Chapter 11
Chloe stepped outside her apartment, a lidded travel coffee cup in each hand, and started for the front of the building. Knowing Bret, he’d be here to pick her up promptly at nine-thirty, if not earlier.
Sure enough, she met him halfway down the steps leading up to her floor. At his quizzical look, she said, “Tiffany’s still in bed. I didn’t want to wake her up.”
More to the point, she didn’t want to answer any questions. Kate had already gone to work the breakfast shift at the diner, but a knock from Bret might be just enough to rouse Tiffany, who had the late shift, in time to provoke some unwanted curiosity. She’d told her roommates she was going to “a work thing,” trying to make it sound as tedious as she could.
It was a work thing, after all. Nothing to get excited about, other than the chance to see Dr. Macias again. Chloe had admired her in college—a woman in her mid-forties with a PhD, who’d challenged Chloe to work so much harder than she’d been required to do in high school.
That was why she was giving up her Saturday. It had nothing to do with a man who, a couple of weeks ago, had been her nemesis. So she’d dressed much the same way she would for a typical day at the office. Okay, the blue silk blouse she wore under her sweater was a favorite, but they’d been having warmer temperatures lately. And Barstow was in the High Desert.
Bret, who’d gone back to his trusty gray blazer, nodded at the two cups in her hands. “Is one of those for me?”
“No. I’m a two-fisted drinker.”
For half a second he hesitated. Chloe couldn’t hold back her grin. Gotcha, Mr. Deadpan. She handed him one of the coffees. “Leaded. Lots of cream.”
“Perfect. Thanks.”
She figured Bret wouldn’t turn down caffeine. For her, it was essential. She was perennially behind on sleep these days.
He took the cup and led her to the curb, where a vintage black Mustang convertible waited. Chloe couldn’t conceal her surprise.
“I didn’t know this was yours,” she said as he pulled the passenger door open for her.
He lifted an eyebrow, but didn’t comment. She supposed it should have been fairly obvious. The employee lot was sparsely populated most mornings, but there were always some cars there. She just didn’t know which ones belonged to the overnight crew and which belonged to early arrivals. The Mustang had caught her eye, but—well, it didn’t seem like Bret’s type of car. Sleek and sporty, it came from a time when cars were built for style and speed, instead of practicalities like fuel efficiency.
Inside, it was free of the type of clutter that littered most cars, her own included. No scraps of notes, no junk mail, no candy wrappers. That didn’t surprise her.
He got in beside her, started the engine, and turned to her. At her puzzled look, he prompted: “Seat belt.”
“Should I be worried?”
“No. Just a good habit. You never know.”
“In my own car, I always do.” In friends’ cars, she’d found, the safety belts were usually stuck somewhere in the seat cushions, if she could find them at all. Not the case here. She clicked her seat belt into place and gave him a nod: Proceed.
Bret pulled away, and their unlikely adventure had begun. Within a minute, Chloe found herself racking her brains for words. What was it about being alone in a car with someone that magnified every silence? She fished through her mind for topics: Nice weather we’re having. Boy, your car sure is clean. So, how’s that coffee? If that was the best she could come up with, the two-hour drive would pass by in dog years.
Bret must have had the same feeling, because a couple of blocks into the drive down Evergreen Lane, he pressed a button on the car stereo. Crunchy electric guitars blared out at a volume that made Chloe jump. Immediately Bret hit another button, and the snarky rock was replaced by the drone of a commentator. National Public Radio, probably.
He turned the volume down and gave her an embarrassed glance. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Nobody’s NPR all the time.” She nodded at the console, intrigued. “What was that?”
“Weezer. They started out in the nineties—”
“Please.” Chloe blew out a puff of air. “I know who Weezer is.” Emboldened, not to mention curious, she pressed the button Bret had hit. The guitars returned. She listened a moment. “But I don’t have this album.”
“It’s Pinkerton. Their second.” He nodded at her feet. “There’s a binder of CDs under your seat. If you like Weezer, you might like some of the other stuff, too.”
Chloe reached down and fished out the folder. “I didn’t think to bring CDs. I’ve got some music on my phone, though.”
“This is a 1965 Mustang. It doesn’t do MP3s.”
“If you were being authentic, you’d have a cassette deck.”
Bret shuddered. “Authentic is one thing. Cassettes are an abomination.”
As they turned onto the highway leading out of town, Chloe flipped open the CD folder and felt a surge of delight. They had overlap. Not a hundred percent, but a lot. Bret’s music had a surprising amount of bite: Green Day, Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Cage the Elephant, more Weezer. Holy cow, the Smiths. And, sure enough, the Beatles, a must in any breathing human being’s music collection as far as Chloe was concerned.
The trip ahead suddenly looked a lot shorter.
“You have taste.” She flipped another of the plastic sheets. And squinted her eyes at him. “Wait a minute. Bon Jovi?”
He colored faintly. “Guilty pleasure.”
She thought of the songs on her phone. She actually had a playlist labeled JUNK FOOD. “My biggest guilty pleasure is the Knack.”
“The Knack? I’m surprised. Some pretty sexist stuff there.”
“Yeah, but it’s good-natured. You can tell they’re kidding.”
He shook his head. “That might be wishful thinking. I’m not sure they were kidding. Guys take a little longer to grow up.”
“How much longer?”
He flicked her a grin. “What time is it?”
She couldn’t resist saying it. Maybe she’d had a little too much caffeine. “That’s not what Sherry said.”
She watched Bret for his reaction. The car may have veered slightly, but other than that, he only chuckled. “That was so long ago, hardly anyone remembers. Sherry and myself included, most of the time.”
She watched Bret, but his eyes stayed on the road, making any reaction hard to detect. He wasn’t easy to faze, but between the two, he’d probably been more disconcerted when she found the Bon Jovi CD. She persisted, “I’ve got to admit, I’m still trying to figure it out. You and Sherry? How did that even happen?”
Bret sighed. “I was a senior, she was a sophomore. She needed an English tutor, I was available.”
“Okay. Still. I love Sherry, but what did you have in common?”
“Hard to say.” Another shrug. “Who are you when you’re seventeen? Think back. What kind of people did you have crushes on in high school?”
And suddenly Chloe’s face felt hot. Quiet, brainy types. Often with glasses. “I take the Fifth Amendment.”
Bret nodded in satisfaction. “I rest my case.”
While Bret’s eyes were on the road, Chloe stole a look at him, careful not to turn her head much. It was hard to say what made a face handsome, aside from a certain symmetry of features. With Bret, she supposed it would be the firm line of his mouth, and those almost fierce dark eyes. But he was undeniably good-looking, and she didn’t understand anyone who couldn’t look past a pair of glasses to see that. To Chloe, the glasses only added.
Still, she doubted that any of the guys she’d secretly crushed on in high school had ever grown into a Bret. Like the more popular guys in her high school and college years, he didn’t seem to care much about what other people thought. Not out of conceit, like the jocks she’d dated in her teens, but simply because he had more important things on his mind.
She returned her eyes to the windshield, before he could catch her staring, and shifted the topic. “Okay. One more question.” She folded her arms. “What color is Sherry’s hair, really? She always tells us she doesn’t remember.”
“Light brown. The facts are never as interesting as the mystery.”
Chloe contemplated Bret’s profile again. I don’t know about that, she thought.
“Your turn,” Bret said suddenly, without turning his head. “I’m still trying to figure out you and volleyball.”
“I told you. It’s competitive, and I was good at it. What’s to figure?”
“I’m not sure. It’s either too obvious or not obvious enough. It seems like you’d avoid the expected. You look like a volleyball player. Except—”
She waited.
He said, tentatively, “Aren’t you a little short?”
She laughed. “That’s what the other teams thought, too. Every game, they’d start out aiming the ball at me. And I’d ram it down their throats.”
Bret laughed. “Okay. Now I get it.”
“I don’t like being underestimated. But I love fighting back.” She grinned, glad he understood. “Plus, it was something my dad could get into. My brothers had their sports, and I was off in my room writing. You can’t exactly cheer a writer.”
“Hmm.” Bret glanced at her again.
“My dad’s a bright guy,” she added. “He’s been a supervisor at the cable company for nearly thirty years. He just relates to things that are more—external.”
Bret nodded. “Got it. My dad owes your dad a debt of gratitude, by the way. The TV’s almost never off at his house. He leaves it on for the news.” He paused. “And the noise.”
Conversation paused, and Bret turned up the Weezer CD.
As they wound their way down the mountain, the pine trees grew more sparse. An hour later, they were passing through bona fide desert, with yucca plants and scrubby-looking dry trees, punctuated by suburbs. Victorville even had a mall, and Tall Pine didn’t. As signs of civilization thinned out again, Chloe frowned. “I wonder why they decided to have the awards way out here.”
“Two reasons I can think of. The event is at the Harvey House. It’s a historical landmark, about a hundred years old.”
“What’s the other reason?”
Bret grinned knowingly. “It’s only two and a half hours from Las Vegas. On a Saturday afternoon, I’ll bet they figured a lot of people might keep going and make a weekend of it.”
“Sin City, huh?”
“You’ve got it.” Bret ejected the current CD from the player. “Could you grab the Foo Fighters, please?”
“Sure.” Chloe pulled out the disc and put it in the player.
Eyes on the vacant stretch of road in front of him, he said, “This is the part of the drive I enjoy the most.”
Chloe didn’t see anything but blue skies, dry brush, and a ribbon of straight gray road. There weren’t even any other vehicles in sight. “What’s here?”
Bret advanced the CD a couple of tracks forward and slid a glance her way. “Absolutely nothing,” he said.
He turned up the volume and stepped on the gas. The car surged forward while the music blared.
Chloe’s heartbeat quickened at the sudden burst of speed. But there was, as Bret said, absolutely nothing in their way. Nothing but open road and soaring guitars as the Mustang opened up, smooth and sure, riding the dips and swells of the pavement. She loosened her hold on the door handle. Bret spared her one sly grin before returning his attention to the road.
For one song, the car sailed over the blacktop. When the next song started, Bret eased up on the gas, and they returned to normal highway speed. Seventy miles per hour felt slow by comparison.
“Now I know why you told me to fasten my seat belt,” she said.
“No. That’s for all the maniacs out there on the road.”
“You’re lucky we didn’t get pulled over.”
“Never had a ticket in my life,” he said placidly.
Chloe frowned. Even in irresponsibility, Bret was carefully responsible. “There’s something almost sad about that,” she said.
“I don’t know about that. I can’t say I’ve ever lain awake at night because I have a clean driving record.” A smile tickled at the corners of his lips, making her heart do those funny things it wasn’t supposed to do. “Now, you. You strike me as someone who’s talked her way out of a ticket or two in her life.”
He looked at her just as she felt the temperature of her face rise again. “Maybe,” she admitted.
“And how’d you get away with it?”
“My dad always taught me to call a policeman ‘sir.’”
“Uh-huh. And maybe you made your eyes a little extra big?”
Her blush deepened. It was true. Although her father certainly hadn’t taught her that.
“So you’ve been known to turn sexism to your advantage. Let’s face it. If I tried that, the cop would have me hauled out in three seconds to search the car. Because he’d be sure I was up to no good.”
“Talk about sexism. What if it was a she?”
“Mmm, I still don’t think it would be smart for me to do the big-eye thing.”
“Your point?”
“Nothing, I guess. Except that we grew up in different worlds. In my world, I had to get by on being a careful driver. So I’m careful about when I break the rules. Plus, I’m not interested in getting killed.”
“That’s something else most boys don’t learn until they’re about thirty.”
“True.”
* * *
They reached their destination ten minutes later, and Bret was almost sorry to get there. Being in the car with Chloe had felt like some sort of a safe zone—a desert oasis from real life. Away from other people, it had been easy to talk, even when it wasn’t about anything important.
A vacation, he decided. That’s what this was. At least, as close as he’d come to one in years, unless you counted taking time off for his dad’s illnesses or repairs on the old house. Just for one day—or for several hours of it, anyway—not to be the boss or the reporter, the caretaker or the caregiver. To enjoy the way Chloe’s eyes devoured the arches and bricks of the old Spanish-style building before they even stepped out of the car.
Not everyone got excited about twentieth-century historical sites, but as they walked toward the entrance of the Harvey House, Chloe grabbed her phone and started taking pictures.
“What is this place?” Ignoring the brisk wind, she stopped for another shot of the row of arches in front of the long two-story building.
“It was a hotel and restaurant for people traveling by train. There were a bunch of Harvey Houses in the late 1800s, early 1900s, when we were still settling the West. It’s still a working train station.”
Chloe’s camera phone swung to include the railroad tracks that stretched behind the building.
She was equally enthused about the lobby—inevitably decorated for the holidays, with wreaths, garland, and a Christmas tree in the corner. Bret watched as she took in the period décor with her eyes, then documented it voraciously on her phone: the copper chandeliers overhead, the gleaming wood of the reception counter, the stairs leading to the second floor. “Can we go up?”
“Sure. It’s not roped off.”
Chloe started up ahead of him, her light steps taking the stairs at an impressive clip, while Bret followed at a more leisurely pace. He’d been here before; this time around, the real sight was Chloe’s reaction to the charm of the place. The stairs made a ninety-degree turn at the halfway point; before she started up the second flight, Chloe turned around to photograph the Christmas tree in the lobby from her new vantage point. Still on the first flight of stairs, Bret stopped his own climb just to watch her. The phone covered half her face, but it couldn’t completely obscure her smile.
She shifted, aiming her phone’s camera again, and the flash hit his eyes. Bret flinched inwardly. He hated to be photographed.
“I’d better not be in that picture.” His words sounded more abrupt than he intended.
Her smile dimmed as she lowered her phone. A guarded look returned to her eyes, one he hadn’t seen since they left Tall Pine.
No. Not here. This day wouldn’t last long, and he didn’t want anything to disrupt it.
“You might break the camera,” he amended lightly. He resumed his progress up the stairs to join her. Chloe’s expression lightened again.
They continued up the stairs and down the hallway, peering into the roped-off rooms. They’d re-created the former stationmaster’s suite with an office that included a vintage typewriter, and a bedroom with its original furniture. A plaque on the wall boasted that the bathroom included a tub reportedly used by Winston Churchill on a 1929 visit, but to Chloe’s great disappointment, they couldn’t see it from their side of the velvet rope.
They returned to the hallway and stopped at the landing that led back to the stairs. Her camera temporarily at rest, Chloe leaned her folded arms on the railing and looked down at the heads of reporters arriving for the luncheon.
She smiled at Bret. “Look. Those people down there look like . . . slightly smaller people.”
Bret leaned his elbows on the railing alongside hers. “Think they’d like it if we tossed down breadcrumbs? Like ducks?”
It earned him a chuckle. And he wondered if, like him, Chloe felt a little reluctant to join the crowd.
“You’ve been here before?” she asked.
“The Harvey House? Sure. I like history, and I love obscure tourism.”
“This place is amazing.” There it was again—that unguarded smile. “But I meant the luncheon. Have you been to one of these before?”
“A couple of times.”
“Are you up for an award?”
He hadn’t thought to mention it. “I—yes.” He felt his face redden. “A story I did last spring on school test scores in Tall Pine, and why our students do better than the rest of San Bernardino County. It won’t win.”
“You don’t know that.”
He shook his head. That had sounded like a poor-me statement, or some kind of bid for reassurance. “Sorry, I wasn’t fishing. Just stating a fact. It’s not the right kind of story. You’ve heard the expression, ‘If it bleeds, it leads’?”
Chloe nodded.
“Well, it’s up against stories about gang wars in San Bernardino and the murder rate in Victorville. Those are just more—relevant.”
Her smile gone, she was studying him closely. Too closely.
Bret sighed. “I joke about it, but you know I don’t really want bad things to happen, right? It’s just that they do, and it’s important to write about them. Tall Pine is a great place to live, which makes it an awful place to write about.”
So why are you still there? He could see the inevitable question forming. To circumvent it, he looked down at the thinning group of people filing toward the ballroom below. “We’d better get down there and find our seats.”
As they turned away from the rail, he resisted an unexpected impulse to rest a hand on the small of her back. This vacation had unspoken rules, and he doubted Chloe was even aware of them. Today was his chance to enjoy being with her from a respectable distance, and maybe even pretend there was potential for something more. Just pretend. As long as he didn’t cross the line to try to make it a reality.
Although where that line was, and how close he could come to crossing it, was getting harder to tell.
* * *
At the entrance to the ballroom where the luncheon was being held, a beige-haired woman behind a table took Bret’s tickets in exchange for two adhesive name tags. Chloe grinned as she jotted her name on her tag with one of the black marking pens provided. “I always have the urge to write, ‘If lost, return to 325 Hilltop Road.’”
She slapped the tag just below the light blue shoulder of her blouse. Bret, who’d been known to quietly disregard name tags, reluctantly followed suit. They continued into the banquet room, which was filled with reporters, about half of them seated while the others stood chatting in clusters.
“You’re right,” he said. “It looks like a luggage tag convention.”
The room was more than half male, and memories of the Christmas party earlier this week surfaced in his mind. Bret wasn’t anxious to deal with predators of either the executive or the Mike-from-the-press-room variety. He was glad when Chloe opted to look for seats right away, and he was equally pleased when she chose a seat next to a woman with a smart-looking gray pageboy haircut. Bret sat at her other side, figuring he’d precluded any wolf attacks.
That was, until a twentysomething guy with eager blue eyes and a snappy red tie landed directly across from Chloe. His name tag proclaimed that he was Tyler Shepperton from the San Bernardino Sun.
It seemed to Bret that he’d met a lot of shallow, self-serving guys named Tyler.
“I’m Anne Rueland,” the woman on Chloe’s left said. “Are you two together?”
Chloe’s mouth formed an appealing “o.” Clearly she’d been caught off guard.
“We’re both from the Tall Pine Gazette,” Bret said. If that left a little ambiguity, he didn’t bother to clarify it. He nodded past Chloe. “I’m Bret. This is Chloe.”
Anne nodded back, her gray eyes keen but kind. If she’d been looking for personal details, she took the hint and let it go. “It’s nice to meet you both. I’m with the Mount Douglas Herald.”
For some people in Tall Pine, mention of Mount Douglas—the bigger town up the mountain with enough regular snowfall to warrant a ski resort—brought out a sense of rivalry. Chloe only smiled.
“So we’re neighbors,” Chloe said. “I think you probably win the award for longest distance traveled.”
While Chloe made small talk with their new friend, Bret noticed the kid across the table—sorry, you weren’t a man until you needed to shave more than twice a week—kept eyeing Chloe. She had to be aware of it. But as beverages were served and conversation spread over the rest of the table, Bret noticed something else: the way Chloe managed to acknowledge Tyler Shepperton while limiting eye contact with him. Bret thought again of the Christmas party. It must be a constant for her, contending with male attention, whether it was from executives, coworkers, or the occasional traffic cop.
Traffic cops aside, it shouldn’t be part of her job to deal with admirers diplomatically. He needed to remember that, before he became part of the problem.
But today, away from the office, he still wanted to pretend.
As Anne got involved in a discussion with a man from Victorville, comparing notes on their weather challenges, Chloe lowered her eyes from her latest admirer and started reading the program left at the side of her plate. Idly, Bret picked up his program as well. Chloe’s former instructor was the only one shown with a photograph, but below that, there were brief biographies of the other two speakers as well.
Somewhere along the line, McCrea had sent them updated information that included Bret’s bio. He hadn’t expected that. He skimmed the paragraph: born in Tall Pine, graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. . . .
He turned his own program face down and glanced again at Chloe. He knew she’d seen it when her eyes widened.
“Bret.” Lovely gray-green eyes stared at him. “You interned at the Washington Post?”
Her words fell into a conversational lull at the table, and suddenly all eyes were turned on him. He fought off a sense of discomfort. While Chloe was used to being looked at, Bret preferred to recede into the background, which served him well in his work as a reporter. When necessary, it made it easy to be a fly on the wall, to watch and listen and observe.
“The Washington Post?” Anne echoed, and of all the people at the table, he would have guessed she’d be the hardest to impress. Tyler looked relatively blank, and Bret tried to decide if he was jealous or clueless.
“It’s not as big a deal as it sounds,” Bret said. “They have a couple of dozen students go through there every summer.”
“But it has to be awfully competitive,” Anne said.
“What was it like?” asked a woman on Tyler’s left who’d been quiet up to this point.
He drew a breath. He definitely wasn’t used to being the center of attention, not like this. And although he didn’t look at her, he could feel Chloe staring at him with a million questions.
“Really exciting,” he admitted. “And hard work. The place is intense.”
“So you walked where Woodward and Bernstein walked,” the man on Anne’s left said. Maybe that would clue Tyler in.
For the next five minutes, Bret fielded questions, and though the answers weren’t hard, he was surprised at how foreign it felt. He was used to being the one to ask the questions. And he was acutely aware of Chloe’s eyes on him, and all the questions she wasn’t asking. Not yet. But he knew she remembered their conversation that night at The Snowed Inn, and he’d be hearing from her later.
It had been the most dizzying, exciting time of Bret’s life, until it all came to a crashing halt. In the town of Tall Pine, the Washington Post might as well be on the moon. He never talked about it.
At last the conversation turned toward the film version of All the President’s Men, and Bret exhaled. By the time their food arrived, conversation had moved on to the quality of the chicken. Chloe delicately picked at her meal while Tyler Shepperton pelted her with questions about snow in Tall Pine.
Bret marveled at the way Chloe controlled the wattage of her smile. Polite, friendly, but not too encouraging. The way she had with Mike from the press room. The way she had with Lloyd Mossel, until she was leaving the building. Another thing she shouldn’t have to do. And then, on her way out, she’d felt safe enough to let the full brightness of that smile shine through.
He didn’t remember eating his chicken. And when it was time for him to speak before the first award was presented, he didn’t remember what he said. Thank God for preparation. He knew some people were terrified of public speaking, but for Bret, that came much more easily than dealing with a table of six.
His speech must have been coherent, because there was a decent round of applause as he made his way back to their table. At least they hadn’t fallen asleep. What Bret remembered was Chloe’s face as she made room for him to return to his chair.
And her smile was bright.