“It’s in Barstow.” Bret pulled her away from her thoughts. “About a two-hour drive. It’d kill your Saturday. But if you’d like to come along, I’m allowed one guest. And you could let your old prof know what you’ve been up to.”
Okay, that made it clearer. She weighed the question. Bret’s eyes looked perfectly direct and matter-of-fact. In other words, pure Bret.
She remembered her silly disappointment when Bret hadn’t paid any attention to her at the party. She had nothing to worry about. Bret was a level-headed individual.
That made one of them.
What could it hurt? They were colleagues. It was a business event. She’d just remember to think of it on that level, no matter what her heart rate told her.
She smiled. “I’d like that. Thanks.”
* * *
After Chloe left his office, Bret stared down at the postcard. Printed up before his boss’s surprise assignment, it still had McCrea listed on the lineup, along with two other guest speakers.
He couldn’t remember his mouth getting so far ahead of his brain in—well, maybe ever.
He suspected the visit by Mike-from-the-press-room had a little to do with it. Or a lot. Bret had gotten territorial, which wasn’t like him. And it wasn’t smart. Now, suddenly, he’d booked himself an entire day alone with Chloe. Outside the office.
Where he’d have to remember to maintain those professional boundaries.
But hey, he’d gotten good at keeping people at a distance, even when he wasn’t trying. As his recent dating record could attest. No reason to believe he’d break form now.
Still, he’d be lying to himself if he pretended he wasn’t looking forward to it.
Chapter 11
Chloe stepped outside her apartment, a lidded travel coffee cup in each hand, and started for the front of the building. Knowing Bret, he’d be here to pick her up promptly at nine-thirty, if not earlier.
Sure enough, she met him halfway down the steps leading up to her floor. At his quizzical look, she said, “Tiffany’s still in bed. I didn’t want to wake her up.”
More to the point, she didn’t want to answer any questions. Kate had already gone to work the breakfast shift at the diner, but a knock from Bret might be just enough to rouse Tiffany, who had the late shift, in time to provoke some unwanted curiosity. She’d told her roommates she was going to “a work thing,” trying to make it sound as tedious as she could.
It was a work thing, after all. Nothing to get excited about, other than the chance to see Dr. Macias again. Chloe had admired her in college—a woman in her mid-forties with a PhD, who’d challenged Chloe to work so much harder than she’d been required to do in high school.
That was why she was giving up her Saturday. It had nothing to do with a man who, a couple of weeks ago, had been her nemesis. So she’d dressed much the same way she would for a typical day at the office. Okay, the blue silk blouse she wore under her sweater was a favorite, but they’d been having warmer temperatures lately. And Barstow was in the High Desert.
Bret, who’d gone back to his trusty gray blazer, nodded at the two cups in her hands. “Is one of those for me?”
“No. I’m a two-fisted drinker.”
For half a second he hesitated. Chloe couldn’t hold back her grin. Gotcha, Mr. Deadpan. She handed him one of the coffees. “Leaded. Lots of cream.”
“Perfect. Thanks.”
She figured Bret wouldn’t turn down caffeine. For her, it was essential. She was perennially behind on sleep these days.
He took the cup and led her to the curb, where a vintage black Mustang convertible waited. Chloe couldn’t conceal her surprise.
“I didn’t know this was yours,” she said as he pulled the passenger door open for her.
He lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. She supposed it should have been fairly obvious. The employee lot was sparsely populated most mornings, but there were always some cars there. She just didn’t know which ones belonged to the overnight crew and which belonged to early arrivals. The Mustang had caught her eye, but—well, it didn’t seem like Bret’s type of car. Sleek and sporty, it came from a time when cars were built for style and speed, instead of practicalities like fuel efficiency.
Inside, it was free of the type of clutter that littered most cars, her own included. No scraps of notes, no junk mail, no candy wrappers. That didn’t surprise her.
He got in beside her, started the engine, and turned to her. At her puzzled look, he prompted: “Seat belt.”
“Should I be worried?”
“No. Just a good habit. You never know.”
“In my own car, I always do.” In friends’ cars, she’d found, the safety belts were usually stuck somewhere in the seat cushions, if she could find them at all. Not the case here. She clicked her seat belt into place and gave him a nod: Proceed.
Bret pulled away, and their unlikely adventure had begun. Within a minute, Chloe found herself racking her brains for words. What was it about being alone in a car with someone that magnified every silence? She fished through her mind for topics: Nice weather we’re having. Boy, your car sure is clean. So, how’s that coffee? If that was the best she could come up with, the two-hour drive would pass by in dog years.
Bret must have had the same feeling, because a couple of blocks into the drive down Evergreen Lane, he pressed a button on the car stereo. Crunchy electric guitars blared out at a volume that made Chloe jump. Immediately Bret hit another button, and the snarky rock was replaced by the drone of a commentator. National Public Radio, probably.
He turned the volume down and gave her an embarrassed glance. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Nobody’s NPR all the time.” She nodded at the console, intrigued. “What was that?”
“Weezer. They started out in the nineties—”
“Please.” Chloe blew out a puff of air. “I know who Weezer is.” Emboldened, not to mention curious, she pressed the button Bret had hit. The guitars returned. She listened a moment. “But I don’t have this album.”
“It’s Pinkerton. Their second.” He nodded at her feet. “There’s a binder of CDs under your seat. If you like Weezer, you might like some of the other stuff, too.”
Chloe reached down and fished out the folder. “I didn’t think to bring CDs. I’ve got some music on my phone, though.”
“This is a 1965 Mustang. It doesn’t do MP3s.”
“If you were being authentic, you’d have a cassette deck.”
Bret shuddered. “Authentic is one thing. Cassettes are an abomination.”
As they turned onto the highway leading out of town, Chloe flipped open the CD folder and felt a surge of delight. They had overlap. Not a hundred percent, but a lot. Bret’s music had a surprising amount of bite: Green Day, Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Cage the Elephant, more Weezer. Holy cow, the Smiths. And, sure enough, the Beatles, a must in any breathing human being’s music collection as far as Chloe was concerned.
The trip ahead suddenly looked a lot shorter.
“You have taste.” She flipped another of the plastic sheets. And squinted her eyes at him. “Wait a minute. Bon Jovi?”
He colored faintly. “Guilty pleasure.”
She thought of the songs on her phone. She actually had a playlist labeled JUNK FOOD. “My biggest guilty pleasure is the Knack.”
“The Knack? I’m surprised. Some pretty sexist stuff there.”
“Yeah, but it’s good-natured. You can tell they’re kidding.”
He shook his head. “That might be wishful thinking. I’m not sure they were kidding. Guys take a little longer to grow up.”
“How much longer?”
He flicked her a grin. “What time is it?”
She couldn’t resist saying it. Maybe she’d had a little too much caffeine. “That’s not what Sherry said.”
She watched Bret for his reaction. The car may have veered slightly, but other than that, he only chuckled. “That was so long ago, hardly anyone remembers. Sherry and mys
elf included, most of the time.”
She watched Bret, but his eyes stayed on the road, making any reaction hard to detect. He wasn’t easy to faze, but between the two, he’d probably been more disconcerted when she found the Bon Jovi CD. She persisted, “I’ve got to admit, I’m still trying to figure it out. You and Sherry? How did that even happen?”
Bret sighed. “I was a senior, she was a sophomore. She needed an English tutor, I was available.”
“Okay. Still. I love Sherry, but what did you have in common?”
“Hard to say.” Another shrug. “Who are you when you’re seventeen? Think back. What kind of people did you have crushes on in high school?”
And suddenly Chloe’s face felt hot. Quiet, brainy types. Often with glasses. “I take the Fifth Amendment.”
Bret nodded in satisfaction. “I rest my case.”
While Bret’s eyes were on the road, Chloe stole a look at him, careful not to turn her head much. It was hard to say what made a face handsome, aside from a certain symmetry of features. With Bret, she supposed it would be the firm line of his mouth, and those almost fierce dark eyes. But he was undeniably good-looking, and she didn’t understand anyone who couldn’t look past a pair of glasses to see that. To Chloe, the glasses only added.
Still, she doubted that any of the guys she’d secretly crushed on in high school had ever grown into a Bret. Like the more popular guys in her high school and college years, he didn’t seem to care much about what other people thought. Not out of conceit, like the jocks she’d dated in her teens, but simply because he had more important things on his mind.
She returned her eyes to the windshield, before he could catch her staring, and shifted the topic. “Okay. One more question.” She folded her arms. “What color is Sherry’s hair, really? She always tells us she doesn’t remember.”
“Light brown. The facts are never as interesting as the mystery.”
Chloe contemplated Bret’s profile again. I don’t know about that, she thought.
“Your turn,” Bret said suddenly, without turning his head. “I’m still trying to figure out you and volleyball.”
“I told you. It’s competitive, and I was good at it. What’s to figure?”
“I’m not sure. It’s either too obvious or not obvious enough. It seems like you’d avoid the expected. You look like a volleyball player. Except—”
She waited.
He said, tentatively, “Aren’t you a little short?”
She laughed. “That’s what the other teams thought, too. Every game, they’d start out aiming the ball at me. And I’d ram it down their throats.”
Bret laughed. “Okay. Now I get it.”
“I don’t like being underestimated. But I love fighting back.” She grinned, glad he understood. “Plus, it was something my dad could get into. My brothers had their sports, and I was off in my room writing. You can’t exactly cheer a writer.”
“Hmm.” Bret glanced at her again.
“My dad’s a bright guy,” she added. “He’s been a supervisor at the cable company for nearly thirty years. He just relates to things that are more—external.”
Bret nodded. “Got it. My dad owes your dad a debt of gratitude, by the way. The TV’s almost never off at his house. He leaves it on for the news.” He paused. “And the noise.”
Conversation paused, and Bret turned up the Weezer CD.
As they wound their way down the mountain, the pine trees grew more sparse. An hour later, they were passing through bona fide desert, with yucca plants and scrubby-looking dry trees, punctuated by suburbs. Victorville even had a mall, and Tall Pine didn’t. As signs of civilization thinned out again, Chloe frowned. “I wonder why they decided to have the awards way out here.”
“Two reasons I can think of. The event is at the Harvey House. It’s a historical landmark, about a hundred years old.”
“What’s the other reason?”
Bret grinned knowingly. “It’s only two and a half hours from Las Vegas. On a Saturday afternoon, I’ll bet they figured a lot of people might keep going and make a weekend of it.”
“Sin City, huh?”
“You’ve got it.” Bret ejected the current CD from the player. “Could you grab the Foo Fighters, please?”
“Sure.” Chloe pulled out the disc and put it in the player.
Eyes on the vacant stretch of road in front of him, he said, “This is the part of the drive I enjoy the most.”
Chloe didn’t see anything but blue skies, dry brush, and a ribbon of straight gray road. There weren’t even any other vehicles in sight. “What’s here?”
Bret advanced the CD a couple of tracks forward and slid a glance her way. “Absolutely nothing,” he said.
He turned up the volume and stepped on the gas. The car surged forward while the music blared.
Chloe’s heartbeat quickened at the sudden burst of speed. But there was, as Bret said, absolutely nothing in their way. Nothing but open road and soaring guitars as the Mustang opened up, smooth and sure, riding the dips and swells of the pavement. She loosened her hold on the door handle. Bret spared her one sly grin before returning his attention to the road.
For one song, the car sailed over the blacktop. When the next song started, Bret eased up on the gas, and they returned to normal highway speed. Seventy miles per hour felt slow by comparison.
“Now I know why you told me to fasten my seat belt,” she said.
“No. That’s for all the maniacs out there on the road.”
“You’re lucky we didn’t get pulled over.”
“Never had a ticket in my life,” he said placidly.
Chloe frowned. Even in irresponsibility, Bret was carefully responsible. “There’s something almost sad about that,” she said.
“I don’t know about that. I can’t say I’ve ever lain awake at night because I have a clean driving record.” A smile tickled at the corners of his lips, making her heart do those funny things it wasn’t supposed to do. “Now, you. You strike me as someone who’s talked her way out of a ticket or two in her life.”
He looked at her just as she felt the temperature of her face rise again. “Maybe,” she admitted.
“And how’d you get away with it?”
“My dad always taught me to call a policeman ‘sir.’”
“Uh-huh. And maybe you made your eyes a little extra big?”
Her blush deepened. It was true. Although her father certainly hadn’t taught her that.
“So you’ve been known to turn sexism to your advantage. Let’s face it. If I tried that, the cop would have me hauled out in three seconds to search the car. Because he’d be sure I was up to no good.”
“Talk about sexism. What if it was a she?”
“Mmm, I still don’t think it would be smart for me to do the big-eye thing.”
“Your point?”
“Nothing, I guess. Except that we grew up in different worlds. In my world, I had to get by on being a careful driver. So I’m careful about when I break the rules. Plus, I’m not interested in getting killed.”
“That’s something else most boys don’t learn until they’re about thirty.”
“True.”
* * *
They reached their destination ten minutes later, and Bret was almost sorry to get there. Being in the car with Chloe had felt like some sort of a safe zone—a desert oasis from real life. Away from other people, it had been easy to talk, even when it wasn’t about anything important.
A vacation, he decided. That’s what this was. At least, as close as he’d come to one in years, unless you counted taking time off for his dad’s illnesses or repairs on the old house. Just for one day—or for several hours of it, anyway—not to be the boss or the reporter, the caretaker or the caregiver. To enjoy the way Chloe’s eyes devoured the arches and bricks of the old Spanish-style building before they even stepped out of the car.
Not everyone got excited about twentieth-century historical sites, but as they walked tow
ard the entrance of the Harvey House, Chloe grabbed her phone and started taking pictures.
“What is this place?” Ignoring the brisk wind, she stopped for another shot of the row of arches in front of the long two-story building.
“It was a hotel and restaurant for people traveling by train. There were a bunch of Harvey Houses in the late 1800s, early 1900s, when we were still settling the West. It’s still a working train station.”
Chloe’s camera phone swung to include the railroad tracks that stretched behind the building.
She was equally enthused about the lobby—inevitably decorated for the holidays, with wreaths, garland, and a Christmas tree in the corner. Bret watched as she took in the period décor with her eyes, then documented it voraciously on her phone: the copper chandeliers overhead, the gleaming wood of the reception counter, the stairs leading to the second floor. “Can we go up?”
“Sure. It’s not roped off.”
Chloe started up ahead of him, her light steps taking the stairs at an impressive clip, while Bret followed at a more leisurely pace. He’d been here before; this time around, the real sight was Chloe’s reaction to the charm of the place. The stairs made a ninety-degree turn at the halfway point; before she started up the second flight, Chloe turned around to photograph the Christmas tree in the lobby from her new vantage point. Still on the first flight of stairs, Bret stopped his own climb just to watch her. The phone covered half her face, but it couldn’t completely obscure her smile.
She shifted, aiming her phone’s camera again, and the flash hit his eyes. Bret flinched inwardly. He hated to be photographed.
“I’d better not be in that picture.” His words sounded more abrupt than he intended.
Her smile dimmed as she lowered her phone. A guarded look returned to her eyes, one he hadn’t seen since they left Tall Pine.
No. Not here. This day wouldn’t last long, and he didn’t want anything to disrupt it.
“You might break the camera,” he amended lightly. He resumed his progress up the stairs to join her. Chloe’s expression lightened again.
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