California Girl (8 page)

“Spoilsport.” The man couldn’t take a joke. Flying high on
life, she climbed onto the soft shoulder of the road and admired the autumn
cornfield. Stretching, enjoying the tug of each muscle, she breathed in air
thick with dust. The Caddy was far enough off the road for safety. She’d done
good.

The back tire was a mess. Mame would be hours ahead of them.
Alys suffered a twinge of guilt, then reminded herself that Mame was an adult
and in full possession of her faculties. She hoped.

She gestured, and Elliot released the trunk latch from
inside. Opening the lid, she rummaged around for the ice chests he’d insisted
on bringing. She’d packed one with soft drinks. He’d packed one with water and
yogurt and other disgusting oddities. She’d long ago concluded a healthy spirit
and her stomach had nothing to do with each other, unless it involved
chocolate.

Popping the top of a Coke, she took a sip, then lifted the
first of the ice chests out of the trunk so she could dig down to the tire.

Still on the phone—apparently holding for AAA—Elliot grabbed
the chest from her and carried it to the side of the road. “I’ll unload it just
as soon as I’m off here,” he told her. “We don’t have any idea what kind of
shape the spare is in. Or if there’s even one in there.”

Accustomed to doing for herself these past years, Alys
shrugged and removed the second chest anyway.

A pickup slowed down to check out the Caddy’s tail fins.
This was car country and people noticed prime antiques like Mame’s pink
Cadillac. When Alys shaded her eyes to see who was looking, the truck pulled
off in front of them.

A pair of good-looking teenage hunks climbed out. “Need some
help, ma’am?”

Elliot instantly returned and planted himself between her
and the boys. “No, we don’t,” he called back over the highway noise. “I’ve got
it under control.”

Alys gave him an incredulous look and elbowed him out of the
way. “Isn’t this great?” she murmured for his ears only. “It’s just like living
in the sixties. Don’t you ever watch those old shows on Nickelodeon?”

Of course he hadn’t. Modern civilized man considered himself
above good ole Andy Griffith. She’d had lots of time over the past few years to
watch all the reruns from Mame’s generation. There was a lot to be admired in
the old ways.

Checking out the two burly young men, Alys concluded they
looked safe. She cruised in their direction, leaving Elliot behind. “The tire
blew up,” she yelled over the traffic noise. “Would you like a Coke? We have a
full trunk that we’ll have to empty to get at the spare.”

Both young men dragged their gazes from her to warily watch
Elliot. With eyes in the back of her head, Alys could just about see his
disapproving expression. He was probably worried they’d run into the gang from
Deliverance
or serial killers who wanted
to steal their Cokes and thirty-year-old Cadillac.

“He doesn’t bite,” she said cheerfully as Elliot’s shoes
crunched the gravel behind her.

“Triple A says it will take an hour to get someone out
here.” Elliot dropped a heavy hand on her shoulder.

He may have meant it as a threat to tell her to shut up or
as a proprietary gesture to tell the two young men to back off, but Alys felt
as a sensual shiver all the way to her bones at his touch. His sexy aftershave
added flavor to the dusty air, and his protective attitude had her reverting to
adolescence, when she’d thought the big handsome men on the screen hauling
their women around were the epitome of romance.

She glanced mischievously at the stern set of Elliot’s
square jaw, then back at the young men shifting uncertainly from foot to foot.
“All the Cokes you can drink, boys. Let’s see if we have a spare.”

Without waiting for Elliot’s permission, she led the way to
the ice chest and handed out soft drinks. While she chattered, her two
broad-shouldered Good Samaritans emptied the heavy bags from the trunk.

Elliot studied her with an enigmatic look in his eye.
Proving his civility, he hefted the luggage the boys took out of the trunk
without comment on her highhandedness. His shoulders strained the seams of his
fancy dress shirt, but he didn’t break a sweat carrying them to a safer
distance from the rushing traffic.

With the luggage safely stowed, he leaned against the
guardrail and crossed his arms, keeping an eye on the proceedings but not
interfering in her little fantasy trip to the sixties.

Maybe her purpose on this journey was to teach him to share
the burden of life’s stresses.

Sipping the water Alys had carried over to him, Elliot
contemplated the two yokels casting surreptitious glances at his companion as
she admired their handiwork. Admittedly, she looked almost ethereal with her
see-through shirt blowing in the breeze, but what the yokels didn’t know, and
he was just starting to suspect, was that there wasn’t a damned thing fragile
about Alys Seagraves.

When the boys removed the spare tire from the trunk, she
smiled so proudly at them that they straightened their backs and worked harder
to free the no doubt rusty jack. For that smile, Elliot had half a mind to
elbow the clods out of the way and show her how a real man jacked cars and
changed tires.

But he wasn’t a teenager running on hormones. He took
another swig and let the boys prove their masculinity.

Seeing the laughter peeking from beneath Alys’s thick fringe
of lashes as she walked toward him, Elliot crossed his arms and appreciated the
view of her swaying hips and enticing curves. He supposed he’d been young and
foolish enough to fall for a woman’s wiles once. He just didn’t remember when.

“Verifying you still have the old sex appeal?” he asked as
she approached.

Instead of taking insult, she leaned next to him against the
rail, crossing her arms over her breasts in imitation of him. “When I was a
kid, I was plump and wore thick glasses. My parents knew nothing about the
latest fashions, and I had no sister to teach me, so I looked like a geek. I
was happily married before I had laser surgery and learned to make myself
presentable. I never learned to flirt. Why shouldn’t I start now?”

She said that without an ounce of whining and with such interest
that he couldn’t take offense that she was just toying with him. For the first
time, he noticed her ring finger was bare. When had that happened?

“Because flirting is dangerous?” he asked wryly, unwilling
to analyze the meaning of the missing ring. Before she demanded an explanation,
he continued in his best radio talk-show manner, “Your husband must have been a
man of rare good sense if he married a geek.”

She turned her approving smile on him, and he felt it clear
down to his metatarsals. Maybe it was a damned good thing he couldn’t see his
radio callers if they could spit and fry him with a single look.

“Fred was a geek, too. A brilliant one. We met in a movie
theater showing a French film with subtitles. The theater was almost empty and
we each had attended alone. We laughed in the same places and started arguing
over cultural symbols before the movie ended. Afterward, we spent half the
night talking. I missed out on a lot by marrying young, but I’ll never regret
it.”

Her sincerity stirred him. He understood gawkiness. He’d
been a beanpole as a teenager. But he’d always been too dedicated to his cause
to care about his dateless life. With two younger brothers and a huge
responsibility on his shoulders, datelessness had been convenient. But lonely.

“A real-life love story, I guess.” He wasn’t certain if he
believed in love at first sight and had to wonder what would have happened had
Fred lived on as a geek while she’d turned into a butterfly.

He winced at the sadness filling her eyes.

“One love story a lifetime is about all I can manage,” she
said decisively.

Remembering she’d just lost her husband, he mentally kicked
himself. He sought for something reassuring to say. “Mame was like that. She
lost her husband in Vietnam and never remarried.” Like that was helpful. Why
didn’t he just throw himself in front of moving traffic?

She crushed her empty Coke can and leaped up, casting him
one of her laughing glances. “From the sound of it, she had three young boys to
occupy her. Why on earth would she need a man?”

Knocked off his complacent block, Elliot remained seated
while she danced off to thank the young men jacking the car down. The spare
tire was a size too small and Beulah listed to one side.

He’d never thought of life from Mame’s perspective. She must
have been young and widowed just like Alys when his parents had died. He knew
he owed his aunt far more than he could ever repay for taking in him and his
brothers. He was doing everything within his power to make her life easy now
that he had the opportunity to do so.

But he’d never really considered that Mame had given up her
life for them. She was intelligent and vivacious and could easily have
remarried. Instead, she’d devoted herself to raising children who weren’t her
own.

Had it been a case of one love story a lifetime? Or lost
opportunities?

Rising, he followed Alys to the car, reaching for the wallet
in his pocket to reimburse their friendly neighborhood tire changers. Before he
could pull out a couple of twenties, Alys reached up to hug one grinning young
man and kiss the cheek of the other.

Something very like jealousy gnawed at the vulnerable place
beneath his ribs.

When Elliot offered the cash, the young men grinned, shook
their heads, and wandered back to their truck, finishing off the cans of Coke
Alys had handed them.

“
Can’t buy me lo-o-ve
,”
Alys sang, patting him on the hand holding the money before dancing back to the
driver’s seat.

Trying not to gnash his teeth or laugh out loud, Elliot
shoved the bills back into his wallet and vowed to find Mame at the very next
stop—before he developed a split personality.

* * *

Alys parked in front of the sign welcoming them into
Kansas, so Elliot could take her picture. She didn’t do anything so common as
to stand in front of the sign, but clung to the top and smiled over it, nearly
giving him heart failure when the post swayed.

She insisted on taking his picture as well. Fascinated with
the digital camera, she held on to it afterward, aiming it at the scenery
before returning to the car.

“Perhaps I could take up photography and illustrate my
travel columns,” she said with the perpetual enthusiasm that was starting to
wear on him.

Or perhaps it was worry over Mame that gnawed at him. He
kept a constant watch for his Rover along the side of the road as Alys wove
around tractors and pickups. The incident with the tire had his nerves jumping,
but at least he knew Alys could handle emergencies. Could Mame handle a
blowout? How far behind her could they be?

“Maybe you’d better look for a real job and use travel writing
as your hobby,” he suggested absently.

“I could go back to selling real estate, I suppose. I had to
let my license go when Fred got too sick for me to attend continuing education
classes.”

In a few short hours he’d learned her moods cast light and shadow
with the swiftness of passing clouds. He didn’t hear wistfulness or regret in
her declaration. He glanced over to see her gazing pensively at the old arched
concrete bridge covered in graffiti ahead of them.

He studied the Route 66 guidebook he’d found in the glove
box. The bridge was apparently another historic monument to the past. If they
stopped, he bet he’d find Mame’s name scribbled on it. He refrained from
telling Alys that. “If you earned the license once, it shouldn’t be difficult
to obtain again. I bet you’d be excellent at real estate sales.”

She shrugged. “I love houses. Maybe I could be an interior
decorator.” She turned back to him and her eyes were alive again. “Is that what
you did? Full-time doctoring and writing as a hobby?”

“I earned my degree but never really practiced. I spend a
lot of time in research. So, yeah, maybe the writing was a hobby at first.” Or
maybe his life was a hobby. When he wasn’t researching, or taping his radio
show, he devoted all his free time to writing up his findings and conclusions.
His only other activity in life was sleep.

He was relieved she didn’t have a crystal ball. She seemed
to see right through him as it was. Fortunately, she didn’t call him on it,
since the sign for Baxter came into view. He glanced through the guidebook’s
description. This might be the only town in the area where Jesse James
hadn’t
robbed the bank. Maybe that
uniqueness was what they should advertise.

“What does your Rover look like?” she asked as the first
sign of the town appeared in the windshield.

“Black.”
Idjit
. He
should have told her that sooner, but he’d been worried about her concentrating
on traffic. “Missouri plates, luggage rack, no distinctive markings.”

Elliot scanned the street for the big vehicle. On the narrow
two-lane with parallel parking that comprised the few blocks of the business
district, it should stand out like a sore thumb. He didn’t see it anywhere.

“Does it have one of those computer navigation systems?” she
asked with wide-eyed interest.

“Yeah, but I can’t imagine Mame using it. I’d feel better if
I knew she could. What if she’s lost?”

“She’d ask directions.” Laughter definitely tinted her
voice. “Boys prefer toys.”

“Why would Mame be interested in Jesse James?” he wondered
aloud to divert her train of thought. Yeah, he liked toys. And no, he didn’t
like asking for directions. But she’d already guessed that.

“I believe it was her husband who liked outlaws. He was
apparently a bit of a thrill-seeker, rode the rodeo, flew balloons, drove a
Harley. Maybe he considered himself an outlaw.”