Page 62 of The Perfect Deal
Liberty was right there in the middle of it. The girls gravitated toward her, many of them asking her questions as they prepared to cast their hooks into the lake for the first time. For a moment, I lost awareness of everyone else around me as I stared at her side profile, remembering how beautiful she’d been when the two of us were swimming together in this lake not all that long ago. If I allowed my mind to continue down that path, I’d end up back in my bed with Liberty on top of me, a dangerous thought to have in the middle of a fishing excursion with nearly fifty kids.
Clearing my throat, I turned around to find someone who needed help and spied a kid who couldn’t get his hook settled. I helped him before moving on to help someone who’d gotten his line tangled up in some brush.
For the next half hour or so, I helped the kids get situated. For the most part, once everyone had their poles ready and their hooks in the water, there wouldn’t be too much to do. If someone caught a fish, then we’d have to reel it in and all of that fun stuff, but mostly the kids wouldn’t catch that much. Many of them hadn’t been fishing before and weren’t that talented. In my experience, fishing was more of an art than anything else.
Once everyone was settled down, I moved down the dock, closer to where Liberty was sitting with some girls from her cabin. “Tighten your line up just a bit,” she said to one of them. “Reel it in. There you go.”
“Gee, Miss Liberty, you sure know what you’re doing,” Monique noted. “How come you know so much about fishing?”
I listened in, wondering if Liberty could feel the weight of my stare on the side of her face. I could almost always tell when she was looking at me, so I imagined she could and didn’t mind.
“Well, when I was younger, I used to go fishing with my dad and my older brother,” she explained. “I had to learn pretty quickly how to put my own hooks and bait on, or my brother would tease me.”
“That’s not very nice,” Tara noted. “Your brother sounds like a jerk.”
Liberty giggled, and I stifled a laugh. “No, he’s not. A lot of big brothers are like that. In a way, him being hard on me helped me because I learned a lot of stuff I might not have otherwise.”
“Do you have any sisters?” Elizabeth asked.
“I do. My sister Sophia is in college,” Liberty explained.
“Are you guys friends?” one of the other girls asked.
“We are very good friends,” Liberty said with a nod. “But Sophia doesn’t really like icky things like worms or bugs, so she didn’t go with us when we went fishing. She usually stayed home with our mom.”
I chuckled under my breath, picturing little Sophia from years ago refusing to go out fishing with the older kids. All of that added up to me. I’d been on a few of those fishing trips, and Liberty had held her own back then with all of us, just like she was doing now.
“It’s really cool how you know how to do so much stuff, Miss Liberty,” Monique said. “When I grow up, I want to be just like you.”
“Oh, Monique, that’s so sweet,” Liberty said, wrapping an arm around the girl’s shoulder. “Thank you so much, but I have to tell you, I’ve seen how brave and strong you are, and when I grow up, I wanna be like you.”
Monique giggled, her cheeks turning pink. “Thank you, Miss Liberty. That’s totally cool.”
Liberty turned and caught my eyes, and I grinned at her, so glad to have witnessed that exchange. Monique couldn’t have picked a better role model to emulate, that was for damn sure.
With Liberty at camp, everything was different. I could see the two of us growing closer together, not just because we were spending so much time together but because we were taking such a deep interest in what the other one enjoyed. In my mind, as the week progressed, I found myself constantly thinking about how it would be if this was my life—if the camp wasn’t just mine butours. What if she never went back to work for Landon at the drop-ship company but she worked for me full-time? Even when I wasn’t at camp, she could still take pictures in the facility. We could use her photographs for other aspects of the business as well. Everywhere I looked, I saw opportunities for Liberty and me to grow together.
At the end of the first week, Liberty came to my cabin one evening, after the kids were in bed, camera in hand. “Can I show you something?” she asked in a teasing tone.
She can show me lots of things,I thought to myself. “Sure. Come on in,” I told her, and she walked through the door, heading not for the bed but for the sitting area.
It was then that I noticed she had her laptop with her. I sat down next to her, grasping that this was more of a business meeting than an attempt at a sleepover. We’d kept our distance from one another the best we could since Landon had asked us to take it slow. Only a few brushes of our hands and a stolen kiss or two had transpired.
“What do you think of these?” Liberty pulled up some photographs she’d taken of this session. I gasped in awe when I saw the first few images. It was clear she’d used some of the techniques she’d been talking to me about before camp started. The effects were stunning.
One picture showed Axel reeling in a fish, and all of the droplets of water that splashed as the fish emerged from the water were caught in the frame, perfect teardrops against the blue of the water.
Another showed Monique laughing, her face framed perfectly by the sun behind her head and the leaves of a tree.
“Wow, Liberty.” I shook my head, my eyes wide as I took the pictures in. “This is amazing.”
“Do you like them?” she asked, biting down on her bottom lip as she awaited my response.
“I love them,” I told her. “They’re breathtaking… magical.” Looking into her eyes, I added, “Just like you.”
Liberty’s cheeks pinked. “I’m glad you like them,” she told me, but she didn’t get another word out before my lips captured hers, pulling her into a passionate kiss.
She pulled back and looked up at me, surprised by my actions, but then, she tipped her head and kissed me, and everything was right with the world.