The Billionaire's Best Friend(20)

Too bad you don’t really mean that. If not for the storm and bad driving conditions, she would have sent him on his way as soon as they pulled into her driveway.

Nate made his way into the cozy living room and toward the couch. By the looks of things she’d left in a hurry earlier that night. A half-eaten sandwich and a glass of what he would bet his entire savings was root beer sat on the coffee table. Several textbooks lay open on the couch and a plan book was set next to them. Avoiding the books, he sat down and looked around the room. A large-screen television hung over the fireplace and two overstuffed chairs sat in front of a big bay window overlooking the front yard. A tall bookcase stood in the far corner. The bottom two shelves contained cookbooks, while the top three held framed photos. In this room, like the kitchen, she’d hung pictures of places in Europe she had always talked about visiting someday as well as a plaque that read, “Always Dance In The Rain.”

Had she managed to travel to any of the places pictured on her walls? He could still vividly remember her talking about the trips she wanted them to take someday when they both graduated from college. If she had, whom had she taken with her? Had she traveled alone? Had Callie gone with her? The two of them were like sisters, or at least they had been. Had they traveled across Europe before Callie’s marriage?

“Sorry, I needed to call Kevin back.” Lauren put a little extra emphasis on his name as she came into the room. “I was supposed to drive down to Rhode Island tomorrow for the weekend.”

She took a seat across from him, and Nate wondered why she was telling him all this, and if she’d told Kevin he was here. Could it be her way of telling him again that she had someone in her life and for him to leave her alone? Or was she just making polite conversation?

“By tomorrow afternoon the roads should be fine,” he said, as visions of Lauren with Kevin formed in his mind.

Lauren nodded in agreement, causing a strand of hair to fall forward. “I know, but I’ll want to visit Kelly and the baby when he or she is born.”

The reason for Lauren’s dangerous trip out into the snow had slipped his mind entirely. “Have you heard from her or Jared yet?”

“No. I keep checking my text messages, but so far nothing,” she answered, clear disappointment in her voice. “Are you hungry? There’s a decent chance I’ll lose power. It happens during almost every snowstorm, so if I’m going to cook I should do it soon.”

“Sounds good. Whatever you have is fine.”

Without a word, Lauren stood and went into the kitchen. Left alone, Nate moved over to the bookcase and the framed photos. The top shelf contained three: the one in the center of the shelf was of Lauren and Kelly at her sister’s wedding, to the right was one of Lauren with her brother Matt the day he got married, and to the left stood one of Callie and Lauren at Callie’s wedding. Several pictures of kids that he guessed were her niece and nephew filled the second shelf. Both children bore a resemblance to her brother. The last shelf contained a mixture of pictures of Lauren and her family. In some of them Lauren looked to be only five or six, while in others she was much older.

Tucked close to the back, one particular picture caught his attention. Pushing aside some frames, he grabbed the one almost hidden behind the others. In the picture, a nine-year-old Lauren stared back at him. She stood on the beach with Kelly and Matt on one side of her and Nate and his older brother Ryan on the other side. Behind the group stood Virginia McDonald and his mom and lying in front was the family dog. He remembered the exact moment her father took the picture. The two families had gone up to New Hampshire for a week together. It had been the first of many trips they had taken to New Hampshire together. Before that, they had always gone to a campground near Wells Beach in Maine. That year they had decided to try out a new location, and it had become a favorite for everyone.

He hadn’t thought of those joint family trips in years. Now though, he could picture the sand castles they had built together and the hours they’d spent splashing in the lake or hiking along sections of the Appalachian Trail. Once it grew dark or the bugs got too annoying, they’d returned to their campers and played board games or told stories until their parents wrangled them into bed.

For years, going up there with his family and the McDonalds had been the highlight of his summer. Something he’d started looking forward to as soon as they had changed the clocks in the spring.

Nate placed the photo back on the shelf and glanced over the other framed pictures again. The picture of her and him on the beach with their siblings was the only one of its kind. All the others, with the exception of the one with Lauren at Callie’s wedding, contained only family. There weren’t any pictures of her and Kevin on the shelf, or anywhere else in the room for that matter. This photo must have meant a lot, otherwise it wouldn’t have earned a spot on the bookshelf.