a clean shirt and a tie - clothes he,d bought yesterday - and he,d scrubbed himself in the shower for an hour before checking out of the hotel. His hair was too thick and too long, but it was thoroughly combed.
"Who are you!" she demanded. She set the menu down and glanced angrily towards the back of the restaurant for the waiter.
Reuben didn,t answer. There was no waiter visible in the back of the restaurant just now. Only a couple of other tables were occupied.
"Look, I,m dining here alone," she said politely but firmly. "Now, please go."
Then her face changed. It went from anger and annoyance to thinly concealed alarm. At once her eyes hardened and so did her voice:
"You,re the reporter," she said accusingly. "The one from the Observer."
"Yes."
"What are you doing here?" She had become furious. "What do you want with me?" Her features were transformed into an obdurate mask. Inside, she was roiling with panic.
He leaned forward and he spoke in a warm intimate voice.
"I,m that boy from up north," he said.
"Yes, I know that," she said, not getting the connection. "I know just who you are. Now kindly explain: what do you want with me?"
He reflected for a moment. And again, she looked desperately for a waiter but none was in the main room. She started to get up. "Very well, I,ll have my lunch someplace else," she said. She was trembling.
"Laura, wait."
He reached out for her left hand.
Reluctantly, suspiciously, she sank back down in the chair.
"How do you know my name?"
"I was with you last night," he said softly, "most of the night. I was with you until early morning when I had to go."
He,d never in his life seen anyone so perfectly astonished. She was frozen, staring at him across the table. He could see the blood pounding in her pale cheeks. Her lower lip quivered but she didn,t speak a word.
"Reuben Golding is my name," he went on in a low trusting voice. "It started up there for me, in that house, up north. That,s how it began."
She took a deep ragged breath. The sweat broke out on her forehead and on her upper lip. He could hear her heart pounding. Her face softened and her lips were trembling. The tears rose in her eyes.
"Good heavens," she whispered. She looked at the hand with which he was clasping hers. She looked at his face. She was taking his full measure and he felt it keenly, and the tears almost sprang to his eyes, too. "But who - ? How - ?"
"I don,t know," he admitted. "But I do know that I have to leave here now. I,m going back up there. The place is mine - the house in Mendocino where it happened. It belongs to me. And I want to go there. I can,t stay here any longer, not after last night. Will you come with me?"
There it was, and he fully expected her to shrink from him, to pull her hand out of his and draw it down away from his reach. Her Man of the Wild was not a Man of the Wild after all.
"Look, I know you have your work, your tours, your customers...."
"It,s the rainy season," she said in a weak small voice. "There are no tours right now. I don,t have any work." Her eyes were glassy, huge. She took another heaving breath. Her fingers wrapped around his.
"Oh ...," he said stupidly. He didn,t know what else to say. Then, "Will you come?"
It was unbearable to sit there quietly under her scrutiny, to wait until she spoke again.
"Yes," she said suddenly. She nodded. "I,ll come with you." She looked certain but dazed.
"You realize what you,re doing if you come with me."
"I,m coming," she said.
Now he really did have to fight the tears, and it took him a moment. He held tight to her hand but looked out the window, at rainy Throckmorton Street and the crowds hurrying to and fro under their umbrellas, in front of the many little shops.
"Reuben," she said. She pressed his hand now tightly. She,d recovered herself and she was very serious. "We should leave now."
As he steered the Porsche towards the Panoramic Highway, she began to laugh.
She laughed harder and harder. It was a great release, this laughter. And she obviously couldn,t hold it in.
He was baffled, uncomfortable. "What is it?" he asked.
"Well, you have to see the humor of this surely," she said. "Look at you. Look at who you are."