Drew Miller was no fool. Not being a fan of the overly sweet traditional camping dessert, he took his sweet time showering, shaving and throwing on a pair of flannel sleep pants and T-shirt. Then he threw on a lightweight zip hoodie because, not only did it get a little chilly at night, but the mosquitoes started getting aggressive as the sun dropped.
He didn’t take long enough, though, and when the crowd around the group campfire spotted him, they didn’t accept him waving off their invitation. After stowing his toiletries back in his tent and draping his swim trunks and towel over one of his tent’s ropes, he grabbed a bottle of water from his cooler and went to join the insanity.
“Want a s’more?” Bobby asked him, swinging an almost-liquid marshmallow on a stick in his direction.
Drew flinched away. “No, thanks. You should get that onto a cracker before—”
The melted marshmallow slid off the stick and hit the ground in a white, sticky lump Drew knew would end up on the bottom of somebody’s shoe before the night was over.
“Oops.” Brian wandered away. “Mom, I need another marshmallow.”
From his vantage point just outside the perimeter of the circle of camp chairs, it looked to Drew as if there were at least a half dozen marshmallows being waved over the fire, so he stayed where he was. Liz was sitting across the fire from him, laughing with her aunt and Rose, and he watched her for a while.
She looked relaxed. Happy. Drew enjoyed seeing her surrounded by her family, and the bond she’d managed to keep with them despite being all the way across the country for so many years impressed him. Family was obviously important to her.
“You know they’ll keep offering you s’mores until you eat one,” Mitch said, stepping up beside him. “The sooner you give in, the sooner they stop waving flaming marshmallows at you.”
As if she’d heard him, Steph moved toward them, holding a s’more in her hand. “Drew, do you want a s’more?”
This one was premade, not offered up in the form of molten marshmallow dangling from a stick, so he figured Mitch was right. It was probably easier to give in. “Thanks.”
He had a mouthful of very sticky sweetness when Brian looked over and saw him. “Hey! How come you didn’t want my s’more?”
He shrugged, unable to talk even if he’d wanted to, and Mitch came to his rescue. “Because Steph had put it together already. You know, I don’t think Ryan’s had a s’more yet. He loves s’mores.”
Since Ryan was over near Liz, they’d have a few minutes of peace. “Brilliant move.”
“Being with these kids makes me wonder how Rose kept her sanity. I think we were almost as bad.”
“There were some moments for sure.” He saw Ryan trying to get marshmallow out of his hair, glaring in their direction over the top of Bobby’s head, and nudged Mitch. “There’s going to be payback.”
“Remind me not to ride behind him.”
Drew laughed, and his gaze shifted from Ryan to Liz. She was watching him and, when his eyes met hers, she gave him a warm smile. She had a smudge of chocolate at the corner of her mouth and he wanted to cross the distance between them and wipe it away.
Maybe it showed, because her cheeks got a little pink and her gaze flicked to Mitch before she turned back to Mary and Rose.
“We’re going to get sucked into going on a big group ride tomorrow,” Mitch was saying, “but once they’re all in the pool or hiding in the air-conditioning, we’ll head back out on the trails and blow off some steam.”
Sounded like a good plan to Drew. He definitely had some steam to blow off, though he wasn’t sure if one tank of gas in the ATV would be enough. He might have to do laps around the trail system before he found any relief.
*
It took about two minutes for Liz to come to the realization she was maybe a little too old to sleep on the ground in a cheap, nylon tent.
Privacy had been first on her priority list and, since both cabins were rented and she couldn’t afford an RV, her own tent had seemed like a brilliant idea. Now she realized comfort should have ranked up there, too. And judging by the damp chill setting in, she should have sprung for the nicer tent.
When her hip started throbbing because the foam pad under her sleeping bag offered a lot less protection from the ground than the label had advertised, she rolled onto her back. Maybe she should take a walk to the bathhouse and then accidentally wander into one of the RVs, with their lovely pullout couches. She could claim she was sleepwalking.
Unfortunately, running through the options of alternate accommodations to sneak into made her think of Drew and his big tent. Or, to be more precise, the very comfortable-looking, very large air mattress she’d seen him inflating earlier. It would easily fit two, especially if there was cuddling.