Not that she was looking.
Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose. “You swear this is something I can pull off?”
“Absolutely!” Taylor assured her.
She was probably going to regret this. But maybe her twin was right and getting back to nature would help break the writer’s block that had been plaguing her for months. At the very least, maybe she’d get some shots to replace the artwork on her walls.
“Okay, I’m in. Tell me what I need to do.”
~*~
“Good morning, staffers!”
From one of the picnic tables set up down by Lake Waawaatesi, Beckett Hayes watched his new boss, Heather Tully, address the assembled crowd. Oh yeah. His buddy, Michael, had done well when he’d married her. The cheerful blonde looked absolutely in her element. And why shouldn’t she? Camp Firefly Falls—summer camp for grown-ups—was her brain child.
“It’s going to be a super busy week as we finish prepping for our first session of the summer—Singles Week—so we’ll be throwing you all into the deep end with that one.”
“Deep end is right,” the guy next to him whispered. “I was here for that last year. It’s like policing a damned orgy.”
“Lovely,” Beckett muttered. He’d dealt with some of that in his last job as national park ranger. Herding drunk, horny people was never fun. It almost always ended in insults and often with beer or other questionable liquids spilled on his uniform.
“Now, some of you will be here all summer and some will be in and out, depending on the specifics of the session, but everybody has to pass their camp certification by the end of the week to keep our insurance company happy. That said, we want all of you to have fun yourselves. Here at Camp Firefly Falls, we work hard and play hard. The work begins bright and early at eight every morning. You can pick up your daily assignments at breakfast. We wrap in time for dinner at six, with evening activities planned so you can get to know your fellow staff members.”
The collective staff cheered.
“This afternoon, we’re getting started with a swim test.”
“Are you serious?” someone called from down front.
“Camp rules. Everybody has to tread water for two minutes, then swim out to the raft and back. Anybody who does not pass will not be on any water activities for the summer. Anybody who’s not already suited up, go change. We get rolling in fifteen minutes!”
Beckett held himself back from the minor stampede toward the staff cabins to change clothes. He was already set with board shorts and a t-shirt. While waiting, he scanned the remaining faces, noting the animated conversations and laughter. A lot of these people were returning staff, and a fair chunk had been campers here before the Tullys bought it and turned it into a resort, back when Camp Firefly Falls had been a regular sleep-away camp for kids.
Beckett hadn’t been one of them.
Michael wandered over and plunked down on the other side of the table. “Settling in okay?”
“Getting there.”
“Cabin working out for you?”
Beckett laughed. “It’s like a damned penthouse suite compared to some of the places I lived with the park service. Listen, I want to thank you again for giving me a job this summer. After the—” He cut himself off, not wanting to get into the mess of his former position. “Well, my prospects weren’t great. This is really saving my ass.” The summer’s work would buy him time to figure out his next move.
“Hey, it’s our gain and my pleasure. They were wrong for firing you.”
Beckett jerked his shoulders. “Yeah, well, I was far from the only one. You flagrantly disagree with the powers that be, you get burned.” Even given how things had turned out, he couldn’t regret being part of the AltPark movement. It was good work. Important work. Work that was now being carried out by others.
They both looked out over the lake, glistening in the early morning sun. It was gorgeous, soothing, and a far cry from the Ivy League campus where they’d met.
“Never would have thought we’d end up here when we were busting our humps for our MBAs,” Beckett observed.
“Maybe not me, but you walked away from the crazy a lot sooner than I did.”
In his last year of grad school, Beckett had walked out. Of the classroom. Of the MBA program. Away from Dartmouth. He’d never looked back. “Wasn’t gonna make me happy.”
“I wish I’d figured the same out sooner. That whole corporate culture nearly cost me my wife.”
“But it didn’t,” Beckett observed. “This place brought you two back together.”