Love and War

by Peg Sutherland

“I dressed in those darn business suits all my life,” Mag said, eyeing the charcoal-gray item her granddaughter was wearing. “Got tired of being stodgy. A girl owes herself a little fun. You know, I could whip off this scarf and we could slip it into that waist pocket on your jacket and just let it trail. Now, that would make a statement, don’t you think, Emma?”

  Sandy grinned, but to Mag she still looked distracted. Pressure, of course. “Thanks, Gran. But I think I’ll stick with the stodgy image today.”

  “Fine. But if you change your mind, look for me in the crowd. I’ll be easy to spot.”

  They all three got a chuckle out of that.

  Location was everything, Mag knew, and the location for the new Yes! Yogurt outlet was perfect. Next door to the video store, the old red brick building had been dressed up with a yellow-and-white awning and a cheery yellow-and-white sign featuring an abstract-looking goat munching on a rose.

  Mag grabbed her granddaughter’s hand and squeezed. “That’s it, isn’t it? The new logo? It’s stunning! So nineties! You’ll knock ’em dead in Chicago, Alexandra.”

  “Thanks, Gran. I hope you’re right.”

  “Forty-five years in retail—of course I’m right.”

  The little shop was already full of people milling around, eating free samples of frozen yogurt and cheesecake and sipping coffee. Half of Tyler had gathered, it seemed to Mag. She floated about the room on a cloud of excitement, cooing over new babies—”Gracious, but breeding does seem to be in vogue again, doesn’t it?” she said to Alyssa Wocheck, who had a passel of grandbabies with her—and catching up on the latest with Annabelle Scanlon.

  “You know they say Pam Kelsey is pregnant, don’t you?” Annabelle asked from the corner of her mouth. “What do you think of that?”

  Mag pretended to be hurt. “You mean they’ve already stopped talking about Clarence and me?”

  “Well, the talk has died down.” Annabelle inclined her head toward the front window, where a row of metal ice-cream-parlor chairs was obscured by the crush of people. “You could spark things up again, if you’ve a mind to.”

  Mag’s gaze followed the direction of Annabelle’s gesture. At first all she could see was parkas and overcoats and a knit cap here and there. Then, as Marie Innes walked off and the Reverend Sarah bent over, she saw what Annabelle had seen: Clarence Stirling.

  He sat at one of those little tables like an aristocratic lord. He wore a camel-hair topcoat and a wide-brimmed brown fedora, with one gloved hand resting on the carved head of a walking stick. He was smiling at Emma Finklebaum’s sister, Tessie, with all the charm of a prince.

  The sight of him evaporated Mag’s happy cloud. She landed on the ground with a thud.

  “Still a handsome devil, isn’t he?” Annabelle whispered. “Look at the way Tessie is preening over him. What are you going to do, Mag?”

  “Why, nothing.”

  Apparently disappointed, Annabelle wandered off a few minutes later. Suddenly, Mag could find no one to talk to. Whichever direction she turned, it seemed, she ended up facing the window, catching a glimpse of jovial Clarence Stirling. Everyone else she saw, she thought of good reasons to avoid. Whatever would she say to them, when all she seemed to have on her mind was Clarence Stirling? What was he saying to all these people he had turned his back on fifty years ago? What could they possibly be laughing about? What was an old man like that thinking, flirting so blatantly with women who hadn’t even been born when he ran off? Mag began to consider leaving.

  She had spotted Sandy and was headed in her direction to make excuses when she overheard Cece Baron talking to her husband, Jeff.

  “I don’t know, but he certainly doesn’t look worried about running into Mrs. Murphy, does he?”

  That did it. If Mag left now, everyone would think she was running away. That she couldn’t handle being in the same room with Clarence Stirling.

  And they’d be right, wouldn’t they?

  Fluffing her hair, Mag squared her shoulders, raised her chin and did what she should have done at the start. She swirled through the crowd, marched right to the front of the store and placed herself in front of Clarence. Then, with her flirtiest smile, she said, “Hi, there, sailor. I thought maybe you’d buy me a frozen yogurt.”

  * * *

  “IT’S A HIT,” Drew said, squeezing behind the counter again to pick up another tray of cheesecake samples.

  Sandy cursed her luck in choosing this moment to step out of the crowd herself. Why was it that no matter how careful she tried to be, she always ended up in Drew’s path? Granted, they worked together. But it was more than that. It was almost as if some force greater than her own best common sense kept placing them together.

  Thank goodness she’d had no less than a million things to do these past few weeks. Working eighteen-hour days, she’d had no time to think. No time to feel, even.

  But the truth remained that no matter where they ended up—in the kitchen at Britt’s with a houseful of kids or in a bustling store with half the town as witnesses—Sandy felt an instant and electric intimacy.

  “It’s a hit today,” she said as briskly as she could manage. “We’re giving it away today. Let’s see what happens a week from now.”

  “A week from now we’ll be in Chicago,” he said. “Still think you can be ready?”

  “Of course I’ll... What do you mean, we’ll be in Chicago?”

  “We. As in I the vice president of sales and you the director of marketing.”

  She stared at him, stunned. “I thought Britt was going with me.”

  “She was. Then Renee reminded her of some big pageant at the school and did the sad-faced-kid routine. You know Britt. No way is she going to miss one of her kids being in the spotlight. So you’re stuck with me.”

  He didn’t look the least bit disturbed about it, either. He looked rested and happy and as if it would take a lot more than her mere presence to distract him. She, on the other hand, felt worn-out and ragged and ready to lose what little control she had if he so much as breathed in her direction. She could not handle—would not put up with—a trip to Chicago with him at her side.

  She groped for an alternative plan, but kept coming up empty.

  She could quit her job.

  There had to be a better way.

  She could ask Britt to ask Jake to go in Drew’s place.

  And have to explain her request?

  She could give in. She could do what every fiber of her being kept suggesting in those rare moments when she wasn’t thinking about market research and logo slicks. Those moments at night when she closed her eyes and could see only Drew’s smile. Those moments when she did her sit-ups and could feel only Drew’s touch. Yes, she could give in to the temptation. And that was exactly what she feared.

  A pesky part of her mind—sometimes she worried that it wasn’t her mind at all, but her heart—kept asking her what would be so tragic about doing that very thing. Sometimes that little voice argued so persuasively that Sandy became convinced her professionalism wouldn’t suffer permanent damage if she sank to the depths of admitting she was not just a marketing director, but a woman as well.

  But every time Sandy almost bought her traitorous mind’s arguments, she received a reminder that there was more to the problem than just her professional conflicts. Like right now, when she looked across the room and saw her grandmother sitting at a table with Drew’s grandfather.

  Oh, Lord. Was Yes! Yogurt’s grand opening about to disintegrate into an angry free-for-all right in front of her eyes?

  * * *

  CLARENCE KNEW HOW to behave like a gentleman. He also knew that sometimes it was easier than others. That was the mark of a true gentleman, he had always believed—the ability to act like one even under difficult circumstances.

  Mag Halston Murphy defini
tely constituted a difficult circumstance.

  So he did what his breeding dictated. He snapped his fingers at one of the young people walking around with trays of frozen yogurt and procured one for his erstwhile fiancée.

  “You’re looking well this morning,” he said.

  She sat across from him and took a small bite of the yogurt. “Last time you said I was as beautiful as ever. I’ve moved all the way down to ‘looking well’?”

  She would go out of her way to make this being-a-gentleman business even harder. As a matter of fact, she did look beautiful. She still looked soft and round, as did those curls of hers, the kind of fluffy curls a man longed to crush in his fist. Even a seventy-something man with a touch of arthritis in that fist, as it turned out.

  “Ah, Mag, you’re a stunning woman. But I don’t want to be responsible for contributing to your vanity.”

  “I promise not to hold you responsible.”

  He caught the teasing gleam in her eye and chuckled. “Still have that sharp tongue, I see.”

  “Never change a winning game. That’s what my father always taught me.”

  The mention of the man whom he blamed for ruining his own father stirred unpleasant emotions, so Clarence decided to change the subject. “Looks as if our grandchildren make a good team.”

  “Alexandra has my business acumen.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  In response, Mag smiled that featherheaded smile of hers that had gotten him into so much trouble all those years ago. Because Mag was no featherhead at all. Far from it. He thought, for the first time in many years, about the other side of Mag, the side he had allowed himself to forget so he could concentrate on her childishness, her betrayal. Mag had also been the kind of young woman who set her sights on a goal and knew exactly how to hit her target. She had a sharp mind and she hadn’t been shy about using it, even in the days when women weren’t encouraged to think for themselves.

  As a dreamer accustomed to getting by principally on his charm, Clarence had thought in those days that the two of them made the perfect match. What he lacked, she had. What she lacked, he had. Between them, they could knock the world to its knees.

  Well, one of them had been knocked to his knees, that was a certainty.

  “What did you do with yourself all these years, Mag?”

  She looked surprised at the question. “Oh, about what you’d expect. Raised a family, ran the store—the things people did in our day.”

  “The old hardware’s still going strong.”

  She nodded. “My boy Franklin has a good head.”

  He kept asking questions and soon had a picture of the life they might have shared. The children and the grandchildren and the peaceful life in Tyler. He found, as he listened, that he didn’t feel the bitterness he had expected to. Her life had been good, but so had his. He had struggled more, perhaps. But he had needed to, to get his head out of the clouds.

  “Are you changed much, Mag?”

  “Changed?” She cocked her head to one side and appeared to mull over his question. “Well, I guess we all change some. I like to think I’m not as self-centered now.”

  He smiled, thinking how right it felt to sit here and talk to her as easily as they once had. “Nineteen’s a time for being self-centered, isn’t it?”

  “What about you, Clarence? Tell me about you.”

  He didn’t really want to tell her, because it wasn’t all pretty, especially the years right after he’d left Tyler. But he looked into her bright eyes and saw the same rapt interest that had lured him to her all those years ago, and he was lost. He wanted her to know about his life, just as he had once wanted her to know about the darkness he’d felt coming back from the war a broken man. That was why he had fallen for her—she made it easy for him to talk. And what he said she seemed to understand. And she loved him, anyway.

  Or so he’d thought. Ah, but disillusionment wounded so deeply at that age.

  But the disillusionment was not nearly so real at this moment as the look in her eyes, so he began to talk. He told her about the struggles to get on his feet in Chicago, made easier because he was a veteran at a time when patriotism ran high and made harder because of his own bitterness and reluctance to fail. He told her about the good, if uninspiring, woman he had shared his life with. She had been nothing like Mag and, at the time, that had seemed like the best qualification for a wife. He told her about the children and the grandchildren, glossing over the tragedies, such as losing his only son, Drew’s father, in a car accident.

  And he didn’t mention that sometimes he’d longed for something more in the good woman he’d wed. A fire, a flare that he’d missed.

  When he finished, he realized her eyes had never left him.

  “So we both survived,” she said.

  “And better for it, I’m sure.” But he didn’t believe that. Not now, looking into her eyes and remembering...

  “I suppose,” she said. A trifle wistfully? “Although it took a while before I could see that.”

  He didn’t want to ask. He’d hoped she would tell him of her own free will. But it appeared she wouldn’t, and the wondering had plagued him for so many years that finally his resolve broke down.

  “Why’d you do it, Mag?”

  “Do what?”

  “Stand me up like that? If you didn’t want to go through with it, you could’ve come to me and told me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You can’t imagine the agony of it, standing there waiting with half the town looking on.”

  She pointed her plastic spoon at him. Her eyes were no longer soft with memories, they were shooting sparks. He remembered that, too.

  “You’ve lost your mind, do you know that, Clarence Albert Stirling? The one left standing was me. And I think it’s high time you made your apologies.”

  “Apologies? Me?”

  She crossed her arms. “I’m waiting. You’d best jump in here while I’m in a forgiving mood.”

  Clarence asked himself what a gentleman would do in this situation. The answer was clear. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he braced himself on his walking stick and the wrought-iron table and pushed himself to his feet. “You’ll excuse me, Mrs. Murphy. But my forgiving mood just vanished.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  DREW PLOWED THROUGH the opening-night crowds at Food World, impatient to find the Yes! Yogurt exhibit. He would have hated admitting it, but it wasn’t so much his company’s booth he was impatient to see. It was the woman at the booth.

  Two aisles over, above the heads, he saw a bright yellow helium balloon in the approximate shape of a goat. His heart leaped. He smiled for the first time in days as he quickened his pace.

  He stopped a few yards away just to take her in. She wore a body-skimming dress instead of her usual suit. The sophisticated winter white made a stunning contrast to her dark skin and hair. She had also softened her hairstyle tonight, although she still wore it up, captured on one side with a curve of silver. Often at shows such as this, a good many of the women staffing booths were stunning young models hired to attract attention, an obligation they fulfilled at least in part by wearing clinging, skimpy outfits. Beside them, Sandy looked like a class act in high heels.

  What she wore best, he thought, was her smile. Gracious and real and absolutely captivating, her smile was given out freely with every sample of frozen yogurt, cheesecake and cheese Danish that left the booth.

  Drew thought he would personally buy anything she offered, if he were on the receiving end of that smile.

  “Some exhibit, isn’t it?”

  Drew turned toward an unfamiliar voice, which belonged to an equally unfamiliar middle-aged man in expensive charcoal pinstripes and a solid gold collar pin.

  “You we
re looking at the yogurt booth, weren’t you?”

  Drew nodded, still trying to figure out if he was supposed to know him. “Yes.”

  “So was I. Impressive for a small company.” The businessman shook his head. “I tried to get Alexandra when she was still with International Baking, but she’d already signed on with these guys somewhere out in Wisconsin. I hated losing her, but she wouldn’t discuss it.”

  As unobtrusively as possible, Drew checked out the man’s name tag. R. D. Wernikoff. Recognition dawned instantly. This man was CEO of one of the largest food manufacturing conglomerates in the country. And he knew Sandy? Not only knew her, but wanted to hire her?

  “Why?” Drew asked, without stopping to think how impertinent the question was. “Why her?”

  Wernikoff chuckled. “You have to ask? Look at that exhibit. That logo, that slogan, will appeal to every twenty-something consumer in this country. Plus it has the sophistication to speak to the thirty-five-to-fifty market. Alexandra knows how to take the pulse of her generation—after all, she is the target consumer. But she can do it without losing track of what the Boomers like because she has an innate maturity, as well. We’re all going to have to do that, if we expect to capture the younger crowd without sacrificing the established market. The key is people like Alexandra.”

  Drew looked back at Sandy with new eyes. And he saw the exhibit she had created—really saw it—for the first time. He remembered the hours she had spent with the graphic artist and the designer from the exhibit company, articulating exactly what she wanted to accomplish with every detail. The colors, the type style, every nuance had a purpose. He’d heard more than one of their vendors leave Yes! Yogurt grousing about her being such a stickler for details. But as Drew studied the exhibit now, and compared it with the others around it, he could see that Sandy had accomplished exactly what she wanted. The Yes! Yogurt exhibit stood out from the rest. It said the company was both fresh and stable. It said the products not only tasted good, they were good for you, too. If Drew had been a first-time customer, he would have both trusted this company and been enthusiastic about what it offered.