“Were you a drill sergeant in the service?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Nope, but I used to do a damn good impression of my sergeant. It’s a good thing he never caught me, or I’d have spent some time in the brig for sure. Mostly my team and I did classified work—rescue missions, reconnaissance, that kind of thing.”

“You could tell me the details, but you’d have to kill me, right?” She turned toward him with a smile.

“Something like that.” He grinned. “But enough about me. I’d rather talk about you.”

“You know almost everything there is to know about me. You’ve got my résumé on file. Which reminds me, do you keep a list of potential folks who would like to come here for one of the sessions? Novalene and Diana aren’t coming back,” she said.

“Of course we do,” he answered. “We’ve got lots of counselors who would like a part-time job in the summer, but we don’t have a file for cooks or for folks to help on the grounds when we don’t have girls at the camp.”

“Guess you’d better start one then.” She picked up a tea towel, dried the pot, and put it back where it belonged.

Elijah sure wished Jayden would stay and take the job. Did that mean he was crazy? He couldn’t ever remember having that kind of feeling with any other woman. He headed out toward the barn, thinking about Jayden the whole way. He started to call Henry to talk to him about his feelings, but that seemed silly.

“Remember your training, Elijah Thomas,” he muttered. “Keep business and pleasure separate. Jayden is your employee. Sure, you’ve flirted, and she even said she’d go on a date with you, but be sure you’re not still bad luck when it comes to folks you care about.”

He remembered when Tim teased him about trying to analyze his feelings, but nowadays he realized that just meant he needed time to think. Men, especially guys like him who had done the work he had in the air force, did not worry for hours on end about a woman. They flirted, they either got lucky or they didn’t, and then they went home and had a beer or two and forgot all about it. He didn’t want that kind of relationship with Jayden. He wanted more, and he needed to think about it.

“Just a little time,” he whispered.

I believe that I’m ready to settle down, and that’s why I’m questioning why Jayden is twisting me up in knots to the point that I make up excuses to spend a few minutes with her when I can, he thought.

“You talking to yourself?” Jayden startled him when she spoke from a few feet away. “Have we driven you completely bonkers?”

Not y’all, he thought, just you, Jayden Bennett.

“Just thinking out loud,” he said. “We’ll divide up the girls so that Keelan and Ashlyn are riding in different vehicles.”

“That’s smart thinking,” she agreed.

Elijah’s heart did a couple of flips at just the sound of her voice. Dammit! He shouldn’t let himself get all stirred up over a woman who would be going home to the big city in only three weeks.

The heart wants what the heart wants. Henry’s voice couldn’t have been any clearer if the man had been standing right behind him.

Elijah could feel the energy coming from all the girls as they made their way up into the bleachers at the football field just as the sun dropped below the horizon. The chamber of commerce president stepped up to a microphone just below the goalpost, introduced himself, and welcomed everyone to the fireworks display. “But first, we’ll stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and, in honor of Independence Day, we will remain standing and everyone will sing the national anthem together.”

Tiffany tapped Elijah on the shoulder. “Can we take our caps off for this?”

“Yes, we all should.” He removed his and motioned for the girls to do the same.

“They look different,” Jayden said.

“Yep, and they’ve got farmer’s tans on their foreheads. When they get home, they are going to whine for days about that,” he whispered.

“That’s where their makeup will come into play.” She smiled.

“I pledge allegiance . . . ,” the man behind the microphone started, and the crowd joined in. Immediately after that, the high school band started to play and everyone in the stands joined in with the singing. When the last note died away, the first burst of fireworks lit up the sky in red, white, and blue.

The girls put their caps back on, and the ones with ponytails pulled them through the back—then they sat down. The night breezes steamed their faces like a sauna, but none of them seemed to mind. Elijah had deliberately lined them up with the Daydream girls right behind him and Jayden, Diana’s three after that, and the Moonbeam ladies on the far end behind Novalene.

If everything went well that evening, he fully planned to do this every year. It saved money, and it came at a good time in the summer program to reward the girls. A buzzing behind him came all the way down the line from one girl to the other.

“Are they playing that old game we used to at parties?” he asked Jayden.

“Which one?”

“The one where one person whispers something, and it goes around the room until the end, and then the first one and the second one . . .”

“Do you mean the telephone game?” Jayden asked.

“Yes, that’s it,” Elijah answered. “I think the girls are playing that. Keelan whispered something to Bailey and now it’s all the way to Tiffany.”

Jayden turned around just in time for Tiffany to lean forward and put one hand on Elijah’s shoulder and the other on Jayden’s. She did not whisper but said right out loud, “See that little posse in short shorts and tank tops behind Keelan? They’re laughing at us and calling us convicts.”

“Ignore them,” Elijah told her.

Tiffany sucked in a lungful of air and let it out in a whoosh. She leaned forward and sent a message down the line to Keelan’s attention to ignore the other girls.

Keelan nodded, and Elijah didn’t give it another thought. He was enjoying watching Jayden’s face as each display lit up the midnight-black sky. She was an extraordinary woman who enjoyed the little things, like lightning bugs and a cold beer after a hard day’s work—the kind of woman that Henry would tell him would be the type to ride the river with.

As was normal with all fireworks shows, the best was saved until last. A loud boom lit up half the sky with the American flag in bright sparkling lights. When the oohs and aahs had died down and the flag had disappeared, folks began to stand up and make their way to the end of the bleachers. The Piney Wood girls got to their feet and started moving in that direction.

Things went just fine until Keelan took the final step out onto the grass. Elijah and Jayden were ahead of them, waiting beside the entry gate, when he heard one of the girls that had been picking on the Piney Wood girls say, “Y’all convicts don’t belong here.”

Ashlyn got right in the girl’s face. “Bless your heart, darlin’. I’m going to save this nasty uniform just for you. With your attitude, you’ll need it. If you want a piece of any of us, just step right up.”

A second girl took the blonde by the arm. “Come on, Justina. We’ve got a party to go to. We can’t stand around listening to these losers all evening.”