She looked so pretty standing there, wearing a floral top with jeans and flip-flops. She had a shade of pastel pink on her toes, her hair in a messy ponytail.
“I totally forgot about your fear of motorcycles,” he said with a grimace.
“My fear . . . I . . . Oh. Yeah, my fear.” Her eyes widened but she took the helmet. “I’ll be fine. Just don’t go too fast. Or flip the bike. Or . . . park. No parking.”
Parking?
She smiled at him and put on the helmet. “I’m ready, Captain, my Captain.”
And just like that, the tension in his chest eased. She climbed onto the bike, settled her hands on his hips.
He would have preferred she wrap her arms around his waist, but this would do. For now.
Casper followed her rules—not too fast, no wheelies. He did, however, have to park the bike in the dirt lot of the family’s lodge.
Raina got off and handed him the helmet. She stared at the lodge house like she had at last night’s sunset. “It’s beautiful.”
It was? He saw the roof still needing repair from the fire and the ash-pocked cedar boards, graying and warped with age. He saw tall, angry weeds along the walkway, two stones that had cracked with age, and the ugly paint job he’d done on the red door so many years ago, an adolescent reaction to having to work on a Saturday.
He saw the forest burned and dismal behind them despite the wall of evergreens they’d planted along the far edge of the property. He remembered too well the lick of the fire, charring their resort, a memory only barely blotted out by the handful of framed-in, half-built cabins now dotting the property.
The place looked sickly, feeble. Wanting.
But it had given him a good reason to stick around this spring, this summer, without having to answer any probing questions.
“Have you lived here all your life?” she asked, now taking down her hair, running her fingers through it.
Don’t put it back up, he silently asked, but she wound it against her head, secured it.
“Yeah,” he said. “Evergreen Resort has been in the family for four generations.” He gestured to the pathway that led to the fire pit.
He didn’t know when the family campfires had started, just that he’d spent every Sunday he could remember gathered with his parents and any family members in town, roasting marshmallows, trading highs and lows of the week.
His father had already started a blaze, his mother unloading her basket of graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows. Tiger waved his stick in the air like a weapon, and Casper caught it with one hand. “Whoa there, kiddo.”
Tiger giggled, especially as Casper pulled him into his arms like a football and tickled him. Tiger screamed with laughter, fighting him. Casper finally let him down and glanced at Raina. She was grinning, her eyes glistening.
Huh.
Ingrid looked up. “Raina, honey. So glad to see you. Grab a stick. We’re a little ways from roasting, but it’s always good to be armed.”
John smiled at Raina, then glanced at Casper, question in his eyes.
Casper ignored him. “We’re short family members tonight. Amelia is on her way, I think, but Grace is still in Hawaii, and I’m not sure when Darek and Ivy are getting back.” He didn’t mention Owen, mostly for his mother’s sake.
Raina claimed a stick and found a spot on one of the long rough-hewn logs.
He wiped his hands on his pants, his stomach suddenly churning. Okay, this felt weird—her here, as if it were a date.
With his parents sitting across from them. Oh, boy.
Tiger had grabbed a handful of marshmallows. He came over and offered Raina one from his grubby mitt.
“Tiger, Raina doesn’t want that—”
“What are you talking about? Of course I do. Thank you, Tiger.”
Tiger grinned. Casper stuck out his tongue at his nephew.
“Hey, we’ll have none of that, Casper,” Ingrid said, laughing. She brought a plate with chocolate and a cracker over to Raina. “Have you ever made s’mores before?”
“No,” Raina said, taking the offering. “I’m a city girl. This is my first s’more experience.”
Tiger took it upon himself to show her how to spear the marshmallow with the stick, watching her progress while Casper retrieved his own supplies and sat next to her.
“Not one camping trip as a child?” he asked.
“Nope. My dad was a trucker. It was just me and my brother most of the time, and he didn’t have time to take us anywhere. We sometimes went to day camp at a local church, summer school, but never camping.”
John slapped a mosquito. “Welcome to the woods.”
Casper wanted to ask about her mother but didn’t know how. He imagined her alone for long stretches of time, her dad on the road. Imagined her coming home to a cold, dark house, afraid in the middle of the night, caring for her brother.