by Anna Katmore
“Are you cold?” Greyson asks me when I keep rubbing my upper arms to warm them. “I’m sure Justin can lend you his jacket for the walk back.”
“There’s no need,” I tell him politely but scowl at Justin at the same time to stop any stupid ideas. From his stern look, he wasn’t thinking about it anyway.
At the next cold slap from the wind, I do start to envy Julie and Justin for bringing jackets, however. Greyson seems to be just fine in his T-shirt.
My chin dipped low to watch the path in the dark, I hear the boys whispering behind me and get a bad feeling.
“What?” Justin snaps at Greyson under his breath, but not low enough for Julie and me not to hear.
“She’s cold,” hisses Greyson.
Then a few illegible words are whispered, and finally Justin snorts. “All right, I get it, Grey,” he growls and comes forward to flank me. I don’t look up, but a second later, a warm hoodie is draped around my shoulders. Wearing Justin’s clothes is the last thing I want tonight, so I shrug, irritated. He only grabs my shoulders tight and holds the damn hoodie in place. “If you drop it,” he drawls a warning in my ear, “I’ll throw you over my shoulder, carry you to the frog pond, and dump you in the water.”
My gaze snaps to him in shock. His tilted eyebrows say that he means it. Fuming inwardly, I seal my lips and keep walking but angle away from him. He’s such an idiot, and someone should slap Greyson for getting me in this awkward situation in the first place.
But the annoying shivers from the cold wind stop when the warmth of the worn hoodie encloses me, and suddenly I can’t be mad at either of them anymore. Gripping the sides, I wrap it tighter around me. A soft smell creeps up my nostrils. It fills my head with images of Justin pressing me against the wall in our cabin. I don’t want to be swamped with that right now, not when he’s walking so close beside me. With a hard swallow and a shake of my head, I abandon those thoughts.
Relief floods me when the three huts come into sight, just as a couple of raindrops land on my nose. I pick up my pace, skipping up the steps to the shelter of our porch. Julie is right by my side. She thanks the guys for taking us. I just mumble, “Good night,” and turn to walk inside.
“Chloe!” My hand is already on the doorknob when Justin’s tight voice makes me freeze. Warily, I pivot. Standing on the bottom step of our porch, he holds out his hand. “My hoodie.”
Oh, right. I pull it off my shoulders and toss it at him. His lips curled up in a small smile, he bites out, “Thank you.” Then he turns and walks off, his hair quickly getting wet in the falling rain.
“Night, girls,” Greyson says and hurries after him.
As Julie and I walk inside and she locks the door behind us, she cuts me an amused glance over her shoulder and teases, “Still not calling dibs on Justin?”
“No,” I snarl with a serious frown at her. Then I grab my pajama shorts and head into the bathroom.
Chapter 5
Justin
Greyson and I jog through the woods. The path is quickly soaking up the rain and turning into a mud fest. We’re both drenched and dripping when we reach the boys’ side of camp. Leaving our dirty shoes on the porch, we stumble into the cabin, and I hurry to get out of my wet tee.
“Boy, what a downpour,” my roomie says as I rub myself dry with a towel and put on a fresh T-shirt and sweats.
“Yeah, didn’t see that one coming.” Barefoot, I cross to the bathroom and brush my teeth.
“Hey, was it just my imagination, or did you shoot your own warning to hell tonight?” Greyson calls to me.
I look up and stare at my reflection in the mirror above the sink as I answer around the toothbrush in my mouth, “What do you mean?”
“Chloe.” When he pauses, I glance over my shoulder out the door. He’s standing in the middle of the cabin, questioning eyes on me. “You said I shouldn’t get involved, but then you kind of got up close and personal with her real fast.”
I roll my eyes, bend forward, and spit into the sink before I rinse my mouth. Wiping my face, I speak into the soft terrycloth. “I didn’t get personal with her.”
When Greyson comes into the bathroom to brush his teeth too, I leave and sit down on the edge of my bed. Clasping the towel as I lean forward, bracing my elbows on my thighs, I turn my head. “We were having an argument when you and Julie came back.”
Standing in the doorway, squeezing some toothpaste onto his yellow toothbrush, he locks gazes with me. “An argument?”
“Yes. An intense one.” I smirk, because I know how that must sound. Grey laughs about it as he disappears into the bathroom again, but the truth is, a lot would have to happen before I’d lay a finger on Chloe Summers. From what I saw today, she’s still the same arrogant little bitch she was in high school. Putting herself first, no matter what.
Of course, blackmailing her was quite shitty of me. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. But I do have to file a report about her at the end of July, and if she wants me to go easy on her in my write-up, she has to show a little willingness to work first. Let’s see what I can get out of her this summer.
I toss the towel on the chair by the desk. It’s almost two o’clock in the morning. Tomorrow will be a tough day, sorting the kids into group activities and keeping them entertained. With the alarm on my watch set for six thirty in the morning, I slip into bed and wait for Greyson to turn off the light when he comes out of the bathroom.
Five minutes into darkness, the sounds of my roommate tossing and turning in his bed still fill the cabin. “You all right, man?” I ask.
“Yeah.” From the sound of it, he really isn’t. He punches his pillow into place for the sixteenth or so time, then slams his head into it and moans, “Know what?”
“What?”
“I’d really like a smoke right now.”
Laughing, I lean over, reach into the drawer of the nightstand between our bunk beds, and fetch a licorice. I toss it to him in the dark. “Good night, Grey.” Then I close my eyes and zonk out within seconds.
A sharp rattle on the door wakes me what feels like ten minutes later. I jerk upright, banging my head on the frame of the bed above me. The door bursts open, and in the dark, a figure storms inside. My vision needs a moment to adjust, while Greyson groans beside me, no happier about the disturbance.
“We’re done! The puzzle, it’s finished,” an excited voice calls out. Craig Sullivan. He’s in the Wolf group. The next instant, the light in our room goes on. My eyeballs feel like they’re shriveling to raisins from the blinding brightness.
I rub one hand over my face, squeezing the bridge of my nose, then I try to glance at my watch. “Wha… Craig! It’s four o’clock in the morning.”
“Yeah, I know. But we finished the puzzle. We won!”
Struggling to focus on the thirteen-year-old in the doorway while Greyson curls up in his bed and pulls the quilt right over his head to hide from the light, I declare, “I don’t care if you knocked up the Virgin Mary. Get back to your cabin and go to sleep!”
“But—”
“Now!”
Harrumphing, he turns on the spot and walks out. The door closes, but the light is still on. God! Feeling like a sleepwalker, I swing my legs out of bed and rub the sore spot on my forehead. Might as well go and pee while I’m up, so I trudge to the bathroom, trying not to get sick from the dizzy feeling in my head.
When I get back to bed, light finally out, Greyson emerges from his quilt cave. “Seriously? Knock up the Virgin Mary?” He snickers.
I grimace against my pillow. Perhaps not the best lecture I’ve given so far.
When we get woken the next time, it’s thankfully not by one of the kids, but by the alarm on my watch going off next to my ear. Still dead tired, it’s not much nicer.
After Grey and I get ready for breakfast, we go and wake up the boys. I didn’t reckon they would work on the darn puzzles all through the night, but the Wolf puzzle sits complete on the floor. The Raccoon team apparently gave up af
ter midnight, and the upper left corner is still shattered in a hundred pieces. Looks like the Wolves get their first weekend off from kitchen duty. I know it has nothing to do with me at all, but it still makes me proud of my boys.
Grey is a serious mess at breakfast. He eats for three, his leg is bouncing nervously under the table, and whenever I look at him, he’s holding a straw, which he occasionally runs through his mouth.
“What the heck is riding you today?” Julie asks him after a whole half hour of watching him with a concerned frown drawing her dark eyebrows together.
“Withdrawal,” Chloe and I say at once and instantly look at each other with surprise. “From smoking,” I absently add for Julie, but in truth I’m wondering what that small smile on Chloe’s face is for. Can’t be for me. I drop my gaze and continue eating my pancakes and sipping my coffee.
In the meantime, Julie gets carried away with the possibility of releasing my roomie from his torture. Apparently, yoga is the cure.
Grey sounds terribly offended when he replies, “Yoga is for girls!”
“That’s not true,” Julie contradicts. “It’s for everyone. And it’ll do you a heck of a lot of good.”
I don’t know anything about this stuff, but I’m all for him trying it, as long as it’ll help make him a little calmer at night, so I can sleep better.
When we’re all finished with breakfast and the noise in the dining hall is getting louder, Julie and I stand up to ceremoniously hand out the flags we made last night for the kids and call out the rules of the game.
“Guard it like a hawk,” Julie warns the curious-looking girls and boys. “The team that manages to steal the opponent’s flag and can hold on to it until the end of camp will be announced winner. The losing team will be servants to the winning team for the entire last weekend of camp.”
These additions to the rules are new to me. I shoot her a startled look, which she returns with a shrug. “Thought we should put something big at stake,” she whispers and smirks.
I like her idea. And so do the youngsters. Excited murmurs break out as they start making plans for the right hiding places. Before they can slip out through the double door into the thankfully sunny morning, I call after them, “Dance club in thirty minutes at the girls’ campsite! Soccer down by the lake!”
Chloe’s irritated grumble as she stomps away isn’t lost on me. She’s one unhappy dancing instructor. Did she think I would change my mind overnight? Oh, how little she knows me… I could have easily assigned her to soccer yesterday, but the truth is, I didn’t want to. Like everyone else, she too has to learn that not everything we wish for comes true in life. And I’m happy to be the one to teach her that particular lesson after so many years.
Am I trying to settle a score with her? Well, since we’re both stuck in these woods for five weeks, it would be a wasted chance not to, right?
With a chuckle on my lips, I walk out into the warming sun and watch her trudge away down the path.
Twenty minutes later, I’m at the lake helping Greyson get a game of soccer started up. He seems to have everything under control, so I leave him alone with the kids. Before I return to our cabin, though, I decide to make a detour and stop by the girls’ site to check how Chloe’s doing with the dancing.
Music fills the area around their cabins. An iPod lies on the table in the middle of the space, along with Chloe, who sits beside it, her feet planted on the bench. Seven or so girls stand huddled in a group a couple feet away and awkwardly sway their arms or shift their weight from one foot to the other.
Sighing deeply, I shake my head as I join Chloe on the table. “Is this your idea of teaching them to dance?”
“Freestyle,” she tosses cynically at my face.
“So you intend to sit around and do nothing for the next five weeks?”
“I’m not doing nothing. I’m supervising, can’t you see?”
Supervising is the keyword. “You know that I’m actually supposed to supervise you. So what do you suggest I say when I’m asked if you engaged in any camp activities?”
Chloe doesn’t spare me a look but leans back on her elbows and keeps her gaze on the dancers in front of us as she says in a cold tone, “Tell them I attended mealtimes.”
Yeah, so far that’s the most I can write in my report about her. And maybe I should. Who am I to give a damn anyway whether she makes up her hours before the end of her probation or not? If she can’t make concessions, then she’ll have to live with the consequences, not me. I’m just someone asked to observe.
Then again, what kind of a teacher will it make me later if I give up at the first obstacle? She’s difficult, but there’s always a way to get through to everyone. I just need to find the right one with her. More importantly, leaving her alone wouldn’t quite help me with settling those old scores with her.
I have other plans.
Exhaling a frustrated sigh, I prod her, “Come on, you can do better than this. Teach them a few moves. They’re supposed to have fun here, not look like Homer Simpson in a bar.”
“You can’t teach them what you can’t do yourself.”
I’m pretty sure that look of hers is meant to poison me, but I shrug it off, unimpressed. “How about you start with some stretching? And I’m sure you’ve seen enough Pitbull videos to remember at least a handful of moves to show them.”
Come to think of it, watching her dance would be quite the show, especially in that hot, black outfit she’s wearing right now. If her body wasn’t made for dancing, then I don’t know whose is.
“Are you staring at my legs?”
Ripped out of my thoughts by Chloe’s sharp comment, I lift my gaze to hers in surprise. “Hm, what?”
“You were staring at my legs,” she growls again.
My heart beats a little faster. “No, I wasn’t.”
Suddenly, she starts to laugh. “Oh, you so were!”
“Was not,” I grumble and rub my neck, keeping my wayward gaze on the uncoordinated group of dancing girls.
When Chloe makes a foreboding hmm sound a few seconds later, she involuntarily drags my attention back to her. Her lips are curled in contemplation. “Stretching, you said, huh?”
I don’t understand the mischievous spark in her eyes. And that smirk of hers just doesn’t bode well.
“Let’s stretch then.” Getting up from the table, she steps down from the bench. When she takes up position in front of the girls, all their faces instantly light up with hope. I remain seated and wonder what’s coming next. “Change of plans,” she tells them. “No more freestyle. We’re going to stretch a little now to warm our muscles”—she angles her head to cast me a salacious look over her shoulder—“and get flexible.”
Eyes narrowed, I blink. What is she up to?
Facing the girls again with her back to me, she bends forward, her legs placed in a wide A. Knees straight, her upper body goes down and down…and down. Suddenly all I can concentrate on are the black hot pants molding around her extremely sexy butt, which she shows in my direction. The view makes my throat dry out like an African lake in the dry season. I swallow hard, but it doesn’t help much. Chloe’s slim, tanned legs seem to stretch on forever, until they end in her black Nikes, which she has her hands on right now.
Flexible? Oh, man. What would I give to run my fingers from her ankles over that flawless skin up to her bottom—and squeeze. In fact, I’ve been dreaming of it for years, just not any time recently.
The way she’s bent down, her black top is sliding up her body, revealing a tasty swatch of skin on her perfect stomach, but it’s tight enough to stop before exposing her breasts, too. Maybe I should thank God for that, because if it wasn’t, I might be in trouble right now. Or am I in trouble already? Uncomfortable all of a sudden, I shift on the table, leaning forward and bracing my elbows on my knees. Jesus Christ, that view! I know people who would pay money for it.
It takes a while for me to notice that I’ve actually zoned out. When I get a grip again, I spo
t Chloe’s head between her ankles, her long, dark hair pooling at the ground. She stares at me with a grin on her face, and when she knows she has all of my attention, she quickly sticks out her tongue.
Touché.
I hang my head and laugh. How exactly did that happen to me?
“All right!” Chloe claps her hands, making me look up even though she’s speaking to the girls. “Next, clasp your hands behind your back and move them up as far as you can, keeping your elbows straight.” She turns around, so the kids can see what she’s doing behind her back. The problem with this is, now her front is facing me, and when she moves her arms up behind her back, her boobs stick out provocatively. The more she stretches her shoulders, the farther those puppies push forward and her stomach flattens inward. Her tee is riding up once again, but only a little, exposing just a thin strip of skin between the hem and her shorts this time.
It’s enough to make my mouth water.
Biting my bottom lip, I struggle to suppress a smirk, because now it’s totally obvious why she took my advice to stretch. She knew very well the effect it would have on me. The little witch!
“Are you all right there, Justin?” she asks with such sweetness in her voice that it’s actually ridiculous. Or maybe my reaction to her teasing is.
“Yep, I’m totally fine,” I reply, playing her game, but my husky voice betrays me.
Her eyes are dark and untamable under her hair, which is now wild after she tossed it backward when coming up from the first stretching pose. “Good. Because we’re going to roll our hips next. Maybe you want to join us?”
I bite my lip harder. “No, I don’t think I will. Not today, anyway.” It’s time for me to leave, before the situation inside my pants gets out of control. I rise and step down from the bench, tucking my hands into my pockets and pressing the heel of my hand against my beginning erection.
