Chapter One
Two months later
With a groan, Rob sat up and swung his legs off the ancient twin bed. Figuring out long-term accommodations and buying a decent bed were leapfrogging up the to-do list. They’d been so busy getting the campground ready for campers, they hadn’t had the time or energy to worry about themselves.
Today was the official opening day for their incoming seasonal campers, so all four of them had spent the night in the small house.
And while he’d graduated from a camping cot to the twin bed, it—like most things in his life—had been a hand-me-down and the mattress barely met the definition of the word anymore.
The house had two small bedrooms, one of which was mostly taken up by the queen bed and a dresser.
It had only taken a couple of nights back in March before Brian won that bedroom.
Or Stella did, really. If she didn’t have room to stretch out next to her human, she grew restless and none of them slept well.
They’d managed to get two twin beds into the other bedroom, though Rob and Joey had to share a dresser.
Once they’d been able to turn the water on to the bathhouses, Danny had used the small cabin whenever he stayed over.
But the old, broken-down beds in the cabins had been thrown away and the new ones hadn’t arrived yet, so he was stuck with the couch in the house.
It was in about as good a shape as the mattresses.
He’d floated the idea of buying a used camper—or borrowing their parents’ very nice one—and taking one of the sites for their own use, but Danny had shot him down. Unless Rob wanted to pay the full seasonal fee for the site, he could sleep in the house with the others.
A few more weeks, he told himself as he shuffled to the only bathroom. Once the campground was fully open to the public and they’d gotten the rhythm of it, he and Brian would be the only ones actually living there. Joey would show up for weekends, more than likely. And Danny even less.
First, though, they had to get through today, he thought as he joined his brothers in the kitchen.
He walked in just in time to see Brian closing the fridge with a snort of disgust. “I’m not sure what it says about us that we did the shopping and we have a stockpile of camper light bulbs and an apocalypse-worthy stash of toilet paper, but we have nothing for breakfast.”
“I brought coffee, sugar and milk when I came up last night,” Danny said. “What else is there?”
“Eggs, maybe,” Brian suggested. “Bacon. Toast. Home fries.”
“Humor’s totally lost on you.”
“Oh, that was humor? I guess I missed that because it wasn’t funny.”
It was too early for brotherly bickering—Danny was the quietest while Brian was a button-pusher, and they had a long history of not getting along—so Rob decided to distract them with the promise of food none of them had to cook.
“Let’s go to Corinne’s because we’re going to burn through some calories today. ”
Corinne’s Kitchen was the only restaurant within a reasonable driving distance.
Luckily, the food was good and the prices were decent, because they’d become regulars over the last couple of months.
That hadn’t been part of the plan and the meals couldn’t be paid for with the campground’s credit card even if they talked about the business, as per Danny, but when you spent an entire day digging trenches to upgrade the electrical system, you just wanted somebody to set a plate of already cooked food in front of you.
“Who’s buying?” Brian asked, opening the door to let Stella out.
Joey snorted. “I vote for separate checks. I’ve seen you eat.”
Twenty minutes later, they were ready to go, but had to wait while Brian let Stella inside so she could have the first of her many daily naps while they were gone. Then they headed for two of the vehicles, but Rob stopped, phone in his hand.
“Wait. We need a photo.” As if he’d pressed a sound effect button, all three of his brothers groaned in unison. “Just one, in front of the sign, to commemorate the day.”
“You say just one, but it’ll take you an hour to set up the shot,” Joey protested. “I want breakfast.”
“And more coffee,” Danny said.
“Five minutes. And you know Mom and Dad will want a picture. Especially Mom. She’ll be disappointed if she doesn’t get a picture to post and brag about on Facebook.”
As expected, Mom was the magic word and though there was some muttering and rolled eyes, his brothers gathered in front of the Birch Brook Campground sign, making sure they didn’t block the letters.
Rob wanted to run into the house for his equipment bag so he’d have his good camera and tripod, but he knew if he did, there was a good chance they’d get in their vehicles and leave without him.
Instead, after using the stand built into his phone’s case to prop it on the hood of Danny’s car, he framed the shot.
Then he joined Brian on one side of the sign, so they were evenly split, and pulled up the remote shutter button on his smartwatch.
“On three,” he said, and counted them down.
They didn’t even give him a chance to see if the autofocus had gone awry or if any of them had their eyes closed.
Rob barely had time to retrieve his phone from Danny’s hood before his brother was in the car, with Joey sliding into the passenger seat.
It surprised him they didn’t run over his foot in their rush to get to breakfast—or with Danny driving, to get to the coffee.
Brian pulled up so Rob could jump into the passenger seat of his truck, and after fastening his seat belt, he checked the picture.
He wasn’t too worried about it because he could always retake it when they got back.
But over the years, he’d learned that when taking a photo like this, the most emotion was in the first shot.
With each subsequent take, it became more about the picture than the moment the camera was capturing.
And what a moment he’d captured, he thought as the photo filled his phone screen.
All four of them were relaxed and smiling, with the same air of yeah, we really did it he’d felt.
It was probably the best picture of the four of them he’d ever seen, and he pulled up his messages and scrolled through until he found the one labeled Family Group Chat of Doom.
That one was pretty much the entire Kowalski family, including his grandparents and all the aunts and uncles—even the cousins in Maine—and he knew it would blow up their phones.
He didn’t mind because it was a day to celebrate.
Also, it would annoy Brian, which was always a bonus.
Their favorite table was available, and Kenzie Pelletier—the owner and the only full-time server—didn’t bother to ask before bringing four mugs and the pot of coffee to their table.
“Today’s the big day, right?” she asked, setting the mugs in a line and filling them before handing them out.
“Yep,” they all said at the same time, and she laughed.
“Congratulations. And a big day needs a big breakfast, so I’ll give you a few minutes while I deliver those plates in the window.”
Rob wasn’t sure what he wanted, but that plate of French toast waiting in the pass-through window for her to pick up looked good.
Everything at Corinne’s Kitchen was good, though.
Frank, who was Kenzie’s dad—Corinne was her mom, but she’d passed away—couldn’t cook a bad meal as far as Rob was concerned.
Their phones all buzzed for what was probably the fifteenth time in the last ten minutes.
During the season, most of their guests would arrive on Fridays, but they’d decided to make Saturday opening day so fewer campers would show up in the dark.
That meant most of their family was off from work and able to chat.
“I would look at a menu,” Brian muttered. “But I guess I’ll read six thousand text messages instead.”
“You could have waited until after breakfast,” Joey pointed out.
“We’ll be busy after breakfast,” Rob shot back. “And you don’t have to react to every single one. Let everybody congratulate us and then when it peters out, do a quick thanks all and move on.”
“It’s a good picture of us,” Danny said, picking up his menu. “Thank you for taking it.”
“It is a good picture,” Joey admitted, and even Brian nodded.
While the others moved on to pondering their breakfast orders—seriously, Danny and Joey had been arguing about the difference between a cheese omelet and scrambled eggs with cheese melted on top since Rob was in diapers—he tuned them out. He was definitely having the French toast.
A truck pulling a camper turning into the parking lot distracted him, and he tilted his head to get a better look out the window.
The driver could be going anywhere, of course.
There were a lot of campgrounds in northern New Hampshire, not even counting the private land some owners kept campers on.
But it was still an exciting reminder they were actually going to welcome their seasonal campers to Birch Brook today.
Then the door opened and a woman walked in. Rob forgot about French toast and Birch Brook and pretty much everything but her.
She was a few inches shorter than him—Rob, of course, not only being the youngest Kowalski brother, but the shortest at five-nine—and wearing jeans and a plum Henley shirt that hugged her curves.
Her long, dark hair was pulled into a ponytail, and when she looked around and her gaze met his, he could see that her eyes were just as dark.
And the door that closed behind her didn’t reopen, so she was alone.
No wedding ring, either.
He could feel his heart beating in his chest as he looked into her eyes. Then he gave her his most charming Kowalski smile.