“So, how long until you finish the book?” Meg asked.
“Another couple weeks, I think.” Lauren stepped carefully out of the dress. “It’s the same basic outline, I’m just trying to dig a little deeper into how I felt. Feel. To be more honest.”
Meg gave an encouraging nod in the mirror. “Sounds wonderful.”
“It’s... cathartic,” Lauren told her. “Like a good cry. Or a cleanse.”
Meg laughed. “I’m sure your work is not a pile of crap.”
“Actually, I feel good about the work. About the changes,” Lauren confessed. “I just wish I had the resolution figured out.”
“You mean, like a happy ending?”
“Not exactly. I’m not writing fiction.”
“You know, happy endings aren’t only in fairy tales. It’s just that in real life, they take hard work. And time.” Meg smiled crookedly. “And sometimes they don’t look the way you expect them to look.”
Of course Meg believed in happy endings. Her parents had been married for forty years. Meg had recently reinvented her career to make a life with her longtime love, Sam. And her brother’s wedding was tomorrow. Lauren wasn’t going to rain on that parade.
“I believe in happy moments,” she said. “In enjoying as many moments as you can make in the time that you have. What I’m really looking for, though, is meaning. Something that would take all the loose ends and tie them together in a neat little bow.” She slid the dress onto a padded hanger. She’d never stayed in a house with padded hangers before. Her mother would be so impressed. “But maybe the message of the book is that not everything in life is resolved. Not everybody finds closure.”
“Speaking of closure... What happens in a couple of weeks when you finish the book and it’s time to go home?”
Lauren didn’t question Meg’s genuine concern... or resent her interest. Meg had brought her here, bought her the time and space she needed to finish her book. But as Lauren’s publicist, Meg naturally wanted to know that Lauren was going to meet her obligations.
“That depends. I need to meet with Eleanor—my faculty advisor.”
“I thought you were on leave. You don’t have to go back to school this fall, do you?”
Lauren shook her head. “I’m pretty much done with my course work. Clinic work, too. Which is a good thing, since I’m sure the department has already made all the teaching and clinic assignments for fall. But I still have to finish my dissertation. I’m way behind there.”
“What about Jack?”
Lauren’s heart took flight like a startled bird, beating, beating against the walls of her chest. What about Jack? Jack, with his good cop/bad cop vibe, his dark, intense eyes, and unbearably sweet half smile.
“Jack’s a great guy,” she said, which was such a lame understatement that it felt like a betrayal. Of him. Of her feelings.
Meg arched an eyebrow. “Not a fixer-upper?”
Her own words came back to taunt her.Nice guys, but not long-term relationship material. So they stay with me until I can fix them.
And then, when they don’t need me anymore, they move on.
Lauren cleared her throat. “I’d say we both need a little fixing. We’re good for each other. At least for now.”
“Listen, you can tell me to butt out of your business. But I care about you as a client and as a friend. And I care about Jack. What about when you leave here? Will you try to see him again?”
“We haven’t talked about it. We’ve known each other less than two weeks. It’s a little early to be throwing words likecommitmentaround.”
“Absolutely.” Meg smoothed another dress onto a hanger. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt. Either of you. In the long term, Jack strikes me as a more traditional kind of guy.”
“He is. We’re very different. That’s one reason I’m not going to risk what we have now by projecting too far into the future.”
“And what you have now is... sex?”
“Great sex.”
She had never craved another man the way she hungered for Jack. Never known another man who loved sex so much, who was so creative, so intense. She wanted him all the time. She spent her days churning inside with anticipation, lust, and happiness. And the nights... They’d made love on every horizontal surface of the boat and a few vertical ones. Rolling across his bed. On all fours on the floor of his salon. Pressed close together in the cramped shower, his hands tight on her butt. Propped on the galley counter, her legs around his waist.
