Bentleys Buy a Buick (That Business Between Us Book 5)

by Pamela Morsi

  Erica shrugged. “My mom thought that working at a hospital, I would marry a rich doctor.”

  That statement provoked guffaws all around the table.

  “The myth of the handsome single doctor,” Rayliss replied shaking her head. “I think everybody’s mother has bought into that one.”

  “They’re all married by med school,” Callie stated as a matter of fact. “’Cause somebody has to support them when Mommy and Daddy are all tapped out. You might catch one in midcareer, divorced and on the rebound. But by then, all he’s got left is the debt.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  The “docs,” as they were known collectively to the hospital staff, were mostly nice people, professionally respected, endlessly fascinating to watch, but not held in the kind of awe more typical of the community at large.

  “It’s just another of those inescapable facts of life,” Callie said. “So many men, so many reasons not to hook up with them.”

  “That is, except for Dr. Glover,” Darla said with a sly glance toward the far end of the table.

  Callie blushed and shook her head. “He’s a pharmacist, not an M.D. I know it’s likely that I might break his heart, but he does bring out the cougar in me,” she said. “He’s got to be at least ten years younger.”

  More like fifteen, Erica thought, but kept the observation to herself. A romance around the table was an entertaining interlude for everyone. And Erica was so happy, contented with her own marriage, that she couldn’t help wanting that for everyone.

  A few minutes later, the group finished eating and bussed their table. As they headed back to the department, Erica made a quick stop at the ladies’ room to freshen up. She surveyed herself critically in the mirror.

  She wore her long, light brown hair up in a neat twist on the back of her head. It gave her a more serious, businesslike appearance. The reading glasses helped, too.

  The pink-and-black tweed suit was a retread from her pre-pregnancy days. It was still a good-looking outfit and it still fit, but it looked different. Erica turned sideways and surveyed the lines of her body. She’d lost all of the baby weight and exercised herself into the best condition since her volleyball days in high school, but to her own eyes, she didn’t look the same. That young, fresh, twenty-something was now somebody’s mommy. And wearing these clothes from her former life reminded her of the passage of time in a way that her thirtieth birthday last summer hadn’t.

  Erica decided that a little midday pep talk could go a long way and began rooting through her designer knockoff handbag. When she found her cell phone, she immediately punched in her speed dial. After only one ring, the voice of reassurance answered.

  “Hello, gorgeous working woman.”

  Erica smiled into the phone.

  “I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice,” she answered. “What’s up at the shop?”

  “I’ve got two cars on lifts, if that’s the question you’re asking,” he replied with a teasing lilt to his voice. “If that ‘up’ inquiry is more personal, I think I could be lured from this grindstone for a quickie with a hot babe like my wife.”

  She laughed, just as he intended that she would.

  “I’m not such a hot babe anymore,” Erica said. “These days I’m somebody’s mommy.”

  “Woman, you are hotter than a ’48 DeSoto with a bad radiator,” he said.

  Erica shook her head, smiling into the phone.

  “So how’s your day going?” Tom asked her.

  “Well, I spent the morning coding like a crazy woman. I ate a slightly limp taco salad for lunch, and I’m now hanging out in front of the bathroom mirror missing my man.”

  Tom chuckled lightly. “It sounds like you might be asking yourself why you were so anxious to go back to work.”

  “I know exactly why I wanted to come back,” she corrected. “I like my work. And we need my wages to cover our household expenses so we can give our business some room to grow.”

  “And it’s growing,” he assured her. “Wait till you see this car I brought in today. I swear, Erica, it’s the most beautiful car ever built.”

  “Yeah, I bet you say that to all the ’57 Chevys,” she answered.

  He laughed. “Actually, it’s a Buick. A ’56 Roadmaster convertible. Great condition.”

  “Only driven by a little old lady to church on Sunday mornings?”

  “Sort of,” Tom answered. “Although I think this little old lady may have been more interested in whiskey dens on Saturday night.”

  Erica listened to her husband’s enthusiasm. He loved cars. He loved everything about them. She didn’t really understand it, but she was grateful for it. A car had brought them together in the first place.

  She’d just finished her afternoon classes at St. Phillip’s College. It was raining heavily, and the traffic was challenging enough. Then her sad old Honda began acting weird. The motor raced, but she had no power, and the unmistakable smell of burning wires began to permeate the interior. All around her cars honked impatiently. Erica barely managed to get the sedan off to the side of the road. She opened the hood and got out in the pouring rain to look underneath. The only thing she knew about engines was how to check the oil and the radiator. Both of those seemed fine, but the smell of burnt wiring was still pungent. She stood there pondering who to call. Her mother would never come to help, but she would undoubtedly find a reason why a broken-down auto was Erica’s own fault. Her girlfriends were not any more knowledgeable about cars than she was. And her kid sister Letty was smart and quick-thinking, but she was only twelve.

  As she pondered which direction to walk for help, a flashy new pickup pulled up behind her. From behind the wheel a big, burly guy with thick, black hair and a scar across his nose got out. He looked a little scary. But Erica realized pretty quickly that her pulse wasn’t racing from fear. Tom Bentley was strong, streetwise and sexy. He was also the sweetest guy she’d ever met. How could she not fall for him?

  “I can’t wait for you to see this Buick,” he was saying on the phone. “There’s something about it...it’s like...I don’t know, it’s so familiar in a really good way.”

  “Maybe you used to drive it in another life,” she teased. “I’ve got my fingers crossed that I can fix it well enough to be able to cruise it around the corner in this one,” he answered. “So what does your afternoon look like?”

  “Charts,” she answered. “I’m just coding charts. I’m still so slow. It’s frustrating when I think how efficient I used to be.”

  “You expected that,” he reminded her. “You’re a little rusty, but you are really good at what you do, Erica. They’re lucky to have you back.”

  She sighed, feeling much better. She could always count on him to have confidence in her. Talking to Tom was like refueling her self-esteem.

  “Future view!” he challenged in an infomercial announcer voice. “The Bentleys—ten years from now.”

  Erica laughed lightly. Future view was a silly little game the two of them had made up. They’d been playing it since their dating days. It was ridiculous, but somehow funny and encouraging as well. It lifted them out of the everyday and kept their dreams on track.

  “Ten years,” Erica mused. “Okay. In ten years for sure, I’ll be the boss of this place.”

  “If there’s any justice,” Tom agreed.

  She laughed.

  “In ten years we’ll have paid off the small business start-up loan,” she said.

  “Whoo-hoo!” Tom cheered. “And we’ll decide to celebrate by taking a second honeymoon.”

  “I believe that technically it would be a first honeymoon,” she pointed out.

  “I was never that good with math,” he answered, before feigning over-the-top sincerity. “And every minute with you, lovely wife, is a honeymoon for me.”

  “Shut up, you idiot,” she responded playfully.

  “Ten years, your mom will be married like three more times,” he suggested.

  Erica sighed a
nd nodded at that. “And my sister will be some amazing something, so busy we will hardly ever get to see her.”

  “She will never be too busy for you.”

  “I hope not,” she answered. “Ten years, Quint will be sixteen. He’ll probably be as tall as his dad.”

  “Probably,” Tom agreed. “But with any luck at all, he’ll look more like you.”

  “At the very least, he won’t have the broken nose.”

  Tom laughed. “He’ll be old enough to drive.”

  “Wow, that’s hard to get my mind around,” Erica said. “We’ll have to get him a car. Maybe that Buick driven by an old lady.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” her husband warned. “You might prefer that he fall in love with a real live girl.” “You think he might not?”

  “For us testosterone producers, a beautiful car can be very, very seductive.

  Chapter 2

  RICK’S ROADSIDE SERVICE showed up with the Buick about two-thirty. Tom hardly had time to supervise the unloading and get it safely tucked into bay four before it was time to head over to pick up Quint.

  He left his truck parked in the lot and took the aging, rusty sedan that Erica had when they married. It was ugly, but he kept it dependable. And, unlike his truck, it had a perfect place for a car seat in the back. Within a few minutes of three o’clock the street in front of Woodlawn Elementary was clogged with traffic. Moms, grandmas and babysitters all waited patiently for their turn to pull up to the sidewalk in front of the school. Tom was fairly certain he was the only guy involved in this ritual. At least, he had yet to see another man waiting. He didn’t mind. He figured it was a lesson in patience, something much required in being a dad, and it gave him a few minutes to make phone calls away from the noise and interruptions of the shop.

  He called to let the owner of a ’38 Studebaker know that he’d finally located a rear-seat deck at a salvage pick-and-pull in Ohio.

  He gave the bad news to the fellow who’d just bought a “cherry Mustang” that the engine had been rebuilt.

  And he reminded the very wealthy developer from Olmos Park that he still hadn’t been paid for the drivetrain work on his 1970 GTO.

  One of the calls he made was to Mrs. Gilfred.

  “I just wanted to let you know that ‘Clara’ made it safely to the shop.”

  “What you say?” the older woman hollered into the phone. “Who is this?”

  Tom repeated himself more loudly a couple of times before Mrs. Gilfred understood.

  “Oh, thank you for letting me know,” she said. “I watched them pull away and I honestly felt as if I was waving goodbye to an old friend.”

  Tom smiled. He could understand that connection. “Try to think of her as going to a vacation spa for a little rest and rejuvenation,” he said.

  “Say what?”

  Tom repeated again.

  Mrs. Gilfred chuckled. “That certainly sounds better,” she said. “I only wish I was there myself.”

  He patiently went over everything that he’d told her earlier about his impression of the vehicle’s condition, and he reassured her that as soon as he’d made a complete assessment, he’d be back in touch.

  “I didn’t get most of that,” the old lady complained. “I can’t hear a blame thing over this telephone.”

  Since Tom was already yelling into his cell, he found that fact almost as frustrating as she did. He made a mental note to find a way to communicate with her directly in the future.

  When he edged up to the pickup spot in front of the school, he put his phone away. He flipped down the passenger-side visor, displaying the bright yellow number 214. But it was unnecessary. Mrs. Salinas, the first-grade teacher, recognized him. Quint did, too. His son was all bright smiles as he hoisted his book bag and came running in his direction.

  “Good afternoon,” he said to the pretty, young teacher as she opened the rear passenger door.

  Quint scrambled inside and into his booster seat. He managed to buckle himself in.

  “See you tomorrow,” Tom said to Mrs. Salinas.

  “Yeah, see you tomorrow,” Quint echoed.

  His son’s smile for his teacher was absolute adoration, and the one she returned to him was equally genuine. With parents she was more guarded, but that was okay, too. She obviously loved her job, and if Quint’s enthusiasm for school was any measure, she was good at it.

  Tom pulled away from the curb, slowly, carefully, cognizant of all the kids being kids, not paying attention, and their parents distracted. He didn’t mind taking it slow.

  “I was like the smartest kid in my class today, Dad,” Quint confessed excitedly. “I did better than anybody, except Maddycinn Guerra, and she’s like the smartest every day, so that doesn’t count.”

  Tom grinned. “Just so you do your best,” he said. “Your mom and I are always proud when you do your best.”

  Quinton Bentley was six years old. His light brown hair was cropped closely to his head, making his big brown eyes seem even larger and brighter than they were. He was a little bit small for his age. Perhaps the remnants of his early struggles as a preemie, born six weeks early, or maybe it was some long-ago ancestor who was short and slight. It didn’t matter to Tom. He was just happy that his child was healthy. And it didn’t seem to matter to Quint. He’d been blessed with a temperament that looked at the world to see all the positives, not the negatives. Other boys might be bigger, but they could never win at hide-and-seek by scrunching inside the radiator closet. And none of them were ever small enough to slide beneath the chain link to retrieve the softball when somebody hit it over the fence.

  Tom paused for traffic at the street in front of the school. Their home was to the right. The neat little two-bedroom, postwar house was on French Place just on the other side of Woodlawn Lake. But he turned left instead, toward Zarzamora. From there he drove north to Fredericksburg Road toward his shop on West Avenue.

  “Did you know my teeth are going to fall out?” Quint asked him.

  Tom raised an eyebrow as he glanced in the rearview mirror. “Do you have a loose one?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Quint answered, and then continued to try to talk as he tested each one.

  “There’s no need to be in a hurry,” Tom assured him. “Baby teeth usually start coming out next year, I think.” “Baby teeth?” Quint scoffed at the description. “I’m no baby! Mrs. Salinas calls them deciduous teeth, Dad. Babies don’t have teeth at all.”

  He nodded. “I guess you’re right,” Tom said.

  “All our deciduous teeth come out, and then we get permanent teeth that are bigger and stronger,” Quint informed him. “Do you know what that’s called?”

  Tom shook his head.

  “Exfoliation.”

  “That’s a big word,” Tom pointed out.

  Quint agreed. “I like big words,” he said.

  Tom smiled.

  “Cody Raza said that when our teeth come out, we can put them under our pillow and get money. Is that true?”

  Tom was thoughtful for a moment. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully. “I think we’ll have to ask your mother on that one.”

  Erica was the one who knew about what families did and what traditions they should or shouldn’t have. Tom knew nothing about families until he had one of his own. His life before Erica had provided the kind of education that most people never acquire. It had prepared him for a lot of things. Love and family, however, were not among them. He was feeling his way through parenthood one day at a time. His wife always assured him that love, patience and good intentions were all that was needed. Still, some details required a breadth of experience that Tom simply didn’t have.

  “I hope it’s right,” Quint said with great seriousness. He pulled a very scary look as he counted his teeth, speculating how much money they might bring him.

  Tom chuckled.

  A few moments later, he turned into the driveway of their family business. Bentley’s Classic Car Care or, as th
ey called it, “the shop,” was a dream come true. It had been Tom’s dream, but it would have never come true without Erica.

  The long brick building with four service bays was set far back from the street, surrounded by ten feet of metal fence and twenty-four-hour video surveillance. Tom kept the place neat as a pin and free from the marks of taggers and graffiti artists. He was asking car owners to trust him with valuable vehicles. Even the ones in sad disrepair were irreplaceable. His customers needed to see that he understood that.

  Tom drove through the gate and parked his car in the back of the building. Quint gathered up his book bag and the two headed inside.

  His young son announced his presence with a general yell, “I’m here!” he said, as if everyone had been waiting for him.

  Tom’s three employees stopped what they were doing long enough to acknowledge the six-year-old.

  Hector Ruiz was forty-something. He was an excellent mechanic and really knew his way around old cars. Unfortunately, he was also overly familiar with alcohol. He was a binge drinker who would disappear without warning for weeks at a time. None of his former employers would tolerate that. Tom did. Because when Hector was on the job, he was the best.

  Gus Gruber would never be that good. Gus was short, fat and nearing sixty. He was a capable mechanic. He knew how things worked and how to replace parts that weren’t functioning. But his real skill was bodywork. He was an artist, in his own way. And like an artist, he had a temperament that might be mistaken for laziness.

  Cliff Aleman was Tom’s oldest friend and the guy most like Tom himself. They were both a couple of years past thirty. They both had great wives. Cliff had two kids, a boy and a girl.

  Tom and Cliff had been roommates at Job Corps. Later they’d been bachelors on the town, sharing a cheap, stripped- down apartment with mattresses on the floor and a fridge full of beer. Back then, both of them dreamed about owning their own business. Cliff’s dream was still in the dream stage. And it didn’t look to Tom like it would get out of that phase anytime soon. He and his wife Trish had just bought a new house in Westover Hills. It was in a clean, pretty, just-built subdivision with a brand-new elementary school. It was hard not to be envious, but Erica talked him out of it.