by Julia Kent
“I’ve seen pictures of him. The guy looks like Thor. Do I look like Thor?” Mike challenged.
Given his silver hair, bright blue eyes, and the fact that he was a good half a foot shorter than Thor, Jeremy had to say:
“No.”
“Then quit talking about how I’m not a billionaire.”
“Touchy,” Adam mumbled under his breath. Jeremy didn’t spend much time with Adam, who was on the road much of the year, representing the campground as he tried to expand brand marketing. Adam and Dan had hopes of creating a chain of campgrounds in the northeast.
Jeremy was quickly becoming fond of him, though.
“You want help unloading, or you want to needle me?”
“I want to beat you at Fallout 4.”
“Never gonna happen....” Mike had developed an insatiable desire for video games their first winter in Maine, stuck inside with nothing to do but have sex, watch television and play video games.
There was, apparently, a limit to how much sex you could have. Who knew?
“Laura and Josie are about to arrive,” Sandy said from behind him, making him jump and lose his grip on a box. His heart hammered in his chest. A little harder and it would thump against the cardboard.
“Aren’t they early?” Lydia asked, shoving some other box at Adam, who grunted as he shifted its weight in his arms.
“They want some girl time. They’re best friends,” Sandy explained with a smile. “Like you and Krysta, honey. Imagine if you had a double wedding with her.”
“And Caleb,” Jeremy muttered. Lydia whacked him, the clip hitting his kidney and making him yelp.
“Someone say my name?” Caleb said, his voice lower than normal. Caleb was the only fair-haired kid in the family, a young man who carried the slightly-haunted look of being the youngest brother in a family of six.
Jeremy swiveled and saw Caleb and Adam share a meaningful look. Sandy and Lydia eyed them with suspicion.
He hated all this nonverbal nonsense these Charles family members had going on. He’d never, ever understand what went unspoken between them. Too much history. Too much shared experience. Not that Jeremy minded being an outsider.
Most of the time.
But right now he wished he were part of the tribe, because the ratio of unspoken to spoken words was about a thousand to one.
“Hey,” Mike said, coming up from behind him and placing a hand on his shoulder. Mike’s face had changed over the years, tension easing. Spending most of their time in the middle of Nowhere, Maine, had led to a massive change in Mike. The ambition was still there, but channeled into places outside of business.
Mike had become a champion of Jeremy’s nonprofit efforts, but had turned much of his focus to fitness. First, his own, spending hours sea kayaking, running, mountain biking, and hiking. The three planned to hike the long Appalachian Trail sometime in the next two years, though Jeremy and Lydia had barely managed Maine’s largest peak, Mount Katahdin, without oxygen masks.
Mike’s deep interest—Lydia used the word “obsession” frequently—in fitness had morphed into a business idea. He was currently traveling to major fitness events, from Tough Mudder to Ironman Triathlons to cancer fundraising walks and runs to offer an integrated software solution that would tie together the most difficult management aspects of these events and make them seamless to run.
Awesome? Yes. Profitable? No.
And Mike had learned to be just fine with that.
“Hey, yourself. What’s up?” Jeremy couldn’t stop watching Lydia out of the corner of his eye, her shorts a little tight, her ass cheeks peeking out here and there as she stooped, bent, and stretched with the effort of unloading boxes. He needed to stop this, because pretty soon what he felt for Lydia was about to become as evident as a lobster lollipop in his pants.
“What’s this weekend really going to be like? Should we skip out?”
“Skip out?” Jeremy repeated, the words sounding stupid coming out of him as he watched Lydia. He suppressed a groan as she bent and stretched at the same time, the globe of one fine, round, ripe ass cheek aching for his hands.
His abs.
His co—
“Jesus, Jeremy, wipe off the drool,” Mike snapped. He followed Jeremy’s gaze and halted, mid-breath, seeing what distracted Jeremy.
He let out a low whistle.
Both men stood in silence, just eating up Lydia’s display, the seconds ticking by until she stood up, turned around, and flashed them a devilishly wicked grin that made it clear she knew damn well they’d been watching her.
She blew them a kiss.
They groaned in unison.
“Damn,” Mike muttered, shifting his hips as he stood. Jeremy willed himself to think about anything but that creamy ass.
“So, skip out?” Jeremy said in a choked voice. “We can’t. All hands on deck. Sandy and Pete need our help.”
“I mean right after. Plenty of townies want the paid time. We don’t need it. We can help and then disappear at the reception.” Mike’s expression changed from open admiration of Lydia’s warm form to something more troubled.
“Why?”
“Because Laura, Mike and Dylan are just like us. And this ‘wedding’ will stir up emotions between the three of us.”
“I am never, ever marrying you, Mike.”
Mike rolled those sapphire eyes, the blue so piercing it was like watching the Caribbean freeze into irises. “Didn’t ask you to. But see? You proved my point.”
“What point?” Lydia asked. Jeremy startled as she groped his ass. Hmmm. Like minds and all that. He took the gesture as an invitation to do the same. She winked.
He was getting some tonight...
“That the threesome wedding will stir up feelings between the three of us,” Mike answered. Jeremy admired his directness. The whole topic made him feel like he’d acquired a stutter and a bad case of hives.
“Of course it will. Does.” Lydia’s frank reply hung in the air between the three of them. Mike held her gaze. Jeremy looked at anything but the two of them.
“And those feelings are...?” Mike asked, drawing out the last word.
“Happiness for them? Irritation that Mom and Dad are bugging me to do the same? I don’t know,” she said, her voice mingling with a frustrated sigh. “I like our life. I like the way we live now. It’s taken a long time to adjust to being—” she flailed her hand between the two men “—like this. Why change anything?”
“What’s this?” Mike imitated her hand.
“This. Us. The give and take we have. The negotiation. The new and ever-changing boundaries. The trips and the staying home. The new house we built here. How Mom and Dad accept this weird relationship we’ve built, and some of the townspeople have, too. How some haven’t, and we deal with the unspoken anger and judgment from assholes who don’t matter. How some people who do matter turn out to be assholes—and I’ve lost them.” The torrent of words pouring out of her made Jeremy hold his breath. She felt so much more about this than he’d realized.
“I don’t want to ditch out early, though,” she said, her words coming out in a rush, as if she needed to say them fast so she believed them herself. “Mom and Dad need our help. Won’t be upset watching Laura, Mike and Dylan get married.” She gave them each a searching smile. “We make our relationship up as we go along. Just because another triad does something like this doesn’t mean we need to, also.”
Mike bridged the gap between his body and Lydia’s, holding the back of her head as he planted a kiss on her forehead. “You sure?” he murmured against her ear as he held her in a hug.
“Certain,” she said, breaking the embrace. Her eyes met Jeremy’s. “Unless you two feel differently?”
Jeremy shook his head. He didn’t have any words right now anyhow, and was thankful for basic neuro-motor functioning at this point.
Another delivery truck, this one emblazoned with a florist’s logo on the side, kicked up dust on the camp road. One of the new f
lock of chickens squawked, useless wings flapping. Sandy had added free-range chickens to the campground, and to the delight of all the small kids, the chickens integrated themselves into campground life like domesticated pets.
The rooster was damn annoying, but a necessity for the new crop of Rhode Island Red chicks next year.
Lydia broke away from them and jogged up to it, giving Jeremy’s eyes something to follow.
“She really believes what she’s saying,” Mike said, admiring her, too, his arms folding over his chest.
“You don’t think she means it?” Jeremy’s voice sounded like a monkey going through puberty.
“I think she thinks she means it. But after this wedding’s over, we’re going to have some serious reckoning.”
Mike’s phone buzzed in his pants, interrupting their talk, and as Mike took the call and trailed off, talking about century mountain bike races, Jeremy’s mouth went dry, his pulse sped up, and he felt like the world had become covered with a fine layer of electrified cotton.
Weddings gave him the willies for a reason.
Chapter Eight
Laura
“What the hell is that?” Josie squeaked as Laura pressed the brake a little harder than needed. The car lurched lightly, just enough to make her seatbelt snap. The two goggled at an enormous billboard. After driving up to Portland, picking up Josie and meeting her crazy Ohio family, and leaving a sad Alex there for one more day to sightsee, Laura was excited. The billboard upped the ante.
“We found it,” she marveled, eyeing the giant...starfish? dolphin? whale? thing...that was hand-painted on a billboard that said:
Escape Shores Campground
Come Escape With Us!
The lettering was a child’s work, with professionally-designed signs added for clarity. Laura’s tight stomach loosened.
“That’s a unique sign,” Josie said with a chuckle. “No question about the family atmosphere here. But someone needs extensive art lessons.”
A little more of Laura’s stress released itself as they drove slowly—5 miles per hour, per all the signs littering the road—and she took in as many details as she could while driving. Some of the greenery held berries. Were they edible? And the cabins all seemed to have tiny, fenced-off gardens, big green leaves indicating kale and other hardy greens still thriving. A child’s bike, on its side and abandoned, rested in a thatch of overgrown grass.
The road they were on was long and curved slightly, with auxiliary roads cutting off at various angles from it. She saw cabins and RVs, thick, sturdy tents on platforms, and supply buildings with golf carts parked in front of them.
Unrolling her window, she heard the hush-hush-hush of the ocean in the distance, the nose of the car guiding her toward it.
“Where are all the people?”
“We’re it,” Laura explained. “They cleared out almost everyone so we could do this in private.”
“Right. I know that. But I mean—where are the owners? And the workers?”
Laura shrugged. They drove on, Laura impressed by an artist’s cottage, a tiny playground made of nothing but carefully placed fallen trees and stumps, and a series of fruit-bearing bushes.
“We’re sleeping in sheds?” Josie’s reaction as they drove down the rutted campground road was amusing. Each campsite was carefully designed to flow with the rest of the natural landscape, yet to confer some sense of boundaries. Larger cabins mixed in with what looked like garden tool sheds. A picnic table and a fire pit graced each campsite. Josie was right. The sheds looked like something you’d buy at a home improvement store to house your lawn mower.
She wondered what it would be like to sleep in one.
“We talked about this! We’re renting the entire campground for the weekend,” Laura reminded her. “We have a mix of housing options.”
“What about those nice houses? I want one of those.”
“You and Alex get a nice cabin. Me, Mike, Dylan and the kids get one, too. The sheds are for other guests. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried. I just don’t want to fight mosquitoes the night before my own wedding. Scratching my ass as part of sex is one thing. Doing it because of a bug bite is another.”
“So romantic, Josie. So, so romantic.”
The two shared a smile, the sparring a joke. Laura’s heart had lightened when she’d picked up Josie, leaving Mike and Dylan to manage the three kids. Cyndi had recovered and brought her niece, Ellie, to help out. The entire entourage would follow tomorrow morning. Mike and Dylan swore they didn’t need more than a day to acclimate. Everyone had agreed that there was no need for bachelor and bachelorette parties, Alex and Josie shuddering oddly at the thought, her mother’s name thrown out a few times.
Laura knew the story and respected it. She was too tired for a crazy, late-night, alcohol-drenched party, and anyhow, if she could have some man’s crotch in a G-string dangled in front of her face, she’d rather it be Dylan or Mike.
Or both.
Distracted by that pleasant thought, she ambled right on by the registration building, which appeared to be a combination camp store/office. Turning left to swing around, she smiled as a playground came into sight.
What a sweet little place. A haven. She’d have to give Madge a triple-extra hug for suggesting it.
“It looks so quaint. Like something out of a Hallmark Channel movie,” Josie said, an amused smile twitching on her lips. “Like half the towns back in Ohio.”
“Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?” Laura asked as she parked in front of the building, taking in the rustic details. She’d spoken on the phone a hundred times with Sandy, one of the campground’s owners and Madge’s daughter. Sandy had been gracious and lovely, but also whip-smart efficient, just like her mom.
As they climbed out of the car, Laura took a deep breath to center herself. When she’d picked up Josie in Portland she’d been half mad, overwhelmed to the point of irritability and so anxious she just wanted to lie down and stare at the sky for a year or so. The two-hour drive north had soothed her, Josie’s non-stop chatter about her mother’s shenanigans and something about killing Darla like returning to baseline.
Having a day and a half away from her own little family was going to be a relief. It already was, even if it had meant driving for more than six hours. Funny how her ideas of “downtime” had changed since having kids. A road trip like this would have been exhausting and exhilarating in the past.
Now it was just a break.
Here they were, at Escape Shores Campground in tiny Verily, Maine. As they’d driven through the tiny town center, their GPS cutting out on them as it lost the signal, Laura circling the town center twice before finding the right road, she’d found herself entranced. The ski resort where she and the guys and the kids now lived wasn’t exactly in the middle of a city, but it was a very short drive to every bit of major chain-store shopping you could need, and about an hour’s drive out of Boston.
Verily, Maine was a dot on a map by comparison. Town hall, post office, general store, a coffee shop, a few straggling diners, and an ice cream shop were all she could count, though she was sure there was more. Blink and you miss it.
It made her smile, wide, as she took in the campground and let her feelings wash over her. Skin tingling, blood rushing to the surface, her deep breaths absorbed the ocean air, layers of muscle and tendon letting themselves go.
This was perfect.
“I wonder if they have decent coffee,” Josie said, her voice carrying on a sudden gust of wind. She was gawking, taking in her surroundings, though Laura could tell it was with a different eye. Josie was wondering how on earth they were going to keep her mother occupied in a boring little setting like this.
Laura didn’t even have to ask if she was right.
“Laura?” The familiar female voice made her turn, the breeze blowing a thick patch of her own loose hair into her eyes, Smoothing it away, she saw an older woman with dark hair coming toward them. Laura’s eye caug
ht a cluster of apple trees behind her, the branches pregnant with ripe fruit ready to be plucked and eaten.
She took another deep breath in as she and Sandy shook hands, the older woman’s smile radiant, the eyes tight with stress.
“So good to finally meet you!” Sandy said, pulling Laura in for a hug. The unexpected affection only added to Laura’s increasing calmness. This wedding was going to be good. They had made the right choice.
After pulling Josie into an equally warm hug, Josie’s eyes popping out comically in surprise at the gesture, Sandy led them into the camp office. An iPad on a stand stood next to a cash register. The place sold a little bit of everything, from tweezers to fire starters to knitting kits. Neat and orderly, clean as can be, it radiated old-fashioned charm.
Except for that iPad.
“How are you girls doing? Drive up here okay?” Sandy gestured to a coffee machine, Josie’s face taking on a grateful expression as she picked a flavor and fired up the machine.
“It was fine.” A large, white truck ambled by slowly, catching Laura’s attention. Catering truck. “How are the preparations?”
Sandy’s smile widened and she pointed to an enormous bulletin board above a desk, covered with sticky notes in various colors. “It’s going very well. We’ve got everything covered. You girls don’t have to worry about a thing. Just the marrying part.” She winked.
“Alex said we should be fine with a marriage certificate and cross-state issues,” Josie said as she stirred cream into her new cup of coffee. A tug on Laura’s heart made her hold her breath for a split second.
That was one detail she, Mike and Dylan didn’t need to worry about.
Sandy nodded. “Can’t help you there, but we have all the centerpieces, table cloths, food, flowers...” she ticked off various items with her fingers, laughing when she reached more than ten.
“You’ve got it all handled,” Laura marveled. “Thank you so, so much.”
“No, dear. Thank you! Our sons Adam and Dan have been pushing us to do more large-scale events for a long time, and they say this is going to be great for growing our business.”
“I guess we should all thank Madge, then,” Josie said.
