She's Got a Way (28 page)

But that wouldn't be fair. The least he could do was wait till morning, when both of them would have had a night's sleep and clear heads to work with. With a sigh, he set off up the pathway toward his cabin, but just as he reached the admin cottage, he pulled up short.

Ah, hell. Gabriela was sitting in an Adirondack chair, her knees pulled up to her chest, staring out at the moonlit lake. He looked up the pathway toward the dining hall where the girls were hopefully sleeping, and nobody was stirring. Was Gabi having trouble sleeping?

Was it because of him?

He took a moment to watch her, and wished he didn't ache so badly to touch her. She had on his Red Sox T-shirt and her own yoga pants, and her hair was pulled up into a ponytail that made her look like she was barely twenty. Her feet were bare, flip-flops on the sand, and in the moonlight, her face looked dreamy and tired and—he squinted to see better—teary.

Was
that
because of him?

He stood still for a long minute, debating whether to let her know he was there. Clearly, she thought she was having a private moment out here on the beach. But before he could convince himself to make the intelligent decision and go back to his cabin, his feet were on the move, and they were heading directly for Gabriela. When he was about ten feet away, he saw her shoulders tense as she heard him coming, but she didn't turn around.

After a beat, she said, “I wondered if you were going to stop lurking in the shadows and come talk to me.”

He chuckled. This was a good sign—her actually talking to him. “I wasn't lurking. I don't lurk.”

“Did you have a good evening in town?”

He stood a few feet away from her, not wanting to spook her. “It was … fine. Got my butt whipped at pool.”

“Noah?”

“Piper, actually. But Noah, too.” He shrugged. “I pretty much suck at pool.”

She laughed softly. “Well, I guess it's good you have some fallback skills.”

“Mind if I sit?” He pointed to the other chair.

“Sure.” She nodded. “I was kind of hoping to talk to you, anyway, actually.”

“Well, that's a relief.” He smiled. “I wondered if we were going to get back to that part.”

“I know. I'm … sorry.”

“Are you okay?”

She sighed, looking back out at the lake, her eyebrows furrowed. “I'm not sure, really. I think … I think I kind of dove in the deep end last night, and it turns out … I'm not so sure I'm all that good at swimming right now.”

“What does
that
mean?”

Gabriela sighed. “I don't even know. I'm just … petrified that maybe I'm more in love with the idea of
being
in love than I am really
falling
in love.” She shook her head. “That makes no sense. And also, it's the kind of statement that should make you run. Fast. Sorry.”

His gut fell.
Shit.
“It makes
some
sense.”

“I don't want to hurt you, Luke.” She pulled her arms closer around her. “I'm just in this—I don't know—weird space. You start creeping toward thirty, and you go to five weddings every summer, and suddenly you feel like the happily-ever-after boat's leaving, and you're going to be doing a life sentence on a deserted island with your pile of romance novels and your ten yowling cats.”

“Every woman's greatest fear?”

“You'd be surprised.”

He paused. “I have a question for you, and you can answer it, or not. Your choice, but … a part of me needs to know.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, not even sure he should put the question out there at this point. “And another part of me
doesn't
want to know.”

She looked at him sidelong. “If it's about the sex, last night was hands down the best night of my life.”

He half choked on a laugh. “Um, no. That wasn't it.”

“Oh.” Her face immediately went crimson. “Should have let you finish. Obviously.”

“I just—I can't help but wonder if it's
me
who has you running scared? Or if someone who came before me set you up to—I don't know—not trust that last night was … real.” He put up his hands. “No pressure to answer, because that's
way
personal, but everything was … amazing, and then? I feel like you're sort of slamming the door before we even have a chance to figure out what we've got here.”

“I know, and I'm so sorry.” She blew a slow breath through her lips, but didn't look at him. “I probably should have warned you I'm an over-analyzer. Also, I'm pretty good at the whole pessimism thing. It's not healthy, but it's me.”

“I imagine you have reasons. I mean, I can't pretend to know how you grew up, but—”

“Do you have any idea what my net worth is, Luke?”

He shook his head.
What?
“Of course not.”

“I have three hundred dollars in the bank, Luke. Not three hundred thousand, not three hundred million. Three hundred dollars.” She raised her eyebrows. “How I grew up is moot.”

“No trust fund? No pot of gold?” Luke smiled, almost embarrassed by how happy it made him that Gabriela
didn't
come with either of those.

“Were you hoping?” Her eyebrows arched menacingly, making him laugh.

“Absolutely not. I'd be far more thrilled to know you were destitute.”

“Well, good news. I'm pretty darn close. I had a trust fund, and it was a really nice one, but it … went away.”

“What happened?”

She paused. “Long story. I chose integrity and friendship over family, and … family didn't like that choice. So, that was the end of the O'Brien Fund for me. In the end, kissing that money good-bye was probably the best thing that's ever happened to me. Made me have to grow up and be an adult. But at least I got to do it on my own terms.”

“Wow.”

She tossed a pebble toward the water. “My last boyfriend did not say
wow
. He tried to convince me that maybe it wasn't too late to make good with my family, see if I could get back into their good graces.” She shivered. “But by that time, I'd kind of embraced the whole black-sheep thing. He wasn't amused. I'm pretty sure he had plans for my money already. And oddly enough, he broke up with me exactly one week after he realized I was not, in fact, the O'Brien heiress. Shocker.”

Luke laughed. He couldn't help it. Gabriela as a black sheep was just such a funny image, when he sat looking at the most beautiful woman he'd ever met.

“It's not funny.”

“It's
sort
of funny.” He touched her arm. “I mean, come on. Idiot whoever-he-is thinks he's found the proverbial pot of gold, and then—dum-dum-
dum
—learns she's no empty-headed glamour girl with a loaded bank account, so he ditches her and goes looking for a new heiress? It's like a rom-com in the making.”

“It's so not! Have you ever
seen
a rom-com? There's romance … and comedy!”

“Well, here's the thing.” He raised his eyebrows. “That's the part that comes
next.
First you have to have the disastrous setup so the heroine can truly appreciate the
real
hero when he comes along.”

“Ah, is that how it goes?”

Luke saw a smile start to take over her face, so he kept rolling. “Absolutely.”

“So what happens next?”

“Well”—he pretended to ponder—“generally, we'd see a few minutes of clips that give a glimpse into her life. The audience would fall in love with her quirky smile and her terrible taste in flip-flops, for instance.”

Gabriela looked down at her sandals, then narrowed her eyes at him, but didn't speak.

“We'd see her at work, maybe, doing good things for needy people—like, say, obnoxious teenaged girls at a private school, though that one's kind of a cliché.”

“Of course. So overdone.”

“Shh.”

“Sorry.” She smiled, waving her hand. “Woman dumped, terrible flip-flops, obnoxious teens. Carry on.”

He mock sighed. “Thank you. So
then,
something happens to throw this heroine off the path she thought she was on, and ka-bam. She ends up somewhere she never expected to be.”

“Like, say, a summer camp for boys? Which has no boys? Or … camp?”

“Exactly. But it's all okay, because in the next scene, she meets the incredibly hot, also-not-rich, fantasy-inducing camp handyman-slash-director.” He waggled his eyebrows. “You follow me?”

She laughed. “It's a complex plot.”

“So then they fall in love, she moves to Echo Lake—I mean, the hero's hometown—and they live happily ever after.”

“Ah.” Her smiled faded. “Just like that, huh?”

“Well, there's usually the part where all seems lost, and the audience is supposed to believe they'll never, ever find their way back to each other, but somehow, it always works out. But we could totally skip that part. It's super-cheesy anyway.”

She smiled again. “How many of these have you watched? You've got the formula down pretty well.”

“Ten.” He rolled his eyes. “Piper, Josie, and Molly made all of us guys do a chick-flick marathon one weekend last winter when we got snowed in.”

“Pure hell?”

“Really was.”

Gabriela was silent for a long moment. “Are you ever tempted to do something different, Luke?”

He looked at her, but in her face, couldn't read why she was asking the question, or what answer she hoped to hear. Was she hoping for verification that his commitment here at Camp Echo was ironclad? Was she hoping to hear that he'd ditch it all in a second for the right woman? He really didn't know, but he suspected she wouldn't believe the latter, even if it was true.

Which it wasn't … he didn't think.

“No, Gabriela. I'm not tempted to do anything different. Oliver's handing his legacy over to me, and I don't take that lightly. What Briarwood will do with this property is something I can't predict right now. But I've got a job to do, and it's a job I'm passionate about. There's nothing I'd rather be doing.”

She nodded slowly. “I think that's very admirable.”

“But?”

“No but.” She shook her head.

“What about you?” He braced himself for her answer. What if she, too, said she'd never leave
her
current position? Where would that leave them … if there was to even
be
a them?

She shook her head again. “I don't know. Sometimes I feel like I'm banging my head against ivy-covered walls wherever I go. The endowment fund at Briarwood is embarrassing. There's so much money sitting there earning
more
money, and it makes me crazy. We could be educating
fifty
needy kids a year on that money.”

She sighed. “I don't know. I'm just starting to wonder if I'm maybe … on the wrong path altogether. Maybe that's why I'm so impressed that you seem to have figured it out. I'm trying, but no matter where I turn, Briarwood is still an insular, connected place … and they're
really
not interested in making sure the other ninety-nine percent of the population breaks into their club. It makes me really angry, to tell you the truth. I haven't even been battling it for long, in the scheme of things, but in three years of trying to funnel money to kids who really, actually need it, I've managed a grand total of two scholarships. Two.”

Luke put his hand on her arm. “You're doing the right thing, Gabriela, by trying. That's all you can do sometimes.”

“Luke?” She took his hand, her voice soft, but didn't look at him. “You said Oliver decided you were a kid worth helping, way back when. Were you—”

“In the system? Yeah. Ten homes in seven years. And it was no more fun than anybody makes out. I know there are probably hordes of foster parents who are in it for the good of children, and who do a bang-up job raising them.” He shook his head. “But I didn't have the opportunity to meet those types in my travels.”

“I'm so sorry.”

He took a deep breath, expecting the slicing pain that pity usually invoked, but to his surprise, it didn't happen. Maybe because what he saw in Gabriela's eyes was sadness, not pity.

“How old were you when you met Oliver?”

“Sixteen. Old enough to be deemed a lost cause by a whole hell of a lot of people, and I'd given them plenty of reasons to think so. He just didn't put up with the bullshit, and he saw through all of the posturing. He dragged me here to Camp Echo, put me to work, got me through school, and I'll be grateful to him till my dying day.”

She smiled sadly. “I want to be Oliver when I grow up.”

“Well, you've got a pretty good start, don't you think? You can't boil the ocean, Gabriela. You have to start somewhere, right?”

“I know. I just wish there was a way to do … more.”

He nodded slowly. “Are you committed to staying at Briarwood?” He half held his breath for her answer, hating himself for hoping it might be no.

She tipped her head, frowning. “I think—it's all I know, really. I grew up there, I taught there, and now I'm a … whatever I am. And someday I could move into a position where I could actually enact some change, you know?”

“Ever think you could make a bigger impact with needier kids?”

“Yes and no. Maybe.” She sighed. “But you know what? My kids are just as needy—just in a different way.”

“I know.”

“My parents shipped me off to my first boarding school in kindergarten, Luke. I didn't even know they
made
boarding schools for kids that young.”

“Are you serious?”

She nodded. “I went home for Christmas, and the first summer. After that, I was at camps every summer. When I was ten, I scratched a line in my bed for each day I saw my parents that whole year. Guess how many lines I ended up with?”