Return to the Beach House (4 page)

Just the thought of spending her days going from trainer to trainer was enough to goad her to get moving to find him a car. She checked for traffic and crossed the street, saying a quick prayer that jaywalking tickets weren’t a primary revenue source in Monterey.

While Tanner Motors had the same basic setup as every other used-car lot she’d visited that day—red, white, and blue bunting flapping in the breeze, the price of the car or an upgraded feature written on the windshields, the “Hot Deal of the Day” sitting on a rotating raised platform—one thing was missing: a salesman.

With that in mind, she took a deep breath and entered the dealer’s office, a converted modular home tastefully decorated in earth tones and early Spanish artwork.

A man just shy of six feet tall, with salt-and-pepper hair and a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his nose, smiled as he pushed his chair back from his desk and rose to greet her. “Good morning,” he said as if he sincerely believed it was. “How can I help you?”

“I’d like to buy a car,” she said.

“Hopefully, I can help you with that.” He dropped his glasses on his desk and held out his hand. “Kyle Tanner,” he said. “Owner, chief salesman, and part-time financial officer of this fine establishment.” It was said with an appealing twinkle in his eyes.

She put her hand in his, expecting a softness that wasn’t there. Somewhere, at some time, Kyle Tanner had led another life that had nothing to do with sitting behind a desk. “Alison Kirkpatrick,” she replied.

“How about we start with what kind of car you have in mind.”

“Something for my grandson.”

“A gift?”

“Not exactly. We’re renting a house in this area for the next four weeks and won’t be going in the same direction most days. It would be nice to have two cars.” She considered his question again. “Does it matter?”

“Only in giving me an idea whether you’re looking for a car that would look good with a big bow sitting on the hood or one that will keep money in his wallet when he pulls out of the gas station.”

The phone rang. He looked to see who it was and let it go through to voice mail. “I’m going to assume you’ve already tried the standard rental route and there was a problem?”

“It’s his age. He won’t turn eighteen until August.”

“And no one will rent to someone that young,” he said, nodding. “Why don’t we start by taking a look at what’s on the lot. That way I can get an idea of what you think would appeal to your grandson.”

She followed him out the door. “I should tell you up front that I’d like to work something out that you’ll buy the car back thirty days from now—at a fair profit for you, of course, plus something for your trouble.”

“I guess that would depend on the car you choose. Pick one of the losers I’ve been trying to move for six months and it’s going to be pretty hard to talk me into allowing it back on the lot.” He softened the words with a chuckle. “I seem to wind up with a disproportionate number of vehicles with only a couple of years left in them. If you want to sell me a used car, attach a sad story to it and I’ll fall for it every time. I keep the better ones around for people who need cheap transportation. The others I junk.”

“Then I’ll try to pick one that you’re sorry to see leave.”

He stopped beside a Subaru. “Is this going to be your grandson’s first car?”

“Yes.”

“Is he more the athletic or academic type?”

“Both, actually. But I really don’t care what we get as long as it’s reliable. It’s a thirty-day romance, not a marriage.”

“What’s his sport?”

“Dressage.” The only sport where the contestants competed in top hat and tails.

“Ah, that must mean he’s come to California looking for a new horse?”

“Yes,” she answered, surprised that he knew enough to ask. “Judging by the scores he received before his horse was out of commission, his trainer thinks Christopher should move to the next level. That requires a horse capable of moving up with him.”

“Word is that there are a couple of exceptional Dutch and German warmbloods at Harden Stables. I imagine they’re on his list?”

She wasn’t sure whether they were or not. Christopher did most of his own research and negotiating using his trainer for advice when he felt he’d gotten in over his head. She limited her involvement to enthusiastic spectator. “You’re a rider?”

He shook his head. “Just a longtime friend to someone who is. He and my daughter were engaged, but it didn’t work out. I think she got tired of coming in second place to a horse.”

“I’ve seen it happen,” she said.

Alison stopped to look at a metallic blue 2006 Mustang convertible. It was what Dennis would have called a muscle car, owned by someone who considered his transportation an extension of his personality. She tried to picture Christopher behind the wheel and couldn’t. He wasn’t the muscle car type. She started to move on when it hit her that maybe it was time her grandson tried something new. “How much is this one?”

“Twenty.”

“
Thousand?
”

“This isn’t a six-month car. It has less than twelve thousand miles on the odometer, and according to the mechanic at the shop where I have everything checked, it’s not only show-room quality, it’s as sound as a twenty-dollar gold piece. I could ask another three or four grand, and it would still be gone by the end of the week.”

“If you were going to buy this for your grandson—”

“I wouldn’t.”

She frowned. “Why not?”

“It’s too much car for a seventeen-year-old. Especially a first car.”

She peered through the window at the interior. It looked brand-new. “He’s very responsible.”

“I have no doubt. Kids who do well in school and ride dressage rarely have enough time to get into trouble.” He pulled a yellow cloth out of his back pocket and used it to wipe a set of fingerprints off the hood. “Give that same kid a car that pouts if it’s driven under seventy and thirty days with little to do but run around looking for something to do, and you’re just asking for trouble.”

“Christopher isn’t like that,” she insisted.

Kyle laughed. “
Every
guy is like that. It’s in our genetic makeup, the same way it’s in the genetic makeup of preteen girls to be attracted to Justin Bieber. Neither one makes sense, at least not to me, but there you have it.”

She was tempted to tell him that even as a young girl she’d never been drawn to the “pretty” Bieber type, that it was the raw sexuality of Bruce Springsteen that made her toes curl, but that was the kind of conversation you had with longtime girlfriends, not a man you’d just met. “Okay, you have my attention. What kind of car would you recommend?”

He thought a minute. “How involved is he in the care of his horse?”

“If he could, he would spend all day every day at the stables.” If it didn’t come across sounding so melodramatic, and if they hadn’t just met, she would have told him the truth—riding had saved Christopher’s life.

After his father and grandfather died, he’d pulled deeper and deeper into himself until there was nothing left of the little boy who had charmed jaded cab drivers in Manhattan as easily as he’d captivated the men and women who worked in Dennis’s office. Struggling with their own grief, Alison and Nora did what they could to help Christopher, including sessions with the top child psychiatrist and grief counselor in Manhattan. Nothing stopped his decline.

Finally, unable to fill her own void, Nora went back to work, leaving Christopher’s day-to-day care to Alison. He was eight, and on the verge of being lost to them forever, when Alison was invited to spend a week at a friend’s house in Dutchess County, near Rhinebeck.

There, Christopher met Ransom, a black-and-white tobiano pinto pony rescued from a roadside petting zoo. Too proud and too stubborn to be trained with a whip, Ransom had been neglected, then starved, and finally abandoned to die in his stall. The magic moment between Christopher and Ransom had happened as gently as a fall leaf floats through the air.

Ransom had crossed the paddock, stopped in front of Christopher, and nudged his hand. Christopher straightened his fingers and offered his apple, smiling for the first time in months when Ransom worked his muzzle to move the apple into his mouth.

Somehow Ransom had recognized a kindred spirit in Christopher and was enticed to open his heart one more time. They formed what would become a lifelong bond at that first meeting. Before she and Christopher were headed back to the city at the end of the week, Alison had found and put a deposit on a neighboring horse property. At the time, she thought of it as a retreat from the city, a place where she and Christopher and Nora could escape old memories and create new ones, if only on weekends.

She’d dipped into an account she hadn’t touched since Dennis died to pay for the property and house and full-time caretaker. To her surprise, she discovered that she liked seeing and experiencing an investment far more than looking at numbers on an investment account.

Not for a moment had she considered the possibility that the house would become a home for her and Christopher or that she would slip into the role of surrogate mother when Nora started traveling again and found her own escape in fourteen-hour workdays.

Kyle brought her back to the present when he pointed to the back of the lot. “I have something I’ve been saving for the right buyer.”

She followed him to a multi-stall garage, where he pressed a coded keypad. The door closest to them opened. Inside, Kyle proudly explained, was a 1949 Chevy five-window truck, a classic for a collector, especially one itching to do the minor restoration work remaining that would make it his own.

Alison managed to hide her disappointment as she walked around the truck, noting the small dings and scratches and chipped paint that went with a vehicle that was over sixty years old. Why would he offer her something like this? “A little on the tired side, wouldn’t you say?”

“Wait for this.” He popped the hood and stood back with a broad grin. The engine compartment and motor looked brand-new. “It belonged to a friend of mine who had to liquidate for a divorce settlement. He worked on it frame off, personally cleaning, replacing, or restoring every piece. He was getting ready to send it out for paint, but put it back together to sell. Everything’s done but the body.”

So the truck wasn’t a loser he was trying to get rid of. “I’m not sure why you think Christopher would be attracted to something like this,” she said, sincerely puzzled. “I’ve never heard him express interest in anything older than six months—not clothes or music or movies. He’s like his friends—waiting for what’s next, not looking back to what was. This truck is almost as old as I am.”

“That’s not possible.”

“What part?” she asked, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth.

“You can’t be over fifty.”

Sincere, or part of the sales pitch? “I’m sixty. Or at least I will be in a couple of months.”

“There are half a dozen things I could say to that, but let’s just leave it where I started. You don’t look a day over fifty.”

Alison laughed. “I remember when I thought fifty was ancient.” Focusing on the truck again, she said, “I don’t know . . .”

Kyle ran his hand over his chin. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You show him the truck, and if he can’t see past the cosmetic, bring it back and we’ll get him in something he likes better.”

“Just not the Mustang,” she said, offering him a conspiratorial smile. She looked inside the cab. Like the engine, it was the product of loving hands. “All he really needs is something that will get him from point A to point B for the month we’re here.”

She spoiled Christopher. He was as aware of it as she was, and they both knew why. He tolerated it the way he tolerated his work-addicted mother’s need to keep busy and his own need to follow in his father’s footsteps, from the sports teams he’d championed to the college he would attend in the fall. In a perverse way, even the riding was a result of his father’s influence. Christopher had turned to the ring as an escape from a world where he had no control.

“I’ll make this as painless as possible,” Kyle said on the way back to the office.

Before going inside, he took a minute to wave to a middle-aged couple wandering around the lot. “Most of the new ones are on the back row,” he called to them. “Let me know if you have any questions. If you want to take one of them out for a spin, you know where the keys are.”

They returned his wave and said they knew where to find him.

“Kind of high-pressure, don’t you think?” Alison teased.

Kyle indicated the chair on the opposite side of his desk. “They’re at the planning stage right now.”

She sat and waited for him. “Which means?”

“Deciding what kind of car they’re going to buy when Fred is employed again. They come in every couple of weeks to see what’s new. If there’s anything that appeals to them, I give them the keys and they take it out for a test drive. It’s a way to kill an afternoon.”

The kindness of the simple gesture touched Alison. She was going to have to reconsider her prejudices about used-car salesmen. “That’s incredibly generous, considering there’s no chance for a sale.”

“I’ve never given anything that hasn’t come back tenfold.”

Suddenly, and with inexplicable reasoning, Alison hoped Christopher didn’t like the truck. It was the only legitimate reason she could come up with to see Kyle Tanner again before the end of her thirty days in California. “So, how are we going to do this?”

“I’m going to give you the keys, and you’re going to show the truck to—?”

“Christopher.”

“—to Christopher, and if he likes it you’re going to come back and put down whatever mutually agreed-upon deposit we come up with to cover one month’s use. I can’t see any reason to do all the paperwork for a sale and then have to redo it at the end of the month.”

She liked his plan. She especially liked knowing she would see him again before she left at the end of the month.

Now, what to do with the other twenty-five days.

Chapter 3

Alison saw Kyle a lot sooner than they’d arranged. The plan had been for him to follow her to the beach house, driving the truck while she drove the rental car, and then she would take him back to the car lot—a minimum of three hours out of his day. When he suggested she use the truck so that she could become familiar with any of its idiosyncrasies, she did fine right up to the point of putting the key in the ignition and reaching for the shift.