“Relax, Megan, I’m not going to jump your bones.”
I shifted around and glared at him. “I thought we were going to a pancake house.”
He reached over and tugged on one of my braids. “Can you undo your braids first, so it doesn’t look like I’m sitting there with a kid?”
“I don’t see what difference it makes,” I mumbled, even though I began undoing them. My compromise between fast and slow. I hadn’t bothered to fix my hair. Mostly because I hadn’t wanted him to think I was doing anything special for him.
When I had the strands undone, I ran my fingers through my hair, shook my head, and wondered why he was grinning like the Cheshire cat.
“I really like it loose,” he said.
I thought about grabbing my clip out of my backpack, but I liked the way he was looking at me.
Bad, Megan. Don’t encourage him.
“Are we going to go?” I asked. It was so wrong to be attracted to this guy. I had Nick.
“Sure.” He twisted around, started the car.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
We didn’t talk during the short drive to the pancake house. And we ordered more than coffee and milk. I ordered a short stack of pancakes, and Parker ordered the International, which included pancakes, Belgian waffles, and French toast, plus bacon, eggs, and hash browns. The guy had an appetite.
The waitress poured him a cup of coffee and brought my milk. After she left, Parker stretched his arm along the back of the booth, reminding me of some lithe creature that was about to pounce.
“You wanted to talk?” I said.
“Like I said, I’ve been thinking about that kiss—”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it, too, and it shouldn’t have happened.”
“I agree.”
With a devilish grin, he reached across and nudged my chin up so my dropped jaw closed. His words were so not what I was expecting. I was thinking he was going to say that it should happen again. I was confused, mostly because—shame on me—I sorta wanted it to.
“That’s…that’s good,” I finally stammered. “So it won’t happen again.”
“Won’t happen again.” Leaning forward, he crossed his arms on the table. “So there’s no reason that we can’t be friends, hang out, have some summer fun.”
For some reason an old Elvis Presley song about suspicious minds that my grandmother played a lot was suddenly reverberating through my head.
“You want to be just friends?”
“Sure. Why not? We’re here for the summer. I like you. I do a lot of stuff with Jordan. You’re her roommate, and knowing Jordan, she’ll invite you to join us. If I hook up with someone else, you’ll always feel like a third wheel. If I stay unattached, then when pairing takes place, you have someone to pair with.” He shrugged. “And so do I. Lot less work on my part. I’ll have a partner for the summer that I don’t have to impress. Just hang with. Who wants to spend the summer looking for dates?”
I furrowed my brow. “Why don’t I trust you?”
He pounded his fist against his chest, over his heart. “I’m hurt. It’s an earnest offer. Friends for the summer. Nothing more.”
“Friends.”
“Friends.”
“Didn’t think guys and girls could be just friends.”
“Sure they can. I have lots of just friends who are girls. Kate Hudson—”
“You know Kate Hudson? The Kate Hudson?”
“Sure. She was in one of my dad’s movies. You could have fun with me, Megan. I’m an interesting guy. Be really nice, and maybe I’ll introduce you to Orlando Bloom.”
My jaw tightened. “And what does really nice involve?”
He grimaced, realizing his poor choice of words.
“I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not expecting anything other than friendship. Be a good friend, and maybe I’ll introduce you to Orlo.”
Orlo? Did he really know him that well?
“I don’t get it, Parker. I mean, you hanging out with me, when I have a boyfriend, will mean that I won’t be alone for the summer, but what do you get out of the deal?”
“The same thing. Not being alone for the summer. Look, Megan, it’s a lot of work to try to develop a relationship, especially if you want it to go beyond friendship. With you, I wouldn’t have to put forth any effort. Which works for me, because basically I’m a lazy guy.”
I thought about how all Jordan’s car had needed was a new battery, and he’d gone to the trouble to change her oil. Lazy? I didn’t think so.
But if his offer was honest and sincere, while I had Patti and Lisa to hang around with, it would also be nice to have a guy around—especially when Jordan did ask me to join her for things. Because he was right. I would start to feel awkward, in the way.
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “We can be friends.”
“Great.” He held out his hand. “Let’s shake on it.”
But when I slipped my hand into his, felt the strength and warmth of his close over mine, I couldn’t help but worry that I was getting in over my head.
“So you and Parker, huh?”
I looked up from the glass shelf I was dusting at H & G to find Nancy staring down at me.
“Excuse me?”
“I saw you and Parker sitting in his car last night in the parking lot, so I just figured you and him…” She wiggled her eyebrows and gave me this I-know-what-you’re-up-to-and-aren’t-you-a-lucky-girl grin.
“No, we’re just friends.”
“Yeah, right. He’s totally hot. And you’re ‘just friends.’ Give me a break.”
“Seriously. That’s all we are.”
“If you say so.”
She walked off, but her skepticism hung in the air. We were just friends. After we’d made our agreement last night, I’d actually relaxed and enjoyed our midnight snack. The conversation had been pleasant. He’d told me all kinds of stories about his encounters with famous people. He knew everyone, and he talked about them like they were just regular people. I guess because to him they were. I mean, some of these guys were in his “media room” watching football games, cheering the same team he did. Amazing.
And no wonder Jordan’s dad had given her a credit card. She often went shopping with the stars.
After I finished dusting, I went to my place behind the cash register. Patti was working the same shift as I was, but she’d been really quiet since I’d arrived.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“I don’t approve of summer flings,” she said tartly without looking at me.
“Neither do I.”
“Then why are you having one?”
“I’m not.”
“We were going to sit together last night.”
“I lost you in the crowd.”
“I saw you sitting with Parker.”
“Sitting. That’s all we were doing.”
“You looked pretty chummy to me.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know, it’s really not your business, but just for the record, we are only friends.”
That seemed to become my mantra for the afternoon as one person after another dropped by during his or her break and said, “You and Parker, huh?”
The guy was Mr. Popularity, and suddenly I was his girlfriend.
By the time Parker actually stopped by to see if I wanted to take my break with him, I was fuming.
“Everyone thinks there’s something going on between us,” I said, as we sat at the miniature table outside the Gingerbread Man and munched on our peanut-butter cookies. “It’s a regular episode of The OC around here.”
“What difference does it make what everyone thinks? We know what’s what.”
“How can it not bother you that people are talking about us and not even interested in hearing the truth?”
He reached across and laid his hand over mine where it rested on the table. “Megan, I grew up with gossip and tabloids. All that matters is that we know the truth. I’m not going to waste energy tryi
ng to convince everyone else that we’re just friends. They’ll see what they want to see.”
“It probably doesn’t help that you’re holding my hand.”
He grinned. “Technically, we’re not holding hands.”
I couldn’t help but return his smile. “It’s pretty darn close.”
“Close only counts in horseshoes. Isn’t that what they say in Texas?”
“Yeah, something like that.” I knew I should probably pull my hand back, but I didn’t. I left it there because his thumb had started to stroke the back of my hand and it just felt nice. Calming. Soothing.
“Jordan, Ross, Cole, Ronda, and I are going to spend next Monday out at the lake. So, friend, are you going to come?”
I narrowed my eyes, wondering if I’d been manipulated. “Why didn’t you mention this last night?”
“It just came up this morning. The guy we’re renting the cabin from has a boat. He asked me to take it out, keep the engine in shape. Just gonna do some cruising.”
“Sure. Why not? Friend.”
He laughed. It was a good laugh, a carefree laugh that made me laugh in return.
I thought it would probably start the gossiping going again. But I didn’t care.
I liked being with Parker. We could keep our relationship as friends. I knew we could. Even if I felt a bit of loss when he finally moved his hand away from mine. Even if I wished our break would never end.
It was the work I was avoiding. Not the being with him that I wanted to prolong.
Or at least that’s what I told myself.
Only 44, no 43 Nick-less days to go, and counting….
Chapter 15
We couldn’t have picked a nicer day to go out on the lake. I was wearing black shorts and my red “Too Hot to Handle” halter. Which of course made Parker grin when he saw it. That he refrained from commenting surprised and pleased me at the same time. He was wearing swim trunks and a Hawaiian-print shirt. It was unbuttoned, the front flowing back as he drove the boat across the lake. I sat in the seat beside him.
I shouldn’t have been impressed. My dad had a boat. It was green. Metal. Had a motor. Held two people. He used it when he went bass fishing.
This boat was a lot bigger, a lot nicer. Cole and Ronda sat in the two seats behind us. A padded bench ran along either side of the boat behind them. Jordan and Ross were sitting there. We probably could have accommodated a few more people.
Apparently, Parker and Cole had discovered a little cove last summer when they were out exploring with the guy they were house-sitting the cabin for. So we were headed there now for a little swimming, a picnic, and just general relaxation away from the hordes of people we dealt with every day. The wind and the motor created too much noise to talk, and I couldn’t explain why I was having a great time. We weren’t really doing anything. Maybe it was just getting away from it all.
I didn’t want to contemplate that it was being with Parker. Since we’d made our agreement to be just friends, he always came to H & G during his break—whether it was his short break or his lunch break. He was always at the park when it closed and walked me back to the dorm. And he was always asking me to come with him at dawn when he took Magnum Force for its first run of the day.
He never used the word test, but that’s what he was doing. Testing it to make sure that it was operating properly. If I didn’t want to ride it after it was declared operational for the day, I sure didn’t want to ride it before it was declared ready to go. He kept promising that it was safe. If it was safe, why did it need to be tested?
He looked over at me now and smiled. I loved his smile. It gave the impression that he was simply glad to find me there.
“We’re almost there,” he shouted, and I read the words formed by his mouth more than I heard them.
He slowed the boat as we got closer to shore. I could see the tree-lined cove. When he got near enough, he cut the engine.
“Let’s go, guys,” he said.
He, Cole, and Ross jumped into the water. There were ropes used for mooring the boat to a dock, but of course, there was no dock here. They used the ropes to pull the boat partially onto the shore and anchored it in the sand.
Ronda, Jordan, and I handed off all our gear to them: quilts, blankets, towels, ice chests. Then using the ladder on the side of the boat, we climbed down, dropped into water that went past our knees and waded to shore. It wasn’t as cold as it had been the first night that I’d waded into it. But it wasn’t Texas-warm, either.
We spread out blankets and set up the bucket of fried chicken and drinks because the guys were starving. I wanted to explore but figured that it would be better to do it on a full stomach. The place was amazing. Really secluded.
“I wonder why there aren’t any houses around here,” I asked once we were all settled and eating.
“I think it has to do with the ghosts,” Parker said.
He was sitting beside me, his bare knee touching mine. I didn’t know why, but there always seemed to be some part of him touching me: his knee, his hand, his foot. It was all very innocent, and I’d grown comfortable with it. It was just the way he was.
I swallowed the chicken I’d been chewing and looked around. “The ghosts?”
“Yeah. In the late eighteen hundreds, there was a big storm. A ship sank a mile or so from here. They say twenty-seven people drowned. And this is where they came to rest. A little bit farther down is a lighthouse. We can go look at it after we eat.”
“A shipwreck?” I asked.
“The Great Lakes are huge. There have been a lot of shipwrecks. Haven’t you ever heard of the Edmund Fitzgerald?”
“My dad has a song about it that someone sings.”
“Gordon Lightfoot. Yeah, my dad does, too. Anyway, diving expeditions are searching for the wrecked ships all the time. And huge cruise ships travel the lakes. Don’t you think when you look out that it’s like standing at the edge of the ocean? You can’t even see the far shore.”
I had thought that, the first night when I walked along the sandy beach.
“Okay, so there are shipwrecks. There has to be a more practical reason that no one lives here,” I said.
“It’s the ghosts,” Cole said. “We saw one last summer.”
“Get out!” Jordan, sitting between him and Ross, shoved his shoulder.
“Hey, watch it! You almost made me drop my drumstick,” he said.
“You so did not see a ghost,” she said.
“We saw something.” He pointed behind us. “Right between those trees. Then it was gone.”
“You’re just trying to make us more cuddly,” Ronda said.
“And how do ghosts do that?” I asked.
“Get us on edge and the next thing they know, we’re clinging to them, like they’re He-Men or something and will protect us from all harm.”
“You know, there are definite disadvantages to having a girlfriend who’s studying psychology,” Cole said.
“So it is the cuddle factor and not real ghosts?” Jordan asked.
Strangely, I could hear the slight apprehension in her voice, like maybe the idea of ghosts really would make her more clingy.
Cole just shrugged. I peered over at Parker. He was studying his chicken thigh like he was trying to determine what it was. Was he hoping to make me cuddle with him? Was he not looking at me because he didn’t want me to see the truth in his eyes?
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said.
“You will,” he said in an eerie voice. “After we go to the lighthouse, you will.”
As it turned out, only he and I trekked around the cove to where the lighthouse was. I’ve always been fascinated by lighthouses. This one was a typical tall cylinder shape, painted white with fading red around the top.
“It’s not a working lighthouse, is it?” I asked as we approached.
“Nope. Hasn’t been in years.”
I saw the lighthouse keeper’s house. It looked ramshackle, lonely, as lonely as the lighthouse. ??
?It’s kind of sad.”
“Only a girl could think a building looks sad.”
I peered over at him. “That is so chauvinistic.”
“But true.”
“You must find something interesting about it or you wouldn’t have wanted to come here,” I said, fully confident that the words were true.
“Haunting,” he said. “There’s something haunting about it.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re not going to scare me with your ghost stories.”
“I’m not trying to. I don’t mean haunted like with apparitions. I mean haunted like…lonely, abandoned…”
“Sad?” I offered sarcastically, anything not to let on how it always rattled me when we were thinking the same thoughts. That never happened with Nick. We could be looking at an apple and we wouldn’t see it as the same shade of red. Which I’d always thought was a good thing. Isn’t it better to be different, so you don’t bore each other?
Parker laughed. “Okay. Maybe sad does work.”
We’d reached the lighthouse. Spider webs were laced at the top corners of the door. Thank goodness no spiders were in sight. It’s not that I’m a scaredy cat. I just don’t like spiders, or ghosts, or roller coasters…okay, basically anything on Fear Factor is at the top of my list of things I’d rather not experience.
Parker pushed on the door. The hinges creaked. All I could see was the darkness. He took my hand. I didn’t object. As a matter of fact, I squeezed his hand hard, just in case he decided to let go. No way was that going to happen.
Once we were inside, my eyes adjusted to the shadows. Faint light was spilling down from the top where there were windows, and I could see the cast-iron spiral staircase that wound its way up. Without a word, Parker started up the stairs, with me following close on his heels, not only because he was still holding my hand, but because I didn’t want to be left alone.
Our footsteps echoed a clanging sound. The wind was whistling up the stairs, creating an eerie howling. Or at least I kept telling myself it was the wind. I could barely feel it, but it was there. It wasn’t those souls lost to the deep making the noise and sending chills along my spine.