One Summer Night

by Caridad Piñeiro

  “Hey, Mags. Are you as excited as I am about getting away for the weekend? I was thinking we could get a head start and leave later tonight instead of in the morning.”

  She grimaced and stammered as she began her excuse. “Owen, I’m so sorry, but something’s come up. I’m not going to be able to make it this weekend. You understand, right?”

  Silence filled the air for long moments before his tired sigh broke the condemning quiet. “Sure, Mags. I get it. Work always comes first with people like us. Maybe we can get together for dinner sometime next week.”

  Despite his words, the hurt and disappointment were obvious, and even without the video to see him, it was obvious he was pulling back and giving her space because he understood her well enough to know she needed it.

  “That sounds lovely. Maybe we can even get away next weekend?” she offered, ignoring all her doubts about whether she’d be ready to sleep with him in just another week.

  “Sure. Have an easy weekend. Don’t work too hard,” he said.

  Before she could utter another word, he hung up, leaving her more confused than when they’d started the conversation. He’d given up too easily, and a part of her was a little disappointed that he had. Another part of her was annoyed with herself, because as hesitant as she was about having sex with him, she liked spending time with Owen.

  Now that wasn’t going to happen this weekend. Maybe never if he took her reticence to mean that she didn’t want to move the relationship forward.

  Cursing her indecisiveness, a trait of which she’d never been accused, she packed up the papers for the campaign her advertising team had developed, determined to review them that night. She also stuffed into her bag the notes on the financing she’d need to complete the plans for the holiday overhaul and an agreement with a top Italian knit designer for an exclusive clothing line that would launch in midfall for an added boost of publicity and hopefully sales.

  Maybe she could even get Connie to come over during the weekend and take a look at the contract. She dialed her friend, and like Owen, she answered on the first ring. But unlike Owen, her voice was far from chipper.

  “Everything okay?” Maggie asked.

  “A little crazy since one of our clients just got sued, but I won’t be involved in this one.”

  “I guess that’s good, right?” she said.

  But Connie’s answer was an exasperated, “They only want the big boys working this case.”

  To ease her friend’s upset, she said, “I was hoping you could look at a contract for me over the weekend.”

  A long pause followed, not unlike the one during her conversation with Owen. Much like that discussion, her friend responded with, “You’re blowing him off, aren’t you?”

  She sucked in a deep breath and then expelled the words like a rapid-fire semiautomatic. “Yes, I canceled with Owen. I have a lot of work to catch up on and need to make up a lot of time over the weekend.”

  Connie’s response this time was immediate. “You were never a good liar, Mags. I sense regret has already set in, which is why this call is about Owen and not about some contract you need me to see.”

  “Did I do the right thing, Connie?” she wondered aloud, definitely sorry about skipping out on what had promised to be a very nice weekend with a very sexy, handsome, and understanding man. While she wanted to save the stores for herself, her mother, and her employees, she wanted more in her life. She needed more.

  Silence greeted her again, but this time when it was broken, the concern in her friend’s voice was impossible to miss. “How about dinner tonight? Bryant Park Grill?”

  Maggie glanced at her watch. It was only four o’clock, but she was already dog tired, both physically and emotionally. She needed out of the office sooner rather than later.

  “Can you do five? And by the way, there really is a contract to be vetted.”

  “I’ll meet you in your lobby at five. Email me the contract. I’ll have something for you by tomorrow afternoon.”

  While the day had dragged, the hour until dinner flew by like a supersonic jet.

  Maggie hurried down to the lobby and arrived a few minutes early. It gave her a moment to appreciate the beauty of the building in which she worked when she wasn’t at the office in the Fifth Avenue store.

  The art deco style was apparent in every little detail from the elevator doors with their geometric inlaid designs to the polished stainless-steel mailbox. Above the entire lobby, a painted canvas on the ceiling depicted the workers who had labored on the structure while muscular male figures celebrated the technological achievements of that era.

  “Playing tourist?” Connie asked as she walked up to Maggie and peered up to investigate whatever Maggie was busy viewing.

  “Stopping to smell the roses,” she admitted.

  “I’m sure there are plenty of roses in Bryant Park at this time of year. Let’s go smell them while we appreciate the meal and the company,” Connie said and urged her around one crowd of sightseers standing in the lobby and to the revolving doors, where another group of tourists was creating a bottleneck as they fumbled to get the door moving. They detoured to the second revolving door and circled through it and onto Forty-Second Street.

  The sidewalks were teeming with visitors to the city and commuters racing home on a Friday night. They navigated through the crowds, shooting through gaps and breaking apart to get past the packed Grand Central area and up to Fifth Avenue and the huge public library with its famous lions. Walking past the library, they entered Bryant Park and strolled over to the restaurant.

  There were a few people already waiting for an early dinner, but the host recognized them as they came in and greeted them warmly. “It won’t be long, ladies. Why don’t you enjoy a cocktail while you wait?” he said and motioned toward the bar off to one section of the building.

  “I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink,” Connie said.

  Maggie followed her into the bar, where they sat on some stools and efficiently ordered cosmos to keep them busy until a table was ready.

  “To friends,” Connie toasted.

  “To my BFFFs,” she said with a big smile and took a sip of the smooth, bright cocktail.

  “Totally. Bottoms up,” Connie replied and urged Maggie to chug her drink rather than sipping it slowly like a teetotaler experimenting with their first taste of alcohol.

  “Trying to get me drunk?” Maggie teased as she stared at the bottom of the glass.

  “For sure,” she said and, with a wave of her hand, instructed the bartender to bring another round. The young man was just setting the glasses before them when the host came over to tell them their table was ready.

  “May I?” he asked, and at Connie’s nod, he swept up the glasses and walked with them to the table for two close to the windows.

  It was still bright out, and all around them, the colors of the lawn, trees, and flower beds were vibrant and alive. With the arrival of dusk in a few hours, the lights of the buildings all around the park would spark to life with the arrival of dusk.

  In a couple of months, the lawn would be covered with a skating rink to kick off the holiday season, and small kiosks would pop up all around the park so visitors could shop and eat while they enjoyed a New York Christmas. Maggie wanted those same holiday revelers to enjoy time at her family’s store.

  At the table, Connie gave her a drink-up gesture and scooped up her own cocktail glass for a sip. As Maggie watched her friend quickly consume the cosmopolitan, it occurred to her that even though she’d initiated the call for help, Connie apparently needed to vent as well. She eyed her friend over the edge of her glass.

  “Everything okay at work?”

  “Just feeling a little stressed. Rumor has it they’ve been discussing who they’ll make partners, and I’d like to be in the running. But with them leaving me out of this big case�
��”

  A lot of Connie’s identity was wrapped up with being a successful lawyer, so Maggie understood how important it was for her friend to become a partner. Despite that, she sensed there was more to Connie’s mood.

  “Is that the only thing that’s bothering you?” An indecisive shrug answered her. “Want to talk about it?” she said.

  “Not really,” Connie replied, and as the waiter came over, she quickly perused the menu, placed her order, and added another round of cosmopolitans for them.

  Prying anything from Connie was as hard as hacking into the Pentagon, unless of course you created an overload of the system with something like the cocktails. Maggie gave the waiter her order and was careful to control how she drank her liquor while plying Connie with yet another cocktail as she discussed what she was doing with her staff in preparation for the holiday season.

  By the time dinner was finished, she was feeling a little buzz, but Connie was well lubricated. So much so that Maggie said, “Why not stay the night?”

  Connie hiccupped and teased, “Are you trying to take advantage of me?”

  She smiled. “Totally. Come on. We can have more girl talk. Maybe have another drink.”

  “Only if you spill about why you bailed on Owen,” Connie said, still sharp despite the many cosmos.

  Maggie made an X across her chest with her index finger. “Cross my heart, I’ll spill,” she said, but she intended to get her friend to divulge what else was bothering her.

  They walked back toward the library and Fifth Avenue and flagged a cab to head downtown to Maggie’s brownstone. Friday night traffic was rough, as was the ride in the taxi. By the time they got to Maggie’s, they were both ready for fresh air and something else to drink.

  Since it was a beautiful late-summer night and in New York, you had to take advantage of them before the colder and wetter weather set in, she directed her friend out to the small courtyard behind her kitchen.

  “Get comfy. I’ll be out in a second.”

  Connie motioned upstairs with her index finger. “I’m going to change and get totally comfy.”

  Maggie smiled and nodded. “You know which room.” She had two extra bedrooms that Emma and Connie used to crash if they were staying in the city, and each of her buddies kept clothes and other necessities in the rooms and the nearby Jack and Jill bathroom. Connie only did overnights every now and then, since her place in Jersey City was a short ferry ride away. Emma stayed pretty often, since the trip back to Sea Kiss, where she lived and worked, was a longer trip.

  “I do,” Connie said with a wobbly, still a little drunk smile, and as she went up the stairs, Maggie followed. She might as well get comfortable also.

  Her bedroom took up the entire floor above the two guest bedrooms and was an open-concept space that included a library and sitting area with a fireplace. A little tingle went through her at the thought of lying in front of that fireplace, naked, making love with Owen. It had been a recurring dream that she couldn’t shake out of her head despite her concerns about taking the relationship to that level.

  Inside her room, she quickly exchanged her bespoke suit for yoga pants and a loose T-shirt with a fanciful cartoon of a crab that read Don’t bother me. I’m crabby. Corny, but it had caught her eye while at a convention in Baltimore, and she’d broken down and bought it.

  As she skipped down the stairs, she met Connie on the landing, and together they went to the kitchen, mixed up a batch of strawberry margaritas, and prepped a tray with glasses and some chips and salsa to take outside.

  The small courtyard behind her brownstone consisted of a ten-by-ten brick patio flanked on the sides with raised beds loaded with flowers. Waves of pink and purple petunias cascaded over the edges of the beds made from antique bricks saved by her contractor from the demolition of a home on Long Island’s Gold Coast. Hydrangea, lavender, delphiniums, hollyhocks, and an assortment of other taller plants and bushes provided height in the beds and rested against the brick wall that surrounded the entire space, softening the roughness of the bricks.

  Beyond the patio was another ten-by-ten square of perfectly manicured lawn and more flower beds. There were still lots of blooms, but once they had a killing frost in a couple of months, it would be time to clean up all the beds and prep them for the winter and next year.

  “I love it out here,” Connie said with a sigh as she sank into the white, wooden Adirondack chairs Maggie had chosen, eschewing the more traditional wrought-iron set her designer had wanted to place there. The chairs reminded her of the ones they kept on the lawn at her Sea Kiss home, and that recollection brought thoughts of Owen and how perceptive he’d been in realizing the reason for the design of her town house.

  “I see that smile,” Connie said with a smirk. “You’re thinking about Owen.”

  “I am,” she said without hesitation and added, “And your mood has little to do with work.”

  The smirk deadened to a flat line like a heart monitor on a dying patient. “Yes and no. I mean, it is about work and feeling like I’m about to hit a glass ceiling. But it’s also about other stuff, namely Jon. I really wasn’t ready to spend time with him anytime soon, so the dinner was kind of tough for me.”

  She took the time to examine her friend as Connie chugged down a few big gulps of the frozen margarita.

  “And I guess I’ve been brain-dead not to notice before now that something was up with you and Jon.”

  Grimacing, from both icy liquor and the discussion, Connie said, “Nothing is up.”

  Maggie sensed her friend was holding back but decided not to pry about what might be going on between her friend and Jonathan. “I see that you’re not denying there was before. At least that’s what Owen told me after he climbed up the wisteria vine and I worried he’d break his neck.”

  “Which he might have, because don’t get me wrong, Owen is prime, but he’s not Jon,” Connie said, confirming that, despite all her denials, Jonathan still held a spot in her brain and possibly her heart.

  As for the two brothers, Connie was right. Owen was all man, lean and strong, but Jonathan was all man with a capital M-A-N. He had the kind of body that wasn’t built in a gym, all hard muscle with the occasional nick or scar to prove he’d earned that body by challenging himself in dangerous and extreme ways.

  “He’ll break your heart,” Maggie blurted out before she could restrain herself. “I’m sorry, it’s the liquor,” she said and covered her mouth with her hand to hold back her alcohol-aided lack of discretion.

  Connie chuckled and gave a sad little wag of her head. “Don’t you think I know that? Why do you think I keep away from him?”

  “Which is why I decided to blow off Owen. He’ll give me nothing but heartache,” she said with a determined nod and finally took a sip of her drink, which was starting to melt around the edges of the glass.

  “Bullshit and you know it. Owen would never intentionally hurt you. He’s not like his SOB father.”

  Maggie was surprised by the vehemence in her friend’s voice. “You really believe that?”

  Connie did a little bobble with her head and took another sip before responding. “I have to confess I was worried when you first mentioned him. Even way back in college, I could see the sparks between you two, but I knew there was history there.”

  “Family history,” she clarified and earned the stink eye from her friend, so she relented and confessed. Holding up her index finger, she said, “The only history back in college was one kiss on the beach when we were eighteen. No biggie.”

  Connie snorted. “Way biggie. It’s obvious he’s got the hots for you. For real. No game there. Nothing to do with the family BS or the stores or the property.”

  Maggie took a long moment to think about her friend’s assertion, but doubt had sunk its claws deep and was holding on tightly. “How do you know?” she asked, almost timidly.

&nb
sp; Connie tried to tap her temple, but it took her a few tries before she got the right spot. “I can read people. It’s what I’ve been trained to do,” she said, her words slightly more slurred than they had been before thanks to the addition of the margarita.

  Maggie took another little taste of her drink and hoped that mixing the vodka and tequila wasn’t going to be something they’d both regret in the morning. Which made her think about what she was going to regret more with Owen: giving in to the temptation or putting a stop to whatever was going on between them. There was no in-between option, as far as she was concerned, because it wasn’t in her nature to vacillate.

  Although with Owen, she’d done a lot of questioning and delaying. Unfortunately, no seizing, she thought.

  “You’re doing it again,” Connie teased and pointed a finger at her face.

  She felt her smile broaden and chastised her friend. “You know, if I can stop being afraid of what’s happening with Owen, maybe it’s time you faced up to what you feel for Jon.”

  With a very unsteady back and forth of her head, Connie said, “No way. Absolutely no fucking way.”

  But as Maggie sat back and sipped her drink while her friend continued the no-Jonathan rant, she thought, Methinks she doth protest too much.

  Chapter 18

  Since Owen had planned on going down to Sea Kiss for the weekend, he decided to go despite Maggie bailing on him. Besides, Sea Kiss was the place he escaped to when he sought peace or a place to think things through, and right now, he needed both.

  As he walked in, he was surprised to find Jonathan there again, rolling around on the floor with a new puppy.

  “I didn’t expect you to be here,” Owen said as his brother rose, came over, and hugged him.

  “Dad never comes down here, and I figured you’d be at work. Again. So why not take advantage of an empty house?” he said with a casual shrug. “I’m surprised you’re down this early,” Jonathan said and, for emphasis, looked at the nonexistent watch on his wrist.