get rough with him, Dudley. Treat him the way you want him to treat you.”
“Oh, I won’t hurt him, Mr. Lightner. He’s my friend.”
Allison put strips of carrots, sliced tomatoes, warm hot dog rolls, potato salad and sliced hard-boiled eggs on the table, and removed the hot dogs and toasted marshmallows from the grill and put them on the table. She looked at him. “I don’t have any beer. Would you like some white wine?”
“Thanks, but I don’t drink anything alcoholic midday. Lemonade or something like that will do the trick.” He didn’t say that he rarely drank anything, other than wine at dinner; for the time being, she’d learned enough about him. She brought iced tea for them and ginger ale for Dudley.
“What can I give Jack?” Dudley asked them.
He didn’t allow anyone to feed his dog, because he didn’t want Jack to obey anyone but him. “He’s not hungry. I fed him a short while before we left home.” He beckoned to Jack. “Sit here.” Jack settled on the floor beside Brock and closed his eyes.
“We have raspberries for dessert,” she said and served them with a dollop of whipped cream. “I bought them yesterday morning, so they’re still fresh.”
As he ate the berries, he looked at her, hoping for a hint as to the direction she wanted their relationship to take, but she looked everywhere except at him. He wished she wouldn’t be so nervous, that she’d feel comfortable with him. He figured that because she’d been married, at least long enough to produce a child, she should know how to hold her own with a man. He’d get to the bottom of that, but he sensed that she was not a worldly woman and he’d better tread with care. He took his plate to the kitchen, rinsed it and put it in the dishwasher. As he turned to leave the kitchen, he saw that Dudley had followed him.
“Can I clean my plate, too, Mr. Lightner?”
“Absolutely. Little boys should do everything they can to help their mother, and that includes obeying her.”
“Yes, sir.” He stood on tiptoe to rinse the plate and then put it in the dishwasher. “Will you come to see us again, Mr. Lightner?”
“If it pleases your mother, I will.” At that moment, he saw from his peripheral vision that she stood just behind him and made a snap decision to go home. He didn’t crowd women, especially if they weren’t on equal footing with him. He was in her house and he wanted her to know that he knew he didn’t belong there.
“Thanks for your hospitality, Allison. If you need me for anything at all, you have my cell-phone number.” To Dudley, he said, “Be a good boy and obey your mother. Don’t go out of this house unless she’s with you. Got that?”
“Yes, sir. I got that.” The boy hugged Jack and then looked up at him. He hunkered in front of the child and put his arms around him. “Thanks for inviting me to your picnic. I enjoyed it. Bye for now.” He stood, looked down at Allison, winked at her and left.
Brock left Allison in a dilemma. If he’d moved to Indian Lake at the behest of her ex-husband, would he make it impossible for him to get into her house without her permission, and would he have to remain in that tiny hamlet for eight or ten months in order to accomplish his mission? It didn’t seem likely, but she had learned that Lawrence Sawyer would go to great lengths to get what he wanted. Brock Lightner had a worldly, almost jaded, demeanor that fascinated and excited her. Young, strong, muscular and sensitive, too. What was it like to have that kind of man make love to you?
She’d married a man twenty-two years her senior. In her youthful innocence, their long and romantic walks in Washington, D.C’s Rock Creek Park had seemed idyllic. And his delight in reading to her beside her parents’ fireplace on cold evenings had seemed to her like domestic bliss. It had not occurred to her that his willingness to postpone sexual intimacy until after their marriage wasn’t necessarily a good thing; her married girlfriends didn’t discuss their sexual experiences with her. But once married, she learned that Lawrence considered sex his right no matter how she felt about it, and that in their bed, he took selfishness to the extreme. She bought some books on the subject and confirmed her belief that she wasn’t getting her due. He didn’t want children, and after she had Dudley, he showed no interest in her, other than to parade her at his social and business affairs. He had no patience with their son, and when Dudley should have been reprimanded or corrected, Lawrence abused him with physical punishment. Although she had long since stopped loving Lawrence and realized after little more than a year that their marriage could not last, it was for his treatment of Dudley that she divorced him.
“Mommie, can Mr. Lightner come to see us again?” Dudley asked her, interrupting her reverie of the past. “I like Mr. Lightner.”
“We’ll see,” she said. “Right now, I want you to take a nap. After you wake up, you must read for an hour and then we’ll go to the post office.”
“All right, Mommie. Can you get me a book about dogs and puppies?”
She told him she would and watched in awe as he pulled off his shoes and clothes and started to his room. “Can I have a kiss?” she asked him. He turned back, kissed her quickly and said, “I have to hurry and finish my nap, so I can read.”
Was this her Dudley? Normally, he had a fit when she told him to take a nap. “Is Providence playing a joke on me?” she asked aloud. “Brock told him to obey me and look at him.” She threw up her hands and went back to her computer. Revising that book had become a chore, one that she wanted to finish as quickly as possible. The telephone rang. She saw her editor’s phone number on the caller ID screen and lifted the receiver.
“Hi, Layla.”
“Hi. You’re not going to like what I have to say, but it will make your book a top seller.”
Allison blew out a long breath and pounded her right fist on her desk. “What is it?”
“Best Bet Publishers just released a dessert cookbook almost identical to yours. We won’t be able to sell yours unless you include pictures of the finished products.”
“What? You’re suggesting that I make all the desserts again just to photograph them? I’m not even using the same oven and that means—”
“I know. I know. And it isn’t in the contract, but if you want the book to sell, this is what you have to do. Go along with us on this and we’ll advertise it and support it to the hilt.”
What choice did she have? “All right, but you’ll have to push back the publication date.”
“We’ll give you three more months.”
She hung up and would have screamed in frustration if screaming would have helped. She put the manuscript aside. Who was going to eat the desserts she had to make? Previously she sent them to the church for their Sunday morning coffee hour, but she hadn’t been to church in Indian Lake. She made a list of her immediate needs and when Dudley awoke, she told him that their afternoon plans had changed and took him to the supermarket.
“This is a surprise. I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon,” the deep masculine voice said. She turned around knowing she’d see Brock. “Say, why so glum?” he asked before she could greet him.
“That’s not the half of it. You’re a writer. How’d you like being asked to redo your book before your editor even saw it?”
“Don’t
