She Loves Me Not (5 page)

“If Laurel Bay was a ghost town, you'd be out of work,”
she used to tell him.

“Then we could spend every second together,
” he'd say, hugging her close.

“We'd probably get on each other's nerves.”

“No, we wouldn't.”

“We'd be flat broke.”

“Why? You have plenty of money in the bank.”

“For our future. And the kids' college. We can't touch that. We'd have nothing to live on.”

Then he'd say, imitating Patricia Neal in the old movie
The Homecoming, “We'd live on love.”

And they'd laugh.

Now here she is, flat broke anyway, longing for Sam, living on
if onlys.

She and Bill take their time shelving the new stock, chatting about their Valentine's Day plans. Rather, Bill's Valentine's Day plans, which are infinitely more exciting than Rose's quiet evening ahead. He tells her that his friend Jeffrey has arranged a blind date for him with a handsome Broadway dancer.

“I thought you didn't like creative types, Bill,” Rose teases.

“I don't, but he's too good-looking to pass up. And he's got orchestra seats for the new Sondheim revival.”

“So basically, you're using him.”

“Basically, yes. But don't tell me you've never used a man, Rose. Something tells me you weren't always so sweet and innocent.”

It strikes her as an odd accusation, considering her status. She met Sam ten years ago. Before him, there were a few boyfriends, but nobody serious. She was too busy putting herself through college and trying to make it on her own in New York to date much, let alone indulge in femme fatale behavior.

Bill, apparently unaware that her grin has faded, glances toward the plate-glass window. “Uh-oh. Here comes trouble. I'd better go get the other cart.”

“And leave me up here alone with him?”

“Better you than me. At least he's civil to you. He just grunts at me and looks like he wishes I'd go back to Christopher Street, or wherever it is homophobics like him think I belong.” Bill disappears into the back room as the street door opens, its brass bell tinkling on a gust of cold air.

“Good morning.” Luke strides briskly into the store, wearing a long black cashmere overcoat and carrying a steaming paper cup of coffee in his leather-gloved hand.

“Good morning.” Rose picks up the pricing gun and aims it at a paperback's cover.

“It's gorgeous out there today, isn't it?”

She looks up, surprised. It wasn't like Luke to make small talk.

“Cold, though,” he adds.

Rose follows her boss's gaze to the wide, plate-glass window. Bare tree branches cast sharp shadows in bright winter sunlight. Across the street, beyond the row of storefronts, is a cloudless ice-blue sky.

“Yes, it's cold.” Rose can't think of anything else to say, but it seems as though he expects more from her.

She clears her throat, wishing he'd move on. Instead, he pauses to straighten a nearby Valentine's Day display of romance novels and self-help relationship books. He works with precision, carefully aligning each book on the shelf.

Rose watches him out of the corner of her eye, wondering, as she often does, why he's not married. He's a good decade or more older than she is, and handsome: a graying Harrison Ford/Richard Gere hybrid. She knows he's single and childless, but has no idea whether he's divorced, or widowed, or has a girlfriend. It's not the kind of question she feels comfortable asking. In fact, she tends to feel awkward around him under any circumstances.

It doesn't help that she occasionally catches him looking at her with what strikes her as something more than professional employer-employee interest.

He must know about Sam. It's a small town; people talk. Yet Luke doesn't ask personal questions. In fact, today's inquiry about the weather is about as verbally casual as he gets.

Turning away from the display, Luke says, “When you finish stocking the shelves, Rose, you can get to work on the Valentine's cards.”

“Straightening them?”

“No, putting them away.”

“Already? Netta used to leave the seasonal cards up until a few days after the holiday, just in case—”

“You can put them away today,” Luke repeats. “We have to make room for more Saint Patrick's Day stock, and the rest of the Easter and Passover cards should be coming in from the distributor any day now.”

“Okay.”

“Be sure to sort the cards as you put them away. Make sure each one has the right-sized envelope.”

She nods, resenting his explicit instructions. How difficult is it to put away greeting cards?

But Luke, in his characteristic micro-management style, goes on, “Stack any cards that don't have envelopes together with rubber bands. They seem to be walking away from the display this year.”

“The cards?”

“No, the envelopes,” he says over his shoulder, already heading toward the back of the store.

Envelopes.

Rose is reminded yet again of the strange Valentine she received yesterday.

The envelope was red. Not a small one you might get in a box of note cards, but the larger, rectangular kind that comes with a full-sized greeting card.

A ridiculous thought flits into her mind, and she shoves it promptly out again.

Of course Luke had nothing to do with it.

Why on earth would he anonymously send her a paper heart?

But then . . . why would anyone?

H
earts.

Hearts, flowers . . .

Christ, they're everywhere today, aren't they?

Hearts, flowers . . . reminders.

With a grimace, David Brookman turns abruptly away from the red and white stationery store window display, focusing instead on the intersection before him. A steady stream of traffic zips past the towering gray office buildings that line Lexington Avenue. David takes a step back as a yellow cab swerves to miss a pothole, spattering brown slush onto the pedestrian-congested curb. The air is wet with icy precipitation that can't seem to decide whether it wants to be rain or snow.

If there's a more dismal place in which to spend the month of February, David can't imagine where it might be.

You don't have to stay here,
he reminds himself.
It's your choice. You can go south, the way you used to.

His father just called again last night to urge him to join him and David's stepmother on the balmy Gulf Coast.

David regularly escaped to his own condo there right after New Year's, staying at least through President's Day weekend. Hell, he'd have gone down for the whole winter, but
she
didn't want to spend the holidays in the South. Said it wouldn't seem like Christmas without cold weather, and snow.

She loved snow.

He closes his eyes briefly, pushing aside an unwanted memory.

When he opens them again, the orange
DON'T WALK
sign across the street has turned to a white
WALK
. He crosses the intersection, careful to sidestep puddles in his black calfskin Ferragamo oxfords.

One of these days, he really should find a closer rental garage. Parking his Land Rover three blocks from home isn't practical on a day like this.

Halfway down the next block, he mounts the steps of a narrow brownstone, snaps his black umbrella closed, and turns his key in the lock.

Home.

Home again.

A new maid, whose name escapes him, scurries into the entry hall as he wipes his feet on the mat.

“Good morning, sir.” She radiates polite detachment and a bit of uncertainty.

Soon, she'll take his frequent absences in stride, just as the others have.

He nods at her, depositing his dripping umbrella in the stand by the door and tossing his wet Burberry trench on the coat tree.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” the maid asks, as he flips through two days' worth of mail in its designated basket on the nearby table.

“No, thank you.” He picks up the customary stack of bills, financial statements and credit card offers, then strides toward the double glass doors leading to his study.

Stepping across the threshold into a dim, paneled haven, he inhales the familiar scent of leather, furniture polish and lingering pipe tobacco.

Here, with the maroon draperies drawn, the silence punctuated only by the steady tick of the antique mantel clock, David is sheltered from the harsh city at his doorstep; from the harsher past with its haunting memories.

Sitting at his desk, he slips a finger beneath the flap of the first envelope on his pile of mail then curses.

Blood oozes from a paper cut. He sticks his finger in his mouth, wincing at the warm, salty taste, then opens the top drawer to find his letter opener.

He really should use the damn thing more often, if only for practical reasons. Never mind that it's an heirloom, custom-designed, engraved with the family coat of arms and monogrammed with David's initials. His grandfather gave it to him the day he returned to New York with his MBA and joined the family's real estate business. Well, empire would be a more accurate word, David thinks, rummaging through his drawer.

The letter opener doesn't seem to be here.

He frowns, trying to recall the last time he used it.

Truth be told, he
never
uses the letter opener.

Well then, when was the last time he saw it?

He has no idea. It's so easy to lose track of time these days, he thinks, glancing at his daily calendar.

Shaking his head, he tears off several pages: the eleventh, the twelfth, the thirteenth.

Today's date stares boldly up at him.

He toys with a sharpened pencil, rolling it back and forth in his fingers.

February fourteenth.

Valentine's Day.

So?

It's just another bleak day in another bleak month.

Just another holiday spent without her . . .

He clenches his jaw.

Without Angela.

As vulnerable in David's strong fingers as the fragile neckbone of a hapless fowl, the pencil splinters abruptly in half.

T
urning onto Shorewood Lane late that afternoon with her children strapped into the back seat, Rose glimpses a familiar blue car parked in her own driveway.

“Hey, look, Aunt Leslie's here!” Jenna exclaims. “Do you think she can stay for dinner, Mom?”

“We'll ask her.” Rose parks at the curb, not wanting to block Leslie in and have to come out again later to move the car. According to the WLIR meteorologist on the car radio just now, the freezing rain that's been falling over New Jersey and the city all day is moving slowly eastward, and may turn to snow before dark.

Rose intends to change into sweats and warm socks, light a fire, and stay indoors for the rest of the evening. She had planned to brood, as well, but that will be impossible with upbeat Leslie around.

“Hi, guys!” Dressed in her skintight black gym clothes beneath a yellow parka, Leslie bounds out of her car as soon as Rose turns off the ignition. “Happy Valentine's Day. Look what I brought!”

Yes, look what she brought. Rose doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

It's a puppy. A little black puppy with an enormous red bow around his neck.

Jenna and Leo dash across the snowy yard, squealing with joy.

Rose follows more slowly, lugging the bag of orange prescription bottles, Jenna's backpack, the pink construction-paper-covered tissue box filled with her valentines, and a paste-smeared, heart-decorated white paper bag containing Leo's.

“Hey, Ro.” Leslie flashes a broad white grin and twinkly green eyes, looking enough like her brother to create a fresh wave of aching loss in his widow. “The puppy's for the kids. I've got something for you in the car.”

“Leslie—”

Jenna whirls on her with a pleading expression. “We can keep him, can't we, Mommy?”

Too befuddled to think clearly, she doesn't know what to say.

“Sam told me he was planning to get them a puppy that last Christmas, but that you wanted to wait till they were a little older.” Leslie shrugs. “I figured, they're more than a year older now . . . and I saw this little imp in the window of the pet store at the mall this morning. He was so adorable. It was like he was made for you guys. I would've called first to check with you, Rose, but I knew you were at work and I didn't want to bother you.”

Of course you didn't. And a puppy is no bother at all.

Rose looks from Leslie to Jenna to Leo. Her son is giggling as the squirming puppy licks his face. She sighs. “Okay. We'll keep him.”

What else can she do?

Leave it to Leslie to go and spring a dog on them when it's all Rose can do to singlehandedly feed and care for two children, not to mention maintain her own health and sanity.

“I'm so glad, Rose.” Leslie looks relieved. “I've got to call Peter and tell him he was wrong.”

“Wrong about what?” Rose asks.

“When I told him about the puppy, he said it was a bad idea. He said you don't go and buy someone a dog without asking them. But I told him to mind his own business, and that he doesn't know you well enough to say that.”

Sometimes Rose wonders if Peter and Leslie even know each other well enough to be planning a future together. They certainly seem like complete opposites. Leslie is a vegan yoga instructor/personal trainer; Peter indulges a fierce nicotine and caffeine addiction. And Rose has never heard the reserved carpenter say more than a few words without being interrupted by bubbly Leslie. But then, he doesn't seem to mind.

Besides, just because Rose is the look-before-you-leap type doesn't mean a whirlwind courtship can't work for somebody else. Particularly somebody like Leslie, who wears her heart on her sleeve and lives her life guided by instinct alone. She's clearly head-over-heels for Peter. Rose just hopes he feels the same.