The Kiss Keeper

by Krista Sandor

  Jake glanced around. “They married here?”

  “Yeah, right by the water.”

  “Do you know what this place is worth?” he asked.

  No one had ever asked her that question before.

  She frowned. “I have no idea. Why would that matter?”

  “How much further, Aunt Nat?” Annabelle called, her little body hunched forward and arms dangling as if they’d set off to summit Everest and not walk up the hill into the woods.

  “This is far enough. You can tell the kids to stop.” Her gaze shifted from Jake to the little girl, but she couldn’t get his words out of her mind.

  Do you know what this place is worth?

  Jake’s question dropped like a lead weight, but there had to be a reason why he’d ask.

  He was in real estate. Could it simply be professional interest or force of habit? In her case, she could barely go anywhere without something calling to her to be sketched or painted.

  She pushed the question aside as they caught up with the children, waving them in to gather around the basket. Opening it, she pulled out a worn box of crayons.

  “Pick your favorite color and peel off the paper,” she directed.

  “The crayon will be naked!” Annabelle exclaimed as Toby and Tucker snickered.

  She patted the girl’s shoulder. “The crayon doesn’t mind because it’s an artist tool.”

  “Artists don’t use crayons,” Finn huffed.

  “They sure do, just watch,” she countered.

  She peeled the paper off a stubby maroon crayon, then selected a piece of paper. “Art and nature go hand in hand. Think of Picasso’s sunflowers or Monet’s water lilies,” she added, then found a fallen leaf on the ground and, gently placing the paper over it, proceeded to make a rubbing. After only a few strokes, the veins of a pear-shaped birch leaf emerged.

  “It’s like magic!” Annabelle exclaimed, then ripped the paper off her red crayon.

  Finn crossed his arms. “It’s a leaf.”

  She crossed her arms, mimicking the preteen. “I bet you can’t do it.”

  The boy’s eyes went wide. “I betcha I can.”

  She tossed him a crayon, and he snagged a piece of paper, looking hellbent on proving her wrong. And it was just the reaction she wanted.

  “You’re good with kids,” Jake offered.

  She watched as Finn centered the paper over a knot on a birch tree trunk and went to work. “Kids are easy. They want to learn and explore even when they act like they don’t.”

  He took a step toward her. “I don’t know if I agree that kids are easy, but you sure make it look that way.”

  She continued to watch as Finn plucked a pinecone for Josie. “My way with kids seems to be the one thing the curse hasn’t touched.”

  “Curse?” he questioned.

  She cringed. “It may sound a little silly. It’s an old Camp Woolwich legend.”

  She’d never mentioned the Kiss Keeper’s curse to any of her other Jakes, but she’d never brought any of her past Jakes here.

  She glanced over at the kids and caught Finn’s eye. “I’m going to show Jake around. We’ll only be a minute. Can you keep an eye on your cousins?”

  “Sure, Aunt Nat,” the boy answered, falling nicely into the role of the teacher’s, or in this case, aunt’s helper.

  She gestured for Jake to follow her and led him up the trail toward…

  The well.

  It had been years since she’d seen it, but it remained as it had in her memory, a simple circular structure made of stone with a weathered wooden roof. It seemed crazy that something so innocuous could have impacted her life so profoundly. But then again, it wasn’t just the well. It was the legend, built on kiss after kiss after kiss, year after year after year.

  Jake came to her side then froze. “The well.”

  She nodded. “It may not look like much, but here at Camp Woolwich, there’s an old camp legend that a Kiss Keeper haunts it and demands kisses be offered up here at the well.”

  She looked at Jake, expecting him to laugh or tell her she was insane to believe in childhood campfire stories. But he didn’t do or say anything. He just stared at the well.

  She continued. “The way it works is a boy and a girl are chosen to sneak out of their cabins late after lights out to go meet their kiss keeper. But you see, you go blindfolded, so you never see who your kiss keeper is. You’re supposed to kiss, here, at the old well. If you don’t, legend says you’ll be cursed.”

  “How’d you get cursed?” Jake asked, still staring at the gray stones.

  “I met my kiss keeper at the well, but before he could kiss me, night patrol stopped us.”

  “They caught you?” he whispered.

  She shook her head. “No, we hid from them, and then my kiss keeper took off his blindfold and guided me back to my cabin.”

  “You never kissed?” he asked, his voice barely a rasp.

  She couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “No, he kissed me but not at the well. He kissed me outside of my cabin.” She walked up to the well and ran her fingertips over the smooth stone then glanced over her shoulder at her fake boyfriend. “Do you want to know if I ever figured out the identity of my kiss keeper?”

  7

  Jake

  Nothing moved. No breeze. Not a peep from the kids. It was as if nature itself sat stupefied along with him.

  Natalie looked down the path that he knew led to the teen girls’ cabin, then brushed her fingers across her lips. A quick, unintentional movement, or perhaps it was muscle memory. But her pink cheeks and the girlish curve to her lips all but confirmed that she’d thought about that kiss just as much as he had.

  Not that kiss.

  Their kiss.

  Sweet Christ! Natalie Callahan was his kiss keeper. Of all the women in all the trench coats in all the airport screening lines, what were the odds of not only meeting her but going along with her con that was really his con to get her family’s land?

  Ping! Ping! Ping!

  The smile faded from her face. “Do you need to get that?”

  He frowned. “Get what?”

  “Your phone.”

  Dammit!

  He pulled it out to find a text from Charlie, then shoved the phone back into his pocket. “It’s not important.”

  “Well, do you want to know if I ever found my kiss keeper?” she asked again.

  He swallowed hard. She never saw him. He’d made sure of it because of all those damn kiss keeper rules. No looking at each other. No disclosing your name. But she was right. They hadn’t kissed at the well. He’d never contemplated that their kiss at the cabin didn’t count.

  “Jake, are you okay?”

  He shook his head to get his mind back on track. “I’m fine.”

  A lie.

  He was the furthest thing from fine. No more than three feet away stood the girl, now the woman, who he’d thought about night after night. He’d held onto the memory of her through his darkest days.

  He cleared his throat, half dreading and half wanting for her to say that she knew it was him.

  He shifted his weight. “Did you ever figure it out?”

  She sat down on the edge of the well and glanced inside. “No, I didn’t. The funny thing is, I didn’t want to kiss a boy back then. No, that’s not true. I’d thought about it, but—”

  “Was it a good kiss?” he asked, hating himself for asking, but he’d always wondered if it meant as much to her as it had to him.

  Her cheeks went all rosy again, and she smiled the same smile he remembered from that night when he left her, standing in the moonlight outside the cabin with her face partially covered by a bandana.

  She pressed her fingertips to her lips again. “It was the perfect first kiss.”

  She wasn’t wrong. It was. He remembered everything about that night and everything about her.

  His phone pinged again, and he stiffened.

  “Is it your work or your family? Are you s
ure it’s not important?” she asked from her perch on the well.

  He took out his phone to see another notification of a text from Charlie, then set the device to mute. “I can get to it later.”

  He had to get his head in the game. But this, finding her, threw one hell of a curveball into his plan. She watched him carefully with those trusting ocean-green eyes. But he wasn’t one to be trusted. Even if he wasn’t there to persuade her grandparents to sell, he wasn’t the man for her.

  He wasn’t the man for anyone.

  He could only imagine that the other Jakes she’d dated were much like the douche canoe he’d watched dump her and move on in real-time. But he was no better. In fact, he may be worse. Maybe once upon a time, there was a chance for him to be one of the good guys—a family man and a loving husband like his father had been—but all that promise and potential evaporated the moment he learned of his parents’ deaths.

  No, if he wanted the control and the power that he’d focused on achieving for more than half his life, there was only one way forward.

  Play the part of Natalie’s boyfriend.

  Get the grandparents to sell.

  Then, move on. He had to treat Camp Woolwich like any other property—like any other deal.

  This was business.

  “I still wonder about him,” she said, breaking into his thoughts.

  “About who?” he asked.

  She toyed with the hem of her dress. “The boy, my kiss keeper. Where is he now? What’s he doing? Does he remember me?”

  He joined her at the well, his pulse quickening as if his body remembered what it was like being there with her all those years ago, and then, he was thirteen again. All nerves and lanky limbs, he wanted now what he wanted then. He sat down next to her and drew his fingertips up the smooth, milky-white skin of her neck and cupped her face in his hands.

  “I think you’d be a hard person to forget, Heels.”

  It was the truth. He’d never forgotten her.

  She gazed up at him with those damn elusive eyes that made him forget all the darkness and only see her and her light. She was like a beacon drawing him in. He brushed his thumb across her bottom lip, and that force was back, that magnetic pull between them. That intense drive to kiss her, to protect her, and to make love to her flooded his system. He could give in a little bit. Being a good fake boyfriend was all part of the con, right?

  “Oh, Jake,” she whispered as she closed her eyes.

  He threaded his fingers into her hair, and she sighed, melting into his touch. He’d allow himself one last kiss. He leaned in, and the heat of her breath teased his lips, but before they could meet, a loud cry came from where they’d left the children.

  “Aunt Nat! Uncle Jake! Come quick!”

  He and Natalie broke apart, and she sprang to her feet.

  “What is it?” she called as they ran the short distance to where the kids had been making their rubbings.

  “It’s Toby,” Maddie said, pointing up into a giant oak. “He climbed up way too high. We told him to stop.”

  Finn paced back and forth. “I tried to climb up and help him down, but—”

  “I have to pee!” Toby called from way too damn high up a tree, his voice a mix of fear and urgency.

  “He says that if he moves, he’ll pee his pants,” Finn added, shaking his head like a frustrated parent.

  “Okay,” Natalie said with her hands on her hips, gazing up at Toby’s dangling legs. “I’ve climbed this tree a million times. This is nothing to worry about. I’ll go up and get him.”

  “What if he pees on you?” Annabelle whispered with wide eyes.

  Josie wrinkled her nose. “Ew!”

  “He won’t,” Natalie answered.

  Tucker glanced up at his brother. “What if he pees on us when you’re bringing him down?”

  Natalie chewed her lip. “Okay, I’ve got a solution for that. Everyone, hold hands, and take three giant steps away from the tree.”

  They quickly complied.

  “I’ve really gotta go!” Toby wailed.

  “My mom will be really mad if Toby pees his pants, Aunt Nat,” Tucker called from the safe zone.

  “Yeah, she’ll be really mad at me,” Natalie said under her breath.

  “Let me go.”

  She turned to him. “Jake, you did not sign up for rescuing a seven-year-old with a full bladder from a tree.”

  He chuckled. “That may be the first time that phrase has ever been uttered.”

  She dropped her head and sighed. “How good of a climber are you?”

  He cracked his knuckles. “Master level.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I pretty much lived in this tree when I was a girl.”

  He schooled his features. “Is that a challenge?”

  “Aunt Nat! I can’t hold it much longer!”

  A playful glint in her eye answered his question.

  “Ready, set…” he began.

  “Go!” she cried, striding toward the tree.

  And sweet baby Jesus! She wasn’t kidding. He’d been free climbing for years, but Natalie hit each branch like she was part primate. Except, there was nothing primate about her smooth, toned legs, moving from branch to branch. And then he got a quick glimpse of hot pink lace and the curve of her ass.

  “Holy hell,” he said, unable to hold back.

  Natalie stopped climbing, glanced down at the kids below, and then up at the child, clutching the trunk for dear life before awkwardly pressing her knees together. “Don’t you dare look up my dress, Jake Teller!”

  He shrugged. “You’re the one who cheated to get ahead.”

  “Aunt Nat, I’m gonna blow!”

  “How are we going to do this?” Natalie asked, biting back a grin.

  He had to admit that this was pretty damn hilarious.

  He pulled his gaze from her ass and looked past her at the dangling shoestrings, several branches up. “You get to him first, since you’re part chimpanzee, and then I can carry him down on my back.”

  “Okay, let’s hope this works—commence Operation No Tree Pee,” she said, then worked her way up, limb by limb.

  It didn’t take them long to get to the boy.

  “Are you ready, Toby? I’m going to carry you down,” he said.

  “What if I pee?” the child squealed, clenching every muscle in his little body.

  Good question. The last thing he wanted was to be covered in piss.

  “See that bush,” he said, pointing toward the ground. “Once we get down, we’ll race over, and you can pee there.”

  “Okay,” the boy replied, scrunching up his face.

  Natalie climbed onto Toby’s branch and took his hand. “You can make it, honey. I know you can.”

  “Are you going to go fast, Uncle Jake?”

  “Like a tree ninja, dude,” he replied, not sure what a tree ninja was, but it sounded a hell of a lot cooler than a potty porter.

  The boy cracked a smile then grimaced. “If I laugh, I’ll pee.”

  “No funny business,” Natalie ordered, clearly holding back a grin.

  He bit back a smile of his own. “Got it. Commencing Operation No Tree Pee.”

  Natalie’s eyes sparkled as she shook her head, swallowing back a laugh. “All right, Toby, I’m going to help you get down to Jake.”

  The boy released the tree trunk and, with Natalie’s help, lowered himself down.

  “Climb onto my back,” he said, helping the boy get into place.

  He started the decent as the children below began chanting.

  “Hold it! Hold it! Hold it!”

  “I can’t hold it!” Toby yelled.

  Jake quickened his pace. “You’ve got to hold it, Toby!”

  “I’m trying, but it’s like a giant lake is inside of me.”

  Jake glanced down. They were so close. “Ten seconds, Toby. You’ve got this.”

  He climbed down the tree, navigating the branches and trying like hell not to bounce too much.
<
br />   “I can’t hold it,” the boy wailed.

  “Five seconds,” he called, nearly at the bottom. “Count it down, Toby!”

  “Five,” the boy yelled along with the other children.

  He cleared the last branch and carefully lowered himself and the child to the ground.

  “Four!”

  He swung Toby around and held the kid out in front of him like a brick of dynamite, ready to blow.

  “Three!”

  “The bush, Jake! Get him to the bush!” Natalie called.

  “Two.”

  Kicking up bits of dirt and pine needles, he sprinted to the cluster of wild blackberry bushes and set the boy down.

  “All you, Toby,” he called over his shoulder, scrambling away to avoid a direct hit.

  “I can’t get my shorts undone,” the kid whined.

  Jesus Christ on a Cracker!

  He spun around and went back. Operation No Tree Pee could not fail. As quickly as possible, he assessed the situation.

  “Toby, it looks like the standard button zipper combo.”

  The boy looked at him with desperation in his eyes. “But, my underwear is stuck in the zipper.”

  Dammit!

  “I’m going to talk you through it. Undo the button, and then you’re going to pull the zipper as hard as you can.”

  Toby had gone beet-red from clenching. “Okay, here goes.”

  With a growl, Toby yanked the zipper, and his shorts fell past his knobby knees to his ankles. Without a second to lose—because he didn’t want to get squirted with pee—Jake leaped over the bush, limbs waving wildly as he made a mad dash back to the group.

  Natalie pressed her hand to her heart. “Were you hit?”

  He caught his breath and dusted a few errant pine needles from his clothing. “No, I’m good. I made it out just in time,” he answered before realizing that she was messing with him.

  “See, you’re good with kids,” she replied with that glint in her eyes.

  He pulled a bit of tree bark from her hair. “Just the ones bursting with urine.”

  “Pretty good teamwork back there, don’t you think?” she asked as his hand lingered in her hair.

  He stared into her eyes. His kiss keeper’s eyes. He’d always wondered what color they were. But his imagination couldn’t hold a candle to what it was like to gaze into the real deal.