Chapter 25 #3
“Oh, no! I forgot about a meeting with a new business owner, someone starting a dog cake company.” She squeezed Kylie’s shoulder and waved to Luke as she left. “Nice meeting you. I know I’ll see you again soon!”
And she was gone.
“Welcome to Rachel,” Luke said as he nodded toward the door. Kylie followed.
“She seems great.”
“You two have a lot in common.”
“Because we both lived in cities?”
“You’re both involved with Luview men.” he said softly in her ear.
All she could do was drink more coffee and smile. This was definitely heating up, and she wasn’t fighting it. When was the last time she felt so comfortable? So included? So accepted? It had been so long.
Too long.
As they strolled, she marveled at the charming downtown scene.
“Pinch me,” she said.
His eyes drifted to her behind. “Is that a serious invitation?”
“Not there!”
A devilish grin made her appreciate the more passionate side of Luke Luview. Buttoned up in public, as a police officer had to be, he definitely had a wilder side underneath.
Would it come out in bed?
“Why’d you ask me to pinch you, then?”
“This is so beautiful. I’d forgotten how fun Christmas in Maine could be.”
“That’s right. You weren’t here last year, were you?”
“No. We moved here March first. That’s why my lease is up February 28.”
At the mention of her lease, his face went tense, jaw clenching. Luke turned to her, stopping on the walk, face serious.
“Kylie, can I show you something?”
“Umm…”
“How much time do you have?”
“It’s my day off.”
“I don’t want to intrude on your personal life.”
She couldn’t help but snort, leaning in. “Should have thought of that before you kissed me.”
“Trust me. I did.”
“Is that what you want to… show me? Something…”
“Hah! No. Not that. I want to take you to a special place where we can talk.”
Talk.
Was talk a euphemism for…? Her face must have been puzzled, because he clarified:
“I’m not trying to sleep with you. Not today, at least.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“It’s a surprise.”
Dotty Chen walked past them, arms pulled down by full bags. As she opened the coffee shop door, Wolf passed her, hurrying out with a large stack of to-go cups, apparently borrowed from Love You Coffee in one of the many help-your-neighbor-out exchanges Kylie found so endearing here.
“You have to wait! I have all my money on New Year’s Eve,” Dotty whispered to Kylie.
“You what?”
“The betting pool! You two can’t make it official until December 31. I need new gutters.” The wink was what did Kylie in.
Yanking Luke’s arm, she pulled him away.
“Where are we going?” she demanded.
“Away from people who place bets on us.”
“No way,” she gasped. As they turned off the main road, memories poured over her, the drive up the old dirt road unmistakable.
“Way.”
“The camp? This time of year?”
He paused the Jeep in front of the old sign.
“It’s not a camp anymore.”
“It’s not? What is it?”
“My new home.”
“You bought Camp Wannacanhopa?”
“Me, Mom and Dad, Colleen, Den, and Kell.”
“You’re all going to run the camp? Together?”
“No. We’re all going to live here.” He smiled. “Together.”
Launching herself at Luke across the center console wasn’t planned, but in her exuberance, the hug felt natural. “Congratulations!” she squealed as his strong arms wrapped around her shoulders, her face buried in his neck, his aftershave making her heady.
“If I knew I’d get hugs like this for buying property, I’d start a real estate company.”
Kylie began to pull back, but his arms were too tight.
And their mouths were so close.
The buzz from Luke’s phone made him groan. The spell was broken, giving Kylie the chance to pull away and get her wits back.
Not that she wouldn’t have preferred a kiss.
Scrambling out of the car, she willed her libido to stop flashing a big red pulsing light on Luke and calm itself down.
Number 14, Part A.
No matter what.
Luke was out of the car, too, staring intently at her.
“Let’s go down to the pier,” he said. Already on her way there, she smiled as he held out his hand. The zing of contact made her inner mantra–Number 14, Part A–grow weaker and weaker. Finally, she just chanted 14A, 14A, 14A.
As if that did one bit of good.
A path led them down to the shore, the wooden pier intact, a thick layer of bird tracks and likely fox prints dotting the surface of the snow.
The beach was the same, the little wooden boathouse locked up tight, small windows showing the neatly racked canoes and kayaks inside.
Camp Wannacanhopa was never a huge facility, but at peak there’d been over a hundred campers, and there were always plenty of watercraft for everyone.
“No sitting on the edge dipping our feet in,” she joked, but when she made eye contact, Luke’s gaze was serious.
“I brought you here for a reason.”
“You did?”
“Do you remember the last time we were here together?”
“Of course. How could I forget? It was the last time I was truly happy.” She swallowed, hard. “Until this Thanksgiving.”
Luke pulled her into a hug, the warm embrace, the scent of him, the contact, the view, all blending into a pool of bliss.
“That kiss on the pier is the reason I have Harriet.”
Kylie laughed. “Do you need a little lesson on how reproduction works, Luke? Because that’s not how babies are made.”
Hot breath warmed her ear, making her shiver. “Trust me, Kylie. I know exactly how babies are made.”
All thought rushed out of her, need filling the void.
And then he kissed the top of her head. That wasn’t what she wanted next, but it would do for now.
“Amber saw me kiss you that day. Then you disappeared. A week or so later, she told me she liked me. Then, she confessed she’d been too shy to tell me how she felt, but seeing me kiss you made her realize she had to take the chance. And when you ghosted on me–”
“Ghosted? On you?”
He chuckled, the sound wry and a little sad. “I still don’t understand why you cut me off.”
Kylie’s legs went numb.
“What?”
“It’s fine,” he said quickly. “It’s all in the past, and I don’t want to make this awkward. But we do need to talk about it.”
“We definitely do!”
He tilted his head, studying her. “You disappeared. Unfriended me on social media. Stopped answering my emails. Stopping writing me letters.”
“You did all that to me, Luke! Not the other way around!”
“No, I didn’t! I woke up one day and tried to message you and you’d disappeared. Literally. You blocked me.”
“I didn’t block you! I would never, ever have blocked you!”
“You stopped answering my emails, Kylie.”
“I got bouncebacks! Your email system said your address was undeliverable!”
“It’s the same personal email address I use now.”
They stared at each other, dumbfounded.
And each reached for their phone.
Kylie was livid that he would think she’d have ghosted on him like that. “I can’t,” she said between angry jabs at her phone, “believe you would ever think that I would be so cruel to you! I would never ghost you!”
“But you did.”
“You ghosted me!”
“Only because you made it abundantly clear you didn’t want to talk to me. The silence was deafening, Kylie.”
He held up his email account on his phone.
He was right. Same address.
Baffled, Kylie went into her social media account and did a search for him. Nothing came up. She showed him.
“See? You blocked me. Go into your security settings and look.” She pulled hers up and showed him. “I don’t have you blocked. I swear.”
Shaking his head, Luke did as asked, and then pulled his head back in shock at what he saw. She leaned over his arm and read.
Kylie Hood was on his blocked list.
“What the hell?” he rumbled, voice low and tight. “I never did that.”
“Your account says otherwise.”
“No, Kylie. I mean it. I never did that.”
“We were kids. Teens do stupid things.”
“Kylie Hood, so help me God, I never blocked you.” He tapped his phone, hitting Unblock.
Kylie looked at hers, doing a search for his name.
Voila! There he was, for the first time in years.
“And there you are,” he whispered softly, clearly doing the same thing she was.
He tapped his phone, going back to his email account.
A sound, small and pained, came out of him. “No. No way.”
“What are you doing?”
“I have an idea about what may have happened.” He sounded sick.
Positively sick.
“What’re you doing?”
“Going back fifteen years to old Sent emails.”
“Huh? What will that prove?”
He did a search for her in his account. Kylie watching his nimble fingers type it in as if he had it memorized.
Did he? All these years?
“Oh, no. No, no, no. Amber, no.”
“Amber? What does Amber have to do with this?”
Luke turned his phone toward her.
“I just searched for your email, Kylie. And I found this.”
It was the familiar “bounce” email, the kind an automated system sends when an email address is invalid.
Except it was in his Sent folder. Manually created.
It looked very much like the kind you get when the email address is no longer in service.
It was the exact email Kylie received fifteen years ago.
The last kind of email she ever got from Luke before she gave up trying.