Summer Again

by Julia Gabriel

  Of course, no one would ever blame John and Sarah Matthew. His parents walked on water in St. Caroline. While he, their son, would end up with all the blame and reprobation heaped upon his head. When this was over, he’d have to leave town under cover of darkness.

  All right. Enough pity party for now, he thought. He had a dozen other department heads to meet with today; right now he had to dispatch his marketing director back to her office with a clear understanding of her marching orders. The very marketing director who, right now, was leaning back into her chair, her arms folded across her chest and with an expression on her face that was mustering up both confidence and challenge as he watched.

  And that was when it happened. When that hot cord of desire began unfurling in his chest, that old forked devil’s tail snaking its way around his spine, through the pit of his stomach. He had to ignore it, he told himself. This was not the time. He did not have the leisure to take up with a woman right now. This was not the place. He was doing what his mother needed him to do, as soon as he could do it and then leaving St. Caroline for good. And this was not the woman. Not an employee, a direct report no less.

  Down boy. Send her back to her office with work to do. You have plenty to do yourself.

  “The kids camp is not part of your job anymore, Ms. Wyndham. It’s your job now to come up with a new marketing plan that generates more revenue next year.”

  Take it or leave it.

  Chapter 4

  Lucy spent the rest of the morning in her office, researching what other luxury resorts were doing in marketing and special events, working her professional network for ideas, and fuming. Mostly fuming. Getting rid of the camp was unthinkable. It had been part of the resort—part of the Matthew family—for decades.

  But at least Sterling hadn’t recognized her. Although he still had the same unnervingly intense eyes—hooded and dark—he’d had as a teenager, eyes that took in everything around him. Lucy had watched Sterling Matthew’s serious gaze from the safety of the Kids Kamp all those years ago. The teenaged Sterling was always seen lurking around the edges of the camp, watching the campers or just staring out across the bay, into the distance. He’d been the gorgeous, aloof guy all the girls had a crush on from afar—like some teen magazine movie star.

  After she started working at the Inn, it crossed her mind that she might see him again. But years passed and he made no appearance in St. Caroline. After awhile, she stopped even associating him with John and Sarah. He was an abstraction, her mysterious, abstract schoolgirl infatuation.

  The man sitting behind John Matthew’s desk today was certainly no abstraction.

  By lunchtime, Lucy was badly in need of fresh air and a few moments to clear her head. Even though her vacation had ended just yesterday, it felt like a distant memory already. It was obvious, from the flurry of emails piling up in her inbox, that the Inn’s entire staff was in a tizzy from Sterling Matthew’s reappearance—and his beautiful henchman handing out “assignments” right and left. Lucy grabbed a sandwich and a to-go cup of iced tea from the Inn’s Tilghman Café and headed for the walking path that led to the shoreline and the kids camp.

  The village of St. Caroline was a summer playground for the wealthy and the powerful—executives, politicians, even a former vice president had a waterfront compound here. It was internationally renowned for its sailing waters and its seafood. Despite all that, the town itself had a low-key vibe about it. St. Caroline was a place where powerful people came to escape the pressures and anxieties of their normal lives. People who wielded more power than ninety-nine percent of the world’s population could stroll along a pier, pop into a shop and buy a gift, or enjoy a leisurely al fresco lunch without anyone fawning over them or pressing a business card into their palm.

  St. Caroline was also a place where children whose families had no power and often not even two nickels to rub together could spend a few summer weeks escaping the pressures and anxieties of their altogether different world. The camp was what made summer Lucy’s favorite season at the Inn. Every day at the camp was filled with new experiences and new lessons for the kids—sailing, fishing, crabbing, meeting oystermen, touring local farms, exploring art with the many painters and sculptors who had taken up residence in the area. For some of the kids, their weeks at the Inn were the first time they’d set foot outside their inner city neighborhood—and yet, they were often wise beyond their years. Lucy never ceased to be amazed at how perceptive they were, how quickly they sized up people and situations. For kids who had seen so little of the world, they managed to see everything that happened around them.

  Today was the first day of the first session of camp. The first group of kids was here, the new counselors were here and everyone was getting to know each other. Lucy felt the tension of her morning lifting as she came into view of the camp. Douglas and the counselors were helping the campers set up lunch at the long wooden picnic tables.

  “Room for one more?” Lucy called out.

  “Hey, it’s our favorite honorary camper,” Douglas said. A dozen heads turned to look at Lucy. She smiled and waved.

  “So who has the most bug bites so far?” she asked as she took a seat in the middle of the table.

  “Hah,” said Alyssa, one of the campers. “That would be Luis. He’s as sweet as candy to the mosquitoes.”

  “But not to the girls!” someone called out, to laughter all around the table.

  As Lucy watched the kids eat their crabcakes and french fries, bantering with each other as though they’d known each other for years instead of hours, she wondered whether John Matthew knew what his son was planning to do. His conversation last night had seemed to indicate otherwise. If the resort was in financial straits, surely there were ways to fix that without getting rid of the camp. The camp itself had few costs associated with it that weren’t covered by donors or grants. Lucy had been very successful in getting government and foundation grants, something John Matthew had never considered until she arrived.

  After lunch, the kids cleaned up the lunch tables. Lucy balled up the rest of her sandwich and tossed it into the trash bag. She wasn’t hungry.

  “Meet at the pier in ten minutes,” Douglas called out to the kids, who were quickly dispersing. “I have the results of this morning’s swim tests.”

  Watching the kids amble away to chat with new best friends, Lucy felt a determination take hold in her heart. The Kids Kamp was not going away, not on her watch. She would come up with a marketing plan that would generate so much additional revenue, the camp wouldn’t have to be touched. She wasn’t sure how she was going to do that, but she’d come up with something. She had to. There was no way she was going to allow Sterling Matthew to destroy the camp. Not after all these years, all these kids, all the good the camp had accomplished.

  Lucy touched Douglas’ arm. “Do you have a minute?” she asked.

  “For you, of course.”

  Lucy and Douglas had both been campers that summer long ago, but they hadn’t really known each other back then. Douglas was from Philadelphia and his street smart cockiness had intimidated country girl Lucy. When Lucy started working at the Inn, neither she nor Douglas remembered each other. They quickly bonded over their mutual commitment to the camp, and had been close friends ever since. Lucy no longer felt like a bumpkin kid and Douglas’ cockiness had given way to the tanned, rugged athleticism of someone who spent most of his time on the water. His hair was bleached from the sun and salt air, and his upper body was finely honed from the many hours he spent paddling in his kayak.

  “So. Has he been down here?” Lucy asked, cryptically.

  “He?”

  “Sterling Matthew.”

  “Oh, right. Him. No, he hasn’t.”

  “So you haven’t met him yet? What about his consultant?” Lucy made air quotes as she said “consultant.”

  Douglas laughed. “I saw her the other day. From the expression on her face, I’d say her shoes were two sizes too small. But I haven’t m
et either of them. Heard plenty of rumors, though.”

  “Like what?” Lucy wanted to know whether Douglas knew of Sterling’s plans for the camp, but she didn’t want to be the one to tell him if he didn’t.

  “Oh everyone says he’s prepping the resort to be sold next year.”

  “Do you think that’s true?”

  Douglas shrugged. “I guess it’s not out of the realm of possibility these days. Companies get sold left and right, it seems.”

  Lucy sighed. “I’m ready to go back on vacation.”

  Douglas wrapped his arms around her in a big friendly hug. “Let’s have dinner tonight and you can tell me all about your trip to Chicago. Meet me at the Blue Crab at seven?”

  Lucy disentangled herself from Douglas’ arms. Lucy and Douglas had tried dating for awhile, but no chemistry had ever taken hold between them. There were days when she wished things had worked out between the two of them. Douglas was damn near a perfect specimen of man—why couldn’t there be more than just a friendly attraction? Had Josh so thoroughly broken her heart that she was incapable of falling in love again? That was a singularly depressing thought.

  “You bet,” Lucy replied to Douglas. “And we can reminisce about the soon-to-be good old days at the Inn.”

  What if the Inn really did get sold, Lucy wondered as she trudged back up the walking path to her office. What would she do then? It wasn’t as though there were dozens of marketing jobs in St. Caroline. She’d have to move. And she didn’t want to move away from St. Caroline.

  The village wasn’t a place she had consciously set out to live in. She’d never even been back to St. Caroline after her summer at camp until Josh made reservations for them to celebrate their third wedding anniversary at the Chesapeake Inn. The night before they were scheduled to drive to St. Caroline, Josh told Lucy he wanted a divorce. He’d fallen in love with a coworker.

  Lucy had been blindsided, unaware that anything was even wrong with their marriage. After three years, she had still felt like a newlywed.

  She had decided to come to the Inn anyway that weekend, by herself. The reservations were made, no point in them going to waste. And she had really needed to get away. Really did not want to have to watch Josh pack up his things, drop his keys on the table and walk out.

  John Matthew had approached her one evening as she ate dinner by herself in the Inn’s most formal restaurant, Evangeline’s. He inquired as to the quality of her stay thus far. Lucy burst into sudden tears.

  John sat down. “Well, our service isn’t usually that bad,” he said.

  Lucy shook her head, eventually getting enough of a grip on her emotions to explain about the aborted anniversary weekend. John asked her what she did back in Washington. When he learned that she worked in marketing for the Marriott hotel chain, he mentioned that he was looking for a new marketing director himself. If she was interested, he’d be happy to discuss it with her the next morning.

  When Lucy awoke the next morning, she thought, “Why not?” Why not take a new job at this venerable old inn in this quaint shoreside town? After what Josh had done to her, she needed a change of scenery, a chance to pick up her life and set it down somewhere else for awhile.

  That was five years ago now. And while Lucy’s romantic entanglements had been few and far between in St. Caroline—not for any lack of effort on Sarah Matthew’s part—she was happy here. Content. Life in St. Caroline was perfect. The Chesapeake Inn was perfect, just the way it was.

  Chapter 5

  This is el primo real estate, Sterling thought as he strolled down to the water. What could be built here? A restaurant? Sailing school? Luxury cottages with private concierge service? There was a lot of money being left on these shores.

  He stopped and leaned against an old oak tree. At the sound of children’s laughter and shouts floating along the shoreline, memories of his own childhood came flooding back, slamming into him like a surprise wave. He closed his eyes to try and ward them off, but he couldn’t. Evening after evening spent eating dinner in the kitchen with the chef and the wait staff because his parents were working. Asking the guest services director to help him with his homework because his parents were away on a business trip. Going to the Inn’s nurse for band-aids or an ice pack when he’d twisted an ankle or gotten stung by a bee.

  He opened his eyes and looked out over the sparkling water of the bay. How many hours had he stood behind this same damn tree, watching the campers? He used to stand right here, watching the other kids swim and fish and play kickball. Every summer, he made a new attempt to join in but once the other kids found out who he was—the rich kid, the boy whose father owned this place—they would freeze him out. One summer, the counselors pulled him aside and told him, in no uncertain terms, that he wasn’t welcome. He was “ruining the experience” for the real campers.

  He’d been nine years old.

  His parents sent him away to boarding school in New England when he was thirteen, but summers he spent in St. Caroline. Long, boring summers stuck working with his father, summers without even the diversion of school chums. Now he was stuck, once more, in St. Caroline, stuck doing his father’s job, stuck watching these kids have the kind of summer he never had as a child.

  He watched as the campers began to congregate on the pier, in twos and threes and fours. They were laughing and pushing each other around playfully. The pier looked recently rebuilt, its wooden planks still smooth and clean. He’d have to look through the books later and see how much that cost. See, that’s what he hadn’t been able to make Lucy Wyndham understand. No matter how feel-good the Kids Kamp was, it didn’t make any sense at all to rebuild a pier just for their use. How many rooms had to be booked to cover the cost of a new pier? He bet his father had never even considered that. Wait until Elle saw the pier. She’ll go ballistic. He hoped she wouldn’t notice it before the meeting with the bankers tonight.

  Speaking of Lucy, there she was now. It figured she’d be down here. Just what he needed. The person in charge of marketing the resort, of bringing in the money, was a bleeding heart charity case. She probably ran straight here to sound the alarm. Heartless Sterling Matthew was killing the Kids Kamp!

  She was speaking to the camp director, Douglas, her face a mask of seriousness. She’s probably giving him the news right now. He watched as she reached out and grazed Douglas’ arm, gently. There was an intimacy between the two of them, he recognized. Perfect, he thought. Absolutely freaking perfect. Lucy was dating the camp’s director. Just what I need. As if on cue, Sterling watched the other man embrace her, and she leaned her body comfortably into his. Sterling took note of the rippling muscles on Douglas’ arms. He certainly didn’t look like the wimpy, hippie camp directors his father had hired years ago. This one looked like he’d grown up sailing, his family maybe splitting their time between Annapolis and Newport or Bar Harbor and the Caribbean.

  Well, good for him, Sterling thought as he let his eyes graze over Lucy Wyndham’s figure. He leaned against the tree and tried to recall those long ago evenings with her in the boathouse. He cringed as the memories began surfacing. The way he’d kissed her too hard, too eagerly, his teeth pressing against her lips. His complete inability to unclasp her bra. After several tries, Lucy had reached back and unhooked it herself.

  And then the way he’d been unable to manage that fine line between caressing her skin and tickling her. They both had been so worried about getting caught, and Lucy’s thin, nervous laughter had set their nerves even more on edge. The memories were mildly humiliating so he shoved them back into the recesses of his brain where they belonged. He had work to do.

  Chapter 6

  The Blue Crab Bistro was in a small brick building tucked into an alleyway at the very end of Main Street in St. Caroline. The building itself had been built in 1674 and had always housed some sort of eating and drinking establishment. After 337 years, the Blue Crab Bistro was simply its present incarnation. Lucy never had trouble imagining the clatter of horses’
hooves on the cobblestone alley or the click of buckled shoes as men in form-fitting breeches and powdered wigs strode purposefully across the wide-plank wooden floors inside.

  The current owners had gone so far as to frame stock portraits of George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on the wall with mock quotes praising their dining experiences there. Best oysters in the colonies! Your service is impeccable—and your waitress, Sally, is one sassy wench.

  Douglas was already seated at their usual table when Lucy arrived. She leaned down and bussed him on the cheek.

  “How’s camp going so far?” she asked.

  “Great. We’ve got a super bunch of kids this first session.” Douglas pushed a tall glass of amber liquid toward her. “I took the liberty of ordering a drink for you. Sean just put the summer ale on tap.”

  The waitress ambled over but Lucy and Douglas waved her off with “the usual, Kelly.” That meant the crab cakes for Douglas and for Lucy, the wild greens and organic chicken salad.

  Douglas cocked his head toward the private dining room. “Look who’s here.”

  Behind the windows of the Blue Crab’s private dining room sat Sterling Matthew, Elle Scott-Thomas and three men wearing serious charcoal grey suits, stiff-collared white shirts and low-key blue silk ties. Lucy was a little shocked. His father would never have behaved this way. John Matthew would never have held a meeting with bankers in a restaurant, flaunting their presence in front of everyone in town. Lucy was surprised when Sterling quirked an eyebrow and caught her eye through the glass. She quickly turned back to Douglas.

  “They’re meeting with the bankers,” she told Douglas.