Free Out of the Game3 by Kate Willoughby

should go somewhere neither of us has been before, so it’s new to both of us.”
    They looked at the board again.
    “San Francisco?” he asked.
    “Been there,” she replied. “Phoenix?”
    “The Coyotes play there.”
    “Oh, I forgot.”
    She scanned the board one more time. “That leaves Salt Lake City.”
    “Anything interesting in Salt Lake City?”
    “You know,” someone said from behind them, “if you’re talking about Salt Lake City itself, it’s like any capital city. I used to live there. But a few hours away are some amazing places.”
    They turned to find a man with a rolling suitcase and a garment bag. He was about forty, wearing slacks and a shirt, no tie.
    “Like what?” Alex asked.
    Claire was curious to find out, too. Utah was not high on her list of locales to visit.
    “Zion National Park.”
    Alex grinned. “She likes national parks.”
    “Then there’s Bryce Canyon, too. Park City hosted the Winter Games. In fact, Robert Redford has a resort up that way. I think he was filming
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
when he fell in love with Utah.”
    “I love that movie,” Alex exclaimed. “They filmed it there?”
    “Parts of it, I think,” the stranger said. “But if you’re interested in going to anything in that area, you’re better off going to Vegas first, not Salt Lake City.” He pointed to a flight departing in an hour. “SLC is a lot farther north than you need to go.”
    After sitting down on a bench, Alex looked up Zion on his phone and Claire took Bryce Canyon.
    “Claire, look. Man, this is cool. Look at this.”
    He showed her pictures of a beautiful, narrow stone canyon with vertical walls that looked a hundred feet high. A stream ran through it and she could imagine the soft gurgling noise it would make. Oddly, it reminded her of New York City and how you couldn’t really see the sky unless you looked straight up, but obviously in the outback of Utah, there wouldn’t be exhaust or litter or traffic noise.
    “That really is beautiful,” she said.
    “What did you find on Bryce?” He leaned over to peer at her screen.
    On her phone was a barren but beautiful landscape with misshapen stone towers, arches and rippling ridges that were the same colors as the Grand Canyon.
    “That’s on Earth? It looks like the backdrop for a science fiction movie. I bet they’ve filmed stuff there, too.” He twisted to read the departures board. “Come on, let’s go. The flight to Vegas leaves in forty-five minutes. Plenty of time to buy tickets and get to the gate.”
    He took her hand and pulled her to her feet. In a last ditch effort, her brain tossed out all the reasons why this was a bad idea—the dentist appointment she had scheduled on Wednesday, all the food that was in her refrigerator, the possibility that Erin would go ballistic when she found out—but Claire found she didn’t really care about any of that. For once she was going to do something completely crazy.
    * * *
    During the forty-minute flight, Claire made a list of what she needed to buy when they landed. Alex spent his time trying not to think about how easy it would be to spread the blanket over them both, reach under her dress and bring her to orgasm with his hand. Fuck, that’d be sweet. But he’d promised himself not to rush her.
    He surreptitiously checked out her to-buy list. She was thorough. He was doing fine until he saw the word “underwear.” Was she planning on getting all-purpose undies or did she have something sexier in mind? As far as he was concerned, he’d never seen a pair of panties he didn’t like, probably because by the time he was peeking at panties, he was well on his way to getting laid.
    When they disembarked, they went straight to a rental car facility and got an SUV. After that, they hit a mall, split up and got the basics. He was done long before Claire, so he went to the food court and had a couple corn dogs, some fresh-squeezed lemonade, and a steaming hot pretzel