Forever Mine, Valentine

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  Still, she wouldn’t look at him. “I think I have the choice not to fall in love if the timing is wrong, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No kidding?” He stepped closer, wanting to rattle her, get some response, any response. “That opinion doesn’t square with the way you reacted in my arms Wednesday night. You melted against me like soft ice cream.” He noted with satisfaction that she’d lifted her brush from the window and her hand was trembling.

  “I wasn’t thinking straight Wednesday night.”

  “Or perhaps you’re not thinking straight now.”

  She stuck her brush in a jar of water and put the jar in her paint caddy. “Excuse me, but I have the other window to do,” she said, picking up the caddy and moving around him.

  “You haven’t painted the slogan on this one,” he reminded her, delighted that his presence bothered her enough to make her move away. That was a start.

  “I’ll letter both slogans at once. Now, let’s see. The sleeping bags should be red, and—”

  “Sleeping bags?” he said, leaning casually against the wooden frame of the window. “I thought you said a lantern on this window?”

  She flushed. “You’re right, of course. I meant lantern. A red lantern with—”

  “I can’t forget what your lips felt like—so supple, so giving. You tasted wonderful,” he said, watching her pupils grow larger.

  “Spence, please…”

  “I could feel your heartbeat, too, fluttering like a bird against me,” he murmured, drawing the noose of emotion tighter.

  “Don’t,” she pleaded, gazing at him with her moist lips parted, her eyes soft. “It’s not fair.”

  “It’s not fair that you’d kiss me like that and then want to take back all those feelings we shared,” he countered, rejoicing in the passion in her eyes. “Have you been able to bury those feelings, Jill? Because I sure as hell haven’t been successful.”

  She didn’t speak, but he got his answer just by looking at her. If the mall hadn’t been filled with people, he would have made his point by kissing her again and showing her how close to the surface those emotions raged. For now, the knowledge that she was susceptible to him would carry him through the day.

  “See you tonight,” he whispered, and pushed himself away from the windowframe. Unable to walk calmly back into the store and return to his bookkeeping chores, he strode down the mall toward the skating pond.

  Finding a vacant artificial log, he sat on it and rested his chin in his hands. Across the pond from him, Charlie and Gladys skated as if they’d practiced together for years. Arms around each other’s waist, hands linked, they glided with smooth precision, often gazing at each other with fond smiles.

  Spence envied them. The course of their relationship ran as smooth as the ice slipping beneath their skates. Neither of them had anyone or anything to consider except themselves. The only obstacle to their happiness was Charlie’s reluctance to accept money from Gladys, but Spence figured Charlie would overcome that.

  For Spence and Jill, the road was far rougher. His heart was still pounding with suppressed desire and he wrestled with guilt. Who was he to sabotage Jill’s determination to finish her trip and return to her lukewarm relationship with Aaron? Yet that was exactly his intent—sabotage. Her journey and whatever it meant to her was standing in his way, and he was used to getting what he went after.

  Somehow he had to keep her from leaving until he could show her what lovemaking could be like between them. He wanted to provide her with a powerful reason to dump Aaron and come back to him. Yet he couldn’t rush her, either, or the relationship wouldn’t stand on solid ground. Would she grant him the time to woo her? After the meeting tonight, after everyone was gone and he could wrap his arms around her again, he’d know the answer.

  6

  IN THE Remembrance Mall Museum, display cases lined the perimeter of the principal room, and usually an ornate covered buggy sat in the center. When Jill arrived on Friday night she noticed that the buggy had been wheeled to a far corner and folding chairs were arranged in the rows where the buggy had been.

  The chairs were already filling with people, some eating carry-out dinners. Jill heard someone joke about tonight’s dinner show. Spence stood in the corner next to the buggy with his hand resting affectionately on a large spoked wheel. He was surrounded by Charlie, Gladys and the three men from lunch the other day—Robert, Bernie and George.

  Spence hadn’t noticed her come in, and she allowed herself a covert assessment before he did. Her feelings for him bubbled to the surface, drawn there by the tilt of his head, the curve of his smile, the strength of his stance. Despite all the warning lights flashing around this attraction, she couldn’t put it from her.

  To strengthen her resolve she’d called Aaron the night before. She’d wanted him to be warm and flirtatious, to make her decision easier. Instead he’d scolded her about taking on this extra job of the mall protest. “Jill of All Trades is at it again,” he’d said, disapproval zinging across the telephone line from Maine. “If you’re not going to stick to your plan, you might as well come home now.”

  They’d fought, something she wasn’t used to doing with anyone, least of all Aaron. He’d been so patient with her through all her searching for the right career. Patient and—she realized now—indulgent, as someone might indulge a child’s fierce determination to fly airplanes or discover a cure for cancer.

  From this distance, halfway across the country from Aaron, Jill understood at last that he didn’t care about her struggle over what to do with her life as long as she got it out of her system and settled down with him. He had no particular appreciation for her talents, except when they enlivened his own existence. He viewed her as an adjunct to him, and at the moment, an uncooperative one.

  She thought of the way Spence’s eyes had lit up when she’d described her cross-country trek. He hadn’t warned her about the danger of her plan, or asked why in the world she’d decided to do it. He’d simply accepted her behavior as appropriate to the sort of person he saw before him. Jill liked Spence’s image of her. Yet he wasn’t reluctant to cross her, either, as evidenced by their clash over whether she’d help with this protest. It seemed they could agree and disagree openly.

  Added to that was the most compelling physical attraction she’d ever experienced. And he seemed to sense it. No man had ever talked quite as straightforwardly to her about his needs as Spence had today.

  She’d been afraid to go back and look at the job she’d done on the lantern after his unsettling speech, she’d painted on auto-pilot for the rest of the day before stowing her supplies in the van.

  From the corner of the room, Spence glanced her way and smiled. Jill returned his smile and acknowledged to herself that the internal bargaining had started. She was familiar with the process. A distraction would come along and eventually she’d give herself permission to be distracted from her goal, always promising herself that she’d get back on track and work twice as hard to complete the original project.

  Except she’d always allowed the distraction to take over and the project to be forgotten. Aaron expected that to happen again—he’d said so the night before on the telephone, although he knew nothing about the added distraction of Spence Jegger.

  Not this time, she vowed, walking over to Spence and the others gathered around him. She wouldn’t give Aaron the satisfaction of seeing her fail, and then there was G.G., who’d displayed such faith in her plan. G.G.’s collection of postcards would not end with Denver.

  “Ah, Jill,” Charlie said, moving aside to make room for her next to Spence in the circle. “Right on time.”

  “The lantern looks terrific,” Spence said, smiling down at her. “In fact, we sold a lantern today because a woman wanted to give it to her husband for Valentine’s Day. She said she’d steal your slogan, if you don’t mind.”

  Rattled by his nearness, Jill couldn’t remember what slogan he was talking about. “She’s welcome to it,” she sa
id, and finally remembered lettering the unoriginal phrase “Light up your lover’s life” underneath the lantern. Standing so close to Spence, she caught a whiff of his after-shave and her pulse accelerated. She moved away a few more inches, afraid that touching him would add to the turmoil of her senses.

  “Nice to see you again, Jill,” Robert said, adjusting his glasses.

  Jill acknowledged his greeting. “The Senior Striders must be taking quite an interest in this cause,” she said.

  Bernie shifted his weight and leaned on his walking stick. “We’re just observers, at this point.”

  “That is, unless the tenants all go against Spence,” George added. “In that case, we’ll speak up.”

  “Let’s hope they all agree with me,” Spence said. “Then we can form a delegation, go straight to Tippy and settle this.”

  “Let’s hope,” Jill murmured, realizing that if the campaign went that smoothly, she’d be on the road by Monday at the latest. That wasn’t nearly enough time to explore her feelings for Spence, yet she’d have no excuse to stay.

  Spence glanced at his watch. “It’s seven. Let’s get going. Jill, if you’ll sit in the front row, I’ll introduce you and explain your function before we begin.”

  “Fine.”

  “We’ll sit with her,” Charlie said, appointing himself spokesman for the Senior Strider delegation.

  Jill and her followers had no trouble finding seats together. The front row was empty. Jill recognized that as an obvious sign that people weren’t sure where their loyalties lay.

  She settled into the metal chair with a sigh; it felt good to sit down. Behind her a woman finished the last of a hamburger and Jill’s mouth watered. She’d skipped dinner and hadn’t realized she was hungry until she caught the aroma from the hamburger. Her encounter with Spence that afternoon had driven all thought of food from her mind for several hours. She settled her legal pad on her knees and leaned back in the chair.

  Spence stood alone in front of the group and after everyone had quieted down he thanked them for coming and introduced Jill as his consultant.

  A consultant, she thought with a smile. Aaron would laugh at that.

  “She’s not some sort of protest organizer, is she, Spence?” said a man in the back row. “We don’t need someone like that around here.”

  “Jill’s not any kind of agitator,” Spence said. “She happened to be painting windows in a shopping center that was having trouble with the management and she observed how they solved their problems.”

  “I’m not having troubles with the management,” the man said. “Anybody who wants to raise my profit margin is okay by me.”

  “I’d like more profit, too,” Spence said easily. “But I wonder what we’ll sacrifice in our search for it. I’ve always been proud of operating in the Remembrance Mall, because we seemed to be more than a collection of shopkeepers. We have the trolley and the handi-cars for people who need a lift to get around. We have the melodrama for live entertainment, which also encourages amateur theater, and we have a museum that links us to our heritage. In the name of profit, Tippy Henderson wants to take those things away.”

  “Yes, but she has a point,” said a woman in a tailored suit. “We pay for those amenities, not the general public. She’s trying to pass the cost on to the consumers instead of adding it to our bill.”

  “And when it is our expense,” said a man next to her, “we have to raise our prices accordingly, and then we’re not competitive with other stores in the city. The Remembrance Mall is a nice place to shop, but it’s also an expensive place to shop. I’ve heard people say that.”

  “Yeah,” agreed the man in the back row. “How many people come here to hang around and do all their buying somewhere else? If Tippy makes them buy something in order to ride the trolley, that makes sense to me.”

  “And the museum is very nice,” said another woman, “but a large department store would lower the rent across the board for all of us. Who wouldn’t appreciate that?”

  A murmured chorus of assent greeted her comment, and Jill noted the tone of the discussion on her legal pad. Spence was facing an uphill battle, she thought, and wondered how he’d answer these people.

  He gazed out over the crowd and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. Jill could tell this resistance bothered him. “But the policies Tippy proposes are shortsighted,” he said, his voice louder, more commanding. “People often say that shopping malls all over the country are the same, that you could be dropped into one in Des Moines or Syracuse and never know the difference. The concept of the Remembrance challenges that statement, but take away the museum, the melodrama and the trolley and we’ll be like every other mall in the country.”

  “Hey, I’m not in this business to be famous,” said the man in the back row. “I’m here to make money.”

  Spence’s jaw clenched and whispers were exchanged among the Senior Striders. Before Spence could respond to the man in the back row, Robert stood and faced the group. “How about the element of compassion, folks?” he said. “I’m in this mall about every day, and I hear the cash registers ringing. I doubt if any of you are really hurting for business. Perhaps you simply want a bigger slice of the pie, and the disabled and poorer customers will be shoved, literally, into the cold by your greed.” Robert resumed his seat.

  “Who’s he?” asked someone amid an undercurrent of angry grumbles.

  “Yeah,” piped up another person. “What right’s he got to—”

  “I can tell this isn’t going to be a smooth discussion,” Spence said, interrupting. “The man who spoke is a member of the Senior Striders. They asked if they could sit in on this meeting as consumer representatives.”

  “Look, Spence,” said the man in the back row. “No offense, but we know you have a soft spot for the old folks, and you’ve moved one of them into the back of your store. We don’t care about that, and the seniors who race-walk are all fine and good, but are they really paying their share of the upkeep around this mall?”

  Jill noticed a white line of tension around Spence’s mouth. His anger was building. He opened his mouth to answer the man’s comment, but he closed it again when his attention was diverted to a late-comer standing at the museum entrance. “Hello, Ms Henderson,” he said carefully, and everyone turned to look. “Would you like to join us?”

  Tippy Henderson smiled at them. “Well, isn’t this a happy group? Since I have you all in one place, perhaps I’ll use this chance to mention that those valentine paintings had better be cleaned off all the windows by noon on February fifteenth. I’m all for individual enterprise, but I’ve hired a design crew for a mall-wide Easter promotion in conjunction with the opening of our new department store, and I don’t want any valentine stuff hanging around.”

  “Do you have the new store lined up?” asked the man in the back.

  “Just about. A representative from Anderson’s department store chain is flying in tomorrow, and I came by to take another look at the space we have here. I had no idea a meeting was in progress. Don’t let me interrupt a thing.” Then she took a seat on the end of the back row.

  “We’ve been discussing the new department store, among other things,” Spence said to her. “I called this meeting to determine if there’s any support for keeping the museum.”

  “I see.” Tippy glanced around. “Is there? Perhaps we should have a show of hands. Although I’m not bound by a vote like that, I like to keep my tenants happy. This space is far too large and valuable for the purpose, of course, but we have a vacancy on the first floor.”

  “That space is no bigger than a closet,” Spence said, his eyes dark and foreboding. “We’ve aired a few thoughts tonight, and now it’s time for some considered judgment on everyone’s part. Unless there are objections, I’d like to adjourn the meeting.”

  “Without a vote?” Tippy said.

  “That’s right.”

  “I move we adjourn,” said a colorfully dressed woman who hadn’t
spoken before.

  “I second it,” said a man beside her.

  Spence glanced in their direction. “All in favor, say aye.”

  Jill expected the chorus of affirmative votes that followed. Tippy’s presence had ended any real hope for honest discussion. As everyone stood to file out, the woman who had motioned to adjourn the meeting walked quietly up to Spence. Jill strained to hear what she said but couldn’t make it out in the shuffle of feet.

  “What a disaster,” Charlie said, gazing around at Jill and his Senior Strider friends. “We’d better go up there and give Spencer some moral support.”

  “I’m appalled at the attitude of these merchants,” Bernie commented, tapping his walking stick on the tile floor. “You’d think we were asking them to give their wares away.” He glanced at Charlie. “Are you sure it isn’t time for me to—”

  “Gracious, no,” Charlie said quickly. “Not yet.”

  “Not time for Bernie to do what?” Gladys asked.

  “Why, ah…” Charlie avoided her gaze. “You know Bernie’s a charmer, my dear. I fancy he thinks he could change Ms Henderson’s mind about all this.”

  Bernie flushed but didn’t contradict Charlie.

  “Why, Bernie, you sly dog!” Gladys teased and Bernie turned a deeper crimson.

  “It’s a thought,” Jill said with a grin. “We should keep it in mind. Anyway, in the meantime we need to instill a sense of unity among the tenants. Right now, everyone’s thinking of individual gain.”

  “That is the problem, of course, my dear!” Charlie beamed at her. “I knew you wouldn’t let us down. We must return to Spencer’s shop and have a—let me see, I learned a new term from a teenage boy yesterday—a rap session,” he finished triumphantly. “That’s what we must have.”

  “Exactly,” Jill agreed as they all headed toward Spence.

  The first woman had left, but Jill and the rest of the group paused as Tippy Henderson walked briskly forward and stood with arms crossed in front of Spence.