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It was entirely too hot, and he grunted as the boiling liquid touched his tongue and burned the roof of his mouth. He swallowed it quickly and coughed. “You were right.”
She laughed quietly and continued stirring hers to let the heat out. Lauren looked over to him, everything between them sober now.
“Thank you,” she said. “For being here. For anchoring me.”
“You do the same for me,” he said back, his voice just as quiet and just as serious as hers had been. “You know that, right? You do the same for me.”
She nodded and ducked her head. He lifted her chin to look at him, and Blake felt only love streaming inside him, between them. Could she feel it?
“You have me,” he said. “Always. You have Tommy. My brother and sister adored you. Momma asks me if I’ve proposed to you yet every day.” He smiled, because it was all true. “We’ll be your family, okay?”
She nodded, a single tear slipping down her face. She dropped her chin again and Blake let her this time.
He cleared his throat and started stirring his own bowl of soup. “In fact.” He cleared his throat. “I wanted to talk to you about some of that.”
“Which parts?”
“Us being a family,” he said. “Getting married.”
She said nothing, and Blake had to have something to occupy his mouth or he was going to say too much. So hot soup or not, he took another bite. It was easier this time, though still blistering as he chewed the noodles and white beans before swallowing.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said. “But let’s be thinking about it, okay? What we want. Where we want to live. If you even want to keep this thing going.” He glanced over to her, and she did let a small smile lift the corners of her mouth.
“I want to keep this going,” she said. “And the rest…I’ll start thinking about.”
That was good enough for him, so he nodded, and asked, “Where did you learn to make this soup?”
“It’s Bessie’s grandmother’s recipe,” she said, and Blake let her lead the conversation to her Supper Club ladies—who had been her family for so long.
Blake hoped she had room in her heart for him and Tommy, and with how things had gone this summer, he suspected she did. He just needed to be patient with her, and he needed to keep her close even when she wanted to pull away.
24
Lauren didn’t notice much difference between summer and fall in Hilton Head. The sun shone brightly and hotly every morning and all day long. There were less tourists in the fall, and Joy had gone back to Texas. Otherwise, it felt like business as usual on the island.
Blake went to work every day, and things between him and Tommy seemed to get better every single day. Lauren wasn’t entirely sure, because she got everything second-hand, mostly from Blake, but sometimes from Tommy.
She walked in from her time at the gym that morning, her phone already ringing. She’d set up a landline here at her house, in the narrow office just on the other side of the wall. She ran down the hall and around the corner to grab the phone. “Keller Marketing Group,” she said, and she drew in a long breath to try to tame the panting. She’d already put in five miles on the treadmill that morning.
“Yes, hello, Miss Keller,” a crisp male voice said. “This is Agent Toledo. Do you remember me?”
Lauren sank into her desk chair, because how could she forget? An image of the tall federal agent flashed through her mind. “Yes,” she said, trying to make her voice as crisp and as sure as his had been. She wasn’t entirely sure she’d succeeded. “What can I do for you, Agent Toledo?”
She stared at the black computer screen in front of her, her hand moving to wake the machine. She needed to pick up some new clients, and this wasn’t the kind of call she wanted to get at her new firm. A firm of one person. One woman who ran the whole show, from the marketing department to the art manager to the financial secretary to the CEO.
“We’ve reached a settlement with Simple Solutions,” he said. “We’re distributing money back to the employees who it was taken from, and I just need to confirm your payment details. Do you have a few minutes?”
“Yes,” she said, utterly surprised to hear she’d get any sort of compensation. “Simple Solutions is still out of business, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Now, let’s go over your current address…”
Lauren gave him all the details he wanted, and he said the money would be in her account by the weekend. The call ended, and Lauren supposed that could count as securing a client without having to do any of the work.
She showered and got back to business. She had two clients right now, with a possible third on the table. She had a mock-up to do for them, as well as a quote to put together, and then she needed to call Bill Shaffer and find out what he thought about the designs she’d put together for him.
The hours passed quickly, as Lauren loved thinking through sales concepts, looking at and creating creatives for campaigns, and working from home. Whenever her tea got cold, she made more. When she was hungry, she could pad into the kitchen and make something to eat. Her mind whirred during her quieter moments, and she’d often come up with her best ideas while away from the job.
An alarm went off, and that was Lauren’s signal to stop working for the day. She sat back from the drawing in front of her, her fingers releasing the pencil they clutched. She’d forgotten how much she enjoyed actually hand-drawing the art. She loved sketching things out by hand, but Simple Solutions had moved to digital tablets and pens five years ago.
