The Kiss Keeper by Krista Sandor

Author:Krista Sandor [Sandor, Krista]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Candy Castle Books
Published: 2020-07-22T18:30:00+00:00

8

Natalie

“What do you think, Aunt Nat?”

Natalie glanced up to find Josie and Maddie twirling in circles in the center of the lodge as their homemade Hawaiian skirts, made not with grass but strips of fabric sporting tiny lobsters, fluttered around their legs.

She finished cutting a strip of fabric, handed it off to one of her aunts, then grinned at the children. “They’re perfect! You both look ready for the lobster luau.”

“Why do we do a lobster luau?” Annabelle asked, shimmying around the table in her own little makeshift skirt.

“Good question,” Leslie said under her breath, weaving her way to sit in the corner with her sister through the room of Woolwich women working on their Maine inspired Hawaiian costumes.

But not even Leslie could dampen her mood. She’d done it. Natalie Callahan, the screwup Woolwich granddaughter, had turned a scheduling melee into an event to remember. Elks had caught buckets of trout, cars had been washed, the band got in a fun-filled afternoon on the waterfront, and the nuns had sketched. Their guest had left camp smiling, except for Sister Evangeline, who had a thing for Jake. She sported a scowl for the entire lesson and had bucked practicing shading techniques on fruit to sketch Jake’s torso. If there were one thing she could say about the feisty nun, it was that the old gal still had an excellent memory and had produced one heck of a drawing.

But she hadn’t earned this victory alone. A delicious shiver traveled down her spine and settled low in her belly at the thought of Jake, taking her hand, threading his fingers with hers, and standing by her side. And then her mind wandered to her fake boyfriend’s body, shirtless with every ripped muscle exposed, and she couldn’t blame the nun one bit for lamenting his absence. Those abs, the same abs that had pressed against her back as he took her from behind this morning, were seared into her memory as well. But it wasn’t only his spectacular body that she missed.

She missed him.

She hadn’t seen Jake since they parted in the art room earlier in the day. Her grandfather had whisked him away to go fishing and, most likely, had him on lobster bake duty with the rest of the Woolwich men and boys as if he were hers, and a real part of all this Woolwich family madness.

The strange thing about this ruse, this con, was that the lines had blurred. Sure, they’d had the greatest sex of her life last night, but that had been predicated on intercourse simply being intercourse—a transaction between two willing people. A transaction like a man pretending to be a woman’s boyfriend.

But this morning, when they were half-awake, not consumed with playing a part and only relying on touch and desire, it had felt real. And after that, when she’d led him up to the well and shared her kiss keeper curse story, it was as if every cell in her body had ached for his kiss—as if the well or the ghosts of Otis Wiscasset and Muriel Boothe demanded it.

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