California Girl (9 page)

“Mame married an idiot like that?” Elliot could have bit his
tongue but it was too late.

She laughed and scanned a line of cars down a side road
while they waited at an intersection. “Mame was quite proud that he’d done what
he wanted to do before he died. I suspect he would have mellowed as he grew
older, but he never had that chance.”

It was amazing that Mame hadn’t died, too, given the family
curse. Elliot rubbed the ache developing in his midsection.

“Where’s the restaurant?” He’d had enough psych courses to
know fear of death led to life-paralysis. He didn’t need to dive down that
path.

“On the corner over there. There was a parking space down
that side street. Why don’t I circle around, park there, and we can walk and
stretch our legs?” Apparently catching his resistance, she added, “We can look
down side streets easier.”

“And everyone in town can see us coming in this pink
elephant,” he admitted. “So would Mame.”

He wasn’t accustomed to anyone else driving, and it was all he
could do not to press his foot against an imaginary brake or shout she was too
close to the curb while she maneuvered the Caddy around the block and into a
parallel-parking space.

Every head on the street turned as they climbed out of
Beulah. The cracked window and listing trunk didn’t add to the Caddy’s pink
charm. By the time he walked around the hood, Alys had already started down the
sidewalk, oblivious to the stares they attracted.

“Oh, I haven’t seen one of those since I was a kid!” She
darted into a nearby store just as he caught up with her.

Wondering if he was expected to follow, Elliot realized he
hadn’t spent enough time in the company of others lately to remember how
shopping together worked.

Figuring he’d lose her if he left her—not a bad idea except
she had the keys and the itinerary—he glanced up and down the street for any
sign of Mame. Finding none, he stopped at the store window to see what had
caught Alys’s eye.

A display of old-fashioned toys.

Shoving his hands into his pockets, he studied the wooden
letter blocks, an old Tonka tractor, a whirligig, a hula hoop, and a baby doll
in a christening gown. If she came out with the doll, he was heading for the
hills. He didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity of a female with a ticking
biological clock. He smiled at the old plastic doctor’s bag with a stethoscope.
He’d had one of those.

Alys bounced out before he had time to worry that she’d
escaped through a back door. He was actually looking forward to seeing what
she’d purchased. Obviously, he’d been under too much stress lately.

She waved a colorful aluminum whirligig like a magic wand
under his nose. “And they had bubbles!” She rummaged in her sack to produce a
small red bottle. “They had a wand that blew
enormous
bubbles but I didn’t think we had room for that.” She
dipped the wand into the bottle and produced a twinkling stream of fragile
bubbles with the first wave.

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what you plan to do with
those?” he asked. She was such a mixture of child and wisdom that pinning her
into any one niche was equivalent to classifying bubbles.

Her arched eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Play with them, of
course. Didn’t you ever play with bubbles?”

“When my brothers were little, I guess.” He strode down the
block to the restaurant, darting glances down alleyways for the familiar sight
of his Rover. He didn’t need her analyzing the reasons he’d never learned to
play.

Alys trailed behind him, leaving a string of bobbing bubbles
to the amusement of passersby.

Smiling, she stopped to chat with an elderly lady who
admired the spinning gold-and-copper whirligig. The gnawing in Elliot’s stomach
demanded feeding. He ought to go ahead, grab a table, and let her catch up.

But he lingered, watching her throw her dark hair back in
laughter. When was the last time he’d laughed like that? He wanted to smile
just looking at Alys. She was like the whirligig, bright and shiny, spinning
uselessly just for the fun of it.

He didn’t have to approve. He could just enjoy.

He’d enjoy a lot more if he knew Mame was safe. And that
Alys wasn’t deliberately dawdling to give Mame time to get farther ahead. He
should never have mentioned the assisted-living home. He had a feeling that had
pushed his travel companion over the edge to Mame’s side.

She ran up to him a second later, catching his hand as if
she did it every day, dragging him onward. “She thinks she saw Mame earlier.
People notice strangers in small towns. The toy store clerk didn’t remember
her, but the owner was out to lunch. We could check back later.”

Flabbergasted, not just by her observation but by the
electric shock waves elicited by her slender hand in his, Elliot accompanied
her into Café on the Route.

Alys hadn’t been spinning uselessly. She’d been more focused
than he was. “Maybe you should be a detective,” he muttered, probably to
himself since she was busy looking for a bank safe in the restaurant. If this
crumbling structure had once been an old bank, outlaws
should
have robbed it.

Heads swiveled at their entrance. Still holding Alys’s hand,
Elliot felt as if he’d been caught robbing a cradle, but he didn’t release her.
The old high school, gangly awkwardness threatened to turn him into a
hormone-fogged klutz as they threaded their way through chairs and tables.
Thankfully, Alys released his hand, so he could think again. There for a
moment, he’d been blinded by shining gold and copper.

He remembered to scan the room for Mame and to ask the
waitress if she’d seen her. He felt foolish asking. What difference would it
make if Mame had come and gone? They couldn’t catch her any faster. The uneasy
possibility that this was a wild-goose chase lodged in his throat.

* * *

“You’re fretting again,” Alys said as Elliot slid into the
seat across from her, wearing such a serious frown that he almost had her
worrying. She loved Mame. She didn’t want anything to happen to her. But after
Elliot had explained the nature of Mame’s problem, and she knew Mame had been
taking medication and dealing with it for years, she honestly thought it was
best if Mame came to them and not the other way around.

“I don’t like the idea of Mame driving alone,” he admitted.
“I was hoping someone had seen her so I could ask if she had anyone with her.”

His heart was in the right place, Alys decided, although he
kept rubbing his chest as if he feared losing it. “We can stop at the
collectible store later. Mame couldn’t have resisted going in any more than I
could.”

When he relaxed, Elliot’s whole face transformed. The frown
beneath his dark curls disappeared, and his little boy smile twisted at her
heart. The crescent scar beside his lips turned upward in a smiley face to
match. When all that masculine attention was focused on her, she felt as if she
were the only woman in the room.

She felt like a woman.

It had been a very long time since she’d remembered she was
one. Not a busy wife. Not a caretaker. Not a zombie. But a woman in the eyes of
a good-looking man. Her nipples sprang to attention beneath his appreciative
gaze. He looked away before she could melt into a puddle.

She studied her companion speculatively over the top of her
menu. Elliot pulled his reading glasses from his pocket and seemed engrossed in
deciding what healthy item he should nibble on next. She couldn’t really be
interested in a man who ate like a rabbit, could she?

She’d been without sex for so long, she could be interested
in a rabbit with the appropriate equipment. Elliot Roth definitely had what it
took. The question was, did
she
?

She’d never really been shy. Reserved, maybe, but she’d
outgrown that with her sales courses. She just didn’t have a lot of experience
with men.

Elliot Roth was a wealthy, famous man in his prime. He would
have women hanging all over him. He had responsibility written all over him as
well, so indiscriminate sex was out. He probably had a steady girlfriend. She
would have done better with the boys who’d changed the tire if casual sex was
all she wanted.

Casual was definitely all she could handle at this stage,
just to see if the juices still functioned.

She would never see him again after they found Mame. Casual.

Elliot slipped his glasses back into his shirt pocket and
glanced up at her from the depths of his intelligent eyes, and all her decision
making flew out the window.

He was the one. If she intended to rediscover herself, and
end years of abstinence, Elliot Roth was the man she wanted to do it with.

Mame
, she prayed
silently,
don’t have a heart attack. Let
your positive energy heal so I can borrow your nephew for lascivious purposes
.
She had a strong hunch Mame would approve.

“The Caesar salad,” Elliot told the waitress. “And could you
grill the shrimp instead of frying them?”

The devil prompted Alys as she ordered, “French fries and
chocolate cheesecake with whipped cream on top, please.”

The waitress grinned and scribbled the order.

“Bring her some of those grilled shrimp, too,” Elliot added.
“And sliced tomatoes if you have them.”

“Bring him some of the cheesecake,” Alys countered, handing
the menu to the waitress and meeting his gaze head-on. “And a big old glass of
Coke.”

“That stuff will kill you,” he protested.

“Yeah, but I’ll die happy. How about you?” she teased.

The waitress escaped before the war could escalate.

“You can’t really mean to eat that stuff.” In appalled
fascination, Elliot watched Alys dip her spoon into a decadent bowl of
whipped-cream-laden chocolate cheesecake. The only healthy thing on it was a
strawberry.

He couldn’t remember anyone over the age of ten eating like
that.

“One bowl of dessert will not kill you.” She dipped her
spoon into the chocolate, and sampling the flavor, hummed in appreciation. “For
all I know, the human body develops an immunity to cheesecake just as it does
arsenic. Gad, this is incredible.”

Her pink tongue flicked across the spoon to clean it. Elliot
had to drop his gaze to his cheesecake. He squirmed in the chair, refusing to
let libido overrule good sense. “A diet of arsenic has long-term debilitating
effects.”

Out of curiosity, he sampled the whipped cream on the
dessert the waitress had set in front of him. Plastic.
Blech
. He could resist. She must have been deprived for a long time
to consider this good eating.

“I’m not recommending a diet of cheesecake,” she admonished,
happily digging into both cream and pie now that she’d tasted them separately.
“I’m just saying one slice won’t kill you. It might even make you feel better.”

“Finding Mame would make me feel better.” He stabbed his
fork into the dessert. Maybe he needed the antacid action of dairy.

“Mame spent her entire life raising you and your brothers.” She
shook her spoon at him. “Now she’s free to do as she pleases. If this is what
pleases her, you shouldn’t interfere. You know as well as I do that she will
let us know if she needs help. You have a phone and she has the number.”

Distracted by her waving spoon, waiting for the dollop of
whipped cream to shoot across the table, Elliot glanced up to catch Alys
licking a patch of chocolate on the corner of her lips. When he caught himself
wanting to lick the spot clean for her, he swallowed his bite of cheesecake whole.

By the time he’d stopped choking, he’d prepared his
argument. “The stress of the journey could worsen her heart condition. Her life
is more important than a Balloon Fiesta.”

“Her life
is
the
Balloon Fiesta,” she said serenely. “Life is a journey. Which would you rather
do—spend your whole life in the fast lane fighting traffic or stop to watch the
balloons?”

“That’s New Age baloney.” He slapped down the fork, and
ignoring the soft drink she’d ordered, he sipped from his water glass.

“Not to Mame. She’s doing what she believes in.”

What was she trying to tell him? Probably nothing he wanted
to hear. He rubbed at the heartburn this discussion—or the
cheesecake—engendered.

“Are you okay?” Her huge eyes watched him with concern.

He liked having her watch him as if he were that whipped
cream she was inhaling, but he didn’t like having anyone fret over him. “I’m
not used to rich desserts,” he replied, unwilling to tell her more.

She studied him briefly, then finished off her last bite
with a sigh of pleasure. She patted her mouth with her napkin. “Little girl’s
room.”

She flitted away in her butterfly mode. Heads turned to
watch her pass by. She stopped to speak with the waitress, who glanced in his
direction. Why did that scene make his chest burn more?

A moment later, he knew.

“Doc Nice!” the waitress chirruped, handing him the check.
“I listen to you on the radio all the time. Could I get your autograph?”

Heads swiveled. This was a small room and the waitress
hadn’t exactly been quiet. He scribbled his autograph on a napkin and reached
for his wallet.

A woman at a nearby table turned around and handed him a
notebook. “Please, for my daughter? She swears by your books.”

A small cluster of women surrounded the table before he
could pay the check and escape.

Not until the waitress brought back his credit card and Alys
still hadn’t returned did he realize she’d stiffed him with the check and
disappeared.

Escaping his admirers and hurrying outside, Elliot fumed.
They hadn’t seen a sign of Mame. For all he knew, Alys could be fleeing in the
Caddy.

Striding down the street, he stumbled to a halt when he
turned the corner and saw Alys sitting on Beulah’s big pink hood, blowing
bubbles. A weary mother pushing a stroller and clinging to the hand of a
whining toddler stopped to let the child watch.