His Runaway Campfire Princess

by Gwen Hayes

  “I did no such thing, Merriam. I told him the truth. That the Duke of Carlysle had always protected the royals. That my job was to guard you and your future children. I could not do that and be your husband. It was a question of honor.”

  His honor. That’s what had kept him away from her. “What about my honor?”

  He didn’t understand, so she tried to find the words. “You allowed me to think you didn’t want me. All this time. All these…years? My pride meant nothing to you?”

  “I had no hope that you wanted me back. Not until last summer. And then…Merriam, I know I hurt you. I was raised with one truth ingrained into me from my earliest memory. That I was to protect you. That my reason for being was to guard you. To make sure nothing ever hurt you. I didn’t know how to just change.”

  Neither did she.

  “So, what happened? You said you stepped down.”

  “Just because things have always been, doesn’t mean that’s how they should always be. I’ve watched you changing everything around you these last few months—just on your sheer will. You convinced me that I was lacking courage. That my honor lacked conviction. I will always protect you, that I promise you. But I don’t need to be a commander to do it. I want to be with you. I want us to be together.”

  Funny how this point was where all her fantasies about a reconciliation with him always stopped. He was saying all the right words. He gave up who he thought he was to be with her. But…why had she never imagined what would come next?

  Because she couldn’t. There was no next.

  “No,” she said.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SOMEHOW, IN ALL HIS PLANNING and all his imagining of how this conversation would go, he wasn’t prepared for her no. He should have been. Lord knows she never made a day in his life easy. But unprepared he was all the same.

  “I know I hurt you, Merriam. And I’m sorry.”

  “Are you?” She stood up and started pacing. “Because I feel like maybe you still don’t get it. Get me. You haven’t spoken to me for five months. You haven’t given me any indication that my pride or my love meant anything to you at all. And then you descend from the sky like a bad action-movie hero and expect that I’ll fall into your arms because you decided it was time? I’m not a prize you win for facing your inner demons, Harmon. I love you but I don’t want one more man making decisions without consulting me.” She shook her finger at him. “You involved my best friend and Heather Tully in your little plans, didn’t you? They weren’t surprised because you just arranged it all behind my back. What makes you better than my father?”

  She loved him. That was about all he heard from that. For a few minutes, anyway. And then he started really listening.

  Obviously, this was the part where he would object to being “better” than his king. But he let that go. He let all of it go because all that mattered was her.

  “I should have spoken to you. I shouldn’t have made such a rash decision without talking to you. I wanted…” It sounded stupid now. “I wanted to surprise you. With some grand gesture. Sweep you off your feet. It was exactly the wrong thing to do, and I’m sorry.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him as if she wasn’t sure he was telling her the truth or what she wanted to hear.

  “I don’t want grand gestures,” she finally said.

  “What do you want, Merriam. Anything at all.”

  “I want to be taken seriously. I want a partner, not a guide. I don’t want to be protected from the world; I want to be part of the world.” She sank back onto the couch. “I don’t know that you will ever let me. You don’t know how to not guard me, Harmon. You’ll never let me live freely.”

  His body was tight, his head buzzing. He could lose her. Maybe he was never supposed to have her. That’s why he’d pushed her away. That’s why he hadn’t let himself want.

  But, hell. He wouldn’t give up without a fight.

  “I don’t know how to not protect you. You’re mine. You’ve always been mine. And when I think of you being hurt…” Harmon didn’t know how to explain the primal feelings that raged through him. There weren’t words for those kinds of things. “If you give me seven minutes in a sleeping bag, I could show you.”

  The corner of her mouth quirked. “Show me what?”

  “No one will ever love you the way I do. The way I can. You will never belong to another man. We both know it.” The pulse in her throat quivered, and he knew he had her attention. “Give me seven more minutes. I won’t be careful. I won’t be sweet. I’ll mark you. I’ll claim you. And I’ll own you.” He palmed her face, holding her where he wanted her. “As you already own me.” She swallowed hard, but didn’t look away. “And I’ll spend the rest of my life learning how to be the partner you deserve.”

  “Am I supposed to just forget that you told my father you didn’t want me?”

  “I never said I didn’t want you. Don’t pretend not to know that I have for a long time.”

  “Then why?” her voice cracked, and in him, so did his heart. “Why did you tell him no? Why would you have let him give me to someone else?”

  “I thought that honor meant sacrificing what I wanted so that I could fulfill tradition. How could my son protect your children if my son was ours?”

  “What changed then?”

  “You did.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You showed me what honor was. It’s not tradition or going through motions that go against how you feel. It’s not sacrifice for no reason. It’s standing up and doing what you feel is right. It’s facing your mistakes head on and changing from them. It’s not watching life pass you by, it’s taking it and making it yours. You did all that. You didn’t shirk the press or pretend—you faced them all. You stood up to the king and everyone who said you couldn’t be who you wanted to be.” He kissed the tear running down her cheek. “You showed me what brave really is.”

  “Oh,” she whispered.

  “You usually have more to say than that.”

  “I want to hear more about the seven minutes. Tell me how beastly you’re going to be.”

  He yanked her onto his lap. He was instantly hard. He wrapped his hand in her hair, tipping her head back so he could nip at her throat. He growled. God, he’d missed her so much. “I’m going to devour you. I’ll fill you up and make you scream my name.”

  “Oh,” she whispered again as she shivered in his arms.

  “Marry me.”

  She opened her eyes. They were dilated and full of desire. For him. How had he thought he could ever let her go? That he could guard her while another man wed her. Gave her children.

  “I just spent the last five months proving to my father I don’t need to get married.”

  He shook his head. “Marry me anyway.”

  “Harmon.”

  “Nothing less will do, Merriam. I will stand at your side and be your partner and spend the rest of my life trying to not hold you back…but I need you to be my wife. I need to be your husband.”

  She rocked against him and they both groaned with pleasure. “Okay, that sounds nice.”

  “Nice?” He grasped her hips and ground against her. “Nice?”

  She shuddered on another moan. “Yes, I’ll marry you.

  He kissed her. Hard. And when she opened for him, he kissed her harder. Deeper. And then he remembered. “There’s a ring. It’s in my pocket. I really screwed this whole damn thing up.”

  “I don’t care about a ring. I care about getting to my cabin. As quickly as possible.”

  “You care about this ring.” He disentangled himself enough to get the box from his pocket. When he opened the box, she gasped. “Marry me?” he asked again.

  “That’s my mother’s ring.”

  “Yes.”

  “Papa…?”

  “Has given us his blessing.”

  “Well, you were his first choice.” She took it out and he put it on her finger. “You’re my first choice, too.”

 
“You’re my only choice, Princess.”

  “Harmon?”

  He kissed her fingers in answer.

  “I am going to require more than seven minutes.”

  He smiled, a foreign yet pleasant experience for him. “As you wish.”

  Not ready to leave camp yet? Read a snippet of the next Camp Firefly Falls book: Second Chance Summer by Kait Nolan.

  “Welcome to our Retro Session at Camp Firefly Falls!”

  Cheers practically raised the roof of the boathouse. Strands of twinkle lights were wrapped up the columns and around the rafters, giving the whole place a party vibe. The general jubilation of the campers added to the effect. Up on the little stage, Heather grinned from ear to ear. “Tonight kicks off two weeks of turning back the clock. We’ve got all your favorite, classic camp activities.” She listed off several options Audrey remembered seeing in the brochure. “—with a few more grown up options thrown in.” She gestured toward the bar that had been set up to one side of the dance floor. “My husband, Michael, is playing bartender tonight. We remind you to have fun and please drink responsibly. That said, let’s get this party started!”

  The sound system rocked out with “Here’s To Never Growing Up” and people exploded onto the floor.

  Audrey hadn’t expected quite this level of chaos. She leaned toward Sam, raising her voice to be heard over the music. “Is this a normal camp thing?”

  “Don’t know about here. Hale River had dances, but nothing like this.”

  “This is a Camp Firefly Falls dance on steroids,” Charlie said.

  “Let’s get out there!” Sam gave a little hop in time with the chorus.

  “You two go ahead. I’m going to get a drink.” With a drink she’d have reason to stay outside the chaos and observe. No way would her legs allow for dancing. Not after today.

  Sam gave her two thumbs up and dove after Charlie into the gyrating crowd. Was this what a mosh pit was like?

  Audrey edged her way around the floor, watching and absorbing body language, automatically analyzing with her scientist’s mind. It seemed a lot of these people knew each other. From what she’d heard, this was as much a reunion as a throw back session, so that made sense.

  What must that be like? To have friends you made as a child that either stayed with you for years, or who you could pick back up with after all this time passed as if it were yesterday. Audrey couldn’t imagine that. She had friends, of course. Plenty of them as an adult. But as a child, she’d been painfully self-conscious, shy and so far above her peers intellectually they hadn’t been able to relate to her at all. She’d been weird. Awkward. A freak. It had been easy to retreat into her studies.

  School was easy. School followed some sense of logic and rules, and her academic performance had delighted her parents. Continuing along that track had just made sense. College. Grad school. Going into research professionally had been a no brainer. Audrey had an aptitude, and, in the Graham family, ignoring that would’ve been considered a crime. Over the years, she’d quietly amassed a list of all the life experiences she’d missed out on because of a lifetime spent worshiping at the altar of academia—never with any clear idea what she was going to do with it. It was more as a form of observational research. After the accident, that list had become her Holy Grail.

  “Hi there.”

  Audrey slid her gaze up to the guy who’d paused beside her. He was attractive in a clean cut, Ivy League sort of way, with the kind of confidence she’d seen often during her stint at Yale. The jeans and Camp Firefly Falls t-shirt he wore saved him from being unapproachable. She wondered where she could get one of those and made a mental note to track down one of the staff to ask.

  “I’m Brad.”

  The correct social convention is to speak. Open your mouth, she ordered herself. “Audrey.”

  “Want to dance, Audrey?”

  A refusal was on the tip of her tongue, but the music shifted into something less energetic. Something by Jack Johnson. Not a slow song, exactly, but something she could get away with not bouncing around to. Number thirty-seven on her list was Attend a school dance. This was probably as close as she’d ever get. She worked up a smile. “Sure.”

  Brad knew how to dance. That much was obvious when she put her hand in his and followed him out onto the floor. His grip on her was light but sure. Audrey forced herself to relax and follow his lead.

  “First time at Camp Firefly Falls?” he asked.

  “What gave me away?”

  “The way you’re watching everybody, like you’re not quite sure what to do.”

  Audrey tried not to take offense at that since it was true. “I expected something a little more low key tonight.”

  “Kumbaya and s’mores?”

  Number fifty-four: Roast marshmallows over a real campfire to make authentic s’mores. That had to be better than roasting them over the burner of the gas range in her apartment.

  “Well, I did have my heart set on s’mores.”

  “They have a campfire for that purpose every night, so if that’s what your heart desires, we can absolutely make that happen.” He flashed a too practiced smile.

  Was he flirting with her? Or just being friendly? This was one of those areas of human behavior she’d never felt comfortable assessing with any kind of accuracy. Uncertain, she gave a half smile and continued to watch the people around them. Probably it was rude not to maintain eye contact, but that felt too intimate. She didn’t know what to say to this guy.

  Brad’s grip shifted. Before she could ask what that was about, he was whipping her out into a spin. At least, that’s what she assumed he was trying to do. Her legs couldn’t keep up, crossing over themselves like a pretzel, making her stumble. Pain shot up from her ankles, through her knees. Shock and an instant panic kept her from crying out. But his quick reflexes kept her from falling or from crashing into the couples dancing nearby.

  “Whoops. Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to surprise you.”

  Audrey held onto him, not because she wanted to but because without his support, she was pretty sure she’d drop like a stone.

  “Audrey, you okay?” The concern in his voice told her she hadn’t managed to hide the wince.

  “I think I twisted my ankle.” She hadn’t, but it was the easiest explanation that would get her off the dance floor.

  “Crap, I’m so sorry. Here, let me help you.” He led her over to a row of chairs near the bar. “Should I find the camp doctor?”

  She waved him off. “No need. I’ll be fine. I’m just going to sit here a bit. You go on and keep dancing.”

  “You’re sure I can’t do anything?”

  He looked so distressed at the idea that he’d ruined her evening, she relented. “Grab me a glass of wine?”

  “I can do that. What kind?”

  “Anything red.”

  He brought her a glass of merlot and, after much urging, returned to the dancing. Audrey let out a long, controlled breath, imagining the pain leaving with the exhale. Sometimes that worked. Sometimes it didn’t. She’d have a date later with some muscle rub and the cold packs she’d shoved into the freezer of their mini fridge on arrival. She took a sip of her drink and relaxed in the chair. At least the wine was excellent.

  Someone stepped up to the bar behind her. “Beer.”

  Audrey cocked her head at the word, not knowing why.

  “What kind?” Michael reeled off several types.

  “The IPA.” There was something about that voice. It was deep, the kind of resonant timbre that soaked into your skin.

  Come on. Say more than two words.

  She heard ice shifting as Michael dug through the cooler. “You settling in okay? Got everything you need?”

  “Yeah.” A pause, as if the speaker were taking a pull on the beer. “It’s a lot swankier than I remember.”

  Michael laughed and said something in return, but Audrey didn’t hear it. His response, the music, the pain in her legs, everything else faded as her
mind zeroed in on the other guy. She knew that voice. Had dreamed of it over and over. Had heard it in her head, urging her on through all the grueling months of physical therapy.

  Or maybe it was just that she wanted it to be him. Her nameless savior.

  She turned around, hoping the sight of his face would jog her memory, but he’d already left the bar and was striding across the boathouse. He didn’t stop to speak to anyone, didn’t even acknowledge other campers were there. He just walked on out the door and into the night.

  Before she could change her mind, Audrey shoved to her feet and followed.

  Link to Second Chance Summer

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  GWEN HAYES LIVES IN THE Pacific Northwest with her real life hero and the pets that own them. She writes stories for teen and adult readers about love, angst, and saving the world.

  Gwen’s first novel, Falling Under, was released in March of 2011 by NAL/Penguin and followed up by the sequel, Dreaming Awake, in January of 2012.

  She also enjoys talking about herself in the third person.

  For more about Gwen, please visit her website at www.gwenhayes.com.

  For more about camp, visit www.campfireflyfalls.com

  In addition to writing, Gwen is a freelance editor at www.fresheyescritique.com.

  Wait… don’t go! I almost forgot to ask you to sign up for my newsletter so you never miss a new release or big freaking news! www.gwenhayes.com/news