Free Summer at Willow Lake by Susan Wiggs Page A

he’d tell her in person. It was going to turn him into the heel of the century.
    The only thing worse was spending the rest of his life with someone who didn’t own his heart the way Mariska did.
    Now Mariska grew serious, her full mouth forming a sad smile. Philip hugged her. She smelled fantastic, a heady mixture of flowers and fruit, and she fit just right in his arms, as though heaven itself had made her for him, exactly like the song said. Her nearness made him forget his worries about Pamela.
    “I picked these up at the one-hour-photo place today.” Mariska took an envelope out of her purse. “There’s a shot of us. I ordered double prints, so you can keep a copy.” Flipping through the snapshots of the day’s sporting events at the camp, she pulled out one of her and Philip, laughing in triumph as he held a bright silver trophy cup aloft.
    His heart constricted. He looked so damn happy. In that moment, he had been happy. Taking the tennis trophy down from the luggage rack, he put the snapshot inside it and replaced the lid. “Thank you,” he said.
    She crossed the room and kissed him. “We should go. It’s the last dance of the summer, and you know how I love dancing.”

    Each summer, the season ended with a series of rituals. Yesterday, the campers had all gone home. Today was the staff’s farewell, a dinner dance that would end at midnight. By this time tomorrow, nearly everyone else would be gone, the college-age counselors all heading back to school.
    “Let’s go,” she urged him, pulling back and taking his hand. “I don’t want to muss my hair.” She eyed him with a mischievous gleam in her eye. “Not yet, anyway.”
    Even that oblique promise was enough to send him into overdrive. As they left the bungalow, he buttoned his sports coat and hoped his physical reaction to her nearness wasn’t too obvious. As he had since the beginning of summer, he cast a furtive glance around the area to make sure they hadn’t been spotted. Kioga had strict rules about fraternizing among counselors and other workers, and just because his parents owned the place didn’t mean he was exempt.
    Mariska wasn’t a counselor, but she was supposed to be off-limits, too. She and her mother, Helen, supplied the baked goods to the camp. From the age of fourteen, Mariska had driven the white panel van up the mountain every morning at dawn, bringing bread, pastries, muffins and cookies to the dining hall. The local police looked the other way when the delivery truck lumbered past. Mariska’s mother, a Polish immigrant, had never learned to drive. Her father was on swing shift at the glassworks down in Kingston. They were a working-class family and the authorities were sympathetic to their plight. They weren’t about to ticket an underage girl for helping out with the family business.
    As Philip and Mariska strolled through the forest at twilight, he couldn’t resist slipping his arm around her. She tucked herself against his shoulder. “Careful,” she said softly, “someone might see.”
    “I hate all this sneaking around.” A sick guilt flurried in his gut. It was definitely not cool, falling in love with another girl while your fiancée was overseas. He couldn’t help himself, though. He had been helpless to resist Mariska, even though he wasn’t free to be with her. She was so understanding, complicit in the secrecy, but he suspected she was as eager as he was to stop hiding it. The moment Pamela returned, he’d end it with her and then he could finally show the world what was in his heart.
    “You’re looking at me funny,” Mariska said. “What’s that look?”
    “I’m trying to figure out the exact moment I fell in love with you.”
    “That’s easy. It was that night back in June after Founders’ Day.”
    He couldn’t help smiling at the memory, even though she was wrong. “That was the first time we had sex. I fell in love with you way before that.”
    They reached the end of the gravel path