Long Summer Nights by Kathleen O'Reilly Read Free Book Online

watching all that untapped energy.
    It was unnerving. It was arousing.
    She was in such big trouble. Instinctively she knew he was a mistake. Yes, she’d had more than her share of them.Even when she tried for safe and easy, it was still a mistake. For example, the senior financial analyst from Tribeca, with the great apartment and nervous smile. There was no women’s magazine that would call him a Dating Don’t—unless it was Playgirl. To the uneducated eye, he appeared completely normal and tending to boring. Two dates later she learned that the nervous smile was due to a compulsive tendency to shoplift. He’d stopped in a drugstore for aspirin, and she’d nearly been arrested in the process.
    Oh, sure, the cop had been very nice and understanding with flirty eyes. In fact, the cop was so nice that he’d let Jenn off with only her promise to call him. If she hadn’t been careful she wouldn’t have noticed the wedding ring on his finger.
    Jerk.
    But the cop was different from the man she’d met today. Aaron wasn’t flirty, wasn’t fun and would never pretend. Hide, yes, but there was something that drew her to him….
    Still not being smart, her eyes searched out cabin number three, nearly hidden in the woods, a dim light in the window. Not an invitation. Not even close. She heard a furious clacking sound, fingers attacking the typewriter keys. A typewriter?
    Unable to resist, she smiled.
    The torture of it suited him, with no room for mistakes or edits. No. Whatever words he allowed on the page would have to be perfection.
    Feeling far from perfection herself, she went back to her lonely cabin number five. There she pulled on her favorite T-shirt, falling back on her uncomfortable mattress,still feeling the hard fingers on her breast, the burn of his kiss.
    That night, she didn’t worry about mice or snakes. Instead she dreamed of a man with passion-fogged eyes.

3
    T HE NEXT MORNING, there were no garbage trucks, or honking cars, or the clangs and clanks of the city. This was an odd song. Musical. Cheerful.
    Birds. Yes, that’s what that sound was. For a second she lay there, listening, waiting for the noises to begin.
    The quiet bothered her, the idea that she could hear the aimless rattles in her brain. The great thing about Manhattan was that it was impossible to feel aimless. There were always directions to be found if you were looking. Uptown, downtown, north and south. In the city, everyone always had a focus, always had a destination. But here, in Harmony Springs, it was easy to second-guess her own footloose life-navigational skills.
    Like last night for instance? Making out on a rock with Mr. Dead Poets Society.
    So why didn’t it feel like a mistake? Why was she contemplating going back for more? Yes, that was the smoking orgasm talking there.
    However, before there would be more orgasms, there needed to be focus, direction and actual pursuit of her assignment.
    It would have been easier if there was coffee, but alas, inher cabin there was none, no Starbucks, but her well-trained java-jazzed nose told her that somewhere in this veritable island of dystopia, coffee was brewing. Excellent coffee. Full-bodied, highly caffeinated. It wasn’t long before she tracked the ambrosia to the campground office, where she found Carolyn hard at work, squinting at the computer monitor and muttering to herself.
    “Fudge. Fudge. Floundering fudge.”
    “Problem?” asked Jenn politely, and felt guilty when Carolyn jumped.
    “Sorry,” Carolyn said, rubbing her neck. “You’re very quiet.”
    “Not usually. What are you doing?” Casually, not meaning to pry, or actually not to look as though she was prying, she peeked at the screen. “What is that?”
    “E-mail.”
    Now, that Jenn understood. The link with the outside world, the unbreakable bonds that connected the people of the planet. And judging by the screenful of messages, Carolyn had more messages than she did. Yes, it was petty to notice, but it