Book Boyfriends Wanted 17: His Curvy Distraction

What a heartless jerk! He had no compassion. No vision. No sympathy. Did he think all kids were given these opportunities? I knew from personal experience they were not. There were tons of kids in MacKellar Cove who only went outside during recess at school. Kids who only ate when they were at school. Kids who didn’t have someone at home looking out for them.

Amelia and I created a place for those kids. We gave them the kind of summer kids should have. And now we were being given the opportunity to do that for more kids, and the big stuffy jerk of a mayor was saying no.

Not even maybe—just no.

I sat there with my arms crossed, trying not to fidget, while Amelia did her best to talk him down.

“Omar, you know what a huge opportunity this is for the community. What this can do for the families here.”

“We can’t afford all of that, Amelia. It’s not possible. We’re not talking some huge budget. We’re barely able to scrape by enough to pay for the required repairs to the property to make it functional for the kids. And this?” He gestured toward me, his glare following his tossed-aside hand. “This isn’t realistic. It’s just not going to happen.”

“Give us a few days, Omar. A week. Natalie hasn’t even been out to the site yet. With the weather, we couldn’t get over there. We’re going right after this meeting. We’ll come back in a week with a plan.”

He shook his head before she even finished speaking.

My heart raced. My palms were soaked. Sweat pooled under my boobs and saturated my bra. My throat was tight. I wanted this. I hated how badly I wanted this, but as I sat there and listened to him take it all away, rip my dream right out from my fingers, I wanted to cry. And scream. And tell him where he could shove his expensive outfits and classic car.

Yeah, I knew all about his car. Everything about the man screamed high class and fancy. He had no idea what life was like without the privilege of money.

“I don’t see any of this happening, Amelia. I really don’t.”

“I understand, but we do. We know what it could do for this town. We know the need is there. And once we get out there and see the place and get a better idea of what we’re facing, we can come up with a more concrete plan. You said yourself we might be operating on credit. Give us a chance, Omar. Let us have another week to see what we can do in the budget you have available, and we’ll go from there.”

Mayor Knight let out a long breath, one that did not ease any of the anxiety racing through my bloodstream. He was ready to say no, and I was ready for it, but I was holding on to that tiny piece of hope I felt coming from Amelia.

She was not going to accept no.

“Fine—”

Amelia squealed.

“But!”

She fell silent, but her smile didn’t slip.

“But if you don’t have a more solid plan, one that more closely fits into this budget, we’re going to have to delay all of this. And the only way it can go into the budget for next year is if we cut other things. You know how this works, Amelia.”

“I do know, Omar. And I appreciate you giving us the chance to figure this out. We will not disappoint you.”

“I hope not.” He slid a glare in my direction, the jerk. “Talk to Jane about getting on my calendar again—and dial back your list of demands to something more realistic.”

“We will. I promise.” Amelia stood and grabbed my arm, tugging me from my chair. “Thanks, Omar.”

Amelia practically dragged me out of the office, not giving me a chance to say anything else. She kept her arm looped through mine like I was a toddler about to run off at any moment.

“Jane, Mr. Mayor agreed to meet with us again next week. Does he have an opening on his calendar?” Amelia smiled at Jane, holding me tight to her side.

Jane clicked a few buttons and stared at the computer screen. “Um, it looks like he’s available on Wednesday next week. Morning or afternoon?”

“Morning is usually better for me. No kids in the building,” Amelia said.

Jane nodded, smiling at Amelia. “How about ten?”

“Perfect. Thank you so much, Jane. We will see you then.” Amelia dragged me out of the building, only letting go when we made it to her car.

I climbed in and buckled my seatbelt, grumbling as Amelia walked around the car. When she slid behind the wheel and turned the car on, she finally turned to me.

“We have to be reasonable about what we can do. I love your ideas, but there was no way he would go for all of that.”

“I… He put me on the spot.”

“I know. And I know you were only sharing things that would be amazing, but he doesn’t see the same thing we see. He doesn’t know how hard things are for these kids.”

I nodded. Amelia wasn’t mad at me. She was capable of seeing both sides—of understanding what everyone needed in a situation.

“Let’s go look at the place, then we can start to make a plan. Maybe get in touch with some contractors who can help out. If it’s for the summer camp, there might be companies who will do the work for free. A lot of them like to do volunteer work, and having a project for them is a benefit.”

I nodded, wondering how she did it. How did she figure out how to talk to people and make them want to help her bring her vision to life? I could barely string a sentence together most of the time when talking to adults, and Amelia was already thinking ten steps ahead.

She pulled out of the parking lot and turned toward the edge of town, heading east to the campground. She drove in silence for a few minutes, letting me gather my thoughts.

“What would you have said when Mayor Knight asked what you wanted to do?”

Amelia glanced at me.

I chewed my lip and wrung my hands. I knew I had said the wrong thing, and I wanted to understand why.

“Omar is worried about the expense. He’s going to be up for election in the fall, which means he’s thinking about what he needs to do to maintain the support of the people of MacKellar Cove. Spending a ton of money on a site for a summer camp is not going to win over the residents who are going to elect him.”

“But this is for kids. How can people say it’s not okay to do it?”

“Because not everyone who lives here has kids. You and I aren’t getting any benefit from having the summer camp open, besides employment. Neither of us has kids who would be helped by it.”

“But we know it will make a difference.”

“Yes, it will. I know that. And I support it. But if you’re a retired couple living on social security and your taxes go up to pay for a summer camp, your perspective is different. That couple might say they want a new mayor—one who isn’t going to spend a bunch of the town’s money on something that’s only going to benefit a small group of locals.”

“I just…” I let her words sink in and really listened to them. “Okay, you’re right. I only see where it’ll help, but yeah, I understand what you’re saying.”

“That’s why Omar pushed back.” Amelia turned off the main road onto a dirt path that was barely wide enough for her car. “He has to think of everyone. So if the town has ten thousand dollars, for example, he has to decide if it would be better to spend that money on this camp or if it would be better to use it on something like repairs to the River Walk or upgrades to Catherine Park—or saving that money and cutting taxes a tiny bit for everyone.”

I got what she was saying, but I stopped listening when the road opened up to a clearing and I got my first look at the campground.

It was…not what I was hoping. “Wow.”

“Holy crap,” Amelia breathed, putting the car in park.

We got out and stared.

A large tree lay across the basketball court. The surface looked okay, but until the tree was moved, we couldn’t be sure. The nets were missing. Weeds had taken over the edges of the court and made it impossible to see where the court stopped.

We walked closer and found what was supposed to be beach volleyball. There were more weeds than sand there, and again, the net was gone. One of the poles was bent, meaning it would need to be replaced.

The pool was covered, but the amount of leaves on top of the cover told me more than I needed to know about the condition of the pool. The cover was definitely in water, but I didn’t want to think about the color of the water. And there was no fence around the pool. One old panel stood at the end, but the rest were completely gone.

Wires and old hookups stuck up all over the cleared area of the property. Thirty campsites—all in need of work. Conduit and connections had to be removed, and the entire property dug up from each site to wherever they went to the road.

“Well, the camper looks okay,” Amelia said. Her hands were on her hips, her focus on the camper parked not far from the pool. “Want to look at it?”

I shrugged. No words formed. I wasn’t sure whether I was excited or terrified. The space was beautiful. The Adirondack Mountains rose up in the distance. Trees swayed in the breeze. It was quiet and peaceful—and a true gift.

But holy crap, it was a disaster. I couldn’t even begin to think about where to start. The pictures Daisy found online felt like a different property than the one Amelia and I were looking at.

Amelia opened the door to the camper and immediately stepped back. “Oh, God. It smells horrible in there.” She gagged and moved farther away, leaving the door open to air the place out.

The smell reached me, and I fought the urge to vomit. It was old food and possibly a dead animal mixed together. “There’s no way we can do this.”

“Yes, we can. The smell is already getting better,” Amelia said.

I shook my head. “I’m not just talking about that. The whole thing. How can you stand there and think there’s any way this is possible? All this work, all this property. It’s too much. It’s too big. What was I thinking when I imagined this? Why did I think this was possible?”

Amelia stepped in front of me, blocking my view of the camper. She grabbed my hands. “Natalie, stop. Listen to me. Are you listening?”

I nodded.

“Don’t panic. We take this on one thing at a time. It’s not going to be easy.”

“Not easy?” I laughed like a maniac. “Not easy would be one of these things. We have a tree on the basketball court. There’s no way the pool is functional. The volleyball court might as well not exist. And that driveway? Your car barely made it back here. What are we going to do if it rains? Or if someone has a big vehicle? This isn’t possible. This is just not going to work. The mayor was right.”

“No, he was not. Close your eyes.”

I scowled at her.

“Humor me.” She squeezed my hands. “Please?”

I drew a breath, then regretted it when I smelled the horrible scent from the trailer. I blew out my breath, then inhaled through my mouth and closed my eyes.

“Okay, first, all those campsites are gone. The property is clear and wide open. Can you see it?”

I tried to push aside the vision I knew was reality—get rid of the connections and wires. It took me a minute, but I managed. “Okay, I see it. But—”

“Nope, don’t get ahead of me. Focus on the wide open property. Without all those hookups, we can build that big structure you mentioned. Something that will hold a hundred kids or more.”

“Two hundred,” I said, my lips lifting in a smile. “The elementary school has a thousand kids, and if we can have a hundred at the community center and four hundred here—two groups of two hundred—we should be able to take all the kids who need it.”

“Okay, two hundred kids. Picnic tables?”

“Yeah. Rows and rows of them. With open space in the middle—for games and stuff when the weather doesn’t cooperate.”

“People could get married here. Another way to pay for the location.”

“That could help.”

“Okay, good. Keep your eyes closed. What else do you see?”

I let my imagination take over. “The pool is fully fenced in, so it’s safe. It’s bright and blue and full of kids.”

“I can hear them laughing,” Amelia said.

I breathed a laugh, thankful she was working with me. “The basketball court just needs to be cleaned up. The volleyball court can be fixed or moved. And we can relocate the fire pits. Maybe consolidate them so there aren’t as many and they’re bigger, with grates over the top so we can use them to grill one day a week. Maybe s’mores. This place could be used in the winter for a holiday drive-thru light display or a winter wonderland kind of thing.”

“I like that idea. You’re coming up with ways for it to pay for itself.”

I sighed heavily and opened my eyes. “But it’s never going to happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because all of that income is after we spend the money to make this place into that. We can’t afford it.”

“Maybe not all of it, not right now, but if we come up with a plan, I think it’ll be something Omar approves.”

“How in the world are we going to do that?”

“Natalie, you’ve done more with less. The yard outside the community center has none of the things you just mentioned. Yet, you still made it into something fun for the kids—a place where they’re already begging to come back to. We take all of this one project at a time.”

I looked around the campground and realized she was right. It was a ton more space, and even though it was in rough shape, it was bigger and better than what we already had.

“There’s that look,” Amelia said.

I tilted my head. “What look?”

“The one that says you’re getting it. You will figure out a plan. And Omar will approve it.”

I drew a breath and looked around. It was too perfect to not try—to let it all sit there. “It’s not going to be easy.”

“Don’t they say nothing worth having ever is?”

I pursed my lips and shook my head. “Yeah, well, it would be really nice if it were easy.”

“This town will help. You know they will. I’ll talk to my son, and we can find people willing to pitch in. The cleanup will make a huge difference. Just getting the trees around the driveway trimmed back, the tree off the basketball court, and this grass cut, it’ll be a different place.”

“What are we going to do about this camper?”

Amelia looked at it. She rested her hands on her hips and shrugged. “Burn it?”

I snorted a laugh. “As much as I love the idea, I’m not sure we can afford that. Think any of those volunteers would be willing to help clean it out?”

“Maybe there’s someone with zero sense of smell.”

“Lucky person,” I said.

“Yeah, because that’s horrible.”

I nodded. “It’s so horrible.”

Amelia chuckled. “Let’s look at more of the property. Then we can start making a plan.”

“Sounds good.”

* * *

By the time we got back in the car, I wanted the camp so badly I was ready to start the work myself. It was going to be a lot, but I could see it. I could imagine where everything would go. It was going to be perfect.

If there was such a thing as perfect, it would be damn close, though.

We got back to the community center, and Amelia went to her office. I retreated to mine and started dreaming about what we could do.

On my whiteboard, I drew a map of the campground. I added the current structures, including the hookups and the camper, then I made a list of all the things that needed to be done.

•Remove hookups

•Clear and pave road

•Clean up volleyball court

•Remove tree and repair basketball court

•Clean pool

•Fence in pool

•Exterminate camper

Those were the bare minimum tasks to open the camp and know it was safe. If we couldn’t open the pool, we would have to put barricades around it. The volleyball and basketball courts were not bare minimum, but they would make the camp more fun and hopefully wouldn’t take much work or money.

The only part I really wanted to add in was shade. But there was no way that was in the budget.

Maybe someone had an old circus tent they didn’t want. And by some miracle wouldn’t be opposed to donating it to the summer camp.

I shook my head and pinned my list next to the drawing on my whiteboard. Even if Amelia managed to get people to help, there was no way we would be able to do all of it in time. But I refused to give up. Even getting halfway there meant we were closer for the following summer.

I just had to put aside my impatience and accept that some people weren’t as concerned with the welfare of children.

And then change his mind.