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

didn’t make it any less true. “You have a lot of friends,” Jenn said casually, as if everybody had that many friends.
    Carolyn laughed. “These aren’t for me. It’s for my boss.”
    Jenn smiled, because ha-ha, of course she’d known that nobody could have that many e-mail buddies. “Who’s your boss? I thought you owned the campground?”
    “No, I’m a virtual assistant.”
    “Wow, that’s so cool. What do you have to do?” asked Jenn, wanting to know more, because at this point it was wise to consider all vocational options—in case she needed them later, for instance.
    “Read e-mails, answer e-mails and manage finances.”
    “Do you have a lot of clients?” That many e-mails, that much stuff, that much obligation… It boggled the mind.
    “Only one. He’s a writer.”
    One? Wow. “So how’d you get the gig?”
    “I get a referral from a friend. It keeps Emily in shoes.”
    Self-deprecating but also content. Jenn mulled the paradox.
    “What about the rest of your family?” she asked, because an absent family could explain the disconnect. No hovering parents, no need to worry about excessive expectations.
    Carolyn shrugged, sucked in her lip, and patiently Jenn waited for the answer. “Not so happy there. Dad, well, he wasn’t exactly the picture of responsibility. Mom thought he had life insurance, he didn’t. Left her with a mess of problems. I help out with what I can, but I guess good fiscal sense doesn’t run in my gene pool.”
    “You don’t seem upset.”
    “I don’t let myself worry. It’s self-destructive and Emily catches on and gets cranky.”
    “But don’t you get mad at your dad?”
    Carolyn cast her a sideways look. “Are you kidding? All the time. But you have to work past it.”
    Jenn couldn’t compute that last part. Parents weren’t supposed to be human and make mistakes. They were supposed to be all-knowing, all-loving and not capable of stupid judgment. “I think you’re doing a helluva lot better than I would.”
    No hypocrisy there, because stuck out in the woods, living alone and surfing some other dude’s e-mails, no, Jenn didn’t have the strength.
    “You’d be surprised. You don’t know what you’re capable of until you have to live through it. And it’s not likeI’m some Nature Nanny. Sometimes I cuss, sometimes I drink a little too much wine, and sometimes…”
    Jenn lifted a brow, nodded wisely. “Mario?”
    Carolyn looked around, obviously searching for people who would cruelly judge her for perhaps being overly friendly with a man. Seeing no one in the room that had any business at all in even thinking such things, Carolyn bobbed her head once.
    It was very hard being a woman of certain needs, i.e. not a robot.
    Making herself at home, Jenn casually strolled to the coffeepot and poured herself a cup. “Don’t you suffocate here sometimes? Everybody knows everybody. Everybody sees everybody. And if you and Mario or you and somebody else happen to hum-hum-hum-hum, then doesn’t it bother you?”
    Part of the question was curiosity, and part was the devious female mind that needed to know whether Carolyn and Aaron had ever…
    Carolyn was nice, attractive, and Aaron was…very efficient in the art of the orgasm.
    “Nobody knows,” admitted Carolyn.
    “Really?”
    “Except for you.”
    “Telling the reporter all your most valuable secrets? Not very bright, are we?”
    Carolyn snorted. “Not even on a good day.”
    Jenn took a sip and sighed as the hot joe warmed her throat and zapped her brain. “It’s men. They make us stupid. So stupid.”
    “You got a guy back in the city?”
    “No,” Jenn scoffed.
    Carolyn watched her curiously, and then enlightenmentflashed in her eyes “Oh.” Then she frowned. Thought. Worried. “Seriously?”
    Jenn flushed. “Not seriously. It was a moment.”
    “Really? I didn’t think he had moments.”
    “Have you tried?” asked Jenn carefully.
    “Aaron?” She laughed. “Good God. No.” Then