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

by Sandra D. Bricker

  The truth ached inside of her.

  “Good night, Evan.”

  “Annie, can we—”

  “No, really. Good night.”

  Chapter Nine

  “All right, Mr. DeMille.

  I’m ready for my close-up.”

  Gloria Swanson, Sunset Boulevard, 1950

  Change is a funny thing. It’s a lot like a mink coat hanging in a closet. You know you want to approach it because it looks so glamorous and inviting, but where would you actually wear it without someone either dousing it in red paint or whispering about you behind your back for your audacity? And then there’s the grief you’ll take from your friends and family for even wondering what it might be like to try it on.

  “I’m not nagging you. I’m just wondering what you decided, that’s all.”

  “Well, Mom, I actually decided to stay put for a while,” Annie said, and she adjusted her headset while rolling up to a red light. “As much as I love the idea of getting back to Monterey already, the truth is…something’s telling me that being with Gram for a while in Carmel isn’t such a bad idea.”

  “I suppose you don’t need to uproot again so soon.”

  At first, she marveled at her mother’s verbiage. Uprooting. It was just a change of location, after all. But that’s what her five-point plan was all about, right? Uprooting her life, pruning it a little, shaping it, and helping it to thrive and grow into a whole other direction? The only hitch being that every point on her list, aside from the new job, had been thwarted in some way. Annie couldn’t seem to force change into her life with a whip and a chair!

  “Listen, Mom, I have to go. I’m just pulling up at the office, and I’m running a little late.”

  “You’re late this soon in starting a new job?”

  “I won’t be if I hang up right now.”

  “All right, honey. Come and see us soon.”

  “I will.”

  Annie tossed her cell phone into her bag then swooped the bag up along with her purse, jacket, and Diet Coke before sprinting across the parking lot and through the door. Deke stood in the doorway to his office as if waiting on her.

  “What? Am I late?”

  The front door swung open again and Nick Benchley blew through.

  “A new low,” he told Deke. “Now she’s slamming the door right in my face.”

  “Oh, Nick, I’m sorry,” she said, unloading her belongings on the top of the desk. “I didn’t even know you were there.”

  “I went out to the car to get my phone,” he stated. “And I ate a little bit of your dust, following you up the path.”

  “You got the number?” Deke asked him.

  “Yeah, here it is.”

  Just after the two of them disappeared into the next office, Deke poked his head around the corner and grinned. “Morning, Annie.”

  “Morning, Deke.”

  “Wanna step in here when you’re settled?”

  “Sure.”

  Annie took a moment to catch her breath, stole a long draw from her soda, then checked herself in the mirror of the compact she kept tucked in the center drawer. Grabbing a notepad and a pen, she quickly went into Deke’s office.

  “Glad you could join us, Annie Gray.”

  “Thank you, Nick. How are you today?”

  “Stellar. You?”

  “The same.”

  Deke pulled a face that told them he wasn’t fooled in the least by their pleasantries. But something else in his expression said he was in no mood for it, either.

  “It would appear,” Deke began, leaning back in his chair and clasping both hands behind his neck, “that I have a bit of a heart problem.”

  Annie waited for the one-liner to follow, but it didn’t come. “Beg your pardon?”

  “My doctor has suggested to me that surgery may be in order,” he clarified.

  “You’re not joking, then.”

  “No.”

  “What’s wrong, Deke?”

  Annie eyes misted with tears, and she made every effort to angle herself away from Nick so he couldn’t see them.

  “It’s nothing to worry about. A little blockage. They’re going to check me into Community and clear it out, and I’ll be good as new.”

  Annie gave a quick sideways glance in Nick’s direction. His legs were crossed, his hands folded in his lap, as he stared down at the floor like something important might be going on down there. Annie almost wanted to take a look for herself.

  “So what does this mean as far as…me? I mean, do you want me to keep the office open? Should I…do something?” she queried Deke instead.

  In the fraction of a second it took him to reply, Annie had already summoned visions of the unemployment line or, worse yet, returning to a call-center job and the umbilical-cord headset she had learned to despise. Her five-point plan began swirling, swirling, swirling down the—

  “For you, this just means that you’ll be deprived of my daily company for about eight weeks,” Deke told her. “Bench has taken a leave of absence from the force, and he’ll be keeping things going for me while I’m indisposed.”

  Bench…leave of absence…keeping things going…

  It took a moment, but the reality of this news settled on Annie with a hollow thud.

  Nick Benchley is going to be…my boss?

  “Interesting turn of events, eh, Annie Gray?”

  She turned toward Nick to find him grinning at her from one annoying dimple to the other.

  Oh, this is so not funny.

  On the drive back to the station, Nick found himself empathizing with Annie. Granted, he’d been given the news of Deke’s condition a full twenty-four hours prior, but he would guess that his face had melted into a similar kicked-in-the-gut expression when he’d first heard.

  She really cares about Deke, he thought. And it just made her more attractive to him, as if he needed that to happen.

  Nick wished he could have wound his arms around her before he jammed out of the office, to let her know that he shared her concern. Or just wrapped her in his arms for any good reason, come to think of it.

  He wondered how long his friend had been suffering and whether the staunch and unflappable Deacon Heffley fought any anxiety over the notion of his chest being sliced open.

  “Where ya been?” Greg Thorton asked as Nick passed his desk and headed toward his own.

  “Alvarado Street,” he replied as he flopped down into his familiar, lumpy chair. “Hey, your father-in-law had heart surgery last year, didn’t he?”

  “Triple bypass,” Thorton replied. He gulped back the last of the coffee in his 49ers mug. “Hundred percent blocked in one and eighty in the others.”

  “Long recovery?”

  “Endless.” Thorton chuckled before he added, “But then, he came to stay at my house while he recovered. Might have just seemed endless.”

  Not the best Friday afternoon to ask Deke to let her go early, being his last day in the office before Monday’s surgery, but he was amiable anyway, and Annie made it to Jake’s in plenty of time for her manicure appointment. Concern for her employer and newfound friend formed a cloak around her.

  “It sounds like a very glam evening you have planned,” Jake said, standing behind Michelle and overseeing Annie’s French manicure. “What do we have planned for the hair?”

  “Something beautiful,” she said. “Something, I don’t know, over-the-edge-of-the-world gorgeous. You can do that, right?”

  “It will be brilliant,” he told her with a smile. “Just come on over to the chair when Shell finishes your nails.”

  Truth told, Annie’s stomach resembled a swarm of butterflies, and she didn’t have one clue about how she wanted her hair fixed for the gala and her date with Colby. She’d tried on her champagne-colored gown at least a half dozen times since she’d bought it, with three different bras, two types of slips, and with and without the beautiful beaded shoes. She’d held her hair up off her shoulders, let it cascade over them, and even tried cli
pping it up on one side.

  She’d brought along a zippered bag holding a variety of rhinestone clips and shiny little hairpins, but she had no clear idea what Jake might do with them. All she knew for certain was that she wanted to look more amazing than any other woman at the gala. How she got there, well, that would be up to Jake.

  He draped her in the familiar plastic neon cape and spread out the variety of clips and pins on the counter in front of the mirror. He looked like a painter considering his palette of colors before allowing one stroke to hit the canvas.

  “Your dress is off the shoulder?” he asked her reflection.

  “Only slightly,” she replied, drawing the whole scope of the neckline with her index finger. “Like this.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly, focusing a burning hole right into her. “O–kay.”

  Annie laughed off a comical memory of a cartoon she’d seen where the details of a makeover looked like someone diving into a blender and, once the power was cut and the craziness had subsided, a totally different person resulted. Hoping Jake didn’t drag her into a blender, Annie closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  When she opened her eyes again a few minutes later, her new ’do was what Merideth liked to call “red-carpet ready.” Jake had swept her hair upward and clipped it so the curls cascaded down her back, and then to decorate the style, he used a handful of her sparkly hairpins with the clusters of pastel rhinestones on the ends. With a small hot iron, he had randomly added more definition to the natural spirals of her hair and then sprayed it all into place.

  “Oh, Jake.”

  “I know, honey.”

  “It’s—”

  “Perfect.”

  Always the first one in a room to hate her own hair no matter what the style, Annie surprised herself by loving what Jake had managed to do. She felt downright princess-like.

  “Yes,” she replied. “It’s perfect.”

  “Now when you get to the makeup,” he said, still fussing with the curls with the pointed end of a comb, “go easy. Soft and elegant. Muted colors. Nothing shocking or dramatic.”

  “Thank you so much, Jake.”

  When she got up from the chair, Jake gave her an unexpected hug. “Go and be the Annabelle of the ball.”

  And with that, Annie took her fantastic hair and new French manicure and headed home to get dressed.

  When Colby arrived at her door two hours later, Annie had just clasped Gram’s necklace and slipped into her beaded shoes. She glanced into the mirror before opening the door to make sure her fancy hair still looked fancy, and it did. She held her breath until Colby’s reaction told her he was pleased; then she released it in a soft sputter.

  “You’re magnificent,” he told her, and he took her hand and planted a kiss right on top of it. “Just beautiful.”

  Annie thanked him, refraining from commenting on the way he looked in a tuxedo—almost prettier than her but, thanks to Jake’s efforts, not quite.

  “Ready to go?”

  “Absolutely.”

  The interior of Jake’s cocoa brown Jaguar smelled spicy, like him, and the leather was softer than one of Sherman’s ears. Elevator jazz clinked from the backseat speakers, and the drive to Carmel Plaza seemed much too short.

  Colby offered his arm, and Annie’s heels made the perfect little click-click-click on the stone walk toward the main gallery. When she saw their reflection in the double glass doors, she couldn’t help but admire the way they looked—like something out of a movie or atop a very tall cake. The handsome prince with the perfectly chiseled jaw and the dainty princess at his side, glimmering and glistening with pure joy. She wanted to freeze the moment, just hold on to it somehow so that she could call it up again in the future after she’d been scrubbing the toilet or arguing with Evan or visiting her mother. It would be a beacon of remembrance that, for one flash in time, she looked and felt glamorous and had a strikingly handsome man at her side—a time when everything had been absolutely perfect, even if only for that one millimoment.

  Once inside, however, she realized that the entire gala teemed with princes and princesses, probably all of them feeling a lot like she did in their new dresses and fancy shoes and sprayed-up hair. One of the most beautiful of them all turned out to be Merideth.

  “Killer dress,” she said to Annie, as if seeing it for the first time.

  “Yours too.” Just to prove she could play.

  A small orchestra in the courtyard played old standards like “It Had to Be You” and “Moonlight in Vermont” while people milled between three small galleries framing the outer edges of the space, each of them hosting tables of silent auction items. Bistro tables for four dotted the courtyard, each of them adorned with a single white candle floating in a crystal bowl of water alongside a perfect white magnolia. Nets of crisscrossing white lights loomed overhead and captured the perfume of both the flowers and the women.

  Annie and Colby followed Merideth and her husband, Frank, toward tables upon tables beckoning delicious offerings, and uniformed attendants stood waiting to serve at each chafing dish.

  “I like to make it a point at events like this one,” Colby half whispered as he handed Annie a chilled plate, “to have all the things I wouldn’t normally have. For instance, how many times do you steam up a bunch of crab legs for yourself at home?”

  “Not often,” and she giggled as he loaded a half dozen of them on her plate.

  By the time they joined Frank and Merideth at a table, Annie was working to balance the array of food.

  “It’s a buffet, sweetie,” Merideth teased. “You can go back for more later. Pace yourself.”

  “He’s a bad influence,” Annie announced, nodding over her shoulder toward Colby.

  “I can see that.”

  The instant Annie and Colby sat down, Frank popped up and hurried away from the table without a word.

  “Something we said?” Annie asked.

  “Oh, he’s hung up on the possibility of being outbid on the sword-fishing expedition. He’ll be right back. In fact, I’d better go keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t bid the house for it.”

  Annie watched Merideth float across the room. “She looks radiant,” she commented, and Colby nodded in agreement.

  “This is my first time meeting Frank,” he told her. “He’s not the guy I would have pictured with Mer.”

  “No?” she asked curiously, watching the two of them across the room, holding hands, as Frank chatted with a fellow behind one of the auction tables. “Why not?”

  “He’s so…I don’t know.”

  “Straitlaced?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know what you mean. I always thought Merideth would end up with a jet-setter who could keep up with her—if that person even exists. But there’s something quiet and peaceful in Frank that responds to the craziness in Mer. Whatever it is, it works.”

  “So it appears.”

  Annie glanced at Colby as he watched Merideth and Frank.

  “I hope someone looks at me that way one day,” he said, and he flashed her an awkward smile.

  Keep watching. Maybe I’ll be the one looking at you like that one day soon.

  “Mmm, taste this,” he said suddenly, popping a large chilled shrimp into her mouth. “The cocktail sauce is phenomenal.”

  Annie struggled not to choke on the thing as Merideth and Frank reappeared at the table with another tuxedo-wearing man in tow. Colby greeted them, standing and shaking the man’s hand.

  “Dwayne, you know Colby already,” Merideth stated. “But I want you to meet my friend Annie. She’s a private investigator.”

  Annie nearly sprayed bits of shrimp all over them as she looked up into the narrowed eyes of Dr. Dwayne Biddle.

  “Annie, Dr. Biddle is one of tonight’s sponsors. Without him, our job would be worlds more difficult.”

  Biddle pressed a hole through her, his eyes thinning, turning ominous and dark.

  “A private investigator,” he commen
ted. “That must be interesting work. I don’t think I recall seeing that on the forms you filled out, Miss Gray.”

  “I’m little more than a secretary, really,” she told him, trying to appear casual over the thunder of her own heartbeat. “I answer phones, type up reports, that sort of thing.”

  “You two know one another?” Colby inquired.

  “I saw Dr. Biddle last week for my back problems.”

  Please, God. Please, God. Please, God.

  “What back problems?”

  Oh, Merideth!

  “Miss Gray was in a car accident a few months ago, and she has had some problems ever since.”

  “No, she wasn’t. Annie, you didn’t tell me you were in a car accident!” Merideth cried. “When? Were you driving Taurie?”

  Annie nearly fell to her knees with gratitude as someone tapped the microphone onstage and called for the attention of the room.

  “Good to see you again, Miss Gray.”

  “You too, Dr. Biddle.” Not. “Enjoy the evening.”

  Acid churned in her stomach, bubbling up into the back of her throat. How could just a few simple words out of Merideth’s giant mouth completely ruin a budding new career?

  Colby and Merideth seemed to see the benefit as a wonderful success, and Annie perceived her date with Colby in the same light.

  On the drive home, Colby reached through the darkness and took her hand. She noticed the perfect fit as she looked down at them, clasped and resting casually on the console between them.

  He walked her to the door, and they stood in the yellow glow of the light from the parlor window. Her insides flopped with butterflies in flight, her mouth went dry, and Annie felt like a high schooler again. The prom had gone even better than she’d hoped.

  “Are you going to invite me in?” he asked as she turned the key in the door, and she felt his hand on her arm as he guided her around to face him.

  Annie found it difficult to look away. He moved in slowly, wrapping her in his arms, and she dropped her keys to the porch floor as his lips touched hers in the kiss she’d been wondering about since the night they met.