Summer SECRETS Read online

  ALSO BY JILL SANDERS

  The Wildflowers Series

  Summer Nights

  Summer Heat

  The Pride Series

  Finding Pride

  Discovering Pride

  Returning Pride

  Lasting Pride

  Serving Pride

  Red Hot Christmas

  My Sweet Valentine

  Return to Me

  Rescue Me

  A Pride Christmas

  The Secret Series

  Secret Seduction

  Secret Pleasure

  Secret Guardian

  Secret Passions

  Secret Identity

  Secret Sauce

  The West Series

  Loving Lauren

  Taming Alex

  Holding Haley

  Missy’s Moment

  Breaking Travis

  Roping Ryan

  Wild Bride

  Corey’s Catch

  Tessa’s Turn

  Haven, Montana Series

  Closer to You

  Never Let Go

  Holding On

  The Grayton Series

  Last Resort

  Someday Beach

  Rip Current

  In Too Deep

  Swept Away

  High Tide

  Sunset Dreams

  Lucky Series

  Unlucky in Love

  Sweet Resolve

  Best of Luck

  A Little Luck

  Silver Cove Series

  Silver Lining

  French Kiss

  Happy Accident

  Hidden Charm

  A Silver Cove Christmas

  Entangled Series: Paranormal Romance

  The Awakening

  The Beckoning

  The Ascension

  Pride, Oregon Series

  A Dash of Love

  My Kind of Love

  Season of Love

  Tis the Season

  Dare to Love

  Where I Belong

  Stand-Alone Novel

  Twisted Rock

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Jill Sanders

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542007764

  ISBN-10: 1542007763

  Cover design by Vivian Monir

  Cover photography by Wander Aguiar Photography

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  Hannah was running late to her first yoga class of the morning at River Camp—the adult camp she and her best friends owned and ran. Meeting Elle Saunders, Zoey and Scarlett Rowlett, and Aubrey Smith at the tender age of eleven here on these very campgrounds had been the single most important event in Hannah’s life to date. Starting the camp back up again ten years later was their way of bringing the spirit of friendship to new groups of people.

  As she ran down the wet pathway, she hurried toward the gym and cursed her new cell phone and its stupid alarm feature. She smacked right into a solid body as she came around a corner. Caught off guard, she fell backward, letting out a high-pitched screech, a sound she’d never made before in her life. She tried to catch herself before she landed on her butt in the mud. Her mother would have been mortified by her actions. After all, a Rodgers didn’t screech, or even run, for that matter. They certainly didn’t bump into people.

  Just as she imagined herself landing in a mud puddle, strong arms closed around her and lifted her to safety.

  She had closed her eyes in anticipation of landing in the water and having it splash all over her, but now she looked into a pair of dark-brown eyes. Eyes that were laughing at her instead of glaring at her for bumping into him.

  “Sorry,” she started to say, but then she realized it was Owen Rhodes holding her. Zoey had hired him and his two younger brothers a few weeks back, before she and her friends had reopened their childhood summer camp to be for adults instead. The three men were tall, dark, and handsome as sin and, lately, seemed to be up to no good. At least according to Zoey.

  “Are you okay?” he asked instead of letting her go immediately.

  “Yes.” She straightened herself and pulled away from his light hold. “I’m sorry,” she said again and then noticed the instant smile he gave her.

  “You said that already,” he joked.

  “Right.” She took a deep breath and glanced down at her phone when it chimed. “Thank you for your assistance.” She started to move past him but stopped when he chuckled. Glancing back over at him, she frowned. She didn’t think she’d said anything funny, but he was looking at her as if she’d just made a joke. “What?” She turned fully toward him. He shook his head, still chuckling. “What’s so funny?” she prodded, her nerves running high all of a sudden.

  He might be one of the sexiest men she’d ever run into, but she’d never had anyone laugh at her before.

  He motioned around them to the dirt pathways surrounded by the greenness and beauty of the Florida Panhandle. “You run this outdoorsy place, yet you talk like you’re in the White House.”

  Her eyes narrowed even more. “You’re an employee.” She tilted her head, wondering how he expected her to talk.

  He looked at her. “Am I?” With the heat of his gaze, she realized just how close he was to her still.

  “Well, since I own this camp . . .” She waited, but instead of backing off, he continued to smile at her.

  “Part of it,” he corrected her. “With four of your best friends.”

  “Still,” she said, moving closer until they were almost nose to nose, “if you don’t like the way I talk—”

  “I never said that,” he interrupted her. “I happen to like a formal tone laced with a sexy southern drawl.” His eyes moved to her lips, and she sucked in her breath as she wondered for a moment what she would do if he bent down and kissed her right there on the pathway.

  Swallowing, she took a step back. “Zoey thinks you and your brothers are lying,” she blurted out.

  His dark eyebrows shot up in question. Something flickered behind his eyes, but before she could determine what the emotion was, it was gone.

  “About what?” he asked easily.

  Hannah crossed her arms over her chest and shrugged. “Things, everything, something . . .” she said, thinking of how her friend had tried to explain that she just didn’t trust the sexy men. She cou
ldn’t give any real reasons, other than that one of them, Dylan, got on her nerves. But Elle and Hannah believed it was because their friend was hot for the guy. Still, the jury was out on the entire situation.

  But after seeing the look that had passed over Owen’s face, she was beginning to have her own doubts about why the three brothers had applied for jobs.

  “What do you think about all this?” he asked, again moving a little closer to her.

  Just then her phone chimed again. “I think”—she glanced down at it and groaned—“I’m late for my class,” she said, starting to walk backward down the pathway again.

  “Let me know when you make a decision about me,” he called after her.

  The fact that he had made it all about her feelings toward him and not about his brothers played over in her mind as she taught the first of her many yoga classes for her guests.

  What was it about Owen that had her acting like a teenager? She’d run into his brothers several times and hadn’t reacted the way she had around him. It just had to be the strong sexual pull she felt toward him.

  Whatever it was, she had a new business to get off the ground. If River Camp didn’t become successful for her and her friends, she’d have to crawl back to her parents for help. And that was something she swore she’d never do again.

  Being raised with money hadn’t been her parents’ biggest downfall—they had married for status and wealth, which had somehow caused the pair to end up worse. It was as if joining forces had entitled them to different rules than all the other parents. They had used those rules to govern her as if she were one of their possessions instead of a living being with her own dreams and rights.

  Over the next few months, she started to grow closer to Owen. Closer than she had with anyone else before. She found herself dropping her carefully placed guard around the man and even openly flirted with him around others—something she had no experience in at all. She was sure she ended up looking like a complete dork in the process.

  When she and her friends found out that the brothers had lied to them about their last name and that the Costas were only at the camp to look for their father and missing family money, she’d still found it hard to turn him away. Even when he’d made a point of not apologizing for his actions.

  He promised her that he had his reasons for lying.

  “We didn’t know who we could trust,” he told her one evening when she caught up to him after dinner. “You have to understand: all we knew was that he’d scheduled a meeting with Elle and then disappeared with close to a million dollars.” He tried to pull her close, but she jerked away.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier? Why did we have to find out from Ryan?” she spat. Her anger had been so great she’d mentally compared him to her parents at that point.

  “I should have told you that first moment when I kissed you under the stars.” His voice changed, growing deeper and more sincere. Just hearing the emotions in his tone almost undid her. His eyes locked with hers. “I had no right to kiss you then.”

  This time when he moved closer, she let him wrap his arms around her.

  “You didn’t,” she agreed, causing him to smile.

  “Spitfire,” he said softly. “We didn’t know who we could trust.”

  “Do you know now?” she asked under her breath.

  “Yes. I’ll never lie to you again,” he said, and for some strange reason she believed him.

  But then a few days later, the subject of intimacy came up, and things got . . . weird. They were in one of the cabins. He’d been called out to help Aiden Stark, the camp’s head maintenance guy and chief architect for the new cabins, and she’d followed him out there, knowing that Aiden had been called to another job. She wanted—no, needed—some time alone with him.

  He kissed her, and it felt so right that she blurted out that she was happy she’d waited so long. Which caused him to instantly freeze.

  “You . . .” He sat up from the bed, where he’d laid her gently down moments before. “You’re a virgin?” He looked so shocked that she laughed nervously.

  “Yes.” She tried to pull him back down to her, but he jerked away like she’d slapped him. The look on his face hurt far more than any words could have.

  “I . . .” He glanced around. “Have to go.” He bolted from the cabin so fast that she was left lying there, her breasts exposed to the cool night air.

  A few days after that and after his father had contacted Elle but before she could sort out her new feelings completely, she learned that he’d packed up and left the camp and her. Without a word, without saying goodbye. Making her realize that she’d been a complete fool. She swore then and there to never fall for a man like Owen Costa ever again.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Several months later . . .

  The binder Hannah clutched contained all the legal documents she would need for her meeting with the team of lawyers who were going to hopefully save her and her best friends from ruin. She stood in the late-September heat just outside the massive glass building, feeling the sweat soak into the folder from her palms.

  Letting her anger drive her forward into the building, she held her head up high as she stepped into the air-conditioned lobby. Just the knowledge that their new business could be taken down by an ex-employee hell bent on destroying them practically propelled her up the elevators.

  She wasn’t anxious about meeting the lawyers to discuss the legal battles. River Camp had every right to fire Ryan Kinsley. After all, the woman had almost killed one of her best friends. Still, a wrongful-termination suit combined with a sexual harassment claim could mark the camp forever.

  Instead, her nerves were due to the slight possibility that she would run into Owen Costa again. His family owned the building she was standing in, and it was his team of lawyers she and her friends had hired to fight against the crazed woman.

  Owen had strolled out of her life as quickly as he’d walked into it. And without so much as a glance back. Which pissed her off even more.

  Her anger had paved the way for her friends to talk her into becoming the camp’s main liaison with the team of lawyers.

  After all, she was good at negotiations. It was one of the reasons her father had allowed her to work at one of his businesses shortly after school. That and so she would be under his control once more.

  But since Elle had persuaded her and her other friends to put everything they had into reopening her grandfather’s old summer camp, her family problems had disappeared into the background. For the most part.

  Now, as she stood outside the lawyers’ offices, she was thankful Elle had suggested opening River Camp again. The business had saved her from her parents’ overbearing attention.

  In the weeks leading up to her departure from New York, her parents had tried to set her up with five different men. All easily double her age and either very close friends with her father or clients of his. She expected this was another attempt to control her. To keep the family money in the tight circles they wanted or to even expand it further by marrying her off to more wealth.

  She preferred to choose her own man. Just not Owen Costa.

  After stepping into the office, she glanced up and held in a gasp when she noticed the man she’d been dreaming of for the past few months standing just inside the office doors. It wasn’t as if they had been officially dating back when he’d been at the camp. They hadn’t even really been an item, in her friends’ eyes. It was just that . . . she’d hoped, and that hope had caused her heart to break a little when he’d vanished.

  He was facing away from her, so she took a moment to reappreciate his beauty.

  During his time at the camp, he’d only worn shorts and camp T-shirts, along with flip-flops or hiking boots. Now, the perfectly tailored suit and the dress shoes on his feet should have looked foreign on him, but they didn’t. Instead, he looked like he was born to wear the outfit.

  Her eyes moved to his butt in the dark suit pants, and she felt hers
elf heating even more than when she’d seen him in nothing but swim shorts. He’d been a golden-skinned god by the pool, basking in the sunlight; now, in a suit, he was something more. He was powerful.

  His longer jet-black hair had always been windblown or tucked under a baseball cap. Currently it was slicked back, away from his face.

  She swallowed and cleared her throat, and the two men he was talking with turned toward her, but only Owen trapped her with a look as he turned.

  With his hair slicked back, his dark eyes looked even more dangerous than when they had heated upon seeing her for the first time. He still had a light stubble on his face, however, which contrasted with how he was dressed.

  “Here she is now,” Owen said, as if he’d just seen her an hour earlier instead of almost a full month before. The deep richness of his voice caused her insides to vibrate as she remembered all the fantasies she’d had of the man over the past few months.

  Swallowing again, she raised her chin and shifted the binder in her hands so she could shake his hand. But instead, she lost control of the folder, and it slipped from her hands, sending all her organized paperwork sailing in every direction.

  Bending in her pencil skirt, she started gathering the papers up, only to have Owen kneel beside her to help. Their knees brushed, and she held in another gasp as his heat transferred to her almost instantly.

  “Dylan mentioned the meeting to me,” he murmured as he helped pick up the papers.

  Even though the interior of the building was a chilly seventy degrees, she could feel herself start to sweat the closer his body shifted to hers.

  “I’ve got this,” she said, avoiding his eyes. She tried to focus on putting everything back in its place, but her mind kept playing over the first time she’d run into Owen at the camp.

  “Here.” He handed her the last paper and then held out his hand to help her stand. Keeping a tight grip on the folder with everything tucked back inside it, she stood and glanced over his shoulder at the other two men. She’d somewhat expected to see them laughing at her; instead, they both stood watching her and waiting.

  “Hannah Rodgers, this is Chris Schumer and his son-in-law, Jonas Cobbs.”

  Shifting the folder once more, this time getting one hand under the open end, she shook their hands in turn. “Nice to meet you,” she said, feeling her face heat at her own embarrassment.