Lauren sat at her desk in the small office that allowed her to look out over the studiously tidy salon of a niche women's fashion boutique that was her life. She owed so much to her stepfather, a property developer who continued to be supportive of her endeavours as they each came to terms with what had happened and had turned over their lives.
Jack was alone now, just as she was, following the loss of Carola, a wife and mother. They had met some fifteen years ago in a small hotel overlooking the Aegean Sea and an intense love affair had ended with Carola and Jack marrying and putting behind them Carola's abandonment by an errant husband, and Jack's loss of his wife in a car crash. That she had been pursuing an affair had only become known to him when the news was brought to him, that Jenny had not been alone but with her lover.
There was a strange symmetry that had brought them together, but neither Jack nor Carola had reckoned on the place that Jack soon held in her life and mind. Her feelings for him had gone unrequited but the bond had remained close, if not obsessive, on her part. It persisted, throughout the years that Jack and Carola lived and loved together.
Now Carola was gone and her fashion shop, 'Be Beautiful' or 'Beebe's' was for her to run on her own and not as a devoted assistant to Carola. She had her apartment in Cheltenham, close to BeeBe's, and Jack lived not so far away in The Cotswolds, in a stone manor house that she looked on as a second home and visited frequently.
'It won't be long until I see you,' she had told him when Jack called to say that he was on his way to attend to some business in the town and that he would call for her as soon as it was finished and they went to lunch.
'I look forward to it, I always do...'
'And promise me that you won't rush away again, Jack, please? We don't have to live parallel lives anymore.'
'No, I guess not, but I'm still getting used to the idea.'
'And I'm here to help you, I always have been.'
Once more, and in her direct ways of speaking to him, she had let him know that her bond to him remained as tight as ever.
♥
Jacques van Sommeren, or Jack as he preferred, was a man who loved women but possessed none of the bravura or the arrogance in his character that would accurately describe him as a 'ladies' man'. Instead, his pursuit of a relationship was muted or carefully considered, the choice of a companion achieved after a period of assiduous wooing. No flamboyance would show him to be a man possessed of unwavering self-confidence. On the very rare occasions that he had given in to an impetuous liaison, it had been accompanied by guilt -- as if a flaw in his character had been revealed and that he had been reckless and selfish. His conscience would make him pay for a moment's impetuous, yet pleasurable, behaviour.
He stood tall and proud in a posture that described good health achieved through regular exercise and careful, not obsessive, attention to his diet. He had little inclination for alcohol and drank only at social occasions, or when he entertained family and friends. Otherwise, the stock of wine in the cellar of the house he had rebuilt with his first wife remained untouched for long periods. That house had become the home of Carola, the woman who had saved him from the long months that had followed a period of mourning for his second wife, Carola Baines, a flaxen-haired beauty with a fulsome figure and a passionate heart.
Paying attention to his appearance had become a habit, a matter of routine, and only rarely was he to be seen in casual clothes that were not coordinated for color or style. For him, grooming made the man and his hair was cut short but not, in the fashion of the time, cropped close to his scalp. The cut was sportive, easily manageable and it was strikingly fair, almost bleached white when the time had been spent in the sun. He was restless, impatient to remain active, and his skin retained a deep tan, a colour that he was told his father possessed in his younger years.
He could indulge himself and took holidays that afforded opportunities to pursue his main interests of sailing, swimming, and most of all, running. They were an outlet for nervous energy that drove him to work long hours when a project was in its early stages but left, as a result, extreme mental tiredness. Relief from the effects of his work could usually be achieved by the injection of adrenaline, that invigorating buzz achieved when he was out, alone, running through the fields and over the paths that surrounded what had been the family home.
A life-changing holiday in Greece had been the start of turning his life upside down all over again. He had met a mother and daughter, Carola and Lauren Baines, women that had found a way into his life and receptive mind only too easily, and when the moment came for them to part, after the holiday, they knew, suddenly, that their lives would never be the same again. Oh, how lives had been changed after one look, by just one look, that they had exchanged when they had first met.
Lauren had been the first to use them in the context of their relationship with each other. Intuitively, she had, it seemed, recognized a man whose character matched her ideal. It was the open affection that he could express, his discreet touch upon her, the interest shown in his eyes for both of them that told her he was the man to be in their lives. Above all, he gave time and commitment to loosen the ties that held them to a former existence. It helped that he combined this propensity for showing affection with good looks and his indifference to what others might regard as his understated, and unfashionable, choice of clothes for the beach. They were on holiday, after all, and Lauren in her precocious ways had blurted it all out, much to Carola's embarrassment and his dismay.
'People can think what they like about us, but I know that meeting you has changed how I'm going to deal with the future.'
'A future with us!'
'Lauren!'
'No, I think that she may be right and time will tell.' He had spoken out without a second's thought.
Lauren had been seen to rush to Carola's side and had disclosed that they had each found their man, a devoted kindred spirit; she just knew it. He would take them both with him on their journey together; he would lead when they needed his guidance; he had said that he loved them and she had needed to hear that most of all and to hear the words, often.
And that was how it had always been where in concerned Lauren. But for Carola he had been too tactile, too eager to express his feelings and to admit that he could restore the life of love and companionship she thought was lost. Lauren had no objection to these traits in him, far from it. She knew that they had 'clicked', in their own particular and special way.
Whereas Carola came to represent the calm and order in his life that he needed, Lauren's lively and unpredictable spirit matched his own suppressed inclinations to take a risk, to break the shackles that kept him in a conventional routine. Carola would take time to convince; she had allowed Lauren to be with him and relied upon an instinctive assessment of Jack, a family man, that he would not take advantage of her. If Lauren approved, learned of him, and discerned that he would accept them both, then Carola was prepared to relent in her denial that she welcomed his advances. She reserved her judgment, but Lauren's assurances soon spoke of her trust in him and the wish to discard the protective shield that they always seemed to build around themselves when a stranger entered their lives.
'We've met a wonderful guy, we both have!' she had cried out and Carola had told him of later. 'Time's just whizzing by too quickly to learn just about everything about him...about Jack. We're on holiday...so let's just live for the moment!'
And they had done until their lives together, a devoted trio, had been changed and now left them to pick up the pieces and to move on and do that together. The way to do that seemed to be clear in Lauren's mind. Not so in Jack and the tension between them had to be broken, somehow and soon.
♥
They drove to her home which was part of the high-quality development that Jack had pursued and retained an interest in and that went beyond her apartment.
'Are you sure you don't want to go out to lunch? It's not too late to change your mind.'
'Yes. I'm sure. Let's go to the flat. I want it to be just the two of us so we can talk.' Her fingers entwined with his for a moment and their eyes met as he drove, his hand on the gear shift and his Jaguar convertible cruising smoothly. 'It used to be so simple, seeing you or being together...now it seems as if I have to make a special appointment.'
'Hardly...an appointment,' he retorted. 'We're both busy people.'
'Not too busy to be together, and that's how it seems to me, Jack.'
