by Lori Wilde
“He’s got five hundred thousand dollars in cash, he can pretty much stay at the most expensive hotel in town if he chooses.” Mason’s eyes met Charlee’s and he could tell she was thinking the same thing he was. Their plan was lame but it was all they had.
“Maybe they’re on some kind of trip through memory lane,” she mused. “Recalling their misspent youth.”
“Maybe. But that doesn’t explain why Gramps stole the money or why your father kidnapped them or why the guys in the Malibu were following us or why some old western actor showed up in the desert in a limousine to give Elwood a lift.”
“Touché.”
“Something big is at stake.”
“Yeah, like half a million dollars.”
“It feels bigger than that. The whole thing makes me uneasy.”
“How come your family sent you to Vegas?” Charlee asked. “Especially since you’re not keen on flying.”
“Pardon?”
“Why didn’t your brother come after your grandfather or even your father?”
Mason shifted against the hard plastic bench and toyed with the paper wrapper from his white plastic dinnerware. “Because it’s my job.”
“It’s your job to baby-sit your grandfather?”
“No. It’s my job to play cleanup. Hunter is the front man. The mover, the shaker, the deal maker. I tie up the loose ends. It’s up to me to maintain customer service. Make sure everyone is happy.”
He tried hard to keep the bitterness from his voice. He was resigned to his position in the family hierarchy, but sometimes he couldn’t help but begrudge the fact that he’d been relegated to second place simply by birth order. No matter how hard he tried, Mason always seemed to fall short in comparison to his older brother.
“So essentially you’re the family janitor. Mop up the messes and whatnot.”
“It’s not like that,” he protested.
She raised an eyebrow.
“It’s not.” He could hear the defensive tone in his voice. Who was he trying to convince? Charlee or himself?
“And what about you?” she prodded.
“What about me?”
“Are you happy, Mason?” She peered deeply into his eyes in a maneuver that made his gut hitch. “Do you like being the janitor?”
When I’m with you, I am.
Her perceptive question took him off guard. He had no idea how to answer. “Sure I’m happy. Why do you think I’m not happy?”
“Well, for one thing you’re glowering.”
“I’m not glowering,” he denied and smiled purposefully.
“Now that’s just plain wrong.”
“What is?”
“Denying how you feel. Pretending to be happy when you’re not. What happens in your family when you express your displeasure?”
“What is this? Twenty questions? We’re talking about our grandparents here, not me.”
“What happens?” she persisted.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? What does that mean?”
Good Lord, the woman could worry a wart off a frog. “I’ve never openly expressed my displeasure.”
“For real?”
“My parents aren’t emotional people. We Gentrys prefer to stay reserved. It facilitates peace.”
“Peace at all cost, huh. Explains a lot.”
“Explains what?”
“Why you’re so screwed up.”
“I’m not screwed up.” Annoyance surged inside him at her half-baked psychobabble. “You think I’m screwed up?”
“How old are you?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Thirty-two, thirty-three?”
“I’m twenty-seven.”
“Oh. Sorry.” She looked chagrined. “You seem much older.”
Before she could elaborate on her theory concerning his supposed screwed-up-ness, their cheeseburger baskets arrived, sidetracking them from further talk.
In spite of himself, the aroma of grilled onions made his mouth water and when he bit into the cheeseburger he sighed involuntarily at the delicious flavor.
“Good, isn’t it?” Charlee grinned and dunked a french fry in ketchup.
Good? The fatty cheeseburger was sheer heaven but he wasn’t about to admit that to her. Not after all the bitching he’d done. Feeling contrite, he dabbed his chin with a paper napkin.
“Mmmm.” Charlee’s soft little moan of pleasure just about stopped his heart.
He looked up and the expression of delight on her face caused his breath to come in short, ragged gulps. Charlee’s lips glistened in the cheap fluorescent lighting and her eyes glowed luminescent.
And when she slowly licked a morsel of melted cheese from her finger his entire body tightened and the swell of heat swamping his groin was almost more than he could bear.
Jesus. What in the hell was the matter with him? Talk about your mental turmoil.
He was not the kind of guy who vacillated. He didn’t have conflicted feelings. Mostly, he ignored his feelings. So why couldn’t he do that now? Why the constant struggle? He wanted her so badly and yet he didn’t want to want her. He was screwing up his life. Ruining everything he’d built. Letting himself be tempted by a litany of “what ifs?”
This was wrong.
And yet the notion of kissing those provocative lips felt so damned right.
He was going to have to break up with Daphne and that’s all there was to it. He’d barely thought about his girlfriend in the last twenty-four hours. And how could he commit to Daphne when he couldn’t stop fantasizing about bedding a certain very sexy private eye?
The wind howled around the corner of the diner, escalating as sharply and rapidly as his desires. Dust bathed Matilda’s windshield. Overhead the ceiling creaked and groaned.
“Let’s get out of here.” He wiped his hands on a napkin and then reached for his wallet. “I’ll get the check.”
Belatedly, he realized he had no wallet and no money.
Instead of heading on into Tucson where he’d had his secretary wire him money, they had immediately headed for L.A. after Waylon Jennings told them Maybelline and Nolan were headed there. He was still without cash flow and he hated being broke.
“You’re broke, Gentry,” Charlee pointed out, a little too gleefully for his tastes. She had an uncanny ability for pushing his buttons and shooting down his pretensions. “My treat.” She pulled a wad of ones from her jeans and approached the cashier.
Damn if he could stop himself from eyeing the incendiary swish of her back pockets.
She paid for their meal and came back to retrieve her hat from the seat. She plunked the straw Stetson down on her head and turned to gaze at the windstorm.
“Maybe we ought to lie low until the dust devil passes,” she said.
“No, no. It’ll be all right.” Mason wanted to get on the road. The sooner they got out of here, the sooner they’d get to L.A., and the sooner they were in L.A., the sooner he and Charlee could go their separate ways. “Give me the keys.” He held out a palm. “I’ll drive from here on out.”
“Whatever.” Charlee dropped the keys into his hand.
The metal roof groaned again, louder and more insistently. He took Charlee’s elbow and guided her toward the door.
Was it his imagination or did she tense beneath his touch? Too bad. He’d been raised a gentleman. She was stuck with his deeply ingrained manners, like it or not. Besides, he liked touching her.
He leaned forward and reached to push open the front door of the diner, but the wind snatched it from his hand. At the same moment the roof stopped its low-level groaning and instead let loose with a sharp, metallic, bone-chilling shriek.
The whole building shook as the shriek gave way to a deep, heavy rumbling.
And then came a crash loud enough to rival a wrecking ball smashing into a dilapidated building.
Bam. Boom. Splat.
In unison, the truckers and cowboys seated at the tables
and counters jumped up and ran to the window.
“Holy shit,” someone exclaimed.
Charlee gasped and clutched Mason’s shoulders, her fingernails digging into his flesh.
Mason froze, his mind refusing to accept what his ears had witnessed.
“I’m so sorry,” Charlee murmured.
Slowly, in millimeter increments, he turned his head.
The giant fiberglass hamburger that forty minutes earlier had been perched jauntily up on the roof of the diner now lay squarely on top of Matilda, squashing her flatter than aluminum foil.
CHAPTER 9
The thermostat is busted.” Maybelline wiped her oil-stained fingers on a white paper napkin and slammed down the hood of the camper.
“So we’re stuck here.” Nolan splayed a palm to his forehead. He regretted leaving his cell phone at home. He hadn’t brought it with him because he was afraid his family would call and he wouldn’t be able to resist answering the damned thing.
“Until I can jury-rig something and we can make it to the next gas station, yes.”
Nolan sank his hands on his hips and let his breath out slowly. “May, it’s imperative we get to L.A. before the Oscars on Sunday night.”
“I’m aware of that, but it is only Thursday evening. Relax. We’ll get there.”
“I’m worried about Elwood finding us again.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“The sooner we get to Hollywood the better. I need time to plan an offensive counterattack.”
“I’m doing my best,” she said calmly, took a map from the glove compartment, then leaned against the hood and opened it up. “Our current location isn’t even on the map.”
They had decided to stay off the main roads after ditching Elwood at the abandoned Twilight Studios lot. Unfortunately, staying off the beaten path had been a calculated risk that wasn’t paying out.
“As the crow flies, we’re only a few miles from the interstate and a place called Nowhere Junction. Maybe we could hitch a ride there.”
“Except when was the last time we saw another car on this road?”
Maybelline sighed and folded up the map. “Not for hours.”
“Face it, we’re stranded.”
The sun squatted on the horizon. Nothing could be done tonight.
No point taking his prickliness out on Maybelline. At least she knew enough about engines to try to repair the broken thermostat. His manhood took a ding on that one but it couldn’t be helped. The gizmos underneath the hood of a car were a complete mystery to him. Might as well make the best of a bad mess.
Fifteen minutes later they were ensconced in the back of the camper. They sat side by side on the bare mattress, their backs pressed against the cab. Nolan took an orange from the sack of supplies Elwood had left stashed in the front seat of the camper, peeled the skin away, and broke off segments for Maybelline. The tangy sweet smell of citrus fruit filled the small confines.
“Not exactly the way I imagined spending the night with you,” he murmured.
“You imagined spending the night with me?”
“Hell, yes,” he growled. “About a thousand times on the plane trip to Vegas and about ten thousand since then.”
She leaned against his shoulder. “I never knew you thought of me like that.”
“Like what?” he asked out of pure devilment. He wanted to hear her say it.
“You know. Sexually.”
“I married you, didn’t I?”
“That was in name only. You were just trying to protect me. I never thought you actually wanted to sleep with me, sleep with me.”
“Christ, woman, what is the matter with you? The whole time we were married and living in that bungalow on the Twilight Studios lot and you were six months pregnant, I wanted you.”
“I never knew.”
“Come on. You never had an inkling?” He put his arm around her shoulder, drew her closer, and fed her an orange wedge. When her lips brushed against his fingertips, his old heart sang.
“I thought you were just a really sweet guy from back home who married me to save my reputation.”
“Well, you were wrong.”
“The whole three months we were married you never once even tried to kiss me.” Maybelline leaned up and traced his chin with her finger.
“You were pregnant with another man’s baby and I thought you were in love with him.”
“I might have been. Once. Or I was in love with the image of who I thought he was. Until I discovered the cheating bastard was married.”
“You were going to fling yourself off the HOLLYWOOD sign over him. What was I supposed to think?”
“That I was pregnant and unwed back in the fifties when girls were judged rather harshly for that sin.”
“What about you? Not once did you let on that you thought of me as anything more than a friend. And when you filed for the annulment…”
“Oh, come on, Nolan.”
“What?”
“I knew I wasn’t good enough for the likes of Nolan Gentry. Your daddy made that fact clear enough the time he threw a hissy fit when he caught us together at the soda fountain.”
“My daddy was an ass.”
“No. He was right. He knew you were Dom Perignon and I was Ripple.”
“Dammit, don’t put yourself down like that.”
“I know who I am, Nolan. I’ve never labored under the illusion that I belonged in your world. The only reason I agreed to the marriage in the first place was because I would have lost my job at the studio if they’d discovered I was unwed and pregnant.”
“It hurt me, May, when you got that annulment behind my back and took off without a word.”
“I couldn’t stay married to you when your family was planning on you walking down the aisle with Elispeth Hunt. I wasn’t about to ruin your life just because I’d ruined mine. And when that gossip columnist started snooping around the set and asking questions, I knew I had to do something to protect you. I could just imagine what would happen if your father found out you’d married me out of pity.”
“I didn’t marry you out of pity, dammit. I married you because I loved you.”
“If that was true, Nolan, why did you make everyone on the set swear to keep our marriage a secret? Thinking back on things it was a miracle no one gave us up to the gossip rags.”
He swallowed hard. “I was a coward.”
“No you weren’t.”
“I let the love of my life walk away because of my family.”
“I hid from you.”
“I should have searched harder.”
“Your father had a heart attack. What else could you do but go home? And let’s call a spade a spade. You married me because you wanted to feel like a hero.”
“That’s not true, but I am sorry,” Nolan said vehemently, “if I ever made you feel like you were anything less than special to me.”
“You never made me feel bad. I just knew we weren’t right for each other.”
“You were wrong about that.”
Maybelline said nothing. He peered down at her in the gathering gloom. It was almost too dark to see her face but when he put out a hand, he felt the dampness of her cheek and knew she was crying.
“Ah,” he said. “Ah, sweetheart, don’t.”
And then he was squeezing her tight, pulling her close to his chest, and kissing her like he should have kissed her forty-seven years ago.
Charlee stared at the car in horror.
“Matilda.” Mason’s voice cracked as he stood beside the massacred Bentley. The plaintive sound sliced a hole through her heart.
“Mason, I’m so, so sorry.”
He dropped to his knees and ran a hand over the piece of bright red metal that used to be a fender, poking from beneath the giant murderous hamburger.
“It’s my fault,” she said. “If I hadn’t insisted we pull over for a meal.…”
“She’s the only car I ever had,” he murmured in the hushed reverential tones reserve
d for funerals.
The diner patrons stood in a circle around them, mumbling their sympathies.
“I lost my virginity in the backseat,” Mason continued. “To Blair Sydney. She was home on spring break from Vassar the summer I turned seventeen.”
Charlee squatted beside him, laid a hand on his shoulder. She felt lousy as hell. She was the one who had parked the car directly underneath the burger, even if it was at his demand. She should have ignored him and parked where she wanted.
“You shouldn’t torture yourself.”
“You don’t understand. Matilda represented something important to me. Freedom from my family. A piece of my own identity.”
“A shit load of money is what she represented,” one of the cowboys muttered. “I’d hate to have his insurance premiums.”
Charlee shot the loud mouth a quelling frown and the cowboy had the good grace to look embarrassed. “Come on, Mason, let’s go back inside. Nothing can be accomplished out here.”
He appeared to be in a trance, staring at the violated car as if he were peering into a crystal ball and seeing an unpleasant future. He sat for the longest time not saying a word. Just when Charlee thought she was going to have to pinch him to remind him he was alive, Mason spoke. “I should have listened to you. I should have left Matilda in Phoenix with your friend.”
God, she hated being right. Hated seeing him so disheartened. She imagined her cherry red Corvette compacted beneath the oversized sesame seed bun and empathy pains knotted her stomach.
This wasn’t good at all.
She had to snap him out of his funk.
Twilight deepened and the lights from the gas station next door came on. The other diner patrons meandered off, but Mason just kept sitting on the ground, shaking his head and reciting a litany of memories associated with the car—his college graduation, summer vacations, and cross-country trips. He was holding a wake for Matilda. The only thing missing was whiskey and Irish lament songs.
He worried her. Big time.
Allowing him to descend into self-pity—however understandable under the circumstances—was a luxury they couldn’t afford. They had to get their heads straight and come up with a way out of here, ASAP. They had no car, very little money and now even his cell phone was D.O.A in the wreckage of Matilda.