Page 33 of The Kiss Keeper
“This is Jake’s first visit to Woolwich Cove,” she offered, answering for him with a bright smile.
Bev Woolwich squinted and adjusted her glasses. “I’m sorry, Jake. After hosting thousands of campers over the last fifty years, every face seems to look familiar to me, dear.”
“Is this the sunrise and sunset boyfriend?” Hal asked with the hint of a smirk, then released a muffled cough.
Natalie pushed up onto her tiptoes and gave the man a kiss on the cheek. “Oh, Grandpa, don’t be like that,” she said, then frowned and surveyed the man’s face. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Right as rain,” the man answered.
“I think that it’s quite romantic,” Bev said, shifting the attention away from her husband, then surprised him by wrapping her arms around him.
Jake returned the embrace and met his fake girlfriend’s eye.
“That’s my Jake. Always the romantic,” she said with ajust-go-with-itsmile.
Natalie’s grandfather took in the trench and heels. “That’s an interesting outfit. Let me hang your jacket in the closet.”
Oh, shit!
“It’s a dress,” he and his fake girlfriend blurted out in unison.
The man frowned. “That’s a dress?”
Natalie pasted on an amped-up grin. “Boy, I’m hungry!”
Note to self. His fake girlfriend was pretty terrible at the art of deception.
“Of course, you must be starving. Come on in and join your cousins! We’ve got pizza and beer in the kitchen,” Bev said, hooking her arm with Natalie’s and leading her into the main house while he hung back and walked next to Hal.
Rustic furniture and the scent of pizza woven in with a fire burning in the fireplace made for a cozy setting. Oil paintings and framed photographs blanketed the walls. He stared at image after image of groups of campers, arms slung around each other until one picture caught his eye, and he froze.
It was…him.
There he was, in black and white, standing with a group of campers. He recalled that day, lining up for the all-camp picture as Hal climbed a ladder to take the photograph.
“You found Nat,” the man said, stifling a cough then coming to stand next to him.
“I did?” he asked.
Hal tapped the photo, pointing out a young girl with dark hair. “She’s right there. That was her first year as a teen camper. The year our little Nat moved up to be with the big kids.”
Jake nodded, unable to speak. He hadn’t put it together until this moment.
Of course, she would have attended camp here, and that meant they’d been campers at the same time.
But he couldn’t recall meeting her.
He’d kept to himself that summer. Thirteen had been an intense age. He’d grown nearly six inches in one year and woke up bright and early every damn day with morning wood. He didn’t hang out with the other teen boys doing arts and crafts or playing pickup basketball. Instead, he’d hiked over to an abandoned lighthouse. Supposedly, the home of the Kiss Keeper legend, but for him, it was a place to think and daydream back when he’d wanted to be a marine biologist or a park ranger. He’d even contemplated opening a camp of his own.
Back when he could afford to have silly, childish dreams before the hard punch of reality hit him square in the gut.
Hal’s expression grew pensive. “Our Nat’s always had a good heart, a kind heart, an artist’s heart like Bev. And, like her grandmother, she can’t dole it out in parts. It’s all or nothing for these Woolwich women, and I fear she’s had it broken a time or two.”
He got the not so subtle don’thurt my granddaughterhint and nodded solemnly.
What else was he supposed to do? Pretending to be her boyfriend, he was walking a fine line, and he didn’t want to say anything too incriminating. He didn’t want to insinuate that there was a future for them, while at the same time, he needed her family to believe that there was—at least for this week.
“Hal, sweetheart, let Jake get some pizza,” Bev called from the kitchen, saving him from a response.
