They were walking quickly, but he gave her a quizzical look. “‘Young men like me,’” he said, turning the phrase over in his mind. “And what does that mean? Aren’t you ‘young’ like me? Yet last night you slipped away from a wonderful party.” Pausing, he smiled. “At least I was told that it was a great party.”
“You weren’t there?” she asked, wide-eyed.
“Hate them.”
“But if you want to be a politician, you’re going to have to go to lots of parties.”
“But I assume that those parties will have a purpose, and there is work that will be done when one isn’t at a party, right?”
“Right,” she said, smiling. “So what will your guests think when they find out that their host isn’t here? That he’s run off with the dancer? More important, what will your family think?”
“That I’m lucky,” Hal said. “And as for the others, they can entertain themselves. The girls are here because they want to marry my father’s money.”
“Ah,” Leslie said.
“And what does that mean?”
She decided to be honest. “That I didn’t know that you knew.”
“Couldn’t very well miss it, could I? You wouldn’t believe the number of ‘accidental’ encounters I have with girls. If one more fakes a drowning in the swimming pool, I’ll—”
“With or without her top on?” Leslie asked.
“Two with, one without,” Hal said; then they laughed together.
They’d walked down a pretty little path until they reached a stream. A green canoe was tied to a wooden dock. “This joins a river about half a mile from here,” Hal said as he put the basket in the canoe. “This is your last chance to back out.”
“And miss an opportunity to put the noses of those girls out of joint? No, thank you. Do you know how to row this thing?”
Hal smiled. “Yes. You’re sure you want to spend the day with me?” he asked again as Leslie prepared to step into the little canoe.
She looked into his eyes. They were soft brown and gentle. But under it she could see that rocklike foundation that he spoke of in his mother. “You’re like your mother, aren’t you?” she said softly.
“Yes,” he answered simply. “Her family isn’t flashy like my father’s, no great heaps of money made. But my mother’s people know what they want when they see it and they go after it. They don’t give up.”
The way he said it and the way he looked into her eyes made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. It was almost as though he were saying that he wanted her. It was absurd, of course, but it was a feeling she had. Truthfully, she didn’t want to see this. She didn’t want to have to make up her mind about her future right now. Right now it was a beautiful day and she wanted to have a ride in a canoe with a handsome boy who flirted with her.
“If you ask me to marry you, I’ll tell Alan and he’ll beat you up,” she said in mock seriousness.
When Hal’s eyes lit up and he laughed, she knew that she’d caught him off guard, but the laughter lightened the mood.
As he handed her into the canoe, Hal said, “I’ve seen him and I could take him.”
“When did you see him?” Leslie asked as Hal jumped into the canoe and pushed off.
“Around. I told you that I’ve been watching you.”
“Is that like being a Peeping Tom? That won’t look good when they dig up dirt on you when you run for president.” She’d meant it as a joke, but he was serious as he maneuvered the oars to steer them into the middle of the placid stream.
“There it is again,” he said. “It’s as though you know what’s going to happen. Not that I believe in such things, but are you clairvoyant?”
Leaning over the side of the canoe, Leslie trailed her hand in the water. “No, not at all. It’s just that—” There wasn’t anything that she could say that would satisfactorily explain what she’d already lived through. Could she tell him that in spite of how she looked, she was one day away from being forty years old and that she was married with two almost-grown children?
“Are you still with me?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered, smiling. “I’m here for at least another three weeks.”
He opened his mouth to reply to that, but then he closed it. “I like a girl who’s a mystery,” he said. “And you’re about as mysterious as they come.”