One Summer Night Page 3

  Tim Parker, the man she had lost an entire night’s sleep over, was even more handsome close up than he had been when she saw him at the diner for the first time. The tiny scar on his lip drew her attention. It was a flaw in an otherwise flawless face. A flaw that was deeply sensual, somehow. He was still looking at her, still waiting for an answer, and it flattered her – he was interested, even if it was only because he was probably thinking about calling Security on her. In his dark suit and pale-blue shirt that really brought out the color of his eyes, he looked a little older than he did yesterday. The suit jacket hid his athletic figure, which was a good thing because Lauren was finding it hard enough to think straight.

  ‘Lauren . . . Nice to meet you. So, you’re still in school? What’s your major? Traffic defense law? Economic law?’

  Lauren could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks.

  ‘I’m in art school,’ she managed to squeeze out and breathed a sigh of relief that the fourth floor light finally came on.

  She stepped through the doors as soon as they opened, keeping her head low.

  ‘Thank you, I can take it from here.’

  She was about to reach for her binders, but Tim stepped out into the hallway with her before she could. Suddenly, the narrow hall with its soft, grey carpeting and its teal walls seemed to close in around her. The sheer presence of this man made her feel unsettled. Which she enjoyed – and hated at the same time. She’d never felt this way before. Need she remind herself that this Tim Parker person had a girlfriend – and so she urged her goddamn heart to get a goddamn hold of itself, do its job, and start pumping blood into her brain for a change.

  ‘Don’t be silly, they’re way too heavy. So, where are we going?’

  He glanced down the hallway, and Lauren shrugged her shoulders. She’d be rid of him sooner if she let him get on with it. Without saying a word she marched ahead of him into the copy room. Her new skirt suddenly seemed very tight, and she thought she could feel him staring at her backside. Sheepishly, she motioned toward a table.

  ‘Just put them down over here. Thank you so much!’

  Did her voice sound a little unsteady? She licked her lips and cleared her throat as inconspicuously as she could. Tim did as he was told and then wiped his hands on his upper thighs. He took a look around the tiny room and nodded.

  ‘So art, huh? And how . . . do you balance that with shredding documents?’

  Didn’t he have someplace else to be? She was finding it hard enough not to propose right then and there.

  ‘Yep, art,’ she said curtly. ‘Peter Latham is my dad. I’ve no say when it comes to shredding.’

  Her little joke made Tim smile, and he bowed his head in reverence. ‘I see.’ He looked at Lauren as if contemplating whether he should have guessed her status as first daughter here at the firm. ‘My normal advice would be to seek legal counsel in the case of employer coercion, but . . . but in this case . . . I mean, seeing that I might risk my job . . .’ He gave her a wink, and his dimples were back. ‘I won’t, but instead I will offer to help with these binders again any time you need.’

  Lauren laughed out loud. She pushed the files aside and leaned with her hip against the tabletop to make herself look even skinnier. This Tim guy was a hole-in-one! Not only because he was devastatingly handsome, but also because he was a pleasure to be around. His voice was wonderful: deep and masculine and confident; and the fresh scent of his cologne conjured up images of him standing under the shower.

  ‘Oh, I see which way the wind blows. Where are all the good men who cross hell and high water for a damsel in distress? Who face every danger and pay any price just to win a lady’s favor?’

  ‘Sorry, haven’t seen any of those around in a long time!’ Tim admitted with a grin and turned toward the door. ‘But, Lauren, since you’re not going to sue the diner after all – perhaps we could, as compensation for my lack of heroic chivalry, go grab a coffee sometime?’

  He was leaning in the doorway, waiting for her answer, and his ice-blue eyes were holding her captive. He engulfed her, wrapped her up in his smile, in his scent, and in his easy, noncommittal words. So what if she met up with him for coffee?

  ‘And what are you going to tell your girlfriend?’ she ventured.

  Tim took an audible breath and ran his hand over his tie. Only then did he look up again. ‘You mean Caroline? From the diner?’ He hesitated. ‘She’s not my girlfriend. We . . .’

  ‘You’re just having sex?’

  He curled up the corners of his mouth and raised his hands in an exasperated gesture.

  ‘That’s one way of putting it, yes.’

  ‘She’s . . . very pretty.’

  Tim smirked. ‘So are you.’

  Lauren felt the heat in her cheeks and a flutter in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t fail to notice that he was coming on to her.

  ‘So she wouldn’t have a problem with us seeing each other from time to time?’

  Now it was his turn to sheepishly rub his chin.

  ‘Exclusivity is not a requirement in our . . . relationship.’ He winked at her. ‘We can see each other – if you like.’

  Lauren didn’t really know what to say. She didn’t want to muscle in on someone else’s relationship, but Tim was a great guy, and she felt drawn to him. On the other hand, what could really happen with a man who was somehow involved with someone else?

  ‘Lauren?’ he followed up on his question and glanced out the door, saying hello to someone who was passing in the hall. ‘So, what do you say? Will you go out with me?’

  ‘Fine!’ she caved in and pushed herself off the table. ‘But if the coffee is too hot again we’ll turn this into a class action suit. Art doesn’t pay, you know.’

  A smile was dancing around his lips, and with a wink he disappeared into the hallway.

  ‘Lauren Latham,’ she scolded herself after spending several moments staring at the spot where Tim had stood only seconds ago. ‘You are not going to be silly and fall for a guy who is so obviously a womanizer!’

  Deep in thought, she opened the first binder and pulled out a pile of documents. Then she started the shredder and spent several hours turning old minutes of proceedings into strands of paper spaghetti. In her mind she was still standing in the elevator with Tim Parker. And the more thinly cut paper strips the shredder spat out, the clearer it became to Lauren that Tim had to absolutely come to her birthday party. And if she had to invite the entire law firm just to convince him, then she would do that, too.

  * * *

  ‘You’ve always been the kind of person who takes what she wants. And you have no idea how glad I was when you took the initiative,’ Tim admitted as he looked around. The people gathered here tonight had been a part of Lauren’s life for so much longer than he had. And he was full of gratitude that he was allowed to be one of them. Rachel, her brother Chris, and Lauren’s family were his family today, too. He knew, come what may, they’d be there for him. He knew he was going to need them, and soon. And he also knew that they would give him the support he needed when the time came.

  ‘That’s girls for you,’ Rachel chimed in. ‘If you guys can’t get your act together, then we need to take our fate into our own hands.’

  She got up, bent forward, and threw a couple of pieces of wood into the flickering flames. Nobody here wanted the fire to go out – tonight, it held them all together. Then Rachel took her seat next to Lauren.

  ‘That’s just how we are. We decide what we want.’ There were tears in her eyes, but her smile was full of warmth and love. She was no longer speaking about what happened then. She was speaking about what was going to happen. She understood – and this was so endlessly important to Lauren.

  Carefully, trying not to wake Alyssa who was sleeping in her lap, Lauren leaned over and hugged her best friend.

  ‘No tears today,’ she reminded her, but could nevertheless feel the hard lump in her own throat.

  Rachel nodded
and dabbed her eyes with a tissue. It was black with smudged mascara.

  ‘All right, fine, distract me. Tell us how the story continues,’ Rachel asked.

  ‘Oh lord, it’s been such a long time! I’m not sure I can get all the pieces of memory to fit together,’ Lauren admitted and furrowed her brow in concentration. She was trying to keep her composure, for the night was still young. She did not want the mood to turn sour. ‘You guys were all there. Help me. What’s the next bit of the story?’

  ‘Well, that’s easy,’ Tim said, coming to her aid with a big grin. ‘You were smitten with me.’

  Lauren smiled. Under the blue night sky, in the soft, romantic light of the bonfire, it was easy for her to agree with him.

  ‘Yeah, I had a crush on you – I had fallen for you big time,’ she admitted, and amidst her brother Ben’s cheers Tim pulled Lauren backward and leaned in. Giggling like a schoolgirl, she gave in to her husband’s passionate kiss.

  Suddenly, the night no longer felt cold. And for a moment she even forgot about the throbbing pain behind her temples. She was filled with a feeling of warmth and happiness, and it made her heart speed up. A feeling too rarely felt these past few months.

  ‘Oh, yes, the party! I remember it well. Mia honey, your mother used to throw lots of wild parties down here by the lake,’ Peter Latham explained to his thirteen-year-old granddaughter with a twinkle in his eye.

  ‘For real?’ Mia prodded without hesitation. Lauren could almost see her mind calculating whether this piece of information could somehow be of use to her.

  ‘Well, they weren’t that wild!’ Lauren objected, but her dad only smiled into his silvery beard.

  ‘All right, so maybe the parties weren’t that wild,’ he conceded, amused. ‘Otherwise I would never have allowed you to invite your whole tribe all the time.’ He let his eyes wander from face to face by the fire. Everyone knew that he considered his daughter’s friends to be part of the family.

  ‘Do you remember what you used to tell us back in the day?’ Rachel turned to Peter. Her black hair had an almost blue sheen in the moonlight, and with her raspy voice she sounded like a fortune teller. She waved at Mason and offered him a grateful smile when he walked over.

  ‘Truer words were never spoken, Peter. We should have taken them to heart much sooner,’ Rachel remembered and reached for her beloved’s hand.

  The Party

  The sun was already low, and veils of clouds formed a brilliant purple in the sky. The surface of Lake Champlain danced, reflecting the colors, and the ducks near the shore looked as if they were dipping their heads into liquid gold.

  There was a light breeze blowing across the lake and making the burning torches that reached all the way up to the spacious porch in front of the house flicker. Lauren shivered and rubbed her arms. The thin satin of her sapphire-green shirt did not keep her warm, and she was glad that she had chosen to wear a pair of jeans instead of a short skirt. It was late September already, but the summery breeze that they’d had these last few days could easily make you forget that fact.

  ‘Go get yourself a jacket,’ Lauren’s mother Celeste suggested, wiping one of the garden chairs clean with a wet cloth.

  ‘It’s all right, Mom. Once the party’s started I’m sure I’ll warm up.’ Lauren hadn’t dressed like this just for fun – she wanted to impress Tim. After all, she’d plucked up the courage to invite him. But despite all of her efforts to look pretty, next to Rachel she still felt like a wilting flower. Rachel was wearing a dark-red cat-suit with black knee-high boots, and looked absolutely stunning. She was, after all, trying to attract a fancy dentist!

  Lauren’s dad Peter stepped outside through the big folding doors and handed Lauren and Rachel a martini each.

  ‘Here’s to you, girls! May all your wishes come true!’ He raised his glass and pilfered the olive from his daughter’s drink.

  Lauren smirked, because she never liked the olives.

  ‘Thanks, Dad. But if all our wishes are coming true this year, then what the heck are we going to do with the rest of our boring lives?’

  ‘You’ll see – I’m sure you can come up with a few more wishes for the next year. Once you get to my ripe old age . . . you’ll have so many wishes piled up that you know for a fact you won’t have time for them all. So, girls, start early if you want your dreams to come true.’

  Rachel nodded.

  ‘Wise words, Peter. And from the corner of my eye I can see the man who might just give me sweet dreams in the future.’ She raised her hand and walked toward Mason, who was approaching from the gravel path leading around the house.

  ‘And what about you, honey? What will make you happy this year?’ Peter asked, putting his arm around her shoulders. Lauren leaned her head against her father’s strong chest like she used to, and hugged him back. Peter didn’t look fifty, even if he had piled on a few pounds thanks to his many years of working in an office. His gray hair still showed a few coppery strands, and his laugh was as fresh and bright as always. Only the tiny wrinkles around his eyes had become deeper over the past few years, but that only made him all the more likeable. His carrot-colored hair, his struggles with his weight, plus a love for all things sweet was something Lauren had inherited from him, while her delicate features came from her mom.

  Lauren wondered how her dad would react if she started seeing one of his lawyers. Trying to get a feel for his stance, she asked: ‘Do you know Tim Parker? He’s . . .’

  ‘A brilliant lawyer. I keep asking myself if he isn’t wasting his talent up here in Vermont. I think he’d be a suitable candidate for the New York office. On the other hand, I would bypass several of his older and more experienced colleagues if I were to transfer him. Which I don’t really want to do. Why do you ask? Do you know him?’

  Lauren emptied her martini glass and strolled with her dad through the yard and down to the water. She didn’t like the idea of Tim getting transferred to New York. Not now that she was falling for him.

  ‘I invited him here tonight. He seems nice.’

  Peter looked at her for a while, as if trying to read her mind. He was probably thinking about how best to protect her, but after a brief pause he nodded.

  ‘If you say so, honey, I’m sure you’re right.’ He buried his hands deep in the pockets of his suit pants. Only the argyle sweater vest he was wearing over his shirt hinted at the fact that it was the weekend. The rest of his outfit tonight would be perfectly suitable for a court hearing.

  ‘You’ve always known what was best for you.’

  They strolled alongside the banks of the lake. The first leaves were already dipped in fall colors, glowing brilliantly in the warm evening light, and Lauren could not imagine a more beautiful place than this, her home. Her family’s estate included not only the main house, which they all lived in, but also a smaller lake house, which she always hoped to one day decorate and make her own. Now that she was letting her eyes wander over the whitewashed, wood panelled outer walls and the large latticed windows, she could easily imagine moving in right away. But first she would need to finish art school and figure out how she was going to make a living after college. Whatever she ended up doing, she hoped it wouldn’t tear her away from her family.

  ‘We should go back, your guests are arriving. And I’m going to take your mom out to dinner, otherwise she’ll be here all night cleaning up after you.’

  ‘She shouldn’t worry. It’s only a little party.’

  ‘You know how she is.’

  Yes, Lauren did know what her mother was like. Celeste Latham enjoyed her job as a homemaker and mother, and she liked things spotlessly clean. Ever since Lauren’s older brother by three years, Benjamin, had left home to pursue a career in professional baseball, Celeste didn’t need to wash his sports clothes anymore and the casual observer might think that Celeste was a little bored without that to occupy her time.

  With a last glance back to the little house, Lauren followed her dad back to the porch. Rac
hel had already poured the champagne, and welcomed her brother Chris along with his latest conquest Blake, plus a co-worker from the physical therapy center. Mostly, though, she was busying herself with giving her attractive dentist long, languishing looks.

  Lauren was happy that Rachel’s brave physicality was paying off. A worried glance at her watch showed her that her own date Tim was now an hour late – and she wondered if he was going to show up at all. Why would she ever have assumed he would? She was not as sexy as blonde bombshell Caroline.

  ‘Hey, Lorelei!’ Chris chirped, giving Lauren a boisterous hug from behind. Nobody except Rachel’s older brother by two years called her that, but he could not be dissuaded from it. He could also not be discouraged from pressing wet, unwelcome kisses into the nape of her neck whenever he saw an opportunity. What a childish, tattooed baby!

  ‘Hey, Chris!’ Lauren wrenched free of his embrace and motioned toward his date, who was shooting her jealous glances. ‘Don’t forget that you didn’t come here alone!’ Lauren leaned closer to his ear so that his dark, shoulder-length hair touched her cleavage. ‘I think she wants to kill me, so keep an eye on her, would you?’

  Chris gave his cheekiest grin and slammed his fist against the flat of his palm. ‘Don’t worry, Lorelei, anyone who wants to pick a fight with you will need to get past me first! I shall protect you. Always! But first I’m going to get my date a drink.’

  Lauren laughed and nudged him in the side. She could see a brand-new tattoo peeking out from under his T-shirt. He must have dozens of those things all over his body by now.

  ‘I know, I know! You’re my hero. Which is why I’m going to get you that martini. And now go and have fun with . . . your biker chick whose name has already slipped my mind.’

  Chris winked at her, and whispered, ‘Same thing happened to me yesterday morning – but, believe me, it was way more embarrassing for me!’

  ‘Why don’t you have it tattooed on yourself, just to be on the safe side?’ Lauren suggested cheerfully.