Camp lost and found, p.1
Camp Lost and Found, page 1
Camp Lost and Found
Synopsis
Cassidy Clarke wants to find herself. Tasked with scattering her friend Mason’s ashes, she heads to the campground where they met as kids. She expects the grief. She expects the guilt. She expects how absent she feels in her own life. What she doesn’t expect is the broken disrepair of the campground. Or the grouchily broody, yet intriguingly beautiful, cabin manager.
Francesca Sisto wants to lose herself. A deadly tragedy eight months ago has left her battered and guilt-ridden. The job at a rundown, very sparsely populated campground was supposed to keep her away from people. But when a very demanding and infuriatingly attractive guest keeps calling, she has no choice but to be a person and interact.
They aren’t looking for love, they’re actively avoiding it. Nobody knows better than Cassidy and Frankie that life doesn’t always give you what you want. But sometimes, if you’re lucky, life gives you exactly what you need.
Praise for Georgia Beers
On the Rocks
“This book made me so happy! And kept me awake way too late.”—Jude in the Stars
The Secret Poet
“[O]ne of the author’s best works and one of the best romances I’ve read recently…I was so invested in [Morgan and Zoe] I read the book in one sitting.”—Melina Bickard, Librarian, Waterloo Library (UK)
Hopeless Romantic
“Thank you, Georgia Beers, for this unabashed paean to the pleasure of escaping into romantic comedies…If you want to have a big smile plastered on your face as you read a romance novel, do not hesitate to pick up this one!”—The Rainbow Bookworm
Flavor of the Month
“Beers whips up a sweet lesbian romance…brimming with mouthwatering descriptions of foodie indulgences…Both women are well-intentioned and endearing, and it’s easy to root for their inevitable reconciliation. But once the couple rediscover their natural ease with one another, Beers throws a challenging emotional hurdle in their path, forcing them to fight through tragedy to earn their happy ending.”—Publishers Weekly
One Walk in Winter
“A sweet story to pair with the holidays. There are plenty of ‘moment’s in this book that make the heart soar. Just what I like in a romance. Situations where sparks fly, hearts fill, and tears fall. This book shined with cute fairy trails and swoon-worthy Christmas gifts…REALLY nice and cozy if read in between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Covered in blankets. By a fire.”—Bookvark
Fear of Falling
“Enough tension and drama for us to wonder if this can work out—and enough heat to keep the pages turning. I will definitely recommend this to others—Georgia Beers continues to go from strength to strength.”—Evan Blood, Bookseller (Angus & Robertson, Australia)
The Do-Over
“You can count on Beers to give you a quality well-paced book each and every time.”—The Romantic Reader Blog
“The Do-Over is a shining example of the brilliance of Georgia Beers as a contemporary romance author.”—Rainbow Reflections
The Shape of You
“I know I always say this about Georgia Beers’s books, but there is no one that writes first kisses like her. They are hot, steamy and all too much!”—Les Rêveur
The Shape of You “catches you right in the feels and does not let go. It is a must for every person out there who has struggled with self-esteem, questioned their judgment, and settled for a less than perfect but safe lover. If you’ve ever been convinced you have to trade passion for emotional safety, this book is for you.”—Writing While Distracted
Calendar Girl
“A sweet, sweet romcom of a story…Calendar Girl is a nice read, which you may find yourself returning to when you want a hot-chocolate-and-warm-comfort-hug in your life.”—Best Lesbian Erotica
Blend
“You know a book is good, first, when you don’t want to put it down. Second, you know it’s damn good when you’re reading it and thinking, I’m totally going to read this one again. Great read and absolutely a 5-star romance.”—The Romantic Reader Blog
“This is a lovely romantic story with relatable characters that have depth and chemistry. A charming easy story that kept me reading until the end. Very enjoyable.”—Kat Adams, Bookseller, QBD (Australia)
Right Here, Right Now
“[A] successful and entertaining queer romance novel. The main characters are appealing, and the situations they deal with are realistic and well-managed. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good queer romance novel, and particularly one grounded in real world situations.”—Books at the End of the Alphabet
“[A]n engaging odd-couple romance. Beers creates a romance of gentle humor that allows no-nonsense Lacey to relax and easygoing Alicia to find a trusting heart.”—RT Book Reviews
Lambda Literary Award Winner Fresh Tracks
“Georgia Beers pens romances with sparks.”—Just About Write
“[T]he focus switches each chapter to a different character, allowing for a measured pace and deep, sincere exploration of each protagonist’s thoughts. Beers gives a welcome expansion to the romance genre with her clear, sympathetic writing.”—Curve magazine
Lambda Literary Award Finalist Finding Home
“Georgia Beers has proven in her popular novels such as Too Close to Touch and Fresh Tracks that she has a special way of building romance with suspense that puts the reader on the edge of their seat. Finding Home, though more character driven than suspense, will equally keep the reader engaged at each page turn with its sweet romance.”—Lambda Literary Review
Mine
“Beers does a fine job of capturing the essence of grief in an authentic way. Mine is touching, life-affirming, and sweet.”—Lesbian News Book Review
Too Close to Touch
“This is such a well-written book. The pacing is perfect, the romance is great, the character work strong, and damn, but is the sex writing ever fantastic.”—The Lesbian Review
“In her third novel, Georgia Beers delivers an immensely satisfying story. Beers knows how to generate sexual tension so taut it could be cut with a knife…Beers weaves a tale of yearning, love, lust, and conflict resolution. She has constructed a believable plot, with strong characters in a charming setting.”—Just About Write
Camp Lost and Found
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By the Author
Romances
Turning the Page
Thy Neighbor’s Wife
Too Close to Touch
Fresh Tracks
Mine
Finding Home
Starting from Scratch
96 Hours
Slices of Life
Snow Globe
Olive Oil & White Bread
Zero Visibility
A Little Bit of Spice
What Matters Most
Right Here, Right Now
Blend
The Shape of You
Calendar Girl
The Do-Over
Fear of Falling
One Walk in Winter
Flavor of the Month
Hopeless Romantic
16 Steps to Forever
The Secret Poet
Cherry on Top
Camp Lost and Found
The Puppy Love Romances
Rescued Heart
Run to You
Dare to Stay
The Swizzle Stick Romances
Shaken or Stirred
On the Rocks
With a Twist
Camp Lost and Found
© 2022 By Georgia Beers. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-63679-264-4
This Electronic Original Is Published By
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, NY 12185
First Edition: December 2022
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Ruth Sternglantz
Production Design: Stacia Seaman
Cover Design by Jeanine Henning
eBook Design by Toni Whitaker
Acknowledgments
I went to summer camp for two consecutive summers when I was a teenager. I was an awkward kid whose formative teenage years were marred by my parents’ bitter divorce and my struggle to keep everything as calm as I could, resulting in my growing up way too fast and with some behaviors I’ve carried into adulthood. My dad left my mother with me and my younger sister, and I took it upon myself to become the “man of the house,” so to speak, keeping an eye on my sister, trying to make my devastated mother laugh whenever I could, and just generally being a kid who never rocked the boat, never got into t
I decided I wanted to write a story about somebody who’d been just as touched by her time at summer camp as I was, and I came up with Cassidy Clarke, a woman who has suffered a loss, compounded by guilt, and needs to be alone. She decides her old summer camp, which is now fairly abandoned, is the best choice. Little does she know that Frankie Sisto is already there, also trying to be alone. I really loved these two women. I related to them. I wanted to hug them both and tell them to hang in there, that everything was going to be okay. I hope they resonate with you the way they did with me.
As always, my gratitude to Radclyffe and Sandy Lowe and Ruth Sternglantz and Cindy Cresap and Stacia Seaman and everybody at Bold Strokes Books who makes my career run smoothly. I’m so lucky to work with such a professional group of people.
Thank you to my writer friends and my not writer friends for all the support. I say it all the time, but writing is very solitary. And even this introvert needs to have people I can reach out to, I can ask for advice or guidance, who make me laugh, and who bolster me when I’m feeling undervalued, irrelevant, or uncreative. I’m lucky to have the people in my corner that I do, and I know it.
Special thanks to Anne Shade, Patrice James, Toni Whitaker, Pam Stewart, and Virginia Black for their invaluable guidance.
To all of us who have struggled to find ourselves.
Don’t stop looking.
Chapter One
A hammock chair hanging in the middle of a living room was ridiculous, right?
All white canvas and weirdly knotted—what was the stuff her grandma used to do? Something French…macramé, that was it. Ropes knotted into different designs to make plant hangers or wall hangings or, yeah, hammock chairs that hung in the middle of living rooms, apparently. Who knew?
Frankie loved the thing. She hated to admit it—it was such an eyesore. But it was comfortable, and it hung in front of the giant picture window in the main house at Camp Lustenfeld where she’d been living and working for the past month and a half. She sat in it way more often than she’d ever admit to anybody, sipping her coffee—or something stronger—and watching as the nature that surrounded her went by.
She sat there now, alone, sipping her second cup of coffee and losing herself in the quiet. If Francesca Sisto was familiar with anything at this point in her life, it was isolation and quiet. She needed them. She craved them.
She deserved them.
It had to be fate that caused her to stumble across this job. Camp Lustenfeld, in its heyday, was a thriving summer camp for kids of all ages. But it had long since been defunct and empty. The main house, where she was living now, was actually in pretty decent shape, and it was her job to keep it that way, functional and lived-in. The six smaller cabins on the property were all empty and fairly run-down, magnets for kids and vagrants and whatever kinds of riffraff populated the small town of Shelton, New York. Frankie wasn’t from there, so she had no idea, but she’d had to clean up empty beer cans and liquor bottles and the occasional used condom (so gross). She was basically being paid by the Lustenfeld family, who lived in Massachusetts, to make sure the camp didn’t look abandoned.
And so, she lived there.
Her coffee was hot and strong, and she took a sip as she watched a doe and her two fawns amble across the front yard. The fawns were growing quickly, their spots almost gone now, and soon they’d be on their own to fend for themselves. Frankie had put out salt licks and carrots and such for them when she’d arrived, and they knew exactly where to find them. She was grateful the Lustenfelds owned so many acres and there was no hunting allowed, as it was mid-November, deer-hunting season. She’d never be able to bear seeing a deer gunned down by some bearded macho man in camouflage and an orange vest, carrying a gun or a bow and beating his chest. Yes, she understood the reasoning behind deer season. No, she didn’t have to like it.
Her coffee mug had one last sip, and she swallowed it down, then headed to the kitchen for a refill.
The main building was large, meant to house the counselors and staff when the camp was in business. The ground floor consisted of a main living space with a huge stone fireplace, a dining room where the staff ate, a kitchen that wasn’t quite industrial but came close, a large suite in the back where the camp director had lived year-round, and three smaller bedrooms, though one had been converted to an office.
As Frankie poured herself another cup from the ancient Mr. Coffee pot, her cell phone pinged an incoming text. Cell coverage was surprisingly good for the Adirondack Mountains, though it could be temperamental and spotty once in a while, depending on the weather.
She doctored her coffee with Coffee mate—she preferred actual milk but tried to limit her trips into town, and milk spoiled pretty quickly—and picked her phone up off the counter where she’d left it. It was early, so probably her mother checking on her. Or her sister. She’d become a pro at dodging their calls, so they texted pretty often.
Nope.
Ethan Lustenfeld had sent a text: Hey, listen, guest arriving tomorrow for an undisclosed amount of time. Put upstairs. Keep room and bathroom clean. I’ll put a bonus in your next check. Thanks.
“What the fuck?” she said in disbelief to the empty room. A guest? Here? Now? Why? First of all, that wasn’t part of the deal. Wasn’t part of her job. She wasn’t managing a hotel. Dealing with people had never been part of the package. Second, who in their right mind wanted to be a guest here? At a camp that was no longer functional or open to the public? Up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere? Third, keep room and bathroom clean? She was a maid now? And was she supposed to feed this person?
Poking the inside of her cheek with her tongue, Frankie let it sit for a moment. Stared at her phone. Read the text over and over. Ethan Lustenfeld had done her a favor by hiring her. It was clear he’d expected to have a man up here in the middle of the woods looking after his camp, but she’d begged and pleaded and promised she was capable. And she was. But she’d wanted to be up here alone. That was the whole point. She needed solitude, and she’d told him that, sort of. She deserved to be away from the rest of the world, and now this mystery guest was going to be here…and for an undisclosed amount of time. Seriously?
“What the fuck?” she said again, but this time, it was more of a whisper. She couldn’t argue. She had to accept it. And she needed to respond. Her thumbs flew over the keyboard.
Will make up room. What about food? There was a ton more she wanted to say, but she left it at that, not trusting herself, not wanting her tone in text to be misunderstood or, worse, understood completely.
The gray dots bounced along. No worries. Just keep the room clean. Sheets and towels and such. Thx.
She snorted. She was a maid now, clearly. Had to make somebody else’s bed. Perfect. She groaned and texted back, Arrival time?
Ethan’s response came immediately. Tomorrow afternoon. No specifics. Thx for this. Appreciated.
She sighed. No, groaned. Loudly. She would let herself be annoyed for fifteen minutes, and then she’d need to let it go. It was a new method she’d employed recently when she realized that she was either mad, annoyed, or irritated—or all three—about three-quarters of the time she was awake. Negative emotions were wreaking havoc on her mind and her body, and she’d realized she needed to make a change in that department. Thus, she’d instituted time limits for each.
