Page 69 of Lady and the Camp
He’d ditched the dressier shirt and pants for jeans and a band T-shirt. A totally different look than I’d seen on him so far.Weekend Lucas.
A jab hit my side. “Stare much?” Noah grinned at me.
Caught. She saw me staring and she saw who I stared at. “How’d you know?”
“I didn’t. You just confirmed.”
Dang, my friends were sharp. “Don’t say anything.”
She winked at me. I could trust Noah not to blurt out I had a thing for Lucas, but I could also count on her to dance around the topic so frequently it forced me to confess. Good times ahead.
Lucas caught my gaze from across the room. His weekend look hit me right in the sweet spot. It took determined strength to not dash across the room and fling my arms around him.
I smiled back at him, then quickly glanced to my friends if anyone noticed. Lucas grinned. Almost as if he energized by our secret.
We hit the snacks head-on, followed by delivery from a Greek food take-out with gyros, salad, pitas, and baba ghanoush. We spread out across the dining area and combined living room, which stretched the full length of the cabin, with windows at either end and a couch facing a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace. The other half was comprised of a simple but functional kitchen and a hall leading to a bathroom and bedroom.
After eating, Robby grabbed an acoustic guitar from a hook on the wall. He began a gentle strum, then jammed harder, seeming to lose all sense of time and place.
“He’s the youngest,” Matteo said. “He’s special.”
“I’ll start a fire,” Lucas offered. “Unless you all want to go to the fire pit at camp. We have the place to ourselves.”
“Run of the camp?” Robby stood. “Lead the way.”
Patrick held up a hand. “We should get a group consensus. Who wants to go to the fire pit?”
“Future politician,” Marcy said to me as she raised her hand. “He’s alwayspracticing.”
He folded his arms. “I heard that.”
The group gathered jackets, coolers, the guitar, and moved outside. Lucas and I were the last ones out.
As I began to cross through the doorway, he hooked a finger onto my sleeve and pulled me inside again. He swept me closer for a kiss. “I need a little hit.”
I kissed him back and ran my hand along his jawline. He smelled like woodsy perfection. “Maybe we can find a chance to sneak away.”
“They’ll follow us. My cousins are ruthless.”
“Noah already suspects something.”
“Marcy will find out.”
“Who are we missing?” Marcy called out loudly from outside. “Hudson and Lucas—what are you two doing?”
I went in for a last-second kiss. His lips lingered and I stupidly sank into his embrace as a door creaked open. We pulled apart. As I suspected, we had an audience.
Chapter 23
Lucas
Withallthesurpriseexcitement of my crew showing up, I’d forgotten we planned another practice for the camp games competition that weekend. Maggie and some of the counselors were gone, but Pocket Pete and the kitchen staff came out Saturday afternoon along with the meet-up group folks. We were one big happy mash of camp family and friends.
Hudson said she wished for a camp for adults, and that’s exactly what we did. I couldn’t imagine anything better than camp with my best friends, my new friends, and Hudson.
I gathered everybody to the central activity area by the fire pit.
“You know what this means, Lucas.” Matteo clapped a hand to my shoulder. “Three words.”
