The Summerhouse

by Jude Deveraux

  “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.”

 
“But I assume that those parties will have a purpose, and there is work that will be done when one isn’t at a party, right?”

  “Right,” she said, smiling. “So what will your guests think when they find out that their host isn’t here? That he’s run off with the dancer? More important, what will your family think?”

  “That I’m lucky,” Hal said. “And as for the others, they can entertain themselves. The girls are here because they want to marry my father’s money.”

  “Ah,” Leslie said.

  “And what does that mean?”

  She decided to be honest. “That I didn’t know that you knew.”

  “Couldn’t very well miss it, could I? You wouldn’t believe the number of ‘accidental’ encounters I have with girls. If one more fakes a drowning in the swimming pool, I’ll—”

  “With or without her top on?” Leslie asked.

  “Two with, one without,” Hal said; then they laughed together.

  They’d walked down a pretty little path until they reached a stream. A green canoe was tied to a wooden dock. “This joins a river about half a mile from here,” Hal said as he put the basket in the canoe. “This is your last chance to back out.”

  “And miss an opportunity to put the noses of those girls out of joint? No, thank you. Do you know how to row this thing?”

  Hal smiled. “Yes. You’re sure you want to spend the day with me?” he asked again as Leslie prepared to step into the little canoe.

  She looked into his eyes. They were soft brown and gentle. But under it she could see that rocklike foundation that he spoke of in his mother. “You’re like your mother, aren’t you?” she said softly.

  “Yes,” he answered simply. “Her family isn’t flashy like my father’s, no great heaps of money made. But my mother’s people know what they want when they see it and they go after it. They don’t give up.”

  The way he said it and the way he looked into her eyes made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. It was almost as though he were saying that he wanted her. It was absurd, of course, but it was a feeling she had. Truthfully, she didn’t want to see this. She didn’t want to have to make up her mind about her future right now. Right now it was a beautiful day and she wanted to have a ride in a canoe with a handsome boy who flirted with her.

  “If you ask me to marry you, I’ll tell Alan and he’ll beat you up,” she said in mock seriousness.

  When Hal’s eyes lit up and he laughed, she knew that she’d caught him off guard, but the laughter lightened the mood.

  As he handed her into the canoe, Hal said, “I’ve seen him and I could take him.”

  “When did you see him?” Leslie asked as Hal jumped into the canoe and pushed off.

  “Around. I told you that I’ve been watching you.”

  “Is that like being a Peeping Tom? That won’t look good when they dig up dirt on you when you run for president.” She’d meant it as a joke, but he was serious as he maneuvered the oars to steer them into the middle of the placid stream.

  “There it is again,” he said. “It’s as though you know what’s going to happen. Not that I believe in such things, but are you clairvoyant?”

  Leaning over the side of the canoe, Leslie trailed her hand in the water. “No, not at all. It’s just that—” There wasn’t anything that she could say that would satisfactorily explain what she’d already lived through. Could she tell him that in spite of how she looked, she was one day away from being forty years old and that she was married with two almost-grown children?

  “Are you still with me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered, smiling. “I’m here for at least another three weeks.”

  He opened his mouth to reply to that, but then he closed it. “I like a girl who’s a mystery,” he said. “And you’re about as mysterious as they come.”

  “As mysterious as Cynthia Weller?” she couldn’t resist asking as she trailed her hand in the water. She knew that he married Cynthia and they had three daughters.

  “Don’t believe I know the name,” he said. “Should I?”

  “No, not yet.”

  Hal maneuvered the boat around a tree that had fallen into the stream. “I want you to tell me everything about yourself.”

  “To see if I’m suitable?” she asked, smiling.

  At first Hal frowned; then he smiled. “I get the feeling that you know me, as though you know more about me than I know about myself. And, in answer to your question, yes, I want to know if you’re suitable.”

  When she looked at him, she saw that ambition in his eyes. Every article she’d ever read about Halliwell J. Formund IV had talked about his eyes. The writers said that you could mistake Hal for the boy-next-door—as long as you didn’t look directly into his eyes, that is. Once you looked into those eyes, you saw what was propelling him on the journey toward the Oval Office. “Eye on the Future,” had been the title of one long in-depth article.

  “He doesn’t make mistakes,” the article had said.

  This isn’t a man who will later have pictures surface showing some bikini-clad bimbette sitting on his knee. It was as though Hal decided when he was eighteen years old that he wanted to be president and since then he has conducted his life with that goal in mind. His wife, Cynthia Weller, is eminently suitable, the perfect helpmate for a future president. She’s pretty, but not too pretty. Educated but not so much as to be formidable. She has a quiet sense of humor, a conservative sense of dress, and a background without a hint of scandal. No doubt she will make a perfect First Lady.

  Now Leslie thought about the description of Hal’s wife, and she realized that it described her as well. She was not someone who would cause controversy or engender anger among the American people. She wasn’t elegant like Jacqueline Kennedy, but she wasn’t Hillary Clinton, either.

  “All right,” she said, looking back at Hal. “My father is a building contractor, and . . .”

  Twenty-six

  “What have you done to my son?” Millicent Formund asked Leslie, her eyes narrowed at her. “Do you have any idea how many young women we parade before him, but he isn’t interested? Yet he’s spent every minute of the last two days with you, ignoring all his other guests.”

  Leslie liked this woman a great deal. She reminded her of a woman on her church fund-raising committee. When Lillian Beasley called and asked for a donation, no one ever said no. “You’re wondering how a middle-class girl like me can interest him over these long-legged thoroughbreds, aren’t you?” Leslie asked, an eyebrow raised.

  “Dear, if you’re trying to cast me as a snob, it’s not going to happen. My father drove a truck.”

  Leslie smiled. “Oh? And how many trucks did he have to drive?”

  At that Millie laughed. “All right, so he owned them as well as drove them, and he owned more than a few. I can see what my son likes about you.”

  “He’s a very serious young man, and he wants to do serious things with his life,” Leslie said. “Who he marries is of great importance to his future.”

  Millie didn’t say anything for a moment, but she looked at Leslie with interest. “You have an old head on your shoulders, don’t you?” she said; then she slipped her arm through Leslie’s. “Is it possible that you paint?”

  “Houses?” Leslie asked. “I painted our summerhouse when I was—” She’d been about to say, “when I was pregnant.” “When I was a teenager,” she finished.

  “No, I mean watercolors.” Millie gave a grimace. “This was my doctor’s idea. He said that my life was so stressful that I must slow down, so he got together with my family and they persuaded me to take private watercolor lessons. I’m really quite awful,” she said. “But it is relaxing. But now, with all the guests, I’m weeks behind in my lessons.”

  Leslie squeezed Millie’s hand on her arm. “Someone cares a great deal about you, don’t they? Gardening for exercise and watercolors for relaxation. And house visits by the doctor.”

  “I’m very lucky in my life,�
� Millie said softly, then smiled. “Do you think you could try painting?”

  “I would love to,” Leslie said, “but I know nothing about painting, other than houses, that is. But, truthfully, you don’t have to spend the day with me. I can occupy myself easily.”

  “Actually, I think I’d rather like to have your company. And, besides, it seems that I’ve been elected to chaperone all the young people today.”

  The way she said this made Leslie laugh. “It couldn’t be as bad as that. If you give them enough food and keep them out of the bushes, they should do all right.”

  “You are an old soul, aren’t you? Well, come along and help me carry things. We’ll set up by the pool, so I can see everything that goes on.”

  Actually, Leslie was glad for some quiet time so she could think. She’d spent two days with Hal and she liked him a great deal. In fact, she liked him more than a lot.

  They reached the pool area, and set up under a big umbrella were two easels. It looked as though Millie had assumed that Leslie would spend the day with her, and that she would join her in painting. As a mother herself, Leslie knew that Millie wanted to get to know this young woman who might become part of her life.

  “What do I do?” Leslie asked as Millie handed her a wooden paint box. Inside was a thick pad of paper, brushes, and a couple of dozen different colors of paint in tiny ceramic pots.

  “This week my lesson is . . .” Millie picked up a piece of paper and looked at it. “‘Capturing action with a brush.’” Smiling, she looked up at Leslie. “That means that we paint what we see as quickly as possible.”