by Kaitlyn Rice
“Darla told me your vision for the camp,” she said. “What you’re doing is great.”
Her opinion pleased him more than it should have. “Thanks,” he said. He got up, lifted the grill lid and turned the meat, then returned to the chair beside her. “And I apologize for my earlier behavior. I overreacted to you, I think.”
“But you realize now I’m no Betsy?”
He nodded. “Absolutely. And the counselors might notice your looks, but most of them know their boundaries.”
She chuckled.
He gazed at her in the darkness. “What?”
“You said most of them. Guess you’ve noticed Dusty.”
“How could I have missed Dusty?”
Isabel leaned toward Trevor. “He’s come to the office at least four times a day, asking for things like extra backpacks and lanterns. Darla thinks he’s stashing them under his bed or something.”
“I didn’t know about that. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“Don’t say anything to him,” Isabel said, catching his hand momentarily. “I’m certain this is just an innocent…liking, for a person he admires.”
“A young, attractive woman he admires,” Trevor corrected. “I don’t know how innocent it is, though. Guys that age have a lot going on in their heads.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Remember, I was that age once,” he said. “Trust me. I know the kind of trouble those boys could face.”
“You were some sort of juvenile delinquent?”
She wouldn’t give up, would she? “No, but I was a bit of a…what’s a genteel word? A rake. I was a rake. I’d have done more than just borrow a lantern.”
“Even with an older woman?”
“Especially with an older woman, if she looked like you and she let me.”
He knew he would see a blush on Isabel’s cheeks, if not for the darkness.
“You’re not that way anymore, are you?”
Sweet, small-town Isabel knew how to ask a direct question, didn’t she?
“No. I’m not.”
“What stopped you?”
Amused by her persistence, he got up to check the chicken and discovered it finished. He turned off the flame, then turned to glance at Isabel. “That’s a tired story.”
“Never mind, then. I’ll just ask Darla later.”
He laughed, then closed the grill lid and sat down. He’d get a clean platter in a moment, and carry the meat inside for dinner.
“I got into trouble when I was sixteen,” he said. “A girl I’d known for about two weeks got pregnant.”
Isabel remained silent. He could almost feel her willing him to go on. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel reluctant to do so. “Clair—that was the girl—and I made plans to marry.”
“After a two-week romance?”
“I wouldn’t even call it a romance,” he said, glancing into Isabel’s face. “But, yes. Even though I didn’t know her—I’d slept with her because I could—I wanted to give my child the Kincaid name and a stable home. I quit school and took a job as a night stockman. Clair and I got to know each other in infant-care classes.”
“And then?”
Again, Trevor offered a palatable version of the truth. “And then, nature took care of our problem.”
Trevor felt the soft touch of Isabel’s hand on his. She moved it away and said, “I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago, and good things came out of it,” he said. “Suddenly I was more interested in school than I’d ever been. I worked hard and finished my law degree early.”
“And girls?”
“I took them more seriously. Waited until I knew them.”
“That’s a good thing.”
“Sure, it is.”
They might have talked more, but Darla walked outside with a clean platter. “You two okay out here? The meat’s surely finished by now.”
“We’re fine, and the chicken’s done.” Trevor got up and stretched, then noticed that Isabel had stood up alongside him. An impulse to hug her and thank her for the talk stunned him.
Instead, he helped Darla transfer the meat to the new platter, then carried the old one and the spatula inside.
During the dinner conversation, Trevor learned that Isabel had grown up in a rural house, with two sisters and a single mother who had avoided public places and strangers.
Isabel had learned to cook at age eight and hadn’t gone to a movie until she was seventeen, when her older sister’s husband had sneaked her out. Except for her brother-in-law, she hadn’t been around boys much at all. That might explain her curiosity about his past, and her patient affection for Dusty.
But the thing that stuck with Trevor most was that Isabel hadn’t had an easy life, either.
If the troubles in his past had given Trevor a cynical heart, Isabel’s past had left her entirely too trusting.
The sixteen-year-old Trevor wouldn’t have known or cared that a woman as vulnerable as Isabel Blume existed. The grown-up Trevor was fascinated by her—a woman who was quite likely his opposite.
He was going ahead with his idea.
Chapter Five
On Saturday morning, Isabel ran the office again while Darla spent the morning helping Sam move cattle to their summer pasture. When Darla arrived, fresh from a shower after lunch, Isabel pointed to a classified ad in the newspaper. “Here’s a DJ who claims to have more than a hundred wedding songs in his collection. Let’s call him.”
“Trevor hollered at me from across the porch,” Darla said. “He needs help down at the cabins.”
“This will take less than five minutes.” Isabel hopped up from Darla’s chair and handed her the phone receiver. “Then we can cross it off our to-do list.”
“Trevor wants the help right now.” Darla returned the receiver to its cradle.
Jeez. When the man said “jump,” people jumped, didn’t they? “That’s fine, go on down,” Isabel said. “But I can contact this DJ and get the information, if you’d like.”
“No. Trevor wants you to come help him.”
Isabel frowned. “Me.”
Darla patted a stack of work on the corner of her desk. “He said he thought it’d be best if you helped, so I could get caught up on bookkeeping this afternoon.”
Isabel kept frowning.
Darla sighed and shook her head. “All I can figure is that our dinner the other night was a wild success.”
“What’s he doing down there today, anyway?”
“The first-session camp kids arrive on Monday morning. He’ll want to inventory the gear and mend any tents that need it.”
Inventory and mending—those chores sounded doable. Isabel looked down at Angie, who had been quite good all morning. She’d made some copies for Darla, then she’d clacked away at the old typewriter for a while. Now she was sitting on a bean bag chair they’d dragged in from the community room, thumbing through a stack of books. She had a jump rope waiting for when she got bored, which would probably be in about five minutes.
“What about Angie?” Isabel asked.
“Oh, leave her. She’s content.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” Darla said. “Believe me, Angie will liven up an otherwise boring afternoon.”
“Do you mind staying here with Darla again, Ange?”
The little girl frowned. “What’s inn-vinn-tory?”
“It’s a way of counting things,” Isabel said.
“I love to count!” Angie shoved her picture book off her lap and scrambled to her feet. “An’ I can go way past twenty! Wanna hear? One, two, three…”
Isabel caught Darla’s grin, as Angie continued. “That’s great, hon,” she said when the little girl stumbled after thirty-two. “But remember, I’m helping Trevor today. He’ll need my attention, just like your brother does sometimes.”
“Oh.” Her bottom lip extended, Angie plopped down on the red vinyl chair. “Why are you helping that ol’ Grinch, anyways?”
“Y
ou mean grouch?”
“Yeah. Why are you helping him?”
Isabel shrugged. “Because he asked me to.”
“Make him ask someone else.”
“I want to go.” She did.
“Why?”
Isabel leaned down to Angie and spoke in a low voice. “Remember when you proved to R.J. that you could jump down from your daddy’s tractor as easily as he could?”
“Yep. You said I ripped his socks off.”
“I said you knocked his socks off,” Isabel corrected. “And that’s what I want to do, hon. I want to prove to Trevor that I can count as high as he can. I can do that better if you stay here with Darla.”
Angie held her gaze for a moment, considering, then she said, “Okay. I can stay here an’ watch Shrek.”
In the past week, the little girl had watched that movie twice a day, every day. “I brought other movies for you, hon.”
“I like Shrek.”
“Sure, you can watch that one again,” Darla interjected. “That donkey makes me laugh every time. I like him.”
Isabel walked across to Sam and Darla’s house to grab the Shrek DVD, then returned and popped it into the combination TV and player they’d set up in a corner of Darla’s office.
After the movie started, Isabel wandered down to the kitchen. Whenever the lodge and cabins were fully booked, guests could choose to eat meals in the big dining hall or not. But during the camp weeks, Darla reserved the cabins and several of the lodge rooms for the kids and counselors.
Her part-time cook kept the refrigerator stocked with a variety of pick-up-and-go foods, and Darla encouraged everyone to act as if the big refrigerator were their own.
Isabel grabbed a couple of juice boxes, an apple and a package of cheese and crackers, hoping to save Darla a trip when the little girl asked for a snack.
With Angie settled, Isabel went to the lodge’s communal bathroom to tidy her hair, then headed down to the cabins.
This afternoon should be interesting. She’d get a closer look at the attitude change she’d been noticing from a distance.
Thursday, she’d gone into Boulder with Darla and Angie. They’d checked out florists and bakeries and tried on attendants’ dresses. Darla had also convinced Isabel to buy a swimsuit so she could at least stand in the pool with her and Angie.
That morning Isabel had said hello to Trevor and Sam from across the lodge porch before she’d gotten into the car to leave. Trevor had called out a greeting that could’ve melted butter.
Then, yesterday, he and the college guys had been gone all day, hiking and climbing somewhere. She hadn’t seen them until late afternoon, when Trevor had waved at her from across the dining room. It’d been a wide wave. An enthusiastic one.
Apparently, their grill-side chat had made a huge difference in his opinion of her. Her polite-turned-surly highway rescuer had evolved to charmer.
But why? What did he want?
She was beginning to believe Trevor Kincaid was actually twins: one grumpy, one friendly.
Both confusing.
Isabel told herself it didn’t matter. Her confidence had grown in the week she’d been here, and she was having the time of her life. Trevor might be intent on keeping her guessing, but her relationship with him could be a learning experience.
That was part of her reason for being here. Her sisters would certainly say so.
He was at the picnic tables again, shirtless this time, and with his back to Isabel as he spread out an extremely large, army-green tent and bent down to work the zipper.
Heavens, the guy had wide shoulders. She’d known he had a nice build, but who’d have figured that his clothes were hiding the sexiest male back she’d ever seen?
The play of muscles beneath smooth, tanned skin fascinated her. She called out a greeting through the scrub brush to warn him of her approach, but her tongue felt bulky. Her voice sounded thick. Had he heard her?
He turned around.
Whoa! Trevor’s front was even better than his back. Slick with sweat, ridged with muscle and bone. Hard.
Lean.
Seriously sexy.
The corner of his mouth lifted, wooing her attention away from the span of muscles between his neck and belly button. “Isabel, there you are! I expected you a half hour ago. Come on around.” He made a motion with his hand, as if to hurry her.
“I’m on my way,” she said with a frown.
His smile was replaced by the row of forehead dimples. Trevor’s expressions had certainly made an impression on her, hadn’t they?
Isabel tried to recall Roger’s smile. He sported a reddish-brown mustache and some light freckles on his cheeks, but what did his smile look like? His teeth were white and even, she remembered that. She couldn’t remember his smile, though. Not at all.
Man, she was rattled.
Trevor grabbed a mustard-colored shirt from a nearby table and yanked it over his head. The gentlemanly action should have relieved some of Isabel’s nervousness, but it didn’t. Now that she had seen the body beneath, the thin, sweat-dampened material only made a nice frame for those muscles.
As Isabel entered the clearing, Trevor said, “Hey, I didn’t mean to rush you. I was trying to be friendly.”
“Huh?”
“You look perturbed.”
Oh. Well, she was.
Isabel stopped a few feet away from him. “Where are the counselors?”
“Inside the cabins, readying the kids’ bunks. They’ll be carting blankets and sheets up to the lodge laundry room this afternoon.”
“The cleaning staff doesn’t do the cabins?”
“They could, but I think this is better for the crew. They’ll be in charge of a group of younger boys in a couple of days, and they need to work well together. They do a lot of talking while those wash loads cycle through.”
That made sense. “Want me to help them with laundry, then?” she asked, and wished she could un-ask the question as soon as it came out of her mouth.
He didn’t want her to help the counselors.
He wanted her to help him.
For whatever, unfathomable reason.
“No, I want you to stay out here with me.”
She’d known he was going to say that. And she could do this. She could be alone with Trevor among all these tall trees and bulging muscles. She could conquer this overpowering mixture of jumpiness and shyness and guilt, and do whatever Trevor needed her to do.
She could.
Isabel drew in a deep breath. Moving beyond him, she studied the miscellany of tents laid out on the tables.
“We’re checking zippers? Should I start on these, over here?”
“Let’s work together.” He lifted a corner of the tent near him. “If you’ll hold this up, I’ll soap the zipper teeth.”
She turned to him. “Soap the zippers?”
He grinned. “See? I know a few watermelon rind tricks, too. Soap keeps the zippers zipping, and it’s affordable.”
They inspected each tent, checking seams and zippers and scraping rust from poles with sandpaper.
“Guess I never really grew up completely,” Trevor said moments later as he stuck his finger through a ripped seam and tossed that tent into a pile to be repaired. “I still get excited about these backyard campouts with the boys.”
Isabel studied the thick forest beyond the cabins. “Surely this won’t be an ordinary backyard campout. How much land does Sam own, anyway?”
“Just over fifteen hundred acres,” Trevor said. “The property extends about a mile beyond the trees on this side, but he has an easement into the Roosevelt National Forest. We do most of our hiking and climbing off-site.”
At that moment, the five college men came out of the last cabin and hollered a greeting as they lugged several overfilled laundry baskets up the narrow path.
Intensely aware that she was alone in the woods with Trevor, Isabel refrained from asking any more questions. Friendliness with a stranger on the highway had fel
t natural. Even their chat the other night had been all right.
But now she knew him better and liked him more, and that made all his attentiveness feel dangerous.
As they sat on either end of a shaded bench to stitch torn seams and mesh inserts, a woodpecker tapped on a distant tree. A breeze lifted Isabel’s hair, cooling her face and making the warm day pleasant. The woodsy smells of thick plant life and raw, warming earth filled her senses.
She began to relax.
“You said at dinner the other night that you are close to your sisters,” Trevor said. “Tell me about them.”
Isabel sensed that he’d stopped working to look at her, but she kept her eyes on her needle and thread. “I told you about my big sister, right?”
“Some. Tell me more.”
Isabel pushed the sturdy needle through the heavy canvas, then pulled it out. “She and Ethan have a two-year-old boy, and Callie does cancer research for a Wichita hospital.”
“Must be smart.”
Isabel smiled to herself. She and her sisters each had special gifts, their mother had taken pains to tell them often, but one of Callie’s greatest was certainly her intelligence.
“I suppose you’d say Callie’s the brainy one.”
“And your other sister?”
“Josie’s a couple years younger than me and works as an interior designer.” Isabel thought about her baby sister, who had scads of male friends and not a shy bone in her body. “She’s the gregarious one.”
“You must be the beautiful one, then.”
She glanced across at him, and he moved his gaze slowly down to her mouth and back up.
What was he doing?
“Oh, no,” Isabel said. “I’m not the beautiful one. I’m the homebody. I like family and quiet things.”
Her mother had always said so.
Trevor raised his brows. “The type who would bring the neighbor’s kid along on a summer trip, for instance?”
Did he have to bring that up again? Angie had been a sweetheart, but Darla and Isabel were constantly trading off chores and child-care duties.
Although Sam and Darla currently had a few other adult guests staying at the lodge, Darla had altered the menus to suit a little girl’s tastes. Right now she was doing her office work to the sounds of Shrek.