California Girl (27 page)

Elliot took a quick look at Alys again, at the silky short
hair brushing her cheekbone, and the way her upturned nose and small chin gave
her an elfin appearance. He didn’t have the right to ruin her life. If she had
been a more sophisticated woman, one who didn’t form attachments simply because
they enjoyed each other’s company, he might not be so apprehensive. But she was
and he was, so he’d better take this cautiously.

“Mame is in sunny Albuquerque, riding balloons,” he
concluded. “If she needed Lucia immediately, she shouldn’t have left her with
us. Or maybe like you said, she’s in Santa Fe exploring.”

“But I thought . . . a hospital?” Wide clear
eyes watched him.

“I’m sure Santa Fe has one if we need it. One more night
won’t hurt, and this weather isn’t fit for driving. How far until Las Vegas? Can
we stop for lunch?”

She eagerly started flipping through guide books. “It should
be only about forty-five miles away. They have a bunch of hotels, so there are
bound to be places to eat. We booked the El Rey Inn for this evening in Santa
Fe. It’s supposed to be left over from the thirties. We may have missed Mame
for lunch, though. She would have driven down to Santa Rosa. She said she
danced in a club down there.”

“Mame?
Danced
?” Lord, she kept spinning his head around.

“Didn’t you know?” Alys glanced at him in surprise. “Mame
traveled for a year as a professional dancer—you know, the sixties go-go kind
of stuff in clubs? They’re scattered all along Route 66. I think that’s how she
made her way back to Springfield after her husband shipped out to Vietnam.”

Astounded,
he didn’t know what to say. The aunt he knew had always been a bit of a loose
cannon, but she’d never swerved in her dedication to him and his brothers. He’d
never seen her drink alcohol or smoke a cigarette, never heard her curse. “
A go-go dancer
?”

She laughed, and Elliot could swear the sun peered out from
behind the heavy clouds for just a moment to see who had made the joyful noise.

“What’s the matter, Elliot? Doesn’t the world conform to
your specifications?” She sat forward to watch the dancing sparkles from the
blackened sky. “There’s so much out there to be admired; why put a limit on
your expectations?”

The car fishtailed on a curve, and Elliot slowed down to
concentrate on the road. He scanned the highway ahead. The sides of the
pavement were disappearing in the blowing snow. He down shifted and slowed some
more. Beulah had a huge engine and could take these hills without a hitch. He
just didn’t trust the visibility or the ice.

The snow fell harder, hitting in hard pellets, blending the
air and sky in a blanket of gray. No headlights broke the dangerous curves
ahead. The Caddy’s lights created triangles of yellow broken only by the
falling snow.

They hit a bump, the car fishtailed again, and the small
back tire ran off the road. With a curse, Elliot held the wheel steady,
downshifting and slowing without braking.

“I don’t know if we’ll make it forty-five miles,” he
murmured as he regained control of the car. He slowed to a crawl. “We may need
to return to the interstate.”

Even though he tried to speak calmly, Lucia climbed over the
seat and settled into Alys’s lap. Alys worked the seat belt around her rather
than sending her to the back. Only Purple made a sound. He was meowing kitty
curses and cowering on the floorboards. Elliot couldn’t see him in the mirror.

“I can call the road department and check on road conditions
ahead.”

Elliot could see Alys’s hand tremble as she reached for the
cell phone he kept on the console. He wanted to halt the car and haul her into
his arms, but this wasn’t the time or place.

“There’s no reception,” she murmured, returning the phone to
its case.

They couldn’t say anything more in front of Lucia. The child
had settled in Alys’s lap and now stared out the front window intently.

“We need to get rid of this car.” He was thinking aloud,
cursing the road, the car, and the truck who had sent them off their safe
route. “We’re a bright pink moving target if we turn back to the highway.”

“Beulah is Mame’s baby,” she protested.

“And we don’t have another vehicle,” he agreed. “Maybe we’ve
lost them.”

“Or they’re behind us, figuring we’ll have to stop in Las
Vegas in this weather.”

Elliot could hear the businesswoman she must have been
behind her curt words. He wanted the dreamy, laughing gamine back, but for
right now, he’d accept her shrewd depiction of the situation.

“Check the map. Where else can we go? I don’t want to travel
much farther north in this weather.”

She scanned the map and shook her head. “If you don’t want
to go north, all we can do is drive to Las Vegas or back to I-40.”

They needed to eat, fill up the car, and buy a tire. This
was the most bizarre experience of his life, but adrenaline had roused
primitive instincts that demanded he protect Alys and Lucia, at whatever cost.

No amount of logic could convince him to leave them with the
police and go after Mame. Of course, logic had gone out the window the moment
Alys had walked into his life.

Another fifteen minutes of crawling down the road, and Lucia
made a demanding noise, tugged on her seat belt, and leaned forward, pointing
at something on the side of the road. He scanned the horizon for whatever was
bothering the child.

“Slow down, Elliot.” Alys tilted her head, trying to read
the sign ahead.

“Looks like a gate.” Whatever had been painted on the ranch
sign dangling from the metal post over the driveway had worn away. The
countryside sprawled out around them in undulating hills and scrub disguised by
cloud and snowfall. Another half hour, and they could be in town—if they didn’t
slide off a mountain.

Lucia bounced up and down and pointed eagerly, looking
hopefully from him to Alys and back at the gate.

“Do you know this place?” Alys asked the child.

Lucia nodded and pointed again.

Elliot carefully downshifted and braked in front of the
turnoff. If a dirt road lay beneath the layer of icy snow, he couldn’t see it.
Judging by the absence of scrub along the hill just past the posts, it was
possible pickups used it, but it didn’t look any safer than the dilemma
awaiting them ahead. “I’m thinking being stranded in the middle of a cow
pasture in a snowstorm is not a wise idea.”

“There’s a mailbox.” Alys pointed out a tilted post with a
rusted box hanging on by one nail. “Lucia lived in Amarillo and she’s going to
Albuquerque. Chances are good she has relatives in between. This may even be a
reservation for all we know.”

Lucia
nodded eagerly. “
Bisabuelo
.”

Alys caught Elliot’s gaze. Lucia had spoken.

“Remember that in Spanish?” she murmured.

“
Abuelo
is grandfather. Great-grandfather?” Against his better
judgment, Elliot gave in to the will of the two women in his care, even if one
was a half-pint who’d spoken only one word. He knew this wasn’t the reservation
where they were supposed to take the child, but it was better than nothing. He
hoped.

The weather was bad. They had mysterious thugs trying to
drive them off the road. And they were driving a target the color of Pepto-Bismol.
Driving into a cow pasture couldn’t be much worse.

Alys leaned forward to scan the horizon as Beulah lurched
down the ruts of the dirt road. She prayed they were still on the right track.
She doubted if the road would be easy to see in good weather. How did people
live without grass or neatly fenced fields or some attempt to mark the
boundaries of civilization? “I see smoke.”

“With our luck, it’s a volcano. Or Old Faithful.” White-knuckled,
Elliot gripped the steering wheel tighter, easing the old car over ruts and
rocks disguised by blowing ice and snow and sand.

“I don’t think we’re that far off the route.” She tried to
keep amusement in her voice, but it was difficult. She’d persuaded him to this
insane side trip because a five-year-old thought she knew where they were. What
were the chances?

But
Lucia had actually spoken. She didn’t want to terrify her into silence again.
Sometimes, miracles happened.
Positive
energy, Alys.
Maybe
they could find out what this was all about.

“I think it’s a ranch house.” Relief colored Elliot’s voice.
“Now, if no one shoots at us . . . ”

Lucia
glanced out the windshield, murmured “
Bisabuelo
”
once again, then buried her face in Alys’s shoulder. This time, her little body
seemed to relax. Alys wished she’d never have to let her go.
Dangerous
, her mind screamed.

“It’s going to be all right. I can feel it.” Thinking
positive meant believing Lucia would be safe here, and not fretting that she’d
never have a child of her own to hold. She would shed these maternal instincts
once she had a life and career. “Look, there are trucks and cars in the drive.
There are people here. And Lucia isn’t frightened. Maybe there’s a phone.”

Thinking positive also meant not worrying that Elliot would
have a heart attack while they were stranded out here in the middle of nowhere.
She cast him a surreptitious look. He seemed tense but fine.

She
wasn’t so certain
she
was fine after watching him
in action. She had badly underestimated the good doctor. She’d thought him a
slightly cranky teddy bear she could cuddle and enjoy for a little while. Now
that she knew what he was capable of, she had to adjust her whole view of him.

He’d acted swiftly, thoroughly, and deliberately,
endangering life and limb in the process. He’d made a life-and-death decision
right there in the middle of the road, and he’d come out the winner. He’d been
terrifying. And wonderful.

“I’ll leave the car running and go to the door.” Elliot
parked the Caddy behind an ancient pickup missing its cargo gate.

That sounded eminently practical and more like the world as
she knew it. But before she could relax, Lucia pulled loose of the seat belt,
leaned over to open the door, and ran after Elliot. Well, so much for
practical.

She wasn’t even wearing a coat! None of them were. She’d had
no idea climates and weather could change so rapidly. Well, this was how one
learned.

Turning off the car and pulling the key from the ignition,
Alys climbed out and opened the trunk while Elliot and Lucia ran to the ranch
house. She’d packed sweaters. She didn’t think they’d fit Elliot or Lucia, though.
At least she knew how to be prepared for the unexpected. She just needed to
learn to prepare for everyone else as well—for now, until she was alone again.

Finding a short-waisted, short-sleeved cardigan for Lucia
and a cable-knit pullover for herself, Alys shut the trunk, fished around
inside the Caddy until she found Purple, and hurried up the path toward the
house. A rectangle of yellow light opened through the gloom, but she couldn’t
see past Elliot to the occupant. She heard Lucia’s squeal of delight though.
They’d come to the right place.

After a brief exchange with whoever opened the door, Elliot
turned to wait for her to catch up, and Alys imagined she saw relief and
something softer in his features as he held out his hand to her. Obviously, her
positive thoughts had inflated to ridiculous proportions, but she wouldn’t pop
her balloon right now. She let him wrap his arm around her and haul her inside
as if he had every right to do so. Purple clawed to be free, but she was afraid
to let her go.

To Alys’s shock, Lucia was chattering in a rapid spate of
English, Spanish, and some other language, obviously reciting everything that
had happened to her in the entire five years of her life. Very little of the
tale was immediately coherent, but the elderly gentleman crouching beside her
nodded understandingly, holding her as if she were a precious gift.

A woman of an age to be his wife hovered in a doorway,
wringing her hands and sending them nervous glances. If Alys had to guess from
her limited experience, both were Native American.

“I’ve apologized for the intrusion and asked for a phone,”
Elliot whispered against her ear, “but I haven’t been able to squeeze a word in
edgewise since.”

Alys leaned into the comfort of his strength and let his arm
tighten around her in almost the same way she cuddled the kitten. She had been
shaking half the morning. Right now, she wanted to soak up the pleasure of
safety and Lucia’s happiness. “I’m warm and there aren’t any muggers at the
door, so I’m not complaining.”

Finally settling Lucia’s extended monologue, the elderly
gentleman stood up. His thick gray hair was woven into a long braid. His
gnarled brown features expressed neither curiosity nor welcome. He merely
nodded at their presence and gestured at Lucia.

“My
great-granddaughter tells me you have saved her from
villanos
, as she calls them. We offer you our humble hospitality
in return.” He turned to the woman in the doorway. “Kaya, do we have coffee?”

With a silent nod, she turned back to the kitchen.

“We do not mean to intrude upon your hospitality, but the
weather is dangerous. Like I said, we need a phone so we can call for road
conditions ahead. May we use yours?” Elliot asked.

“No phone. Please excuse my bad manners. I am Sam Wolf,
Lucia’s maternal great-grandfather. Kaya is my wife. We will not talk of what
brought you here just yet.” He indicated the child hanging onto his knee and
his every word.

“I’m Elliot Roth, and this is Alys Seagraves. I’m not
certain I can even explain what we’re doing here.”

“The gods work in mysterious ways. Come, warm yourself by
the fire.”

Thrown so far into a different world she may as well have
dropped from a tornado, Alys stayed at Elliot’s side and took everything in.
She thought maybe she knew how Lucia had felt when left in their care. What
could she say when her whole world had turned inside out?