Small Town Girl (6 page)

Immediately, there was a rustling in the back of the room behind a cubicle divider, followed by the scraping of a chair on the hardwood floor.

“I’m Joan,” said a woman who came out from behind the partition with a perky smile. “Joan Halloran. What can I do for you?” The agent was small, with large, popping eyes behind even larger glasses. She was middle-aged with short cropped graying hair and an annoyingly energetic manner. She took Lauren’s hand and nearly wrung it off in a hearty handshake.

“I inherited my grandmother’s house up on Highland Road,” explained Lauren as she gingerly withdrew her hand. “I’d like to list it for sale.”

“Really?” Joan the Realtor took her by the arm, luring her back to the cubicle. She pushed Lauren backward toward a small office chair and took her own seat behind her desk. “Have a seat here, dear, and tell me about it. Which house on Highland is it? I’ve lived here all my life. I’ll know the house.”

“My grandmother was Katherine Hamilton,” Lauren explained, and before she could utter another word, Joan clapped her hands together.

“You’re Katherine’s granddaughter! Mary’s daughter! The little girl who used to be there in the summers! I remember you! Yes, I do. Oh, everyone loved your grandmother. That place is a gem, although it could use some work. How did you hear about me?”

“I had to call a plumber when I got there,” Lauren answered flatly. “Bob Cochran told me to see you about listing the house.”

“Ah, Bob!” she said fondly. “Such a good person. I’ll have to remember to thank him for the referral.”

Lauren felt the need to return to the reason she had come to the real estate office. “How do I go about listing my house?” she asked, not wanting to encourage the woman by seeming too friendly.

“Well, let’s fill out this form. This gives me permission to advertise. Then we have to do a checklist attesting to no lead paint, leaks, radon. Stuff like that. I’ll do a walk-through and let you know where it needs help.”

Lauren cut her off. “I don’t want to do anything to it. Just sell it as fast as you can. Sell it as is.”

Joan made a funny face. Lauren wasn’t sure how to interpret it. “Well, we want to get the best price for it, don’t we?”

“I really don’t care what I get for it,” said Lauren adamantly. “I just want it off my hands.”

Joan pursed her lips as if trying to find another direction to come from, but her enthusiasm would not be repressed. “Well, we’ll get a good price anyway. I know the house. I didn’t get to be Realtor of the Year because I don’t sell houses! Now let’s get down to business.” Lauren placed the manila folder of legal papers she had brought in front of Joan, who, in turn shoved a pile of forms across her desk to Lauren. Lauren began to methodically pore over them, signing here and there, checking this box and that.

Joan went over each document in Lauren’s folder. Finally, she seemed satisfied. “I’ll have to run all this past my boss. He should be back later this afternoon. And I have to go to the Town Office and dig up the tax maps. Oh, and I’ll get one of the lawyers I work with to go over this too. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll tend to the details. You’ll have to sign some more forms and releases tomorrow after my boss approves everything, but you’ll be in town for a bit, yet, won’t you?” Without waiting for Lauren to answer, she stood up, and slapping her thighs with her hands, said, “Let me take you to lunch! We’ll celebrate the upcoming sale of the house.”

“Oh, no,” said Lauren, smiling politely. “Thank you anyway.”

“Now I won’t take no for an answer. I didn’t get New England Realtor of the Year by taking no for an answer!”

I bet you didn’t
, thought Lauren, and then, suddenly, she acquiesced. She might as well go for lunch. There wasn’t anything to do until “the boss” got back. “Okay, you talked me into it,” she said, trying to sound pleasant. “I’ll go.”

“Wonderful! Come with me. We’ll walk down the street to the pub. It’s really very nice. A decent bar and grill with a pool table. It’s the local watering hole for everybody after work, but they serve the best lunch in town, too.”

Lauren followed the Realtor of the Year, as she privately thought of her, out the office door and into the hot sunny July day. She looked around her. The town was actually very pretty in a bucolic way. She was remembering certain things about it, like the old Victorian houses clustered around a town common. All the buildings seemed to have window boxes full of scarlet geraniums. It was very picturesque.

Joan Halloran led the way up the front steps of one of the Victorian houses. “This is the pub,” she said, indicating the big sign over the porch. “The proprietors live upstairs. It’s the way a lot of us do things here. The pharmacist lives above the drug store. The owners of the bookstore live on the second floor of that building. It saves commuting in the winter and helps pay the heating bills!” Joan laughed at her own wit.

Inside was a surprisingly attractive room. Small tables were arranged comfortably about, making the best use of the space. Against the inside wall was a fireplace and opposite was a great bow window with two tables in front of it. In another life, thought Lauren, with her eye for old things, this would have been part of one of the reception rooms. On another wall was a bar that was a deep red chestnut color, so highly polished that it positively glowed. There was a huge gold-framed mirror behind it, flanked on either side by shelves upon which sat bottles of gin, scotch, whiskey, and vodka with colorful labels. A girl dressed in a logoed “McTavish’s Pub” T-shirt was pulling one of the several beer taps at the far end of the bar. The place exuded a friendly, sociable atmosphere.

Lauren’s eyes adjusted to the light, and it was then that she saw him. His back was to her. He was sitting at the bar with two other men, and although she had only seen him once, Lauren knew the way Caleb Cochran’s shoulders knit together into the strong muscles of his back. She recognized instinctively the powerful arms and the way his muscles lengthened down from his rugged torso to his slim waist and hips. She felt her mouth go dry. Automatically she followed Joan, trying to concentrate on what the Realtor was saying.

Joan was babbling. “Come this way, dear. We’ll sit in the bow window and look out on the street.” They took their seats on either side of a small bistro style table. Lauren forced herself to look out onto the pretty little green with its white gazebo and plantings of vermillion geraniums, but her eyes kept wandering back to the bar, coming to rest on that particular place between Caleb shoulder blades. She assumed he was there eating lunch.

Suddenly, Lauren didn’t feel hungry. Instead, she felt like running. Running away from the blithering real estate agent. Running away from the quiet and slow moving little town. And above all, running away from this stranger who had such an effect on her that she had erotic dreams about him.

“What can I getcha?” The girl who had been pulling the draft beer was now standing beside the table, holding a pad and pencil. Lauren looked up, surprised. She hadn’t realized that a menu had been set before her.

“Oh, um,” she stammered, “do you have BLTs?”

“Of course,” said the waitress, somewhat impatiently.

“Then I’ll have one of those.”

“Anything to drink?”

Lauren wished it was five o’clock so she could have a gin and tonic, but it was noon. “Iced tea,” she said. “With lemon.” She was wondering if his father had told Caleb about their conversation. She wished she had just kept quiet! She was not good at keeping her mouth shut sometimes.

Joan the Realtor said, “I’ll have my usual tuna on rye, Vanessa. With a black coffee.” The waitress turned abruptly and disappeared into the kitchen. Lauren stole another look at the bar. Caleb’s back was still to her. His elbows were on the bar, and she could hear him laugh as he carried on a conversation with the men to his right and left.

Suddenly, he caught her eye in the mirror. Busted! Lauren could feel embarrassment flooding over her like a smothering blanket. Damn! He had caught her staring at him.

Caleb flashed her a smile. Then, before she could react, he slipped off his stool and walked over to the table.

“Hi,” he said.

“Oh, hi, Caleb,” bubbled Joan Halloran. “How are you today?”

“I’m fine, and yourself?”

“Oh, busy, busy. You know summer is our busiest time and we — ”

Caleb cut her off smoothly, turning to Lauren. “How’s the hot water situation?”

She felt electrified by his presence, standing over her in such close proximity. She could feel the physical power of him. She could have reached out and touched him. Right there, at his waist, about his belt. She felt her fingers twitch, and she consciously composed herself.

“Oh, fine now, thank you.”

“I might stop up later this afternoon and check on it.”

Why did her stomach leap so at his words? “Oh,” she said. “That’s fine. I should be there.”

“Well, then, I’ll see you later.” He smiled and turned toward his two cohorts who were waiting by the door. With a wave at the waitress, he exited the restaurant.

“Caleb’s a good boy,” said Joan, sitting back as the waitress returned with their order. “Comes from a good old family from right here in town. He was good friends with my son when they were growing up.” She took a bite of her sandwich and shook her head slowly. “Poor guy.”

Lauren looked at her curiously. “What do you mean? He doesn’t seem like a poor guy to me.”

“Well, business-wise, he’s doing fine. Took over his father’s fuel oil business and became a master plumber to boot. He’s got a good reputation around here. I was talking about emotionally. His wife died, let’s see, must be about five years ago. They had only been married a year. A vicious cancer. She only made it about nine months. It hit him real hard. They were so young. I think she was only twenty-six or twenty-seven. They had just bought a little house, right here, up that side street. I sold it to them. You can drive right by it on the way up to your grandmother’s house. Let’s see, my son’s thirty-eight, so Caleb must be about the same age. A lot of women have been after him.” Joan leaned forward, arching her eyebrows salaciously. “And you can see why!” Then she sighed. “Ah, well, he hasn’t gone for anybody. He’s locked his heart. Filled it with work, volunteering as a fireman, stuff like that. Too bad.”

Lauren finished her BLT sandwich automatically, not tasting a bite of it. So that was what Bob Cochran meant when he had said Caleb had been through enough. It must have been horrible, and people were still protective of him. It said a lot for his character, but Lauren didn’t know how to process the energy she felt emanating from Caleb. She was attracted to him, that was for certain, and she was sure it was reciprocated. She was ready to write it off as a mild flirtation, but this bit of information changed all that.

Lauren followed Joan back to the real estate office, where they discovered that “the boss” had not returned yet. Lauren waited an obligatory half-hour, and when he still hadn’t shown, she said politely to Joan, “You know, I’m not leaving until the morning, so I could stop by early and get the papers taken care of. There are some things that I have to do at the house, and I’ve hired a high school kid to mow the lawn. I better go check on it. Also, you could call me if he does come back and I’ll skip down. It’s not that far.”

“Okay, dear,” said Joan with a kind smile. “I may give you a call later, then. You take care, and I’ll see you tomorrow at the latest.”

Lauren hurried out to her car. She was curious to drive up the side street Joan had pointed out to see whether she could pinpoint Caleb’s house. She backed out of the parking place onto the main street and slowly turned up the road in question. It was quiet and tree-lined, the quintessential New England village street.

Then, as she proceeded up a small rise, she saw the house. The name “Cochran” was on the mailbox. It was a small, white clapboarded house in the Cape style, with a good-sized garage attached. The garage was painted red and had obviously been an old barn. The property was pristine, with a split rail fence and a border of well-tended perennials along the road. Suddenly, Lauren felt both foolish and sad. She tipped her foot to the gas pedal and continued on up the hill to her grandmother’s old house.

Lauren mused on the way. While she was sorry for Caleb about the loss of his wife, it was nothing that would affect her. She smiled a little. She had been lonely for Charles. Caleb was an attractive man; Joan had said as much, as had his own father. It was all very superficial and natural. He was just another good looking guy, tucked away in a small town, hammering out his life on a day-to-day basis. He would most likely never be any more than average and would probably develop a beer gut by the time he was fifty.

She, on the other hand, was looking forward to life at the top of the social ladder with Charles, free from financial worries, living in the penthouse overlooking Central Park, chairing committees for different charities around the city. The reality was that this was a material world, and she liked the finer things in life. She had worked hard from the time she had moved away from her parents’ home, to leave their nomadic, idealistic, granola lifestyle behind, and she had succeeded.

Lauren’s picture had already been in
Town & Country Magazine
, as well as in
New York Magazine
. The articles featured her position as curator of the prestigious Thompson Museum for the Arts.
The
New York Times
hadn’t missed the opportunity to publish an announcement of her engagement to Charles. Lauren sighed contentedly. Soon this business up here in the back woods of New England would be behind her, and she would never see these people again.
There
, she thought with satisfaction, pulling into the driveway,
I’ve taken care of that problem. I just reasoned it through.
She smiled confidently, congratulating herself on making the important choices that would pave her path in life with security, opportunity, and more than a little bit of glamour.