The Mischievous Mrs. Maxfield

Chapter Sixteen: Truth Be Told

A/N: Hello everyone! Sorry about the long wait but here’s the latest chapter. Actually, I ended up chopping the chapter into two because it just became too long. 

Thank you again to those who continue to support this story and for falling in love with it along with Brandon and Charlotte.

A few people have asked me why I seem to make them go on a bit of a chase here when I can just make them fall in love and admit it. 

To be perfectly honest, I think that in real life, two people who had an awful first meeting and a complicated business arrangement/marriage would be hard-pressed to fall in love with each other and live happily ever after in less than a month. 

I strive to show a change in the dynamics of their relationship in each chapter and sometimes they can be very small but vital things—like a bit of honesty or compromise or just a happy, memorable date. I have to magnify these little things that will bridge them together so their feelings are plausible. I can’t write a story that goes, boy meets girl, they fall in love, ka-bam! they live happily ever after. 

The reason I’m pointing this out is to appeal to you to be patient. Enjoy the ride.

Thank you!

Please vote and comment!

***

"The smokies are better because they're already cooked. You just have to roast them in the fire a little."

I chewed on my bottom lip in frustration as I returned the package of hotdogs to the cooler shelf. "Do you even know how to build a campfire? I'm sure they don't offer premium campfire-building services lit from a gold-tipped, ivory-handled lighter."

Brandon rolled his eyes and pushed our shopping cart further along the aisle until he could grab a pack of cheddar smokies. "I ordered a special flint set from an outdoor supply company. A flint is a traditional fire starter."

It was late Thursday afternoon and we drove down to a nearby grocery to get food for the camping trip that Brandon planned as our special weekend getaway.

Yes, camping.

It was a far cry from the fancy Paris trip he'd planned for our honeymoon but I was as excited as a kid on Christmas morning because I have never gone camping before.

Yes, I have never gone camping. Not once.

It wasn't really all that shocking. My mother walked out when I was six and my father pretty much stopped being any kind of real parent to me since then. We didn’t go camping or fishing or any of those things that happy families usually did.

I often didn't have extra money to pay for any of the fancy trips and summer camps the kids at school went to. I was only in that school because it was the only one to offer a working-student scholarship in the area. 

What cash I did earn then, I certainly hadn’t wanted to spend on supplies so I could go off and live like a squatter out in the wilderness. I used to tell myself it was silly that people would spend so much money to live less comfortably and conveniently—only because it helped make me feel a little less left out. 

When you'd lived most of your life with your nose pressed up against the store window for something you could never have, you learned to tell yourself that what was beyond the glass wasn't really all that special, and you weren't missing out on much.

So yeah, that was my long, short story for why I never once went camping.

Apparently, Brandon learned this little fun-fact about me because when I asked him where he got the idea from, he said that his father mentioned it to him.