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Faces Of A Clown
By Stella Cameron Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.
Copyright © 2004 Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-373-83603-1
Chapter One
HE WOULD NEVER find her here - never! But Mark knew he had to try. Grimly, he strode through the wrought-iron gates into the unfamiliar melee of Seattle Center on a Saturday afternoon. This place was huge, and crammed with relaxed, slow-moving throngs. And in this crowd he was going to find Laura? A woman he hadn't seen in six years?
First he must find the clowns. He knew that much. She would be there performing with them. And when his search ended, what then?
He pushed a hand through his fair, sun-streaked hair and looked around. Somehow he had gotten the idea from Laura's landlord that this was a little city park.
"Oh, you mean Buffo, the clown," the man had said. "She and the troupe are down at the Center doing their act. They've got some big do going there today. Can't waste weather like this. She was off like a shot this morning."
Now this - acres and acres of the city fathers' land providing sufficient play space for the citizens of Seattle. It was a vast complex of buildings - opera house, theaters, coliseum, eating places and shops - scattered among expanses of beautifully tended grounds. And wherever he looked there were people - milling, laughing, oblivious to his small problem. Only his problem wasn't small to him. Whatever was going to happen when - or if - he found Laura Fenton would shape the rest of his life.
He tried not to look too grim or be rude as he elbowed a path through the aimless wanderers. These were all just people out for a good time on a late-summer's day, he reminded himself, but they were still a real pain to him. They kept blocking his view and getting in his way. They gathered in clusters to watch anything at all, then broke up and drifted elsewhere. And he must always find out what they were watching, because it might be the clown he was hunting who held them spellbound. So he worked his way through them, time and again, being polite, carefully sidestepping small children, mumbling apologies, only to find a break-dancing contest or a magician performing tricks or something else he didn't want to see. Everywhere he drew a blank, but pushed on doggedly, always heading for any flash of color that might indicate clowns.
If only so much didn't depend on this.
He looked around in exasperation. Where were all these people coming from? He'd never thought of Seattle as a big city. And it wasn't supposed to be this hot, either. He'd always heard it was a gray and chilly place.
A fleeting recollection of Laura, cross-legged and squinting up from a picnic blanket distracted him. They were in her uncle's yard behind the luxurious old Victorian mansion in Pacific Heights - a fashionable area of San Francisco where they'd both grown up. Mark, about to graduate from law school, had been trying to help her cram for semester exams in her senior high-school year. Laura had collapsed, giggling, when he'd threatened her with the dire consequences of not getting her diploma and he'd been unable to stop his own smile. She'd been a wild one even then. Her carefree laughter had made his attempt to offer stern guidance hopeless. With her he'd often felt a freedom and spontaneity that didn't exist in the rest of his life.
He released a bitter sigh. Only when they read poetry together did she become serious and introspective. He remembered thinking that she had seemed to deserve so much more love than she'd received in her life, and his empathy for her had engendered a special kind of comradeship between them. Then one ghastly morning, in a driving rainstorm, everything had changed. He'd seen Laura Fenton as she really was: worthless and destructive. Now what he must do was find her, do what he had to do, then separate their lives again as soon as possible.
Suddenly he saw them - the clowns. Not ten feet away. The crowd shifted, broke, and he got a quick glimpse of a white mime face above a red-striped T-shirt. There was another figure in shimmering green-and-yellow satin, and yet another in a big Afro wig of orange and pale purple. The whole troupe was there, with Laura hidden somewhere among them. He pushed his way through the crowd and stood watching the performance, grimly intent, his eyes narrowed against the brilliant sun, which shone warmly on his face. The rest of the leisurely Saturday crowd enjoyed the clowns' antics as they went through their routines. The troupe was clever, skillful and best of all, fun.
Always moving - the clowns worked hard to hold the attention of the onlookers as long as they could.
He tried to check a weary anger. Laura's remembered laughter sounded once more in his mind. That girl he had known, in her heedless search for a good time, would have seen his present search as a big joke. She'd have thought his desperate scanning of the painted faces to find hers, very funny. He might have known that with the streak of defiance she sometimes had she would make his task as difficult for him as possible.
No, he realized, that assumption wasn't fair. She had no idea he was within a thousand miles of her. She probably hadn't given him a thought for six years. Did she ever think of him at all? Of anyone she'd left behind in San Francisco to pick up the pieces? Or would she have shut her loved ones out of her mind along with all the havoc she had caused? Did he still hate her for it?
Somewhere he'd read that hatred cannot be sustained, that it dies of its own burdensome weight. How true. The hatred of Laura was finally gone, but bitterness remained. He had tried to understand. He recalled her Uncle George's kindly eyes and counsel. "Try to understand, Mark. She's very young. Her background is ... well, things can't have been too easy for her, although we tried our best."
Even Irma, his own mother, in her deepest grief, had said virtually the same thing. "You mustn't be so bitter, Mark. Try to understand. As the French say, 'To understand is to forgive.' Remember Laura's mother virtually dumped the child on poor George and Rhea. The woman never came back. The next we heard of her, she was dead. Laura's never known what it means to feel truly loved."
Well, he understood well enough. He also still remembered the days when he'd longed to help her, to let her know he at least cared about her. But forgive, after what came later? That was something else. She had cost him - cost them all - too much. Oh, yes, far too much.
What would she say if she knew that he stood this close to her now, unforgiving? She'd probably just laugh.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Faces Of A Clown by Stella Cameron Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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