The Summerhouse Read online

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Somehow, she wasn’t surprised when she turned and saw Hal standing behind her. What had made her think that she wouldn’t recognize him? She hadn’t wanted to admit it to Ellie and Madison, but over the years she’d followed his career quite closely. She’d even subscribed to some obscure magazines because they were likely to have stories about Hal in them.

  Now she looked at him, knowing that he was going to get better looking as he grew older. At twenty, he was a nice-looking boy with brown hair and brown eyes, and the best teeth that money could straighten, but he was ordinary-looking, not nearly as handsome as Alan was at twenty. But Leslie knew that age lines and gray hair and a body that was kept taut and hard was going to make Hal a knockout at forty.

  “Yes,” she said. “Serene.”

  He smiled, making his eyes crinkle at the corners. “That’s just the way my mother describes it. She designed it and had it built the first year after she married my father. She says that building has saved her sanity.”

  Leslie laughed. “Your father is that bad, is he?” She’d read a couple of in-depth articles about Hal and she knew that his father was a horror.

  “Worse. He’s as forceful as my mother is—” He broke off, as though he weren’t sure how to describe his mother.

  “Strong,” Leslie said. “I would guess that your mother is the solid foundation that your father has built himself on. A person can’t push against the world without a good, solid foundation.” This was her own opinion after having met the woman. If her husband was sending the doctor out to see her, he wanted her to stay healthy.

  Hal looked at her with eyes that showed surprise and maybe even shock. “Yes, you’re right. My mother is the strong one in the family, but not many people see that. My father is so—”

  “Dynamic?”

  “I was going to say, in-your-face, but ‘dynamic’ is a nice word.”

  She turned away to look back at the little summerhouse nestled among the trees, and she could feel his eyes on her. “Why did you invite me here?” she asked softly. It was a question that had haunted her for twenty years. “Did we meet somewhere and I don’t remember it?”

  “No,” he said, “not really. But I’ve watched you for three years now, and—” He broke off because Leslie had turned to give him a sharp look.

  She had to remind herself that it was only 1980 and that stalkers hadn’t yet come under prosecution, but she didn’t like the way he’d said that he’d been watching her.

  “Whoa,” Hal said, putting his hands up before his face as though to act as a shield. “I didn’t mean anything bad. I’m male; I watch all the pretty girls, okay?”

  Leslie let out her pent-up breath and smiled. “Sorry. It’s just that with being a dancer you get some . . .” She waved her hand to finish the sentence.

  “Yes, I would imagine that with a body like yours you get every pervert on campus following you.”

  Leslie knew that she should say something modest, but it had been a long time since anyone had paid her such a compliment—a long time since she’d been in good enough shape to deserve such a compliment. Turning away, she blushed all the way to her hair roots.

  “Why did you leave the party so early last night?” he asked.

  “I . . .” she began.

  “Didn’t know anyone, and it was too noisy and too busy?” he suggested.

  Laughing, Leslie turned back to look at him. “Exactly. You’re fairly perceptive, aren’t you?”

  “Fairly,” he said, and she could tell that he was amused. No doubt he was used to girls who flattered him endlessly.

  “So why did you invite me?” she asked again. “And don’t you dare say anything about the shape of me.”

  “That will be difficult,” he said.

  Heavens! But it had been many years since Leslie had flirted with anyone. In fact, had she ever flirted with a man? Alan wasn’t exactly the flirting type.

  “Maybe I should ask you why you accepted,” Hal said. “I hear you’re engaged to be married the second you graduate.”

  “His car broke down and I was going to be spending the week alone, and I wanted to see this place. Maybe I’ll tell my children that I visited the Formund estate and met Halliwell J. Formund IV, who is now president of the U.S.”

  She had meant to make him laugh, but he didn’t. Instead, he was staring at her as though she were a witch. “How did you know about me and politics?” he asked softly.

  “Oh, just something I heard, I guess,” Leslie said, trying to cover herself.

  “There was nothing you could have heard,” he said. “My entire family assumes I’m going into the banking business with my father and my uncles. The idea of politics is inside my head only.”

  “Maybe you look like a politician,” she said, smiling. “In fact, I can easily envision your face on campaign posters. I can even imagine you in Congress and the press saying that you’re a president-in-the-making.”

  He didn’t return her smile but looked away at his mother’s little house. “I think you see me the way I see myself. But my family isn’t going to like it.”

  “Not like that their son wants to be president of the United States?” she asked, incredulous.

  Turning, he looked at her for a while, as though he were considering something. “Would you like to spend the day with me? I mean, just the two of us? We could take a basket of food and go rowing on the lake.”

  It was amazing how much the idea appealed to Leslie. She knew that inside her mind, she was nearly forty, but she was in the body of a twenty-year-old and raging inside her were hormones that she hadn’t felt in many years. The thought of a lazy day on a lake with a handsome young man who thought she was beautiful was vastly appealing.

  He misinterpreted her hesitation. “I won’t lay a finger on you,” he said. “I promise.”

  “Then I am definitely not going,” she said before she thought. But in the next moment they were both laughing.

  “If I must,” Hal said, his eyes sparkling, then he held out his hand to her and in the next moment they were running across the lawn toward the back of the big house, but he stopped outside the door. “If you go in with me and we get the food together, it will be all over the place within seconds,” he said. “Your decision.”

  Looking at him, Leslie marveled that he could be so thoughtful. He knew that she was engaged to another man, and now he was giving her a chance to keep what she was doing secret. How many other boys his age would think of such a thing? “You’re going to make a good president,” she said; then she opened the kitchen door and stepped inside. Let Alan find out. Let Alan feel what Leslie had been feeling in the last months over his assistant, Bambi.

  With a chef and two helpers in it, the kitchen was a flurry of activity as they prepared breakfast, but from the way Hal slipped in and out of the quickly moving people, he was a familiar presence. He knew where the picnic baskets were kept, and he knew where the best foods were stored. Leslie saw two of the workers drop things into Hal’s basket without his asking them to do so. Fifteen minutes later he opened the door and they left the kitchen together, the big basket over Hal’s arm.

  “Do that often?” she asked teasingly.

  “Not with a girl,” he said, “if that’s what you’re asking, but, yes, I often take a lunch and stay away for the entire day.”

  “I thought that young men like you liked parties and girls and . . . well, parties and girls.”

  They were walking quickly, but he gave her a quizzical look. “‘Young men like me,’” he said, turning the phrase over in his mind. “And what does that mean? Aren’t you ‘young’ like me? Yet last night you slipped away from a wonderful party.” Pausing, he smiled. “At least I was told that it was a great party.”

  “You weren’t there?” she asked, wide-eyed.

  “Hate them.”

  “But if you want to be a politician, you’re going to have to go to lots of parties.”