California Girl (13 page)

She heard the love in Elliot’s voice, and understood his
need to take care of Mame as his aunt had taken care of him. Pointing out that
Mame wasn’t seven years old wouldn’t alleviate his emotional need to rescue
her. She couldn’t deny his spiritual connection to Mame was far greater than
hers.

Bowing before his greater need, she surrendered her own
selfish concerns. “We can go right to the hotel she’s reserved for tonight,” she
offered, taking his arm as the hostess led them back to a table. She needed to
absorb his strength while she sacrificed the trip of a lifetime. Her needs were
irrelevant compared to his. “We’ll hide Beulah, sit in the lobby, and wait for
Mame to show up.”

Sliding into the booth, Elliot looked momentarily grateful.
Then, to her surprise, he shook his head. He had tamed his curls before he’d
left the room, but the humidity had already worked its magic. He shoved on his
glasses to scan the menu, and dark hair waved over the ear pieces.

“We’d bore ourselves to death all day sitting there, and
Mame would still elude us. She obviously knows how to find us. We can leave a
message at the desk asking her to call, but otherwise, we might as well see the
sights. What’s on the agenda?”

“Why on earth hasn’t some woman snapped you up?” she asked,
marveling at his ability to read her mind.

He peered at her over the dark rim of his half-glasses.
“Because I have more sense than to swallow bait?”

She grinned and ordered the strawberry crepes. That kind of
charm could be even better than traveling with Mame.

And they had another night and another bed ahead of them.
Had he bought condoms when he’d bought those new pajamas?

She squirmed in her seat just thinking about it.

* * *

Elliot couldn’t remember ever traveling with a woman for
pleasure. He’d been on the road with publicists, at conferences with editors or
medical researchers, spoken to all-woman groups across the country. He’d taken
women to concerts, to dinner, and to bed.

He’d never driven down a rolling country road in a pink
Cadillac with a sexy pixie bouncing on the seat, singing “I Am Woman” at the
top of her lungs. He hadn’t a clue why they were hunting for a round barn—or
why anyone would build one—but as long as she kept bouncing like that, he
wouldn’t complain.

Today, she wore a faded blue halter top and black hip-hugger
jeans revealing a curving waist and flat belly. She didn’t look a day older
than sixteen unless he happened to catch her eyes. Now he knew why they
reminded him of crystal balls—they held age-old wisdom and a world of woe.

Her offer to sacrifice her trip for his sake had knocked him
flat. How many other people in the world would have understood his anguish
enough to give up their own pleasure for him?

He longed to make her laugh so she wouldn’t regret her
offer, and to erase the pain behind the unblinking crystal of her eyes.

Which was a pretty damned stupid thing for a man of his
social ineptitude to think. Testosterone had apparently eaten his brain.
Without a microphone in hand and a soundproof booth to shield him, he didn’t
know how to make people laugh, and he certainly had no idea how to erase her
memories—or he would erase his own.

He pulled the Tums container from the ashtray and popped
two. If he didn’t find Mame soon, his heartburn would eat a hole through his
esophagus, and he wouldn’t have to worry about his shattered brain.

“I don’t think a whole lot of those is a good thing,” Alys
informed him with concern. Since he was driving, she could fold her legs into
the seat to balance the newly repotted orchid. “Maybe you should see a doctor.”

“I
am
a doctor,”
he reminded her.

“Not a practicing one, you said. And doctors are the last
ones to diagnose their own illnesses. It’s foolish to diet and exercise and
never have a checkup.”

“You sound just like Mame. I get regular checkups.” He
swerved off the road into a gas station. “We need gas. You didn’t tell me that
driving Route 66 instead of the toll road would mean we wouldn’t have service
stations.”

“This is a service station. It just hasn’t been torn down
and replaced with plastic.” Setting the pot on the floor, she leaped out of the
car the instant he turned off the ignition. “I’m going to see if they have ice-cream
bars.”

“Try not to incite any riots while you’re at it.” He might
as well have talked to Beulah. Alys raced off, hair and breasts bouncing, to
the admiration of every male in sight.

From the collection of Harleys at the side of the station,
Elliot figured there were plenty of males inside enjoying the view. It was
ridiculous to worry about a twenty-seven-year-old woman who should know how to
take care of herself by now.

A woman who had never been outside of the state of Missouri
and looked as if she were sixteen might not be quite as experienced as she
ought to be.

The antacid didn’t help the roar of flame beneath Elliot’s
sternum. It took forever to fill the huge Caddy tank, and Alys hadn’t returned
by the time the nozzle clicked off. In keeping with the sixties’ traditions of
the old road, the ancient gas pump didn’t have credit card capability. He had
to go inside to pay. Route 66 might have been America’s Main Street half a
century ago, but it looked to him as if the rest of the country had picked up
and moved to the suburbs in the decades since.

Idly wondering how many people drove off without paying,
Elliot entered through the fly-specked glass door into smoke-filled air barely
stirred by the wooden ceiling fan. The only man in the place seemed to be the
attendant leaning on the counter, watching out the side window. Elliot followed
the clerk’s gaze, and his heart sank.

He could barely discern Alys’s sleek hair over the heads of
a dozen burly bikers sporting tattoos and heavy leather. He could see the end
of a rotten picnic table and figured she was sitting cross-legged on the
tabletop, eating her ice-cream bar. The bikers were shouting and jeering, but
Elliot couldn’t catch more than glimpses of a blue halter and bouncing hair
past broad shoulders and beer bellies.

Slapping two twenties on the counter, Elliot loped out the
side door. He wanted to curse fool women and innocent pixies and the laws of
the universe, but his brain was too paralyzed for words. He wasn’t a coward. He
knew he had the strength for a good fight if necessary. But a dozen men . . . ?
Think, Roth. Tell them their bikes were on fire? Did motorcycles burn?

Heart pounding, Elliot elbowed his way through the crowd,
hoping he could just lift Alys off the table and carry her out of here. The men
crowding the table glanced at his face and eased from his path, apparently
recognizing murderous rage when they saw it. He’d wager his next royalty check
that Alys wouldn’t.

A sharp cry sounding like
Aii-e-e-e
followed by a loud crack stood his hair on end. The
bikers at the front of the crowd roared in approval. With one last vigorous
elbow punch, Elliot shoved to the front—just in time to watch Alys offer the
two halves of a split board to a bearded old guy with a graying ponytail. Had
she just broken the board with her hand?

Seeing Elliot arrive, she grinned and leaped to the ground.
“The ice cream was messy,” she explained.

Stunned enough for that almost to make sense, Elliot
staggered beneath a pounding blow to his back.

“Don’t need to tote hardware with an old lady like her along,
right, son?”

Tote hardware? Mental images of tire jacks leaped to mind,
but Elliot had his arm firmly around Alys’s shoulders now, all but shoving her
toward the car, and he didn’t care what the hell they were talking about.

“We’ll see you at the barn!” one of the bikers behind them
yelled.

Alys turned and waved. “Put some lotion on your nose or it’s
gonna fall off!”

Elliot winced but when no one came after them with that tire
jack, he opened the Caddy door and without finesse, shoved her inside.

He pondered the possibility that terror and fury were the
flip sides of the same coin while he drove down the road, battling incoherence.
Alys didn’t appear fazed. As expected, she didn’t even recognize the rampaging
emotions with which he struggled.

After depositing the orchid in a less heated spot on the
back floorboard, she curled up in the seat, found a moist wipe in her overlarge
handbag, and cleaned the ice cream off her fingers. She sang along with the
radio, something about rolling down the river and toot, toot. Somehow, that
seemed fitting.

“You can break boards?” he finally asked, deciding that was
a neutral subject and didn’t involve yelling his head off.

“They have a karate class at Mame’s school.” She wadded up
the wipe and deposited it in the plastic bag she’d hung over the headrest for
trash. “If I’m going to be a woman alone, I thought self-defense classes were
called for. Control of one’s life promotes positive energy.”

He didn’t care. He shouldn’t care. It was none of his
business. She was her own person and not his responsibility.

The refrain sounded hollow, even to him. “Karate does not
work on men wearing heavy leather,” he all but growled. “They had us
outnumbered by six to one. If you make it a habit to entertain bikers, you’ll
need a better weapon than karate.”

He caught her surprise without even looking.

“Were you
worried
about
me?”

“You were surrounded by a dozen men and it didn’t even occur
to you that it might be dangerous?” Okay, he was almost shouting.
Chill, Elliot
.

“I have lived the last few years in terror,” she announced
coolly and succinctly. “I’m not doing that to myself anymore.
No fear
is my motto these days.”

“No brains,” he muttered, clutching the wheel. “You won’t
survive long that way.”

He wanted to wring her neck and talk some sense into her at
the same time. Better yet, he wanted to get the hell away from her. She was a
disaster waiting to happen, and he didn’t need any more disasters in his life.

“Then I’ll have enjoyed what’s left of my life,” she said
serenely, staring ahead out the windshield. “Arcadia isn’t far. I wonder if the
round barn has a guest book?”

Biting his tongue, Elliot followed the narrow two-lane to
Arcadia and the round barn. As he drove, Alys exclaimed over long horns and oil
wells, insisting on stopping for more pictures. The Harleys roared by, their
riders waving in passing.

“They’re traveling the same route?” he asked, returning to
the car and stowing the camera in the back seat.

“Yup, Triple A members all,” she said cheerfully.

“Are all the sights on our itinerary on theirs?”

Alys took pity on him. He was reaching for the Tums and
looking as if he’d rip the wheel off Beulah if he could. Apparently that tame
exterior of his cost a lot of energy. He’d looked so cool and casual sauntering
through the crowd of bikers earlier, that her heart had nearly stopped in
appreciation, but his laid-back attitude had apparently taken a toll. “Mame had
her own agenda. I added the barn. We can drive on, if you prefer. Mame says
most of the Route 66 things are just nostalgic and tacky.”

“We can stop if you really want to see it.”

“I’d much rather see the butterfly garden and go to the zoo.
I adore butterfly gardens.”

Arcadia and the round barn appeared in the windshield, and
Elliot slowed the car. He caught a gleam of chrome from the Harleys in the
parking lot. “There it is, last chance.”

“It doesn’t look like a place that will have a guest book.
Mame would have gone on into Oklahoma City.”

He hesitated, then drove on. Alys wanted to pat his jaw and
tell him it was quite all right if she died tomorrow because she’d had today,
but she figured he wouldn’t appreciate the sentiment. Maybe she wouldn’t
either. What she really wanted was tonight.

He’d looked like a gladiator striding to her rescue when
he’d waded through that crowd of bikers. Or a martyr, perhaps. She grinned.
Either way, it had been nice of him to be concerned about her welfare. She’d
been looking out for herself for so long now that she’d forgotten what it felt
like to have someone who cared enough to look after her.

And she’d better get the notion out of her head that she
needed any such person now. She’d gone down that road once, looking to others
for love and security. She didn’t intend to travel it again. It hurt too much.

Freedom
was the
life for her.

“Mame’s not been here yet. I left a message with the desk
clerk. We can’t check in until three.”

Elliot crossed the hotel parking lot in long strides, and
Alys sighed in appreciation of his athletic grace and sculpted, tanned arms.
Leaning against the car, she drank in the Oklahoma City sun and sights, and
Elliot was a sight to behold. If all she had to do was look, she wouldn’t
hesitate for a minute. Those long fingers of his had been bliss last night. His
kiss had been a revelation. The sleepy-eyed look he sent her now said he was
reading her mind, and a delicious chill shivered down her spine.

So, she might not want men in her future, but they sure
could be handy to have in the present.

“Too bad about the room,” she said cleverly, admiring the
way his eyes smoked when his thoughts turned to lust. Maybe she ought to keep
his mind on sex. He was a lot easier to handle that way.

“We could always find another.” He opened the car door for
her.

“Not until we’ve seen all the sights on Mame’s agenda so you
can rest assured that she’s alive and kicking.” Understanding Elliot’s neuroses
helped. It would be more beneficial if she understood her own. She didn’t have
to fall in love with a man to go to bed with him. She simply wanted to know if
all her parts still functioned, and Elliot was an attractive opportunity. Once
satisfied, she could merrily go her way.