Nick Scipio
Second Chance for Romance
Summer Camp Swingers: Christy Series Book 1
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
Prologue
Book 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
About the Author
More Summer Camp Swingers
Also by Nick Scipio
PREFACE
Hello and welcome to Camp! If you’ve been here before, let’s talk about some changes.
First, the book titles. They’re new. Duh. But why? For starters, they’re more descriptive now. The old Volume X titles didn’t tell you a thing about the books, other than their order in the series.
The new titles are mostly for new readers. If you’re a fan from before, you probably don’t care what the books are called. But new readers don’t know me or my stories, and titles are an important part of the sales pitch.
Next, the series and universe, Summer Camp Swingers. Why the change?
Amazon. Specifically, their search and recommendation algorithms. I don’t want my books to appear beside ones about regular summer camps. Adding Swingers should make it clear that mine are for grown-ups.
Okay, that’s enough about the changes. If you’re new to Camp, let me tell you how this all began.
Back in the summer of 2002, I had a story growing in my imagination. It started as a simple fantasy that sprang from events in my real life.
My family vacationed at a nudist camp in the seventies and early eighties.
My parents were swingers at the time, although I didn’t figure it out until much later. And when I was a teenager, I knew a woman who was similar to Susan. As an adult, I always wondered what would’ve happened if she’d been more like the woman in my imagination.
So this “what if…?” story was growing in my head, and I kept remembering things and adding new details. It quickly became too much to keep track of, so I decided to write it down. I finished the first few chapters
and posted them online. People liked them, so I kept writing.
In the process, my coming-of-age story evolved into something far bigger than I’d ever imagined. I added an overall plot: Who died? Who’s the wife?
Then I sketched out the people and events in several more stories. Other writers wanted to play in my world, so I created the universe, Summer Camp Swingers. My own stories grew into books, and the books became series—
five of them, as it turned out.
So, where are we now, with this book? Christy is the fifth and final series in the main Summer Camp Swingers saga. You don’t need to read the first four series to enjoy this one, but they add a lot of background for the people and events here. If you’re interested, the earlier series are available on my website.
Whew! That was a lot of introduction. Yeah, sorry. I’ve been writing Summer Camp Swingers since that fateful day back in 2002, so we’re talking about 30 books, nearly 2.5 million words. In any event, I’m sure you’re ready to start reading. You bought the book, after all, so let’s get to it!
Nick Scipio
August 1, 2020
INTRODUCTION
Summer Camp Swingers has always been a serial, published a chapter at a time. So the books in this series don’t begin and end like normal ones do.
They’re meant to be read as a complete story, one after the other. When you reach the end of this book, pick up the next one and keep going.
And when you get to the end of the series, the Epilogue will wrap up the whole saga and answer the two big questions from the very beginning—
who’s the wife and who died?
PROLOGUE
Trip and Wren were already at the private terminal when we arrived. So were my parents. I hated to arrive last, but life didn’t always go the way I planned.
The girls opened their doors as soon as the SUV stopped moving.
“Whoa!” I said before they could leap out. “Take your bags with you.
Dad’s taxi doesn’t do luggage.”
They reached over the back seat and pulled out their backpacks. Then they jumped to the ground and ran inside to talk to Trip and Wren’s kids.
“This is just a big adventure to them,” I said after they’d gone.
“They’re young,” my wife said. “No one close to them has died before.”
She looked at me for a moment. “Are you okay?”
“No. But yeah.”
She nodded.
“I guess I still can’t believe she’s gone. I mean, one minute she’s part of our life, and the next…? Bam! Gone.”
“She’s still part of our life.”
“Yeah, but you know what I mean.”
“I do.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I know I say this all the time, but I love you. And it’s times like now that I really appreciate all we have together.”
“I love you too. And I can’t imagine life without you.”
I leaned across the center console and gave her a kiss. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Laurie come out of the terminal. She took one look at us through the windshield and went back inside.
“We’d better get going,” my wife said with a laugh, “before the girls tell them we’re making out.”
“Oh, no! They might think we’re married or something.”
She rolled her eyes.
“All right, all right. Let’s go.”
In the terminal we exchanged hugs and greetings. And for the first time I could remember, I thought my mother looked old. Her eyes were puffy from crying.
“Don’t say a thing,” she warned.
“Wasn’t even thinking it.”
My father joined us with a very excited Emily under his wing.
“You want to fly left seat?” he asked me.
He’d been retired from the airline for less than a year, and his current
“job” was chief pilot for a hotshot design firm that happened to have his son’s name on the building. It wasn’t a sinecure, but his boss was easy to work with and the hours were good.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “You take it.”
He nodded and then glanced down at Emily.
“Can I fly the right seat?” she asked me. “Grandpa says it’s okay with him if it’s okay with you.”
“Are you sure?” I asked him.
“Are you kidding? She handles the radios and nav better than you do.”
I laughed and agreed.
“Come on, Short Stuff,” he said to her. “Let’s go do the preflight walk-around.”
“Hey! Who you callin’ Short Stuff?”
“Sorry, First Officer Short Stuff,” he corrected.
“Much better.”
I smiled as they walked out to the flight line together.
Even at ten years old, Emily already knew what she wanted to be: a Navy pilot. She’d do it, too! I was sure of it. She was the most willful child I’d ever met. She never, ever let go of an idea once she decided to do something. And heaven help anyone who stood in her way, deliberately or not.
As I watched her, I thought of all the women who’d come before her.
Those trailblazers had cleared obstacles from her path before she ever knew they existed, much less encountered them.
Thinking of them made me think of the women in my own life. They