Wild Love (Rose Hill, #1)(27)

She probably thinks she’s unreadable, but I don’t miss the way her shoulders fall.

“I can go grab the ingredients.”

“No. It’s fine. Hot dogs on a fire sound great. I’ll go grab a sweater.”

After she stomps up the stairs, I get to problem-solving. Because if that girl wants s’mores, she’s going to have them.

A quick swipe across my phone’s screen pulls up Rosie’s contact information, and I hit call.

“I knew you were stalking me,” she answers.

I roll my eyes, standing in my big, empty kitchen, and cut to the chase. “Do you have the stuff to make s’mores?”

“Dude. Have you seen the bunkhouse? I have a hot plate, a toaster oven, and a kettle in the corner. I’m living on the wrong brand of sour cream and onion chips because the grocery store here doesn’t stock Old Dutch.”

“Okay, never mind?—”

“Of course I have the ingredients for s’mores.”

“You’re a hot mess, Rosalie.”

“All I heard was that you think I’m hot.”

I say nothing to that. There’s no safe answer. Especially not when my neck gets all red at the mere mention.

“Can I swing by and grab the ingredients?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Why would I share them with you? You’re a bajillionaire.”

“That’s not an actual term.”

“I know, but it has a more satisfying and ridiculous ring to it.”

I try one last time. “They’re for Cora.”

Rosie goes quiet and then, “Oh. Well, why didn’t you say so? I’ll bring them over.”

Then she hangs up on me.





“You know how to start a fire?”

Cora stands at my back as I arrange the sticks and newspaper at the bottom of the fire pit.

“I do.”

“I’d have thought you had a butler to do it for you.”

I sit back on my heels, kneeling as I look up into Cora’s snarky little face. “Man. Did you and Rosie make some sort of evil plan to mock me mercilessly today?”

A small giggle I’ve never heard from her tumbles out. “No. But I wish we had.”

“You women are going to give me a complex,” I say, dusting my hands clean. “You wanna light it?”

“Me?”

“Yeah. I feel like adding pyromania to your personality profile would be a good fit.”

Cora doesn’t laugh. She stares at me, considering my words. I wonder if I shouldn’t have said them. Probably shouldn’t be ragging on a twelve-year-old.

My twelve-year-old daughter.

But then she says, “That was funny.”

“Yeah?”

Another small giggle. “Yeah. And I want to light it. Show me how.”

“You’ve never done this before?”

She shrugs. “My dad had ALS.”

I know as much, but I’m missing how that has anything to do with lighting a fire.

“So, like… he just became more immobile every year, for most of my life. My mom took care of him. I tagged along. We didn’t do camping or anything. Or maybe we did when I was too young to remember.”

Without hesitation, I decide this is what we’ll do—all the things she never got to. Simple things. Childhood things. Things that include her.

This is what Marilyn wanted for her.

“Well, believe it or not, my parents loved to camp. Before they bought their cabin here—when I was your age, actually—we went camping all the time. Hell, we still went camping even when they got their place.”

“Your parents have a place here?”

I nod while reaching for the long-arm lighter I brought down from the house.

“Can I meet them sometime?”

Her question catches me off guard. People usually just want to meet my dad because he’s, well, him. Famous. “You want to meet my parents?”

Another shrug. I swear her traps must be extra strong with all the unaffected shrugging she does. “Yeah. I never got to do the whole grandparent thing. Might be kind of all right.”

I blink a few times, trying to process that she wants to meet my parents for the grandparent experience. She should be careful what she wishes for because after seeing them with my sister’s kids, I know how over-the-top they are.

“Okay. Yeah. I’ll find out when they’ll be here.” I don’t tell her I haven’t told them about her, and I suddenly feel sick that I haven’t.

“I brought beers and s’mores!” Rosie announces, popping my bubble of guilt as she walks up from the lake.

The fence line between the two properties doesn’t extend to the water, so it’s more direct to walk over than to bother driving around. Still, her presence surprises me. It takes me back to when we were kids, ripping around town on our bikes like the little gang of misfits we were. Showing up at each other’s houses unannounced. Messy hair, dirt under our nails, sun-bleached hair.

Not a care in the world.

Rosie looks nothing like that anymore. She’s wearing an oversized, bright-white, fuzzy fleece that reminds of a blanket. Her hair is drawn up in a high pony, held in place with a neon-pink velvet scrunchie. And she’s rounded the ensemble off with plush socks, Birkenstocks, and a pair of black leggings.