Uncle Frank winked. “Just don’t use all your free nights from now on trolling the local bars.”
Cisco laughed. Six months ago, the good-natured warning might have been necessary. These days? Not so much.
But Cisco sure as hell was going out to celebrate tonight.
Two hours later, just short of closing time at the Suds Hole, Cisco nursed his second beer of the evening and sighed. Yeah, the place was packed and rocking. Same as always. And also true to form, he’d been approached and propositioned by three different women who’d eyed him like a slab of bacon, but…he hadn’t been able to muster the energy to engage.
He was tired of all the noise, and the fake tits being waved in front of his face; over the insincerity of it all. How could anyone decide if they wanted to go home with someone when, due to the loud music, they couldn’t even hold a decent conversation?
Shit. That made him sound old. But…
Superficial had seen its day, and Cisco was embracing it. He was ready for…more.
He saw how things were with the people in his life to whom he was close. His parents were a perfect couple, as were his de facto uncle and aunt, Kyle with Rowan, Doug with Pixie, and most recently, Mike with Joelle. Yeah, Cisco knew what a healthy relationship looked like these days. He just didn’t know how to go about finding one.
When he wasn’t at a club or a bar in his off time, he was patrolling town on his Harley Road King, which was a female-magnet on its own. Woman practically turned themselves inside out to touch his chromed-up bike, drooling over his motorcycle-unit gear. Apparently, there was something intrinsically sexy to the female population regarding a man in a leather jacket, breeches, and tall boots. But just like meeting women in bars, the adoration he received while on the job had gotten old. Cisco was tired of all the superficial bullshit, and knew there had to be more.
There were, of course, plenty of great women on the department roster and on his SWAT team, but Cisco just couldn’t see himself dating any of them. They were his buddies; his contemporaries. Which meant when he wanted to spar or needed back-up, he couldn’t ask for a better bunch. But not one of them roused in him any sexual-attraction vibes. He didn’t know why, but that’s just the way it was with his brain. Colleagues were colleagues, and dates were… Strangers?
Right. That was telling. He’d only ever been out for anonymous liaisons previous to his newly embraced mental awakening, and that needed to change.
Recently he’d made it a point to chat with Everlee, the SWAT team’s go-to person for all things protocol and mental health. She was their SWAT chief’s wife, but also a brilliant and insightful therapist and mentor. She’d reiterated that he might be self-sabotaging with his choice of nameless women, but her advice thereafter, had, unfortunately, sounded like his mother.
Why don’t you join a church, do some volunteer work, or take up a hobby? Find a woman you don’t work with, but can also relate to and respect.
That advice might have been solid, but it wasn’t going to work for him. None of those venues were viable options when your free hours were basically ten to two except for Mondays and Tuesdays. And as boring as it sounded, on those days off, Cisco tended to catch up on chores and the ongoing renovations to his home. Maybe now, though, with his shift rotation changed…
Yeah. He’d finally have weekends free like normal people, as well as every evening after work. It was going to take some getting used to after nine years of being on the clock until eleven, but it might make a difference in his love life…
“Hey handsome.”
Great.
Yet another fake-lipped woman to turn down before she grabbed his dick. Cisco gave her a tepid smile. “Sorry, but I’m just finishing up here.” He chugged the last of his warm beer. “It’s time for me to head home.”
She moved closer and rubbed her leg up against Cisco’s thigh. “I wouldn’t mind being invited back to your place,” she brazenly responded.
Shit. How was it he always attracted the women who were in it to score some cock?
The lie came to his tongue easily. “Uh, sorry. I have a tiny apartment and my grandmother is visiting. Maybe next time.”
Without waiting to see if she pursed those enormous lips of hers in a pout, Cisco got up on the opposite side of his stool from the hopeful man-consumer, threw a few bills on the bar, and strode across the floor, pushing out into the fresh, night air.
He drew in a deep breath, his shoulders dropping from where they’d been parked around his ears.
Goddammit. There had to be a better way.
CHAPTER TWO
Hilly double-timed it to the dining hall.
Frickity-frickity-fuck. She was going to be late for her first meeting with her counselors, and it was all because of that odious developer, Langford Cottins, who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Ever since her paternal grandmother had died and willed the camp to Hilly a little more than three seasons ago, the man had been at her again and again, to sell. And why did she have her suspicions that her father—who she now referred to as her sperm donor—had his hand up the back of that puppet? Maybe because he’d let everyone know how pissed off he was that his mother hadn’t left the money and camp property to him, and that he’d also tried to get Hilly to give him part of what he so blatantly screamed was not hers.
She wasn’t having any of it.
Camp Venture was her inheritance from a woman who’d loved her unconditionally, and Hilly was determined to keep the twenty-seven-acre summer camp up and running, despite opposition. Not that she hadn’t made changes. Her grandmother’s model had always been a place for outdoorsy girls to come and commune with nature, make friends, and get away from the big cities where they lived. Hilly’s vision was a bit different.
The camp, now under Hilly’s directorship, was co-ed. It was also a place of escape, but not from traffic and smog. She’d made it a safe haven for those who’d been recommended to her by area guidance counselors for having been habitually bullied.
The idea of a sanctuary camp had long percolated in Hilly’s head; ever since she’d been a middle schooler with weight problems who’d been relentlessly picked on. During those years, she hadn’t felt confident enough to leave her home to attend even her grandmother’s camp, needing her solitary summers to get over the bullying she’d suffered during the very long school seasons.
Not that she hadn’t come for brief visits to the camp, but she’d stayed in the safety of her grandmother’s cabin for those weekends. Somehow, though, during her short stints, the place had gotten under her skin enough that, with her granny’s patient guidance, she’d eventually become a counselor during her college years when her confidence had soared.
So screw the pushy developer and her sperm donor’s money-making agendas.
This place meant too much to Hilly…and she wasn’t selling.
“Hello, hello,” she greeted her crew briskly but with a broad smile as she walked in to stand at the podium positioned at the front of the large room that was the combination dining hall, meeting place, craft room, and dance hall. Ten faces turned toward hers, half of them returnees from last year; the other half new recruits. “I’m glad you all could make it. How’s everyone settling in?”
There were nods, murmurs, and thumbs up, but no one had anything negative to say, which was a good start. Last year there’d been an infestation of spiders in one cabin, and a snake who’d taken up residence in another over the winter. The two counselors who had discovered the unwanted guests had slept in canoe hulls for one night until the problem was taken care of by Hilly who’d used a hook on a broom for removing the benign snake, and a shop-vac for the spiders.
Hilly never knew what she would come back to each spring. Sometimes it was uprooted trees, other times it was minor vandalism, but this year, knock on wood, all seemed well with everything on site.
Other than the ten guest-cabins—each housing ten campers who slept in bunkbeds, along with one counselor who had a small alcove to themselves—Hilly had a nice, seasonal log home on the property, which held one spare bedroom and also accommodated her business office. An enormous pole-barn sat next to her cabin; storage for all the equipment needed for an entire summer of fun, and home to the canteen where campers could buy personal items they might need, as well as books and souvenirs.
