my own terms.”
“Wow.”
She tossed a pebble toward the water. “My last boyfriend did not say wow. He tried to convince me that maybe it wasn’t too late to make good with my family, see if I could get back into their good graces.” She shivered. “But by that time, I’d kind of embraced the whole black-sheep thing. He wasn’t amused. I’m pretty sure he had plans for my money already. And oddly enough, he broke up with me exactly one week after he realized I was not, in fact, the O’Brien heiress. Shocker.”
Luke laughed. He couldn’t help it. Gabriela as a black sheep was just such a funny image, when he sat looking at the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.
“It’s not funny.”
“It’s sort of funny.” He touched her arm. “I mean, come on. Idiot whoever-he-is thinks he’s found the proverbial pot of gold, and then—dum-dum-dum—learns she’s no empty-headed glamour girl with a loaded bank account, so he ditches her and goes looking for a new heiress? It’s like a rom-com in the making.”
“It’s so not! Have you ever seen a rom-com? There’s romance … and comedy!”
“Well, here’s the thing.” He raised his eyebrows. “That’s the part that comes next. First you have to have the disastrous setup so the heroine can truly appreciate the real hero when he comes along.”
“Ah, is that how it goes?”
Luke saw a smile start to take over her face, so he kept rolling. “Absolutely.”
“So what happens next?”
“Well”—he pretended to ponder—“generally, we’d see a few minutes of clips that give a glimpse into her life. The audience would fall in love with her quirky smile and her terrible taste in flip-flops, for instance.”
Gabriela looked down at her sandals, then narrowed her eyes at him, but didn’t speak.
“We’d see her at work, maybe, doing good things for needy people—like, say, obnoxious teenaged girls at a private school, though that one’s kind of a cliché.”
“Of course. So overdone.”
“Shh.”
“Sorry.” She smiled, waving her hand. “Woman dumped, terrible flip-flops, obnoxious teens. Carry on.”
He mock sighed. “Thank you. So then, something happens to throw this heroine off the path she thought she was on, and ka-bam. She ends up somewhere she never expected to be.”
“Like, say, a summer camp for boys? Which has no boys? Or … camp?”
“Exactly. But it’s all okay, because in the next scene, she meets the incredibly hot, also-not-rich, fantasy-inducing camp handyman-slash-director.” He waggled his eyebrows. “You follow me?”
She laughed. “It’s a complex plot.”
“So then they fall in love, she moves to Echo Lake—I mean, the hero’s hometown—and they live happily ever after.”
“Ah.” Her smiled faded. “Just like that, huh?”
“Well, there’s usually the part where all seems lost, and the audience is supposed to believe they’ll never, ever find their way back to each other, but somehow, it always works out. But we could totally skip that part. It’s super-cheesy anyway.”
She smiled again. “How many of these have you watched? You’ve got the formula down pretty well.”
“Ten.” He rolled his eyes. “Piper, Josie, and Molly made all of us guys do a chick-flick marathon one weekend last winter when we got snowed in.”
“Pure hell?”
“Really was.”
Gabriela was silent for a long moment. “Are you ever tempted to do something different, Luke?”
He looked at her, but in her face, couldn’t read why she was asking the question, or what answer she hoped to hear. Was she hoping for verification that his commitment here at Camp Echo was ironclad? Was she hoping to hear that he’d ditch it all in a second for the right woman? He really didn’t know, but he suspected she wouldn’t believe the latter, even if it was true.
Which it wasn’t … he didn’t think.
“No, Gabriela. I’m not tempted to do anything different. Oliver’s handing his legacy over to me, and I don’t take that lightly. What Briarwood will do with this property is something I can’t predict right now. But I’ve got a job to do, and it’s a job I’m passionate about. There’s nothing I’d rather be doing.”
She nodded slowly. “I think that’s very admirable.”
“But?”
“No but.” She shook her head.
“What about you?” He braced himself for her answer. What if she, too, said she’d never leave her current position? Where would that leave them … if there was to even be a them?
She shook her head again. “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I’m banging my head against ivy-covered walls wherever I go. The endowment fund at Briarwood is embarrassing. There’s so much money sitting there earning more money, and it makes