Looking for Laura (18 page)

He glanced down at her, almost afraid of what he'd see in her face. She appeared slightly dazed, deeply bewildered, as shocked as he felt. “Well,” she said breathlessly, then stepped back, putting some more distance between them.

“Um, look—'

“It's just—the cream,” she mumbled. “It'll keep your nose from peeling.”

“Okay.” The cream. Vitamin E. Maybe it contained some of those special aphrodisiac herbs from that emporium in Brighton. Maybe that was why they'd gone momentarily berserk.

“So, about Laura…”

“Yeah, I'll—uh—'

“Fine.”

“Okay.”

He inhaled, appalled at how shaky his breath was, and bolted for the door. Outside on her porch, he sucked in another deep double-lungful of air, hoping the cool night would yank his psyche back into alignment.

His psyche was all right. Unfortunately, a part of him located a bit below his psyche was still hot and hard and aching.

For Sally Driver. Jesus Christ.

He stormed down the steps and across the lawn to his car. Flung himself behind the wheel, revved the engine, ordered Todd Junior to chill out and backed down her driveway. He needed to get laid—by anyone other than Sally. He needed a cold shower. He needed perspective.
He needed…
something
. Anything. Anything other than Sally.

His best friend's wife. His best friend's weirdo widow.

That would explain it. She was a lonely widow. She'd gone without for a while, and he'd seemed convenient. She was only using him. Hey, he ought to be offended.

Except he could think of few things he'd enjoy more than being used by a busty, lusty woman with a keen sensitivity about the freedom of her thighs. Even if she was a flake. Even if she could be pushy and bossy and sanctimonious. Even if her five-year-old kid knew more about music than she did.

“Paul,” he muttered, speeding down her street in a rage to get away from her. “Paul, you son of a bitch, this is your fault. This whole thing—the letters, the knife, the whole goddamn day and that kiss, that absurd, in-fucking-credible kiss…It's all your fault.”

 

The woman who entered the New Day Café looked familiar to Sally. On the petite side of average and the far side of middle age, she had a compact body, a disproportionately long face and short, stiff hair, red with a faint undertone of violet. She wasn't a regular at the café, but Sally knew she'd seen her before.

She congratulated herself on knowing that much. Her mind had been as scrambled as a Spanish omelette since Saturday night. Thank God she hadn't had to work Sunday. If she had, she would have been useless. Worse than useless. She would have filled the sugar bowls with salt and burned the unbaked pastries Greta left. She would have burned the coffee. She might have burned the whole damn place down.

Instead, she'd stumbled through Sunday like someone
emerging from a fever-induced delirium. The morning sunlight had singed her eyes, but that was preferable to the alternative. Whenever she'd closed her eyes, she'd felt a deep, physical pull of memory—a memory of kissing Todd Sloane.

Ugh. Todd Sloane. The pompous boob. The driver of a Snob, the condescending twit, the defender and protector of Sally's cheating husband. Why on earth had she kissed him?

The worst part hadn't been kissing him. It had been stopping the kiss, ending it, watching him leave her house and wishing he would have stayed, wishing—God help her—he'd stayed all night, kissed her again, torn off his rumpled-journalist apparel and made savage love to her.

Paul had been good in bed, but he'd never been savage. It had never even occurred to Sally that she'd like savage. But one kiss from Todd, one unexpected, unrestrained, totally inappropriate kiss, and
savage
had become her new point of reference.

The entire incident left her profoundly disturbed. She'd sent Rosie next door to play with Trevor all day yesterday, and tried to lose herself in assorted sections of the Sunday
Boston Globe
. Thumbing through the so-called regional news section, she realized that the
Globe's
idea of regional didn't offer nearly enough coverage of Winfield, its neighboring hamlets and the orchards, granite quarries and ski slopes that occupied this part of Massachusetts. She'd reached for the phone, thinking she ought to call the publisher of the
Valley News
to recommend that they add a Sunday edition.

Then she'd remembered that the publisher of the
Valley News
was Todd Sloane. She wouldn't phone him even if her mouth had erupted in hives and she had to
report that she was suffering from some deeply contagious infection that she'd likely passed on to him during those prolonged seconds of insanity in her front hall the previous night. She was not going to phone him, ever—other than to demand that he give her back the Laura letters and then stay far away from her.

She
had
enjoyed the Saturday they'd spent together, though. And when she'd kissed him, when they'd stood so close to each other during those few minutes in her entry hall, his eyes darker than the space between the stars in the night sky and his hair even darker than that, and his mouth had come down on hers…

Well, she hadn't regretted kissing him then. Only afterward, when she'd come to her senses, did she comprehend what a colossal mistake it had been.

“Has Officer Bronowski had his second cup yet?” Tina asked, directing a look at the tall, gaunt officer seated two tables to the left of the black-clad novelist and one table to the right of the trio of burly guys wearing Evergreen Landscaping T-shirts and devouring banana-nut muffins and jumbo lattes. Officer Bronowski was so predictable Tina and Sally would worry that something was wrong if he didn't order a refill precisely 12.3 minutes after he paid for his first cup.

Sally checked her watch. “It's only eleven minutes,” she assured Tina. “How are you? How was your weekend? Has Howard made up his mind about Dartmouth yet?” She'd rather talk about Howard than think about the man in her own life—who wasn't in her life and who never would be, as long as she kept her wits about her.

Tina didn't answer. She was watching the woman who'd entered, the one with the hair so oddly colored and motionless it looked like the molded and painted
plastic hair found on cheap dolls. The woman wore cream-colored linen slacks with crisp pleats running down the leg fronts, a tan linen blazer with brass buttons, a beige shell blouse and an artfully tied silk scarf featuring a paisley pattern. Gold marble-size balls adorned her earlobes, and a wide gold band and a matching gold ring with a hefty chunk of diamond embedded in it circled her ring finger. If not for her hair, she'd look like a well-groomed professional. A real-estate saleswoman, perhaps, or a deputy mayor in charge of the arts. As it was, she looked like a real-estate saleswoman or a deputy mayor whose hairstylist had been having a very bad day.

Where had Sally seen her before?

The woman stopped scrutinizing the pastries in the showcase below the counter and lifted her gaze to Sally. “My son said I had to come here,” she announced. “But I don't know why.”

Todd
, Sally thought her mind still elsewhere, then silently berated herself for remaining fixated on him a full thirty-six hours after that stupid kiss. She faked a polite smile for the woman, and then it hit her.
Todd
. The woman was Todd's mother.

“He said I should come here and have some coffee and stay out of his hair,” the woman continued. “Now, tell me, what kind of son would say that to his mother?”

Sally suffered a brief flashback to Saturday night, when she'd been in his hair, her fingers twining through the thick black waves, feeling the heat of his skin at his nape. She shook her head clear, forced another smile and said, “It's the kind of son who knows how good our coffee is. Today we've got our usual breakfast blend and a delicious Sumatra, and our flavored coffee is an almond-cinnamon.”

“The almond-cinnamon is awesome,” Tina interjected, reaching for the breakfast-blend decanter as Officer Bronowski pushed back his chair. In a perfectly timed choreography, she had the decanter poised and ready to pour the moment he slid his mug onto the counter. He smiled bashfully as she refilled the cup, nodded his thanks and moseyed back to his seat.

“It sounds appalling,” Todd's mother said. “Almond and cinnamon? What's wrong with regular coffee?”

“We've got regular coffee,” Sally said.

“Good old-fashioned coffee?” Todd's mother asked. “The kind of coffee that, when you ask someone for a cup of coffee, this is what they give you?”

“That would be our breakfast blend.” Where had Sally met her? At her wedding, she recalled—Paul had wanted Todd's parents there because he'd developed a close relationship with them over the years. And at Paul's funeral. Mrs. Sloane had swooped down on Sally in the parlor of the funeral home, clamped both her hands around one of Sally's and said, “You don't know me, but—”

“Yes, I do,” Sally had said.

“No, you don't,” Mrs. Sloane had insisted. Then she'd introduced herself and babbled for a while about how she'd always admired Paul's height. “Todd is too tall,” she'd said. “Paul was the right height. There wasn't too much of him. I never got a stiff neck with him.”

Why had Todd told his mother to come to the New Day Café? Was Sally supposed to acknowledge that they'd met before? At a wedding and a funeral?

“You probably don't remember me—”

Sally cut her off. “You're Todd Sloane's mother,” she said, smiling cordially.

“Helen Sloane. All right, I'll have some of that, what is it? Breakfast blend? Explain this, Sally—can I call you Sally?”

“Yes.”

“Explain this, Sally—what exactly is blended in the breakfast blend?”

“Different roasts of beans,” Sally told her. “Colombian regular roast, dark roast, a touch of mocha java. It's a nice combination. It tastes very…regular.”

Helen Sloane gazed earnestly across the counter at her. “How are you doing, dear? You must miss Paul terribly. It's been awful for you, hasn't it.”

“I'm doing okay, thank you.”

“Just awful,” Helen overruled her. “Tragic. Heartrending. He was such a fine young man. I was so happy he was Todd's roommate in college. I thought, what a fine young man! He'll keep Todd in line.”

“I don't think he did,” Sally muttered.

“No, but he was a fine man. This is the breakfast blend, right?” she asked as Tina handed her a mug of coffee.

“Yes,” Tina said. “You're gonna love it.”

“What is wrong with the world that you can't just get a plain cup of coffee anymore?” Todd's mother issued a sigh deep enough to have originated somewhere in the vicinity of her kneecaps. “Just what is wrong with this world? I've had it up to here—” she karate-chopped the air next to her forehead “—with all this new stuff. The computer. You know? I've had it up to here with that blasted computer.”

Tina sent Sally a hesitant smile, one that communicated,
Should I signal Officer Bronowski that we've got a problem, or do you think she's harmless?
Sally refused to smile back, afraid Helen would suspect they were
laughing at her. “I'm sorry you're having computer problems. Would you like a pastry? We've got pear tarts today. They're wonderful. Also cheese Danish, banana-nut muffins, zucchini bread, bagels, croissants—”

“The thing is…” Todd's mother took a delicate sip of her coffee. “Mmm. This is good. What do I owe you?”

Tina turned and deliberately stared at the wall behind the counter, where a placard listed the café's prices. Then she turned back, a large, head-swiveling turn. “A dollar thirty.”

“This is very good,” Todd's mother murmured, unsnapping the flap of her purse and sliding two dollars from her wallet. “I'm not that old, but I remember a time when a person could put out a newspaper with nothing but a typewriter on her desk. None of this computer nonsense. A document was something you got from City Hall and wrote an editorial about. A file was a stack of papers in a manila folder. Enter was what you did through a door. Escape was what jailbirds tried to do. Am I making sense?”

“Absolutely,” Sally said politely.

“Todd is trying to run an entire newspaper with these blasted computers. Fine, I understand, it's a new millennium. Computers are necessary. But they made typewriters obsolete. You see what I'm getting at? It's that feeling of obsolescence. My son tells me I'm in his hair.”

Sally did see what she was getting at. Tina obviously didn't. She frowned, shrugged and wandered down the counter to the cash register to get Helen's change.

“Did Todd tell you he didn't want you to work at the paper anymore?” Sally asked. If the woman answered
yes, Sally would add that to her already substantial list of reasons to hate the man.