresa braced herself. For more reasons than one.



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