California Girl (7 page)

She’d hoped to show him spiritual peace in the chapel so he
might open up, relax, and let the world happen. Instead, he’d made fun of the
saccharine murals of big-eyed children. She’d insisted it was a spiritual
calling that had driven the artist to erect the temple, but privately, she
agreed with his laughter. She would cross off working in tacky tourist traps
from her possible-jobs list.

“The chapel Mame married in isn’t here anymore,” Alys
informed him, swinging up from the bench to follow him into the next room. “She
thought she ought to see what this one was about.”

Elliot studied the stained glass and quit his mockery. She
hoped he was doing as she was, picturing Mame as a young woman, marrying a man
about to go off to war. Had Mame and her husband thought they had their entire
lives ahead of them? Was her young husband’s death the reason Mame lived each
moment as if it were her last? Was she trying to teach Alys something?

She’d have to reward Elliot for his patience by pointing out
the interesting notation in the guest book as they left. Of course then he’d
realize she’d been stalling, giving Mame time to think out whatever she had in
mind. She figured Mame could call Elliot’s cell phone whenever she was ready to
turn herself in. Should be interesting to see how Doc Nice reacted to
insubordination.

“Do you think children are still sweet and charming like the
ones in the murals, or do they pop out of the womb screaming ‘I want’ these
days?” she asked, studying the wall.

The Precious Moments children were piercingly lovely,
content at their prayers. She’d thought to have a pair of children of her own
by now. But she’d need to have a husband to have one, and that wasn’t going to
happen. Maybe she should be a schoolteacher.

“Children learn from the adults around them. If you’re
planning on having any, they’ll probably dally in churches and sing in rest
rooms.” For a change, he didn’t sound sarcastic, just pragmatic and accepting.

He apparently hadn’t entirely forgiven her for the earlier
episode when they’d stopped at a gas station to fill up. NPR had been playing
Judy Collins’s “Amazing Grace” when she’d climbed out of the car. The rest room
had lovely acoustics, and she’d tested them with the lyrics. The mechanics had
clapped when she’d emerged, and Elliot had gone all male and huffy, ushering
her to the car as if she were an addled adolescent.

It had been kind of nice having his strength between her and
the world, but Doc Nice needed to loosen up. He’d obviously lived alone too
long.

“Song and laughter heal the spirit.” She sighed blissfully
at the morning sunshine through the colored glass. “I wish Mame were here.
She’d have some lovely stories to tell.”

Now that she was on her feet and walking, Elliot hurried
toward the door. “And I want to keep her telling stories for a long, long time.
Hurry up.”

“Slow down.” She lingered on the autumn garden path leading
back to the gift shop, but Elliot’s long legs carried him ahead of her.
Trotting to keep up, she balked at the pedestal near the entrance where the big
guest book lay open for visitors to sign. Elliot had stalked right past it when
they’d entered. She’d signed and dated her name. Just as Mame had.

With a look of patient resignation, Elliot halted with his
hand on the door. She had to give him credit for being quick on the uptake.
Instead of yelling at her for dawdling or telling her she’d already signed the
book, he registered her location and her tenacious stance as if struck by a
bolt from the blue. In a few quick strides, he was in front of the book,
examining the entry she pointed out.

“Damn,” he muttered under his breath. “I’m surprised she
didn’t note the time she was here.”

“It’s today’s date and it’s only ten. How far behind can we
be?” Delighted that he hadn’t exploded all over her for dallying, Alys dashed
out the doors, into the sunshine.

“What’s the next stop?” Elliot demanded, his long strides
swallowing the distance to the car.

“According to the guide, U.S. 71 was Route 66 in the
fifties. It takes us into Joplin, where we can find the original Route 66 into
Baxter Springs, Kansas. There’s a restaurant there with a safe once robbed by
Jesse James. We can have lunch. Wouldn’t it be fun to go horseback riding and
pretend we were outlaws?”

Alys raced ahead of Elliot, loving the feeling of moving on,
getting ahead, seeing what the world was all about. She wanted to dance in the
sunshine, climb the trees, and laugh with the children in the school bus in the
parking lot.

She was free!
She’d
forgotten how fabulous it was to be herself, without any responsibility to
anyone or anything.

She leaped to grab a yellow leaf dangling from a tree
branch, and Elliot gave her the patient look an adult does a child. He was
worried about his aunt, so she excused him. For now.

His cell phone rang as they reached the car, and Elliot
unconsciously rubbed at his chest throughout the conversation. Sitting on the
car hood, swinging her feet, Alys tried to pretend this was 1969 and that she’d
just been married and was heading out on her honeymoon. Of course, they didn’t
have cell phones back then, and she didn’t think Mame’s husband would have been
talking into one if they had. But she could imagine the excitement of admiring
her new husband, of setting out on a journey to the future, of anticipating a
wedding night.

She eyed Elliot as he snapped the phone closed and stuck it
in his pocket. If he weren’t quite so restrained, she could imagine him in her
bed. He’d tousled his hair into curls again. She liked the sexy way they
softened his lean features. He looked real, not like some unobtainable movie
star or muscle-bound oaf.

But she had a hard time imagining a famous physician falling
into any of her plans. He was obviously goal-oriented, and she liked bouncing
where life took her, thank you very much. “Any news?” she called, leaping from
the hood.

“No. I left the cell phone number with the neighbors in case
they heard from her. They’re just checking in.”

He really did look anxious. Despite the reassuring tone of
his voice, the little scar beside his mouth had deepened to match the dimple in
his chin. She wished she could ease the concern in his luscious brown eyes, but
he had to reach that plateau on his own. She’d spent countless hours worrying
herself into ulcers over Fred, and not one minute of that worrying had cured
him. Telling Elliot that wouldn’t help.

“I can drive anytime you get tired,” he offered.

“And end up in Tulsa for lunch? No, thank you.” She hopped
into the driver’s seat and watched him arrange his long legs on the passenger
side. She thought he was behaving quite decently, considering the extent of his
concern for Mame.

He’d rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt in the growing
heat. As they drove toward the highway, he draped one bare arm out the open
window and angled his position to study her. “Are you even old enough to drive
a car?”

Wow, where had that come from? Wide-eyed, she admired the
unruly curl hanging in the middle of his forehead, then offered him a beaming
smile.

Momentarily thunderstruck, he jerked his gaze back to the
map he’d found in the glove box.

Tickled that he was as caught by this weird electricity
between them as she was, she obliged him with the truth. “I’m twenty-seven. How
about you?” Twenty-seven, and she’d never even crossed the state line. All but
bouncing in the seat, she watched the road signs for miles to Kansas.

“Do you have a driver’s license to prove that?” he asked
with a distinct air of testiness.

“Yup. Are you going to tell me to act my age now?” She
pushed back in the seat and stretched, which pulled her leggings taut. Sitting
still wasn’t one of her better traits. She caught him sneaking a peek but
didn’t call him on it.

“I have a younger brother who’s twenty-eight and still in school,”
he answered, as if it were relevant. “He rides a motor scooter and lives in a
circus. You’d have a lot in common.”

“A circus?” She didn’t think she and his brother would have
much in common. She was much too old for scooters and circuses, but she was
interested in knowing more about Elliot Roth, and she finally had him talking.

He shrugged. “Circus. Or a zoo. People coming and going.
Animals everywhere. Weird music, strange décor, incense burning. Typical
college atmosphere.”

“I never went to college.” Well, she’d commuted from her
parents’ home in St. Louis to the university freshmen year, but Fred had swept
her off her feet that year, and she hadn’t spent much time thinking about
classes.

“Are you planning on going to college now?” he asked.

Ignoring his question, she sat forward to watch the road
signs on the four-lane road as they drove through Joplin. “Look at the old car
sitting on that pole. I wonder what it represents?” She slowed down to stare at
a car’s hood sticking out of a building, apparently an advertisement for a
Route 66 body shop. “Interstates are never this much fun. Is this where old
cars come to die?”

“This is not about fun. This is about finding Mame before
she has another attack.” But this time, he swiveled to stare at the signpost
and not the traffic behind them.

“I’ll wager anything that Mame is out here having fun,” she
insisted at his contrariness. “We can’t wave a magic wand or look in a crystal
ball and find her, so we might as well enjoy the journey. Maybe it will heal
what ails you. Worrying certainly won’t get us there faster.”

“Someone has to worry or nothing gets done.”

He said it without resentment, and she thought there might
even be a hint of humor behind the thought. The man was subtle. She’d have to
start listening closer.

Alys pulled to the right, neatly circumventing an ancient
Cavalier creeping along in the fast lane. A pickup hitting the gas as they left
town jammed his squealing brakes to avoid her. She felt Elliot grab for the
door handle.

“Are you trying to get us killed?” he growled. “Slow down.”

“I’m doing the limit. Don’t be such a worrywart. They really
like their antique cars here, don’t they?” Eagerly, she scanned the ancient
rock buildings and cotton-littered fields of the old road, lapping up every new
sight.

“We don’t need to see Jesse James’s safe,” he argued. “We
could be in Tulsa before Mame if you’d get on the interstate.”

“The interstate doesn’t go through Kansas.” Thank goodness
she had kept the keys or they’d be roaring for Tulsa right now. “And if you
want to find Mame, you have to follow her route. Take a shortcut, and you might
miss her.

“I’ve never been to Kansas,” she said into the silence that
followed her logic. “That’s about the only stretch of the old Route 66 still
existing. Mame was adamant about following this route.”

He gave her a sleepy-puppy-dog stare as if he didn’t quite
know what to make of her. Briefly, the sun caught in the dark hairs of his
muscled arm. She directed her gaze back to the road.

“Kansas is not a place many people are eager to see,” he
informed her.

“I am. I want to see everything. I’ve never been outside of
Missouri.” Happily, she watched the rolling countryside unfold around them.
“Will there be a sign telling us when we enter Kansas? I wish I had a camera.”

“There’s one in my bag. If you’re twenty-seven, why haven’t
you ever been out of Missouri?”

“My parents were set in their ways and didn’t travel. Fred
and I were building our careers and didn’t take the time. And then the cancer
happened, and life as we knew it stopped. I regret that.” She set her mouth
firmly. She wasn’t much for impassioned speeches, so that was as much of one as
he’d get.

“Cancer is not something one regrets. You fight it, hate it,
despair of it, but I don’t see ‘regret’ as the appropriate word.”

She blinked in surprise at his fervency. “Okay, I regret
that
life
stopped. I should have made
Fred quit his job from the very first. We should have traveled, done all those
things we’d promised ourselves we’d do one day. He never had a chance to see
the Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower. We never swam in the Gulf or saw
Mayan ruins. There were so many things we never did . . .”

Tears spilled over, and she swiped at them furiously. “I
don’t want to go backwards. I’ve been there. I want to move on.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

With a loud
pop
,
the Caddy fishtailed across the pavement. Alys grabbed the steering wheel with
both hands and gently pumped the brake, trying to prevent the unruly car from
spinning out.

Elliot leaned over and held the wheel, giving her the
leverage she needed to hold the heavy car on the road while she slowed down.

A semi flew by, air horn bellowing, and the car swayed in
the rush of wind. Horns honked behind them. Brakes squealed. The old road might
be slower than the interstate, but it was well traveled. Sweat beaded on her
forehead while she fought to bring the tires under control.

She held her breath as Beulah slowed, and she bumped the car
off the side of the road. The Caddy listed to the right. Another semi flew past
them, rattling the windows. She heard Elliot utter a soft curse, and out of the
corner of her eye, caught him wiping his forehead with the back of his arm.

Shaken but unharmed, Alys leaned into the steering wheel,
and took a relaxing breath. “Just like in the movies.” She hadn’t experienced
an adrenaline rush like that in years. She didn’t want to relive it again
anytime soon, but it was good to know she was still alive enough to experience
it. “I didn’t think cars had flats anymore. Do you think there’s a spare, or do
we hitch a ride back to Joplin?”

Elliot stared at her as if she’d sprouted wings. “People get
killed hitching rides with strangers.” He pulled out his cell phone.