California Girl

by Rice, Patricia

  Sliding into the booth, Elliot looked momentarily grateful. Then, to her surprise, he shook his head. He had tamed his curls before he’d left the room, but the humidity had already worked its magic. He shoved on his glasses to scan the menu, and dark hair waved over the ear pieces.

  “We’d bore ourselves to death all day sitting there, and Mame would still elude us. She obviously knows how to find us. We can leave a message at the desk asking her to call, but otherwise, we might as well see the sights. What’s on the agenda?”

  “Why on earth hasn’t some woman snapped you up?” she asked, marveling at his ability to read her mind.

  He peered at her over the dark rim of his half-glasses. “Because I have more sense than to swallow bait?”

  She grinned and ordered the strawberry crepes. That kind of charm could be even better than traveling with Mame.

  And they had another night and another bed ahead of them. Had he bought condoms when he’d bought those new pajamas?

  She squirmed in her seat just thinking about it.

  * * *

  Elliot couldn’t remember ever traveling with a woman for pleasure. He’d been on the road with publicists, at conferences with editors or medical researchers, spoken to all-woman groups across the country. He’d taken women to concerts, to dinner, and to bed.

  He’d never driven down a rolling country road in a pink Cadillac with a sexy pixie bouncing on the seat, singing “I Am Woman” at the top of her lungs. He hadn’t a clue why they were hunting for a round barn—or why anyone would build one—but as long as she kept bouncing like that, he wouldn’t complain.

  Today, she wore a faded blue halter top and black hip-hugger jeans revealing a curving waist and flat belly. She didn’t look a day older than sixteen unless he happened to catch her eyes. Now he knew why they reminded him of crystal balls—they held age-old wisdom and a world of woe.

  Her offer to sacrifice her trip for his sake had knocked him flat. How many other people in the world would have understood his anguish enough to give up their own pleasure for him?

  He longed to make her laugh so she wouldn’t regret her offer, and to erase the pain behind the unblinking crystal of her eyes.

  Which was a pretty damned stupid thing for a man of his social ineptitude to think. Testosterone had apparently eaten his brain. Without a microphone in hand and a soundproof booth to shield him, he didn’t know how to make people laugh, and he certainly had no idea how to erase her memories—or he would erase his own.

  He pulled the Tums container from the ashtray and popped two. If he didn’t find Mame soon, his heartburn would eat a hole through his esophagus, and he wouldn’t have to worry about his shattered brain.

  “I don’t think a whole lot of those is a good thing,” Alys informed him with concern. Since he was driving, she could fold her legs into the seat to balance the newly repotted orchid. “Maybe you should see a doctor.”

  “I am a doctor,” he reminded her.

  “Not a practicing one, you said. And doctors are the last ones to diagnose their own illnesses. It’s foolish to diet and exercise and never have a checkup.”

  “You sound just like Mame. I get regular checkups.” He swerved off the road into a gas station. “We need gas. You didn’t tell me that driving Route 66 instead of the toll road would mean we wouldn’t have service stations.”

  “This is a service station. It just hasn’t been torn down and replaced with plastic.” Setting the pot on the floor, she leaped out of the car the instant he turned off the ignition. “I’m going to see if they have ice-cream bars.”

  “Try not to incite any riots while you’re at it.” He might as well have talked to Beulah. Alys raced off, hair and breasts bouncing, to the admiration of every male in sight.

  From the collection of Harleys at the side of the station, Elliot figured there were plenty of males inside enjoying the view. It was ridiculous to worry about a twenty-seven-year-old woman who should know how to take care of herself by now.

  A woman who had never been outside of the state of Missouri and looked as if she were sixteen might not be quite as experienced as she ought to be.

  The antacid didn’t help the roar of flame beneath Elliot’s sternum. It took forever to fill the huge Caddy tank, and Alys hadn’t returned by the time the nozzle clicked off. In keeping with the sixties’ traditions of the old road, the ancient gas pump didn’t have credit card capability. He had to go inside to pay. Route 66 might have been America’s Main Street half a century ago, but it looked to him as if the rest of the country had picked up and moved to the suburbs in the decades since.

  Idly wondering how many people drove off without paying, Elliot entered through the fly-specked glass door into smoke-filled air barely stirred by the wooden ceiling fan. The only man in the place seemed to be the attendant leaning on the counter, watching out the side window. Elliot followed the clerk’s gaze, and his heart sank.

  He could barely discern Alys’s sleek hair over the heads of a dozen burly bikers sporting tattoos and heavy leather. He could see the end of a rotten picnic table and figured she was sitting cross-legged on the tabletop, eating her ice-cream bar. The bikers were shouting and jeering, but Elliot couldn’t catch more than glimpses of a blue halter and bouncing hair past broad shoulders and beer bellies.

  Slapping two twenties on the counter, Elliot loped out the side door. He wanted to curse fool women and innocent pixies and the laws of the universe, but his brain was too paralyzed for words. He wasn’t a coward. He knew he had the strength for a good fight if necessary. But a dozen men . . . ? Think, Roth. Tell them their bikes were on fire? Did motorcycles burn?

  Heart pounding, Elliot elbowed his way through the crowd, hoping he could just lift Alys off the table and carry her out of here. The men crowding the table glanced at his face and eased from his path, apparently recognizing murderous rage when they saw it. He’d wager his next royalty check that Alys wouldn’t.

  A sharp cry sounding like Aii-e-e-e followed by a loud crack stood his hair on end. The bikers at the front of the crowd roared in approval. With one last vigorous elbow punch, Elliot shoved to the front—just in time to watch Alys offer the two halves of a split board to a bearded old guy with a graying ponytail. Had she just broken the board with her hand?

  Seeing Elliot arrive, she grinned and leaped to the ground. “The ice cream was messy,” she explained.

  Stunned enough for that almost to make sense, Elliot staggered beneath a pounding blow to his back.

  “Don’t need to tote hardware with an old lady like her along, right, son?”

  Tote hardware? Mental images of tire jacks leaped to mind, but Elliot had his arm firmly around Alys’s shoulders now, all but shoving her toward the car, and he didn’t care what the hell they were talking about.

  “We’ll see you at the barn!” one of the bikers behind them yelled.

  Alys turned and waved. “Put some lotion on your nose or it’s gonna fall off!”

  Elliot winced but when no one came after them with that tire jack, he opened the Caddy door and without finesse, shoved her inside.

  He pondered the possibility that terror and fury were the flip sides of the same coin while he drove down the road, battling incoherence. Alys didn’t appear fazed. As expected, she didn’t even recognize the rampaging emotions with which he struggled.

  After depositing the orchid in a less heated spot on the back floorboard, she curled up in the seat, found a moist wipe in her overlarge handbag, and cleaned the ice cream off her fingers. She sang along with the radio, something about rolling down the river and toot, toot. Somehow, that seemed fitting.

  “You can break boards?” he finally asked, deciding that was a neutral subject and didn’t involve yelling his head off.

  “They have a karate class at Mame’s school.” She wadded up the wipe and deposited it in the plastic bag she’d hung over the headrest for trash. “If I’m going to be a woman alone, I thought self-defense classes were called for
. Control of one’s life promotes positive energy.”

  He didn’t care. He shouldn’t care. It was none of his business. She was her own person and not his responsibility.

  The refrain sounded hollow, even to him. “Karate does not work on men wearing heavy leather,” he all but growled. “They had us outnumbered by six to one. If you make it a habit to entertain bikers, you’ll need a better weapon than karate.”

  He caught her surprise without even looking.

  “Were you worried about me?”

  “You were surrounded by a dozen men and it didn’t even occur to you that it might be dangerous?” Okay, he was almost shouting. Chill, Elliot.

  “I have lived the last few years in terror,” she announced coolly and succinctly. “I’m not doing that to myself anymore. No fear is my motto these days.”

  “No brains,” he muttered, clutching the wheel. “You won’t survive long that way.”

  He wanted to wring her neck and talk some sense into her at the same time. Better yet, he wanted to get the hell away from her. She was a disaster waiting to happen, and he didn’t need any more disasters in his life.

  “Then I’ll have enjoyed what’s left of my life,” she said serenely, staring ahead out the windshield. “Arcadia isn’t far. I wonder if the round barn has a guest book?”

  Biting his tongue, Elliot followed the narrow two-lane to Arcadia and the round barn. As he drove, Alys exclaimed over long horns and oil wells, insisting on stopping for more pictures. The Harleys roared by, their riders waving in passing.

  “They’re traveling the same route?” he asked, returning to the car and stowing the camera in the back seat.

  “Yup, Triple A members all,” she said cheerfully.

  “Are all the sights on our itinerary on theirs?”

  Alys took pity on him. He was reaching for the Tums and looking as if he’d rip the wheel off Beulah if he could. Apparently that tame exterior of his cost a lot of energy. He’d looked so cool and casual sauntering through the crowd of bikers earlier, that her heart had nearly stopped in appreciation, but his laid-back attitude had apparently taken a toll. “Mame had her own agenda. I added the barn. We can drive on, if you prefer. Mame says most of the Route 66 things are just nostalgic and tacky.”

  “We can stop if you really want to see it.”

  “I’d much rather see the butterfly garden and go to the zoo. I adore butterfly gardens.”

  Arcadia and the round barn appeared in the windshield, and Elliot slowed the car. He caught a gleam of chrome from the Harleys in the parking lot. “There it is, last chance.”

  “It doesn’t look like a place that will have a guest book. Mame would have gone on into Oklahoma City.”

  He hesitated, then drove on. Alys wanted to pat his jaw and tell him it was quite all right if she died tomorrow because she’d had today, but she figured he wouldn’t appreciate the sentiment. Maybe she wouldn’t either. What she really wanted was tonight.

  He’d looked like a gladiator striding to her rescue when he’d waded through that crowd of bikers. Or a martyr, perhaps. She grinned. Either way, it had been nice of him to be concerned about her welfare. She’d been looking out for herself for so long now that she’d forgotten what it felt like to have someone who cared enough to look after her.

  And she’d better get the notion out of her head that she needed any such person now. She’d gone down that road once, looking to others for love and security. She didn’t intend to travel it again. It hurt too much.

  Freedom was the life for her.

  Chapter Nine

  “Mame’s not been here yet. I left a message with the desk clerk. We can’t check in until three.”

  Elliot crossed the hotel parking lot in long strides, and Alys sighed in appreciation of his athletic grace and sculpted, tanned arms. Leaning against the car, she drank in the Oklahoma City sun and sights, and Elliot was a sight to behold. If all she had to do was look, she wouldn’t hesitate for a minute. Those long fingers of his had been bliss last night. His kiss had been a revelation. The sleepy-eyed look he sent her now said he was reading her mind, and a delicious chill shivered down her spine.

  So, she might not want men in her future, but they sure could be handy to have in the present.

  “Too bad about the room,” she said cleverly, admiring the way his eyes smoked when his thoughts turned to lust. Maybe she ought to keep his mind on sex. He was a lot easier to handle that way.

  “We could always find another.” He opened the car door for her.

  “Not until we’ve seen all the sights on Mame’s agenda so you can rest assured that she’s alive and kicking.” Understanding Elliot’s neuroses helped. It would be more beneficial if she understood her own. She didn’t have to fall in love with a man to go to bed with him. She simply wanted to know if all her parts still functioned, and Elliot was an attractive opportunity. Once satisfied, she could merrily go her way.

  “Why did Mame pick a Marriott this time? It couldn’t have been here in the sixties.”

  “Most of the stuff here now was just in the planning stage when Mame came through. They had some big-deal city designer lay out the downtown back in the sixties. Mame said not much had been built back then, but her husband rode a bull in the stockyards, and she knew I’d like to see the fancy new stuff. We talked about staying at the Howard Johnson’s on 39th, on the old road, but it wasn’t in Triple A, and Mame likes her comforts. So we opted for near the museum.”

  “What’s first then? We don’t even know if Mame is here yet.”

  Alys wrinkled her nose. “Do we need to replace the small tire?”

  “Okay, tire store first. And then?”

  “I guess then we ought to see the stockyards and look around for a likely restaurant for lunch. Maybe we’ll luck out and hit it at the same time as Mame.” She glanced at Elliot’s grim expression. “Or we can call all the hospitals and make certain she’s not in one.”

  His glare told her she’d overstepped, but he was way too serious about this. “If she needs you, she has—”

  “My cell phone number, I know,” he said with a sign of resignation.

  “Let me ask the desk clerk if I can leave the orchid inside. It will cook in the car.”

  After imposing upon the hotel clerk to keep an eye on her orchid, she took her place in the passenger seat, and played with Elliot’s digital camera while he drove south on the interstate. She loved framing a view in its little monitor, running the telescoping thing in and out until she had the picture just the way she wanted it. She hoped he’d give her copies of the photos when they were done. She didn’t have a computer to put them on, but she thought there was some way of making print ones.

  “I’d have to brush up on my computer skills to be a journalist, wouldn’t I? Are the programs for photos difficult?”

  “Not particularly, which is why there are ten thousand other people with more experience in that job line ahead of you. You might as well say you want to be a cowgirl when you grow up.”

  He said it in that same pragmatic voice that she recognized now as concern mixed with a touch of teasing. The man didn’t know how to communicate without giving advice.

  They found a tire store an exit away from the stockyards. The clerk took one look at the pink Caddy’s enormous whitewalls and cackled. “Those are special order, man. I can have ’em tomorrow, or maybe next day. Ain’t seen them beauties in a long, long time.”

  Looking grim, Elliot jammed his hands in his pockets. “We’ll get back to you then. Thanks.”

  Alys trotted out of the store on his heels. “Is the small one safe?”

  “Yeah, but it’s probably tearing up the transmission and brakes and wreaking havoc on the other three tires. Let’s just hope Mame comes to her senses before tonight.”

  Alys was ambivalent about that, but she didn’t mention it aloud.

  Elliot drove down to the next exit, circled the block, and parked the car near the historic district of the stockyards.<
br />
  “Writing books is out too, huh?” Picking up on her earlier topic of careers, she climbed out beneath his withering look. “There ought to be some fun job I can do.”

  “Like sing in a rock-and-roll band? You’re showing your age again. C’mon, this way.” He led her down the main street of the district.

  Passing a western-wear store sporting ten-gallon hats in the window, Alys tried to picture Elliot in cowboy boots and Stetson and liked the idea so well, she grabbed his elbow and steered him inside. “You have to play the part right. You’re not even wearing jeans. What kind of cowboy are you?”

  “A comfortable one? What part am I playing?” Entering the enormous old building with its warped pine floors and battered wood counters, he stared around at saddles on the wall, cubbyholes filled with jeans, and an entire corner devoted to felt cowboy hats.

  “Exploring the Old West, of course. Hats, first. We can’t walk around in the sun without hats.” She pounced on a small black hat with delight, balancing it on the back of her head and heading for a mirror.

  “It seems to me black would be hot in the sun,” he commented, looking over her shoulder.

  He stood so close, she could feel the heat rolling off of him in waves, and a longing so strong welled up inside her that she had to step away. “Black matches my jeans,” she said firmly, hoping he didn’t notice her avoidance. “You can buy a white one.”

  “I’m not wearing a cowboy hat,” he protested. “I’d look like an idiot.”

  “Wearing that knit shirt, you would. But try a hat with one of these western shirts.” She pulled a red and black number off the rack, complete with ivory snap buttons on the cuffs.

  Not satisfied with just a shirt, she waltzed down the aisles gathering the necessary elements for her latest fantasy, and Elliot cringed. On a slow week day, the cowboy-hatted clerks were more than happy to assist, and she had a wizened old man dancing to her tune. Before Elliot could explain that he was only humoring an idiot, the old man ushered him into the dressing room with jeans and shirts, and when he came out, the clerk was holding up boots for his approval.