No Greater Love - Eris Field Page 0,1

attention of a passing clerk. “Boomsa Oude Jenever, please.” As he waited, Pieter found himself searching the aisles for the woman who had captured his attention as no woman had for a long time. With a sense of disappointment at not seeing her again, he nodded at the elegantly embossed bottle with a songbird holding a juniper berry in its beak that the clerk was showing him. As he reached for his wallet, Pieter heard the soft voice with its intriguing accent from behind him at the checkout counter.

“I called just before I left work and you said you had a bottle of Oude Jenever.”

“Yes, we did but we just sold the last bottle.” The clerk’s gaze drifted in Pieter’s direction. “We don’t get much demand for it.”

As Janan followed the clerk’s gaze, she recognized the tall man who’d held the door for her. The light had been dim then but now she was able to see his face with its broad forehead, deep-set dark-gray eyes, aquiline nose, generous mouth, and firm chin softened by a slight cleft. Now, in the harsh light of the store, the irregular-shaped port-wine birth mark on his left cheek stood out in sharp contrast to the gray cast of his skin. Unable to help himself, Pieter turned and met the lustrous dark eyes of the woman standing behind him. For a moment he saw the expression of a hurt child cross her face and then it changed to that of resignation of one who was no stranger to disappointments.

“We have many other fine imported gins.” The clerk gestured to the back wall. “There is a very nice Scottish gin, Tanqueray. Frank Sinatra’s favorite, they say.”

The woman shook her head and pulled the cap down firmly.

“We have Old Raj from England and Petermans from Belgium.” There was a note of desperation in the clerk’s voice now.

“No, I wanted an imported Dutch gin.”

“We have Vincent Van Gogh gin. It’s a very nice blended Dutch gin.” The clerk added eagerly, “It has a picture of a canal on the front.”

As he paused to separate the American dollars that the check-out clerk had handed him as change from the Euros in his wallet, Pieter could not help a faint shudder that accompanied the thought of Vincent Van Gogh gin with its ten added botanical flavors. No Dutchman would drink that. No gin needed more than juniper berries to flavor it. He felt a sense of relief when she shook her head. As he took the bottle from the clerk and slid it into his raincoat pocket, he watched the woman hurry out of the store, the bounce in her step gone. He felt a faint sense of remorse. Why was it so important to her? Was she buying Dutch gin for her husband? A lover? He frowned. Why was the thought of her buying Jenever for another man bothering him? Suddenly he knew why. There had been no startled look of repulsion when she had seen his face. Throughout his life, he had become so accustomed to that quick reaction to his birthmark when people met him for the first time that he anticipated it and allowed time for them to recover, but he had not seen any distaste or pity reflected in her eyes.

A few hours later, Pieter drove slowly down the narrow street of the old village searching for Carl’s house, but all the houses looked alike—well-kept, vintage bungalows with deep porches stretching across the front and broad welcoming steps. Each house had a walk lined on each side with neatly piled banks of snow. He squinted against the sweep of the windshield wipers in the early dusk, barely able to make out the numbers placed precisely on the right column of each porch. Finally, he parked cautiously in front of one, the only one with a foot or more of snow blocking the walk. He could not make out the face of the woman fiercely throwing snow off the porch steps but he recognized the orange cap slung low over her ears and the tall slim figure—the magnificent creature from the liquor store. He took a few steps from the car and cleared his throat but she did not look in his direction. He raised his voice. “Excuse me. Is this the home of Dr. Carl Ahren?”

She gave a brief nod without looking at him and continued shoveling the steps with quick, angry tosses of the snow to either side.

Shivering from the cold filtering through