One Match Fire

by Lissa Linden

  The excitement starts in my stomach and spins into my limbs as it grows. Cam and Britt will only be sick for so long. But this. This could be something. Something long-term. “Would you guys want to come to camp that summer? I mean, if you could. If some program existed after your year as a counselor-in-training. Would you want it?”

  His eyes widen. “That’s a rhetorical question, right?”

  And in my heart, I know it is. That it doesn’t matter what he’d be doing. Griffin doesn’t care what the program would be or what it would ask of him. He just knows that it would happen where he wants to be. With the people he wants to be with. Everything else is just details. And details are where I excel.

  As the bus slows to a stop in the parking lot, the ideas come together. What these no-longer-campers but not-quite-staff could do. How it would run.

  Who would run it.

  The doors have barely opened before I speed through them. New program building in my head. Letter burning in my pocket. Flames licking through my insides.

  Then I see him. Sitting on a curb. Chuck at his feet. And I run. Oxygen pumping into my lungs. Feeding the fire inside me. Stoking the controlled burn I’d tried to contain into a blaze I can’t pretend to control.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I blink, but she doesn’t disappear. Her tanned thighs stay at eye level. Her chest heaves from her sprint. Chuck doesn’t hesitate to dance around her legs, wagging his tail and lifting his paws in his barely contained desire to jump on her.

  She bends down to scratch between his ears. “Hey, boy. I’ve missed you.”

  I want to respond for him. To tell her that he missed her, too. That he barely knew her, but was convinced it was her whenever we ran across any woman of her general build. That he’d fallen for her as hard as I had. But I’m in shock that she’s here, in the city, when I’d spent the last weeks wondering if she’d used my note for fire starter. Wondering if Cam had passed it along at all. I stand and look over her shoulder. “Is Cam here?”

  She bites her cheek. “No.”

  “Did he—” I run my hand over my freshly trimmed hair. “Did he give you my note?”

  Amy takes a small step forward. “He did. And you meant it, right? You do actually love me? Still?”

  My grip on Chuck’s leash tightens. “So fucking much.”

  She pulls a paper from her back pocket. “I need you to read this.” She holds it out with a shaking hand. “I can’t say it. It hurts too much. I won’t make it through. But I need you to know who I really am. To know why my mom doesn’t cry over me anymore. Why I’m terrified that I love you.”

  Our fingers brush when I take the paper. She kneels and presses her face into Chuck’s neck as I unfold the note.

  “I’ll understand if you change your mind.” Her words are muffled in thick fur. “About me.”

  Her writing is clear and precise, the words committed to paper with certainty, even though she’s pretty much trying to climb into Chuck to hide from them.

  My mom told me to leave Dan after the first veto. Told me that he didn’t deserve me if he was more concerned about what I looked like in a dress, than how I felt in it. I didn’t listen. I was horrible to my mom. Said things I regret. Hurt her so deeply that she moved away from me. We barely talk.

  I sided with Dan because I loved him and it cost me my friends. My family. Myself.

  So I don’t trust love. It makes me weak. Stupid. And it hurts.

  She presses her cheek against Chuck’s neck, a guilt-racked woman who’s shown me the roughest parts of herself even though she thinks they would make me stop loving her. This risk-taker—this woman who gave up the life she’d established on a whim, leaping with the hope she could be happier. She’s doubled over and hugging my dog, opening herself to me even when it hurts. She digs her hands deeper into Chuck’s fur, but I weave my fingers through hers and pull her up from where she’s landed. “Come here.” I lead her behind a minivan. “This is how you know about guilt, isn’t it? The night we had fondue, you told me that nothing gets rid of guilt.”

  Amy’s eyes stay on her toes, but she nods.

  “I’m sorry about your mom, and your friends.” I tuck her hair behind her ear. “But I’m not Dan.”

  “I know.”

  “And you’re not the same person you were when you were with him.”

  She shakes her head.

  “So, thank you for telling me. Because this is part of you. It makes you who you are. But you can trust me, Amy. Even if you don’t trust love. And I do love you. All of you. Now, and two days from now, and whenever after, so I’ll give you whatever space, or reassurance, or comfort, or—”

  But I don’t get to finish. Amy launches herself at me, pushing me against the minivan with such force that the alarm beeps a warning. Her hands squeeze my shoulders. “You love me even though I hurt you? Even though I pushed you away? Made you leave?”

  I cup her hips in my hands. “I might actually love you more for it, even though I hate waking up without you, and my back is aching from living on a crappy couch. Because making me leave was what you needed. You need to know who Camp Director Amy is without me looking over your shoulder, or casting a shadow over your choices.”

  She steps as close as she can, feeding her hands around my neck. My fingers dig into her hips. “You said you’d give me as much time as I needed,” she says.

  I swallow hard and stop fighting my fingers. They slide over her ass, gripping her flesh and holding her to me. “I did.”

  She drags the tip of her finger down my neck and nuzzles against my jaw. “So come back with me. Today.”

  My breathing stalls. “Are you serious?”

  “I have two lifeguards down for the count and you, who can do their job, and whose mouth-to-mouth was supposed to get me through a celibate summer, but instead makes me want all the sex for as long as you’ll give it to me. Hell yes, I’m serious, Harding.”

  Her chest presses against mine. Our hearts beat a familiar rhythm. “So you want me to fill in at camp? For the session?”

  “No.” The minivan’s alarm beeps and she pulls me away.

  I trail after her, mind spinning. “What are you saying?” She keeps walking, pulling me along behind her. I plant my feet and tug her back to me in the middle of the parking lot. “Please, Amy. You need to lay this out for me.”

  “I have this idea,” she says, “for the campers who are too old to camp, but too young to be counselors. The zombie kids. I mean, there are always things to do around camp, right? Things I haven’t had a chance to get to since camps started. So what if we ran a volunteer program? Sessions where aged-out campers could come up and do minor repairs, or paint, or whatever else you think needs to be done.”

  “That sounds great. But, Amy. You’re killing me. What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I need you today. And tomorrow. And every day until there aren’t any more.”

  I hook an arm around her back and press my lips to hers. Our mouths work together, creating sparks that move through every part of me, warming me from the inside. I run my tongue along the seam of her lips and she opens for me, whimpering against my flesh when I taste inside her. Catcalls work their way through the haze that only she and I can make, and we pull apart, breath ragged from the inferno of us together. I lean my forehead on hers and draw my thumb along her jaw.

  “Is that a yes?” she says. “You’ll come back with me? Develop this new program? Run that while I run camp?”

  “If you’re sure,” I say. “If you’re sure you don’t need more time.”

  “I’ve had my time.” Her fingers slide up the back of my neck and into my hair. “Now I need you.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Nine Months Later

  “Wait!” Jen’s shout bounces off every wall in the house.

  My mimosa clatters to the table. “What?”

  She sashays into the room, curves on full display in her knee-length, nineteen-sixties-inspired dre
ss. “Use this.”

  I take the straw she offers and pop it into the mug holding my drink. “How did you know?”

  “Please,” she says. “You aren’t the first bride to risk mimosa mouth. Your husband should be the only one messing up those gorgeous lips.”

  I take a sip, letting the sweetness and bubbles dance over my tongue. “You’re still okay with getting the tables set up after the ceremony?”

  “Of course.” Jen straps on her wedge heels and kneels in front of me. She holds up my shoes. “Are you sure about these? I have an extra pair of—”

  “I’m sure. These are perfect.” I take the red flats and bend to slide them on. They’re not quite hiking boots, but I’m not quite the girl I was, either. Scarlet toes peek out from beneath the flowing ivory lace of my dress. “How do I look?”

  Jen smiles. “Happy.”

  There’s a knock at the door and I smooth my hand over my stomach. The butterflies have long since flown off, leaving comforting warmth in their place. I pick up my bouquet of wildflowers. “Let’s do this.”

  I follow Jen across the field to the sound of birds. Conversations drop off as guests catch sight of us. People rise from their seats on the campfire logs. Cam and Britt. Tanya and Laurie. My mom dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  My eyes lock on Paul. Beneath a willow tree. The top two buttons of his shirt undone. His lip rolls between his teeth and his hands work into his front pockets. It might hide his thoughts from the family and friends we’ve invited to our home, but not from me. The breeze from off the lake kisses my cleavage and I grin.

  We have time between the ceremony and dinner. Time to show him how high this dress can hitch. How low the neck can pull. Time to show him much I love him with every part of me.

  I hand my flowers to Jen. Join hands with Paul. And look into my past. My present.

  My future.

  *

  Acknowledgments

  Like Amy says, summer camp was never like this.

  But, for me, summer camp was life-changing in ways I couldn’t have predicted and am still discovering half a lifetime later. For that, I have to thank my parents—city folks who gave in to my pleas for outdoor adventure and let me spend weeks in the wild during such formative years.

  Those years brought me here, to this book, and to my ever-supportive husband. Whether I need chips, sparkling water, or uninterrupted writing time, you’re always there, hauling things home from the store or holding down the home front. You’re more supportive of me than I am of myself, and I know how fortunate I am. You, Brent, are the hero of my own romance.

  Thank you to Anne, my writing buddy, for your constant cheerleading and willingness to lend an ear. This book wouldn’t exist without all the nights we’ve spent at your dining room table.

  To my Pitch Wars family: we were thrown together thanks to a Twitter contest and a shared affinity for words, but you turned out to be the most amazing group of people I’ve never met. There’s nobody else with whom I’d rather grow wise in the ways of publishing.

  Thank you to Kerri Buckley, who found One Match Fire in a Twitter pitch and fought for Paul and Amy’s story, and to Laura Zats, for handling the business side so I could focus on the words.

  Finally, thank you to you, the reader, for choosing this book and for spending your time with Amy and Paul.

  About the Author

  Lissa Linden writes steamy contemporary romance featuring the kind of women she’d hang out with, and the kind of men who can keep up with them.

  She runs on alternating infusions of coffee and cider, and can often be found people-watching from a patio, letting life breed plot bunnies for her ever-growing list of future projects.

  A city girl with an outdoorsy soul, Lissa is equally comfortable in her downtown condo as she is in a tent. Lissa is online at lissalinden.com, or on Twitter, where she can often be found expressing her delight in all things reading, romance, and re-Tweetable pictures of cute animals: @Lissa_Linden.

  Introducing the Carina Press Romance Promise!

  The Carina Press team all have one thing in common: we are romance readers with a longtime love of the genre. And we know what readers are looking for in a romance: a guarantee of a happily-ever-after (HEA) or happy-for-now (HFN). With that in mind, we’re initiating the Carina Press Romance Promise. When you see a book tagged with these words in our cover copy/book description, we’re making you, the reader, a very important promise:

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  ISBN-13: 9781488097041

  One Match Fire

  Copyright © 2018 by Lissa Linden

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 22 Adelaide Street West, 40th Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.

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