She did her best to hide her disappointment, but judging by the wry smile he gave her, she didn’t do a great job.
“Didn’t mean to bother you,” he said. “Just looking for my dog and I figured I’d save time and start here.”
“She likes to stop by and say hi from time to time, don’t you, Stella?” The dog licked her hand before wiggling back under it for more scratching.
“We had some campers who werenotgreat about food and trash, so we’ve become a popular dining destination for the local wildlife. We haven’t seen any bear yet—and hopefully won’t—but I’d rather she not tangle with a skunk or raccoon, either.”
She winced. “Yeah. I don’t know if she’d try to fight them, but she’s always on the lookout for new best friends.”
He shifted his weight from foot to foot, his jaw flexing for a moment. “Is there something going on between you and Rob?”
Hannah frowned. Since, as far as she knew, Brian was aware that she and Rob had been spending time together, this felt like more than him being a jerk about their ridiculous fraternization rule. “That sounds like a question for your brother.”
He looked at her for a long time and then sighed. “Sorry. That was out of bounds. He just seems off and I wasn’t sure if you guys had a fight or something. This might come as a shock to you, but I’m usually the grumpy, brooding brother.”
Hannah put her hand over her chest, gasping in exaggerated shock. “You? No.”
His grin was so like his brother’s, it made her heart ache. “I know. And I also know I should mind my own business, but you have a sister. You know how it is.”
“Even though my sister’s older than I am, I do know how it is. But I’m not sure what’s up with Rob. Maybe he’s just tired? And also that guy who got super drunk and threw up in the pool didn’t help. I’m glad he didn’t actually drown you.”
He shook his head. “That was not fun. But whatever’s bugging Rob started before the pool thing happened. But whatever. Everybody has bad days, I guess.”
Hannah made a noncommittal sound, but it seemed her hunch that something other than the pool situation was bugging Rob was correct.
“You know,” Brian said. “Maybe it was because we were young when we came here on a regular basis, but I don’t remember there being so much alcohol involved in camping. Or vomit, for that matter. Except that one time the coleslaw got left out way too long and my mom was going to throw it away but she got distracted and Danny wolfed it down.”
Hannah’s stomach twinged in sympathy. Over the years of staying at campgrounds with her family, she’d seen more than one person succumb to the fundamental truth that food shouldn’t sit out in the heat for hours and then still be eaten.
“I’d better get Stella back to the house. Once I get her back in the yard, she’ll stay there if I tell her to, but only if she’s already in it.” He smiled at the dog, who was gazing up at him. “She finds all the loopholes.”
After they left, Hannah pushed herself out of her chair and stretched. With Rob in a mood and so much on her mind she might just sit in the chair and stare at the sky all night, she decided getting out of the campground was the thing to do.
She’d go for a drive with the music cranked loud just to clear her head. Then she’d treat herself to dinner and dessert at the restaurant. She’d just finished reading a book so she’d pick whatever she had left in the pile that looked like something she could lose herself in.
There was almost no mood a good meal and a good book couldn’t lift.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The long Fourth of July weekend was forecast to be hot as balls, and since it was only Wednesday and his brothers were cranky already, Rob knew it was going to feel a month long.
The campground was already half-full in the middle of the week. The rest of their reservations would be arriving sometime between noon and midnight the next day. Half of the seasonal campers were staying the full week, and quite a few of them had guests or family staying with them for the holiday. And the air-conditioning in the house was definitely not up to the task of keeping it even reasonably cool.
So far the only positive to this day was the fact he’d started the morning in Hannah’s bed. They’d made love before falling asleep nestled together, and then they’d made love again this morning. And because her camper’s AC was top-notch, they’d done it all without getting too sweaty.
It wasn’t the first time they’d made love in her camper since Erika left, but it was the first time he’d spent the night there. It had been wonderful, but he could feel the void in their relationship now—the space where the conversations about the future were supposed to be, but weren’t because they both knew there wasn’t one. He tried not to focus on that space, but to enjoy every day hedidhave with her. It wasn’t always easy.
Joey was at the counter, doing the tedious task of emailing each seasonal site their electric bill for the previous month. He’d come up to take care of that and to help check people in, but he was going home tomorrow night. While he’d offered to stay for the entire weekend, it would be his first Independence Day with Ellie and Nora, and the little girl was obsessed with seeing the fireworks. They didn’t want him to miss it, but there simply wasn’t space for them to join Joey at the campground that week. For the moment, though, he was spending his time muttering about automating some of their systems someday.
And when Brian walked in, Rob could tell from the way he swung the door closed behind him that his mood had gotten even worse since the last time he saw him. Stella went to her water dish, but Brian walked the width of the store, looking down both aisles to ensure there were no campers present. They’d already learned that lesson.
Then he pointed at Rob. “If the guy from site eight goes in the pool without hosing off the trail dirt first one more time, I’m going to hold him under until the bubbles stop.”
“Okay,” Rob said. “I’m callingnot itfor explaining that to the insurance company, though.”
It wasn’t a good sign that the group from site eight were only on day three of a weeklong stay and Brian already wanted to drown one of them. It hadn’t evenreallygotten hot yet. They were going to see the heat index breaking triple digits on Friday and Saturday, but it was only ninety right now.Only.
“Danny’s calling again,” Joey said, holding up his cell phone.
