and took her in his arms, kissing her as though it might be the last chance he would ever have. She pulled away, saying, “What about the steaks? Don’t you think we should get them out of the car?”
“That’s the way you respond to the best romance I can throw at you?” Hugo demanded. Annoyed at her for not succumbing to his kisses, he rolled her over and swatted the back of her cotton skirt six times. “You used to be such a sweet, shy submissive. You had such good manners then,” he reproved her, letting her up. “All right, go get the steaks. I’ll open some wine.”
“I can’t help it if I’m hungry,” Laura protested, rubbing her bottom as she exited the room.
Laura smiled, remembering the little scene. Then the phone rang again. She pounced on it, thinking this was at last Hugo’s call about the blue china vase. But it was Francesca again. This time she said she had something important to tell Laura about her partner, something Laura would not know. Laura felt uneasy, not because she mistrusted Hugo, but because she heard unhappiness, desperation and malice in the woman’s voice. Francesca went on to reveal that not only had she played with Hugo but that he had possessed her. In fact, they were in a relationship. She felt Laura ought to know this. That was all. She hung up before Laura could organize a coherent reply.
Laura sighed, went out back and smoked a little more. While she was sitting on the low stone wall that overlooked the brook, her cell phone rang. It was Hugo, wanting to know if his contact had called. Laura told him about the phone calls from Francesca. There was a momentarily silence. Then Hugo said, “Yes, she’s stalking me.”
“You’d mentioned playing with her,” Laura said, “but not sleeping with her.”
“Well, I did that too. Unfortunately. Now she thinks...something.”
“Why did you do that? She doesn’t seem like your type,” Laura pointed out, reasonably.
“She’s not. Not by any means. But, you know how it is. She needed a complete scene. I never dreamed she’d fixate on me. I haven’t seen her since and that was months ago.”
“You mean it was a mercy scene?”
“Let me put it this way, within minutes of meeting her in person I didn’t want to play with her, but I did anyway.”
“Anyway, I was thinking about that night.”
“What night?”
“The night you made me come back to your house for steaks.”
“That was a real tease. Morning after, I thought I had it made.
Then you decided to torture me for eight more months. How could you, Laura? Have I ever sufficiently beaten you for keeping me at bay for two years?”
“It was only six months more.”
“My client’s just arrived. I have to go. Call me if you hear from London, okay? And as for Francesca, just be polite and noncommittal. She lives close and may be crazy.”
Laura closed the phone and went back inside, feeling worse for Francesca than before. She knew Hugo well enough by now to know that his heart was irrevocably her own. But here was an outside party, loving him to insanity and doomed to frustration.
Laura got on Hugo’s New Rod Quarterly computer and brought up all the male personal ads from the New England region. There were about sixty. Surely one of these nice bachelors could take Francesca off Hugo’s hands? Someone desperate enough to snap up a head case. Laura called Hugo back and asked how old Francesca was and if she was attractive.
“Why?”
“I’m going through the close-by ads to see if there’s anyone we can hook her up with.”
“Forget it. She’s decided she only wants me.”
“Really? That’s worse than I thought,” Laura replied with that same uneasy sensation.
“The only way we can settle this once and for is to get married, right away,” Hugo suggested.
“That’s not going to settle anything,” Laura pointed out sensibly.
“She only lives a few miles away.”
Hugo signed off and Laura looked out the window. It had started to drizzle and she suddenly felt very hungry.
Grabbing her tweed coat and pulling it on, Laura put up the Out to Lunch sign, pulled the door closed behind her and locked it as she emerged onto windswept Shadow Lane. She ran across the cobbled street to the back entrance of Marguerite Alexander’s bookshop, getting only a little wet.
Hope Spencer Lawrence was in her usual position behind the coffee counter, a slim Venus in blue jeans, a white shirt and red apron, her long blonde pony tail reaching nearly to her waist, her heart shaped face open and friendly.
“I’m so hungry,” said Laura, sliding onto a counter seat.
“I have Tuscan Chicken soup,” suggested Hope, letting Laura taste a spoon.
“That’s great. And give me bread.”
“I’ve got biscuits. Made this morning,” Hope said, sliding a large one onto a dish for Laura and preparing the black tea Laura liked, in a small china pot. She then placed a small china cup and saucer with sugar and lemon in front of her friend.
“This girl keeps calling Hugo,” said Laura, pouring out and blowing on her tea.
“Really?” Hope leaned towards Laura and whispered, “There’s a girl in the shop right now who’s been asking questions about Hugo.”
Laura leaned back and waited for her soup with an accelerated heartbeat. Girl in the shop right now.
“Where’s Sloan?” Laura asked casually, crumbling a piece of the large biscuit off and nibbling it, the taste of which was indescribably seductive. “Oh my god, these are good.”
“I know. They don’t even need butter. He’s gone to Boston for the day.”
“So has Hugo.”
“That’s her,” whispered Hope, inclining her head towards the aisle where the person whom Laura believed to be Francesca was browsing.
Laura was startled to behold a striking, auburn haired Amazon, perhaps six feet tall and beautifully proportioned, pretty and fair complected, with straight, shining shoulder length hair, a woman of 28 or 29, dressed in jeans, a sweater and boots and filling every inch of them magnificently. “No wonder she’s confident,” thought Laura. At that moment the tall girl’s gaze met her own. Laura smiled as she would at any pleasant stranger she happened to encounter in the aisles of a charming bookshop. The girl returned a civil nod then made for a different aisle.
“Do you like being married, Hope?” Laura asked the mistress of the most popular cappuccino bar in a village filled with cappuccino bars.
“Truthfully, I do,” Hope replied, “I feel the position carries with it the respect and respectability which was lacking in my life before David.”
Laura remembered that Hope was a former B&D model
