Chapter Seventeen
“You can look at the calendar to find time to take a walk with your girlfriend, but not see where I blocked myself off of the schedule?” Brian pointed at the monitor. “It’s right there.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“Pretty sure she is.” Brian’s finger swung to point at him instead of the computer.
“You two were even seen holding hands, and Sheila sent us a message that it’s inappropriate because there should be no special treatment.
And she sent it through Facebook, so Joey and Danny both saw it before I could delete it. ”
“I am not going to hold Sheila’s hand.” Rob did like knowing Brian had his back and would have deleted the message. “What exactly do they think Hannah is getting to do that Sheila isn’t?”
“Nothing, but that isn’t the point. The point is that Hannah is your girlfriend.”
“I think the point is that you’re going to be gone for two days and didn’t bother to tell me.”
“Two days but only one night. Do you want me to see if Danny or Joey can come up? We won’t be busy so I figured you could handle it, but I can probably strong-arm Joey into coming.”
Only one night.
For only one night, Rob would have the entire house to himself. And that meant he could have company.
“Bobby.” Brian snapped his fingers. “If I’m going to call Joey, sooner is better than later.”
“No, I’ve got it.” He shrugged, trying to sound casual instead of like a man who’d just discovered a way to have a real night in with his not-girlfriend. “I was saying you could have told me instead of just entering it and assuming I’d see it.”
“Keep giving me crap about it and maybe I’ll just stay down south.”
For a brief moment, Rob imagined him and Hannah in the house, running the campground together. It was like a punch in the chest because the only thing in their future was the glow of Hannah’s taillights as she headed back to California.
“You’re not getting out of working that easy,” Rob joked, hoping to lighten the mood. “You and Stella can have a great time in the land of drive-throughs and box stores, but you’re taking the bathhouses for the whole weekend.”
Brian’s scowl slowly transitioned to a shrewd look. “How about you clean the bathhouses for the whole weekend, and I’ll clean my room and put clean bedding on my bed before Stella and I leave.”
Rob tried to resist—he didn’t want to admit he’d already planned to do just that.
“And I’ll keep it to myself,” Brian added.
“Done,” Rob snapped, and then he turned and walked out the door. Even after it closed behind him, he could hear Brian laughing.
He’d intended to just walk around and cool off—maybe check the recycling bins and see if the UTV or the lawn mower needed gas. Instead, he kept walking and turned toward Hannah’s site.
He wasn’t sure exactly how he was going to ask her to spend the night in the house, but he wanted to do it now so he didn’t get his hopes up.
Even worse than her not being interested now that they were out of the cocoon of the blanket fort would be finding out after he’d spent two days imagining the night in great detail.
But when he reached site twenty-nine, Hannah wasn’t there.
The door was open, but he knocked on the side of the camper and got no response.
Through the screen door, he couldn’t hear any movement, but her truck was still there.
She must have gone for a walk, either around the campground or back into the woods.
Disappointment surged through him, until he started the walk back to the store and heard Hannah calling his name. He turned and saw her walking down the hill toward him at a fast clip. She waved, and he reversed direction, meeting her at the front of her truck.
“Were you looking for me?”
If he said he was, he’d be put on the spot as to why and he’d prefer to ease into inviting her over to the house. If he said no and she’d seen him from the top of the hill coming out of her site, she’d wonder why he was denying it.
“I was around and figured I’d say hi.” He figured that was a good compromise—yes, he’d stopped by, but he hadn’t been seeking her out deliberately.
“I was up in the overflow parking, talking to my dad. They’re doing a joint backyard barbecue for him and my sister’s husband, so I wanted to call him before they started.” She gave him a questioning look. “You and Brian didn’t have to go south to see your dad?”
He chuckled. “There’s no Father’s Day brunch. Dad’s always been pretty chill about it, and with Mother’s Day, we only had seasonal campers in, but he knows Sunday is our checkout day for weekenders. And we have to clean the cabins after they’re vacated and all that. We called him this morning.”
“Come sit if you have time,” she said. “The log I usually sit on was still damp from the rain, so I was standing for the entire call.”
“I can spare a few minutes.”
Luckily, Hannah kept her camp chairs folded and leaned by her door, well under the awning, so they hadn’t gotten wet during the overnight shower.
Today would have been a good day to take the four-wheelers out.
It wasn’t actually raining, but the trails wouldn’t be dusty and there would be some fun puddles to play in, but he’d gotten sidetracked by the calendar.
And now he’d rather sit with Hannah, anyway.
They talked about the campground goings-on for a while. Oscar had slipped his collar last weekend and everybody had been too afraid of the little dog to help catch him.
“So Tony panicked,” Rob said. “He was running back and forth in front of the store and pool to try to keep Oscar from running onto Route 3, and Barb was panicking and chasing him in circles.”
“When was this? How did I miss the whole thing?”
“Saturday morning, I guess. Your truck was gone.”
“Saturday morning...” She thought for a moment. “Oh, I saw a flyer at the market about a yard sale that listed old books, and I always like to check them out when I can.”
“Find anything good?”
“Not this time. They didn’t mean old as in antique or rare. They meant old as in bloated, smelly paperbacks from somebody’s basement.” She held up her hand. “I don’t care about the books. What happened with Oscar?”
“Oh, so there was a lot of panicking and arm waving and yelling, which is totally how you want to calm a spooked dog. Then Connie went into her camper and got a slice of cheese. As soon as she crinkled that wrapper, Oscar was at her feet, sitting pretty.”
Hannah laughed. “A happy ending, then. With bonus cheese.”
“A happy ending for everybody except Connie, who had to listen to a lecture from Dave about giving people food to dogs.”
“Have you considered finding some kind of super epoxy and sealing their doors closed so they can’t get in and have to go home?”
“No, we haven’t considered that, but Brian and I have both thought about hooking the tractor onto their camper and dragging it to the curb.”
“You could pretend there’s something wrong with their electrical system that requires them to pull their camper out.”
He chuckled. “Okay, that we thought of, although Brian said the sewer lines.”
“Oh, that’s better. They can run on the battery and propane without electricity, but nobody wants to mess with sewer lines.”
“My dad talked us out of just telling them to leave because they’re jerks and we’re tired of hearing them complain.”
She made a questioning sound. “But isn’t this supposed to be a fun place to relax?”
“Yeah, but they don’t interact with the transients much, and most of the seasonal campers either avoid them or seem to actually like them for some reason. And like my dad said, it’s not good to limit your business to only people you like.”
“I guess, but it’s not a regular transaction. This is also a community of people you’re spending the entire summer with.”
Rob shrugged. There wasn’t much they could do about Dave and Sheila. They weren’t breaking any rules, since there was no personality clause in the agreement they’d signed.
“I have to get back because I’ve got a running to-do list and the longer I leave it unattended, the more stuff Brian adds to it.”
“I have a load in the washer down at the bathhouse, so I should go switch it before I forget all about it.”
Rob knew it was now or never. “Before I go, I have a question for you.”
Something in her expression changed just enough to let him know she was apprehensive about what he might ask her. “Okay.”
“Brian’s going home for a couple of days. Stella has a vet appointment and he’s got some other things to take care of.” He paused, taking a deep breath and marshaling his courage. “Would you like to come over to the house for dinner Tuesday evening? And maybe a movie?”
Her expression cleared instantly, and then she laughed as she pointed toward the house. “Rob Kowalski, are you inviting me on a date to over there?”
“Hard to resist, I know.”
“What movie?”
“You can pick.” His pulse kicked up a notch. “Does that mean you’ll come?”
“I would be happy to go on a date to over there with you,” she said. “First Date of Doom?”
Rob chuckled. “Hopefully not in the burnt-dinner-and-disaster-flick kind of way.”
“No, in an epic way.” She slapped him on the arm. “And I guess it’s not our first date, really. More like our third.”
“Third?” He liked the sound of that. Good things tended to happen on third dates. “How do you figure?”
“You took me to see the waterfall. First kiss and all, so it must have been our first date. And then there was the Blanket Fort of Doom.”
Rob laughed. “That was a date, huh?”
“It didn’t start that way, but there were drinks, snacks, kissing, romantic music and more kissing, so definitely a second date.”
“Granola bars we didn’t eat and water, which isn’t my best work, but there was music and kissing. And technically I invited you personally to the cookout.”
“No.” She shook her head, laughing. “Your mother and your grandmother were there.”
“So not a date?”
“Definitely not a date.”
“I’m looking forward to our third date, then.”
“Me, too. And I’ll walk with you as far as the bathhouse, I guess.”