Chapter 2
Four weeks later…
Kaci Boudreaux might’ve been born with the face of a Southern belle and the brain of a quantum physicist, but she had the heart of a redneck. And today, for the first time in too long, that heart was in hog heaven.
Twenty feet down the way, the macho team from Gellings Air Force Base pulled the lever to release their catapult.
A satisfying thwack of wood and springs bounced through the air, followed by the even more satisfying crunch of a pumpkin exploding upon takeoff. Orange innards soared a measly twenty feet beneath the crisp October sky and rained down on the dry grass.
She whooped—a good ol’ rebel yell—and high-fived Zada Koury, her team’s student captain. “We got this, ladies!”
The Gellings team had one more pumpkin left to chuck in the fall festival today, but their catapult had too much torque, and the gourds didn’t have the surface tension necessary to withstand the force of the air pressure that came with the launch velocity.
There wasn’t a pumpkin in the world with skin thick enough to survive being launched off that thing.
Kaci would’ve loved to see it loaded down with a watermelon, or maybe a cannonball—man, that thing would probably give a boulder wings—but she was more excited about pending victory.
Her students, all ladies from the Physics Club at James Robert College, were about to be the first all-female team in the history of the Gellings Fall Fest to take home first place in pumpkin-chucking. And for tossing a gourd over a third of a mile at that.
If there was one thing Kaci Boudreaux knew, it was how to design a catapult. She’d nearly gotten herself a juvie record with that knowledge. But Ichabod, the catapult her team had entered, had been completely designed and built by the students.
“This means no homework for a month, right, Dr. Boudreaux?” Jess Peterson, a freshman who’d jumped right into the Physics Club with both feet at the start of the semester, flashed an impish grin.
“Why would I deprive anyone of the fun of physics homework? I’m fixin’ to treat all y’all to some ice cream though.”
The military boys were loading up their last shot. One of them snickered. Another shoved a third. Three more huddled over their pumpkin, rubbing it and whispering.
The judge said something to them, and all eight or nine backed up. Two of them wiped their hands on their pants.
“This is it,” Zada whispered.
Kaci’s team crowded together.
“Think it’ll break again, Dr. Boudreaux?” Jess said.
“Darn near certainty.” Kaci pointed to the catapult.
“See how tight they’ve got it wound down?
” She geeked out, rattling physics principles and design theories until she realized she’d lost them, then fell silent and waited for that beautiful sound of wood cracking and pumpkin crunching into pie in the sky.
One of the guys pulled the release, and the catapult sprang straight with that perfect, reverberating ka-THUD!
But there was no accompanying squish.
No pumpkin guts.
Just a beautiful orange gourd slicing through the blue sky, a perfect arc, perfect height, perfect angle, perfect speed.
“Nuh-uh,” Kaci whispered.
“Wow,” one of the girls murmured.
“That can’t beat us, can it?” Zada said.
The black-shirted boys were all hollering, arms up, fists pumping, chest-bumping each other like Neanderthals.
Their pumpkin started its descent to the ground, a pinprick in the distance, too far away for the satisfying crunch of smashing pumpkin on impact.
And the boys were still hollering.
“That thing went a mile!”
“Did it land on the road?”
“If it did, that road’s sprouting pumpkins next spring.”
Zada angled closer to Kaci, her brown eyes thick with worry. “That went at least as far as ours, didn’t it?”
It didn’t make sense.
That pumpkin should’ve been guts on the ground before it ever took flight.
“Y’all did great,” Kaci said to the team. “I am so proud of every single one of you.”
“Great magic formula, Thumper,” one of the guys crowed.
Several others hushed him.
The judge, a pretty lady in her mid-forties, winked at him.
The head judge’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Two thousand eighty-six feet,” he announced.
The black-shirted bandits all erupted in deafening shouts.
The best Ichabod had done for Kaci’s girls was a penny past two thousand.
Those boys had just beaten her girls by eighty feet.
“But—but…” Jess mumbled.
Given the materials, height, and leverage mechanism those danged military guys had used to construct their pumpkin chucker, not to mention the launch velocity and the way they’d cranked the arm down even lower for the last shot, it should’ve been physically impossible.
It was physically impossible.
Unless—
The rubbing.
They’d put something on the pumpkin to keep it from exploding on takeoff.
They’d lubricated it to reinforce the skin.
And the judge had seen them do it.
She’d winked at them.
Kaci’s blood vaporized and her temper spiked madder than a wet bumblebee.
She didn’t mind losing. But she minded losing to cheaters, especially when her students were being robbed of a prize they’d not only earned but needed. She had a hair up her butt to show those cheaters just how redneck she could be.
If Kaci had learned anything from her mother, Miss Mississippi and second runner-up in the Miss USA pageant, it was the power and advantage of chin up, shoulders back, and belle them to death first.
Then they’d never see the redneck coming.
“Y’all stay here and get Ichabod hitched up to the Jeep,” she said.
She wanted to charge headfirst like a bull over the trampled fairground grass to show those macho, cheating dingbats how this lady handled problems. Instead she put a sway in her stride and a smile on her lips while she approached the other team.
The team’s shirts all bore the logo for the Wild Hogs, Gellings Air Force Base’s 946th Airlift Squadron. Military men in general made her twitch—especially lately—but flyers were enough to induce a seizure.
“Excuse me, gentlemen.” She stopped at the edge of their group and ran her finger down the closest one’s arm.
Eight close-cropped heads swiveled in her direction, and all their backslapping and pompous self-congratulations over their victory trickled to a stop.
She curved her lips into a coy smile. “I just wanted to say that y’all did a spectacular job today.
I have never seen a pumpkin sprout wings like that.
” She batted her lashes. Lull them into safety, then get them to admit they cheated so they’d be disqualified.
“Y’all must be so strong. And smart. Me and my impressionable young friends would love some pointers on how we could get our poor little thingie over there to work half as good as yours. ”
The one with the aviator sunglasses flashed a wolfish grin. “Well, miss, it’s all in getting the right torque.”
“And a really good pumpkin,” the fresh-faced one added with a snicker.
She treated him to a smile and a subtle tug on her pink V-neck, exposing the barest hint of cleavage. Four of the men went slack-jawed. Three more angled closer to her.
The young pups were so easy. They had a few years on her girls—couldn’t be pilots without a good bit of schooling—but she doubted any one of them was pushing thirty.
“Y’all got a magic pumpkin?” she whispered.
“Close—” The fresh-faced one’s voice came out on a prepubescent squeak. He cleared his throat and covered with a wink. “Close enough, miss.”
“No magic pumpkin,” Aviator Sunglasses said. “We’ve got something better.”
No magic pumpkin, her ass. And she’d bet anything his something better was Vaseline or beer rubbed all over its skin. She fluttered her lashes while glancing at the pop cans, rags, and tools scattered about the ground. Had they used Coke?
“We’re just a poor group of college kids doing our best on a small budget and limited brains,” she lied. “We’d love to hear more about your methods.”
Such an easy half lie to tell. And for a good cause.
Her girls were mostly second- and third-year students who had been busting their tails designing and building Ichabod since they’d all come out to the fall festival and observed the competition last year.
They’d lost sleep, boyfriends, and weekends for this.
Every last one of them was on a scholarship or financial aid of some kind, and half of them worked part-time jobs to keep their heads above water.
And these men had cheated their way to the top and robbed Kaci’s girls of splitting prize money that would’ve gone a long way toward next semester’s books for each of them.
Not to mention the publicity of having an all-girls team win. Too few women believed they were smart enough to go into science and technology careers.
She tugged her shirt a millimeter lower. “We’d be most grateful if y’all would be willing to share a few pointers with little ol’ us.”
The flyers all shared a glance.
A guilty glance, in her opinion.
“Sorry, miss, but it’s proprietary,” the fresh-faced one said.
She fluttered a hand to her chest. “Oh, that kind of proprietary?” she whispered.
“What kind of proprietary?” a new voice said.
She turned. A tall, lanky, dark-eyed man with barely-within-regs jet-black hair had his legs spread and his arms crossed while he stared her down.
He was in the same black T-shirt as the rest of the crew but, unlike his buddies, he had his dark gaze trained on her eyes with an authority and a confidence that seemed to be daring her to look away.
Her stomach dropped.
Bad enough they’d taken her girls’ trophy.
But he was on their team? Mr. Kiss-and-Run? Mr. In-Town-Today-Only? Mr. Left-her-with-his-tab?
This was so not her day.
She subtly shifted her posture to make her breasts stand perkier and waved a hand at the fresh-faced guy. Hell if she’d let this flyboy see her sweat. “I was just asking your boss here if you strong, capable men might be able to help my little ol’ group make our pumpkin thrower thingie better.”