Chapter 1 - The Lie

 I'm going to start posting chapters from a book I started years ago and set aside.  Hope some of you find it interesting.

Lauren Parker had been lying to her daughter.  She sat behind her desk at work, staring at the phone, knowing she needed to call and tell her she’d be late again.  Dread held her back.

Ginna was sixteen years old.  Was she old enough to understand?  Before she could change her mind, Lauren grabbed her cell phone and punched the speed-dial for home.

          “Hello, Mom?”

          Lauren breathed a slight sigh of relief when Ginna answered, instead of her thirteen-year-old son.  This would make it easier.

          “Hi, honey.  I’m going to be late again tonight.  Don’t wait supper on me.”

          “I know, just fix something for the two of us.  Oh, yeah.  It’s just me.  Danny isn’t even here.   He’s sleeping over at a friend’s.  How come I’m always the one left home alone?”

          Lauren tried to overlook the ache Ginna’s sarcasm caused.

          “So you’re working late on that public relations project?”

          “Partly that.  Dave has asked me to join him for dinner, too.”

          “You mean Mr. Cameron, your boss?  I thought his name was John.”

          “Yes, he’s John David Cameron, but he goes by his middle name.”

          “Isn’t he nearly ten years older than you, Mom—and married?”

          Here goes.  “Yes, he is.  But you don’t realize that ten years isn’t as big a deal when you’re thirty-five.  It’s not as much of my lifetime as for you at sixteen.”

          “Yeah, Mom, I can do the math.”

          “Please.  I need to see where this will go.  You have no idea what I went through when your father left.”

          “Danny and I went through a lot, too.”

          “I know you’d like to go back to the home we had before.  You’ve told me that often enough, but it’s all gone.  Your father took it from us when he walked out five years ago.”

          She had to stop, her throat closing up in a choke.  These were feelings she never wanted to dredge up—the deep, sharp pain of rejection, the feeling that she was worthless, and didn’t deserve to be loved, ever again.  How could he choose to love a man instead of me?  This was the part she couldn’t bear to tell Ginna.

          “Mom, are you all right?” 

          So she could hear the pain.  Her daughter had always been perceptive.

          “I’m fine, Honey.  Don’t wait up for me, okay?”

          “Okay.”

          Well, that could have been worse.

          Just then, Dave tapped on her half-open office door.  Hastily, she wiped the tears from her cheeks and smiled up at him.

          “Ready?”  His voice had a rich, deep tone that always warmed her deep inside.

          “Sure am.”  She grabbed her purse and walked out the door with him into the nearly empty hallways of the High Plains Nuclear Plant in eastern Colorado.  This was the job that had opened almost miraculously after the divorce.  Her bachelor’s degree was in public information, and once he left--I refuse to even think his name—it was all she could turn to. 

When this job showed up on an Internet query, it was too good to pass up, even though it meant leaving Texas, where all her family was.  The move had been harder on her children than she’d expected.  They had ended up in a small rental house at the edge of tiny Deer Path, Colorado.

          At times, she felt guilty that the lives of her children weren’t enough to keep her happy and occupied.  But she needed this job as a way to feel valuable, contributing something to the world.  Besides, Tim--ugh! I thought of his name-- was very lax in paying child support, so they needed her paychecks to get by. 

          By now, she and Dave were standing in front of the elevator that would descend from their third-floor offices to the ground level.  While they were waiting there, her phone buzzed. 

          “You have a call?” he asked.

          Glancing  quickly at the phone’s screen, she shrugged.  “Just a text, probably from my daughter.  I’ll read it later.”  She should read it now, but her heart was pounding, with him standing so close.  She didn’t want to mess up this moment.

          With a chime, the elevator arrived and the door slid open.   It was empty, and her heart began to race as they stepped inside.  As soon as the door shut, he took her hand and drew her close.  When the light for the second floor came on and back off, he tilted her face up, his fingers weaving into her blonde hair, kissing deeply.

          “Oh, Lauren, I know you’re probably hungry, but I just want to be alone with you.  That’s what I’m hungry for.”

          She looked up into his shining gray eyes.  He wasn’t a truly handsome man, but he had a magnetism which set her head spinning.  It was so good to have value to someone again, especially to someone important in the company, like Dave.