She thought of the boy on the Green who’d convinced her to give him a chance even when she was scared of her feelings. And the boy she’d had to convince to kiss her at the stump not far from here, even when he was scared of his.
“Michael, close your eyes.”
“What? Why?” he asked, an echo of their past.
“Just do it.”
She didn’t wait. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she grabbed his shoulder and leaned in, kissing him right on the mouth.
Heather pulled back, but kept her hands on his shoulders. “You didn’t close your eyes.”
“You didn’t either.” And then he smiled. The whole world still stopped when that man smiled. “Let’s try again.”
Epilogue
Spring 2016
A roaring fireplace, two well-scribbled on notepads, a bottle of wine, and pad thai…all at Camp Firefly Falls. Heather was on cloud nine.
The camp still looked like the rustic retreat she’d bought, but beneath the carefully preserved surface, there was now a lot of luxury as well.
Like a chef who made wicked Asian food.
“We should toast to Meg,” she said lazily.
Michael shot her a quick, teasing grin. “I think you love those noodles more than me.”
“Not possible.” She glanced past him at the now quiet kitchen. “Now that new dessert Allison created, on the other hand…”
They’d really lucked out with both hires. Allison, their dessert chef, and Meg, the head chef, had hit it off right away. They were an impressive force—watching them work together was a whirlwind of professional efficiency and creative chaos.
“We can have that once we finish going over the schedule,” Heather’s husband said, dragging her back to the work at hand.
So bossy.
She grinned and looked down at her notes.
The camp season was broken up into thematic sessions. The first was titled Rediscover Marital Intimacy.
Just like with their cooking staff, they’d lucked out with this block as well. Their yoga instructor, Essa, who’d be with them all summer, happened to know a marital counselor named Birk. He’d been totally enthusiastic about the session idea, and on top of meeting with all the couples, he’d also agreed to teach the couples yoga with Essa for the intimacy session.
Heather’s lips twitched at the thought of getting Michael to participate. Not that they needed any help in rediscovering their marital intimacy.
She blushed. “Week two…” she said, but Michael had already seen her reaction and tugged her foot, sliding her legs apart.
“Nope. What were you just thinking about?”
“Nothing. Official camp business.”
“Like orgasms?”
She gasped. “We can’t pause our work for dessert, but we can for sex?”
“Are you saying no to an orgasm?”
She sighed. “Only out of spite, really. I want more of that dessert.”
He rolled his eyes. “Week two. That’s a corporate training session. I’ve got separate notes on that, but it’s all taken care of.”
“Good. Week three…”
And on they went, session by session, until they’d reviewed each of the different blocks planned for their first official full season. The summer before they’d done a few weeks as part trial run, part re-establish a good relationship with the locals, and part re-connect with the original Camp Firefly Falls alumni, now all grown up. Some of those alumni were back this year for sessions, which warmed Heather’s heart in a serious way.
“It’s going to be a good summer, isn’t it?” she asked as Michael tugged her to her feet.
“The best,” he whispered, leaning in to kiss her.
“To our cabin?” Now that the camp staff had started to arrive and get ready for the summer, sex in front of the giant fireplace in the main lodge wasn’t an option.
They’d save that for the end of the summer once everyone had gone home again.
“Actually, I’ve got a surprise for you.” He laced his fingers in hers. “Let’s go down to the boathouse.”
They took their time. It was an amazing property, and even though a few early staffers had arrived, it was still quiet and serene.
She could see the summer playing out in front of her. And next year they’d do even more.
“What are you thinking about?” Michael murmured, tugging her to a stop just short of the path to the boathouse.
“Crazy ideas.”
“Tell me.”
“You’ll laugh.”
“Maybe.” But then he’d help her make her dream happen. The last three years had proven that without a doubt. “Try me.”
“I want a treehouse. Like a cabin alternative. Maybe it could be a secret, like the hot springs. We’d use it as a prize, maybe.”
“The ultimate reliving your childhood experience.”
She winked. “But with a friend to keep you warm.”
“A treehouse. I like the sound of that.”
“You do?”
He gave her a most definitive nod. “But not for this year.”
“No.”
“Although we do have those ex-Navy SEALs coming here in session three…”
“You can’t put them to work!”
“Work. No. A contest…yes.” He winked. “Or maybe I’ll build it for you in my spare time. We’ll see.”
“You’re amazing.” She squeezed his hand.
“As are you, my wife. As are you. Now come on, there’s something else I want to show you.”
He led her to the boathouse and opened the back door.
Inside, the rafters were strung with thousands of white lights.
Just like she’d imagined, and told him about… three years earlier.
"We didn't do the firefly dance last year," he said softly as she pressed her fingertips to her mouth.
Her eyes were filling rapidly with tears.
“And it didn’t make it onto your schedule for this year. But I told some of the staff, and they set this up while we were eating. So we can have a firefly dance every night if you want to.”
Oh, she wanted to. She was still nodding dumbly when music started from somewhere and he pulled her into his arms.
It was going to be a perfect summer.
What to Read Next
Coming July 15, 2016!
Forget Netflix and chill…campfire and thrill. Here's a sneak peek at the second book set in the Camp Firefly Falls world—stories so hot, you can roast marshmallows on your ereader.
* * *
His Counterfeit Campfire Bride by Gwen Hayes
Meet Miguel Castillo and Seraphina Worth. Two advertising office enemies sent to a corporate retreat at a sleepaway summer camp to work out their differences. With strict orders to come back with whatever trophies and ribbons are awarded for best team or come back unemployed, they are stunned to find out their boss sent them to the wrong camp session. Instead of corporate team building, they are signed up for Rediscover Your Marital Intimacy week.
She thinks he’s unpredictable, unreliable, and unstable. He thinks she’s stuffy, stilted, and square. They can barely work together and now they have to pretend to be married for a week at summer camp—sharing a cabin with one bed, doing tantric yoga, and thwarting the advances of a couple interested in a wife swap.
Trouble is, the one thing they both excel at is marketing. And the more they sell themselves as the perfect married couple, the harder it to remember it’s an ad campaign and not a love match.
* * *
CHAPTER ONE
* * *
Well, hell. She’s wearing the pencil skirt again.
Of course, she was.
Miguel Castillo paused at her open office door. Not to leer. Not exactly.
Well, yes, exactly that.
Most of the time, his feelings for Ms. Seraphina Worth ran pretty cold, much like the lady herself. But on pencil skirt day, he encountered a swift and unwelcome temperature change.
Generally speaking, Miguel preferred blondes. Tall blondes. Tall blondes who surfed, if he were given a choice.
Sera was none of those things.
She was petite. Like she might break into pieces petite. And she was brunette, which was fine, but she would never surf. Not in this lifetime. She wasn’t outdoorsy. She didn’t…muss. He liked women not afraid to get a little dirty—in bed and out. Sera seemed more like the lights-out, missionary-style, once on Saturday nights to get it over with kind of girl.
But when she wore the pencil skirt, it was always with the damned red lipstick.
He was screwed.
She still hadn’t noticed him as she looked out her window and talked into her phone. The sunlight streaming through the blinds landed on her, and he was shocked that he felt it in his gut. He was not allowed to have those kinds of feelings for Sera Worth. It was unprofessional and impossible. She was his co-director. She was his nemesis. And she was so fucking annoying.
As if she heard his thoughts, she cocked her head and met his gaze, raising her eyebrow. Just one. One perfect arch over the rim of the reading glasses she must have forgotten to take off when she answered her phone.
“I’ll call you back, Phillip,” she said into her phone. But she was looking at Miguel. And what she was saying was, “What do you want?”
Before the race for the promotion, they’d gotten along for the most part. Mostly because they ignored each other. She wasn’t on his radar then—unless it was pencil skirt day, of course. And life had been fine.
But then the director position opened up and things got…mean.
They'd both wanted the job. She'd probably wanted it more than he had, at first. But the way she kept harping on him about not being the man for the job. Well, it had rankled. Miguel was not the most mature man he knew—when someone challenged him the way she did, continued to do, he couldn’t just laugh it off. He had to win. He had to conquer. He had to beat his chest and go primal.
And then he got mean, too. It was like a horrible political campaign during election year the way they threw each other under the bus whenever they could. Lines were drawn and blithely ignored. Co-workers were dragged into the muck. Toward the end, he wasn’t even sure he knew himself anymore, but he knew for damned sure that Martin & Lewis Group would be fools to hire either one them for the job.
And surprise…Mr. Martin decided to do them one better—he gave the job to both of them. A shared position. Neither of them lost…but neither of them won, and it was a daily struggle to find a place to put all his caveman feelings.
What was worse was that he now had a job he hadn’t really wanted, still didn’t really want, and it came with extra responsibilities. Miguel wasn’t irresponsible, despite what Ms. Worth had said about him to anyone who would listen all those months ago. He just didn’t care for being overly burdened with obligation. He enjoyed the feeling of a job well done—but that was about as far as it went. Sera, on the other hand, seemed to revel in the glorious importance of her duty.
She finally noticed she was still wearing the reading glasses and slid them off her nose while she walked to her desk. “Hello, Miguel. Do we have a meeting on the calendar?” she asked primly. Again, it meant, “What do you want?”
“I just wanted to see if you’d had a chance to look over the focus group file.”
She nodded, and how she managed to make even a head nod look condescending, he didn’t know. “Let’s do a quick meeting after lunch?”
Of course. “Another meeting? Can’t we just talk about it now? I’m right here. You’re right here. Why do we have to plan to meet when we can just do it?”
Her dead-eye stare was more potent than an eye roll. She had perfected her brand for sure. Ice Princess. “I want to finalize my notes.”
Advertising pitches weren’t meant to be done in the middle of the day over a clean desk. Advertising was about all-nighters and too much coffee. It was about white boards and on-the-fly ideas. It was the adrenaline rush of near-miss deadlines that kept him at his optimum performance level. And he performed extraordinarily well for Martin and Lewis Group.
Miguel stepped all the way into her office. “Why can’t we just talk. Brainstorming is not a four-letter-word. In fact, it’s a staple of our profession. I’m guessing you’ve heard of it.”
Oh shit. Her hands moved to her hips. That meant he was about to get schooled. Which was bad enough. But getting schooled by her in that outfit, with that lipstick, was something he was not supposed to enjoy. Yet, he felt his interest rising, the flow of adrenaline beginning. He wanted to roll his sleeves up. Dig in. Get them both mussed.
“I do brainstorm. I just like to do it on paper, alone with my own thoughts. Your way is not the only way.”
“Neither is yours, princess.”
The sound of someone clearing his throat behind him stopped her from responding to Miguel and instead she said, “Mr. Martin.”
“In my office. Both of you. Now.”
Mr. Martin pivoted and was out the door before Sera could respond.
So she sent Miguel a “what is going on?” look. Because if he knew something and hadn’t told her…
He shook his head. And luckily for him, looked just as confused as she felt. “I have a feeling this is not good.” He stepped back and gestured her to the door.
She hated that Miguel was always a gentleman. Jerks should not also be gentleman. But he never failed to open her door or push her chair in. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he was doing it to piss her off. But it was also just as likely that he was simply raised well. He had his share of negative traits, but his manners didn’t make the list.
The walk down the hall was a long one. She focused on her breathing. It was important to still her emotions. Not get anxious.
Count to ten, Sera.
She wondered how many times she’d counted to ten in her lifetime. It was a trick the therapist taught her when she was eight-years-old before her surgery when she’d just been diagnosed, for the second time in her young life, with coarctation of the aorta. Quite a mouthful for a kid. Everything had gone topsy-turvy in her life and she’d had to learn too early how to manage stress. The therapist taught her how to focus on the things that were in her control and how not to obsess about whatever wasn’t in that circle.
It’s possible that counting to ten was an outdated tactic and there were better ways of dealing with her feelings now that she was an adult, but it still worked and she had no desire to mess with it at this point.
The last six months, though, she wouldn’t be surprised if she’d counted to one million in increments of ten. Something about Miguel Castillo brought out her need for counting. A lot.
On the surface, he was Mr. Fun. Everyone in the office loved Miguel. He didn’t put on airs or drive a flashy car. He was just six feet of yummy tanned skin with the requisite dark hair and eyes. He laughed a lot—the lines around his eyes were a sexy testament to that.
But underneath the surface, he lived to make her life unbearable.
Yes, she was controlling at times. Yes, she supposed it could be annoying. But she didn’t have the luxury of just “letting it happen.” If she’d let it happen, she’d have died before her tenth birthday. Nobody in her life, certainly not her mother, had been mature enough to make sure the meds didn’t get mixed up or appointments didn’t get missed. Sera had to organize her own pills and study city bus schedules and routes to the clinic. She’d learned how to find books in the library about congenital heart defects. How to ask doctors the right questions. How to keep at the doctors and nurses until they answered her, even if she was just a child.
So, yes. Sera took things seriously. Everything. Her health most of all. And that meant knowing what was and wasn’t in her control, and controlling the hell out of the things that were.
Her job: in her control. Her co-director: so not.
After insisting that they both sit, Mr. Martin drummed his fingers on the desk in fr
ont of him without saying a word. For an interminable amount of minutes. A thousand times she wanted to say something, anything, and ask what he needed to see them about. Break the tension as it ratcheted higher and higher. But she sat with her hands folded primly in her lap and waited him out. She was surprised Miguel chose a similar tactic, though his body was more or less sprawled in the chair.
They waited.
And waited.
The ticking of the wall clock getting louder. The silence bearing down, pressing against her skull like the atmosphere right before a rainstorm. She concentrated on her breathing. She concentrated on Miguel’s shoelace. She tried to clear her head. She—
“Do you know why I promoted you both to director last month?” Mr. Martin startled her out of her intense study of a carpet divot.
She and Miguel exchanged a glance.
You answer.
No, you.
He shook his head. She narrowed her eyes.
Mr. Martin exhaled loudly. “Because you two were supposed to be my dream team. You both had qualities I wanted for the position. You were both perfect for the job. So what could be more perfect than having you both?” He paused long enough to take a breath, but not long enough for anyone to answer the rhetorical question. “Except you’re not. Together you are useless.”
“Mr. Martin—”
“I mean it. You haven’t brought me a damn thing I can use, your staff is afraid of you, and HR says someone has complained about a hostile work environment.”
That brought Miguel up from his indolent slouch. “A hostile work environment? That’s insane.”
Mr. Martin raised his hands in front of him. “I assumed that there might be a few bumps to smooth out, but I had faith that the two of you could make it work. You’re my superstars. But neither of you can figure out how to compromise and you’re not bringing down my entire company to play your little ego games.”