“No.”
“Well, here’s my suggestion to you, Miss Gray,” he said, looking very trustworthy and doctorly in his white lab coat with the shiny stethoscope hanging loose around his neck. “The treatments I have in mind for your back pain are very expensive. I’m not going to lie to you. But I know an attorney who can set it up so you won’t have to pay these costs out-of-pocket.”
His name wouldn’t be Gleason, would it, Doc?
“I think I have a card here somewhere,” he said, rummaging through his pockets. “Ah, yes, here it is.”
He handed her the card, and Annie read the name aloud. “Marcus Benjamin, attorney-at-law.”
Annie had been so sure it would be Zach Gleason’s card. When she arrived back at the office and showed it to Deke, so certain she’d failed, Deke’s beaming white smile confounded her.
“I don’t understand.”
“What it means,” he explained, “is that we’re probably digging into a whole network, m’girl.”
“A network of insurance fraud?”
“That’s right. Get Bench on the line for me, will you?”
Annie hadn’t given much thought to Nick Benchley over the last couple of days. Her thoughts had been devoted instead to Colby and their upcoming date. It was a tight squeeze, having Nick forced into her current frame of mind, leaving her feeling a little like she wanted to crawl out of her own skin.
“Benchley.”
This is the way to answer a phone?
“Hi, Nick. It’s Annie.”
“Annie Gray!” he exclaimed. “I knew it was just a matter of time.”
“Until?”
“Until you came searching for me, realizing the error of your ways.”
“Well, I hate to deflate your ego any,” she told him, “but I’m calling on behalf of Deke.”
Silence.
“Hello?”
“You’ve injured me, Annie Gray. You’ve truly injured me.”
“I have a feeling you’ll recover,” she stated offhandedly. “We’ve had a development in the insurance fraud case, and Deke was hoping to set up a meeting with you to discuss it.”
“Will you be attending this meeting?”
“I don’t think so, no. Why don’t I put you on the line with Deke, and the two of you can hash it out.”
Silence crackled for another few beats before he sighed. “All right, Annie Gray. Why don’t you do that.”
“Hold for just a moment, please.”
As she passed off Nick’s call to Deke, Annie had the oddest feeling. What was it about Nick Benchley? He always seemed to leave a strange remnant behind. Kind of like working with something very sticky that she couldn’t wipe off her hands.
Her purse hiked over her shoulder, Annie stood on the street corner with a blank rental application in one hand and a bottle of Diet Coke in the other. She hadn’t intended to leave her gram’s hospitality quite so soon, but this Monterey apartment was available immediately at a great price for the location. Now that she counted herself among the gainfully employed once again, it seemed like finding the apartment was just meant to be. Still, standing there on that curb, preparing to fill out the paperwork and lay down a deposit check on a more-expensive, less-roomy apartment than the one she’d previously occupied, Annie couldn’t help asking herself all of the key questions:
Is this really what I should do?
Is it worth giving up space simply to have a Monterey address?
And what about Gram? Oh, sure, she made it seem like she needed me to move in with her, but we both knew it was just her way of lending a hand when times got really tough. Wasn’t it?
“Zoey, I need you. Can you meet me right now?”
Annie spent the next half hour filling out the paperwork, just in case, and polishing off her third Diet Coke for the day. She’d been vowing lately to cut down on the amount of caffeine she consumed, but she realized as she took the last swig from the bottle that she wouldn’t be keeping that promise today. In the spirit of the great Scarlett O’Hara, she decided she would think about that tomorrow.
Relief pulsed through her as Zoey pulled up and waved. The most decisive person Annie knew would surely be crucial in helping her determine her next step.
“Great neighborhood,” Zoey said as they met up on the sidewalk. “Is this it?”
“Yeah. What do you think?”
“Let’s go in and look around.”
Up the stairs and to the left, then through a heavy wooden door, the small apartment was pure old-Spanish with dark hard-wood floors, arched doorways and windows, and low-dropping, curved ceilings. Domed glass doors led to a small balcony beyond the kitchen, cordoned off by an intricate Spanish wrought-iron railing. From there, they surveyed colorful tile rooftops dotting the hills below.
“This is a spectacular apartment,” Zoey told her as they stood side by side on the balcony. “It has such charm.”
Annie sighed. “I think so too.”
“But why are you in such a rush to leave Carmel? You have an ideal situation there with Dot.”
“I know, but this place just landed in my lap.”
They debated the pros and cons of the move for several minutes, and Zoey kept bringing the conversation back to Carmel.
“You’re walking distance from the village, and you have that great attic bedroom if you want privacy. And don’t forget a built-in babysitter for Sherman when you need one.”
“Gram? Or Evan?”
“Well, both,” Zoey replied, chuckling.
“This is so much closer to the office.”
“Yes. But far less space than you had in your old place. And the rent has to be a lot more for this location. How much is it?”
“Three hundred more a month,” Annie admitted with an inward cringe.
“Three hundred! Annie, come on. You took a new job that pays less, and you want to move into a smaller apartment that costs more?”
“I can afford it,” she insisted.
This is not going the way I’d planned.
“It’s not about affording it. It’s about being wise. I’m not going to tell you what to do, but it just doesn’t seem wise to me. Leaving your gram to live closer to your folks? Is that really going to make you happy?”
“It’s such a great apartment, Zo.”
“It is. But you’re in a gorgeous place now.”
“I can’t stay there forever.”
“Well, that’s debatable. But will you please just think it through before you turn in that application?”
Annie agreed, and they made their way in silence out the door and down the stairs.
“Listen, Annie,” Zoey said with noticeable caution as they reached their cars. “I can see that you’re going through something lately. Looking to change your life and all. But you don’t have to change everything at once just for the sake of creating forward movement. Maybe get used to your new job and see if it’s going to work out the way you hoped. In a few months, you can revisit this idea. But don’t just dive off a cliff before you really know what’s down there. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“Are you upset?”
“Yes.”
“With me?”
“No.”
“Okay,” Zoey said with a sigh. “Call me later?”
“Yeah.”
“Love to Sherman,” she called back just before zipping out of the spot behind Taurie.
Annie’s head began to ache on the drive home to Carmel. Probably from all the ricochets she’d been fielding lately.
After taking Sherman for a quick walk, Annie grabbed another Diet Coke from the fridge and headed upstairs toward her big, comfy bed and favorite pajamas. It took Sherman two tries to make it up on the bed beside her, but he snuggled close to her thigh and let out a groan as they settled in together.
“Zoey is right about one thing,” Annie told him softly. “I need guidance.” But Sherman was already halfway to sleep.
Propping her pillows behind her and
forming a nest with her folded legs, Annie grabbed the Bible Dot had placed on her night-stand when Annie moved in. She opened it at random, and her eye fell upon a single word on the page. Just as it always had, ever since the eleventh grade when she wrote an English composition about the similarity between humans and sheep, that one word captured her: Sheep.
“But He made His own people go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock; and He led them on safely, so that they did not fear.” She read the passage from Psalms over again and was reminded of her plan for change. She wondered if Zoey might be right. Perhaps all the change in her life didn’t have to happen in one fell swoop; maybe God would lead her toward her future one bump in the road at a time.
A few minutes later, figuring it wasn’t like she was making a decision or anything since she’d already bought it, Annie bounced into the bathroom and finally read the directions for her new teeth-whitening system. And two hours after that, she made a silly—kind of frightening, really—face in the mirror to admire her pearly whiter-now whites.
Annie hated dressing-room mirrors, especially on that particular day. She understood that they were designed to show how others would see a person, from every possible angle and all, and a certain degree of usefulness pulsed within that idea. But sometimes it was okay to just feel good about oneself from one angle, wasn’t it?
“Try this dress!” Merideth cried as she rounded the corner and dropped a bunched-up pile of mauve silk into Annie’s arms. She took a stack of other dresses with her into the dressing room next door, looking like a mound of walking fabrics—shiny, downright glittery, floral, and striped.
“If it works for you,” she called to Annie from the other side of the wall, “you can get those beaded shoes we saw when we first came in.”
Annie didn’t know how to break it to her, so she just came out with it. “I’m sort of leaning toward this one.”
The door flew open again on Merideth’s side, and her head popped out like a jack-in-the-box. “I didn’t see you trying that one on, over my mountain of dresses,” she cackled. “All I saw was your head!” Then with a gasp, she added, “Oh, Annie. That looks really good on you.”
Annie examined all four reflections: front, back, side, and other side. It did look pretty good—a champagne-colored silk bodice and floor-length skirt with long, sheer sleeves and yoke.
“You could still wear those beaded shoes we saw,” Merideth added before disappearing on the other side of the door.
“And Gram’s necklace.”
She’d given it to Annie on her eighteenth birthday, mostly because Annie had been thinking of excuses to try it on every time she came to visit since she was nine. It was a lovely shiny, crystal choker, with two more tiers of crystals draping from the first. They weren’t diamonds or anything—just an expensive piece of costume jewelry, really—but her grandmother had worn it on her wedding day.
“Okay, what do you think of this?”
Merideth emerged from the dressing room and all but stopped time. Such a gorgeous woman, with a certain style all her own but wearing this simple black dress with clusters of rhinestones scattered on the layers of her knee-length skirt, Merideth embodied elegance.
“Oh, Mer.”
“Yes?”
“Definitely yes.”
Merideth gazed at herself in the mirror for one long moment, then nodded and smiled.
“Okay, then. On to shoes and bags.”
Shopping with Merideth, Annie decided, was a little like landing the role of understudy in a play. One knew what she was doing on her own but would never realize until that moment how much was still left to learn.
“I’m so excited you’re going to be Colby’s date, Annie. I knew as soon as I met him that the two of you would be a good match.”
Annie held up a pair of earrings to one ear, inspecting them in the mirror. Merideth’s face suddenly appeared behind hers in the reflection, her nose crinkled up and her head bobbing from side to side. “Mmm, no.”
Annie replaced the earrings on the display. “What do you know about Colby?”
“Girl, I know it all,” she replied, fishing through the handbags. “He’s thirty-four, never been married. He’s traveled all over the world—even lived in Germany and France when he was a boy.”
Annie suddenly squealed, gathering the plastic bag to reveal the fabric of her dress to compare it to the beaded handbag on the display table. “Look at this!”
“It’s a perfect match,” Merideth told her. “Grab it, and we’ll go find some shoes.”
By the time they set out in search of Merideth’s car, Annie had purchased a new dress, the beaded shoes and bag, Champagne Frost lipstick, a pair of panty hose, and a new cosmetic brush to replace the broken one in her favorite blusher.
“I haven’t spent this much on myself in a whole year of shopping!”
“Wait until you see the menu for the gala,” Merideth crooned as she turned over the engine. “Crab and shrimp, lobster, and prime rib. It’s really going to be amazing.”
Merideth chattered on as they wove through traffic, back toward Annie’s office to pick up her car. Her friend had been working on the fund-raiser for three months straight, and Annie listened politely as she reviewed the evening’s schedule, from a tour of three art galleries to an unstaged reading of a new playwright’s work to an outdoor buffet in the courtyard between the galleries. But Annie’s thoughts flipped the page a few times, leaving Merideth behind.
She could hardly wait for her second date with Colby Barnes. In fact, she drummed up images of herself in her new dress, on the arm of her handsome date…and those visions sustained her long after she’d said good-bye to Merideth and all the way back to Carmel.
Just before she reached the ivy-covered lattice gate of Gram’s beautiful home, Annie stopped and took a hard look at the place. The two-story, sunny-yellow cottage evoked a sort of joy in her as it beckoned. The oversized front door, flanked on both sides by multi-paned French windows, seemed to welcome her, and the upstairs windows to her bedroom sat open while the sheer white curtains wafted inward. Annie chuckled as Sherman’s head popped up into the window at the mere hint of her return, and he seemed to grin at her happily.
Lugging her purchases inside, the familiar scrape of paws on wood floors announced his approach, and Sherman thudded into her leg by way of a greeting.
“Hi, Shermie. How was your day? Just give me one minute, and then we’ll go.”
By the time she hauled her packages upstairs and returned, Sherman waited for her, leash in mouth and his tail wagging a hundred miles an hour.
“Your turn now,” she told him, clipping the leash to his bright blue collar and leading him through the kitchen and straight to the back door.
Stunned to find Evan standing on the other side when she yanked it open, his fist raised, just about to knock, Annie burst out with a surprised spurt of laughter.
“You scared me half silly.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m just walking Sherman. Want to come along?”
“Sure.”
Evan didn’t say much as they followed the concrete path around the back of the house, through the garden, then toward the street, with Sherman making stops every few feet along the way.
“So how are you doing?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“Not too much. How about you?”
“I’m going to that art gallery deal Merideth has been planning, so she and I went shopping for our dresses today after work.”
“Oh. Find anything?”
“I did. Very elegant, way too expensive. But I love it. Wasn’t it Ben Franklin who said that if you love the dress, it’s worth the extra dinero?”
He smiled but didn’t comment, and they walked on for several minutes more in complete silence.
“Hey, Ev, are you all right?” she asked as they rounded the corner and headed back toward the house.
“Yeah. Why?”
“You jus
t seem a little subdued, that’s all. Very un-Evanlike.” She unleashed Sherman and let him toddle into the house.
“Well,” he replied, “there is something I’m working up to, Annie. Something I’ve really got to do.”
“What’s that?”
Before she knew what hit her, Evan wound his arms tightly around her and his lips pressed down firmly against hers. They were nearly half a minute into the kiss before realization dawned.
Evan is…kissing me.
After too many years on the roller coaster, he’d never really kissed her before—not in this way, at least. Not just a quick peck to say hello or a warm smack good night, but an honest-to-goodness boy-meets-girl cinematic kiss.
And what do you know? I’m kissing him back.
It was a good one too.
The next thing you know, I’ll be swooning or something!
He seemed to pull away reluctantly, and she wondered for a moment if he might just momentarily come up for air before heading back in.
“What was…that?” she asked him.
“A kiss, Annie. And I should have done it a long time ago.”
She regarded him cautiously for a moment before it hit her.
“Yes, you should have,” she replied. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for you to kiss me like that.”
“Really?” He looked hopeful, but Annie didn’t actually mean to extend that branch.
“Yes. Really,” she told him. “For three or four years, every time I thought we were getting closer to something meaningful, you pulled away. The reluctance of committing to something meaningful with me has been an unspoken wedge between us for a very long time, Evan.”
“I want to change that.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why now? Why tonight?” Annie really wanted to know.
“I just figured…if I keep waiting to show you how I feel, I may not get the chance.”
Time just kind of sat there, dormant—Annie didn’t know for how long. And then she felt it winding up again as sorrow crested and flooded over her like a shower at the foot of a waterfall. She’d known this about Evan for such a long while, but it had never been so clear to her as in that moment: He doesn’t want to lose his ace in the hole. He doesn’t necessarily want me…but he sure doesn’t want anyone else to have me either.
Love Finds You in Carmel by-the-Sea, California Page 9