by Meg Benjamin
Oh right, Monica, this is all for Ronnie’s benefit. How selfless of you.
Okay, Ronnie wasn’t the only one who deserved a day of real. That kiss with Paul had been a whole heapin’ helpin’ of real. That was another thing she didn’t necessarily want Faisal filming.
What had happened between them might mean nothing, after all. Like she’d said at the time, it had all the trappings of a summer romance. He still might hide when he saw her coming. But somehow she didn’t think so.
A two-day pass. Or maybe a one-day pass. But one day might be enough.
Paul sat in a rocker on what passed for a veranda at Praeger House. The view stretched across the valley up to the blue peaks in the distance. He could hear a stream tumbling somewhere, probably a creek that had branched off from the river. Judging from the teenagers heading down the street with enormous inner tubes balanced on their shoulders, it must be close by.
Summer afternoons drifting in an inner tube down a mountain stream or a river, riding over the rapids and getting dunked in water that felt like ice, then climbing out to dry off on a sun-warmed rock by the side. That had been a large part of his life until he’d moved to California and the Big Time.
For a moment, he thought about joining the teenagers. But right now he had to waylay Monica.
He leaned back in his rocker, remembering their brief make-out session on the drive before Ronnie Valero had arrived to pull Monica back to sanity. Damn, that had been good. It wasn’t anywhere close to the usual for him, but that was actually a good thing in this case. The usual didn’t hold a candle to Monica. He wanted the two-day pass he’d promised last night. For both of them.
He couldn’t take the chance that she’d try to duck whatever it was they had going at the moment. He didn’t know exactly how she felt about the whole thing, but he planned on doing a lot more exploring.
As if she’d heard some kind of subliminal call, Monica chose that moment to walk through the front door of the hotel. She wore jeans and a white T-shirt with a red cotton sweater over it that did nothing to hide those superlative breasts underneath. Her hair billowed around her face in a wave of curls. Interesting. He’d had no idea that butterscotch hair was actually corkscrews.
Altogether she looked a lot less put together than usual, as if Salt Box, Colorado, had peeled off a couple layers of veneer. He planned on peeling off a few more himself.
“Hey,” he called.
She started, then turned in his direction. “Hey yourself.”
“Where are you off to this fine summer morning?” He managed not to grimace. All of a sudden he sounded like something out of Rodgers and Hammerstein.
She shrugged. “I need to go to the garage and find out what the damage is and if the car’s going to be drivable in the near future.”
He pushed up from the rocker. “I’ll go with you.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened slightly. “Sure. That’d be great.”
“Let’s go.”
Sunlight bounced off the hummingbird feeders and window glass. He pulled out his sunglasses.
“Geez it’s bright around here.” She squinted down the drive, fumbling in her purse. “Is it always like this?”
“Pretty much. We’re up around seven thousand feet. The air is thinner.”
“Hmmph,” she snorted, balancing her sunglasses on her nose.
“You don’t like it?” He grinned in spite of himself.
“Everything is so…glittery. Like it’s just been washed or something.”
He shrugged, following her down the drive toward the street. “Some people might think that was a plus.”
“Some people didn’t wake up with a blast of sunlight in the face after being up late the night before,” she muttered.
He raised an eyebrow. “Not a morning person?”
“That’s an interesting question actually.” Her eyebrows pulled together as she thought. “I can remember being a morning person back when I was growing up. Even in college I’d study in the morning rather than pulling an all-nighter.”
He put his hand on her elbow to maneuver around a pothole, then left it there. “So when did you change?”
“I don’t know exactly. Probably around the time I started working twelve-hour days.” She grimaced again. “All right, that’s it, I swear, this is the last whining for the day.”
“Whine away.” He resisted the urge to put his arm around her waist, although it seemed like the natural thing to do. Monica was giving off a confusing set of vibes. She seemed tense about something, but he didn’t think it was him.
The town was waking up around them. Shops were opening, cars with kayaks and canoes heading down Main Street toward the river. Up ahead he saw a large gray wooden building with a lot next door full of cars, probably Al Monteith’s place.
“Did you call ahead?” he asked.
She glanced at him, forehead furrowing. “No. I didn’t know his number. Do you think that’ll be a problem?”
“Nope. It’s a small town. People probably stop by all the time.”
She sighed. “To tell you the truth, I just wanted to get out of the hotel for a while. I’ve been on the phone since breakfast.”
Probably out of the hotel and away from Ronnie. Paul couldn’t blame her. “Anything new from Donovan?”
She shook her head. “Still in a holding pattern. He wants us to drive up there as soon as we can, but he’s not concerned enough to send a car down yet.”
“Hell, if it weren’t for the luggage, we could probably hike up there. It’s only a few miles.”
She sighed again. “You could hike up there, and maybe me and Brendan and Faisal. I’m a lot less sure about Ronnie and Billy Joe.”
He considered Billy Joe’s cowboy boots and Ronnie’s platform sandals. Probably not.
Monteith’s garage looked a lot like a former barn, minus horses, hay and space. An array of cars, ranging from a beat-up Chevy to a sleek Mercedes, was parked in the yard, probably either waiting to be worked on or waiting to be picked up. They headed toward a door at the side.
A small, round woman with hair the color of licorice sat at a desk tucked into a corner of the room, a cell phone lodged between her cheek and her shoulder while she rummaged through a file of receipts. “Yes, Bodie,” she said, “I know. You told me. You told Al. You told the world. You need it no later than this afternoon. We’ll do what we can.” She rolled her eyes at Monica.
“I should have called,” she muttered.
“Relax.”
“I’ll tell him.” The woman sighed. “No, don’t call me. I’ll call you when it’s ready. No, if you call Al, it’ll take him that much longer to finish. Just give him some time, Bodie. Yes, right.” Her lips tightened into a dry smile. “Oh, you have a nice day too.”
She clicked the phone shut and glanced in their direction again. “What can I do for you folks?”
Monica pushed her lips into a smile. “I just wanted to check on my car. Mr. Monteith towed it in yesterday.”
The woman narrowed her eyes. “You the television people?”
Monica nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
The woman smiled again, just as drily. “Honey, I’m not a ma’am. I’m Nona Monteith. Al’s my son. You mind me asking what show you’re with? I watch a lot of TV.”
“It’s a new program. Finding Mr. Right.”
“Oh.” Mrs. Monteith frowned. “Like that lame-brained Finding Miss Right?”
Paul fought back a grin. “Just like that. Only with bachelors instead of bachelorettes.”
“Well, that might help, I guess,” Mrs. Monteith mused. “It was watching those stupid women all wanting to hook up with some idiot man that made me gnash my teeth. These bachelors aren’t as stupid as those bachelorettes, are they?”
“I hope not,” Monica said quickly. “That is, I really hope you won’t think anybody’s stupid on the show.”
She seemed to be deliberately not looking his way. Paul wondered if she thought his feelings were hur
t. He could definitely have eased her mind on that score.
“We’ll see, I guess. I’ll watch it a few times, tell you what I think. Let me find out about your car.” Mrs. Monteith pushed herself to her feet and headed through a door at the side.
Monica rubbed a hand across the back of her neck. “Great. If she’s a typical viewer, we’re screwed.”
“You don’t think Brendan and Billy Joe are smarter than the bachelorettes?”
“I don’t think the bachelorettes are particularly dumb. They just come across that way sometimes because of the editing.”
Paul frowned. He’d done some of that editing himself. “We don’t try to do that, or I don’t anyway. When I’m editing, I’m usually just trying to find a coherent storyline in all of the blather. Sometimes everybody comes out looking dumb, including the bachelor.”
Monica nodded. “I know. It’s just…”
The door opened and Al Monteith stepped through, wiping his hands on a rag that seemed too grease-stained to do much good. He nodded at the two of them. “Looked your car over last night. Damage isn’t too bad. Battered fender and a couple of flats. And one of the rims got bent. I can do a quick and dirty fix. It should be drivable, but it won’t be pretty.”
Monica sighed. “Pretty doesn’t matter. We just need to be able to drive it. When can we pick it up?”
He shrugged. “I might get it done this evening, but more likely it’ll be tomorrow morning. I got a few people I might need to work on ahead of you.”
Including the phantom Bodie, judging from Mrs. Monteith’s narrowed eyes.
Monica dug in her purse for a card. “Can I leave you my number so you can call me if you get it done before then?”
Monteith shrugged. “Just call late this afternoon. I’ll know by then.” He tucked the greasy rag into the pocket of his coveralls and headed back into the garage.
Mrs. Monteith rolled her eyes again. “Okay, I’ll give you a number to call, one that somebody will actually answer. Call after four. I’ll give you whatever information I’ve got.”
Monica wrote down the number and tucked the piece of paper into her purse, thanking Mrs. Monteith. Paul followed her back into the yard.
“Well, the good news is you’ll actually have a car.”
She frowned slightly. “I guess that’s good news. I mean it’s definitely good news that we won’t have to wait around for Glenn to send somebody after us.”
“But?” He raised an eyebrow.
She shrugged. “But that leaves us with a day to fill. I guess I need to find Ronnie.”
“Why?”
“Well…” She paused, thinking. “Because she might want to do something.”
“And she can’t do it alone?”
Monica glanced back toward where the Praeger House perched on the hillside. “I guess she could. I just…I always feel like I should look after her. Like she can’t really handle things on her own.”
“Right. And so does every red-blooded male who crosses her path.” Paul put his hand on her elbow again, turning her gently down the street. “Trust me on this—if she needs somebody, she’ll find somebody.”
She blew out a long breath. “Probably true. Which means I have a whole day to kill on my own in Salt Box.” She glanced up at him, her lips curving slightly. “Any ideas?”
He felt a quick jolt of heat, pushing his pulse up a notch, something he’d begun to think of as the Monica Reaction. He linked his fingers through hers, drawing her closer. “How do you feel about ice cold streams and lukewarm beer?”
Chapter Ten
The corner booth at the Blarney Stone was probably meant to hold around six people. Currently it held ten, with occasional drop-ins. Monica had sort of lost track of who all was sitting with them. Paul was on one side, Ronnie on the other, Brendan and Faisal on their flanks. Billy Joe came and went, mostly went since he’d found some interesting and apparently gullible girls at the bar.
She tried to remember the names of the locals who were sitting with them. Clark Denham from the hotel was one. There was also an older man with a cropped beard and longish gray hair whom Faisal called Dick, apparently the man who’d repaired the camera. Two of the men who’d danced with Ronnie last night were hovering. Clearly they wanted to sit beside her and just as clearly Brendan had no intention of moving. Monica hoped they wouldn’t end up in a fight, but she wouldn’t take any bets on it.
The owner of the Blarney Stone, one Ted Saltzman, was currently sitting opposite Brendan and Ronnie. He looked vaguely amused by the whole thing. Monica wouldn’t rate him as a serious contender in the Ronnie sweepstakes.
She leaned back in her chair, taking a quick swallow of her beer. The bridge of her nose was sunburned, probably bright pink, in spite of the sunblock Paul had bullied her into applying and the baseball cap the owner of the tube rental place had given her. Her hair was standing out around her head as if she’d just taken hold of a high voltage cable. She was a mess.
She was also absurdly happy. It was the best afternoon she’d spent in months, floating down a creek whose name she never found out, icy cold water against her butt and warm sunshine on her face and arms. Paul had a six-pack of Fat Tire tethered to his tube with a mesh bag for the cans. Between them they’d finished four cans by the time they’d reached the final pull-out and then used the other two to bribe a guy from a river rafting place into giving them a ride back to Salt Box.
“Salt Box.” She turned to Clark Denham. “Why is it called Salt Box? Is it the name of a mountain?”
He gave her a lazy smile. “Do you want the real answer or the classic answer?”
“Can’t I have both?”
“Sure.” He picked up his beer. “The real answer is nobody knows exactly.”
“And the classic answer?”
“…is a story, of course. Starts when the town wasn’t a town yet. Just a stagecoach stop and a potential stop on the railroad that was supposed to go through and didn’t.” He took another swallow. “Sorry—off topic. Anyway, the people who lived here decided they needed to be an honest-to-God town, which meant they needed a name. With me so far?”
Monica nodded.
“Anyway, they figured they’d let the people in town vote on what name they liked best. So they asked people to write down their suggestions and put them in an empty salt box at the general store.”
Paul raised an eyebrow. “I think I see where this is headed.”
“Yeah, well, keep it to yourself. You’ll ruin my concentration.” Denham gave him a dry smile. “So they had a couple of weeks for everybody to come up with their suggestions for a name and put them in the salt box. Then they called a town meeting so they could have a vote to choose the name everybody liked best.”
Ronnie frowned. “But they should have given people time to think first. I mean, they should have told them the names everybody came up with and then let them kind of talk it over. Because at first they might not have liked some of the names, but after a while they might have decided, okay, that’s not a bad name after all. So everybody would have been happy.”
Denham’s mouth edged into another smile, this one friendly. “That makes a lot of sense, but I think the people in town just wanted to get the whole thing over with. Decide on the name so they could get a post office and then move on.”
Ronnie gave a little puff of disapproval. “Patience is a virtue.”
Denham blinked, then took a breath. “Okay, so we’ve got the townspeople all coming together at the general store. Gonna choose a name and get cracking on having a real town. Civilization here we come.”
Monica leaned forward. “And?”
“And they upended the salt box to get all the suggestions, but there was nothing there.”
Ronnie’s eyes widened. “Nothing? No names or anything?”
“Not even salt?” Paul murmured.
Monica gave him a quelling glance.
Denham shook his head. “Nothing. Nobody had suggested anything. So they decide
d to name the town after the box. Sort of a reminder that community spirit isn’t always too reliable around here.”
“But that’s sad.” Ronnie’s eyes were suspiciously bright. “Why didn’t somebody suggest something when they found out there weren’t any other suggestions? Maybe name it after their wife or their girlfriend or something. Didn’t they even care about what happened?”
“That’s one possibility.” Denham took another swallow of his beer. “Of course, it’s also possible that nobody could think of anything good enough, and they were afraid to suggest something bad.”
“Or maybe they all figured somebody else would come up with something, so they didn’t bother. That happens a lot.” Saltzman, the bar owner, grinned at Ronnie.
“Maybe.” Her eyes still looked faintly tearful.
Monica sighed. “It didn’t turn out too badly, Ronnie. I mean, Salt Box is a unique name. It’s a lot more memorable than some places I’ve been.”
“Thank you.” Denham bowed slightly in her direction. “I feel that way myself. Better to live in Salt Box than to live in someplace called Highland Park Acres. The town’s got a flair for the unexpected.”
“Such as?” Paul signaled to the barmaid for another beer, but Saltzman beat him to it, bringing over a pitcher.
“Well, there’s this place, for example.” Clark began pouring beers. “When Colleen told you it was called the Blarney Stone, what did you expect?”
Ted Saltzman took a large swallow from his stein. Monica hoped she wasn’t going to offend him too much if she answered honestly. She shrugged. “Shamrocks. Guinness on tap. Lots of brass and dark wood. Maybe some cryptic sayings on plaques, written in script.”
“Celtic music on the sound system,” Paul added as Three Dog Night blared from the jukebox.
Saltzman grinned at Denham. “Screw you.”
Denham shook his head. “Now, now. You knew that’s what they’d say. That’s what people always say.”
