California Girl

by Rice, Patricia

  He wasn’t accustomed to anyone else driving, and it was all he could do not to press his foot against an imaginary brake or shout she was too close to the curb while she maneuvered the Caddy around the block and into a parallel-parking space.

  Every head on the street turned as they climbed out of Beulah. The cracked window and listing trunk didn’t add to the Caddy’s pink charm. By the time he walked around the hood, Alys had already started down the sidewalk, oblivious to the stares they attracted.

  “Oh, I haven’t seen one of those since I was a kid!” She darted into a nearby store just as he caught up with her.

  Wondering if he was expected to follow, Elliot realized he hadn’t spent enough time in the company of others lately to remember how shopping together worked.

  Figuring he’d lose her if he left her—not a bad idea except she had the keys and the itinerary—he glanced up and down the street for any sign of Mame. Finding none, he stopped at the store window to see what had caught Alys’s eye.

  A display of old-fashioned toys.

  Shoving his hands into his pockets, he studied the wooden letter blocks, an old Tonka tractor, a whirligig, a hula hoop, and a baby doll in a christening gown. If she came out with the doll, he was heading for the hills. He didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity of a female with a ticking biological clock. He smiled at the old plastic doctor’s bag with a stethoscope. He’d had one of those.

  Alys bounced out before he had time to worry that she’d escaped through a back door. He was actually looking forward to seeing what she’d purchased. Obviously, he’d been under too much stress lately.

  She waved a colorful aluminum whirligig like a magic wand under his nose. “And they had bubbles!” She rummaged in her sack to produce a small red bottle. “They had a wand that blew enormous bubbles but I didn’t think we had room for that.” She dipped the wand into the bottle and produced a twinkling stream of fragile bubbles with the first wave.

  “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you plan to do with those?” he asked. She was such a mixture of child and wisdom that pinning her into any one niche was equivalent to classifying bubbles.

  Her arched eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Play with them, of course. Didn’t you ever play with bubbles?”

  “When my brothers were little, I guess.” He strode down the block to the restaurant, darting glances down alleyways for the familiar sight of his Rover. He didn’t need her analyzing the reasons he’d never learned to play.

  Alys trailed behind him, leaving a string of bobbing bubbles to the amusement of passersby.

  Smiling, she stopped to chat with an elderly lady who admired the spinning gold-and-copper whirligig. The gnawing in Elliot’s stomach demanded feeding. He ought to go ahead, grab a table, and let her catch up.

  But he lingered, watching her throw her dark hair back in laughter. When was the last time he’d laughed like that? He wanted to smile just looking at Alys. She was like the whirligig, bright and shiny, spinning uselessly just for the fun of it.

  He didn’t have to approve. He could just enjoy.

  He’d enjoy a lot more if he knew Mame was safe. And that Alys wasn’t deliberately dawdling to give Mame time to get farther ahead. He should never have mentioned the assisted-living home. He had a feeling that had pushed his travel companion over the edge to Mame’s side.

  She ran up to him a second later, catching his hand as if she did it every day, dragging him onward. “She thinks she saw Mame earlier. People notice strangers in small towns. The toy store clerk didn’t remember her, but the owner was out to lunch. We could check back later.”

  Flabbergasted, not just by her observation but by the electric shock waves elicited by her slender hand in his, Elliot accompanied her into Café on the Route.

  Alys hadn’t been spinning uselessly. She’d been more focused than he was. “Maybe you should be a detective,” he muttered, probably to himself since she was busy looking for a bank safe in the restaurant. If this crumbling structure had once been an old bank, outlaws should have robbed it.

  Heads swiveled at their entrance. Still holding Alys’s hand, Elliot felt as if he’d been caught robbing a cradle, but he didn’t release her. The old high school, gangly awkwardness threatened to turn him into a hormone-fogged klutz as they threaded their way through chairs and tables. Thankfully, Alys released his hand, so he could think again. There for a moment, he’d been blinded by shining gold and copper.

  He remembered to scan the room for Mame and to ask the waitress if she’d seen her. He felt foolish asking. What difference would it make if Mame had come and gone? They couldn’t catch her any faster. The uneasy possibility that this was a wild-goose chase lodged in his throat.

  * * *

  “You’re fretting again,” Alys said as Elliot slid into the seat across from her, wearing such a serious frown that he almost had her worrying. She loved Mame. She didn’t want anything to happen to her. But after Elliot had explained the nature of Mame’s problem, and she knew Mame had been taking medication and dealing with it for years, she honestly thought it was best if Mame came to them and not the other way around.

  “I don’t like the idea of Mame driving alone,” he admitted. “I was hoping someone had seen her so I could ask if she had anyone with her.”

  His heart was in the right place, Alys decided, although he kept rubbing his chest as if he feared losing it. “We can stop at the collectible store later. Mame couldn’t have resisted going in any more than I could.”

  When he relaxed, Elliot’s whole face transformed. The frown beneath his dark curls disappeared, and his little boy smile twisted at her heart. The crescent scar beside his lips turned upward in a smiley face to match. When all that masculine attention was focused on her, she felt as if she were the only woman in the room.

  She felt like a woman.

  It had been a very long time since she’d remembered she was one. Not a busy wife. Not a caretaker. Not a zombie. But a woman in the eyes of a good-looking man. Her nipples sprang to attention beneath his appreciative gaze. He looked away before she could melt into a puddle.

  She studied her companion speculatively over the top of her menu. Elliot pulled his reading glasses from his pocket and seemed engrossed in deciding what healthy item he should nibble on next. She couldn’t really be interested in a man who ate like a rabbit, could she?

  She’d been without sex for so long, she could be interested in a rabbit with the appropriate equipment. Elliot Roth definitely had what it took. The question was, did she?

  She’d never really been shy. Reserved, maybe, but she’d outgrown that with her sales courses. She just didn’t have a lot of experience with men.

  Elliot Roth was a wealthy, famous man in his prime. He would have women hanging all over him. He had responsibility written all over him as well, so indiscriminate sex was out. He probably had a steady girlfriend. She would have done better with the boys who’d changed the tire if casual sex was all she wanted.

  Casual was definitely all she could handle at this stage, just to see if the juices still functioned.

  She would never see him again after they found Mame. Casual.

  Elliot slipped his glasses back into his shirt pocket and glanced up at her from the depths of his intelligent eyes, and all her decision making flew out the window.

  He was the one. If she intended to rediscover herself, and end years of abstinence, Elliot Roth was the man she wanted to do it with.

  Mame, she prayed silently, don’t have a heart attack. Let your positive energy heal so I can borrow your nephew for lascivious purposes. She had a strong hunch Mame would approve.

  “The Caesar salad,” Elliot told the waitress. “And could you grill the shrimp instead of frying them?”

  The devil prompted Alys as she ordered, “French fries and chocolate cheesecake with whipped cream on top, please.”

  The waitress grinned and scribbled the order.

  “Bring her some of those grilled shrim
p, too,” Elliot added. “And sliced tomatoes if you have them.”

  “Bring him some of the cheesecake,” Alys countered, handing the menu to the waitress and meeting his gaze head-on. “And a big old glass of Coke.”

  “That stuff will kill you,” he protested.

  “Yeah, but I’ll die happy. How about you?” she teased.

  The waitress escaped before the war could escalate.

  Chapter Six

  “You can’t really mean to eat that stuff.” In appalled fascination, Elliot watched Alys dip her spoon into a decadent bowl of whipped-cream-laden chocolate cheesecake. The only healthy thing on it was a strawberry.

  He couldn’t remember anyone over the age of ten eating like that.

  “One bowl of dessert will not kill you.” She dipped her spoon into the chocolate, and sampling the flavor, hummed in appreciation. “For all I know, the human body develops an immunity to cheesecake just as it does arsenic. Gad, this is incredible.”

  Her pink tongue flicked across the spoon to clean it. Elliot had to drop his gaze to his cheesecake. He squirmed in the chair, refusing to let libido overrule good sense. “A diet of arsenic has long-term debilitating effects.”

  Out of curiosity, he sampled the whipped cream on the dessert the waitress had set in front of him. Plastic. Blech. He could resist. She must have been deprived for a long time to consider this good eating.

  “I’m not recommending a diet of cheesecake,” she admonished, happily digging into both cream and pie now that she’d tasted them separately. “I’m just saying one slice won’t kill you. It might even make you feel better.”

  “Finding Mame would make me feel better.” He stabbed his fork into the dessert. Maybe he needed the antacid action of dairy.

  “Mame spent her entire life raising you and your brothers.” She shook her spoon at him. “Now she’s free to do as she pleases. If this is what pleases her, you shouldn’t interfere. You know as well as I do that she will let us know if she needs help. You have a phone and she has the number.”

  Distracted by her waving spoon, waiting for the dollop of whipped cream to shoot across the table, Elliot glanced up to catch Alys licking a patch of chocolate on the corner of her lips. When he caught himself wanting to lick the spot clean for her, he swallowed his bite of cheesecake whole.

  By the time he’d stopped choking, he’d prepared his argument. “The stress of the journey could worsen her heart condition. Her life is more important than a Balloon Fiesta.”

  “Her life is the Balloon Fiesta,” she said serenely. “Life is a journey. Which would you rather do—spend your whole life in the fast lane fighting traffic or stop to watch the balloons?”

  “That’s New Age baloney.” He slapped down the fork, and ignoring the soft drink she’d ordered, he sipped from his water glass.

  “Not to Mame. She’s doing what she believes in.”

  What was she trying to tell him? Probably nothing he wanted to hear. He rubbed at the heartburn this discussion—or the cheesecake—engendered.

  “Are you okay?” Her huge eyes watched him with concern.

  He liked having her watch him as if he were that whipped cream she was inhaling, but he didn’t like having anyone fret over him. “I’m not used to rich desserts,” he replied, unwilling to tell her more.

  She studied him briefly, then finished off her last bite with a sigh of pleasure. She patted her mouth with her napkin. “Little girl’s room.”

  She flitted away in her butterfly mode. Heads turned to watch her pass by. She stopped to speak with the waitress, who glanced in his direction. Why did that scene make his chest burn more?

  A moment later, he knew.

  “Doc Nice!” the waitress chirruped, handing him the check. “I listen to you on the radio all the time. Could I get your autograph?”

  Heads swiveled. This was a small room and the waitress hadn’t exactly been quiet. He scribbled his autograph on a napkin and reached for his wallet.

  A woman at a nearby table turned around and handed him a notebook. “Please, for my daughter? She swears by your books.”

  A small cluster of women surrounded the table before he could pay the check and escape.

  Not until the waitress brought back his credit card and Alys still hadn’t returned did he realize she’d stiffed him with the check and disappeared.

  Escaping his admirers and hurrying outside, Elliot fumed. They hadn’t seen a sign of Mame. For all he knew, Alys could be fleeing in the Caddy.

  Striding down the street, he stumbled to a halt when he turned the corner and saw Alys sitting on Beulah’s big pink hood, blowing bubbles. A weary mother pushing a stroller and clinging to the hand of a whining toddler stopped to let the child watch.

  Oh, no, she wasn’t doing this to him again. No more dallying. Elliot opened the passenger door to indicate he was ready to leave. In no hurry, Alys leaned over to hand the whirligig to the enchanted child.

  She slid off the car hood, leaving the mother to stroll away, smiling and listening to her toddler’s excited chatter.

  Oblivious to Elliot’s observation, Alys slipped into the driver’s seat and stretched her legs. She snapped on the seat belt, and handed Elliot a roll of Tums. “Mame was in the collectible store this morning. The owner didn’t know for certain, but he thought she was with a young Hispanic girl. Short, long braid, wearing jeans. That’s as much as he remembered. Sound like anyone you know?”

  She’d have him spinning like the damned whirligig. He didn’t know anyone in Mame’s life these days. Frowning at the Tums, Elliot tore open the package and popped one into his mouth. “You’re more likely to know her than I am.” He hated admitting that. He wanted to be annoyed at her delaying tactics, but she kept unbalancing him.

  He scooted the seat farther back so he could stretch out. He missed the Rover’s headroom, but he was damned glad they had the Caddy and not one of those rolling eggs they called cars these days.

  “I don’t know everyone at the school,” Alys said, switching on the ignition. “And I don’t know your neighbors. I can’t think of anyone fitting the description. Do we need to buy a spare before we leave here?” She steered the car from the parking space into traffic.

  “It’s a regular tire, not one of those disposable ones. It’ll hold. We can buy a new one in Tulsa after we find Mame.”

  * * *

  Alys contemplated telling him that they wouldn’t find Mame unless she wanted to be found but decided that defeated her purpose. She could keep Elliot entertained while Mame enjoyed her freedom, and she would see the USA as well. She mentally waved good-bye to Baxter as she drove into the unfolding fields of Kansas.

  She really ought to be thinking about how she would travel on to California after they reached Albuquerque, but she was more interested in what she would do with the man beside her. How could she reach his positive energy and heal his spirit if he wouldn’t relax?

  “Can you sing?” she asked. At his look of inquiry, she shrugged and turned the radio dial. “My turn to choose.”

  “The passenger gets to choose.” He dialed the radio back to the news.

  “Then the passenger should go soak his head.” She switched the dial back to a classic rock song and jumped in on the chorus singing “Jeremiah was a bullfrog.”

  It felt smashing to sing again. She’d always loved cruising down the highway with the windows open and the radio blaring. Maybe she needed to rediscover the things she loved. “I don’t suppose travel writers can afford convertibles?” she asked as the song ended.

  “Real estate might. Stick to what you know,” he advised.

  “I want to go forward, not backward.”

  “You think running away to New Mexico and becoming a travel writer is going forward?” he asked incredulously. “Are you sure you’re not sixteen?”

  “I am not sixteen.” Grumpily, she glared out the window. Catching sight of the sign ahead, she cried, “Oklahoma!”

  She veered suddenly out of tra
ffic and onto the shoulder, causing Elliot to pop another Tums. Two states in one day!

  She ran up to the WELCOME sign to have her picture taken and admired the lanky doctor adjusting the camera. He really was quite patient despite his pragmatic tendencies. He even sat on the ground in his fancy dress slacks to aim the photo upward for a different angle. He looked much more human sprawled on the ground.

  And masculine. She had a bird’s-eye view of his crotch.

  As if catching her wavering interest, he rose hastily, brushing off grass. Realizing she had the ability to turn on the self-controlled doctor. Alys let exhilaration zing through her veins when they climbed into the car again.

  She returned to their earlier conversation while the cow pastures and hay fields of Route 66 passed by. “I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t explore new horizons.”

  “Because you haven’t explored the old ones?” He didn’t miss a beat.

  Good man.

  “Because you can’t run from who you are,” he finished complacently.

  Bad man. That was about as asinine a piece of advice as she’d ever heard. How could she run from who she was if she didn’t know who she was?

  Singing along with the radio, she tuned out Elliot Roth and his sexy shoulders and sleepy eyes. No wonder Mame had run away. The man was infuriatingly predictable.

  The two-lane carried them through flat farms, but to her disappointment, no oil wells. Instead, she spotted a longhorn and insisted on having her picture taken with the animal while she sat on the fence. She needed a cowboy hat.

  They drove through small towns that might have been forgotten by time but not by McDonalds. A humongous coal and tractor-trailer train halted them on the main street of Vinita. Elliot leaned his seat back and closed his eyes—probably counting to ten before he blew a blood vessel. Alys was relieved he didn’t demand that they return to the interstate.

  The old road became a well-traveled four-lane outside Vinita. After Elliot read the guidebook aloud, Alys drove around downtown Foyil until she located the road’s original pink concrete. He didn’t read the book to her again after that.