Summer Wish

by Jill Sanders

  Summer Wish

  Jill Sanders

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2021 Jill Sanders

  Printed in the United States of America

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Grayton Press

  ISBN-13: 978-1-945100-31-4

  Paperback: 978-1-945100-38-3

  Contents

  Summary

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Also by Jill Sanders

  About the Author

  Summary

  Dr. Lea Val has no time for cocky cops who continuously put themselves in harm’s way. She’s been trying to open her own practice and still find time to help her friends out at the swanky adult summer camp. Everything was going great until tall, tan, and sexy turned her life upside down.

  Brett Jewel is a man of his word. After getting injured in the line of duty, he promised his friends he’d slow down and take over a new position as head of security at River Camps. After all, he’s not going to let a silly gunshot slow him down. No, the only thing making him pause is the sexy doctor who is constantly yelling at him to get off his feet.

  Prologue

  Ten-year-old Lea wasn’t going to let some booger-picking Miami Dolphins–loving bully win. Not this time.

  Timmy Crawford had been calling her names since the moment she’d walked into her new school over a year ago.

  So what if she was the only student of Southeast Asian descent in the entire two-hundred-student elementary school. Actually, she and her older sister were the only non-Caucasian students in the entire school system. Which of course put targets on them for bullies to hone in on.

  It didn’t matter that she was a fifth-generation United States citizen. She was probably more American than Timmy himself, since he’d once boasted that his grandmother had lived in Germany when she’d been a child.

  Lea’s great-great-great-grandparents had come to the States on a ship from Thailand. Not from China, like Timmy and the other bullies in her class teased her about. Not that it would have mattered to them, since they assumed anyone who looked like her was a “Chinaman.”

  Some of the kids taunted that she should wash their clothes or do their nails or that she belonged in a dry cleaner rather than in school. They made fun of the way she talked, even though she spoke perfect English, better than most of them did. She pronounced her words clearly, whereas most of the kids in her class spoke with a southern drawl and dropped the last syllables in certain words. Lea was far too refined for that. After all, she’d been raised in New York, up until her family had decided to move to the Florida Panhandle.

  Timmy wore the same faded Miami Dolphins shirt almost every day, which had instantly made Lea hate the sports team. Not that she was really into sports in the first place. Nonetheless, she hated them now. She chose to make a point to cheer for any team that the Dolphins were playing against. If the other team won, she would mention it several times in the proximity of Timmy and his friends.

  She didn’t have many friends herself. Only a few kids braved the masses to speak to her or even just be nice to her.

  Elle Saunders, a girl one class below Lea’s, had arrived at the school at roughly the same time as she had. Then there was Aiden Stark, Lea’s first crush. The boy was dreamy. Lea’s older sister, Raya, who was in junior high, had used that slang to describe Matt Cooper, a boy in her class.

  Matt Cooper was a sweaty, zit-faced boy that wore jeans that were too tight and always had large headphones on as he played basketball with his friends. His shoes were always untied, causing him to trip constantly. Aiden Stark was nothing like Matt Cooper.

  Aiden had soft dark hair. Well, it looked soft, at any rate. Lea had never had the courage to reach out and touch it, but she knew that it would be soft, like her own hair. It had a slight curl to it, whereas hers was flat and boring, like the hair of everyone else in her family. She seriously doubted that anyone in her bloodline dating back to the dawn of time had ever had even a slight curl to their hair.

  Aiden also had blue eyes, something else she dreamed of having. He was the kindest boy she’d ever met and one of the best-looking eleven-year-olds she’d ever seen.

  The only problem with Aiden was his best friend, Brett Jewel.

  Brett was completely the opposite of Aiden in the looks department, with his straight blond hair, which he wore longer in a classic surfer style. Like he ever surfed. There weren’t big enough waves on the Gulf of Mexico to surf. Not like the ones she had seen in California the last time her family had vacationed out west. Brett was also always wearing baggy board shorts. He got in trouble a lot and teased her constantly.

  But to be clear, the way Brett teased her was nothing like the way Timmy and his friends did. Brett had never thrown a racial slur at her or teased her about how she looked. Instead, he made light of how smart she was. He’d say things such as “Lea’s so smart, she’s going to be the first woman on Mars. Which is a good thing, because that’s where all girls belong.”

  One of his other constant teases was “Wow! I can see your face. What? No books to hide behind?” That one always made her roll her eyes. He’d say it anytime he saw her without her nose buried in a book, which wasn’t often, mainly only when she was thinking deeply or watching Aiden play basketball.

  She was ten and by far the smartest person in the entire school system in the small town of Pelican Point. That wasn’t saying much. Not really. That included her older sister, who was more determined to spend her time flirting with boys and singing along to and watching music videos.

  Still, since her parents had moved their family there from New York a little over a year ago, she was stuck attending the small backwoods school.

  Thankfully, her mother had agreed to let Lea take extra classes online, which kept her up to date in all her studies. At the rate she was going, she would graduate high school by the age of thirteen, which meant she could start taking her core college classes shortly after.

  She knew exactly what she wanted to go to school for. Ever since she had gotten her tonsils out at the age of five, she’d dreamed of being a doctor.

  Doctor Lea Val.

  It had a nice ring to it. While most girls of ten had diaries or notebooks full of sketches, Lea had sketches of the human anatomy. Well, what she understood of it so far.

  Her parents wouldn’t let her check out any of the books that had real information in them. Not until she was sixteen. Or so they’d said. Still, she’d gotten information online, so she at least knew most of the basics.

  Which was why Timmy was currently teasing her. He’d yanked her notebook from her hands after school. She’d been waiting for her parents to pick her up in the usual spot, and now Timmy was making fun of her attempt to sketch Leonardo da
Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

  “Lea’s drawing porn,” Timmy teased. “You sicko.” He held up the page to any student nearby. Then he turned it around and looked at it before bursting into laughter. “You think boys look like this?” He laughed again.

  “Lea doesn’t know what boys look like,” one of his friends teased.

  “Haven’t you ever seen a naked boy before?” someone else teased.

  No. She hadn’t. She had a sister, and she was ten, for Christ’s sake. Where had they supposed she would see a naked boy?

  “Give it back.” She’d jumped up to her feet and stretched as far as she could to reach for her notebook. There were far more embarrassing things in there that she did not want Timmy or anyone else to see.

  Timmy held it far above his head, making her jump to try and reach it while his friends continued to tease her. She was easily the shortest person in her grade. Not that that mattered to her.

  Her face was heated, and she was growing breathless and desperate at this point. All the commotion had caused the game to stop and now everyone on the outside courts was looking in their direction.

  If Lea didn’t do something drastic, Aiden would come over and possibly even see some of the things in her notebook that she wanted to keep secret. Especially from him.

  In a last-ditch effort, she swung her foot out and caught Timmy directly on his knee, causing him to fall towards her.

  She cried out, since the kid was almost a foot taller than her and at least thirty pounds heavier.

  She braced for the impact. Just as Timmy was about to take her down, she was quickly pulled out of harm’s way. She blinked and focused and looked up into Brett’s very angry face.

  “Leave her alone,” Brett said, his blue eyes focused on a point behind her.

  Lea turned around and noticed that Timmy had not fallen, as she’d expected. Instead, he was being held back by Aiden, who had yanked Timmy away from her.

  “Give it back,” Aiden added, trying to reach for her notepad.

  “Why?” Timmy laughed “You got a thing for the Chi—” He didn’t get any further, since Brett moved forward and quickly plowed his fist into Timmy’s gut.

  “Say it again,” Brett said in a low tone. “I dare you.”

  Timmy was hunched over, gasping, and holding his stomach. Her notepad fell onto the pavement, opened to a page that she’d feared Aiden would see.

  Closing her eyes, she wished herself to another place. Please, let me be in my bed, fast asleep. Let this be a nightmare, she said over and over in her head.

  “Here,” Brett said.

  She opened her eyes. He stood in front of her, holding out her notebook towards her. He’d closed it, and the shiny yellow sunshine cover was now facing her.

  She took it and gripped it to her chest, avoiding looking towards Aiden, who was standing a few feet away, looking down at the ground where her notepad had been moments ago.

  “Are you okay?” Brett asked in a concerned tone.

  Instead of answering, she turned around and bolted. She ran as fast as she could towards her house. She wasn’t supposed to walk home after school. It was more than two miles and took her past a major road, and her parents feared for her safety, but none of that mattered at this point.

  The boy she’d had her first crush on had seen the stupid heart she’d drawn with their initials in the middle.

  She stopped and wiped the tears from her eyes, then she yanked the page out of her notebook and tore it into tiny pieces. She scattered them in the tall grass that lined the road near the school.

  Never again, she vowed on the side of the road. From now on, she was going to keep her emotions and dreams to herself. She would never again allow anyone the chance to see any sign of weakness.

  Chapter 1

  Dr. Lea Val knelt on the gurney and counted out the chest compressions while they rushed down the hallway of the ER. The middle-aged man was easily two hundred pounds overweight. The fact that he was shirtless, shoeless, and wearing board shorts didn’t affect her as much as it would most doctors.

  This was the norm when you worked near a popular tourist spot along what had been called one of the best beaches on the Gulf of Mexico.

  She’d ridden in the ambulance with the man all the way from her side job as a physician at River Camps, the swanky adult summer resort that she’d started working at almost three years ago.

  She’d gotten the man’s heart to start back up before the ambulance had arrived, but he was in bad shape. Halfway to the hospital, his vitals had taken a dive and she’d had to start CPR once more.

  When the gurney finally stopped, her hands were replaced by the ER doctors, and she was helped off the gurney as she relayed vital information to the waiting nurses, people she worked side by side with at the other job she’d had over the past few years.

  Her parents had been slightly shocked when she’d returned home to do her residency at Santa Rosa Beach hospital, the large hospital closest to her hometown. They had always believed that she’d want to head back up north, towards New York, after she graduated with her medical degree at the tender age of twenty-one and eight months, making her the second youngest person to do so in the States.

  She’d spent a few weeks being photographed, interviewed, and praised by the media before being dropped for the next story. She’d been thankful for the reprieve, since she’d hated being in the spotlight.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d been made the center of attention, and she knew it wouldn’t be the last. When she’d attended Harvard, it had all been good attention. She’d returned home and started working at the local hospital and the attention had turned negative. Not by her peers, but by those who she was trying to help.

  For the first year, it had affected her more than she wanted to admit to anyone, including her parents. After a while, she grew accustomed to it, and it stopped mattering so much.

  Now, at twenty-seven years old, she melted into the background for the most part, which she was thankful for.

  When she had started work at River Camps, she instantly knew that it was one of the best decisions she’d made in her adult life. When Elle had approached her after talking to her at Elle’s grandfather’s funeral, she’d jumped at the chance to work with the only girl in school who had been friendly to her.

  The way Elle and her other friends, the Wildflowers, had changed the run-down summer camp into the gorgeous adult resort was nothing short of a miracle.

  The fact that Elle had hired Aiden, Elle’s second cousin and Lea’s long-ago school crush to work on the place, hadn’t really been a factor in her decision. Sure, the man was still hot as hell, but over the years, their relationship had changed and moved into the friend zone.

  Then Aiden had started dating Aubrey Smith, one of the Wildflowers, and she couldn’t have been happier for the couple, especially when they had announced their engagement a few months later.

  Out of all the Wildflowers, Aubrey was one of her favorites. Lea had made a point to attend some of the self-defense classes that Aubrey offered at the resort. Elle and the other Wildflowers, who all owned equal shares of the resort, had agreed to allow employees to access some of the amenities.

  Lea took them up on the offer as often as she could. Since she worked thirty hours a week at the hospital and another thirty at the resort, what little time she had to enjoy herself she wanted to enjoy to the max.

  Plus, she really did enjoy being around the resort more than any other place in town. There hadn’t been a day since she’d started working there that she hadn’t absolutely loved it. It wasn’t a high-demand job like working at the hospital was. More often than not, she was allowed to roam the grounds or sit by the pool and catch up on some reading while enjoying the outdoors.

  She worked out of a small cabin and saw any guests who needed medical advice or help. It was just a two-room twenty-by-twenty cabin, but it was all hers.

  She carried a walkie-talkie with her whenever she was on site. When
off-site, they had her cell number for camp emergencies, which had happened more than a few times.

  When the opportunity had come up almost a year earlier for her to purchase her very own home in the new subdivision Aiden was building along with Owen Costa, Hannah’s husband, she’d jumped at it. After all, the house payments were far cheaper than the rent she’d been paying in her small Destin apartment.

  She’d moved into the three-bedroom, twenty-one hundred square foot place in Hammock Cove less than eight months before. She loved decorating every square foot of the place. She’d never owned her own place before, so she might have gone a little overboard with picking items to put in it. At first, it was hard to pick a color or theme she wanted. She’d settled on soft gray and white and a somewhat watery or beachy theme since there was an abundance of those pictures and home decorations in the area.

  For the past year, she’d been thinking of cutting her hours back at the hospital, as she was making a little more money working at the resort. But she hoped to someday open her very own practice in Pelican Point, and she needed the extra money. It was past time the one local doctor had a little competition.

  She had her eye on a new commercial building on the edge of town. The land was just being cleared and if she was going to jump on the idea, she only had a few more weeks to make up her mind.

  Her sister Raya had moved to Orlando shortly after graduating high school and had gotten a job at Disney, portraying Mulan, her sister’s dream job.