Love Songs (30 page)

And this face
was
, in its unpretentious way, distinguished, even aside from the quiet ring of authority in his gaze. Serena devoted a few final moments, as André studied the bill, to solving her mystery. Much as she tried, she could pin neither a name nor a place to this man whose interest was now mercifully centered on his woman-friend, granting Serena as free a perusal as convention would allow.

Then, quite unwittingly, he threw another wrench in the works by smiling. It was devastating in its intensity and totally unique. Had she ever seen that smile before Serena would have recalled it. No, she hadn’t seen
it
, but she had seen
him
, of that she was certain.

“I’d watch out for him, Serena.” André’s warning was soft and spoken with a note of earnestness that stunned her.

“Wh–what?” Had she been that obvious?

“That man behind me—”

“You know him?” she interrupted on impulse.

“No. He must be new, perhaps passing through.”

She frowned. “Then why the warning?”

André rose smoothly and came to stand behind her. Bending low in a proprietary attitude, one hand on either of her shoulders, he put his mouth close by her ear. Though Serena couldn’t get herself to look up, she sensed his eyes on the next table.

“I have feelings about people. That one strikes me as an agitator.”

“An agitator?” she murmured out of the corner of her mouth. “He looks harmless enough to me.”

“Is that why you’ve been staring?”

She couldn’t move without André’s say-so; she was cornered in every sense. “He … looks familiar. That’s all. I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere, but I can’t place him.”

André straightened, deftly pulling out her chair and drawing her up in one fluid move. “A mystery man from your lurid past?” he teased her lightly, but she cringed as she draped the strap of her bag over her shoulder, opting for sarcasm as a cover.

“No doubt.” Her drawl wafted into the air as the hand at her back guided her from the restaurant. She hadn’t had to look at the man again to have his face imprinted in her mind.

There it stayed, in living color, to torment her through the afternoon. Each idle moment brought forth the vision with renewed force.
Where had she seen him?

Running
Sweet Serenity
provided some respite, deflecting her attention to her customers. However, with the help of Nancy, who left to fetch her teenagers at three, and Monica, a teenager who arrived soon after from school, much of Serena’s time was free for “decorating.” Her hands were kept busy, carrying out the directives of her mind, while the latter was free to wander.

Inch by inch and working backward from the present, she scoured the years in an attempt to locate that empty slot crying out to be filled. Her past five years had been spent here in Minneapolis, building
Sweet Serenity
from scratch with the money she had unexpectedly inherited from her maternal grandfather. Even now, as she looked around the shop with pride, she recalled the surprise with which she’d received the bequest. Following her father’s disgrace, her mother’s family had been less than supportive. The fact that a grandfather she’d barely known had entrusted her with such a substantial sum after her father had squandered both dollars and trust had been an added incentive for making a success of the shop.

Five years in Minneapolis. The occasional trip to Seattle to visit her mother and younger brother, Steve, with whom the older, sadly defeated woman lived. Periodic trips to Chicago to attend gift shows or negotiate directly with her suppliers. Had there been, during this time, any man such as the one whose presence had struck such a jarring inner chord today? To her knowledge—no.

Traveling further back, she reviewed the two years she’d spent in Boston managing the Quincy Market boutique that had been the original inspiration for
Sweet Serenity.
During this period she had found herself, gaining self-confidence as a creative and capable woman, self-supporting for the first time and slowly beginning to rebuild her dreams. They were dreams different from those of the naive young girl she had been so long ago, but they were lovely in their own way.

Two years in Boston. Customers coming and going. The occasional date for dinner, a concert, or a show. Many familiar faces, mostly friendly. A landlord, several interesting tenants. A doctor, a dentist, and, of course, the members of the racquetball club. Were there any faces among the lot that resembled this April Fool’s Day apparition? No.

The four years she had spent in North Carolina as an undergraduate student at Duke were even harder to examine in detail. Not only was the time more distant, but she had been thrown into the passing company of many, many more people. Students, teachers, house mothers, administrators. Closing her eyes tightly against the peace of
Sweet Serenity
she envisioned her college life, scanning the crowd of faces in her memory for the one whose hidden fire had seared her consciousness today. Nothing. The age was wrong. The face was wrong. Nothing!

In an uncharacteristic fit of frustration Serena crushed the bow she’d been attempting to shape for a crystal martini shaker filled with liquor-stuffed mint olives.
Who was he?

Intuitively she knew his was no face seen merely in passing at some random point in her life. His gaze had affected her too deeply for that. He had been
someone
—someone important. In retrospect she felt a strange defensiveness, a need to protect herself—though from what she simply didn’t know. Perhaps she had to go further back. But each year’s regression was more painful.

Seeking escape, she tossed the ruined ribbon into the wastebasket, left the countertop at which she’d been working and rescued Monica from the clutches of long-winded Mrs. McDermott, a regular fan of cognac cordials. After Mrs. McDermott came several clusters of adolescents intent on splurging on one of the exotic flavors of jelly beans or—the current rage among them—gummy bears. Personally, Serena couldn’t stand the things. For that matter, she rarely ate any of her wares, sampling them only for the purpose of describing them to customers. Mrs. McDermott, for instance, a sprightly senior citizen, would not have been terribly pleased when the gummy bears stuck to teeth that Serena suspected were removable. On the other hand, it was the mature patrons who could appreciate the rich milk chocolate of the imported candies as youngsters could not. So much of Serena’s service involved learning and respecting the tastes of her clientele. It was for this reason that so many had become habitual indulgers since she’d opened her doors.

“Mrs. French!” She burst into a smile as a favorite customer entered the shop. “How are you?”

“Just fine, Serena,” the attractive woman replied. “But I need your help.”

“What’s the problem?” Over the years June French had had “problems” ranging from office parties to Little League banquets to numerous get-well gifts and other more conventional items.

“How about a sweet sixteen sleepover? I need party favors for seven teenaged girls,
all
of them fighting acne, baby fat, and eleven o’clock curfews!”

“I remember too well,” Serena quipped. In truth she had never been to a sleepover, much less a sweet sixteen party. At that particular point in her life she had been a loner. But acne, baby fat, and curfews—those she could relate to. “Let me think.…”

Slowly she looked around the shop. Along the left-hand wall ran the stacks of oversized canisters whose transparent glass faces displayed goods on sale by the pound. Along the right were shelves of decorative boxes and containers, a sampling of which were filled and wrapped for instant sale.

Tapping a tapered forefinger against her lips, she deliberated. “Of course! The obvious.” Several short strides brought her to a shelf that held small, hand-painted tins! Kneeling on the low-pile green carpet, she gathered a selection of tins together. Then she turned to the opposite wall. “Lo-cal suckers. They’re fun. Here”—she plucked one of the wrapped candies from its canister and offered it to her customer—“try this. It’s tangerine. There are also licorice, raspberry, butterscotch, lime and rum. We can fill each tin with a mixed sampling and tie a different colored bow around each. When the candy is gone the tin can be used for earrings, pins, you name it.”

The nod that accompanied Mrs. French’s grin vouched for her delight. “You’ve done it again, Serena. I only wish all my problems were so easily solved.”

So did Serena … with respect to her own. For as the hours passed and memory persisted in failing her she grew more agitated.

Returning to work behind the counter, she let her mind drift further back to those years she’d spent with her aunt and uncle in New York. Those had been her high school years, right after her father’s fall from grace. There had been anonymity in New York, something she had craved after the harrowing experience of stigmatization left her bruised and sensitive. She had spent those years quietly, her peers indifferent to her past. Only one, Michael Lowry, had used it against her, and the memory still hurt.

To hell with this strange man’s identity. It wasn’t worth the effort of rehashing those years. If she was ever to learn his name it would be destiny that chose the time and place. She’d done everything she could to ferret it out from the annals of her memory, with no success whatsoever. Enough! She had
Sweet Serenity
, today and tomorrow. The past was done!

Buoyed by her newfound determination, she lent Monica a hand with the steady flow of customers during the predictably busy late afternoon hours. Then, when the rush had finally eased, she started packaging the telephone orders they had received in the course of the day. There were several orders to be sent to area hospitals, several to be delivered to private homes. These would be handled with care by the local delivery service she retained. There were also several orders to be shipped long distance. Each required careful and extensive padding with the bright lime tissue she always used when wrapping or cushioning sales. In those cases where more glass than usual was involved she dug into the stack of newspapers in the back room to supplement the gayer tissue as padding.

Standing behind the counter, she could absently supervise the activity in the shop as she worked. Nonchalantly she reached toward the newspaper, which she crumpled loosely and eased into one of the boxes before her. Three, four, five times she repeated the process until the package was closed, sealed, and its shipping label affixed. Then she began on the next box. She reached for a piece of newspaper, crumpled it—

Reynolds.
The name leapt up from the half-crumpled newsprint, slamming her with the force of a truck, freezing her hand in midair, halting the flow of air in her lungs as her heart beat furiously.
Reynolds.
With unsteady fingers she straightened the paper, pressing the creases out with her palms, nervously spreading the sheet atop the counter. The name had been there, buried deep in the recesses of her mind. It took a minute of searching for her to locate the article and she was filled with trepidation as she read it.

MINNEAPOLIS, March 20. The
Tribune
has learned that its major competitor, the
Twin City Bulletin
, has been bought by Thomas Harrison Reynolds of the Harrison Publishing Group. Originally from Los Angeles, Mr. Reynolds takes the helm after months of negotiations, during which he bid heavily against two eastern corporations for ownership of the
Bulletin
and its subsidiary press. Initial reports filtering from
Bulletin
executive offices indicate that the staff will temporarily remain intact as Mr. Reynolds studies its effectiveness. The new publisher has vowed to improve the quality of reporting and …

Reynolds. Thomas Harrison Reynolds.
A name for the face. And a place. Los Angeles. A time. Sixteen years ago. Tom Reynolds, the cub reporter who had first broken the story that eventually led to her father’s indictment on charges of embezzlement.

It had to be a hoax. Serena reread the small article and moaned. Knees weak, she slouched against a high stool for support. Why here?
Why here?
Minneapolis was
her
home now. Here there was nothing to haunt her. She had a happy present and an optimistic future. Of all the places into which Tom Reynolds might have dug his journalistic claws,
why here?

Tom Reynolds.
It certainly explained the gut response she’d had earlier. Even now his name stormed through her, leaving tension in its wake. The last time she had seen him had been in court. Thirteen at the time, she had been vulnerable and impressionable. And Tom Reynolds had impressed her as being hard, ambitious, and … wrong.

As she struggled to assimilate the fact of his presence in Minneapolis, her eye fell on the calendar she’d changed just this morning. April 1. April Fool’s Day. Was this all an ugly gag?

In her heart she knew it wasn’t, even before she looked toward the front of the shop when she heard the bell. There at her door stood none other than the man in question, Thomas Harrison Reynolds.