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

by Sandra D. Bricker

  He set down the paperwork and casually sat on the corner of the table.

  “You don’t remember,” he stated.

  “Remember what?”

  “Telling me that you love me.”

  “This is what I’m saying, yes. I think I would recall something as monumental as that, and I don’t have any recollection of it whatsoever. How do you explain that?”

  “Oh, probably…morphine?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your IV had some kind of pain medication in the drip, Annie. But you clearly said, ‘I love you.’”

  “No, I didn’t.” She’d meant the statement to be more forceful than it emerged.

  “Yes, you did. You were going on about wanting to know this and that, and then you said, ‘Just one more thing, Nick,’ and I said, ‘Okay, just one more,’ and you said, ‘I really and truly love you.’ And then you went to sleep.”

  It was the strangest thing. Until she heard him tell the story, she’d have bet the farm she never said such a thing. But as he told it, it began to seem…familiar.

  “Is it all coming back to you?” he asked her.

  “No.” Liar.

  “Annie, what’s the big deal?”

  “Well, you must have thought it was a big deal, Nick, if you told Deke about it. And you remember it with such…clarity.”

  “I didn’t have an IV, Annie. Things are pretty clear for me.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t have said that to you.”

  “No?”

  “No. Because it’s just not…entirely…you know…true.”

  “Yeah, I got that when I found you mooning over my sister’s fiancé the other day.”

  “I wasn’t—” Annie stopped herself mid-word and let out an unintelligible groan instead. You are so frustrating.”

  “But you are the picture of peace and calm for me.”

  Annie dropped to one of the nearest chairs and massaged her temples. After a minute or two, she inhaled slowly and blew it out in a long puff.

  “So who do you love, Annie?”

  She looked up at him, as he leaned back against the table with his arms folded and looked as if he had asked a random, legitimate question.

  “What?”

  “Your heart. What does it tell you?”

  He straightened and closed the gap between them. Taking her by both arms, he guided Annie to her feet and tugged her toward him. “Right here, right now. What is your heart telling you?”

  To run like the wind.

  “Who ever knows what my stupid heart is saying,” she muttered. “It’s always wrong anyway.”

  “Do you want to know what I think?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m going to tell you.”

  “Figured.”

  “I think you have been so busy thinking and planning and wondering that your heart can’t be heard over all that construction.”

  “Oh, really.”

  “And I think the minute you managed to shut up long enough to relax—okay, it took medication to do it—but your heart uttered the words you’ve been carrying around all along.”

  “That I love you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Arrogant much, Nick?”

  “Not too much. Just enough.”

  Nick still held Annie by the arms, his face a mere few inches from hers, his eyes holding hers with an invisible grip.

  “Are you ready to ask me?”

  “Ask you what?” she asked. But she knew what. In fact, they both knew.

  “Ask me already,” he exclaimed. “Ask me to kiss you.”

  “No.”

  “Ask me to kiss you, Annie.”

  “No.”

  “Ask me.”

  “No.”

  And just like that, Nick released her, leaving Annie feeling like a withered petal fallen from a flower, and she nearly lost her balance.

  “I guess I was mistaken, then,” he told her, gathering his stacks of paperwork and heading for the door. “Consider yourself absolved from your words, Annie. We’ll chalk it up to medication and put it behind us.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “Of course I do.” He gave her a sweet, albeit disarming, smile. “I’m not the kind of guy who spends much time wanting someone who doesn’t want me.”

  “It’s not that I—”

  He raised his hand, and Annie fell immediately silent.

  “Let’s stop talking now, all right?”

  “Okay.”

  “Come on. I’ll walk you to your car.”

  The moment he closed Annie’s door and waved good-bye, she turned over the ignition, shifted into Drive, and headed straight for Zoey’s.

  “Didn’t you want him to kiss you?”

  “Well, yeah,” Annie admitted. “I kinda did.”

  “Then why didn’t you say it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe because you didn’t want him to win?”

  “Maybe.”

  Zoey handed her a short, wide glass of water with perfectly formed cubes that clinked around in it.

  “What’s this?”

  “Water.”

  “Are you out of Diet Coke?”

  “I’ve been thinking Nick might be right. We consume too much of it.”

  “Nick’s not right!” Annie exclaimed before sinking into a sigh.

  “I can tell you this,” Zoey told her. “Your meltdown over Evan and Jenny getting married is just plain ridiculous. You’ve known for years that things were never going that direction between you and Evan.”

  “I know.”

  “And his falling for Jenny is not a personal affront to you. Rather, it’s just a natural thing between two people who were meant for one another.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “Evan wasn’t right for you, and Colby wasn’t right for you. But I’ve never seen you look at a man the way you look at Nick.”

  Annie’s heart skipped a beat. “What are you saying?”

  “It’s true. When I saw the two of you together at the festival that day, it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Nick’s The One, Annie. And you know it too, or you never would have told him you were in love with him.”

  “But I was under the influence of—”

  “I don’t care,” she interrupted with confidence. “You said it, and you meant it. All these years, Evan was a great excuse for you to not face the truth. What was that guy’s name?”

  “What guy?”

  “The guy you adored in college. The one who attacked you.”

  “Danny.” Annie clamped her eyes shut and shook her head. “Danny Radcliff.”

  “Danny. He let you down, and he scared the wits out of you, and he got you all mixed up about your feelings about love. You’ve been running from men ever since, Annie. As soon as something even started to develop, you sprinted like a marathon runner.”

  Just what I accused Evan of doing.

  “But it’s time to face it and make a change. Now you’ve got to just swallow your fear of pledging yourself to someone and wrap your brain around the whole idea of trusting someone enough to become part of a twosome.”

  “Zoey, I—”

  “It’s not easy, Annie. Opening up your life to another human being is hard. And some days you’re probably going to wish he’d just disappear for a couple of weeks. Or a year. But the right relationship is worth the trouble, I promise you.”

  She thought about interrupting her again, but Zoey seemed to be on a roll. Annie suppressed the smile and just allowed her friend to continue.

  “You need to ask yourself all the important questions. Then just be quiet and listen to how your heart will lead you. And then follow, Annie.”

  Without a word, Annie stood up and went to Zoey, embracing her vehemently. Then she turned around and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “No.”

  “Scared?”

&
nbsp; “Spitless.”

  “Okay, then. Drive carefully.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “I believe. I believe.

  It’s silly, but I believe!”

  Natalie Wood, Miracle on 34th Street, 1947

  At the risk of messing up her life with yet another list, Annie grabbed a few mini Snickers, a bottle of water, and a pad and pen before heading for the kitchen table. The spot where all the madness began.

  At the top of the page, she wrote, The One. Then she began making a detailed list of the qualities he would have.

  1. Strong faith and sense of self.

  2. Honest and trustworthy. Sincerity and integrity.

  3. Self-contained. Doesn’t rely on someone else to complete him.

  4. Secure enough to trust me. No jealous rages.

  5. Similar ideals and hopes for the future.

  6. Someone I can be myself with. Someone I can trust.

  7. Someone I respect, who can also respect me.

  8. Someone who gets that the Lakers rule all sports.

  9. Lovers of rap and hip-hop music need not apply.

  She read the list over a couple of times before setting down the pad of paper. Without intending to do it, Annie knew she’d painted a full and complete portrait of Nick. Of course, she had no idea whatsoever how he felt about rap and hip-hop, but she could hope.

  “Life does not have to be huge and over-the-top to be fulfilling. Every day doesn’t have to be out-of-the-ordinary spectacular to be inspiring. There is a—a joy in sharing simple things with someone special, in finding your own way and following the path that was laid out for you. There is a joy in the journey that you are totally missing.”

  Nick’s words brought both comfort and a stinging sensation to Annie’s heart.

  And then Zoey’s words fell down on her like rain.

  “You need to ask yourself all the important questions. Then just be quiet and listen to how your heart will lead you. And then follow, Annie.”

  Nick punched “Veldon Smith” into the search box on his computer, and a massive list of priors appeared.

  Smitty’s nothing if not consistent, he thought.

  With his leave of absence to cover Deke’s, Nick had been pulled away from a case he’d been building against the guy for months. Now, as he prepared to return to the force, Smitty’s case file showed little if any progress, despite Thorton’s commitment to see it through.

  “Did you follow up on any of the leads I gave you?” he asked Thorton when he and Chief Sheldon marched through the squad room toward Sheldon’s office.

  “It’s a dead end, Bench,” Thorton returned before they closed the office door behind them. “Let it go.”

  Letting go—not one of Nick’s strong suits. Most of the guys he knew were only too happy to let go of an idea when it didn’t pan out. If no evidence could be found to prove one theory, then move on to the next one until the proof sat well in hand. If the television program didn’t hold interest, just click the remote to access eight hundred other channels that might. A dead-end relationship? Just walk out the door and find the next possibility.

  Nick, however, tended to be more of a dog-with-a-bone variety, and he’d always figured that quality made him a better cop. But when applied to his friendship with Annie, he feared it rang out with a bit of Colby Barnes. The guy just couldn’t take no for an answer, and it colored him a putrid shade of “Loser” in Nick’s eyes.

  He wondered if he’d crossed over that line himself, the one that divided “Interested Party” from “Stalker.” The thought of it poked him in the throat. He’d felt so sincerely convicted that destiny had led them together, but now he surmised that most stalkers likely started out feeling that way too.

  Letting go. Not his strong suit. But clearly, the time had come to make the stretch.

  Okay, he prayed. I get it. I won’t pursue her anymore. Ship sailed. Now I hope You’ll force the message from my brain down into my spirit because I’m not sure I know how to let go of the idea that Annie and I—

  They belonged together. He’d been so certain. But now he couldn’t even form the words in his mind.

  The sun had barely risen, but Annie sped across town in her car, Sherman standing at attention in the back seat. He seemed to sense this was more than a sunrise ride in the car. The radio DJ announced 7:30 a.m. as she pulled into Nick’s driveway and shut off the motor.

  “Oh, God, please don’t let me mess this up.”

  Sherman’s tail wagged double time. “Stay, boy,” she told him, and he groaned at her in response. “I’m serious too. You stay!”

  With firm resolve, Annie crossed the drive and headed up to the door. It took a couple of minutes for Jenny to open it; she held her robe shut with one hand, shielding her squinted eyes with the other.

  “Annie. Is everything all right?”

  “I’m sorry to be so early, Jenny. Is Nick up yet?”

  “He’s up and out by now, I’m sure. He runs almost every morning.” She glanced at the hall tree and nodded. “His running shoes are gone—and Murphy’s leash too. That means Nicky’s gone.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “Of course,” she said with a smile, pointing down the hill. “Two miles to the beach and two miles back.”

  “Thank you, Jenny!” she exclaimed, and she took off at a full sprint toward the car.

  “You’re welcome,” Jenny called after her.

  “Okay, Shermie. We’re cookin’ with gas now.”

  He poked his head over the car seat and tried to rest his chin on Annie’s shoulder. He didn’t quite make it, so she reached back and gave his head a quick rub as she drove down the hill slowly, checking for any paths that might break away from the street.

  Just a few yards from the beach she spotted him, running at an even pace, attached to Murphy by a long, red leash. They looked like two peas in a pod jogging side by side, a sudden reminder of Evan and Sherman. Murphy even lifted his little paws at much the same rhythm as Nick.

  She pulled up beside them and rolled down the passenger window. Nick leaned down, looked inside, but kept on jogging.

  “Good morning,” she called out to him.

  “Morning.”

  “Can we talk?”

  “Is this a replay?”

  “Come on, Nick. Stop so I can talk to you.”

  “Sorry. Murphy and I are occupied at the moment. I’ll call you later in the day.” Then he just continued toward the sand, this ridiculous man and his silly little dog.

  Annie stopped the car, threw the gear into Park, and opened the door. She pulled herself out and stood next to the car, watching him move farther away.

  “Nick!” she called out, but he didn’t turn back. “Nick! Come back here…and kiss me.”

  He stopped, but he didn’t turn around. Murphy, on the other hand, seemed quite astonished, and he looked back at her over his furry little shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” Nick shouted, his back still facing her. “I don’t think I heard you.”

  “You heard me, you mule. I’m asking you to come back here and kiss me.”

  He turned slowly, letting second after second tick by before he finally sauntered back up the hill toward her.

  There’s going to be no living with him now.

  “Are you sure?” he asked as he reached her. “Because you know, you can’t take something like that back once you’ve done it. Can’t unring that bell, Annie Gray.”

  “Oh, just hush up and kiss me.”

  And he did. He rounded the car and took Annie into his arms and kissed her half senseless. Her head began to spin, her heart raced, and beads of perspiration popped up on the back of her neck and all along her spine.

  When they parted, she wobbled on her feet.

  “Wow.”

  She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but—

  “Wow!” she repeated.

  “I tried to tell you,” Nick said with a shrug. “And you almost missed out on it altogether
. Not too smart, Annie Gray. You’re a little slow on the uptake.”

  Annie grabbed him by the front of his shirt and dragged him toward her, wrapping her arms around his neck and diving headfirst into another kiss. This time, Nick’s arms slid around her waist, and he lifted her up off the ground as he returned the kiss. Annie’s leg bent at the knee like a cinematic heroine, and a slight moan snaked up from the pit of her stomach and popped out of her throat.

  “Take it back,” he said when they parted and he’d set her back on the ground.

  She shook her head and blinked at him. “Wh–what?”

  “You said I wasn’t kiss-worthy. Take it back.”

  “Oh, I take it back,” she said, and she couldn’t stop herself. She actually swooned as she fell toward him and kissed him for a third time.

  The sun had made its full arrival, squatting low in the sky at a full-on shine. After that last amazing kiss, the two of them just stood there, locked in one another’s arms.

  “You can trust me,” Nick said on a whisper. “You have my word.”

  Annie noticed just then that Murphy had climbed into the car and sacked out on the backseat with his head buried in Annie’s purse like some sort of broken pillow, one of his long velvety ears draped over Sherman’s happy face.

  “He looks right at home,” Nick said.

  “I kinda think we’re all home now, Nick,” Annie told him. “Home at last.”

  Fade out.

  About the Author

  Sandra D. Bricker has been publishing in both the Christian and general markets for years with novels for women and teens, magazine articles, Christian devotionals, and short stories. With eleven novels in print and four more slated for publication through 2012, she has carved out a niche for herself as an award-winning author of laugh-out-loud comedy for the inspirational market. Sandie was an aspiring screenwriter as well as an entertainment publicist in Hollywood for fifteen-plus years for some of daytime television’s hottest stars. When her mother became ill in Florida, she left Los Angeles to provide care…and begin a new phase of her life as a novelist. Those Hollywood dreams aren’t yet buried, and Sandie hopes to see her books gracing movie and television screens one day very soon.