She's Got a Way (15 page)

Gabi blew out a breath, picturing kindly old Oliver spending his entire salary—which, like any public servant who did the most important work in the universe, was probably dismal—building a getaway for boys who so desperately needed one. She pictured Sam and Eve, who'd probably never had a chance to attend a camp before this lousy summer, and wondered how different they might be if they'd been given the chance to come somewhere like Camp Echo when they were younger.

“So really what you're saying, Piper, is that my school has come in like a stereotypical corporate shmuck, and is railroading a man whose entire life has been focused on creating a safe, structured camp for kids who probably have very little of either of those qualities in their day-to-day lives?”

Piper put up both hands, palms up. “I'm not sure I said it quite that strongly.”

“Shit.”

Piper's eyes widened, and then she laughed. “I've never heard you swear.”

“You've only known me for a week.”

“But still. Unexpected.”

“Even rich bitches swear, Piper.”

“Hey.” Her hands went up again, placating this time. “I
never
said that.”

Gabi closed her eyes, shaking her head. “I'm sorry. I don't even know where that came from.”

“Maybe from constantly dealing with people assuming you
are
? Rich and bitchy, I mean?”

“Well, I'd be glad to show them my bank balance. It'd at least end the rich part of the equation.”

“You're not bitchy, Gabi. Or if you are, you cover it well.”

Gabi looked down, scraping the last of her nail polish from her thumbnail. “Seems like Luke had the girls and I pegged well before we got here, and now I'm stuck fighting his assumptions, because of what he thinks my school is doing to his camp.”

“Can you really blame him? I mean, no offense, but really?”

“No.” Gabi sighed. “I guess not.”

“He's just going by experience, Gabi. And to his credit, he does seem to be trying to put it aside, at least. He
is
helping you.”

“He is.” Gabi nodded. “He definitely is, and on one hand I'd love to just be grateful and thankful. But on the other hand, I can't figure out if he's doing it because he really does want to help, or because he's afraid if he
doesn't
help, he'll be mounting a search party for my runaway girls within a week.”

“I imagine it's a little bit of both.”

Gabi smiled. “Thanks. That was the part where you were supposed to weave a little platitude to make me feel better.”

“Oh.” Piper laughed. “Sorry. Missed it.”

“He walks around that camp like he owns the place, and he and Oliver have way more of a partner-ish sort of relationship than a director-to-handyman one. He's got survival skills, and he can teach them.” She paused. “And he's frighteningly intuitive about my girls. It doesn't quite compute. He plays at being this uneducated handyman, but I'm not buying it.”

“You don't think camp handymen come with the power to understand teenage females?”

Gabi snorted. “Does
anyone
come with that power?”

“Good point.”

“Did he go to college?”

Piper sighed, but continued smiling. “Are you here to do laundry? Or play Twenty Questions about the hot handyman?”

“I'm not—no.” Gabi felt her cheeks flush. “I'm just curious, that's all. And he doesn't like to talk about himself, at least to me.”

“Give him time. He's kind of a grumpy old cuss, for a man so young. He'll warm up eventually.”

“How long does this process generally take?”

“Well, a week ago, Luke was dead sure you were a princess getting brought down a peg for the summer, so that has to enter in.”

“I'm not a prin— Never mind.” Gabi took a deep breath, knowing Piper couldn't possibly have any idea how deeply her words cut, and why. “I'm not the stereotype he has in his head. I'm really not.”

Piper smiled. “Might not be my place to say so, but I think he's already figuring that out.” She shrugged. “And if it matters, Luke's got a pretty finely tuned bullshit meter, so if he still thought you were rich-bitch material, you wouldn't be getting the time of day from him, let alone help with the girls.”

“Um, thank you? I think?”

“Give it time, Gabi. I have a feeling you'll be surprised by what both you
and
your girls could learn from Luke.”

 

Chapter 14

“Ceremonial flush?” Gabi laughed as she handed garbage bags of clean clothes to the girls, who'd jumped up from the picnic table as the Briarwood van had emerged from the leafy driveway into the tiny parking lot.

Sam smiled. “Apparently it's a thing.”

“Yeah.” Eve piped up. “When you complete a plumbing project, after it passes inspection, you do a ceremonial flush.”

“And Luke made you wait till I got back to have this little ceremony?” Gabi laughed as she closed the van doors. “Gosh, I'm honored.”

Madison rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that's quite an honor, Gabi. You should be so proud.”

“Oh, but I am.” Gabi squeezed Madison's shoulder. “A flushing toilet is nothing to sneeze at here. We're just one step from the Ritz now, girls.”

“Right.” Waverly half sneered, but couldn't help but let a smile sneak through it. “Come see, Gabi, so we can actually start using the thing.”

The girls tromped down the pathway before her, setting their bags down outside the bathroom, which now had actual walls and a door. As the girls went inside, Gabi walked around the outside, feeling her eyes widen as she ran her hand along the planks, pausing to admire a dead-even row of nails.

“Didn't think they could do it, did you?” Luke's voice, soft and deep, startled her from behind. He was close—too close—and the feel of his breath on her ear sent signals to all sorts of places that really didn't need to be awake right now, thank you very much.

“Um.” Flustered, she turned around to face him, but when she caught his amused smile, words fled her brain.

“Um?” His smile grew, and his dimple appeared. “We've been working our asses off all day on this, and I get
um
?”

“Sorry. It's awesome! I can't believe they got it done.
You
got it done. You all got it done.” She shook her head. Good Lord. It'd be helpful if some blood could return to her brain here.

“Hey, Gabi?” He—damn him—stepped six inches closer, and she found herself nose-to-pecs with his chest. She inhaled, expecting a mixture of sweat and man. He'd been working all day in the heat, after all. But what she smelled was soap, detergent, and was that aftershave? On a guy who didn't seem
to
shave? “Don't move.”

He lifted his hands, deadly close to her body, and a slew of thoughts went careening through her brain while her feet stayed frozen to the ground. Then he slid both hands into her hair, gently, slowly. What was he
doing
?

“Spider in your hair,” he finally said, stepping back, dangling a huge wolf spider from two fingers. Was it her imagination, or did his voice sound a little huskier than before?

Her hands flew to her hair as her eyes took in the huge black arachnid.

“Don't worry. They're ugly, but they're harmless.” He backed up another step, letting the spider go on a tree branch.

She shivered, but she knew it was more from his touch than from the fear of a spider building a nest in her damn curls.

“Thank you.” Her voice was strangled, soft, and she swallowed hard, trying not to let him know just how strongly her body had reacted to his fingers skating gently through her hair.

“Welcome.” His eyes met hers, then lowered to her lips, then closed as he blew out a breath and turned away. “Okay. Girls are waiting.”

“Right. Girls. Yes.”

Gabi shook her head as she followed him around the bathroom to the doorway. Could she
be
any more pathetic? Had she thought he was going to kiss her or something?
Why
would she think that?

She took a deep breath as they reached the doorway, pasting on a bright smile as he turned around to motion her inside.

“Your bathroom, Ms. O'Brien.”

Gabi stepped inside, and her fake smile turned into a real one as she smelled the fresh lumber and saw four new stalls and an open area at the end, where the girls were standing.

“This will be the shower, eventually.” Eve pointed at the walls of the open area.

“Look!” Sam bounced her eyebrows up and down as she swung a stall door open and closed. “Doors!”

“Heck with that!” Waverly pointed inside a stall. “Toilets!”

Gabi laughed at their expressions. “And you guys did all this? Seriously?”

“They did.” Luke leaned against the door frame, arms crossed across the chest she'd almost reached out and touched just a minute ago. She wondered what it would feel like to slide her hands up inside that soft T-shirt, feel—

“Okay, girls.” Sam pointed. “Places, please.”

Gabi ripped her eyes away from Luke, but not before she caught a knowing arch to his eyebrows as he looked back at her. She shook her head, focusing on the girls as they each took up a position in a stall.

“Ready, set, flush!”

In unison, the four toilets flushed, and Gabi crossed her fingers, hoping everything actually worked. After how much effort they'd put in, she'd hate to see one of the pipes burst open, or see water come gurgling out of one of the bowls.

Each of the girls watched her own toilet, and Gabi would have laughed at their rapt attention had she not been just as invested in the process as they were. And then there was a collective whoop as they realized they'd done it.

“They work!” Eve's eyes went wide. “We actually did plumbing, and it worked!”

“Oh, goodie.” Madison rolled her eyes for effect, but Gabi could see pride peeking through her bluster. “Now we're qualified to help Hank in the dorm.”

“That's a great idea.” Gabi nodded. “Hank could use some weekends off. And if you girls know how to handle this stuff now, maybe we could give him some time.”

“Oh, no, you don't.” Waverly wagged a finger. “What happens at camp stays at camp.
No one
will know we got excited about toilets, understand?” She turned a slow circle, pointing at each of the other girls, and Gabi and Luke laughed.

He pushed away from the door frame. “You
should
be excited. You worked hard, and now you have a set of flushing toilets. And if I'm not mistaken, I might have seen Gabi smuggle some ice cream into the freezer the other day. Anyone want some?”

The girls whooped and headed for the dining hall, but then Madison turned around, a glimmer of humor in her eyes.

“So now do we get to do a ceremonial burning of the outhouse?”

*   *   *

“Chow time!” At eight o'clock the next morning, Luke stacked pancakes on a plate, then set them on the counter with a platter of sausages.

The girls barely lifted their heads.

He raised his eyebrows. “We commence work in thirty minutes. You can do it with fuel on board, or without. Your choice. I don't care one way or the other.”

Grumbling ensued, but all four of them pushed up from the table and came to fill their plates. Gabi watched as each of them took more food than she'd ever seen them eat at school, and she smiled as she realized they were hungry because they'd actually been burning calories doing something other than sniping at each other.

“Where's Piper this morning?” she asked Luke as she plucked a sausage link from the platter.

“She's too busy with work right now to give us weekends. I figured I'll do breakfast, the girls can get their own lunches, and maybe you could do dinner—if that works for you.”

“Sure.” She cringed. “As long as you like pasta.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Not a cook?”

“I live at a boarding school where an executive chef prepares our meals. Not a lot of opportunity to learn, unfortunately.” The words came out of her mouth before she had time to consider how they sounded, but it was too late to reel them back in.

He didn't take the bait, which she found odd, but somehow comforting. “What about when you were a kid? Didn't your parents ever teach you to cook anything?”

She shook her head.
Ha.
She wasn't sure the kitchen at any of her homes had ever been used by anyone but caterers.

“Um, no. I lived at Briarwood then, too.”

Luke turned. “So have you ever
not
lived at Briarwood?”

“Briefly.” She shrugged. “I went to Wellesley before I came back to work there, which—I know—sounds totally cliché.”

“I didn't say it.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You didn't have to. I could feel you thinking it.”

He pasted a bored expression onto his face as he held out the spatula. “Pancake?”

“Just so we're clear”—she took the pancake—“I'm not some boarding-school princess who doesn't know how to tie her own shoes.”

“I assume you've got shoes covered. We can work on the oversensitive piece next. And maybe we need to teach you how to cook while you're here, so you don't starve if the executive chef goes on vacation?”

“Very funny. I
can
actually cook enough to stay alive.”

“What's your specialty?” He raised one eyebrow in challenge.

She shrugged uncomfortably. “I don't know that I have a … specialty, so much.”

“All right. Say it's a chilly Sunday night in the fall. You've had a long weekend, and you just want a nice dinner. What would you cook yourself?”

“Lucky Charms. Isn't Sunday-night cereal a universal thing?”