A figure rose from the back of the nearest boat. A dark raincoat now engulfed her body. The hood framed her face, casting shadows down the curve of her neck. Dark curls trailed along her cheeks. His heart caught in his chest. All these years, Nicky had been like a phantom at the edges of his memory—and here she was even more beautiful than he’d remembered.
How much did she remember? Did she remember the long conversations on top of the cliff? How he’d opened his heart to her? How close they’d gotten? Or had everything they’d shared been destroyed by how he’d left, then been lost under an avalanche of time?
Her eyes opened wide. Then they narrowed, filling with a look that bordered on frustration. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that he’d walked out of her life for a reason. He’d needed to protect her then. He needed to protect her now. “Sorry to just barge in like this. We didn’t really didn’t get a chance to talk back there, and I wanted to make sure everything was okay.”
“Yeah, I’m just busy doing the work of two people, trying to get ready for tomorrow.” She shrugged. “Obviously, I’ll feel better when George is back on his feet again. I’m guessing you didn’t get a chance to talk to him?”
A bitter taste rose to his tongue. Yeah, he’d talked to George, for all of two seconds after he’d pulled him from the blaze. Just long enough for George to remind him he’d once been a liar and a thief who’d tried to steal the camp cash box. Which was the exact opposite of what he’d have ever expected from the old man, especially after George had pressed upon him how important it was to him personally that Luke come up this weekend. It made no sense.
“Not really. Just a few words. Do you keep anything special in your camp cash box? I thought he said something about my going back for it, but obviously I couldn’t.”
She blinked. “No. Just a couple hundred dollars in petty cash. Nothing worth running into a fire for. Maybe you misunderstood him.”
He shrugged. “Probably.” She turned to the boat. He crossed the floor in three steps. “Wait. Before you go, I owe you an apology.”
She didn’t even look at him. “Don’t worry about it. Please. You’re hardly the first person Ace Sports has lured away. Just make sure you double check your invoice carefully.” She slapped a button on the wall and the garage-type door rolled open. “Now, if you could close this door after I leave, I’d really appreciate it. The remote isn’t working and it’s going to rain.”
Why were they still talking to each other like virtual strangers? For years he’d pictured what it would be like to see Nicky again. He’d imagined her crying. He’d imagined her yelling. He’d even imagined her tumbling into his arms. He’d never imagined her just brushing him off.
She glanced back over her shoulder. Her eyes met his. Huge. Fathomless. Filled with questions she didn’t seem ready put into words, yet which still somehow managed to reach into his chest begging him for the answers. She slipped a key into the ignition. The engine roared to life.
“Nicky, wait.” He crossed the floor quickly, feeling all the words he wanted to say get mixed up and jumbled inside him. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
“I’m sorry, but I really must go.” The boat inched forward. She didn’t even look at him. “I’ve got to get the camping site ready for tomorrow and the storm’s moving faster than I expected. I’m short-handed as it is—”
He grabbed the corner of the windshield. “I’m sorry I never showed up at the lookout that day and just left you standing there waiting. I never should’ve left without saying goodbye. As for telling you my name was ‘Louie’ instead of ‘Luke’ so you couldn’t find me, and pretending I was really a counselor at Ace Sports...that was pretty low.”
A long pause spread through the tiny boathouse, filling his ears with the sound of water lapping against the boat. Her hood fell back. Her eyes were wet with unshed tears. Her lower lip trembled. He slid his hand down the windshield and onto the console, inches away from hers.
But she kept both hands on the steering wheel. When she spoke, her voice was as clear and strong as the sound of the final whistle. “I don’t know what to say to that. Except, thank you for finally being honest. I thought I’d recognized you earlier, but I didn’t know what to think, especially when you said you’d never worked at Ace Sports.” She blinked hard. “I accept your apology. But I honestly don’t have time to talk about this right now. I just really have to go.”
“Okay.” He let go of the boat and crossed his arms. “Then I’m coming with you.”
The thick mass of towering rock and dense pines rose out of the water, deep in the middle of the lake. Black-and-orange clouds hung heavy in the trees. Nicky eased up on the throttle and steered the boat toward the island. They’d barely exchanged more than a word or two since they’d left camp. Not that it was always easy to make yourself heard over the rush of the wind and the smack of waves hitting the boat. Maybe he was simply waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t have a clue what to say.
So, her first love hadn’t just broken her heart, he’d lied to her about who he was and where he was from. Repeatedly and intentionally. Which probably meant he’d just been some bored teenager from a nearby cottage who’d thought it would be fun to sneak into a camp. Wouldn’t be the only time that had happened. Except, this time she’d been the foolish girl who’d been too quick to trust and to give her heart away. A mistake she wouldn’t make again.
Nicky focused on coasting the boat through an obstacle course of jutting rocks and yellow buoys. Whatever she’d once felt for this man was ancient history. All that mattered now was saving her camp. Luke was nothing more to her now than someone her boss had invited up for the weekend.
She cut the motor, filling the air with a silence that was so still it was almost deafening.
Luke whistled under his breath. “George told me that a former camper had given Camp Spirit an actual island in their will, but I’ve never seen it.”
She almost smiled. “It’s about a two-hour trip by canoe, though way less by motorboat. It was bequeathed to Camp Spirit about three years ago, but we haven’t been able to do much with it, to be honest. George has this vision of turning it into an offshoot youth camp for older teens that are either in trouble with the law or at risk of going that way. But we don’t have the resources to make it happen.”
“Do you get a lot of donations?”
She steered the boat toward a small strip of beach. “Not really. A few former campers give us twenty or thirty dollars a month. But even though George kind of runs the place like a charity, he’s never applied to legally become one because we don’t hit all the criteria, and that turns off a lot of donors. Sometimes business people or organizations partner with us to build something specific. And then there’s Mystery Donor.”
His eyebrows rose. “‘Mystery Donor’?”
“That’s what the counselors call him or her. Seven or eight years ago, someone gave George a huge, huge donation. Close to a million dollars, actually. With careful management, George was able to use it to fund new buildings and new projects. It kept us going for years. But as only George knew their name, the summer staff got into the habit of praying, ‘Thank You, God, for the Mystery Donor!’ and it stuck.”
She chuckled. But Luke frowned. His gaze ran over the steep stone crags. His brow furrowed. The whole trip there she’d been catching little sideways glimpses of him, without really meaning to. Evaluating the man he was against the boy she remembered. His shoulders had gone from husky to strong. Dark stubble on his jawline hinted of a man who didn’t like a close shave. No ring on his finger, implying he’d never settled down. There was still a slight curve at the corner of a mouth that looked just as soft as the day he’d first kissed her. “Well, I know things are tight