One Summer Night Read online

  Her heart skipped another beat when his blue eyes met hers once again. And once again he offered her a grin. Lauren quickly turned around and leaned over the table to Rachel.

  ‘Call me crazy, but there’s something going on between us!’

  Rachel, in turn, strained her neck and nodded. ‘Yes, you’re right. You are crazy! Because right now he’s got his tongue all the way down her throat.’

  ‘What?’ Lauren almost threw her back out as she squinted over the back of her bench.

  ‘Dammit! But you have to admit that he looks as if he’s a really good kisser – which is the cornerstone of a good marriage!’

  Rachel tugged on Lauren’s blouse, making her plunk back into her seat.

  ‘Right, I am sure those two are going to have a great marriage, but one which, I regret to say, you are not going to be a part of!’

  Lauren glared at her from across the table, and was once more reaching for the menu when she noticed the waitress making her way over. In all the Prince Charming excitement she still had no idea what she wanted to eat.

  ‘Breakfast number two with coffee, please,’ she ordered on the spur of the moment and impatiently waited for Rachel to make her order, trying to suppress pangs of guilt that she hadn’t gone for the low-cal option. She wasn’t trying to lose more weight, after all. She was only trying to maintain it.

  When the waitress finally shuffled away, Rachel changed the subject.

  ‘How are things going in Maine, anyway? Is your art professor still crazy in love with your room-mate?’

  Lauren rolled her eyes. ‘It’s ridiculous! The guy is at least fifty, and Vicky is our age; only twenty-three.’ Lauren shook her head. ‘The other day when I came home, he was standing in our room in his underpants! It was creepy! And I am supposed to listen to him in class after seeing that? Can’t do it, I tell you!’

  Rachel chuckled. ‘At least there’s stuff going on in your life. Me, I have nothing interesting to report. My brother’s got a new girlfriend, again. She works at the gas station. And Mason – you know the good-looking dentist?’

  The waitress returned with their breakfast, interrupting their conversion and, zombie-like, started putting down their two plates of pancakes with maple syrup, cups of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice.

  ‘Doctor Mason Howell! He’s getting divorced from his wife as we speak. All I want is a date with him! I made an appointment at his dental practice, just so that I could see him,’ Rachel gushed. ‘He’s so fine! He’s tall and so . . . distinctive!’

  Lauren raised the steaming cup to her lips and started slurping her coffee.

  ‘But that sounds great! And you were saying that nothing is going on around here.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s much longer since I last saw a man in his underpants.’

  ‘Trust me, it was not a pleasant sight!’ Lauren spluttered, trying to rid her mind of the image of her half-naked teacher while pushing a forkful of delicious pancake into her mouth.

  She loved the sweet stickiness of the maple syrup and the soft, fluffy consistency of the pancake, even though eating it meant that she would have to be mindful of what she ate for the rest of the day. Rachel, too, devoured her food greedily, and so they sat and ate in silence for a while, listening to the clatter of dishes inside the diner and the voice of Mariah Carey droning from the speakers above their heads.

  ‘How long are you going to be home for?’ Rachel picked up their conversation with her mouth still full.

  ‘Another four weeks. And then classes are starting again.’

  ‘Well, that gives us plenty of time to celebrate our birthdays. Any ideas yet?’

  Lauren shook her head and smoothed back her curls. She and Rachel were born on the same day in the same hospital and – it seemed to them, at least – they had been friends ever since. When they were younger they would often joke that perhaps they had been switched at birth and actually belonged to the other’s family. Which, of course, wasn’t the case, because Lauren looked exactly like her mother, but whenever they would get into a fight with their parents they found the idea of it quite comforting. Maybe I’m not even related to that family of bores, Lauren would often wonder at the height of puberty. And, of course, when they were children they celebrated every single one of their birthdays together. Their twenty-third birthday was already a week old but wasn’t going to be an exception.

  ‘We should at least invite the dentist, and . . .’ Lauren turned around one last time. Blondie had disappeared, only Mr Blue-Eyes was still there, drinking his coffee. ‘. . . and my husband-to-be!’

  ‘No way! It would be super embarrassing to talk to a complete stranger!’ Rachel was dead set against it.

  ‘It’s not that embarrassing, really. Complete strangers chat us up in bars all the time!’ Lauren defended her suggestion.

  ‘Yeah, but at least they’re buying us drinks – and in the end we’re still telling them to buzz off! Which is exactly what would happen to me if I were to take your advice.’

  Lauren had no response. As inconspicuously as possible, she once again turned around to look at the man of her dreams. Was he getting more handsome by the minute or was she only imaging it? She noticed a dimple on his chin as he was chatting and laughing with the waitress, who was suddenly anything but zombie-like, and holding his cup up for a refill. His magic worked on others, too, then.

  ‘How about we take some time to think about our party, and give each other a call. Or I stop by your house after work. I gotta go now; Mr Mathison’s tensed-up shoulders won’t straighten themselves.’

  Lauren looked out the window and into the gray, cloud-covered sky and the thick rain that was still pelting down against the windowpanes.

  ‘You really want to go out there?’ she asked doubtfully, reaching for her cup of steaming coffee and glad that she got to stay inside a little while longer.

  ‘Want? No, but duty calls.’ Rachel got up and smiled. ‘Besides, you know me and my brilliant mind. I just happen to have brought an umbrella along – imagine that!’

  She placed a banknote on the table and, triumphantly, held up the umbrella in question.

  Lauren rolled her eyes but got up, too, and hugged her friend goodbye. She followed her with her eyes as she left the diner, grateful that her parents had made it possible for her to follow her passion and attend art college in Maine. They hadn’t forced her into a job that she didn’t enjoy. A job in which she had to touch the shoulders of men like Mr Mathison, she added to herself. To make up for it, she would help her dad in his law firm during term breaks. Peter Latham would have liked for Lauren to follow in his footsteps and become a lawyer. Instead, she filed documents and destroyed old, outdated case files.

  Which was what was waiting for her over the next few days, and so she decided to enjoy her last day off. And just as she was wondering what could make a day better that had started with a great breakfast with Rachel, the stranger’s face popped up in her mind. She threw an inconspicuous glance over her shoulder. He was still there. A sign, surely!

  Lauren tried to check out her reflection in the windowpane, but it was pointless. Looks-wise, she wasn’t at the top of her game today, but if that stopped a guy from talking to her then he wasn’t the right guy to begin with. Besides, she reminded herself silently, he couldn’t be the right guy anyway because he had a girlfriend. Still, she made herself get up and casually strolled over to his table. The weight she had recently lost gave her a little extra self-confidence, and she even seductively swayed her hips.

  There was a moment, when she looked at him full of expectation and he at her, full of surprise and interest, when he raised his eyes and smiled . . . This moment seemed to last forever. Lauren breathed in and out again. Her heart was beating fast inside her chest and she was nervous, her fingers were trembling when she ran them through her hair.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, and the corners of his mouth twitched. Lauren’s head was suddenly full of thoughts. Except her reason for
crossing the diner. It was the amused expression on his face that was to blame, because Lauren knew what it meant: women talked to this guy all the time. Flirted with him, too, probably. Women like her, who dared to approach him and then . . . what? Who wanted to marry him? Women who, like her, couldn’t take their eyes off his full upper lip with the tiny scar and who almost climaxed just because he said hi? Whatever the reason, women flirted with him and she didn’t want to get in line, didn’t want to be one of those stupid women who, more than likely, were far better looking than she.

  ‘Uh – excuse me . . .’ she muttered, desperately trying to find a reason, any reason at all, why she had crossed the diner and was standing in front of him. There had to be something!

  Lauren desperately looked around. Saw the cup in his beautiful hands.

  ‘Your coffee . . . Did you find . . .’ Jesus, even his hands were beautiful! ‘. . . Did you find that it was too hot?’ she managed to squeeze out the pitiful question and could feel herself blushing.

  Well, this sure was embarrassing! But all right. She didn’t want to get in line with all his other conquests anyway, so it wouldn’t be so bad if he thought she was a little loopy.

  ‘Too hot?’ He seemed confused, and his beautifully shaped eyebrows rose quizzically. Lauren gave him the gravest nod she could muster and stared at the tips of her boots. The bottoms of her pants were almost completely dry again. A little bug was crawling across the joint from a black floor tile to a white one. She kept an eye out for the crack in the ground that was going to open and hopefully swallow her whole, to spare her the embarrassment. But there was no crack. She had to go through with it. ‘Yeah, hot,’ she explained as matter-of-factly as possible.

  ‘I’m only asking because . . . because I just burned myself on the coffee . . . and . . . and if that were generally the case, I . . . I would tell the . . . the waitress. I mean, I wouldn’t want . . . anyone to get hurt or anything.’

  Phew! That was quite a struggle but, hey, not too bad. Quite satisfied with herself, Lauren now straightened up and turned to an older couple sitting at the opposite table.

  ‘What about your coffee? Hot? Not too hot?’

  * * *

  ‘Oh God, how embarrassing!’ Lauren giggled and snuggled deeper into Tim’s arms.

  Even though the fire was still burning, the nightly cold had started rising from the earth.

  ‘That wasn’t embarrassing at all, it was . . . entertaining,’ Tim retorted with a grin.

  Rachel, who was sitting on the opposite side of the bonfire, laughing and shaking her head, inched a little closer.

  ‘Why has nobody ever told me this in all these years? If I had known, I would have blown my appointment with good old Mr Mathison and stayed to watch the show!’

  ‘Oh, come on, it wasn’t that bad. I thought you were cute back then at the diner. But I really only took notice of you later – at the law firm,’ Tim recounted.

  ‘So you don’t think I’m cute anymore?’

  Tim kissed the back of Lauren’s neck and lovingly rubbed her arms to keep her warm.

  ‘Of course I do. And all I can wish for today is that we get the time to laugh about so many more things to come.’

  Mountains of Files

  Lauren was humming along to the song she had heard earlier on the radio when she was driving to the law firm with her dad. She couldn’t remember the song title, but the melody had been stuck in her head all day. And she didn’t even particularly like it.

  Gingerly, she climbed the wobbly step stool and fished the next handful of binders from up high on the shelf, all the while deriding herself for picking such a short skirt that morning. She had decided to show the world that her diet was working – as motivation to herself, in a way. But this stepladder would be far easier to navigate wearing a pair of jeans. Back to back on the shelves sat the legal files of clients, the court records, the case files, and the statements of claim. Everything older than ten years had to be destroyed on a regular basis, and this was her job during term break. She pulled out five binders all at once, heaving them onto the big desk in a corner of the sparsely lit basement. The computer screen in front of her flickered in the faint light of the fluorescent tube, and with dusty fingers she typed each binder’s record number into the system. Every page, every sheet of paper she fed into the document shredder had to be meticulously recorded.

  After she had finished that task and checked each number one final time, she grabbed the binders and made her way to the fourth-floor copy room where the only shredder stood. Years ago Lauren had suggested they purchase an additional document shredder for the basement archive, just so she wouldn’t have to haul every single binder from the basement all the way up several flights of stairs. But her request had been denied. The risk of accidentally destroying a legal file would be too great, she was told. Right! Lauren could see it before her now: one of the paralegals would pull an extremely important binder from the shelf, would then trip, tumble from the ladder, switch on the shredder in mid-air, and somehow the binder would then disappear in-between the heavy-duty rotating blades. Yes, this sounded extremely likely and probably happened all the time in companies around the world. Which was why she was now trying to balance the stack of binders on her arms, bending backward so that the files rested against her chest, neck, and chin rather than falling to the floor. If one binder slipped, the others would tumble along with it.

  After the first couple of steps she noticed that a strand of her hair had caught in a paper clip. She strained her neck to pull it free, but failed. And so with each step she took she was pulling on her hair, so she quickly switched gears to get rid of her load sooner. Using her elbow, she pressed the well-worn elevator button and leaned against the wall until a soft hum announced the elevator’s arrival. The doors opened quietly, and she was welcomed by soft music and a pleasantly warm light. As if that made hauling around these dust-covered binders worthwhile!

  Carefully, she maneuvered them into the elevator and stuck out her tongue to her stressed-out reflection in the mirror. Only then did she notice that the button for the second floor was lit. ‘Just my luck!’ she thought, rolling her eyes in irritation. She was throwing her back out lifting stupid binders, and now the elevator would probably stop on every single floor. Her arms were shaking under the weight, and she tried again to pull free her hair. When the doors opened, the stack of files jiggled dangerously.

  ‘Dammit!’ she muttered, pressing her chin over the top binder and looking over at the man who had entered the elevator and was pressing the button for the third floor. Just her luck. She snorted quietly, but he must have heard her because he turned around. Lauren froze when his ice-blue eyes met hers. His eyebrows shot up in surprise. He ran his hand through his hair.

  ‘Hi,’ he said with a huge grin, eyeing her stack of binders. ‘Those wouldn’t be evidence and lawsuit documents regarding the hot coffee at the diner? I sure hope not, because I quite liked going to that place.’

  ‘What?’ Lauren’s head sprung up. The strand of hair pulled at the paper clip, came loose, and fell over her eyes. She tried blowing it out of her face, but it didn’t work. Her blue-eyed Prince Charming smiled and helped her tug the curl behind her ear.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘What?’ Lauren’s skin tingled where he had touched her, and the feeling of it chased away any sensible thought. She felt like a parrot repeating herself, but found it impossible to follow his words. What coffee? What lawsuit? And better than what? Patiently, as if explaining something to a child, he leaned in her direction.

  ‘Who’s representing you?’ And, after a glance at her confused face, he added, ‘Who’s your attorney? Who are you looking for? Maybe I can help . . .’

  ‘Help? Me?’ Lauren tried to make sense of what the handsome stranger was saying. ‘Who the hell are you?’ she asked, wheezing under the weight of her binders.

  ‘I’m sorry, my bad. Tim Parker: trial l
awyer. And you are . . . ?’

  He held his hand out to her, but quickly withdrew it again when he realized that she was unable to move hers. Helpfully, he offered to relieve her of most of the binders.

  ‘You work here?’ Lauren asked in surprise, tucking the last remaining binder under her arm and smoothing down her sweater, revealing a little more cleavage. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around here before.’

  Now it was the lawyer’s turn to act surprised. The elevator doors opened but no one got in and he didn’t get out.

  ‘What do you mean? What do you do around here?’

  ‘That was your floor,’ Lauren reminded him as the doors closed quietly.

  ‘Yeah. No. I mean, yes – it was, but,’ he motioned toward the binders, ‘where do those need to go?’

  ‘One more floor. I . . . You must be new, because I know all the other lawyers here at the firm.’

  Lauren clenched her teeth. Bleurgh. Lawyer! Sure, if she were a lawyer she’d be able to see eye to eye. Instead she was going to have to explain that she was probably the least qualified person in this entire building.

  ‘No, I . . . This is just a job during term break. I’m Lauren.’ She attempted a smile but felt stupid and almost wished for the elevator’s steel cables to snap so that this dreadful journey would finally come to an end.