Free Pilgrims Don't Wear Pink by Stephanie Kate Strohm Page A

right you are,” Cam said, steering me toward the kitchen. “Let me help you, Miss Libby.”
    â€œBut the girls, I—”
    â€œOh, they’ll be fine for a minute,” he insisted, quashing my protest. “They have candy.”
    Cam took a jug from the kitchen, filled it with water from the pump out back, and placed it on the kitchen table. The minute I’d put the flowers in the jug, Cam pulled me away from the table, brought my head toward his, and kissed me. Deeply.
    â€œCam.” I broke away breathlessly, completely taken aback by how sudden this was. “The girls. They’re in the other room. We can’t. Not here, I—”
    â€œWhat are you doing after this?” he asked, cradling my face in his hands.
    â€œI’m—I’m moving into a bunk on the
Lettie Mae,
” I explained, trying to conjure a coherent thought out of thin air even though my brain appeared to have shut down. “I have to get my things out of the house and into the boat.”
    â€œThe
Lettie Mae
?” He wrinkled his nose distastefully. “I think you’re moving into a bunk on the wrong ship.” Cam stroked my cheek. “You’d have a lot more fun on the
Anne-Marie.
I promise.”
    â€œOohhhh, Miss Liiiiiiiiiiiibbby,” one of the girls said in a loud singsong from the other room, “what are you dooooooo-iiiiiiiiiing?” Giggle explosion.
    â€œI—I have to go back in.” I gestured to the parlor, trying to break away, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do.
    â€œI’ll help you move.” He kissed me again, quickly, fiercely. “Change and meet me at the wharf at two forty-five.”
    â€œTwo forty-five,” I whispered back, as he vaulted out the kitchen window. The man knew how to make an exit.
    I tried to collect myself, but my heart was pounding so loudly, I was afraid the girls would hear it. Or that it might burst forth from my stays and leap straight out of my chest. But somehow I managed to keep all my vital organs in the right places as I collected the samplers, put them in the cabinet, and took the girls back to the Welcome Center in a maelstrom of Cam-related teasing and giggling.
    There wasn’t any camp on the weekends, so the goodbyes took a little longer. Eventually, everyone had been hugged and handed off, so I was free to hustle my bustle (literally) back to the Bromleigh Homestead. As I changed into my standard-issue polo and nonexistent khakis, I cursed the fates for condemning me to this hideous shirtdress and myself for not having the foresight to smuggle in some makeup. This was a sort of/almost/kind of
date,
for Pete’s sake, with the hottest guy I ever had or probably ever would cross paths with, and I was going dressed as a half-nudist man. With no eyelashes.
    Taking a page out of Scarlett O’Hara’s book, I pinched my cheeks and bit my lips, and then added my own personal touch: the sooty swipe of ashy eye shadow. It would have to do. I locked up the house and made my way toward the wharf, which was at the corner of the museum closest to my house. It served as the unofficial barrier between the historical harbor at the museum and the working harbor in town.
    I couldn’t believe Cam had offered to help me move—how could someone so hot also be so sweet? Not like that idiot Garrett, who would barely even fish me out of a barrel, let alone move my hair-care products to a schooner. Not that Garrett had anything to do with this—who knew why he had randomly popped into my head.
    Cam was leaning against an old wooden pole in the water, squinting into the late-afternoon sun, and pushing all thoughts of Garrett from my mind. Somehow Cam even managed to look good in the stupid Camden Harbor uniform, which defied all the natural laws of physics.
    â€œAlready got her pants off?” He smirked, looping his thumbs casually through his khaki belt loops as he pushed off the pole