are going to be a dangerous woman,” Hugo predicted, leaving money on the table.
“I knew you’d get me,” she said, jumping up to follow him out.
“Did you drive into Random Point?” Hugo asked as they walked out of the bookstore and back across cobbled Shadow Lane to his own shop.
“Yes, I left my rental car at the Inn.”
“You’ve got yourself a room?”
“Of course. I didn’t know if I’d be welcome to stay with you.”
“Well, keep the room for tonight while I break the news to Laura. Did I mention I was in the middle of proposing to her when you walked in? And she was in the middle of putting me off, for some reason I can’t understand. Tomorrow you can come and stay with me. Tonight I need to hash this out with her or it’s going to preoccupy me. And I want to give you my full attention.”
“She’s beautiful. I hope she likes me.”
“Oh, you’ll be like a sister to her before you know it. In fact, I have a lot of friends who are going to make a very large fuss over you.”
Amanda beamed. She had worked hard and been modest to please her stepfather, with the new one, she would merely have fun and in so doing, please him as well. She had one week before her freshman year commenced. After which there would be little time to spare. She saw that she was making a good impression. Her mother’s predictions about Hugo had all come true. He was easily beguiled, pleasant, natural and more than willing to treat her as a mature adult. Mother had been wise to withhold her from Hugo. He would have turned her head.
She’d been perfectly serious in expressing her desire to pose for Playboy, for it was part of her master plan, to develop a glamorous persona as an arresting counterpoint to her serious academic one. She planned to double major in economics and Latin American studies, and was already fluent in Spanish. She envisioned herself at some future point, in a tight, white linen suit and four inch high, ankle-strap heels, devastating dark, hot-blooded men across board room tables in sultry climes, then being ravished by them under mosquito netting. She had a framed photograph of Benecio del Toro by her bedside and a scrapbook of the greatest Latin actors of the 20th century that she used to look at before going to sleep, choosing a different dark eyed face each night to fantasize about in her dreams.
The next afternoon, a shimmering one in late September, Laura was still thinking over Hugo’s proposal as she peddled her bike down leaf-dappled Shadow Lane. The sky was exceptionally blue and the air sweet and balmy on this last golden day of summer. She’d unconsciously turned her wheels toward Michael Flagg’s tavern. She might get a sandwich. Perhaps Marguerite would be there and they could discuss everything. When Laura discovered that it was only Michael there, in the empty pub, her pulse raced.
“Fate has decided the events to follow,” Laura told herself, sliding onto a bar stool and smiling at her host. Michael stopped polishing glasses and clasped her hands in greeting.
“You’re just in time for lunch,” said Michael, opening the box of sandwiches that had just been delivered from the Ball and Feather Inn. “They sent chicken tarragon, roast lamb and pepper steak.”
“I’ll have a pinot grigio and the chicken,” said Laura, then watched her fair haired, attractive and muscular 6’3” host open a bottle for her. “Where is everyone?” she asked, when he set the plate and glass before her.
“Carmen’s not coming in until later.”
“Where’s Marguerite? I didn’t see her at the gym this morning.”
“She took the baby and the nanny to Boston for a few days to visit her family.”
“This must be kismet,” Laura thought to herself, taking a sip of the crisp, fruity wine. She said, “Hugo finally proposed to me.”
“High time!” Michael smiled, well aware of Hugo’s long pursuit of Laura, which had only resolved itself into a relationship in the last few years. “Have you said yes?”
“I’m still thinking it over. I still have one wild oat left to sow and I think I’d rather do that before than after I’m married.”
“Really!” Michael leaned back against the counter behind him and folded his arms. The former detective immediately realized that hunger for something other than a fancy baguette sandwich had brought Laura to The Dutch that day. “And might this particular oat be the lawful wedded possession of your best friend?”
“I don’t think Marguerite would mind. Especially since she’s out of town anyway. She was Hugo’s plaything for years. Why shouldn’t I be yours for one hour?”
“That’s all I get, one hour?”
“Maybe two?” Laura grinned.
“Is Hugo going to hear about this?”
“No. He’d find it disagreeable.”
“In that case, Marguerite shouldn’t hear about it either.”
“Agreed.”
“We don’t want to risk her blurting it out to Hugo.”
“Right.”
“Well? Where should we do this thing?”
“The house in the woods, I think,” said Laura, referring to Michael’s residence, a handsomely fitted out cottage which together with Marguerite’s white Cape Cod house in the village afforded the newlyweds just the right amount of living space. It was the place where he and Marguerite went to make love and play in complete privacy, a luxury worth an extra mortgage payment.
Laura bit delicately into the sandwich and drank some wine. Then she laughed.
“What?” Michael was looking at her, trying to figure out why it had taken her six years to ask him to play. He had always coveted the dark-eyed brunette, from the first day he met her, in Marguerite Alexander’s shop.
“Hugo thinks I’m hesitating because I’m still brooding about that stupid caning he gave me years ago.”
“Well, you didn’t talk to him for two years,” Michael pointed out.
“I know. It was the only way I could make sure he realized I don’t like that kind of thing.”
“I think you made your point.”
“So, you’ll never believe this, but guess who walked into the shop yesterday...”
Hugo and Amanda had spent the afternoon biking around Random Point, eating a picnic lunch on the beach and getting stoned in the woods.
He’d brought a blanket in his knapsack and they lay on their backs, looking up at the cottony clouds scudding across the deepest of blue skies through the latticed umbrella of turning leaves.
“This IS the best day of my life,” she confided. “Everything is just so engaging.”
“What I can’t understand is,” he leaned up on an elbow to look down at her, “why you didn’t get in touch with me until now. I mean, I can understand you
