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  “Whatever you say, Stinky Bateman,” Neil muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Jeremy to hear.

  Laughing, Jeremy nudged Neil’s ribs with his elbow. “He’s gonna be fun to fuck with.”

  Keeping his eyes on the departing boy, Neil wondered if Chris Bateman was as weak and half-witted as he appeared. What would it take to wipe that stupid smile off his face? It might be fun to see, he thought.

  Chapter Six

  Sammy carried the box down the stairs and set it next to four other identical ones. She slipped a black Sharpie from her jeans pocket and scrawled the words Upstairs Bathroom on the side. Glancing toward the living room window, she wondered when it’d become dark outside. She’d been so busy packing that she hadn’t realized how much time had passed. It must have been three hours since Steve O’Reilly had left.

  He’d stopped by on his way to the camp—to “check up on her,” he’d said. She was happy for the company. With her father gone, the cabin had become a lonely, desolate place. While sorting through her father’s things, Sammy had found herself, more than once, overcome with emotion and breaking down in tears. This was much harder than she thought it would be. She welcomed the distraction of Steve’s visit, even if it was only for fifteen minutes.

  They’d sat at the small kitchen table, chatting over coffee, the conversation being mostly superficial and guarded. She didn’t know Steve well enough to share her more intimate thoughts and feelings.

  “You sure you still want to go through with this?” Steve had asked her just before leaving. “No one’ll blame you if you want out.”

  Sammy shook her head. “No, I’m good. I have to do this. For Dad.”

  She crossed to the front door, pulled it open, and stared out across the darkened forest. The incessant chirp of the crickets filled the cool April evening air. She glanced at her watch, wondering if he’d driven past the cabin, straight to camp. There was no reason why he would’ve stopped at the caretaker’s cabin, but she’d planned for that contingency just in case.

  Stepping back inside, she pushed the door closed and crossed the living room toward the kitchen. A bottle of Johnnie Walker stood on the kitchen counter along with two glass tumblers. She filled one with two fingers of whiskey, and then swallowed it in one gulp. She hated whiskey, but he loved it, therefore she’d been learning to tolerate the taste. At least she could now drink it without retching.

  Back in the living room, she drew open the top drawer of an antique roll-top desk. It was empty except for an eight-by-ten picture laying face down in the center. Lifting it out of the drawer, Sammy turned the frame over, her wistful gaze looking at the photo on the other side. The twenty-year-old photo invoked a tear, which fell down her cheek, dropping onto the corner of the frame itself. She remembered the day it was taken. Her father had hired a professional photographer to come to the cabin to take the family portrait. It was first one they’d had taken since her mother died, and it would be the last. Sammy had been dressed in her best jeans and an oatmeal-colored blouse. Her father—in a gray polo—and her half brother—wearing a paisley long-sleeve Oxford—both looked handsome, making her proud to be the “woman” of the house even though she had been only twelve at the time. They sat on the cabin’s front porch stairs, her father and half brother sitting in front and Sammy behind and above them, looking over their shoulders.

  Finding that she couldn’t take her eyes away from the photograph, she had almost missed the flash of light through the windows from outside. Dropping the frame back into the drawer, she crossed to the living room window, peering out from around the blinds. All she saw was a pair of blazing headlights illuminating the cabin. Could it be him?

  She opened the cabin’s front door and squinted against the intense glare. Lifting her hand to her eyes, she tried to get a better look at the car behind the lights. She heard a car door open and the sound of a foot crunching on the driveway pebbles. A tall silhouette stepped out and moved toward her.

  Sammy met the silhouette in the middle of the driveway. She was surprised to feel her heart race. He looked even more handsome than she remembered. His dark hair was a bit windswept but still looked immaculate. The face, although older, still had that sexy charm that she’d fallen for eighteen years ago.

  He’s not allowed to look this good, she thought. It’s not fair.

  “It really is you,” she managed to say.

  He smiled, taking a step closer to her. “Sammy, how are you?”

  When he said her name, she stopped breathing momentarily. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be in control. She shouldn’t have had that whiskey.

  “Steve said you were coming, but I just can’t believe you’re here.”

  He smiled and held out his arms. “In the flesh.”

  Since they had started speaking, he had been closing the gap between them until they were now inches apart. An infusion of conflicting emotions seethed within her. She raged against herself for the underlying sense of desire she was feeling toward him. For her body to respond this way was a betrayal of all that she’d become over the past eighteen years. Get a hold of yourself, she thought.

  Taking a deep breath cleared her head. The cool evening air, with its faint fragrance of pine and cedar, calmed the cadence of her heart. Without warning, she stepped forward and embraced him, burying her face into his shoulder. His arms wrapped around her, pulling her in closer. Deep within his arms, she closed her eyes, forcing herself to think of her father and half brother. The enflamed desire began to dwindle, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She couldn’t lose control like that again.

  As they parted, she said, “Come on in.”

  Sammy turned toward the cabin, walking slowly, making sure to accentuate the swaying of her hips. She felt his eyes following as she climbed the porch steps. He hadn’t moved by the time she reached the cabin door. She turned and leaned against the door frame, making sure that her figure was silhouetted by the light from within the cabin. “Are you coming?”

  He laughed. “That’s a loaded question. Let me just turn off the Merc.”

  She smiled as she watched him dart back to the car. Got him. Hook, line, and sinker, she thought.

  Chapter Seven

  Neil was surprised at how little the cabin had changed. He’d only been in there once before. But that night had been so memorable that even the cabin’s smallest detail had been etched into his memory. Tongue-and-groove pine boards—stained a golden honey—ran up horizontally across the walls, the knots and tree rings forming unique random patterns throughout the cabin. The same dusty ceiling fan hung down from the high sloping ceiling of the large living room. An open staircase led to a loft with two small bedrooms.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” Sammy asked.

  “Whiskey?”

  “Is Johnnie Walker okay?”

  He nodded and watched her cross to the kitchen, passing through an archway at the opposite end of the room. The beige appliances, alongside the pine cabinets, looked awkward and outdated. A small round table provided meager seating for four. Nothing had changed.

  “Coming right up,” she said from within the kitchen.

  While she fixed the drinks, he wandered around the living room, taking in the surroundings. There was a distinctive “unlived in” feel to the room. Dragging his finger across the surface of one of the two mission-style end tables flanking the sofa resulted in a thick layer of dust on the tip. A similar layer of dust was visible on the thirty-two-inch flat-screen TV and the cabinet on which it sat. Even the brown microfiber chair sent a cloud of particles into the air when he gave the cushion a light pat.

  Glancing toward the stairs, he noticed a pile of cardboard boxes stacked against the wall. The faint fragrance of jasmine lingered in the air. Neil had first caught the scent when she’d embraced him outside. The embrace. That’d been unexpected. But then Sammy even bein
g here had been unexpected. Could make for an interesting twist to the weekend, he thought.

  The bedroom. That was the room he remembered the most. He pictured it all like it was yesterday. The twin bed. The floral pattern on the comforter. Dozens of stuffed animals sitting against the headboard. Sammy—sixteen at the time—moaning and gasping beneath him as they made love for the first, and only, time.

  He’d been eighteen during that last summer at Camp Tenskwatawa, and Sammy had blossomed from a teenage tomboy into a desirable young woman over the previous winter, so much so that he’d barely recognized her at first. Once he saw her, however, Neil knew he had to have her, spending the rest of the summer thinking, scheming, and plotting how to get her to sleep with him. The summer of ‘97 became a whirlwind of flirting, innuendo, and clandestine make-out sessions in the woods. To his dismay and frustration, making out was as far as Sammy had been willing to go for most of the summer. Whenever his hands wandered too far, she’d push him away, give him a coquettish smile, and tell him “not yet.”

  Her smile. That was what always sent his teenage hormones into a lustful rage. With an air of mischievous teasing, Sammy had been an expert at leading him on with just a smile, giving him, again and again, a false hope that she was about to fulfill his salacious desire, only to crush that hope every time. Yet, with a tenacity that bordered on the obsessive, he persisted in his attempts to persuade the girl to give in to his amorous intentions.

  As Sammy returned carrying two tumblers filled with three fingers of whiskey, he gestured to the boxes. “Are you moving?”

  She handed him a glass. “Sort of. Haven’t lived here for years. Dad passed away recently. I’m just now getting around to cleaning out the house.” Raising her glass, she added, “To old friends.”

  “And old lovers.”

  She smiled, bringing the tumbler to her lips. It was one of those smiles. Flirtatious and mischievous. He’d seen that smile so often that, for a moment, he felt like they were teenagers again and he was proposing an illicit rendezvous for later that night.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your dad.” Looking around, he added, “I can’t believe he still lived here.”

  Sammy lowered herself onto the faded green plaid sofa and crossed her legs. His eyes roamed over the smooth tanned skin of her thigh. She gestured for him to sit beside her, and he did without hesitation.

  “The camp was his life. He’d worked here for almost twenty-five years,” she said. “When the camp closed two years ago, the owners asked if he would stay on as caretaker, to keep the place from falling to pieces. They thought it’d open again in a few years.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was an unsuitable business model. The owners tried to keep things going as long as they could.” Her eyes became pensive and nostalgic. “But costs kept rising and the kids stopped coming. For a while, there’d been some talk about closing for a year or two, to give enough time to reinvent the camp into something new and exciting. But it all fell flat. Eventually, they sold out. Dad was going to remain until the paperwork was completed, but he didn’t make it.”

  He caught a glimpse of sadness in her hazel eyes, but it only lasted a moment. Reaching across, she placed her hand on his knee, giving it a gentle rub. Her light touch was electric, surprising and arousing him simultaneously.

  “What’s Neil Brewster up to these days?”

  Leaning back into the sofa, he said, “I’m a defense attorney up in New York. I work in a big firm, got a corner office. Got a senior partnership at the firm in the works.”

  “Impressive.” She smiled at him. “Let’s see if I can remember . . . was it Yale?”

  “Harvard.”

  Sammy laughed and took another sip from her whiskey. “I knew it had to be Ivy League. Married?”

  “Nope.”

  He didn’t technically lie to her, just withheld certain information. He didn’t see the need to tell her about Sheila in the same way that he wouldn’t be telling his fiancée about Sammy. The two were mutually exclusive, and the less they each knew about the other the better. He justified his omission with a simple thought, who would know?

  “Really? That’s surprising. A rich lawyer with your looks? I’d have thought someone would have snatched you up a long time ago,” she said.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “My focus has been on my career. No time for serious romance.”

  “Serious romance? So, you love ’em and leave ’em then.”

  “You could say that.” Laughing, he added, “Enough about me. What about you? What about Sammy Wilcox?”

  “It’s Sammy Piper now.”

  He glanced at her left hand to confirm what he’d noticed earlier, no ring. “Divorced?”

  She gestured with her tumbler. “You’re good. The marriage lasted four years. We both had too much baggage. Ended amicably though.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “A nurse. Work over in Philly. I’ve got a nice apartment downtown. Walk to work every day.”

  “No one in your life?”

  She shook her head. “Just a little Chihuahua named Snoopadoo.”

  Try as he may, Neil couldn’t stop himself from laughing. “Snoopadoo?”

  “Don’t make fun of my dog!” She backhanded him on the shoulder.

  “No, of course not.” He made a half-hearted attempt to fight back the laughter. “I’m sure . . . Snoopadoo is a lovely dog.”

  “Bastard!” She reached for his empty whiskey glass. “You want another?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Sammy took his glass and walked into the kitchen, leaving him on his own for a moment. As he listened to the sound of her fixing more drinks, his mind wandered back through the years to their last night together. A smile danced on his lips as the memories fueled the reemergence of his childhood desires.

  Sammy returned from the kitchen with two refilled tumblers of whiskey, handing one to him as she lowered herself again onto the sofa. She flashed him another of those smiles and gazed at him through half-open eyes. He wondered if she knew the effect that had on him.

  “Steve O’Reilly stopped by earlier today,” she said over the edge of her glass.

  “Yeah? What’d he want?”

  Sammy sipped some whiskey. “Just to say hello, to see how I was doing.”

  Neil gulped at his whiskey, swallowing hard. He’d hoped to keep her to himself. But if Steve knew she was here, then it was a good bet that his other friends probably knew as well. It might complicate things. To his surprise, a streak of jealousy surfaced for a moment, aimed toward his friends, and mostly at Steve O’Reilly. It was the same jealousy he often experienced when he felt his territory was being threatened. Sammy was his territory, and he wasn’t about to share. One way or another, he was determined to charm his way back into Sammy’s bed, and neither Steve nor his other friends were going to get in the way. The jealousy subsided moments later, however, as Neil realized how ridiculous it’d been. He couldn’t help but laugh.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It’s nothing. How do you know Steve?”

  Leaning back into the cushions of the sofa, she replied, “Oh, he’s just an acquaintance. He stopped by to see Dad a few times while negotiating the sale of the camp. Steve came to the memorial service for Dad when I spread his ashes out over the lake.”

  “Was your Dad upset when they sold the camp?”

  She was looking at Neil, but her eyes seemed to look past him. The sadness he’d seen earlier reappeared, and she hesitated before answering. “Working at this camp was hard on Dad. The past several years, he just wasn’t happy at all. There was no joy in it for him anymore. He’d get up every morning, go through the usual routine, and that was it. By the time they sold the camp, he was already a broken man.”

  Wondering if he should feel guilty, Neil remembered how hard he and h
is friends had ridden Charlie Wilcox. From letting the air out of the tires of the caretaker’s golf cart to shooting out the lights around the camp with a BB gun, they had looked for every opportunity to raise hell around camp. He’d always thought it just harmless fun, but Neil had never considered the impact his actions might have on others. But as he sat there, he felt nothing. No sense of remorse, no sense of condemnation. To feel guilt would mean that he was sorry for his actions. He wasn’t. They’d just been a bunch of teenagers having a little fun. If Charlie Wilcox couldn’t deal with it, that was his problem.

  Gesturing around the room, he said, “The place hasn’t changed a bit; it’s just as I remember it.”

  “Dad never was much of an interior decorator.” Smiling, Sammy added, “If I remember, you were only in here once.”

  It was the first time she’d referenced their final night together since he’d arrived. The night she’d finally given him what he’d wanted all summer long. Sammy smiled at him, as if waiting for him to make the next move. Neil was reminded of fencing practice when he was in Harvard, of thrusting and parrying to gain advantage over one’s opponent. She had just thrust, now it was time for him to parry.

  “It could’ve been more than once.”

  “I was waiting until I turned sixteen.”

  He smiled. “Age didn’t mean anything to me.”

  “It did to me.”

  “Do you still keep a shitload of stuffed animals on your bed?”

  She laughed, and then her smile turned mischievous as she looked at him through narrowed eyes. “If you come back tomorrow night, maybe you’ll find out.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  She rose from the sofa, took the tumbler from his hand, and said, “How about around eleven? I’ll have a fresh bottle of whiskey waiting.”

  Her lips formed a smile that tempted and tantalized, but Neil found her eyes to be cold, creating an image of incompatibility that intrigued him. The mysterious vision of contradictions was an enticing paradox, throwing fuel upon his desire to have her.