together, and she held his gaze as her pulse kicked up. All it took was one touch from this man, and her heart edged out her head by a landslide.
What was this pull between them? This crazy connection that made her body buzz with anticipation.
He stared down at her, looking as confused as she felt. “It’s hard to believe that this time yesterday, we hadn’t even met.”
“We’re on camp time. An hour here is like a day in the real world. At least, that’s how it always felt for me. This place is like stepping into an alternate universe where time stands still and, at the same time, seems to go by at the speed of light. You experience life more intensely here. When I was a girl, I’d imagine that I was living inside a work of art—some painting of a far-off, magical place.”
“Like being under a spell?” he questioned, leaning in as she pressed up onto her tiptoes.
She nodded as every cell in her body begged to get closer to Jake.
He released her hands and cupped her face. “Your eyes are the exact color of the deepest parts of the water. I always remembered that color. The canopy of green that shimmered in the distance. The vividness. The depth.”
No Jake—no, anybody—had ever said anything like that to her before. Was he pretending, simply playing the part of a caring boyfriend? It made no sense to do it now. No one was here. It was only the two of them. Alone.
He slid one hand from her face and trailed his fingertips down her neck, leaving a path of goose bumps as his hand came to rest on her shoulder. His thumb brushed past her collarbone, and a dreamy familiarity washed over her.
“I shouldn’t want to kiss you this much,” he said on a tight exhale.
“I shouldn’t want you to kiss me,” she whispered back.
His gaze darkened, and she gripped the fabric of his shirt as his lips hovered a breath away from hers when a chorus of giggles burst their almost-kiss bubble.
She gasped and pulled back to see a frowning Finn flanked by Tucker and Toby, both covering their eyes, as the trio of little girls giggled and squeaked with excitement.
“Do you have the art basket?” she asked, doing her best to recover from that intense almost-kiss.
Finn held up the old wicker case with a corner of drawing paper hanging out of the opening.
“Then we should go,” she answered, sharing a quick look with Jake as the children headed for the trail leading away from camp and into the thick foliage.
He held the door for her, and they walked in silence, several paces behind the children.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to kiss you,” he said with his hands in his pockets.
She stared ahead, needing to collect herself and to remember that he wasn’t her Jake. She raised her chin. “It’s okay. Like I said, things feel more powerful here. It’s part of the—”
“Magic,” he supplied.
She nodded as they followed the dirt path into the heart of the woods, then glanced up at him. The softness in his expression had reverted to the stone-faced man she’d met at the airport.
“What do you do when you’re not pretending to be somebody’s boyfriend?” she asked, hoping to ease the tension.
“I’m in commercial real estate.”
“You build things?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered, his voice void of emotion and his gaze trained on the path.
This Jake didn’t seem keen on sharing.
“Are you from Colorado?” she pressed, grasping for something benign for them to talk about.
“No.”
“Then, where?” she chimed.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Michigan.”
“Is your family still there?”
“No.”
“Well, where are they now?” she tried.
This was going nowhere fast. Maybe he was a serial killer. They walked a few more paces when he broke the silence.
“How big is the camp?”
“Like acreage?” she asked, grateful for some shred of conversation.
“Yeah.”
“It’s pretty big. The camp stretches from the cove up the coast where it meets the Atlantic. I think my grandparents own almost five hundred acres, and then there’s a nature preserve that surrounds it, so it feels like there are woods and trees and wildlife for miles.”
“Hmm,” he answered as if he were ticking off a box.
“My grandfather won the land in a card game,” she added—a fact that usually intrigued people.
Jake glanced over at her. “Really?”
“It was a long time ago in Boston. He won the land from some guy, and then he and my grandma got married here the very next day.”
Jake glanced around.