“It was. A real tough time. Summertime, real dry, lightning strike. Spread all the way to my back acreage. Took out four of my best bulls along with a good quarter of my land, and my house.”
“That’s terrible,” Lauren said, and meant it. She couldn’t imagine losing everything like that. “Was anyone hurt?”
“Mercifully, no. And it was contained before it spread any farther through the valley.” He turned and started moving the meat to the platters on the sideboard. “Took a while to go through all the legal processes, insurance and such, so I had time to think about what I wanted. I considered moving into town, but I’ve grown attached to living out here, seeing all this every day.” He waved his long handled fork toward the mountains, but didn’t really look at them. “So, I did some research on architects and Dave happened to be in town on vacation, and the rest just sort of sprang from that.” He did look up then, looked at his house. “I’m real proud of what we accomplished here.” He glanced at Lauren. “We talk about the environmental issues, but it’s time more of us put ourselves into the picture intimately, if you know what I mean. It’s been something of a personal movement of mine ever since.”
Lauren smiled and nodded, even though now he sounded like he was stumping his cause on the campaign trail. Maybe he simply couldn’t help it. Maybe he’d been mayor for so long, politico-speak was his normal conversational style. But she also couldn’t help but think if he was so environmentally conscious, that his ‘personal movement’ would have been more readily reflected in the press she’d been poring over, both back in D.C., and, more intimately, the past day or two.
She glanced at her mother, to see if she could gauge her expression while listening to her husband pontificate, but she was still busily arranging everything just so. “It’s a beautiful table, Mom,” she said, awed, as usual by how her mother made it all look so effortless. “You really always amaze me with how you put things together.” She laughed a little and looked at Jake. “I take after my father. We couldn’t arrange plastic silverware on a picnic table if our lives depended on it.”
“Oh, it’s just force of habit,” Charlene said. “You do anything long enough it becomes second nature.” She primped the last napkin, then, looking satisfied and pleased despite brushing off the compliment, she spread her arms to them. “Fill your plates and come have a seat. I’ll get the lemonade and the tea.”
“Would anyone care for wine?” Arlen asked. “Beer, Jake?”
“I’m fine with lemonade,” Jake said. “Haven’t had any in a long time and it sounds good.”
“Me, too,” Lauren said.
“I can bring out a bottle of cabernet, if you—”
“Don’t bother with it,” Arlen told Charlene. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. I’ll have some lemonade, too.”
Conversation ceased as they all went about filling plates from the sideboards, giving Lauren more time to think. Other than Charlene’s aborted attempt to talk about the house, neither of them included the other in their conversational efforts, nor did they comment on what the other was saying. When she’d commented on the lovely table, she’d half expected Arlen to give her props as well, saying something about her mother’s wonderful hostessing capabilities, but he’d said nothing. Maybe he wasn’t paying attention, or the sort who passed out compliments. Hard to say. The air between them wasn’t strained. But it was hardly convivial or teamlike. Much less affectionate. She just didn’t get it.
Fortunately, this time she had Jake with her, as a second set of eyes and ears. Maybe she really would just not ever get it and had to simply get past it. Or maybe Jake would confirm what every second spent around the two of them continued to reinforce inside her: which was that these two people may be happy in their life here, but they weren’t exactly happy with each other. Much less in love.
“Hey,” Jake said as he moved in next to her while she used the tongs to grab a roasted ear of corn.
“Hey, yourself,” she said, feeling ridiculously breathless just by his very nearness. She bobbled the corn and Jake quickly moved to cover her hand with his own.
“Careful there.”
“Got it,” she said, delivering corn husk to plate. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
She glanced at him. He was still leaning in closely, so she could talk without being overheard. “I mean for all of it. You really didn’t have to come here tonight. I can’t imagine this is great fun for you.”
“So far it’s just been handling the rituals surrounding the manly art of barbecue.” He leaned in front of her to snag his own ear of corn and used the motion to catch her gaze with his own. “How are you holding up? How was the tour?”
“Good.”
He quirked a brow, but led her on toward the smoker as Arlen and Charlene made their way to the grill.
“That sounds…less than enthusiastic.”
“No, not at all. We’re good, or getting there. I’m way more encouraged than I was. She’s truly happy here and it shows in what she’s done with the house. I’m finding out all kinds of things about her I didn’t know. I guess she didn’t really, either.”
“But?”
She glanced at him. “You’re way too good at reading me, for knowing me such a short time.”
“Maybe we’re just in tune.”
Maybe they were. She heard his words from earlier in the day echo through her mind. Sometimes you just know.
“We’ll talk later,” she said, feeling her mother and Arlen drawing closer. “Just…watch them together.”
“What do you—”
“Are you all getting enough to eat?” her mother asked as she stepped in behind them. “Please, there’s enough here for a week of leftovers. Jake, I hope you’ll consider taking some home with you.”
“Thank you, Mrs.—”
“Charlene,” she said. “Please.”
“Certainly. I appreciate your generosity in inviting me this evening, but please don’t feel—”
“Please, otherwise I’ll be having barbecue for a week. You’d be doing me a favor. Since Arlen got this smoker—”
“I thought you were enjoying it,” he asked as he joined them.
“I am,” she said, carefully shifting between Lauren and Jake so she could serve her plate.
“Here, let me,” Jake said, quick to take up the tongs. “What can I get you?”
“I’d love some ribs,” she said. “And I do like the smoker,” she said to Arlen, “but you have to admit we’ve had just about everything you can smoke on it over the past few weeks.” She smiled to smooth over any possible ruffled feathers, ever the perfect hostess.
Arlen chuckled, but looked a bit ruddier about the cheeks. Could have been the heat from the barbecue and smoker. “What can I say, when you do something, you should keep doing it until you get it right.”
“Here you are,” Jake said, taking care of serving Charlene. “I think we’ve perfected it with this batch.” He wiggled his eyebrows a little. “And, you know, winter will be here sooner rather than later, so you can always get retaliation with a Crock-pot.”
Lauren and her mother both started laughing, leaving Arlen and Jake looking perplexed. “Long story,” Lauren said, “but suffice it to say that Matthews women and electrical cookware…not a good match.”
Jake gently nudged Lauren. “Good to know.”
“The secret is out,” she said, still smiling.
Arlen finished filling his plate at the smoker. “You already know what a great hostess Charlene is,” he said, “but we do try and leave the cooking to others.”
“Now, Arlen, you know I make a perfectly respectable dry martini.”
Everyone chuckled and Charlene led them and their loaded plates to the table. Lauren relaxed a little. Finally, a little banter. It was about time. She tried to catch any further byplay—shared glances, anything—between the two, but Jake stepped in front of her to help pull her chair out, and they were both seated across from them by the time she�
��d unloaded her plate and taken her seat. “Thank you,” she said, glancing up with a smile as Jake helped push her chair in.
“My pleasure.” He took the seat next to her, so they both faced their hosts. “You do set a beautiful table, Mrs.—Charlene,” he said, quickly correcting himself. “Are those flowers from your garden?”
“In fact, they are. As you probably know, Arlen was very involved in getting the botanical gardens started in Cedar Springs some years ago. So I had the very fortunate privilege of working with the head gardener there to get some clippings and some advice.”
“A very nice perk,” Lauren said.
“You know something about that, I suppose,” Arlen said. His tone was entirely conversational as he started digging into the ribs on his plate. “Perks, I mean. Working for Senator Fordham must come with a few. He’s pretty highly placed.”
Lauren felt rather than saw Jake come to attention at the comment, which she found equally interesting. She’d have to ask him his thoughts on that, too, later. But while she’d have much preferred to eat her dinner and let her mind wander to the possible directions her evening might take once they departed the ranch house, she couldn’t afford to let Arlen’s conversational gambit go to waste.
“I would say the sacrifices are greater than the perks, but some of them aren’t all that bad.” She smiled. “Still the stuff you put up with makes it a little easier to take advantage of the perks you do receive without feeling too guilty about it. They’re usually well earned. You probably feel the same, having been mayor for so many years.”
“I do my best not to take advantage, but in a small town, we all rub each other’s back, as it were.” He settled into his meal but lifted his gaze to meet Lauren’s. “How long have you been in D.C.? Your mother tells me you rose pretty quickly in the ranks. Impressive.”
Lauren risked a glance at her mother, but she was busy skewering her corn cob with little red-and-black-checked glass chickens. She realized they matched the kitchen décor, and wondered again at the change in her mother. She’d never thought of her as particularly whimsical. At all, actually. Pragmatic, steady, determined, gracious, with an amazing eye for detail, her style had always been understated southern elegance. In a million years she’d have never expected ceramic chickens and antique baking implements used as room décor, no matter the room.
But Lauren loved her mother’s new kitchen, loved the warmth, the ambience. And while her mother had always been nothing less than a warm and welcoming hostess, and made certain her home reflected those same sensibilities, that warmth had generally been established by the polish in the fine oak and heritage furnishings, the perfectly constructed and color-coordinated window treatments, all contrasted with the bright colors of the fresh flower arrangements that always filled their home. Whimsical, her childhood home was not.
And yet, her mother’s exquisite eye hadn’t failed her in her most recent stint as home designer. So the whimsy was all hers. And Lauren found she really wanted to get to know the woman who had chosen a checkerboard backsplash and ceramic chicken and rooster salt and pepper shakers. She thought she knew her mother better than anyone. But now she wondered if her own life upheaval had skewed her perceptions of…well, everything in her life.
“Lauren?”
She jerked her gaze away from the little cob skewers she’d been fiddling with. “I’m sorry, I lost track there for a moment.”
“Arlen was just commenting on your impressive rise through the ranks back home,” Jake said, resting his palm on her knee beneath the table and giving her a reassuring squeeze.
Lauren fully trusted he wouldn’t say anything about her recent exodus from the ranks, and was struck again by how well they’d connected in such a short time. Reassuring, indeed. “Well, I don’t know how impressive it is,” she said. “It’s just nice to be rewarded for hard work. And the work is a lot easier when you believe in what you’re doing.”
“Todd is very lucky to have someone like you at his side,” her mother said, “and it’s good to see he knows it.”
“How was it you came to work for him?” Arlen asked.
“I had just taken my bar exam and, growing up as I did, have always been interested in both the law and politics. Todd was running for county commissioner then, and I was on a committee offering him some volunteer legal advice on a few items of local interest that he might want to address in his campaign.” She lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “Things just moved forward from there.” She took a bite of her ribs, really wanting to change the subject to…anything else. “This is really delicious.”
“It really is,” Jake said, picking up her cue. “Now I’m going to have to think about getting a smoker. My grill is about worn out.”
“Don’t you have a catalog from the company?” her mother asked Arlen.
Arlen responded that he did, and the conversation moved mercifully off in the direction of men and their toys. Jake and Arlen were in a discussion of gas versus charcoal grills, when Lauren shifted her chair back. Jake started to do the same, but she put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “No need,” she said. “I just need to find the powder room.”
He covered her hand with his own, then laughed when he got barbecue sauce on her fingers. “Sorry, let me—”
“I’ll take care of that, too,” she said, hoping he was getting what she wanted from him, which was to keep her mother and Arlen occupied for a few minutes. Or longer. “I won’t be long.”
He glanced up at her and she met his gaze for a moment, then smiled at their hosts and excused herself.
“It’s just down the hall, dear, to the left.” Her mother started to move her chair back, but Lauren stopped her.
“I’ll find it. Please, enjoy your food. Besides, they may need a referee,” she added with a laugh. As if they were all just one big happy, jovial family. Which, despite every effort being made here, they were not.
Lauren let herself into the house and quickly rinsed her fingers off in the kitchen sink before heading down the hall. Only she wasn’t looking for the bathroom, she was looking for…“Bingo,” she breathed, as she cracked a door open and saw a number of antlered heads lining the walls. She glanced over her shoulder, but could still see everyone gathered on the patio through the big bay window in the breakfast nook.
She pushed the door open just enough to slip into Arlen’s office. And immediately found herself agreeing with her mother. All those hollow stares were more than a bit unnerving. She couldn’t even name the species of half the things lining the walls of his very heavily masculine study. With a little shudder, she tried to avoid a direct look into the eyes of any of them and did a slow circumference of the room. It was a fairly decent-size home office, with three of the walls lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, all filled with both books, and interspersed with framed photos, the occasional award, and a few small pieces of art. The fourth wall was dominated by a large fireplace and a very, very large moose head mounted over it. “Sorry, Bullwinkle,” she said as she side-stepped around the extensive antlers, despite their being well over her head. She hadn’t thought, from the outside, that the ranch style home would have supported cathedral ceilings, but it was a must in a room like this, housing the type of things it did.
She stepped over to the first bookcase, interested to see what kind of books he collected, and was drawn instead to a few of the framed photos tucked here and there on each shelf. More of them dotted the wall by the mantle and the door. She didn’t recognize the people in the photos, but enough of them were known to her to realize that they were all either political figures or well-positioned businessmen. Which, she knew, were often the big pockets needed to build a successful campaign war chest. She couldn’t say for sure, but given the subtle and not-so-subtle changes in Arlen’s general appearance and the suits he wore, it appeared the time frame of these photos spread over several decades, at least.
She glanced at the door again, then moved behind his desk. She had no business, non
e whatsoever, even thinking about snooping through his personal things. But…something just wasn’t right. Her mother and Arlen’s continued outward appearance of being more associates than spouses being just one of the more overt signals. But despite the smiles and surface ease, there was an unmistakable undercurrent here that Lauren knew had to be attributed to more than her sudden arrival in their lives. She just needed…something, some concrete little something that she could put her finger on. It didn’t necessarily even have to be anything nefarious or even bad, just…something. Something that would explain why every time she looked at Arlen Thompson, she felt her stomach knot.
Squashing any guilt she might have had by telling herself she was doing this to protect her mother, she tugged gently at first one desk drawer, then another. Locked. All of them. Which…wasn’t that kind of odd in the very rural home office of a small town mayor? What did he have to lock up? Wasn’t the only other person here her mother? Maybe they had cleaning staff, she told herself, trying to play devil’s advocate, striving to really be open minded. Maybe he was just a private person.
She tugged at the long center drawer and was surprised when it slid open. But there was nothing in there but the typical office detritus of pens, pencils, paper clips, and the like. The top of his desk was completely clean of all items save the leather blotter in the center. Not so much as a Rolodex or daytimer, or even an old-fashioned blotter. She slid the drawer shut and turned around to look at the shelves behind her. More framed photos of Arlen and the parade of politicos. She tilted her head to read some of the titles of the leather-bound and hard-cover books.
“You have an interest in political history?”
Lauren started badly, instinctively pressing her hand to her suddenly thumping heart. But she quickly regrouped and was smiling when she turned to face Arlen, who was standing in the open doorway.
“Sorry, you startled me. And I didn’t mean to intrude. I just…I saw the shelves through the open door and I was curious. So many books. Quite a collection.”
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