by Lissa Linden
A sexy, summer camp-set reunion romance from debut author Lissa Linden
When Amy left her beloved summer camp, heartbroken and ashamed, she swore she’d never return. Twelve years later, she’s desperate to unearth the person she was before turning into a workaholic. When her old camp advertises for a new director, Amy leaps at the chance to start over—only to find herself face-to-face with the very guy who broke her heart.
Paul hasn’t forgotten kissing Amy beneath a shooting star, or how she bolted from camp without saying goodbye. When she shows up to take the job he never thought he’d leave, Paul can hardly believe his luck. Amy is now a woman with killer curves and a sexual appetite to match. With serious vibes between them, and him nearly dead from the celibacy of life at camp, they strike a deal for a few days of sexy fun in the wilderness.
But when feelings that started long ago enter the mix and it becomes clear Amy will only trust him with her body—not her heart—Paul desperately wants to break through the armor she’s built to protect herself. And although Amy knows there’s something special about the way she reacts to Paul, something beyond skin on skin, the stakes are high enough to scare her.
With a past like theirs, they’ll either ignite a future…or burn out for good.
This book is approximately 78,000 words
One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!
Edited by Kerri Buckley
Dedication
For all the former campers and counselors out there, and for my husband, who was neither, but is everything to me.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter One
It’s quiet. The kind of quiet I haven’t heard in years. The kind that we never get in the city.
They. That they never get in the city. I take the last swig of my fancy coffee and savor it, letting it roll over my tongue and down my throat like it actually still tastes good after my two-hour drive. Like it isn’t just my last tie to the life I’m leaving behind.
I slam the driver’s side door closed and a couple of birds fly out of a tree. One of them chirps as they circle each other before disappearing into the greenery of the old cedar that towers over the rec hall.
“Hey, old friend,” I say. As though the tree can hear me. As though a bunch of trees and cabins actually thought about me as much as I once thought about them. As if they’d been wondering what had happened to the girl who used to joke that she’d sneak into the trees and build a home from nothing more than the forest itself whenever the bus showed up to take us home.
But trees don’t think. Not about me. Not about any of us. If they did, they’d know where I’d gone. Why I’d left. Why even after more than a decade away, I’m only here because I needed out, camp needed a new director, and my life in the city finally turned my stomach more than my memories of this place.
Old habit leads me around the side of the rec hall. I have the critter-proof garbage can open before I stop to think about which latch goes where. The remnants of milk froth and syrup splatter a brand-new garbage bag, already in place and waiting for the first wave of kids to arrive in a week, all hopped up on their summer vacation adrenaline.
I’d always heard that the first camp of the year was the worst. Kids running in circles after sitting at desks for ten months. Kids stumbling across—and into—wasps’ nests. Kids everywhere. Doing everything. Making messes and memories.
Which actually doesn’t sound very different from the drunken wedding parties I’ve spent the last five years corralling. I’m even hopeful that there’ll be less vomit. Maybe even fewer tears.
I pull my car keys from the back pocket of my jean shorts and press the button to lock the doors. The alarm beeps and my breath hitches. I didn’t even register that noise in the city. It was just one more blip in a land of horns, buses, and yelling people. But here, it’s out of place. Like me. Who has turned into such a city girl that I set the alarm on my hatchback when I’m a half hour up a one-way logging road, with only the soon-to-be-departing camp director anywhere in the vicinity.
I raise a hand to shield my eyes and look across the playing field, toward the camp director’s year-round residence. But my palm is no match for a sun unfiltered by high-rises and awnings. “God dammit.” I blink away the burning. Move the sunglasses I’d been using as a headband onto my face, and slip a hair tie off my wrist to gather my hair into a messy ponytail.
I avoid looking at the cabins as I force my feet forward, down the stairs that separate the upper camp’s bunks and rec hall from the lower camp’s dining hall, playing field, and small mountain lake. There’s no need to look behind me. I know they’re there. Cabin 5, where I spent some of the best summers of my life. Cabin 7, where I’d smiled into the darkness. Wished my dreams true. And cried so hard I threw up.
My stomach turns when my feet hit the gravel at the bottom of the wide stairs. I’ve sat here so many times. Listening to announcements. Finding out what the camp director had planned for us that day. I turn to face the stairs and try to picture a hundred sets of eyes looking back at me. Waiting for me to tell them what’s on the docket. Trusting me to give them the best weeks of their summer. I scuff my feet in the dust to hide the fact that I bought my hiking boots yesterday.
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing my shoulders down from around my ears. When I’m no longer wearing my shoulders like some kind of football padding, I lock my gaze on the camp director’s house. My house. I order my feet to move and don’t let them stop until I’m at the door. A lazy woof greets my knock and I step off the front stoop to wait.
The camp director from my days here was a man clinging to middle age and clothes he’d outgrown a decade earlier. I back away farther and turn toward the lake in case this guy shares a similar penchant for patchouli and chest hair. Hell, it could still be Bobcat behind that door, wearing the same incense-scented camp regalia for all I know. I was too focused on clearing out my apartment and getting the heck out of Dodge to ask for anything more than the vital information, which amounted to how soon could I get there, and how long could I stay.
The front door opens with a groan and a cold nose hits my inner thigh. I jump and a German Shepherd–looking dog runs a circle around me. He pauses at my feet and reels me in with his decidedly un-shepherd-like floppy ears. I reach down to ruffle them. “Hi, boy. Nice to meet you.”
>
“Hey,” a gruff voice says from behind me. “You must be Amelia.”
I give the dog one last scratch and turn to the current camp director with the easy smile that can only follow the complete stress relief of petting a dog. But I can’t make it stick when I see him.
Years have chiseled out his cheekbones and grown his hair. He’s barefoot and jeans hang low on his hips, a vintage camp shirt is pulled tight across his chest and arms, showing off the muscles I’d seen hints of when we were sixteen.
Paul fucking Harding.
And he’s as gorgeous as I always thought he was, standing there being all manlike.
But I’m ten, and he’s sharing his cookies with me at campfire after I refused my own.
I’m twelve and he’s sitting with his back pressed against mine so the assholes can’t snap my bra.
I’m sixteen and sprinting from my cabin, not making it to the bathroom before I retch through my brokenhearted sobs.
I roll my shoulders and crack my knuckles, banishing a memory with each pop of cartilage until I’m none of those things. Until I’m twenty-eight and a pro at pretending I have my shit together. I pluck my oversized sunglasses from my face and hook them on the scoop neck of my tank top.
“Actually,” I say, “it’s Amy.”
Chapter Two
It’s not like I expected Fred to send a picture of the new camp director along with his quick FYI email that she’d be showing up for training, but holy shit. He could have given me at least some warning that I probably shouldn’t be free-balling it when she arrived.
“Hey,” I manage to croak out. The words are directed toward where her thighs disappear into her perfect shorts. There aren’t many times I’ve been jealous of the things my dog sticks his nose into, but this time, Chuck had the right idea. “You must be Amelia.”
She turns at the sound of my voice, but doesn’t say anything. I can’t tell what’s going on behind her sunglasses, but my body responds anyway. The hair on my arms stands on end just thinking that she might be raking her eyes over me.
I run through the Latin names for edible plants in an attempt to keep my hair the only thing that stands up under her gaze.
This. This is why I have to get out of here. Why I turned in my resignation just three weeks before camp started. Five years with only my hand and the infrequent townie hookups have turned me into a teenager. Worse, actually, because my dick actually knows what it’s missing.
My eyes follow her hand to her chest when she hangs her sunglasses from her curve-hugging tank top. I look up before she can catch me, and it’s all I can do to hold eye contact when she stands up straight and her boobs strain against the cotton ribbing. “Actually,” she says, “it’s Amy.”
She says it like a declaration—like it should mean something to me. My brain stalls. Reboots. And all the images I could never forget load at once. Her hair’s not as dark as it is now, and her curves aren’t as defined, but she’s there, over and over. Hiking a few steps in front of me. Winning the biggest-splash competition. Lying next to me on the field behind where she’s currently standing, looking at the stars with one eye and the kids playing flashlight tag with the other, while both of mine are stuck firmly on her.
“Holy shit. Amy-bo-bamy!” I jump from the front stoop without bothering with the steps and wrap my arms around her. She grips me for a second and her laugh vibrates against my chest, but she stiffens without warning and drops her arms from my back. I take a step away and run a hand through my hair. “Sorry. They say people start to act like their dogs, and, well, you saw how Chuck likes to greet people. But hey, at least I didn’t lick your thigh or something.”
She cocks her head and raises her eyebrows. “Do you want to lick my thigh?”
I shove my hands into the front pockets of my pants and she drops her eyes, stalling halfway between my face and her boots.
I clear my throat. “Let’s try this again. Hi, Amy, my old friend. I’m greeting you from a totally respectable distance given the fact that we haven’t seen each other in ten years and—”
“Twelve.”
“What’s that?”
She flicks her eyes to mine, then back to her boots. “It’s been twelve years.”
“Well, crap,” I say like I don’t know exactly how long it’s been—like it’s no big deal that she remembers, too. “We have some catching up to do.”
She makes a noncommittal noise. “So. You’re the current camp director.”
I smile. “Sure am.”
“And you’re leaving, right? Just after the first session starts?”
“Yeah. Unless you need me to stay on. I told Fred I could stay for the full first camp if—”
“No.” She shakes her head. “It’s ten days. Just ten more days. I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, this place is pretty much a time warp. Not a whole lot has changed since we were campers. I mean, we added a ropes course when I started here five years ago, and I’ve started some of my own things that you could take or leave, but really, you should be able to run this place on nostalgia alone.”
She shakes her head so slightly that I wouldn’t have noticed if her ponytail hadn’t bounced with the movement. “Right,” she says. “That means I won’t be needing much training. So, I can show myself around. I’ll let you know if I have any questions. Just wanted to let you know I was here.”
Amy’s nearly out of the yard before I find the voice I couldn’t shut up just seconds ago. “Wait. Don’t you want to come in? I mean, to drop off your stuff.”
She pauses. “What do you mean, ‘drop off my stuff’?”
I lean on the doorjamb. “You know, whatever you brought up with you. I’ve moved into the guest room, so the master is all yours.”
Her shoulders creep up and her voice is colder than a morning jump into the lake. “There’s no way I can stay in there.”
My fingers work their way through Chuck’s fur. “Not a fan of dogs?”
Her chest heaves with a deep breath. “Dogs are great. But I’ll stay in the rec hall for now.”
I pat my chest and Chuck stands on his hind legs, paws on my shoulders. He licks my face and I grin. “Why would you choose to be alone in a tiny staff bedroom with a shitty camp bed over our company and actual springs?”
“I don’t expect you to get it.” She turns her back to me. “Not then. Not now.”
The cold bitterness of her voice hangs in the air as she crosses the field and climbs the stairs without looking back. Chuck makes his awkward dismount and I usher him back into the house.
I bang my head against the closed door like it will pound my jumbled thoughts into something concrete. Because I don’t get why she walked away right now, and I definitely didn’t understand when she ditched me on our last night as counselors in training—why she refused to talk to me the next day. All I could get from the kids in her cabin was that Amy was sick. But she wasn’t sick. She wasn’t in the medical room, and she hadn’t been sent home early, like that summer we were ten and she woke up with chicken pox.
I’d been on the dock, getting ready for my third session at camp—the first time I’d stayed for four weeks straight—when I saw her load her pack into the luggage compartment and climb onto the bus. I would have recognized her white shorts and red boots from space. So I ran around the lake, sprinted across the field, and yelled her name loud enough to startle some kid who never quite warmed to me in the weeks that followed.
I could swear she paused—that she almost waited for me. That she almost gave me the chance my legs were clamoring for. Her email address, or phone number, or whatever else would keep us connected outside of camp. But her pause was nothing more than a stutter, and the doors closed behind her before I could stop them.
And now, twelve years later, she still won’t talk to me.
And she’s right.
I didn’t get it then, and I sure as hell don’t get it now.
Chapter Three
I drop my pack onto the
single bed and flop onto the thin foam mattress next to it. My groan reverberates off the walls of the boxlike staff bedroom.
Of course it had to be him. Of all the people who’ve come through here in the sixty-year history of this camp—of all the people who love this place enough to call it home—it had to be Paul.
And me.
Not like there had ever been a Paul and me. Not at camp. Not at home. Not ever.
I tug the elastic from my hair and stare at the ceiling, like the spiders in the corner will somehow tell me how I’m supposed to get through ten more days with Paul fucking Harding and his arms. Those stupid, work-toned arms that squeezed me just right. And, dammit, that hard back I’d rubbed under my palms. Not to mention another hardness that was probably his keys. Or his wallet. Or something completely un-penis-related.
“And then I asked him if he wanted to lick my thigh. What the hell is wrong with me?” I ask the spiders. They don’t move, so I tear myself off the bed and dig through my pack. The lake is going to be chilly, and plunging into that water is better than any cold shower here, unless the water pressure has somehow managed to double in the last decade. And I need blinding cold to freeze out the images of his tousled hair and the way his eyes crinkled when he grinned. The memory of how those jeans rubbed against my thighs and how I’d forgotten, just for a second, how repulsed I should be by him. That in that second I’d wanted to grip whatever was pressing into my stomach and hoped to hell it wasn’t key-shaped.
