Meg's Best Man: A Montana Weekend Novella Read Online Free PDF Page B

competitive juices were flowing. The fall wouldn’t kill you, but if you got tugged into the water about six feet below, you were guaranteed to feel it. Meg got pulled into line just ahead of Leah, and Cadence was next. A few young men jumped at the opportunity to line up with her.
    It wasn’t clear who was going to start the actual tug in this war, and legends were bound to be created on both sides, but it seemed to Meg like the team in front of her stumbled backward and she heard a few screams and splashes. However it had started, the war was on.
    Meg grabbed hold and started pulling. She could hardly see ahead of her, but her feet were moving in the right direction. Then again, the grass was slick and she could have been spinning her wheels. She turned toward Leah, who looked fierce. Behind her Catherine, their anchor, looked peaceful. “Is that as hard as you can pull?” Cadence said to her team of admirers, and the dirt and grass really started to fly.
    It was a good thing the other team had lost a few members in that first maneuver. “You guys pull like girls,” someone from the other side yelled. Ahead of her, Aunt Sonya, Pastor Jeffrey’s wife, yelled back, “Too bad you guys don’t pull like men!”
    Meg felt her feet slide and then heard a splash. The rope moved again, and she could hear the other side celebrating. “Pull!” Catherine commanded, and they dug in their heels. Soon there were a few other splashes, all on the other side of the swimming hole. But just when Meg was thinking they had a chance, the rope was jerked out of her hand. Someone had probably “bungeed”—held on to the rope all the way down. Leah landed on top of her, and ahead of her several women were unceremoniously dumped into the water.
    Some of the wedding guests who were now out of the game were slowly making their way out of the swimming hole and up onto the footbridge, where they were shouting silly insults or doing ridiculously bad cheers.
    At one point the other team was so busy laughing they could hardly stand, let alone pull. Leah must have seen the same thing. “Now!” Leah ordered, and they pulled with all their might. A very satisfying amount of shouting and splashing came from the other side of the swimming hole before things evened out again. All that remained between Meg and the water were two young men and Cadence. Without warning the man in front of Cadence slipped, and he fell off the ledge but refused to let go of the rope.
    The rope jerked down in her hands, but Meg held on. Somehow they managed to pull two people from the other team off their side, but the last young man on the bride’s team was trying to pull and lift his buddy back onto the ledge at the same time, and after a flailing somersault they both landed in the water. Cadence was suddenly facing the ledge, and on the other side of the swimming hole there were three men: Gage, the groom, and the groom’s father. It did not look good.
    Worst of all, Gage was up front, standing there in his jeans and T-shirt and his nice, dry boots.
    Meg didn’t want a valet. And she didn’t want to lose, either. Cadence was giggling and shrieking all at the same time, and Meg and Catherine were pulling with all their might, but the rope was moving the wrong way.
    Her foot twisted in a strange way, and a thought came to her. Not a very nice thought, but there it was.
    “Ow!” she cried. She hopped onto her other leg, letting go of the rope with one hand to reach down and touch an ankle that didn’t really hurt at all.
    Meg wasn’t the type to cry out, let alone cry wolf, and so the response on the other side was instantaneous. All three men stopped pulling and stood straight up. Still hunched over, Meg turned to Leah, who had a worried look on her face. “On the count of three,” Meg whispered. “One, two…” Luckily, by the time she reached three, both women had realized the deception. “Three!”
    It looked to her like Gage was the only person actually