We consider hyperbolic systems of conservation laws with relaxation source terms leading to a diffusive asymptotic limit under a parabolic scaling. We introduce a new class of secondorder in time and space numerical schemes, which are uniformly asymptotic preserving schemes. The proposed Implicit-Explicit (ImEx) approach, does not follow the usual path relying on the method of lines, either with multi-step methods or Runge-Kutta methods, or semi-discretized in time equations, but is inspired from the Lax-Wendroff approach with the proper level of implicit treatment of the source term. As a result, it yields a very compact stencil in space and time and we are able to rigorously show that both the second-order accuracy and the stability conditions are independent of the fast scales in the asymptotic regime, including the study of boundary conditions. We provide an original derivation of l 2 and l ∞ stability conditions of the scheme that do not deteriorate the second order accuracy without relying on a limiter of any type in the linear case, in particular for shock solutions, and extend such results to the nonlinear case, showing the novelty of the method. The prototype system for the linear case is the hyperbolic heat equation, whereas barotropic Euler equations of gas dynamics with friction are the one for the nonlinear case. The method is also able to yield very accurate steady solutions in the nonlinear case when the relaxation coefficient in the source term depends on space. A thorough numerical assessment of the proposed strategy is provided by investigating smooth solutions, solutions with shocks and solutions leading to a steady state with space dependent relaxation coefficient.