The Doris Day Vintage Film Club

by Fiona Harper

  Even the shops fitted with the overall storybook feel to the town. Some were built in the same fashion as the cottages, others were painted in bright pastels, bevelled glass in their front windows, flowers spilling out of boxes beneath. But the stores weren’t cheap and cheerful. They were expensive little boutiques that fitted with the overall sophisticated feel of the town, which was filled with fine restaurants and more art galleries than Claire could count.

  And then there was the beach. Oh my, the beach. A gentle arc of almost white sand, surrounded by rolling hills and framed by twisting Monterey cypresses.

  The strangest thing was that the town had a ‘no stilettos’ policy, something that had sent Peggy practically into hysterics. She’d had to go out and buy both canvas shoes and flip-flops and she moaned long and hard every time she had to put them on.

  They were staying at The Cypress Inn, something Claire couldn’t quite get her head around, because it was actually owned by Doris Day. What were the chances of that happening when Maggs had just won a random competition?

  It was rumoured that sometimes Doris made an appearance, but she hadn’t been spotted there in months, maybe even years. If she had been there recently, the tight-lipped locals were being very discreet about it. Even so, every time Claire came down from her room into the lobby, she had such an adrenalin spike – just in case the almost impossible happened – that she ended up feeling a little queasy.

  This afternoon, she and Peggy were having a total Doris fan-girly day. After visiting the Pebble Beach Country Club, where Doris had shot the opening scenes of Julie, they’d taken the car up into Carmel valley, which overlooked the town, and driven to the Quail Lodge Resort and Golf Club.

  They wanted to get a glimpse of Doris’s house, perched high above the golf course on a small cliff. Every year on the third of April, some of Doris’s loyal fans gathered there under her terrace to sing her ‘Happy Birthday’. Claire knew what the house looked like from photographs, but she discovered that now they were actually there, working out exactly where it was wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

  She turned on the spot, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. ‘You’ve got the map,’ she said to Peggy. ‘Which way do you think we need to go?’

  Peggy scrunched up her face. ‘Dunno. From what I can gather, this is more an “artistic impression” of the resort than an accurate map. I can’t quite seem to find my bearings.’

  Claire sighed. ‘Shall we just walk around the perimeter and—’

  She was cut short by the ringing of Peggy’s phone. Again? That girl seriously had a devoted admirer. She’d been texting at every available opportunity, even sneaking off into secluded corners to have hushed conversations. She glanced at Claire, frowning, and then walked off out of earshot. Claire couldn’t help but wonder why she was being so secretive. Was the guy married?

  Anyway, from previous experience, she knew this probably wasn’t going to be a twenty second call, so she started strolling towards the next green. She made sure she didn’t go too fast, so Peggy would be able to catch her up easily.

  A few minutes later, she heard Peggy squelching through the dewy grass behind her and prepared herself for a halfhour moan about how her plimsolls were hurting her feet.

  ‘Why don’t you hand me that bit of paper and I’ll see if I can make head or tail of it?’ she said, reaching her hand backward but still keeping her gaze on the scenery at the edge of the golf course.

  ‘Here.’ The word was simple, just what she would have expected as an answer to her question.

  The voice, however, was not.

  It wasn’t Peggy’s husky tones, but something much lower, much richer. A sound she’d been aching to hear for weeks. She spun round and found Dominic standing there, holding a concertinaed bit of paper out to her.

  His hair was messy and there was dark stubble round his jaw. He looked rumpled and crumpled, as if he’d just jumped out of a jeep, and before that a plane. In short, he looked absolutely delicious. She hated herself for thinking like that.

  ‘Try this one,’ he said. His eyes were warm, but his voice was serious. ‘I told you I never go anywhere without a good map.’

  She took it from him dumbly, because that was the only thing she could think of doing at that present moment. ‘Wh—what are you doing here?’

  He smiled at her, but it wasn’t his usual overconfident grin. ‘I’m here to be your tour guide.’

  She shook her head. ‘What?’ she said again, but Dominic didn’t answer. He just took her by the hand and led her to the eighteenth green. From there she could see the familiar shape of Doris’s house, the arched window, tiled roof and long balcony that ran the width of the cliff.

  For a long time all she did was stare at it. Was it daft that a tiny piece of her was hoping against hope that she’d see a scuffle of movement and then an old lady with white hair and maybe some dogs bounding across the length of the terrace? Even though she stood there in silence, Dominic beside her, for more than ten minutes, her wish didn’t come true.

  When she finally snapped out of whatever spell she’d been under, she folded her arms across her middle and turned to him. ‘What are you really doing here?’

  He didn’t reply. She’d been grateful for the silence while she’d been hoping to catch just a glimpse of Doris, but now she wanted him to speak up. ‘Dominic?’

  That was the first time she’d called him his name to his face. It felt weird after all those times she’d called him Nick. She shifted her weight onto her back foot and retreated a little, even as she waited for his answer.

  He swallowed. ‘I’m afraid I have another confession to make.’

  *

  Claire just stood there and stared at Dominic. She couldn’t quite process what he’d just told her.

  There’d never been a competition? This was all some plan cooked up by him and Maggs and the Doris Day Film Club? He’d planned all of this? For her?

  She really needed to sit down. And where on earth was Peggy?

  It was at that point that some golfers arrived, wanting to finish their game, and she and Dominic had to stroll off the fairway. They walked to a shady spot under a tree next to a pond.

  Claire wasn’t quite sure what to feel. Half of her was swept away that he’d done all of this for her, the other half couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable that, once again, he’d done things behind her back.

  She finally turned to him. ‘Thank you for all this,’ she said simply. ‘But I don’t know what to do with it. It would be different if we were friends, or if we were in a relationship, but I feel like I don’t really know you. I just don’t know how to take it.’

  Dominic turned so his body was fully facing her and looked deep into her eyes. ‘You’re wrong. You do know me.’

  ‘No. I knew “Nick”.’ She closed her eyes before she said the next bit. ‘It was him I was falling for.’

  When she opened them again, he was still looking at her. They seemed to have got closer. All she could see were those chocolatey brown eyes, crinkling slightly at the edges as he wore the faintest of smiles. ‘I am Nick.’

  She shook her head. ‘You’re Dominic. That’s the real you. Nick was a total fake.’

  He became very serious. ‘The fake one was better than the real one. You got the best deal.’

  She looked away, moved her hands in an effort to explain what her mouth couldn’t. ‘But that’s the whole point of fakes, isn’t it? That they’re not what they seem? That they look better than they really are? You’re not really selling me on this.’

  Dominic pressed his lips together and thought for a moment. A gentle breeze sighed through the leaves of the cypress above their heads and softly blew Claire’s fringe across her face. She pushed it back with her fingers.

  When Dominic spoke, it was with a determination that she’d never seen in him before. ‘The reason the fake me was better is because you made him that way. He started off as clueless as the other one. It was you, pushing me
to be better that made Nick who he was. I was a better man with you as Nick than I ever have been with any other woman as Dominic.’

  Fake was real and real was fake? Claire’s head was starting to hurt.

  Dominic breathed out, steadied himself. ‘If you tell me to clear off, I’ll clear off, but I’m not going to throw all of this away. You changed me, Claire, and I don’t want to change back.’

  Claire closed her eyes. Looking into those painfully sincere brown eyes was messing with her head. Oh, she so wanted to believe him. She so wanted to believe that this was all true, that he really did care for her that much. What other motive could he have had to do all this? It was way beyond a skilful seduction, and she realised there were times in the past – before she’d known the truth – when he could have pushed that door but hadn’t. She’d practically tried to drag him inside one night and he’d still walked away.

  She opened her eyes and looked at him helplessly.

  ‘I’ve been sitting on the surface of my own life for too long,’ he said, a hint of finality in his tone. ‘But you encouraged me to dig deeper, to be deeper. All this …’ He looked round a golf course and let out a soft laugh, but Claire knew he was talking about more than Quail Lodge. He was talking about the whole holiday. ‘I didn’t even know I was capable of it.’

  ‘It’s been perfect,’ Claire whispered. And it had been. It was as if he’d peered inside her head and dug out her daydreams and then inside her heart to find her deepest wishes. She’d even wished for him to be here, even though she’d fought it so hard, and here he was, waving his magic wand over her yet again.

  Could this be true?

  Men like her father or Philip couldn’t have pulled all of this off. They didn’t have the capacity to extend themselves that way. The hard lesson she’d learned from them was to measure a man not by what he said – because that was always a lot of flannel – but by what he did. Was she brave enough to believe that what Dominic had done for her had exposed what had been beneath her horrendous impression of him from the start?

  He stuffed his fists in his pockets. ‘I’ve got one last thing to say, and after that I’m going to go back to Carmel and leave you alone. And, no, I’m not staying at the Cypress Inn. I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.’

  ‘Okay,’ Claire said croakily. ‘What do you want to tell me?’

  ‘That I love you.’

  A tide of emotion rose in Claire’s chest. Not just because of the words he’d said, but because of the look in his eyes. It was all there – the love, the pain, the fear at what he’d just said and the greater fear that she’d slap him down and reject him.

  No one could have faked that.

  She sniffed back the tears that were building behind her eyeballs. ‘Actually, there is one last thing that would make this trip utterly perfect,’ she said softly.

  Somehow she could feel his heart beating hard as he considered her statement. A slight frown pinched his eyebrows together. ‘Which is?’

  ‘I think you should kiss me, because I love you too.’ Even though she’d fought it with everything she had.

  No one could ever have accused Dominic of not being a ‘spur of the moment’ kind of guy, because before she could even blink he scooped her up into his arms and did just that.

  Could real life be as good as it was on a Hollywood movie screen? Claire thought hazily, as she kissed him back, reaching up to wind her arms around his neck. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps …

  * * * * *

  ISBN: 978-1-474-02931-5

  THE DORIS DAY VINTAGE FILM CLUB

  © 2015 Fiona Harper

  Published in Great Britain 2015

  by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited

  Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

  By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

  ® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ®are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

  www.millsandboon.co.uk