Free A Fair to Remember by Barbara Ankrum

river. He jerked his line back, but the fish dropped off.
    “Don’t get cocky, yet, Lassen.”
    “You just focus on your own girl-toss, Canaday. And I’ll take care of my end.”
    A few minutes later, her eyes went wide and she tugged in her line. “Ooh! I got one! I got a fish!”
    Oh, no she didn’t. “Careful,” he told her. “Easy. Reel it in slow and steady.” But she was so excited that the moment she’d pulled it in and reached to grab for it, it shimmied off the line and escaped.
    “Ahhhh!” She slapped the water with the rod.
    “Oooh.” Jake tsked. “Bad luck.”
    “But… but I caught one,” she argued. “You saw it.”
    “Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “Only counts if you land it and take the hook out.”
    “That wasn’t in the rules,” she said, testily, “but fine.”
    Jake cast his line out and hit the pocket he’d been aiming at for the last five minutes. He glanced up at Deke who was deeply focused on a pool shaded by a leaning pine tree, then at Olivia, who’d moved a few feet downriver from him.
    She looked eighteen again, he thought, with her lip caught between her teeth and those freckles still chasing across her nose. He contemplated kissing those freckles, one at a time. But then he thought of other things he wanted to kiss.
    Or suck. Or lick.
    Sweat trickled down the side of his neck. Where the hell were those damned trout?
    Incredibly, not thirty seconds later, both of their lines had strikes almost simultaneously. He didn’t want to think about the fact that she was actually catching fish with her lame-ass toss while he had spent years perfecting his own cast.
    At any rate, he’d let her worry about setting her own hook while he concentrated on getting the job done. As they wrestled the fish in—his feeling some two pounds heavier than hers looked—he unhooked a net from his belt and scooped his safely in. Only then did he gently unhook the lure from its mouth.
    She was still fighting to catch the slippery thing in her hand.
    “Need some help there?” he asked.
    “Gloating is unbecoming.”
    “Yeah, I was gonna say it’s a tie anyway. No gloating. I’m officially impressed.”
    She finally managed to grab the fish. “You mean we cancel each other out?”
    “Hell, no . A wager’s a wager. But to be fair, especially considering you actually caught a fish with that… toss of yours, we both win.”
    Which meant they both got a kiss. Which meant the smile tugging at Olivia’s mouth was either her contemplating her choice of location, or trying to figure out a way out of it altogether.
    He was hoping for the first case scenario.
    Delicately, she unhooked her catch, held the hook up for him to see, then tossed the fish gently back in the water. At his astonished expression, she said, “All you said was I had to land it and unhook it. You didn’t say anything about keeping it. I told you I was a catch and release kind of girl. Besides, we have more than enough fish for dinner.” She jerked her chin in Deke’s direction as he pulled in a three pounder.
    “Playing fast and loose with the rules,” Jake observed, his gaze dropping to her mouth. “I like it.”
    She blushed, then stared at something over his shoulder. “Oh-oh.”
    Jake turned to see thunderheads, ominous and steely, spilling over the crest of the mountain. He’d been so intent on winning he’d missed the smell of the electrical charge in the air that always preceded a storm like the one heading their way. It wasn’t unusual for weather to sneak up on the mountains here. This one was coming fast.
    By the time they’d packed up and headed back to Deke’s place, a drenching downpour had soaked them through. They ran to beat the lightning and deep rumbles of thunder pounding up the valley toward them. Jake leashed Monday in case she got spooked. But she thought it was a game and had fun trying to trip them as they ran, with the falcons dive-bombing them. They were all laughing by the time