His Semi-Charmed Life: Camp Firefly Falls Book 11

by Lisa Hughey

  Crunchy sweet apples and celery mixed with tender chicken and a seasoned dressing that held a bit of bite, and sweetness. Diego groaned. Damn, this was good.

  “Oh.” The chef was back.

  Only a long habit of suppressing his reactions kept his face blank. “The chicken salad is excellent.”

  When was the last time he ate something homemade? Besides a sandwich eaten standing up at his sink?

  “Right?” Meg plopped at the table, far more comfortable with him than the missing Penny. “Penny’s specialty.”

  A random, completely inappropriate thought flashed through his brain as he wondered what else Penny was good at.

  “Your room is ready.”

  “Sorry to intrude.” Diego stood at the sink and rinsed his plate, then looked around for the dishwasher. Finally, he set the plate in the sink.

  “It’s all good.” Meg grinned. “But tomorrow is a busy day. So we’d all better hit the sack.”

  He smiled. “Do I need a password for the internet? I’ve got a little more work to do tonight.”

  Penny had come into the kitchen, her arms full of dishes and the almost empty wine bottle. “Now? It’s almost eleven.” She dumped the dishes in the sink and eyed him speculatively.

  “Well, I’m taking nearly three days off for this retreat.” He tried to answer reasonably but something about her tone set him on edge. It was none of her damn business if he had work to do. “Business won’t run itself.”

  “There’s a difference between hard work and running yourself into the ground.” Penny propped her fists on her hips. He ran his gaze down her disheveled appearance.

  Meg stepped in between them, trying to defuse the sudden tension in the big industrial kitchen.

  “C’mon, Farmer Hastings.” Meg slung her arm around Penny’s shoulders. “Tomorrow is going to be a long day.”

  “Hastings? Penny…Penelope Hastings?” he blurted out.

  The spoiled, wealthy kid who’d haunted his memories?

  The chef glanced between the two of them.

  “Yes.” Penny straightened, her gaze haughty. Even with the ratty jeans, hair tumbling around her face, and no makeup, this chick could seem like a princess talking to a peasant.

  Suddenly he realized why she looked familiar. It was Penelope Hastings. “No wonder you don’t know anything about hard work.”

  Shit. That hadn’t come out right.

  She stared at him for another second. He swore the air shimmered with how he’d hurt her. Again.

  Fuck.

  Which seemed crazy. She’d probably never done a day’s hard work in her life.

  “On that note…” Penny ducked her head and bounded up the stairs.

  Meg raised her eyebrows. “Your room is up the stairs, second floor, first door on the right.” Her easy demeanor gone, she pressed her lips together like she was holding in harsh words.

  But Diego’s gaze returned to the retreat of Penelope Hastings. His nemesis and his inspiration and motivation all in one. He’d long ago given up the urge to apologize to her. Assumed he had been a small blip on her summer of ’97 camp experience. After all, they’d been kids.

  Diego shook off the regret. He had work to do. They couldn’t all be wealthy heiresses playing at being a farmer.

  “Password?” he gutted out.

  Meg rattled it off.

  Diego grabbed his leather suitcase from the office and headed up the stairs.

  He needed to put in another hour or two of work. But even as he tried to concentrate, his mind wouldn’t let go of the memories.

  Penelope Hastings. Here at his retreat. Twenty years later, they were both back Camp Firefly Falls.

  What were the odds?

  3

  Penny had slept horribly. Not a surprise.

  Even so, she was up at five. Contrary to Diego Ramos’s snarky comment, she knew what hard work was.

  No sense in showering just yet. Her work would be tough and dirty today. She’d need to be presentable for the opening evening reception but she had twelve plus hours before she had to make an appearance.

  Penny wove her hair into two no-nonsense braids, threw some water, then sunscreen on her face, and donned a sports bra, jeans, and her pretty “Nevertheless she persisted” cotton tank top. She tugged on her boots. Then, given the slight chill in the air, she threw a flannel over her tank top.

  In the kitchen, she grabbed one of Meg’s cinnamon rolls and closed her eyes. “Heaven.” As much as she wanted to savor the buttery goodness, she had work to do.

  She slugged down a cup of coffee to jump-start her foggy brain.

  “Morning.” Meg’s greeting startled her.

  “Notice there wasn’t a good in there,” Penny said wryly. The wine from last night was definitely the impetus for her fuzzy head this morning.

  Meg laughed. “I slept great. What was up with you and our camper?”

  “Remember that story I told you from my first year at camp? My whiny ass and a grumpy counselor?”

  “Yep.” Meg took ingredients from the pantry, laying them out on the white marble counters.

  “He’s the guy.”

  “Wait, the counselor who yelled at you?” Meg’s eyes widened. “Um, wow?”

  She wouldn’t admit that she’d been keeping track of him since she’d seen the article about Diego Ramos in FAST magazine a few years ago. She finished her cinnamon roll, heaven in a pastry, and nodded. “Well, better get started.”

  Her assistant, Brad, would be here in the next fifteen minutes or so. He was driving up from the farm to help her set up the garden beds for the camp. Her truck bed was filled with 2 x 8 boards, a box of tools, and braces to assemble the beds. Ideally this would have been done ahead of time but during the summer she really couldn’t spare the extra time away from the farm, so she’d decided to pack everything into the three-day weekend. As a bonus, she got to spend some time with Meg last night.

  The day ahead loomed with hard work and manual labor. She was no gentlewoman farmer, no matter what Diego Ramos thought.

  She poured a cup of coffee into a white ceramic mug with “Camp Firefly Falls…back to what really matters” logo and headed outside. She lifted her face to the rising sun. The chill in the air would burn off later but for right now she needed the flannel overshirt. Her small headache was a combo of a bit too much wine and last night’s restless sleep.

  Penny’s edginess was due strictly to Mr. Gorgeous and Grumpy.

  Her dreams had been filled with Diego Ramos. Luscious, sex-filled fantasies that she had no business dreaming since he’d been kind of a dick to her.

  So perhaps it had been a little too long since she’d had sex. But after her last boyfriend “encouraged” her to give up the “stupid playing at farming and move back to Boston,” she’d sworn off men for a while.

  Clearly it might be time to revisit the No Men rule if she was reduced to fantasizing about a jerk rather than say…Luke Evans.

  Penny lugged her tools from the trunk of her car, taking a moment to admire the Porsche. Must have been a challenge to get up some of the hills to camp.

  She might drive around in an old pickup most of the time but her father had been a connoisseur of fast cars, and some of that had rubbed off on her.

  The chug of her farm truck’s engine hit her ears. Penny waved down Brad. “Morning. Thanks for getting up here early.”

  “No problem, Penny.” Brad was bright-eyed and eager, like a puppy. He ran through what he’d already done this morning and she was thankful she’d found him.

  Penny unhooked the gate on the back of the pickup. “Go grab a cup of coffee and one of Meg’s cinnamon rolls. I’ll start unloading.”

  She’d been able to grab a cart to make the transfer of raw materials for the raised beds a little easier.

  Penny pulled the cart, which looked like it had been swiped straight from Home Depot, to the back of the truck. Then she started taking the 2 x 8 boards from the truck bed and setting them on the m
etal cart. She dropped one by accident and it echoed with a loud clang.

  Oops.

  Once it was sufficiently loaded, Penny pushed the cart through the grass and to the plot of open land—to the right and the rear of Pinecone Lodge—that the Tullys had agreed to turn into a fun camp experience for their corporate retreaters. And then the camp would reap the benefits of a producing kitchen garden

  The cart rumbled over the uneven ground, the heavy lumber bouncing and banging on the in the early morning air. Good thing the corporate people weren’t here yet. Penny had managed to eke out three open days in her schedule, today thru Sunday. Yesterday she’d worked a full day at the farm before coming out here.

  A giant pyramid of rich loamy soil had been dumped as close to the lodge as possible. The only major obstacle was that she would have to move the fertile soil in small batches. The dump truck that delivered the dirt couldn’t get through the trees to the side of the camp where she was going to set up the beds, and the dirt needed to be out of view of the cabins and front of the lodge.

  But a water source for irrigation was far more important than dumping the dirt close to the garden. It just meant more physical labor for Penny and her assistant.

  Her heart pumped as she finished unloading the wood for the beds.

  She lay out the lumber in rows, setting up the lines for the narrow raised beds based on the already installed irrigation system. By the time she’d unloaded all the lumber and supplies, her arms were already complaining. She was going to be completely wrung out before the day was done.

  Sweat coated her forehead. She swiped her forearm across her face but the giant glove—meant for Brad’s hand—fell off.

  She would get started on constructing the frames while Brad got a cup of coffee. Between the two of them they could knock this out in a few hours.

  Then she needed Brad to get back to the farm.

  The whole point of this experiment was to convince small businesses and corporate clients to install food gardens in their office complexes.

  Penny blew a stray strand of hair out of her eyes.

  She marked the wood through the holes in the L brackets, then held the pencil between her lips while she checked to make sure the brackets were level. She retrieved her cordless drill and began setting the brackets to connect the first bed. The whirring as the screws penetrated the Northern White Cedar wood soothed her.

  For this kind of bed, the construction measurements didn’t have to be completely accurate but she tried to be precise in everything she did.

  The screen door that led from the kitchen slammed. Penny waved haphazardly at Brad without looking up. She took the pencil out of her mouth and yelled, “’Bout ready!” as she turned.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Angry Diego was back. His hair was matted on one side, and dark stubble shadowed his jaw. He hadn’t raised his voice a decibel. If anything, the words were more of a hiss.

  Penny blinked. What the hell was she doing? Rhetorical or literal?

  She went with literal. “Building raised beds.”

  Beds. Bed. He was clearly fresh out of bed, looking rumpled and sexy and hot.

  He wore a white tank undershirt and some hastily thrown-on basketball shorts. His caramel skin gleamed in the soft misty air.

  “At—” he glanced at his bare wrist “—really early in the morning? You couldn’t wait until the sun was fully up?”

  Hot or not, he was starting to piss her off. But Penny had been the object of scorn and ridicule before over something a hell of a lot more personal than a construction project. “Nope.”

  He rubbed his palm through his short hair. His biceps flexed. Her mouth watered. Literally. And that was unacceptable.

  Penny turned and bent to pick up the drill again. His sharp annoyed inhale made her realize she might have miscalculated. He was, after all, a paying customer. “There’s coffee in the kitchen,” she offered.

  Then she started up the drill so that he couldn’t talk to her and began connecting the wood boards.

  A minute later someone tapped her on the shoulder. She stopped the drill and whirled around. “Look—”

  Brad stood there. “Penny.” His face was dead white.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He looked like he was going to fall over.

  “It’s Greg.” Brad’s boyfriend was still a student at UMass Amherst. “I just got a phone call. He was in an accident.”

  Penny grabbed his ice cold hands. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Where’s he at?”

  He rattled off the hospital name. “I need—”

  “To go to the hospital.” Penny’s day just got a whole lot more complicated. “I don’t want you driving.”

  “Yeah.” Tears glimmered in his eyes.

  “Give me a sec to put away the tools and let Meg know I’ll be back.”

  Looks like Diego was going to get his wish for quiet after all.

  Diego decided to get some work done since he was up.

  But concentrating was difficult. Penelope Hastings. The girl who had haunted him was all grown up. Until he’d realized who she was, he’d been attracted. Very attracted.

  He shaved and then showered, thinking about her.

  The little spoiled girl had turned into a gorgeous sexy woman. Annoyance churned in his stomach at whatever wild hair she’d gotten to start a construction project so early in the morning. No concept of time or respect for the fact that it was damn early.

  He frowned. Damn early.

  He’d wanted to run his tongue along her skin and taste those intriguing freckles. Trail his fingers along her neck and dig into her thick lustrous hair to hold her head for his kiss.

  Annoyed with his thoughts and his completely inappropriate urges, he rubbed the towel over his damp body, his thoughts returning without consent to the shadow between her breasts.

  And shit. He had an erection.

  Down, boy.

  His brain flip-flopped between the spoiled little girl and the sexy-as-fuck woman.

  Guilt and lust tangled up together, leaving him aroused and frustrated, and wasn’t that a weird combo? He threw his towel on the bed in disgust.

  Silence.

  Was she done? He stared out the window, careful to move the curtain slightly. But no one was there. The wood lay abandoned in the dewed grass, a ray of morning sunlight slanted through the trees revealing the empty area.

  She’d stopped work already?

  Diego shook his head. He needed to stop thinking about Penelope Hastings and get back to what was important. Business.

  He dressed in khakis and a polo. His friend, Jason Hollingsworth the Fourth, had told him from the beginning Dress like you belong in the boardroom.

  He thanked the random vagaries of fate that he’d had the balls to follow the escapees from Harvard’s Young Entrepreneurs workshop into the diner that day all those years ago. Except he would have never been trying to sneak in to that exclusive seminar if he hadn’t taken Penelope Hastings’s advice to heart. And…he was thinking about her again.

  While he called Zinnia, Diego stared out the window, taking in the rustic surroundings. Meg had given him a corner room. While he could see where Penny had begun her project on the side, out the other window, in the distance the sunlight glistened on Lake Waawaatesi. A single row of cabins arched from one end of camp to the other along the shore, mostly concealed by the woods. He didn’t have anything in his closet appropriate for a weekend at camp. He’d been thinking the facilities would be more retreat-ish than primitive.

  “Well played,” he said after Zinnia answered the phone.

  “Ah, you’re there?”

  “Yes,” he said patiently.

  “I didn’t want you to be late.”

  He loved his cousin, so he let it go. “I need you to pick up some more casual clothes for me.”

  “From your apartment?”

  “From the store. Get me cargo shorts, bring
a few company T-shirts, board shorts swimsuit, and a pair of Sperry’s.”

  He was a fair boss. He tried to inspire loyalty while still maintaining authority. Of course, he’d grown up with Zin. So maybe she had less fear of him than his regular employees.

  “Yes, boss.” The contrition in her voice was easy to hear but then she perked up. “Is it like you remembered?”

  Penelope’s features popped into his brain. “Not at all.”

  “Better?” She was so hopeful, so enthusiastic. She’d never gotten to go to summer camp. By the time she was old enough, Camp Firefly Falls had closed.

  “Sure.”

  Zinnia let out a sigh. “See you later, mi hermano.”

  “And, Zin?”

  “Yeah?” She was back to her perky self.

  “You owe me.”

  Diego settled at the desk and opened his laptop. A few hours later, the rumble of a gorgeous engine caught his attention. The ’69 Charger was back. He stopped working and waited.

  He wasn’t sure why but the fact that she owned a Charger seemed wrong. Which was ridiculous. But dammit, that was his car. What was she doing driving one?

  He admitted to being a voyeur when instead of getting back to work, he watched Penelope Hastings trudge toward the job she’d started earlier. His previous frustration had shifted. She couldn’t be that much of a slacker if she’d been up at five a.m.

  She opened the giant toolbox. She studied the boards on the ground then visibly straightened her shoulders and got down to work.

  He couldn’t say why but her posture struck a chord of shame in him.

  Why was she so upset?

  4

  Penny had gotten half the boxes screwed together.

  She took a break and drank from her ecologically-friendly, reusable water bottle.

  Worry for Brad’s boyfriend thrummed beneath the surface, but her mind kept returning to Diego Ramos. The man was hot, hot, hot.

  The sexy stubble that darkened his jaw, his defined biceps, flat stomach where his thin T-shirt clung to the rippled abs, and the silky shorts that did nothing to hide his impressive bulge.