Nathan and Ariana are continuing their string of first place finishes, and the end of the race is looming -- But remember, the question is not whether they will win or not, but whether they will admit their love for each other and give it a chance -- and will it survive the revelations to come:
CHAPTER 14 [Twelfth (& FINAL) Leg (Austria to Azores to Alexandria, Virginia] -- Three teams remaining.
After getting in to the airport, they had solved a puzzle within a puzzle, having to solve a math problem using the names of all of the different types of currencies from all of the countries they had visited. Then had come The four challenges had been a rushing blur where all three teams were practically neck and neck, their differences measured in seconds. Then the final dash to the finish line.
They had been hurtling down the road, a hundred yards behind Garret and Jeremy, but unable to gain because they were boxed in by traffic. The south entrance of Manor Hill Park should be but a few miles ahead of them, and then whatever dash to the checkpoint. She pounded the wheel. "We're trapped by this traffic!"
"Then we earned $275,000 for AIDS research and came in second doing our best."
Flicking a quick glare at him in the back seat, she said, "Ya know ya ur infuriating when you are so calm." She shifted her glare to the driver to her right, who glared back and then ignored her, shifting not an inch forward or back. Gritting her teeth, and conscious of the videographer in the back seat, she said, "Ya know, ya are the onla one to ne'er complain about me drivin. Everyone else tells me I am a mad woman behind the wheel."
Studying the map intently, Nathan answered, "I have a couple of decades of cautious 'parent driving' habit. You are - a more aggressive - driver than I am, and we are in a race, so you should drive. Conceding that, it would be churlish of me to complain. Besides, we are a team, aren't we?"
She glanced in the mirror. "Aye, we are a team, no matter what."
"So, wherever we go, we go together; the checkpoint, the hospital, the morgue." He looked up and smiled at her shocked expression in the mirror. "Wherever. Besides, if God wants us to win, we will."
Her retort had been cut off by the woman in front of them suddenly realizing she needed to be in the right lane, with her right turn looming unexpectedly ahead. The woman to Ariana;s right leaned on her horn as the car slid in front of her with inches to spare, being halfway into the lane before the turn signal had come on. And a half lane was all Ariana needed. The videographer yelped as Ariana tried to ram the accelerator through the floor and used every inch of space to pass.
"The park is ahead on the left," Nathan's voice stated, calmly.
"And the scoundrels kin no turn left through the traffic," she crowed, gaining ground by the heartbeat on the familiar car stopped ahead, with its turn signal flashing and the irate driver making obscene gestures out the window at the heedless oncoming vehicles. As they neared the car and a left turn lane appeared, Ariana peered ahead and saw a gap in the oncoming traffic - but was it big enough for TWO cars?
The gap flew by Garrett, and his car peeled rubber to pull left and dive into the park entranceway. Ariana followed, earning a blaring protest of car horns though there had been at least ten feet to spare in the 45 mile per hour on-rush. Streaking up the winding drive to the parking lot, they arrowed across the lot aiming for the parking spaces closest to the beckoning entrance.
They skidded to stop one space over from Garrett and Jeremy's car, thumping the curb soundly, and threw their doors open and hurled themselves out. With Nathan in the lead by a couple of strides, and trailing the other team by barely 10 feet, they dashed through the ornate, wrought iron archway of the park entrance. Just inside was a broad. deep set of stairs descending 8 feet to a wide grassy landing with long, shallow, sweeping ramps leading off to both sides and walled by a rainbow blaze of flower beds, and coming sweeping back in a long curve to end back in front of the landing, about 8 feet below the landing. Between the landing and the broad lawn below was a 2 foot high railing on the stone wall which was the lip, about 2 feet of space, and then an eight foot high thorn hedge.
Ariana looked around as she plunged down the steps after Nathan. Garret and Jeremy were hurtling down the first leg of the ramp on the left. Nathan ran straight to the railing, and leapt over, coming down behind the hedge. He turned and held his arms out and up.
Two weeks of answering 'yes' to the question, "Do you trust me?" took over, and, without a thought, without a word, Ariana leapt the railing in a move of such grace the Madri-Gals choreographer would have burst her vocal cords in a scream of joy. Nathan caught her, set her on the ground, and said, "Go under me, and then run, straight ahead, as fast as you can go." With that he turned and thrust his entire body between two thorn bushes with a strangled gasp, and heaved the bushes apart by spreading his arms and legs, opening up a hole.
Ariana's very first time in front of an audience had been in 4th grade as Alice in Alice in Wonderland. The teacher had made her practice diving through the tiny plywood entrance to the rabbit burrow time after time after time, until she could vanish like a startled snake down a hole. The collective gasp of the audience as she vanished had been almost as heady an experience as the applause for her afterwards. So she closed her eyes, remembered... and dove. Stray thorny twigs slashed at her face and hands and stomach as she shot through, and then she was up and running. There was a great tearing sound and a grunt of pain and determination, and Nathan was pounding along beside her.
There was a fountain ahead, stretching a hundred feet to either side, and beyond that, a set of stairs climbing the knoll in the center of the park. And on the top was the last pit stop, Tom, the other racers, and a battery of cameras. Barely conscious of the hysterically enraged yelling behind them - "NO! Not AGAIN! Not this time!" - Ariana charged the fountain. Nathan had said straight ahead, so straight ahead she would go. Side-by-side they vaulted the low concrete rim and landed in the calf-deep water, still charging ahead. Their boot soles didn't slip on the wet concrete basin as they plunged through three curtains of spray like gargantuan lawn sprinklers, too focused to notice the cold drenches. They leapt out of the fountain and raced for the first step. Jeremy's shout of pain as he tripped over the second spray fixture and fell in the fountain and dislocated a shoulder, and Garrett's fiery cursing as he slipped and whacked his shin hard enough to bruise the bone as he slipped while trying to jump out of the water, went unheard as they jumped onto the first step. Together, pumping arms brushing each other, they ascended the steps like angels preparing for takeoff as the other racers shouted approval. Lungs heaving and legs burning, their feet hit the mat simultaneously and they flailed desperately to keep from running right through Tom, who jumped back to save himself from the headlong lunge.
Tom stared at Nathan, and said flatly, "You're bleeding."
Nathan glanced down to where Tom was staring, and clamped his right hand over the deep slash on the inside of his left elbow, where crimson fluid spurted out to a jackhammer heartbeat. "Doesn't matter," he gasped.
Tom's smile ripped into television history as he yelled, "Ariana and Nathan, you are the winners of Celebrity Fantastic Race, are truly Team Number One for an incredible twelve of twelve times, and have won one million, two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars for HIV/AIDS research!"
Nathan turned to her, and only the word 'exultation' could describe his face. He had grabbed her waist and lifted her high in the air, where she had waved her arms wildly and shouted in joy and relief.
Then she had looked down into Nathan's intense grey eyes, and froze as she realized the man holding her effortlessly in the air wasn't a fan, or a teammate, or a friend, but a handsome, intelligent, devoted man whom she had just realized was cradling her scarred and battered heart in his capable, loving hands.
His eyes held only the naked truth that he loved her too, with every heartbeat that went with every inch of the last 30,000 miles.
He set her down, slowly, their eyes locked on each other, and their lips met.
The intensity of his need for her beguiled her body, and spun her head around. Visceral desire, shiny bright and molten hot, blossomed deep in her belly, setting her legs a-tremble. Feelings she had once thought safely banished to deep dungeons in her memory were suddenly tearing manacles out of walls and hammering down doors in a desperate rush of wanton freedom. If they had been alone, the only question would have been, which was closer, the floor or the bed. Gasping, the kiss finally dissolved, and they stared at each other for a moment, two wounded souls who had just discovered that, together, they were more than whole.
All she had wanted to do, desperately, was kiss him again, to see if the sensual tsunami battering her spirit was a fluke or just a hint of wonders to come. From the startled wonder in his eyes, her question was his own, and he wanted the answer just as badly, but as they came together, and her eyes were closing, she had seen a single crimson drop poised on his lower lip, and tasted the salt on her own, where a single thorn had made a tiny, stinging cut. Her blood on his lip.
