by Pamela Toth
She ignored Emma’s derisive snort. Outdoor plumbing and bug bites didn’t sound very healing to her!
“You won’t accept a loan from me,” Ivy continued, “so I can’t, in good conscience, advise you to turn this down. I just wish you’d forget the idea of trying to manipulate him into going against the rules.”
Unless Emma agreed, they weren’t going to have time to watch the latest Brad Pitt movie, and she had to return it tomorrow. “I’ll think about what you said,” she conceded reluctantly.
Maybe Ivy was right and Emma’s scheme was beyond ridiculous, but she had to do something to put her life back on track. Other than landing a great job so she could get caught up on the bills, she just wasn’t sure where to start.
Most of the staff rode to camp in a van, but Morgan liked to accompany the kids, nearly thirty of them this year. He rode in the bus.
The trip to the site near the Deschutes National Forest in central Oregon took about three hours. That was plenty of time for Morgan to renew friendships with the kids who’d attended last year’s session, to start sizing up the new kids and to mentally begin pairing them off.
After a round of introductions, he led them in camp songs until his throat hurt. With each passing mile, he could feel his personal stress melting away. Sometimes people asked how he could give up the chance to spend his vacation in Hawaii or Mexico, but more than anywhere else in the world, Camp Baxter held a special place in his heart.
The bus signaled to pull off the road at a rest area so they could use the facilities and eat their sack lunches. The van that followed behind them carried the ice chest full of cold drinks. The cook and one of the helpers had gone up earlier with the rest of the supplies.
He wondered if Emma Wright would find the forest of soaring firs and the deep lake as breathtaking as he always did. She had sounded like a real tenderfoot on the phone and she hadn’t said much when they all met in the hospital parking lot with their duffels and sleeping bags this morning.
Since she was the only newcomer, he had introduced her to the others. Before he could offer to help with her gear, Jeff, a male nurse at Portland General, took the opportunity to show off his muscles. The spurt of possessiveness Morgan felt when he watched her smile at Jeff had caught him off guard.
Now Morgan lurched to his feet as the bus braked to a stop. “Okay, kids, stay in your seats until I tell you to get up, okay?” he said.
“I gotta go!” a young boy shouted, followed by a chorus of “Me, too. Me, too.”
Morgan ducked down to look out the window and see if the van had arrived. He’d learned the hard way not to turn the kids loose until the reinforcements had arrived, or they would scatter like spilled buckshot in a munitions factory.
To his relief, the van pulled up right next to them. No doubt the rest of the staff members were also grateful for the pit stop, especially the ones who had begun the trip carrying large coffee mugs from Starbucks. People in the northwest loved their coffee.
He nodded to the driver, who opened the door. After Morgan had descended the steps first, he helped the younger passengers out. His assistants quickly separated the boys and girls into two groups and led them away.
“No running!” Heidi called out. She was a caseworker, too, and her husband, Derrick, was in the second year of his residency at Portland General. Between him, Jeff and those who were Red Cross certified, there would be no shortage of trained medical personnel.
Emma, wearing denim cutoffs and a plaid blouse, was the last to exit the van. Jeff helped her down, saying something that made her laugh before he, too, hurried toward the long, low main building.
When her gaze met Morgan’s, she surprised him by smiling before she donned blue-tinted sunglasses. After her outburst back in his office the first time they had met, he hadn’t been sure what to expect, despite her civility on the phone.
One of the female college students waited for Emma to join her.
“Doing okay?” Morgan asked the two of them.
“I can’t wait to get there,” Franny replied.
Emma merely nodded before Franny gestured toward the facilities and the two of them walked away together. In a few moments, the kids would be coming back to the picnic tables, so Morgan took advantage of the break as well.
“He’s so cute,” Franny said under her breath as she and Emma hurried down the path. “Don’t you think so?”
Except for Morgan, the bus driver and the two staffers who had driven over earlier, everyone else was riding together in the van. The five others already knew each other and they had all been at the camp before. Franny and another girl, Sarah, had made a special point of including Emma in the lively conversation.
Emma would have liked to ignore Franny’s question about Morgan, but she didn’t want to appear unfriendly.
“I consider any man with black hair and blue eyes to be attractive,” she replied, attempting to sound flip as they joined the line on the ladies’ side of the concrete building.
Fifteen young girls from the bus were ahead of them. A few of them chatted and giggled, one or two squirmed impatiently and the rest stood in silence with arms folded and their heads bowed.
Morgan had warned Emma that most of these kids had never been placed, for one reason or another. The rest were here because of disrupted adoptions, ones that hadn’t worked out.
She couldn’t imagine how awful it would feel to get sent back, no matter what the reason. After dealing with that kind of rejection, these kids weren’t about to risk it again.
“Were you talking about Morgan?” Sarah asked, sticking her head around the open rest room door as she wiped her hands. “For an older guy, he’s not bad.”
“Jeez, how old is he?” Emma asked with a lift of her eyebrows. Compared to these girls, she must, at twenty-seven, seem like Methuselah’s sister.
Sarah shrugged her narrow shoulders. She was fashionably thin with streaked hair and a silver ring piercing one side of her nose. “He’s not ancient, but I heard someone say that he’s over thirty.”
“Good thing we all know CPR,” Emma quipped.
“That’s for sure,” said a familiar masculine voice from behind them. “With some of us approaching senility, you never know when you’ll need it.”
How much of their conversation had Morgan heard? As Emma’s face began to burn with embarrassment, Sarah and Franny turned around and burst into giggles.
“You’re not that old,” Sarah cooed as she made a point to look him up and down. “You’ve probably got a few miles left on you.”
Emma realized right then that she probably wasn’t going to like Sarah very much. And Morgan looked totally different than he had at his office.
After seeing his banker attire of suit and tie, Emma would have guessed his idea of casual to be pleated khakis with a crease and a name-brand polo. Instead he wore old jeans and a faded USC T-shirt. She wondered if that was where he’d gone to school.
Even his expression appeared more relaxed as his sapphire eyes gleamed with humor. A dimple winked in one dark cheek.
Suddenly Emma recalled Ivy’s comment. What if…you end up falling for him? That hadn’t seemed like much of a threat, but now that he’d morphed into Personality Guy, she’d have to watch it.
The line moved forward as two young girls came out of the rest room. When they saw Morgan, they both blushed and started to giggle. One of them, who appeared to be about twelve, puffed out her flat chest, threw back her head and gave Morgan a look that could only be described as flirtatious.
His return smile was nearly paternal.
After the girls had walked back up the path, his gaze slid to Emma’s. A muscle jumped in his cheek.
“Some of these kids will do just about anything for attention,” he muttered sadly. “It should make for an interesting session.”
She didn’t want to know that he was compassionate and understanding, she thought sourly as she traipsed after four of the younger girls to the picnic tables a few minu
tes later. It was far easier to see Morgan as a stuffy and unbending jerk.
Right now the jerk was handing out cups of juice to go with the sack lunches each of their charges was opening. He must have said something funny, because a few of the kids laughed. Heidi was grinning, and her husband slapped Morgan’s shoulder.
Silently Emma agreed with him that it was going to be an interesting couple of weeks—but for different reasons than he thought.
“How are you doing so far?” Derrick asked, handing her a sack lunch. He was one of those ordinary-looking guys whose face lit up when he smiled. So far he’d smiled a lot.
“Fine, thanks,” Emma replied. She noticed that instead of claiming their own table, the adults were all sitting with the kids.
“Mind if I sit next to you?” she asked a little girl who seemed to be alone. “I’m Emma.”
The child looked up at her through glasses with thick lenses. A corner of the frame had been mended with tape, and a pink birthmark marred her cheek.
“Sure,” she said with a shy smile as she slid over to make room. “My name is Emily.”
Morgan handed each of them a cup of apple juice. He leaned down and winked at Emily.
“Keep an eye on her,” he whispered, indicating Emma with his thumb. “She looks like the type who would grab your sandwich when you’re not looking.”
Emily giggled as she studied Emma. “I think she’s pretty.”
“So do I,” Morgan whispered loudly, eliciting more giggles from Emily and a blush from Emma.
Between bites of the PB&J sandwich, Emma managed to introduce Emily to another girl who was sitting across from them. Petie jabbered like a magpie, but by the time she and Emily had finished their carrot sticks and cookies, a friendship was beginning to form. Emma hoped she wouldn’t drop Emily as soon as she found other friends.
“That was nicely done,” Morgan commented as Emma helped to make sure everyone took their trash to the receptacles.
“I do have a little experience with kids,” she reminded him. “Grade school’s my specialty.”
Did the man miss nothing? He hadn’t even been seated at their table. “Do you have eyes in the back of your head?” she couldn’t resist asking him.
Again his dimple flashed when he grinned. “That’s what some of the kids think,” he drawled, “but I’ll never tell.”
“Morgan!” shouted the man driving the bus, jabbing a finger at his watch. “Time to head out.”
Upon arrival at Camp Baxter, Emma helped out wherever she was needed, which seemed to be everywhere at once. Despite the obvious organization, there was a lot to accomplish before dark.
Assignment sheets and daily schedules were passed out to the staff. After the kids were divided among five cabins according to age and sex, the names of secret pals were distributed. The salad, chili and pans of cornbread prepared by Cookie were consumed down to the last crumb and kidney bean. As darkness fell, everyone sat around the fire pit for a sing-along and marshmallow roast.
Emma sat next to Petie and Emily, directly across from Morgan. After his welcoming speech, he surprised her with a string of corny jokes that destroyed the last bits of the image she’d had of him. They cracked some of the remaining ice in the group, too.
In the firelight he was so attractive when he grinned at Emma that she had to look away. After that, she was careful to watch everyone else except him.
Heidi and Derrick led the group in singing a couple of the silly songs, which provided a good diversion for Emma. The campfire songs reminded Emma of her Girl Scout troop. When the leader quit, Sally Wright had stepped in, despite having no experience, so the girls could stay together. Had Emma ever thanked her for that?
By the time she crawled into the sleeping bag on her cot that night, she was exhausted. The main lodge was a rather primitive log structure with plumbing facilities and a phone line, but no electricity. In Emma’s eyes, her tiny private room was still infinitely better than bunking with a cabin full of hyperexcited young campers.
Franny and Sarah each slept with a group of girls. Jeff, along with the bus driver, whose name was Frank, and Mohammed, who had ridden up with the cook, were in charge of the boys. Morgan and Cookie each had rooms at the lodge. Heidi and Derrick shared, of course.
Although Emma had been warned about early reveille in the morning, she had trouble falling asleep. She tried thinking about her duties the next day, conducting craft projects, helping in the kitchen and making herself available in case anyone wanted to talk. Despite her best efforts, her mind, like a boomerang, kept returning to Morgan and his transformation.
She could see him as he acted out the words to “The Wheels on the Bus” at the campfire. His clowning had caught her by surprise.
Which was the real Morgan Davis—the stuffy director in the gray suit or the unselfconscious camp leader whose goal was to bring smiles to a circle of children? Emma’s last thought before she finally drifted off to sleep was that getting to know him might be more interesting than she’d originally thought.
Everett felt as though everyone in the hospital cafeteria was staring at him as he stood in front of the vending machine looking for an empty table. His hands were damp with perspiration and he worried about dropping his tray.
He had done that once. It made a huge noise when it hit the floor, splattering his soup across the vinyl. For two weeks afterward, Everett had brought a sack lunch to work and eaten alone at his desk. Now he was careful to hold his tray tightly and not bump into anyone.
He’d thought the pretty nurse, Nancy Allen, might be here. He’d been working so hard that he had lost track of the time and now it was late enough for the lunch rush to be over.
A cafeteria worker was wiping off the empty tables. Employees were supposed to bus their own dishes, but not everyone did. Everett found that annoying. Rules were made for a reason. If no one followed them, there would be chaos.
Disappointed that he had missed seeing Nancy, he ignored the view from tall windows that opened onto the meditation garden. Instead he set his tray down on a clean table facing the doorway. He probably should have e-mailed her, but he didn’t want to come across as pushy in case she was only being polite. She seemed to like him, but maybe she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
He stared down at the food in front of him. Lasagna was served every Thursday and he always selected it, just as he always had chicken on Mondays. Routine made him comfortable. He didn’t like surprises. A person couldn’t prepare for things if he didn’t know what was going to happen.
Feeling a little anxious, Everett arranged the plates of food in front of him. Once they were the way he liked, he opened the book he’d brought with him and began to eat. He was halfway through his lasagna when the sound of voices distracted him from the mystery he was reading.
He lifted his head, immediately recognizing the tall woman who came in with a small group of people. She looked elegant in a slim black suit that turned her red-gold hair to fire. For a moment, pride filled Everett, but it was quickly replaced by mingled sadness and regret.
Glancing down at the food he no longer wanted, he wished he could escape. To do so in the nearly empty room would draw unwanted attention to him, so he stayed where he was.
“Coffees all around?” asked a young man with the group. He wore a navy-blue suit and a tie, but Everett didn’t recognize him.
“Tea for me, please,” the woman, Leslie Logan, replied as another man held out her chair.
Everett was pleased that she sat where he could see her face. When she talked, she gestured gracefully with her hands. Once, she touched the pearls around her neck, making him wonder if they were a gift from her husband, Terrence. Everett liked the idea that he would give her presents to show his love.
The young man returned to the table with a tray of mugs. When he set down Leslie’s tea, she smiled and thanked him. She always knew what to say and how to act. If things had been different, Everett, too, would have been raised to know exactly ho
w to behave in every situation.
As if Leslie sensed his gaze on her, she looked right at him. When she smiled and waved, he thought his heart would stop. Did she somehow recognize him? He would have remembered her coming into his department.
He was halfway to his feet when he realized what he was doing. She was just being nice because she’d seen him gawking at her. Quickly he crouched down as though he had dropped something on the floor. When he straightened again, she had turned away, forgetting all about him.
Tears stung Everett’s eyes as he stabbed his fork into the lukewarm lasagna and took a bite. It nearly made him gag, but he forced himself to chew and swallow. After he had blotted his mouth with a napkin, he pushed his tray to one side and picked up his book. He pretended to read it so that no one would think he sat alone because he had no friends.
The group of people talked and drank their coffee while he sat there turning pages. Other people came and went. An old man with glasses and thinning hair mopped the floor in the far corner with big slow circles.
After a few minutes Leslie laughed and the sound was like music. Everett closed his eyes and pretended she was laughing because he had said something to her that was really, really clever. When he opened his eyes again, her group was walking out the door. The man holding it open smiled down at her when she went past him.
Everett wished he could talk to Nancy about her, but he knew that wasn’t possible. Nancy would never understand. The only one who might understand how he felt was Charlie, because he was Everett’s friend.
Four
Morgan sat in the camp office, absently listening to the hoot of an owl. The first week of camp was nearly over and it had gone as smoothly as anything did involving nearly thirty children, many of whom were troubled.
The different groups came together to salute the flag each morning before breakfast. They took nature walks geared to their particular age group, made handprints out of clay, went rafting on the lake and performed original skits at the nightly campfire. They played tag, softball and soccer.