by Anna Katmore
TAMING CHLOE SUMMERS
Anna Katmore
GENRE: NA/CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, businesses, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
TAMING CHLOE SUMMERS
A spin-off of the
GROVER BEACH TEAM series
Copyright © 2016 by Anna Katmore
All cover art copyright © 2016 by Anna Katmore
Edited by Annie Cosby, www.AnnieCosby.com
All Rights Reserved
First Publication: June 2016
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
Table of contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Playlist
About the author
Terrible things happen at summer camp. Guys fall into rivers and get attacked by leeches. Hearts get broken. And I’m going to lose my mind.
~ Chloe Summers
***
The author takes full responsibility for any camp withdrawals that occur after reading this book. ;-)
Folks,
You know me. I usually write my teen novels very true to reality, trying hard to stick within the authentic bounds of any situation.
In this book, however, you’ll find a summer camp that runs in a slightly different way than what you might know. I took the liberty of altering camp rules in favor of a funny and fresh romance that otherwise wouldn’t work. So I hope none of you will take umbrage when there are no extra personnel at camp, or people don’t come out covered in bruises after playing paintball.
Just saying… ;-)
We all make mistakes in our lives.
This book is for those who love us anyway.
Prologue
4 years ago…
The lake. Midnight. You can bring a swimsuit. Or not…
Clasping the note in my fist like a lifeline as I hang on the windowsill, one leg in, the other outside, I try to make a silent escape. Luckily, we usually keep the window open at night, because July in California is hot enough. Sleeping in a room with six other girls and keeping everything locked… Yeah, you would probably hear about fatal heatstroke in the news all over America tomorrow. Unfortunately, the door to our room always makes this eerie creak—like the worst horror movie sound—when somebody opens it, and that is the only reason I use the window right beside my bunk to sneak out. Because, frankly, trying not to get caught by one of the four watchdogs who keep this summer camp running isn’t my biggest problem.
What I really want to avoid is waking my new friend, Lesley Caruthers. She is the queen bee at our high school—feared by many, admired by all. Since I started running with her pack in the past couple of weeks, my life has become significantly more exciting. Riskier. More fun. And adventurous. I mean, look at me. Here I am sneaking out in the dead of night to meet a guy down by the lake. And not just any guy. All through freshman year, I stalked him through the school building. He was in none of my classes, but we had lunch together and I know some of his friends. Only, I was always too shy to speak to him.
No longer.
The problem now is that I don’t want to share him with anyone. And Lesley is the nosiest person in the world. Even if I told her to let me meet this guy alone, she’d most certainly follow me to check him out.
Uh-uh, not happening. This is my moment. New friends or not, I don’t care for prying eyes in the bushes.
My pink camisole snags on a protruding nail as I lower myself to the ground and rips, the nail scraping the skin at my waist. I breathe a silent curse, my fingernails digging into the windowsill and scratching off the ancient red paint. Feeling the cool grass under my naked toes, I let go and inspect the damage. No blood, just a scratch and a small slit at the side of my top. Nothing too bad. And who cares, anyway? In ten minutes, I have a date with the boy of my dreams.
I smooth the camisole back down and adjust my short pajama bottoms. A dirt track leads from the three huts, which are placed in formation around a picnic table, into the woods. Ducking along the line of bushes, I scurry away. The boys’ cabins stand at the opposite side of the lake, along with the dining hall. That’s where somebody slipped this note into my hand from behind earlier this evening.
Immediately, I knew it was from him. I know how his hand feels against mine and how his soap smells. The beguiling scent drove me almost crazy a few days ago when he kissed me for the first time. Never will I forget that.
My heartbeat hammering in my ears drowns out the song of the crickets in the humid night. It’s not far to the lake, maybe half a mile, but once there I have to jog to the west shore. A dock made of old, dark wood leads a few steps out into the water. He’ll wait for me there, because that’s the place where we kissed.
I slow down as the dock comes into sight. With the moon so full and beaming above me, there’s no need for a flashlight to find my way. The water’s surface lies smooth, like freshly made bed sheets. The song of the crickets doesn’t reach me here, only a couple of frogs croaking somewhere in the distance.
Despite the night, the wood still retains the sun’s warmth as I step onto the dock and warily walk to the square platform at the end. The moon reflects dreamily in the water. Everything’s perfect.
And then a soft shiver trails from my neck way down to my toes as his low voice carries forward from the shore behind me. “I’m glad you came.”
The wood creaks under his shoes as he saunters closer. My breathing difficult to rein in, I spin around. From the looks of it, he didn’t go to bed before sneaking out and coming here. Or maybe he did and then dressed again. His legs seem longer than ever in those blue jeans that hang on his narrow hips like they have to cling onto them with invisible claws in order to not drop off. His arms are thin and sinewy, his chest rather lank under his white T-shirt. Given, however, that he pulled me out of the water and onto this dock without any effort only a few days ago, I know he’s a lot stronger than he looks.
As he slowly comes closer, the dock vibrates gently with each of his steps, the sensation crawling up my legs to warm my body even more than the mild midnight air already does. At sixteen, I’m taller than most girls and can almost look straight in his eyes when he stops in front of me. His hair is hidden under a ball cap that also shades his face from the moonlight. Shame. I love his careless appearance when it comes down to his tousled hair. Will he take the cap off before he kisses me again?
Reaching out, he hooks his finger around mine. That square inch of body contact is enough to make me forget about his cap completely and shiver with anticipation.
“Did you bring a swimsuit?” he asks, pulling me inches closer to him.
Nervously, I chew on my lip. Then I quickly shake my head and smile.
<
br /> His eyes warm with a grin. “Neither did I.”
Nineteen months ago…
“Do I look like a nutcase to you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why the hell do you keep talking to me as if I am?” I send a dirty look to the man wearing an ugly, gray- and yellow-striped pullover in the armchair across from me. In the past twenty-five minutes since my mother pushed me into his practice, he’s taken notes on every damn word I’ve said.
He lowers the chart on his lap, pulls off his glasses, and pinches the spot between his mud-brown eyes. When he puts the spectacles back on his long nose, his well-trained business smile slides right into place. It’s demeaning. Like he’s permanently singing inside his head: Because your mom is paying for my next trip to Hawaii with your sessions.
Grinding my teeth, I pull my feet up onto the black couch, not caring that my boots will probably scuff the leather, and wrap my arms around my legs, dipping my forehead to my knees. I don’t want to hear any of this. I don’t want to be here. All of my friends are having fun with hot guys right now. Only I have a date with a shrink.
“Why don’t we start over again?” he says, with this kindergarten patience that makes me throw up in my mouth a little. “Let’s begin with you telling me why you think you’re really here.”
“I’m here because if I’d refused, there’s no chance they’d ever give me my driver’s license back or let me do the exchange year in Europe after graduation,” I growl into the gap between my chest and my legs. “But it doesn’t mean we have to chat. Why don’t we just sit here in silence and wait until the hour is over? I’m sure you’ll receive your paycheck anyway.”
Dr. Sigmund Freud over there clears his throat, tapping his pen loudly on his chart. Is he trying to get on my nerves on purpose? As he waits for my undivided attention in this clean, unfriendly room, I lift my head and arch a brow.
“You lost your driver’s license?” he asks then, with enough innocence in his voice to turn Miley Cyrus into a saint. “What happened? Did you run a red light?”
Oh, come on! “You know all this shit.” I lean my head forward again, hiding my face from his professional friendliness, and grab the legs of my stretchy jeans for comfort. “And no, I did not run a red light.”
“Did you join in a drag race, perhaps?”
Agh! At the dead end of my patience, I smash my fists into the leather cushions at my sides and straighten my back. “I wrecked my car, okay? I was trashed, lost control, and drove into a tree!” The damn thing just wouldn’t get out of the way when my VW Polo began to fishtail after a ninety-degree curve. “And before you keep this game of stupid questions going, when you should already know all the answers from the police report, yes”—I make a duh face with heaps of cynicism for his benefit—“afterward, I walked into the water!”
His pen flies so fast over the chart on his thigh, the outcome can’t be anything more than wavy lines on the paper. “I see, I see,” he mumbles along, for once not looking down his nose at me but concentrating hard on what he’s writing. “Do you want to talk about why you wanted to drown yourself?”
“I didn’t say I wanted to drown myself. I just needed to escape from my cousin and her boyfriend. They were taking over the beach, so I owned the water.” Drunk, it had seemed like a totally normal thing to do. Two weeks later and sober…not so much.
He lifts his chin, his speedy hand coming to a stop. “All right. Then tell me why you wanted to escape from the two of them.”
I start biting my bottom lip with nervousness. This is the part I really shudder to reveal. It’s been five weeks since my cousin Samantha moved into my house, four weeks since she stole my family and friends, three weeks since she fell in love with the boy I had a crush on, and two weeks since I said sorry for trying to drive her out of the country for all of that. Please, give me a break!
Crossing my legs at the ankles but keeping my knees up, I tug the sleeves of my white cashmere sweater over the heels of my palms and fist them. My chin-length hair annoys me like hell, as it’s constantly swinging forward into my face. The devil must have been screwing with my mind the day I came up with the idea to cut my long locks short and die them raven-black to copy my cousin. I totaled my car only two days later.
My chest lifts and falls back with a few deep breaths. “Can’t we just fast-forward to the part where I say I’m sorry for everything that happened and swear I’ll never do it again? Just sign this damn form and tell everyone I’m not an alcoholic, so they can finally give me my license back.”
The shrink gives a shrewd laugh. “If only it was that easy, Chloe.”
“Why isn’t it? What’s the problem?”
“The problem is that you won’t get around one and a half years’ worth of therapy, four hundred hours of community service, and a clean record of no drinking, all at once. And you’ll probably need to do blood tests to prove sobriety, if you ever want to get behind the wheel again.”
“Fine. Cross me off your list then,” I mutter. “I’ll just take the bus in England.”
“I’m afraid you can’t. You’re on probation. The year abroad will have to wait, too.”
“What?” My voice hitches. “But we have it all planned!” Les, Kir, Brin, and I already sent our applications to the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. Ewan McGregor, Orlando Bloom, and Daniel Craig graduated from there! And while Brinna is still waiting for her acceptance, the rest of us had our dads secure our places with a small cash infusion. We’re going to have the time of our lives next year. Parties, boys, and no adults dictating to us. How dare this stupid doctor ruin it all for me?
Boiling with rage, I push up from the couch and stomp to the door. “I’m going to talk to my dad about this.”
“Your father already did everything he could for you.” The shrink’s calm warning slides like a cold snail down my back and stops me, my hand on the doorknob.
“What do you mean?” I grit through my teeth as I turn around. “He’s a lawyer. He can bail me out of this.”
“Chloe, you crashed your car. You were accused of underage drinking. You ran away from the accident, and according to your friends, you did want to end your life that night, because of your unrequited love for your cousin’s boyfriend.” He heaves a deep sigh that sounds like a mix between sympathy and frustration. “If it wasn’t for your father, you would’ve been arrested that night and might now be in a psychiatric ward where they’d have kept you from getting your hands on anything sharp. They probably would even have pulled the laces out of your shoes so you couldn’t strangle yourself.”
“What?” I croak hoarsely as a wave of horror floods me. The door begins to rattle when my hand starts to shake on the knob.
The doctor rises and comes for me, gently guiding me back to my place on the black leather couch. Then he fills a glass with water at the sink behind his massive desk. Placing it in front of me on the glass-topped coffee table between us, he offers me a clinical smile and sinks back into his armchair.
I take a sip, my trembling hands causing a tsunami inside the glass.
“You do understand now that sessions with me as well as community service is the better end of the deal, don’t you?”
I put the glass back on the table and suck in a few deep breaths before I look up at him. Reluctantly, I nod.
“Very good.” He grabs his chart and places it on his lap once more. “Shall we speak about your cousin’s boyfriend now? Tony, right? It says here that a while back, he was your boyfriend. Is that true?”
I swallow the lump in my throat. He was, but only for a few days last summer, and today it seems ridiculous to bemoan his loss. But I nod again anyway.
Chapter 1
Present day
I’m out of breath. Taking the train home to Grover Beach from San Francisco every third Friday of the month is a pain in the ass. Worse is running from the train station to Dr. Devonport’s practice because my parents couldn’t pick me up today.
Europe is waiting for me.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Devonport,” I greet the man behind the desk as I slip through the door after a quick knock.
“Chloe.” Admittedly, his smile has become a lot more friendly than clinical over the past months, but I still don’t like him very much. Knowing that my future is in his hands and he can decide whether I’m going to drive my own car in London this year or still have to take the damn bus every freaking time I want to go shopping gives me nausea. He holds out his hand as he rises from his chair. “Please, take a seat.”
I sit down in my usual place, in the middle of the long leather couch. But instead of hugging my knees to my chest like during the first few sessions I had with the shrink, I’m now sitting confidently and straight, one leg slung over the other, my hands neatly folded in my lap.
“How’s college going?” he wants to know.
“Good. Finals were this week,” I answer curtly, not in the mood to start a private conversation if we can hurry this up instead. “Where do I have to sign?”
Confused, he adjusts the glasses on his nose. “Sign what?”
“My release.” I smile as I run my fingers through my hair, which has grown a lot since I started coming here. The stark black color has washed out too, but, instead of dying it blond again, like I did for so many years in high school, I decided to stick with my natural brown after enrolling at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco last fall.