Once Upon a Campfire

  Contents

  Once Upon A Campfire

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Once Upon A Campfire

  A Note From Kait

  Other Books By Kait Nolan

  Once Upon A Campfire

  A Camp Firefly Falls Meet Cute Romance

  By Kait Nolan

  Once Upon A Campfire

  Written and published by Kait Nolan

  Copyright 2017 Kait Nolan

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is a work of fiction. All people, places, and events are purely products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is entirely coincidental.

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover design by Kait Nolan

  For those brave enough to take a different path.

  “I need you to impersonate me.”

  From the faded corduroy sofa in her tiny, studio apartment, Sarah Meadows rolled her eyes, though her sister on the other end of the phone couldn’t see. “Did you forget to renew your driver’s license again? Because it expired back in January.”

  “I wish it were something that simple,” Taylor said. “I’ve got a serious problem.”

  “What is it this time?” Sarah tried to keep the judgment out of her voice. Really, she did. But it was hard. So much of her twin’s adult life had been a train wreck, and it seemed Sarah was routinely the one called upon to pick up the pieces.

  “Well, you know I was supposed to be done with this private tour guide gig day after tomorrow and flying back East in time to start the new job at Camp Firefly Falls on Saturday, right?”

  “Yeah. You’ve got orientation next week.”

  “I’m not going to make it back in time.”

  Oh, not good. Not good at all. “Did your flight get canceled?”

  “No. This job came in last night—a week-long trek for some Hollywood muckitymuck.”

  “You are not blowing off the camp job for one last guide trip.” Dear God, she’d thought Taylor was past this kind of thing.

  “No, it’s not like that. I told Danny I couldn’t do it. But he’s threatening not to give me my last month’s pay if I don’t stick around and do it.”

  “You haven’t been paid in a month?”

  “Room and board were covered, and I figured if I didn’t have the money in hand, I couldn’t blow it on anything stupid. Except now I risk not getting paid at all, and I need that money, Sarah.”

  That was putting things mildly. Three years before, Taylor’s unfortunate taste in men had resulted in a short relationship with one Jax Howorth—not his real name—who’d taken every dime of Taylor’s money, trashed her credit, and left her in a mountain of debt. She’d been slowly, painstakingly climbing out of that hole ever since.

  Sarah sighed. “How much are we talking?”

  Her sister named a figure that had Sarah’s mouth dropping open.

  “You’re getting paid that much as a guide?” Maybe she’d chosen the wrong career. Not that anybody became a grad student to make money. The hope was that you’d make some when you finished the degree.

  “Rich people will pay for all kinds of things. And this producer guy, or whoever, is willing to give me a five thousand dollar bonus to stick around.”

  That had all of Sarah’s alarm bells ringing. “Are you sure he doesn’t expect you to do something more than be a trail guide?”

  “Positive. He’s flamingly gay.”

  Well, that was something, at least. “So, what exactly are you asking?”

  “I want you to go to Camp Firefly Falls and be me for orientation week. I’ll be done with this job, get paid, and be back in time for the certification test. Nobody will be any the wiser.”

  Exasperated, Sarah shoved to her feet and began to pace. Ten steps to the kitchen. Fifteen to the window overlooking the busy Brooklyn street. Five to her bedroom door, then start again. “Taylor, this isn’t like fooling our high school teachers. This is a job! One that you’re qualified for and I’m not. And what about you actually learning the stuff you’re being certified for?”

  “I’ve learned the handbook backwards and forwards, and there’s nothing a camp in the Berkshires can throw at me that’s harder than what I’ve been doing in Wyoming.”

  “That may be, but I’m not trained for any of this! How do you expect anybody to believe that I’m you?”

  “It’s not that complicated, sis. You’re in good shape. You’re a trained lifeguard, a runner. And God knows, you haven’t met a subject you can’t study up on and pass a test for. You just have to spend a week learning their policies and procedures, helping get camp set up, readying cabins, and that kind of thing. Easy peasy.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you said when you convinced me to fill in at cheerleading practice so you could meet up with that college guy. ‘Kick high, shake your thing, you’ll be fine,’ you said, ‘they’ll never know the difference.’ Only you failed to mention the pyramid, and trust me, when it all came down, everyone knew the difference.”

  There was a noise at the other end of the line that sounded suspiciously like a stifled snort of laughter. Taylor cleared her throat. “In my defense, I didn’t know think they would try the pyramid. Man they were pissed.”

  “Not making your case here, Tay.”

  “But pissed at me, they were pissed at me. And no human pyramid at camp, no polyester, and no shaking your thing unless you’re so inclined. But preferably not, because, you know, I have to work with these people.”

  “I’m smarter than I was at seventeen. Too smart to let you drag me into this. Besides, I do have a life. Responsibilities. I can’t just pick up and go play you for a week.”

  “Oh, come on. Like you can’t take a week off from your thesis?”

  “I can’t, actually. I’m on a very strict schedule in order to finish in time to defend in August and start the doctoral program in the fall.” She’d scrimped and saved in order to take the summer off from any assistantships so she could just write and be done with the thing. She wasn’t about to waste that time.

  “But just imagine how much clearer your head will be after getting out of the city. You said yourself, you have a hard time writing there. You’ve been dying to get out of New York. This is your chance to recharge a little. And it’s beautiful. You could take your camera, finally have some of the nature you actually like shooting pictures of.”

  A car horn blared from the street below and somebody shouted an inventive curse in…was that Portuguese?

  A muscle by Sarah’s eye began to twitch. “By working for you.”

  “Pleeeeeeease,” Taylor wheedled. “Think about it, Sarah! Five thousand. It’s enough to put a serious dent in the stupid debt. Enough I might be able to pay the last of it off by the end of the summer, so I can finally have a clean slate.”

  A clean slate. That had been Taylor’s Holy Grail since Jax walked out of her life. He’d been her wakeup call, the last in a long line of poor decisions. The school of hard knocks had taught her what no one else could, and she was finally ready to grow up. If she finally could get free of the mess Jax had created, she’d be able to do that. And Sarah would be able to stop worrying about her and focus on her own work. Maybe.

  But coul
d she really afford a week away?

  The living room wall rattled as something solid slammed against it from the apartment next door. A moan and the rhythmic thumping that followed told her it was the newlyweds going at it again, instead of a nice, helpful home invasion that would put an end to the ear-splitting noise violations they engaged in multiple times a day. The eye-twitch ramped up to a full on headache. Not only were they supremely distracting, their enthusiastic amour only served to highlight exactly how long it had been since there’d been a man in her life.

  Not that she was looking.

  Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose. “You swear this is something I can pull off?”

  “Absolutely!” Taylor assured her.

  She was probably going to regret this. But maybe her twin was right and getting back to nature would help break the writer’s block that had been plaguing her for months. At the very least, maybe she’d get some shots to replace the artwork on her walls.

  “Okay, I’m in. Tell me what I need to do.”

  ~*~

  “Good morning, staffers!”

  From one of the picnic tables set up down by Lake Waawaatesi, Beckett Hayes watched his new boss, Heather Tully, address the assembled crowd. Oh yeah. His buddy, Michael, had done well when he’d married her. The cheerful blonde looked absolutely in her element. And why shouldn’t she? Camp Firefly Falls—summer camp for grown-ups—was her brain child.

  “It’s going to be a super busy week as we finish prepping for our first session of the summer—Singles Week—so we’ll be throwing you all into the deep end with that one.”

  “Deep end is right,” the guy next to him whispered. “I was here for that last year. It’s like policing a damned orgy.”

  “Lovely,” Beckett muttered. He’d dealt with some of that in his last job as national park ranger. Herding drunk, horny people was never fun. It almost always ended in insults and often with beer or other questionable liquids spilled on his uniform.

  “Now, some of you will be here all summer and some will be in and out, depending on the specifics of the session, but everybody has to pass their camp certification by the end of the week to keep our insurance company happy. That said, we want all of you to have fun yourselves. Here at Camp Firefly Falls, we work hard and play hard. The work begins bright and early at eight every morning. You can pick up your daily assignments at breakfast. We wrap in time for dinner at six, with evening activities planned so you can get to know your fellow staff members.”

  The collective staff cheered.

  “This afternoon, we’re getting started with a swim test.”

  “Are you serious?” someone called from down front.

  “Camp rules. Everybody has to tread water for two minutes, then swim out to the raft and back. Anybody who does not pass will not be on any water activities for the summer. Anybody who’s not already suited up, go change. We get rolling in fifteen minutes!”

  Beckett held himself back from the minor stampede toward the staff cabins to change clothes. He was already set with board shorts and a t-shirt. While waiting, he scanned the remaining faces, noting the animated conversations and laughter. A lot of these people were returning staff, and a fair chunk had been campers here before the Tullys bought it and turned it into a resort, back when Camp Firefly Falls had been a regular sleep-away camp for kids.

  Beckett hadn’t been one of them.

  Michael wandered over and plunked down on the other side of the table. “Settling in okay?”

  “Getting there.”

  “Cabin working out for you?”

  Beckett laughed. “It’s like a damned penthouse suite compared to some of the places I lived with the park service. Listen, I want to thank you again for giving me a job this summer. After the—” He cut himself off, not wanting to get into the mess of his former position. “Well, my prospects weren’t great. This is really saving my ass.” The summer’s work would buy him time to figure out his next move.

  “Hey, it’s our gain and my pleasure. They were wrong for firing you.”

  Beckett jerked his shoulders. “Yeah, well, I was far from the only one. You flagrantly disagree with the powers that be, you get burned.” Even given how things had turned out, he couldn’t regret being part of the AltPark movement. It was good work. Important work. Work that was now being carried out by others.

  They both looked out over the lake, glistening in the early morning sun. It was gorgeous, soothing, and a far cry from the Ivy League campus where they’d met.

  “Never would have thought we’d end up here when we were busting our humps for our MBAs,” Beckett observed.

  “Maybe not me, but you walked away from the crazy a lot sooner than I did.”

  In his last year of grad school, Beckett had walked out. Of the classroom. Of the MBA program. Away from Dartmouth. He’d never looked back. “Wasn’t gonna make me happy.”

  “I wish I’d figured the same out sooner. That whole corporate culture nearly cost me my wife.”

  “But it didn’t,” Beckett observed. “This place brought you two back together.”

  Michael sighed in obvious contentment. “Seems fitting since we were camp sweethearts as kids.”

  He tipped back his water. “You’re a lucky bastard.”

  “Yes, yes I am. And hey, who knows? Maybe you’ll meet your match this summer.”

  Beckett cocked an eyebrow at his friend. “Come on, now. I expect that kind of crap from Heather. Not from you.”

  Michael just grinned. “We’ve got a bulletin board up in Pinecone Lodge with pictures of all the couples who’ve gotten together here. It’s filling up.”

  “You, sir, are full of shit.”

  Laughing, Michael shoved back from the table. “Just don’t let Heather hear you say that. She’ll try to matchmake you.”

  “I do not need the complication of a woman in my life.”

  “They’re the only complication that’s worth it.” Spoken like the happily married man he was.

  “And on that saccharine note, I believe I’ll take my position at the starting line.” Beckett stripped off his t-shirt and toed off his Chacos, leaving them in a neat pile on the picnic table as he went to join the thickening crowd on the dock.

  He found himself next to a long, lean woman bent in a forward fold. He made a valiant effort not to stare at her ass in the snug, racer-back swimsuit and ended up admiring her gorgeously toned legs instead.

  “See something you like?” The wry tone had him yanking his eyes away like a teenage boy caught peeping in the girls’ locker room.

  Busted.

  “Sorry,” Beckett muttered, gaze now firmly on the raft anchored out in Lake Waawaatesi. “You just look—” Was there any way to finish that sentence that didn’t make him come off like a perv? “—like you know what you’re doing.”

  “I should. I’ve been swimming competitively practically since birth.” She straightened. “I’m Taylor.”

  He interpreted the proffered hand as a sign of forgiveness and turned to take it. His own name died on his tongue as he found himself faced with the biggest doe eyes he’d ever seen.

  Well hello, Bambi.

  “Hi.”

  A corner of Taylor’s mouth quirked as she gave his hand a perfunctory shake. “May the best swimmer win.”

  “Win wha—”

  The scream of an air horn signaled the start of the test. Taylor dove for the water, as did everyone around Beckett before he could get his brain in gear. She’d already surfaced by the time he dove in. The chill lake water was a shock to his system, clearing the haze of lust from his brain.

  “Two minutes!” shouted Heather. “Starting…now!”

  His feet and arms automatically began to tread, keeping him afloat. A few feet away, Taylor was already facing the raft, her dark hair slicked back like a seal.

  “In a hurry?” he asked.

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Eye on the target.”

  “You know this isn’t a contest
, right?”

  Her lips bowed into a full-on grin that sucker punched him more than the icy lake. “Everything’s a competition.”

  Beckett had done everything in his power to get away from competition in his life. But something about that smile pulled at him and invited him to join in the fun. He had a feeling competition with Taylor would be anything but the senseless, boring grind he’d walked away from. So he readied muscles honed as a boy in the surf off Myrtle Beach, and when Heather blew the air horn again, he went for it.

  He made it to the head of the pack in four strokes, but Taylor was faster. Her freestyle was a thing of beauty, slicing cleanly through the water as if she’d been born to it. Beckett dug deep, pulling his focus back to his own form. Half a dozen strokes and he’d closed the gap to two lengths. Ahead, Taylor slapped the raft and dove, popping back up and heading toward shore. Beckett tagged the raft himself and switched to butterfly for the return leg. He caught up with her at the halfway point. Seeing what he was about, she shifted smoothly into a butterfly stroke herself, and they both raced for the finish line.

  Taylor beat him by two strokes. Beckett could hear her crow of victory as she slapped the dock.

  “You are a freaking mermaid,” he gasped.

  She slicked her hair back and beamed. “Yes, I am. God, that felt good!”

  A shadow fell over the two of them. Michael. “You realize we have no prizes, right?”

  “Maybe you should,” Beckett suggested. “Because that was damned impressive.”

  “Maybe we’ll just move things around so she’s on lifeguard duty instead of paired up with you for rock climbing.”

  “Looks like tomorrow we get to go to my playground.” Beckett grinned, turning to the mermaid. Something had wiped the smile clear off her face. In fact, she looked a little sick. What was that about?

  ~*~

  The lodge was buzzing with conversation, when Sarah stumbled in at 7:15 the next morning. She didn’t make eye contact with anyone, didn’t talk. Her entire attention was focused on finding the coffee. As long as she got some in the next two minutes, no one would get maimed, and she’d probably manage to maintain her cover.