Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(70)
“We meet again.”
Toweling off at the side of the pool, Lauren glances up to see a stranger standing behind her.
“Playground,” he prods, at her blank stare.
“Pardon? Oh—right!” She didn’t recognize him without the baseball cap, and the baby, and…his shirt. “You’re the new dad.”
“New? Not exactly. My son is almost a year old.”
“That’s pretty new from where I sit. But what I meant was, you’re the new dad in town.”
“That’s me. Castle Lane. Puke green shutters.”
Lauren grins and tries not to notice that he’s wearing only boardshorts, and that…well, wow. Did she actually think he was someone’s chubby hubby the other day? It couldn’t be farther from the truth. His tanned chest is solid muscle.
“Where’s your son?” She looks around, expecting to see a baby carriage or port-a-playpen.
“He’s with his mom. We share custody.”
So he’s not chubby or a hubby.
“Oh. Well that’s, uh…”
“Difficult. Very difficult. That’s what it is.” He shrugs. “It was harder when I lived in the city, though. At least he’s only ten minutes away now.”
“So your ex-wife lives up here?”
“Actually, my ex-wife lives on the West Coast.”
“And you share custody?”
“No, I never had kids with Zoe—she’s my ex-wife, in L.A. But my son’s mom, Kendra, lives here in Westchester, over in Yorktown Heights. Confused yet?”
“Very.”
“Kendra and I were never married, thank God. That would have been more disastrous than my first marriage. We were dating, Kendra got pregnant, we had the baby together. By the way, since you now know everything about me except my name—I’m Sam Henning.”
“Lauren Walsh.”
They shake hands. She resists the urge to look around and make sure no one’s watching them. Like her children, or Beth, or…people she once called friends.
It’s August. There are few familiar faces here.
“So…is that it?” Sam asks.
“Is what it?”
“That’s all you’re going to tell me? Your name? When I just poured out my whole life story?”
“I—you want to hear my life story?”
“If you want to tell it.”
Trying to decide whether he’s a sweet, fun guy or some kind of nutcase, she smiles. “Maybe some other time.”
“Sure. Personally, I like to get it out there right from the start, you know? All my baggage. That way, if someone’s not interested, she’s free to move on.”
Interested? Lauren raises an eyebrow.
It’s been a while—okay, decades—since a man flirted with her. So long that she’s not even positive that’s what Sam Henning is doing.
But it sure seems that way.
“You know, you were pretty chatty the other day,” he observes. “Now you don’t have much to say.”
That might be because they’re both standing here half dressed, without the buffer of kids and swings and sunglasses and anonymity.
Plus, he no longer has a wife.
He never even had a wife. Well, he has an ex-wife. And the mother of his child. But there doesn’t seem to be a current woman in his life, which makes him more than just some random playground dad.
It makes him…
Potentially…
Oh hell, what do you even call it these days? Dating material? A love interest?
“So you live in the big yellow Victorian house in my backyard, right?” he asks.
“Well, I’m in the only yellow Victorian on our block, so… I guess so.”
“You should cut through the yard and say hello sometime. That is, if poison ivy doesn’t bother you. My yard is full of it. And it turns into a marsh when it rains, so you’d need waders, but otherwise…”
“Sounds inviting.”
“Oh, it is.”
She laughs.
So does he, but he says, “I’m serious. Pop over. I get lonely, living alone.”
So do I, she wants to say.
But she doesn’t live alone, and she doesn’t want him to think she’s flirting.
Is she?
She’s pretty sure he is. Or maybe that’s just his personality.
After all, what makes you think he’d even be interested in a worn-out mother of three with just as much baggage as he has—if not more?
Sure, he’s acting interested…
But maybe he wants something else from her.
Like what? Your riches? Your body? Your three kids, dog, and rattletrap house?
Puh-leeze.
“I should go check on my daughter,” she tells him, wrapping the towel around her hips like a sarong.
“Sadie? Or Lucy?”
She looks up, startled. “How do you know their names?”
“Yesterday…on the playground. Remember?”
She does remember meeting him. But she doesn’t remember telling him the girls’ names. Maybe she did.
Does it even matter?
“It was good seeing you again,” she tells Sam, not quite sure she means it.