Ten Million Fireflies (Band of Sisters) Read online

  “He’s not exactly an American patriot,” Charlie said as she rubbed Brooke’s back.

  This was nice, having the support of her nonjudgmental girlfriends. A Band of Sisters they’d always be.

  “The attorney said something to me after I practically flipped him off.”

  “You didn’t,” sweet Fish scoffed.

  “Not really. Anyway, he said I could donate it to various charities so the money would go to a good cause.”

  “That’s a wonderful idea,” Skye said. “What charities are you giving to? Wounded Warriors?”

  Brooke looked at Charlie and Fish with compassion.

  “Or a foster care program,” Fish offered. It was just like her to want the money to go to children and not herself. “Drug addiction has been a huge issue in our country as well.”

  Her friends already disregarded her comment about giving them the money and offered suggestions close to each other’s heart.

  “I’m not a touchy-feely kind of girl, and ya’ll are gonna make me cry.”

  “You’re a New Yorker. You don’t say y'all.” Fish swiped her eyes.

  “I do when I’ve had five too many sangrias and I’m surrounded by the most amazing women I’ve ever met. Besides, I lived in New York for ten years. I consider myself a Mainah like the rest of ya.”

  “Group hug.” Charlie stood, and they all joined her, crisscrossing arms and holding on tight.

  This was family. This was what she’d missed growing up. Hugs from her mother, hugs from close friends. Brooke rested her head on Skye’s shoulder and thought about her friend’s past, bouncing from foster home to foster home. And Fish, another one who lost her parents when she was so young. And Charlie, while she didn’t lose a parent, she lost a brother at a young age.

  The Band of Sisters was strong, not only in their military surroundings but in their wounded and generous hearts. Nothing would ever tear them apart.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Drew tore off another sheet from his notepad and crumpled it into a ball, tossing it into the trashcan across the room.

  He missed. How fitting. Nothing was going his way lately.

  His agent wanted an outline of his next book by the end of the month, and Drew didn’t have a freaking clue what direction to take his story.

  After days of watching true crime shows and then researching some online, he still didn’t have his story down. Everything he came up with was already done or overly cliché.

  Maybe six books was all he had in him. At thirty-five, he was too young to retire and too old to start a new career. Well, not too old if he had a college degree or experience doing anything but selling insurance in his twenties and writing in his thirties.

  He could teach a class at a community college about writing, but not if he couldn’t figure out how to write a damn book himself. Some role model he’d be.

  “What made you want to teach writing at our school, Mr. Beckett?”

  “Well, I couldn’t write my own book, so I figured I’d tell aspiring writers how to write theirs.”

  Yeah, that would go over as well as a fart in church.

  Another cliché. He was doomed.

  Needing to clear his mind—again—he tossed his notebook onto the coffee table and slid on his sneakers, lacing them tight. The screen door slapped shut behind him as he padded down the steps to the grassy knoll overlooking the water.

  After his run, he’d kayak around Autumn Pond. Hopefully he’d be ready to write after moving his legs across five miles and a good three-mile upper body workout.

  He pulled his cell and earbuds from his pocket and programmed his running music. Classic rock and hair band metal would get him in the spirit as well.

  Five miles later and dripping in sweat, he still didn’t have a clue how to start his next book. Tugging his buds from his ears, he paused mid-step at the sound of laughter coming through the woods next to his house.

  There hadn’t been noise coming from the property in over a decade. And if he had his way, there’d never be noise coming from the camp again.

  He made his way through the overgrown footpath and stopped short when he saw four women sitting on decaying stumps around what used to be a huge fire pit.

  “You’re trespassing,” he barked at them.

  Four heads swiveled his way—a blonde, a brunette, a redhead, and a short-haired woman wearing a backward hat stared at him across the open lot. The internal writer in him wanted to crack a joke, but his rage at having someone—four someones—on this property won out.

  The blonde smiled and got up, sauntering her way toward him. Yeah, she sauntered. He hated how his fame made women turn plastic.

  “We’re just passing through. And who might you be?”

  “Charlie,” the hat-wearing woman scolded, coming up behind her. “Sorry. We didn’t see any signs.” She wore a fitted sweatshirt with Property of the U.S. Army printed across her chest. He couldn’t make out what kind of ball cap she wore, not that it mattered. Intriguing or not, she needed to leave and take her friends with her.

  Drew pointed toward the opening of the camp. “The road is clearly marked.”

  “Oh. That would explain why. We came from there.” She pointed at the water. “We took canoes.”

  “Hmpf.” He’d need to tack up No Trespassing signs on the shoreline as well. “You’re on private property and need to leave.”

  “Do you own this camp?”

  He curled his lip and clenched his fists until his short nails poked into his palms. “Doesn’t matter. You’re trespassing.”

  “Well, if you don’t own it, then it means you’re trespassing, too.” She cocked an eyebrow and stuck her hands on her hips.

  He may not own the property, but he’d deemed himself the keeper since it had been vacant. A few times a year he had to come over and chase out teenagers looking for a place to drink and smoke by a bonfire.

  There’d be no fun and games here. Not on his watch. Never again.

  “I’m keeping an eye on the camp to make sure it doesn’t get vandalized.”

  “We’re not here to vandalize it. How long has it been deserted?”

  Drew didn’t like the woman’s interest or the way her three friends stood behind her to support whatever she felt she needed to say.

  “Seventeen years. You should leave.”

  “Who are the owners?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He turned and started down the path to the water, hoping the nosey woman would follow. She didn’t.

  Instead, he heard one of the rusted camp doors slam shut.

  “Shit.” Drew spun on his heels and jogged up the slight slope toward the mess hall. Putting locks on the flimsy doors was as pointless as sweeping the dirt path to the boat dock.

  He heard one of the women say, “Dang. It smells nasty in here.”

  “Probably dead rodents,” Drew said as he hovered by the door.

  “Yeah. Probably.”

  Not the response he was looking for. Instead of being scared and running away, the women crept deeper into the mess hall. “You know you’re trespassing.”

  “So are you,” the sassy army sweatshirt beauty said, turning toward him. Beauty? When did he start thinking of her as anything but annoying?

  The close-cut hair at the nape of his neck prickled, and he rubbed it away. It wasn’t this building that had haunted his dreams for nearly two decades. Drew risked a quick side-glance through the cluster of white birch trees.

  If the women ventured toward the Penobscot Cabin, he’d use whatever force necessary to prevent them from stepping inside.

  Chills crept down his spine, and he shifted in his running shoes. “I don’t have time to babysit you. You all need to leave the property. Now.” He hoped the women didn’t hear the nerves hidden under his stern voice.

  “Geesh. Such a party pooper. We’re going,” the blonde said with a huff as she pushed past him and stomped down the two rotted steps to the ground.

  “We didn’t mean to cause
trouble,” the brunette said. It wasn’t nerves or a shyness that veiled her expression.

  The writer in Drew stayed mute and studied her as she cast him a brief smile—an apology or a thank you, he wasn’t sure—and followed the blonde. There was a wall there, not one he cared to chisel away, but one he could study. One he could write about.

  Maybe... If only his damn brain would work.

  “Gina’s right. We didn’t mean any disrespect.” It was an American Flag that was stitched into the front of her hat. She must have a brother or father or boyfriend serving. Drew hadn’t noticed a wedding ring, so it probably wasn’t a husband. “I’m Brooke, by the way. We’re sorry about disturbing you. I rented a place on the other side of the water. We didn’t mean to upset you. Girls’ weekend, you know?”

  Drew didn’t want to notice her pink lips or how her sharp cheekbones elongated her face, giving her a sexy edge. Long, dark lashes framed her mocha-colored eyes, and as far as he could tell, she didn’t wear a trace of makeup—scrubbed free of war paint and beautiful as the sunrise peeking over the mountains. And her skin smelled like a vanilla bean freshly scraped from its pod.

  Hell, maybe he should give up writing psychological thrillers and try his hand at romance.

  “Do you?” she asked.

  Embarrassed to be caught staring and zoning, he ignored her question—not having a clue what she was referring to—and held the screen door open for Brooke and the redhead behind her.

  “Do you live around here?” the cute brunette asked. At least from the little hair that stuck out from under her baseball cap, it appeared to be a dark chestnut. Wait. Cute? First a beauty and now cute? Yeah, he needed to get his head back in the game.

  “Not far.” Drew valued his privacy and while none of the women seemed to know who he was, he didn’t want them to recognize his mug shot while strolling through a bookstore and yell out, “Hey! That’s A.R. Beck, the guy who lives next to the empty camp on Autumn Pond.”

  “Well, you should probably head back home before someone comes out here and yells at you for trespassing.”

  He couldn’t tell if she was teasing him or being serious.

  “You coming, Brooke?” her girlfriends called from the dock.

  “Yeah,” she hollered over her shoulder. “It was nice meeting you...” She held out her hand and Drew reached for it out of courtesy before thinking.

  Instead of a soft, feminine touch, she squeezed his hand hard and actually shook it. Even with the firm grip and the surprise move, a bolt of awareness zapped through his body.

  His eyes, as if on a will of their own, zeroed in on her lips. The upper one was significantly thinner than her bottom, and both were free from lipstick. Natural. Naked. Like he preferred.

  Drew tugged his hand away and shoved both into his pockets. Or at least attempted to. His hands shook with nervous energy and after two failed attempts, he didn’t bother to find his pockets. His running shorts left him hanging... only figuratively. Unfortunately, the thin mesh wouldn’t hide his reaction this woman, Brooke, left on him.

  Dropping his hands to discreetly cover his crotch, he stepped back. “I don’t want to see you ladies around here. It’s not safe.” With that, he turned and strode as casually as he could and took the trail back to his house.

  “DUDE. THAT GUY WAS pissed.” Charlie scooped her hair back into an elastic and sat on top of the kitchen table.

  “I thought he seemed nervous.” Fish opened the fridge and handed out water bottles.

  “He was looking out for the property. He said he lived nearby,” Brooke said, unscrewing the cap to her water.

  “He had the hots for you,” Skye teased.

  “As if.” Brooke was the tomboy of the group. The one the guys were comfortable around because they thought she was gruff and rough and not into guys. She’d overheard two soldiers on her team discuss her sexual orientation one night. When they deemed her a lesbian, they went through the short line-up of women in their squad who they’d like to see get it on with Brooke.

  As their sergeant, she could have called them on it but had walked away before they spotted her. It wouldn’t have done her nor them any good to correct them.

  “Private First-Class Lance and Corporal Franklin. I’m straight and I love having sex with men, but I can’t find anyone who doesn’t bore me, is not afraid of me, and who’s man enough to date a woman who can take a two-hundred-pound man down and cut off his air valve in less than three seconds and can shoot a target from over five hundred yards.” Yeah, that would have gone as well as a pair of stilettos in a sandstorm.

  “He couldn’t take his eyes off you,” Skye continued.

  “Because I was in his face about his crazy fear of our trespassing. Think he was hiding something? He seemed spooked when he followed us into the dining hall or whatever that building was.” Brooke turned one chair around and straddled it backward. “I wonder what kind of camps they had there. You guys ever go to summer camp when you were a kid?”

  Charlie hopped off the table and sat in a chair as well. Skye and Fish joined them around the round Formica table.

  “Not me. Growing up in the foster system left little for extra funds to send me to some fancy camp,” Skye said matter-of-factly.

  “My folks sent me to a boot camp when I was fifteen. They saw the crazy in my eyes back then and told me they’d be kicking my ass out of the house as soon as I walked the stage and got my high school diploma.” Charlie grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl in the middle of the table and peeled it.

  “Is that why you enlisted?” Brooke asked.

  “Pretty much. And I don’t regret it. What I regret is going to The Thirsty Caterpillar last fall and wiping out on my ass in the middle of the dance floor.” With permanent pins in her knee and no promises from her doctors that she’d ever walk without a limp, she’d been medically discharged from the army. Her demeanor had changed from happy-go-lucky to easily aggravated and sharp with the tongue.

  “What about you, Fish?” Gina had always been quiet about her past. They knew the facts—the drug overdose, the foster care. But like Brooke, she’d kept the nitty-gritty details to herself.

  “My first set of foster parents sent me to a summer camp the year after my parents died. It was their way of getting me out of the house while they met with the social workers to place me in a new home. I guess strong-willed kids weren’t for them.”

  “Oh,” they all said at the same time and instinctively got up and huddled around Gina to smother her with hugs.

  “I’m sorry for bringing it up. We can talk about something else.” Brooke was pushy with some topics, but she respected her friends’ need to keep the past at bay.

  “No, it’s fine. It’s not the camp that bothered me. I actually had fun and made some friends. Although I never talked to them again.”

  “I get it,” Charlie said. “After my brother died, I didn’t have anyone to talk to who understood. My friends joked about how they wished their annoying siblings would die.”

  “That’s awful.” Skye hugged Charlie. “I’ll never forget losing my brother. I was only six, but that day is forever burned in my mind. Almost literally. Losing him and my parents in the house fire—” There was no need for her to fill in the rest.

  They returned to their seats in a somber quiet.

  “Shit.”

  “You ever go to camp, Brooke?” Skye asked, diverting the attention away from herself.

  “No camp for me. You guys know my mom died when I was ten and my grandmother raised me. She wasn’t a very... active guardian. Camp would have been cool, though. I was pretty much a loner all my life. No one wanted to hang out with a gangly girl who lived with an old lady. I wish there was a camp for someone like me.”

  “We should start one.” Charlie snorted.

  Brooke lifted her chin and looked around the table at her three best friends. She didn’t know if they considered her their everything, but to Brooke, they were her world.

  Th
ey may not know each other’s darkest secrets, but they knew what mattered.

  Loyalty.

  Honesty.

  Integrity.

  Friendship.

  Sisters.

  Skye threaded her fingers and rested her chin on her knuckles. “I wonder what that would cost.”

  The drumming in her chest echoed loudly, filling her with excitement. Now that she wasn’t in the army anymore, she needed an outlet. Needed to have something to do. She’d secured a job as a physical education teacher in the middle school two towns over, but the teaching job would leave her summers to fill.

  Brooke needed to be busy all the time or her mind would think too much. Worry about issues she had no control of. Get angry about things from her past. Idle hands did not suit her well.

  “Think five million would be enough?” Brooke grinned across the table as three pairs of eyes grew wide. “We could start a camp for grieving children.”

  “Oh. Wow.” Fish blinked rapidly and wiped her eye on her shoulder.

  “With my degree in physical education, I’ve got a shitload of games and activities under my belt. I could be rec director.” Brooke stood and paced the small dining area as her mind raced through the possibilities. “Charlie, you’ll have your degree in culinary arts soon. You could be our head chef.”

  “Head chef?”

  “Gina, you could run the arts and crafts.” She’d been obsessed with Pinterest and everything crafty since starting her recovery. Maybe working with children would help her heal faster.

  “I could do that.”

  Brooke paused and tapped her index finger against her lip. Skye’s schedule was irregular with her still enlisted in the army. She wouldn’t be able to dedicate a set month or week to the project, but the eager look in her friend’s eyes told Brooke that Skye wanted to be part of this as well.

  “You could be our PR person. You have that bubbly, friendly, kiss ass personality everyone falls for.”

  “Uh. No offense taken.” Skye smirked, not being offended in the least.