Ruth tsked. "Ollie is exaggerating. The black eye is true, but Cody had no trouble chewing."
"Tell me, Ollie," I said, "what did Eve think of all that?"
He scrunched his face and puckered his lips in a silentoooh. "She was royally pissed. Told both of them to take a hike. She even banned them from the resort for life."
A man with salt-and-pepper hair, whom I'd met but whose name I'd forgotten, jumped up and waved his arms. "It's nature hike time!"
He spun toward the dining hall doorway. Everyone else looked in that direction too.
Eve stood there with an enormous backpack slung over one shoulder. She'd switched her sneakers for hiking boots. "That's right. I've got the bug spray and sunscreen, plus bottled water. Are you guys ready to go?"
Her guests nodded. Some shouted, "Yes!"
"We're heading to the lake, so grab a quick shower first. Don't want to spread any germs, do we?"
"Evie's a germophobe," Ollie quipped, grinning at our hostess.
"Ha-ha. It's resort policy, as everyone knows, and good hygiene. Let's meet up outside."
Guests started to move toward the door.
"Remember the shoes, people!" Ollie shouted. "You want blisters? I sure don't. And does anybody remember the Great Barefoot Disaster of last summer?"
The entire group hurried past Eve, headed for their rooms to retrieve their shoes, leaving me alone with our hostess.
"Do you want shoes?" she asked.
"It's probably a wise choice. Mine are in your house."
She turned and waved for me to follow. "Let's go get them. We'll meet the gang outside."
While we walked back to Eve's house, I asked, "What was the Great Barefoot Disaster?"
"Last summer, the Kitten Brigade decided to go barefoot on a nature hike." Eve winced. "They didn't see the ant colony until it was too late. Velvety tree ants were nesting under a rock. One of the girls tripped over it. Those ants bite if you disturb their nest."
I grimaced. "That must have been unpleasant."
"Since then, nobody goes into the woods without shoes."
Once I'd rinsed off in the shower and put my shoes on, Eve and I met up with the others in the area between the guest house and Eve's home.
"Everyone all sprayed up and sunscreened?" Eve asked.
The group nodded.
"I've got extra if you need it," she said. "Aloe and antihistamine spray too, just in case."
"You're a worrier," I said.
"I've been hosting nudists for five years. It's experience, not worrying."
Eve led us past the miniten net and down a trail into the woods. I took the backpack from her, despite her eye roll when I did it. We ambled down the trail with Eve pointing out various flowers and bushes, explaining what they were and how they fit into the ecosystem. She pointed out birds too, as well as smaller creatures on the ground. I couldn't focus on anything she said. The sight of her round ass moving, stretching her shorts with every sway of her hips, distracted me.
I had to keep imagining ants attacking my dick to prevent a hard-on.
Fifteen minutes later, we reached a small lake. Eve instructed me and Ollie to set out the picnic blankets she'd somehow stuffed into her backpack along with everything else. She unpacked bottles of water and a plastic box filled with single-serve bags of potato chips and tiny pink cakes nestled in a smaller plastic box with wax paper separating them.
She'd brought a snack for us. The woman thought of everything.