Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 33324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 167(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33324 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 167(@200wpm)___ 133(@250wpm)___ 111(@300wpm)
There’s an unreadable squint in her left eye, and my palpitations kick up a notch. I have to keep things professional. She’s not just a counselor, she’s gonna be working with Hailey.
I’m frozen, mute, hands in my pockets, dick hard, brain shutting down…
Then, she fucking saves me, poking at my chest, her eyelashes fluttering, a little glitter catching the light on her cheeks as she says, “Did you know you were going to be my boss?”
“No.” I finally form words, then clarify. “Not until I spotted the Camp WanderLust t-shirt in your bag.”
She nods, chewing the corner of her mouth, tapping the toes of her floral-patterned hiking boots. “So, where do you want me?”
I grunt as my cock finds a new inch it didn’t have before. I want to tell her I want her everywhere. Right here, right now. In my office. Under the stars. In her cabin.
And that teasing sparkle in her wide, eat-me-alive-eyes tells me she knows what she’s doing to me.
I grind my molars and growl through clenched teeth, “I need to introduce you to someone.”
“This is Hailey,” I tell Summer as we come into the activity room, and the way her face lights up almost makes me crumble. “She’s the young girl we hired you for, as a speech therapist.”
Her hands clasp in front of her mouth.
Hailey turns at the sound of her name, the finger painting she’s up to her elbows in forgotten, and raises her hand in a quick salute, leaving a stripe of purple and yellow paint on her forehead.
“Where you been, Papa Pwice?” Hailey squishes up her nose. “You said you would paint wif me.”
Hailey called me just Price for the first year after we met, which was fine by me. Then she started putting the ‘papa’ in front. Someday, maybe she’ll drop the ‘Price’ but whatever works for her. She’s not had the easiest path in her six short years, so I promised myself above all else, I won’t do anything that makes it harder.
The salute is something my dad and I used to do when I was a kid before he disappeared, leaving me and my brother with my mom, who had no business raising kids.
Weird how the past comes back to the present, even when you wish it wouldn’t. Hailey clasps her paint-covered hands together like she’s saying a prayer, an excited sparkle in her eyes as she says, “I made it to the top of da rope today wif Miss Wiley!” she bursts out with her cute as fuck little lisp, then turns to Summer. “Who are you?”
“This is Summer,” I say, her name as sweet as honey on my tongue.
Miss Wiley is Monica Wiley, my accountant and assistant, and the closest thing I have to a mother and a stand-in grandmother to Hailey. I begged her and paid her a boat load of cash to come with us this summer as a ‘counselor’, but really I just needed a friendly face and someone I trusted besides Ted to help me with Hailey.
“Thummer…” Hailey squints and nods. “I wike your name.”
“Thanks,” Summer smiles on a soft laugh. “I like yours too.”
“She’s going to be helping you. You remember we talked about what a speech therapist is?”
“I wemember.” Hailey nods, scratching at her cheek, leaving another paint smudge behind, and my heart sings whenever I see her smile. “She’s nice. I wike her.”
With that, she’s done with me and goes back to her painting. I turn, Summer’s eyes narrow and I already know what she is thinking.
“My daughter,” I exhale, my heart breaking at the flicker of shock and pain in her warm brown eyes, feeling the unusual need to explain. “I didn’t really know her mom. Tequila was involved,” I say, and her face softens in understanding. “I’m not proud of how it happened, but I’m proud to be her father. She’s changed everything for me.”
Summer rolls her lips, her eyes drifting to the bank of windows across the room where there are other staff outside, standing in groups, doing the social things I never seem to understand.
My heart is racing as her silence ends with, “No chance of you and her mom ever…?”
I shake my head. “No. Was never like that and she passed away. It’s just me and Hailey.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry. I—” Horror and embarrassment send a shadow across her soft features.
“It’s okay. I’ve never been great with people, but with Hailey we’re muddling through this whole parenting thing together. She’s probably raising me more than I’m raising her. I want her to have this.” I wave my arm in an arc, but Summer blinks, looking unsure. “Nature. Adventure. She spent her first years in Chicago. The city never worked for me.”
Some part of me wants to tell her more, about the jagged and jaded parts. She’s too soft. Too pure. I don’t want her to carry around the broken parts of me. Or the reasons why I’m that way.