Love Finds You in Carmel by-the-Sea, California

by Sandra D. Bricker

  “How’s the new job?” Tyra asked as soon as the dinner order had been placed. “Better than mortgage acceleration?”

  “If you can imagine that,” Merideth teased.

  “It’s going great.”

  “What kind of cases do you work on?” Tyra wanted to know, shimmering with that mist of I-still-work-in-the-call-center-you-left-behind.

  Annie regaled them with tales of missing persons over dinner, moving on to insurance fraud as they hiked up Alvarado Street. For some reason, she kept Marion Armbrewster all to herself, not ready to share her story just yet. It wasn’t like any of her three friends would blow the surprise, but a certain energy pulsed around keeping Marion’s secret, even from them.

  “I’m surprised Dot didn’t come along tonight,” Zoey observed as they followed the crowd into the scarlet-red lobby of their favorite vintage theater.

  “Prior engagement,” Annie replied.

  “Drinks with Lauren Bacall?” Zoey cracked. “High tea with Julie Andrews?”

  “Dinner. Doris Day.”

  That yanked the attention of her friends, and Tyra’s jaw dropped open slightly as she gasped. “Your granny’s having dinner with Doris Day?”

  Annie shrugged one shoulder and nodded. “I know.”

  As Merideth and Annie purchased their tickets at the window, Zoey leaned toward Tyra and nodded at the framed movie poster for the night’s classic big-screen feature.

  North by Northwest. Cary Grant ran from an airplane in front of Mount Rushmore atop the caption: “Only Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock ever gave you so much suspense in so many directions.”

  “Dot knew Cary Grant,” Zoey whispered to Tyra.

  “Are you joking?”

  “We never joke about Dot’s past,” she said on a chuckle.

  “Next in line.”

  Annie ordered a Diet Coke and a small popcorn; then she strolled around the lobby while her friends made their choices, glancing at several more versions of the North by Northwest movie poster displayed in glass cases on the wall leading to the theater. Two more posters announced the night’s second feature, Notorious.

  Zoey stepped up beside her and read one of the taglines with melodramatic flair. “Fateful fascination. Bold intrigue.”

  Annie chuckled and asked, “So what’s the hubby doing tonight?”

  Zoey sighed. “Working. What else? He’s a permanent fixture at the warehouse these days. I’m lucky if I can catch up just to sort out his paperwork for him.”

  “Running a business of your own isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, I guess,” Annie commented.

  “It certainly is not.”

  Annie sensed something more in Zoey’s tone, and it inspired her to lean forward slightly to get a good look at her friend’s eyes. As she suspected, they were misted with emotion, and Zoey cracked a lame attempt at a smile.

  “Zo?”

  “Ah, yeah,” she replied with a wave of her hand. “I’m just a little overwhelmed lately. There’s a lot going on—a lot of stress.”

  “Anything I can do?”

  “Afraid not. But thanks.”

  They slipped into line behind Merideth and Tyra, following the crowd up the staircase to the balcony lobby. Inside, the theater glowed beneath the yellowish light of ornate chandeliers. A massive red velvet curtain shielded the movie screen, and a blue haze projected from behind it.

  “I love this place,” Annie breathed as they took their regular places in the first row of the balcony.

  “I haven’t been here since last spring,” Tyra told them. “A bunch of us came to see Jeremy Camp then.”

  Annie had nearly forgotten that the theater was also a locale for concerts and large events. To her, the place propelled her into the past, a venue where she could see her favorite old films as they were meant to be seen, on the large silver screen. She’d seen all her favorites on that screen below over the years, from musicals to nail-biters, from Cleopatra to That Touch of Mink, but, as on most classic-film nights, there were far more vacant seats than filled ones.

  The pleated curtains opened as the lights dimmed, and Annie curled into the corner of the padded velvet seat and leaned toward Zoey.

  “Trains are very important to this movie, which is why the title sequence opens with those crisscrossing lines that look like railroad tracks,” she whispered. Zoey nodded as she grabbed a few kernels of Annie’s popcorn and tossed them into her mouth.

  Bernard Herrmann’s score swelled as the film’s title and names of the featured actors moved up and down the screen like elevator cars over a New York skyscraper. Hitchcock’s director’s credit appeared, and Annie leaned forward to announce a key moment to her friends.

  “Watch! Look, there he is!” she told them as Alfred Hitchcock appeared on the screen, racing after a bus—only to have the driver shut the doors before he could board. “He always gives himself a cameo in his films.”

  “Shh,” someone a few rows behind them hissed, and Annie clicked her tongue as she leaned back into her seat.

  Sensing the grin beaming from Zoey to her left, Annie tossed a kernel of popcorn at her without so much as a sideways glance. Zoey’s snicker pushed a chuckle up and out of Annie, and next it was Tyra shushing them.

  At the first sign of intermission, Nick ran downstairs to beat the crowd to the snack counter.

  “Bag of Starburst and a large Coke, please.”

  Just as he paid the tab and gathered his things, streams of people emerged from the flapping doors to the first floor and the staircase that led from the balcony. As he reached the stairs, the same pair of giggling, golden-haired children he’d passed on his way down blocked his path. The fascination with running up and down a staircase had been lost on him years ago, but he grinned at their enthusiasm as he skirted them and headed up the stairs.

  Just as he could almost see the top, something thudded into him and seemed to bounce right off again. Thump-thump-thump—and he realized it was a human being. Hair flew everywhere, and she screeched slightly with each bump. In an effort to stop the momentum, she tried to grab hold of Nick on her way down, but he didn’t realize until too late that she’d miscalculated and missed him altogether. Finally she rolled to the landing with a groan.

  “Oh, Annie! Are you all right?” The woman who raced down the steps and to the side of the fallen victim looked like someone he’d seen in a commercial for hair products, until she turned and glared at Nick with the accusatory sharpness of a fresh blade.

  He took the stairs down to the landing as the woman on the floor began to sputter for air and grappled to indulge in it. He stuffed his candy into his pocket and set his Coke on the railing.

  “Better?” he asked her, and when she peered up at him with greenish eyes poking through a nest of crazy hair, he realized…

  Annie Gray.

  “Can you stand?” he asked, reaching under her arms and lifting her to her feet. “Annie Gray, right?”

  She looked at him oddly, and as she pushed her hair away from her face with both hands, she tilted her head and narrowed those glistening eyes of hers. He could almost hear her wheels turning as she seemed to try to figure out who he might be.

  “Nick Benchley,” he reminded her. “We met at Deke’s office.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  He watched it take root as her friend stepped up next to her. “My gosh, Annie, you fell so hard. Are you all right? Did you hurt yourself?”

  “She’s fine,” he answered for her.

  The friend scowled at him for just a moment before charging. “Well, no thanks to you,” she declared. “Why don’t you look where you’re going, huh? She could have been killed!”

  Killed. Really?

  “She’s the one who wasn’t looking where she was going,” he countered. “And she fell down a couple of stairs, not off the side of the building.”

  As the woman opened her mouth, her intentions to rail at him fully understood, Nick just shook his head and dismissed them both, grabbing his
drink and taking the stairs two at a time up toward the balcony.

  “What a jerk!”

  The words followed him like a wad of stiff paper hurled at his back. Then, more softly, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Zoey and Dot led with tied scores at the end of the first Scrabble game, and Annie and Evan were in the midst of mixing up the tiles for the start of another one when the doorbell chimed.

  Annie glanced at the clock: 7:40 p.m.

  “Who in the world could that be?” Zoey asked. Annie shrugged as she headed over to find out.

  When she opened the front door, a large bouquet of assorted long-stemmed flowers greeted her, and a brown leather–jacketed arm extended them toward her. When he lowered the bouquet, Annie found Nick Benchley standing behind it on the doorstep.

  “What…are you doing here?”

  “I came to apologize,” he said, and he tilted slightly, looking inside. “But it seems as if I’ve interrupted a party.”

  “No, not at all. More like an accidental gathering.”

  “The more the merrier?” he asked somewhat hopefully, and he handed her the flowers and moved past without waiting for so much as a nod from Annie.

  “Nick Benchley,” he said to Zoey, as he extended his hand.

  The moment she reached up to take it, however, he quickly moved into a defensive stance, as if she might punch his lights out rather than shake his hand.

  “When we last met, there seemed to be some question about whether you were going to deck me,” Nick told her. “I come in peace. See? Flowers!”

  “Nice start.” Zoey grinned. She snatched his hand and gave it a vigorous shake. “Zoey Lopez.”

  Turning back toward Annie, half of Nick’s mouth curved into a mischievous smile. “I’m sorry I recklessly got in your way on the stairs, Annie Gray. Can you ever forgive me?”

  She sniffed at the flowers and turned her nose upward, as if to think it over.

  “I suppose.”

  “Great. Now, do I—” Nick cut his own words in half as he caught sight of Gram through the arched doorway to the kitchen as she turned over tiles in the Scrabble box. “Dorothy Gray.”

  Still holding several wooden tiles, Dot glanced up at him and leaned back in her chair. “And you would be?”

  “Nick Benchley, ma’am,” he replied, rushing toward her with an extended hand. “I am such a fan.”

  “Really,” Annie spouted, her hand on her hip.

  Nick grasped Dot’s hand with great care, as if it might be made of Tiffany glass. “I’ve seen all of your films.”

  Zoey pulled a face, and Annie shrugged.

  Evan shifted from where he stood, wedged into the corner of the counter, and folded his arms across his chest. “Who is this?” he asked Annie.

  “Nick, Evan. Evan, Nick.”

  Nick nodded then turned his attention back to Dot. “I saw you off Broadway when I was in high school,” he told her. “You did Love Letters at the Promenade Theater.”

  “Oh.” Dot chuckled. “That was great fun.”

  “Gram!” Annie exclaimed, taking the chair beside her. “I didn’t know you did live theater.” “They enticed me with John Forsythe.”

  Evan’s laughter seemed to bellow, and he leaned forward and rubbed Dot’s shoulder tenderly.

  “Do you like coffee, Mister Benchley?”

  “Nick. Yes, very much.”

  “Then why don’t you and Annie make some while we move the game out to the parlor?”

  “Sounds like a plan.” Nick smiled at her.

  “No need,” Annie interjected. “I’ll make coffee. You join the others.”

  He didn’t even have the good sense to object. He just wandered off with her gram, the two of them arm-in-arm like old knitting-club buddies or something.

  A moment later, the doorbell chimed again and Sherman let out two halfhearted barks.

  Annie chirped under her breath as she plunked the filter into the coffeepot. “You did Love Letters at the Promenade,” she mimicked, snarling slightly as she did so. As she filled a vase with water and dropped the flowers into it, she heaved a rumbly sigh. “Flowers yet. He actually brought me flowers.”

  Chapter Six

  “Frankly, my dear…”

  Clark Gable, Gone With the Wind, 1939

  Annie pulled down the tray covered in beautiful, black metal grapevines dotted with amethyst grapes that Gram had bought in Lisbon while shooting a movie. Lining the tray with hand-painted coffee mugs, she continued to mutter Nick Benchley–inspired musings.

  “Who are you talking to? Are we interrupting?”

  She looked up to find Merideth standing in the doorway, flanked by a tall vision of a man that made Annie’s heart sputter slightly.

  “This is my friend Colby Barnes. We were on our way home from a meeting, and I thought we’d pop in and say hello.”

  Annie added two cups to the tray in one fluid motion and presented her hand to the vision. “Annie Gray,” she said. “Pleased to meet you.”

  He returned a firm handshake, not overpowering.

  Merideth made the introductions to the others while Annie doled out coffee, feeling very much like a server at a casual café.

  “We’re working on a charity thing in the village with a couple of the galleries,” she volunteered. “It would have been a crime not to stop in.”

  Never mind that Annie might very likely have been hanging around in sweats and a ponytail at nearly eight thirty on a Friday night, and she might have met Colby Barnes for the first time looking like that!

  Colby bordered on almost-too-pretty with a chiseled jaw and deep baby blue eyes. Not her usual type, but Annie could certainly appreciate the ease of looking at him. In fact, looking away proved to be almost painful.

  “Any fake sugar?” Zoey asked, and Annie peeled her eyes from Colby with a jerk of a nod before heading into the kitchen.

  “Can I help with anything?”

  The vision had followed her.

  “I don’t really excel in the whole coffee-making arena,” she admitted, pulling a box of sweetener packets from the pantry.

  Colby took the box from her hands, pausing long enough to burn her slightly with a smile. “I’m an old hand,” he commented, and she stood there watching him drop a handful of packets into a small crystal glass he’d produced from the dish rack.

  Sherman waddled into the kitchen for a quick look at the newcomer then yawned and sacked out in the middle of the checkerboard floor.

  “Careful,” Annie said, pointing out her obstacle of a dog.

  “Hello, boy,” Colby said, but Sherman barely gave him a second glance.

  “So you and Merideth are friends from work,” she commented.

  “We were assigned to the same fund-raising project, and it turns out I went to school with her sister.”

  “Small world.”

  Annie bit her lip. Small world? Of all the dumb comebacks—

  “She’s been talking about you nonstop,” he told her, as he stood in front of her holding the bowl of pink packets. “I wondered how long it would be before she arranged a meeting.”

  “Really?”

  Certain that her face had turned fifteen shades of crimson, Annie found herself doing that thing people sometimes did, looking at her feet and poking her toe into the ground, avoiding direct eye contact.

  What am I, twelve?

  She forced herself to look up at him, and when their eyes met, she swallowed around a huge lump in her throat.

  “I can tell you now, I’m really glad she did. It’s nice to meet you, Annie.”

  “You too, Colby.”

  He shot a curious glance at the doorway behind her, and she turned to find Evan filling it.

  “Can I do anything to help?” he asked Annie without taking his eyes off Colby.

  At first, Annie wondered if the power of Colby’s hard-to-look-away factor might be gender nonspecific, but she quickly realized that she’d seen this look on Evan before. He was sizing u
p the opposition, checking Colby out, weighing his competition.

  Competition for exactly what, Annie couldn’t be entirely certain. It wasn’t like Evan had been able to utter words anywhere in the vicinity of commitment. But always, when another male had come around in his presence, one might have thought he had Annie’s ownership papers folded up neatly in his back pocket.

  “I think we have the sweetener covered, Evan,” Colby told him. “Thanks for offering, though.”

  Evan seemed to consider that for a moment; then he glanced down at the dog lump in the middle of the floor. “Sherman,” he said with authority, “let’s go for a walk.”

  WALK. The word held deep meaning for Annie’s beagle friend, and he lumbered to his feet and shuffled toward the back door. Looking back at Evan over his bulky shoulder, the dog sighed. He seemed to be saying, “Well, come on. You offered. Let’s go.”

  They didn’t return until the first round of coffee had been consumed and a new Scrabble tournament had ensued. Annie wondered, as they came through the front door, whether Evan had been out there talking Sherman’s velvety ears off about the unfairness of another man invading his territory. She hoped there would be no canine-like lifting of the legs to set things straight.

  Zoey and Annie had tied scores at the end of the first Scrabble game, and in the midst of mixing up the tiles for the start of a third game, Annie noticed Nick grinning at her from his spot on the floor in front of the coffee table. Sherman was curled up next to him with his chin resting on Nick’s leg. She looked to Evan immediately, and, sure enough, his face was crimped up as tight as a fist at Sherman’s betrayal. Nick’s smile irritated her for some reason, like sandpaper scraping the back of her neck.

  Looking away from Nick, she assessed the diversity of the three men occupying the space nearby. Evan, brooding; Nick, annoying—and Colby looking almost elegant, the Cary Grant in the room, with one long, lean leg crossed over the other and balancing his coffee cup on his knee as he effortlessly soothed the scratch of Nick’s smile with his silkier one.

  Evan seemed to relax a little after Zoey and Dot chose a Tony Bennett CD from the music shelf. The group spent the next hour or so just chatting, sometimes a couple of conversations in play, crisp and easy like an amiable cross-breeze.