Wishing for Wonderful: The Serendipity Series, Book 3 Read online

  “The Big Book Barn, on Seventeenth.” She tilts her head, looks directly into his eyes for thirty seconds and then turns back to the keys in her hand. Perfect. An invitation sprinkled with a touch of shyness. This is how it’s supposed to happen.

  He asks if she likes Italian food and tells her about Antonio’s.

  “The Veal Parmigiana is unbelievable,” he says. “The place isn’t much to look at from the outside, but inside it’s like an Italian trattoria. There’s this little courtyard where they have outdoor dining…”

  “Sounds charming,” she says, looking up again.

  He can sense the way she’s eyeing him, so he asks if she’d like to have dinner this coming Saturday.

  She, of course, answers yes.

  Now I’m doing a happy dance, thinking my Lindsay troubles are over. But after four dates—excellent dates, dates with wine, music and dancing—she stops returning his calls because of a musician she met on the subway.

  When Lindsay started gushing about how much she was in love with that musician, I was sorely tempted to have her step into a pothole and break an ankle. Nothing serious, mind you, but enough to keep her at home so she could have some thinking-it-over time. She was definitely in need of it, because she was way off track. That musician was scheduled to marry the New York Philharmonic’s second violinist and move to Paris.

  The breakup was inevitable, but it didn’t happen immediately. It never does. Lindsay and the musician spent seven months together. Seven months of arguments and apologies, more arguments and more apologies, until one evening he stomped out never to return again. Even though that relationship was not of my making, I had to feel for the girl.

  Love is the most complex of all emotions. Hate is clean and uncomplicated, but love will turn you inside out and when it goes awry you’re left wondering what you did wrong. You always blame yourself even though the only wrong you’ve done is to give your heart to someone who was not part of your plan. The musician was never part of Lindsay’s plan, but that didn’t ease the pain of his leaving.

  After the musician there was a banker, a wannabe model, a dentist and a handsome lad who walked dogs for a living. None of them were part of Lindsay’s plan, and they all went the way of the musician. The banker and dentist she simply tired of, and the dog-walker moved away because the landlord raised his rent and he could no longer afford to live in Manhattan.

  With Phillip, the wannabe model, Lindsay convinced herself that she was fully and completely in love. Yes, she knew Phillip was haphazard, but she told herself that he would eventually settle down. In time, he would give up thoughts of being a model and find a job suited to his talents. He would one day ask her to marry him and she, of course, would answer yes. She remembered how she’d let herself be goaded into argument after argument with the musician, and she was determined not to let that happen again. When Phillip showed up hours late with an excuse so lame that a steel brace couldn’t make it stand, she accepted it. When he swiveled his head to turn and look at women with short skirts or cascading cleavage, she chalked it up to nothing more than harmless ogling. Then one day he left his cell phone on the desk and a text message from Krystal popped up. Only then could she see the foolishness of her ways.

  “How could you?” she screamed.

  “She means nothing to me,” he pleaded. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? You’ve slept with this girl, that’s obvious!”

  “One time. It was a one-time thing.”

  “A one-time thing?” She picked up a bookend and heaved it across the room. “Get out, and don’t even think about coming back!”

  In the time it took for him to ride the elevator down three floors and cross the small lobby, his modeling portfolio, the framed picture he’d given her and the gym bag he kept in the apartment had landed on 23rd street.

  Phillip was just the last in a long string of romantic disasters. Men like him are what they are, and Lindsay was foolish to think otherwise. I can say for a fact she was never in love with the man, but try telling her that. Her friend Amanda even warned her.

  “Lindsay,” Amanda said, “Phillip is nothing more than a gift box, gorgeous on the outside but totally empty inside.”

  Lindsay of course didn’t listen, which came as no surprise. As I’ve told you, the girl is an incurable romantic. If she would have backed off and let me handle things, she’d now be celebrating her second anniversary on a Mediterranean cruise ship instead of sitting in a third-floor apartment painting her toenails.

  Everything happens for a reason. If humans could accept that, my job would be so much easier. After Lindsay hurled all of the never-to-be-seen-again model’s belongings out the window, she broke into huge shuddering sobs and telephoned Amanda. The break-up was slated to happen anyway, but the timing was my doing. Since Lindsay had shown no interest in Christopher from 7B, he’d been reassigned to Amanda. That night Christopher was leaving the building as Amanda was coming in. When the plan works, that’s all it takes—a chance meeting, a fleeting glance and POW! Love happens.

  Eleanor

  John hasn’t told his daughter about us yet. He doesn’t see it as a problem, but I’m not so sure. He claims Lindsay is an open-minded person who’ll be happy for us. But I’ve come to realize kids don’t always take kindly to their parents remarrying. Ray Junior had a conniption when I told him.

  I invited him and his wife to dinner that evening, thinking a pleasant visit and a full stomach would make hearing the news a bit easier. It sure didn’t go like I thought it would. Before I finished explaining what a fine man John is, Ray jumped out of his seat and started peppering me with questions like he was the lead prosecutor in a court case.

  “Don’t you see he’s after your money?” Ray kept asking. I told him I didn’t have any money for John to be after, but then he switched over to badgering me about John taking over our house. I was tempted to tell him it’s my house, not our house, but I held my tongue.

  Finally I couldn’t take any more and lost my temper. I looked Ray straight in the eye and told him John and I were planning to sell both houses and buy a place of our own. Well, that opened up a whole new can of worms.

  “Ah-ha!” Ray shouted. “You’ll sell the house, hand over the money and that’s the last you’ll see of that buzzard!”

  A fat lot he knows. John is not the kind of man who’d even dream of doing such a thing. I tried to explain that to Ray, but he wasn’t willing to listen.

  Traci is Ray’s wife, so because she’s a woman I thought maybe she’d jump in and give me some support. But that didn’t happen. She sat there silent as a stone with her face scrunched into an expression that made me think she had a sour pickle stuck sideways in her mouth.

  After two hours of such nonsense I told Ray he’d better go on home and get used to the idea because like it or not, I was going to marry John. When Ray stomped out the door, Traci followed along. At the last minute, she turned back and mumbled, “G’nite.” That was the only word she’d spoken since the first mention of John’s name.

  I’m praying Ray will simmer down and come to accept the idea. I’d like him to be happy for me, be glad I’ve found somebody, be glad I won’t grow old sitting here alone. Right now he thinks the worst of John, but I’m betting he’ll have a different opinion once he meets him.

  Kids might think their parents are too old for love, but I can say for a fact it’s not true. John makes me feel something I haven’t felt for years. When he kisses me and traces the edge of my cheek with his thumb, I get a tingle that goes clear down to my toes. He feels exactly the same. I know, because if we’re apart for even a single afternoon he calls to say how much he’s missing me. Ray’s daddy never did that, not even when we were first married.

  Cupid

  Mistakes & Misconceptions

  Lindsay is not at all like her mom. Bethany was a practical woman who looked at life and saw it for exactly what it was. At the end of each day Bethany packed her troubles into a closet of forgetful
ness, and the next morning she awoke to a new day and another chance at happiness. Lindsay, well, she’s another story.

  After her breakup with Phillip, she moved through the days like a person without reason to live. Tuesday through Saturday she left her apartment at the same time, stopped at the same Starbucks and worked at the bookstore from nine until six-thirty. Day after day she returned home carrying an armload of books. In the evening she read until her eyes were weary; then, when the words grew fuzzy and sentences ran together, she’d close the book and go to bed. On Mondays when she didn’t go to work, she cleaned the apartment then went right back to reading.

  You might think that after centuries of dealing with humans I would be accustomed to their peculiarities, but certain ones, like Lindsay, still boggle my mind. The end of a love affair is always cause for a certain amount of despondency, but this girl carried it to the extreme.

  While she was at the bookstore Lindsay spent most of her time meandering from aisle to aisle, looking for books that had nothing to do with love. She avoided the romance section and took to browsing the exotic cuisine and travel shelves, even though she had little appetite and nowhere to go. One evening as she staggered in with an unusually large armload of books, Walker, the building doorman, lifted several from the top of the pile and followed her to the elevator.

  “Thanks, Walker,” she said. “I think they were about to fall.”

  He nodded. “Seems you’re doing a lot of reading these days.”

  “I am,” she replied. “It helps to pass the time.”

  “Pass the time?” He set his pile of books down on the foyer bench, then took the remaining books from her arms and placed them beside the first pile. “Why would a girl pretty as you need books to pass the time?”

  “It’s a long story.” She gave a sigh that came from the pit of her stomach and swirled through her chest. “I had this terrible argument with Phillip and…”

  “I know,” Walker said. “I heard the commotion. When I went to take a look at what was going on, I spotted him scooping his stuff off the street.”

  “We’re through. He won’t be back.”

  Walker smiled. “Good. You deserve better.”

  “I do?”

  “Sure. That guy was no gentleman.”

  I could see the wheels turning in Lindsay’s head. She’d looked at eyes, muscles, even the swagger of bravado, but not once had she searched for a lover who was a gentleman.

  “How can you tell he wasn’t?” she asked Walker.

  “People don’t notice me standing here, but I see things.”

  “What things?”

  Walker said how he’d seen Phillip walk through the door first and let it swing shut on Lindsay, how he’d let her struggle with packages and not offered to help, and how he’d openly flirted with the girl in 9A. Walker was a man who knew heartache close up. He’d experienced it in his own family. That’s why he never mentioned he’d also seen Phillip in Washington Square Park fondling a woman who was old enough to be his mother.

  Lindsay listened as he told her about his daughter.

  “My Emily got mixed up with the wrong man,” Walker said, “and she’s had a real hard life. That no-good walked off and left her with two little girls to raise and no money to pay the rent or buy a bag of groceries.”

  “How awful,” Lindsay said.

  “It was awful alright, but by then the deed was done. She couldn’t do a thing about it.”

  The tale of a girl far worse off than herself caught Lindsay by the throat.

  “What happened to Emily and her daughters?” she asked fearfully.

  “Three years later Emily met a fine church-going man and married him,” Walker said. “That man took care of those girls like they was his own.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  “Amen to that,” Walker said. “Most important thing about any man is his principles. A man with no principles ain’t worth the shoes he wears on his feet.”

  Lindsay nodded, although she was clueless as to how one could identify principles.

  “Phillip was a no-good,” Walker continued. “I knew it right off. I would’ve said something, but it ain’t my place to be sticking my nose into other people’s business.”

  “Oh, Walker,” Lindsay said, “I wish you had.”

  “Yeah,” he nodded, “and I wish somebody would’ve told Emily too.”

  Knowing Lindsay’s state of mind you might think she’d be pulled into a deeper depression by this news of Phillip’s behavior, but for the first time in many months she began to think a bit more like her mother. She could suddenly see that maybe, just maybe, Phillip had been one of a kind. A single bad apple. One bad apple didn’t make the whole barrel bad, she reasoned. Maybe there was a chance that someone…somewhere…

  She and Walker continued talking for nearly an hour, and when she got to her apartment she set the books aside and turned on her computer.

  Lindsay had thirty-seven unanswered e-mails, nine of them from her father. She opened the most recent one and read it. He expressed concern that he hadn’t heard from her, he’d been hoping she’d come home for a visit, they needed to talk.

  She reread the e-mail and added thoughts that were nowhere on the page. The words “miss you” made her picture her father a lonely old man, someone reaching out for love and companionship. “Come home” was a plea of desperation. “Needed to talk” most likely meant he was ready to give up on life. The image of her father’s sorrow outweighed her own, so Lindsay clicked Reply.

  ____________________________________

  Hi Dad,

  Sorry I’ve been so bad about writing. I’ve been kind of down because of what happened with Phillip, but I’m sure it’s nothing compared to what you’re going through. Tonight I had a long talk with Walker, our doorman, and I’m beginning to think I did the right thing after all.

  I understand how lonely you are and how much you miss Mom. I miss her too, more than you can imagine. But at least we’ve still got each other, and I promise to spend more time with you so try to cheer up. I’m going to take the first week of September off and come home for a visit. It’ll be such fun, just you and me, like the good old days. How about having a Labor Day cookout? Do you have a recipe for those baked beans Mom used to make?

  _____________________________________

  Lindsay clicked Send then opened the notice of a Lord and Taylor sale that ended a week ago, responded to an Amazon survey and half-heartedly replied to Amanda’s note that went on at length about her new boyfriend. Before she finished going through the remainder of unanswered mail, the answer from her dad popped up.

  _____________________________________

  Great. Love to have you home for a while. Sorry, I don’t have the recipe for your mom’s beans, but I have a friend who can help us figure it out.

  Lindsay, your mom is someone neither of us will ever forget, but time has a way of healing the hurt of such a loss. I’ve learned to move on and make the most of life. I hope you have also. We’ll talk when I see you. Looking forward to your visit.

  Glad to hear you’ve become friends with Walker. Trust what he says, he’s a good man. I’ve spoken with him many times.

  Love, Dad

  _____________________________________

  Lindsay reread the last line. Dad’s spoken to Walker? Had Phillip? She buzzed the lobby desk on the intercom.

  “Front desk,” Walker answered.

  “Hi, Walker, this is Lindsay again. Did Phillip ever stop and talk to you?”

  “No. Never.”

  “But my dad did, right?”

  “Indeed he did. Every time he came to visit, Mister Gray would stop and ask how I’m doing. He’s a fine gentleman, the type who does right by people.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking. Thanks, Walker.”

  I knew precisely what she was thinking. I couldn’t stop the thought, but I knew it was coming. Lindsay is one of those humans who sees true love the way others see a
heat mirage—always in the distance, flickering, wavering and changing shape. After her conversation with Walker, it was inevitable.

  Lindsay closed her eyes and pictured the men she’d been dating. They were handsome, broad-shouldered, muscular, skin tight shirts, leather jackets, slouched stance, most of them a height close to her own and every single one of them with a sexy glint in his eyes. How, she wondered, could she have been so blind as to not notice this?

  She lifted a picture from the desk. It was taken ten years ago, when her mother was alive. In the picture Bethany was looking at the camera, but her father was turned sideways, his eyes fixed on Bethany and his expression one of pure adoration. Lindsay had never seen that look on the faces of the men she’d dated.

  She gave a deep sigh and settled back into the chair. Again she closed her eyes and pictured the men she’d dated, but this time their faces seemed distorted and strangely unattractive. As she thought about the words of her father and Walker, the one-time lovers melded into a single figure that shifted and changed shape. Dark hair became a lighter brown; a suit replaced the muscle shirt and jeans. When the suit appeared a bit too stiff, the image flickered and transformed itself into a sport jacket and slacks. Little by little, the picture came together until at last Lindsay could see exactly who she was looking for: a younger version of her father.

  As Lindsay slid into bed that night, she knew she had designed a man with principles. She closed her eyes and brought the image to mind again. “Perfect,” she murmured. She held on to the picture until sleep came and carried her away.

  ~ ~ ~

  I suppose you know without my saying this is sure to lead to trouble. Only the most foolish humans believe true love is based on hair color or the garments that adorn a body. For centuries I’ve listened to humans expound on how they fell in love with a person’s eyes or their voice. If I had a raindrop for every time a male claimed to have fallen in love because of a female’s breasts, I could easily flood all of Manhattan. The truth is love has nothing to do with any of those things. Love happens when one heart touches another. It’s the deep down beauty of someone’s soul that draws another to their side, but that’s something humans haven’t yet figured out.