“Just finished lunch with my dad, and I was thinking of heading to the mine. I’m meeting with the contractor tomorrow and wanted to get another look at it.” I put the car in gear and headed toward my place.

“I have a better idea,” she suggested.

“You sound like you’re up to no good.” Now my lips were curving, too.

“How about we both skip out on work and you meet me at the hot springs?”

The hot springs. There were ten thousand different reasons I should say no and only one reason why I should go. And damn if that one reason didn’t outweigh every other one.

“Cam?” she asked, her voice pitching higher. She was nervous I’d say no.

Probably because she knew I should. This was a bad idea.

“Willow Bradley, are you asking me to play hooky with you?” The Jeep rocked back and forth through a stretch of road where ice had built up in little boulders.

“Maybe. Okay, definitely. Come on. No one else will ever go with me.”

“That’s because it’s covered in snow.” I looked up through the windshield and saw brilliant blue skies. At least the weather was good for it.

“Only the outsides. The water is toasty. As you should remember.”

A couple of hours with Willow sounded like heaven. We’d had zero time alone together since…well, whatever the hell it was that had happened in the kitchen.

“Come on. Be bad with me.”

“Be bad, huh? Let me guess. You’re not actually being bad. You have all your work done for the day already.”

“Okay, fine. I do. Basically, I’m guilting you into being bad so I can blatantly use you for some fun.”

“That’s a situation I’m well acquainted with. I’ll meet you there in twenty.”

There was no way this could possibly end well. But nothing ever did.

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Camden

Snow covered every part of the meadow between the ridges, with the exception of the hot springs and the creek that ran beside it, heavy with the beginning of spring thaw.

The contrast of undisturbed snow against the steaming turquoise mineral pool was something I’d never found an equal to. I’d traveled all over the world, seen both the breathtaking and the brutal, but there was nowhere on earth I found as beautiful, hence the tattoo on my arm.

Opening this hot springs up to tourists would have made more than a pretty penny, but our great-grandfathers had agreed to keep it for the private use of the Danielses and Bradleys only. With the exception of a few summer parties when we were in high school, this generation had honored that agreement. Relished it, really.