Ex-mas (9 page)

Everyone looks good on a stage, with a guitar,
Lila told herself. It was why famous musicians were always considered hot, even when they obviously weren't, and would be ignored on a street corner.

Beau fielded requests from the crowd and sang and played while the bride and groom led the dancing in front of him. He was a big hit--the guests

cheered and sang along, and no one sat down.

Lila stood to the side and felt like she was tipping over, fal ing headfirst into something she didn't understand, as his slightly scratchy voice managed to make old songs sound new. She didn't know how he did it--it was like his voice was a spel , and she was fal ing under it yet again.

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It's just a memory,
she told herself sternly. A memory of so many other times she'd watched Beau sing, watched his clever fingers dance across the guitar strings while his voice hinted at poetry and connected with her heart. She felt a tug deep inside her.
Just a leftover memory.

She looked up and spotted a cluster of girls by the edge of the stage. They had to be
at least
twenty-two, and were eyeing Beau with way too much interest. She tore her gaze away from them and tried to see what they saw when they looked at him.

It wasn't hard to see. Beau's blue eyes seemed to glow against al his dark hair, and his careless T-shirt and jeans showed off his lean, hard body. Lila was forced to admit something she'd been actively denying for years: Beau was hot. One of the best-looking guys she'd ever seen, as a matter of fact. It probably would have gone to someone else's head. But Beau was always, defiantly, Beau.

He wasn't as big as Erik, and he definitely didn't work out, or walk around with Erik's adorable cockiness. But there was something about the way Beau held himself that made it clear he wasn't to be messed with. That he belonged up on a stage, in front of a crowd, always and forever on his own terms.

Just then, he looked right at her and smiled.

"And now for something a little lighter," he said into the microphone. He stil held Lila's gaze. He strummed a chord, then another.

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No way.

Lila knew those chords as wel as she'd once known Beau. He'd written the song to cheer her up when she had a cold in the seventh grade. The next

time he sang it was over the phone, while she was visiting her relatives in Michigan the summer after eighth grade. They'd dubbed it their lul aby. They'd added to the song over the years, and sung it to and with each other ever since. Up until ninth grade, anyway. Lila remembered every single word.

"Roses are red, violets are blue, are you allergic to flowers, too?"
Beau sang now, up onstage. The dim light from above bounced off his cheekbones.

"What if I brought you cookies instead? One sniff of your roses and I could be dead."

Lila smiled back at him. But she stil didn't get up to join him at the mic.

It was one thing to appreciate the past. It was something else to relive it.

"That guy was lying through his teeth," Beau said as he eased back into his Ford Escort a couple hours later. He settled himself in the driver's seat and glared through the windshield at the blue-coveral ed mechanic, who had the nerve to wave at them.

"About what?" Lila asked quietly, suddenly feeling oddly shy

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in Beau's company. Probably because she was tired. It had been the longest day of her life.

"The car wasn't
that
jacked up," Beau said. "He said it was done hours ago."

"But I'm betting he took al the money anyway." Lila's dad had pointed out on many occasions that mechanics were al crooks--al the more reason she should appreciate not having a car.

"I talked him down, but it was stil six hundred and fifty," Beau said rueful y. "My best-paying gig ever, and I spent most of the money on this damn car."

Probably his best-received gig, too,
Lila thought as he guided the Escort out of the gas station parking lot and back to the winding seaside road. The guests had crowded around him at the end of the reception, and more than one had asked for his phone number, claiming they had parties they wanted

him to play, al over the state of California. One woman claimed she would fly him to Iowa.
Cougar.

"Here," Beau said, snapping Lila out of her thoughts. She had moved on to a happy fantasy where she told al the old women exactly how little chance they had with Beau. He hated everybody. He certainly wouldn't go for the elderly!

He tossed his iPhone at her, and she caught it by reflex. She blinked down at it.

"Check to see when we get service," he said. "We have to

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figure out how far behind the train we are. It's going to suck if they made it to Canada or something while we were trying to get out of Big Sur."

Oh, right.
Reality.
Lila wasn't hanging out with Beau to hear him sing or to remember that time back when or to watch old ladies slobber al over him. Or even to come to terms with his good looks. She was on a mission to retrieve Cooper and save herself from a lifetime grounding. She scowled down at the phone.

Ten minutes out from the convenience store, Lila squealed in delight.

"Service!" she cried.

"Excel ent," Beau said with relief. "And about freaking time."

Lila laughed a little as she went online and quickly looked up the status of the train on the Amtrak website. She drew in a quick breath.

"Let me guess," Beau said. "It turned supersonic and is now in Vancouver. Because why not, after everything else tonight?"

"No," Lila said, stil not believing it herself. She waved the iPhone at him, as if he could read it while navigating the dark, treacherous road. "It's been delayed! It's been sitting on the track outside San Luis Obispo for a couple of hours already!"

"No way," Beau said, laughing. He turned toward Lila, a happy glint in his eyes. "You mean we're actual y getting some good luck?"

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"There's a scheduled crew change in San Jose," Lila read off the Amtrak site as she scrol ed down further. "We can intercept them there, instead of in Oakland."

"Perfect," he said immediately, and grinned at her.

She returned his smile and settled back in her seat. Maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to spend some more time in the car with Beau.

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Chapter 10

***

SAN JOSE, CA

DECEMBER 23

12:33 A.M.

***

to col ar Cooper and throw him in the back of the car when Beau pul ed into the San Jose train station.

"The train is stil about seven minutes out," Beau said after he parked the car, glancing at his phone.

"Check it out." Lila climbed out into the chil y night air, stretching her cramped limbs. "We can actual y
walk
into the station and figure out which track the train is supposed to arrive on. It's like we're on vacation or something." She barely noticed the cold, thanks to the adrenaline pumping through her veins.

She pul ed her leather jacket tighter around her and shoved her hands into her pockets. The air smel ed like gasoline and something

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sickly sweet and floral--a far cry from the clean seaside air in Big Sur.

Beau grinned across the hood of the Escort and pul ed his hunter green sweatshirt up close around his head. The wind picked up and seemed to blow

right through them as they stood there. It had been getting steadily colder as they traveled north. It almost felt the way Lila supposed December
should
feel.

"It's freezing up here," Beau said, blowing on his hands. He started for the old train station's doors. As Lila fol owed, she found herself focusing on the strangest things: the way the cuffs of Beau's jeans were frayed and dragged against the ground. The way he leaned slightly against the cold as he walked.

The way his jeans hugged his--She shook her head a little bit and snuggled deeper into her hot pink scarf. The caffeine and sugar had clearly addled her brain.

Inside the station, the lights were so bright they were almost dizzying. Lila had to blink a few times to see clearly. She frowned, looking up at the board and trying to make sense of al the arrivals and departures.

"This way," Beau said. He motioned with his elbow, his hands shoved into his pockets. Lila walked beside him toward the track, wondering idly if the people who saw them together thought they were a couple.

As they passed a glass window, she looked at their reflection. While Beau's scruffiness was downplayed by his surprisingly

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nice hoodie, her own trademarked put-together-ness had taken a serious hit. She'd been forced to pile the entire mass of her careful y blown-out dark

hair on top of her head, using an elastic she'd found in Beau's glove compartment. She chose not to wonder who the elastic might have belonged to in its previous life. She looked bedraggled and crazy-eyed from al the coffee and sweets. If anyone
did
think she and Beau were together, they would no doubt be wondering how such a hot mess had snagged such a sexy guy.

"Crap," Beau muttered.

"Crap?" she echoed.

"I think we have to have tickets to board the train." Beau nodded toward the entrance to the track, where a uniformed employee stood guard.

"Why can't we just get on, grab them, and get off?" Lila asked.

"If you want to argue with that guy, go right ahead," Beau said. Lila took a closer look at the uniformed guard. He was radiating unfriendliness even from a distance, like Dwight on
The Office.
He looked like he would welcome the opportunity to ruin someone else's Friday night. Lila sighed.

"Yeah," Beau said. "I'l buy us tickets."

"You're using the leftover money from Big Sur, right?" Lila asked, suddenly afraid that he was using his own money. Lila was fine with him using
that
money, but she didn't want him to

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use his own to fund a caper that had probably been Cooper's idea.

Beau shook his head at her, his mouth curving slightly, like he had just tracked every thought that crossed her mind. "Stay right here," he said quietly.

A few minutes later he was back, tickets in hand. He presented them to Mr. Surly at the gate. Lila walked behind him, checking her watch. Twelve thirty-five. The train was due at 12:40.

"How should we do this?" Lila asked, peering down the track, her stomach tightening in anticipation as she saw the point of light in the distance that heralded the arrival of the long-overdue train. "How do we find them before the train leaves again?"

"I figure you start at one end and I'l start at the other," Beau said. "Meet in the middle when we're done." The train whistle sounded, forcing him to raise his voice as the train whooshed into the station and the PA crackled to life above them. "Make sure you check the bathrooms!" He took off running, chasing the front of the train down the track.

Lila moved in the opposite direction, headed for the last car. Once the train stopped, she swung aboard, not even waiting for any of the passengers to exit.

"Excuse
me!"
huffed one affronted lady, but Lila had much bigger fish to fry. Like her brother, who she'd happily fry the second she got her hands on his grimy green sweatshirt.

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The train was much longer than Lila had expected it to be--not that she'd previously given much thought to the length of trains, or for that matter trains at al , unless it was for one of those boring SAT math questions. She moved through the cars swiftly, on a mission, scanning the seats and looking in each bathroom or pounding on the locked door until the person inside angrily proved they weren't Cooper. In one car, she saw a flash of green and messy

brown hair poking over a seat.
Gotcha,
she thought. She threw herself at the seat, only to find herself face-to-face to with a startled mother and a little girl who definitely wasn't Cooper.

"Um, sorry," Lila mumbled, and kept moving.

It wasn't until she was almost to the middle of the train that she started to panic.

Where is he?

For the first time, her own annoyance and anger over her foiled plans faded away, and Lila was confronted with the fact that her eight-year-old brother was hours away from home. And not where she'd imagined him to be. Her heart began to pound. He was obnoxious, sure, but he was stil her brother. He

had the street smarts of a fluffy bunny. She wanted to kil him, but she didn't actual y want anything to
happen
to him.

"He has to be here!" she said out loud, desperately, startling the couple in the seats directly in front of her. She forced a smile and kept going.

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Above her, the intercom crackled, and the conductor warned that the train was preparing to leave the station. Lila panicked. What if something real y

had happened to Cooper? Her panic rising in her throat, she moved even faster, bursting through the doors into the middle car--the snack car.

"Al people not traveling on this service, please exit the train immediately," the conductor droned from the speakers up above.

Lila looked around frantical y at the makeshift café and long, empty tables. She glanced up to see Beau charging in through the doors at the other end of the car, his forehead wrinkled into a fierce frown, his hands empty.

"How can this be happening?" Lila demanded, knowing perfectly wel he didn't know any better than she did. "Beau--where are they?"

"Maybe they're holed up somewhere," he said, sounding desperate. "We ran through the train--maybe we didn't look as closely as we could have."

There was a lurch, and then the train began to rol .

"Great," Lila said in despair, twisting to look out the window.

"We'l look again," Beau said grimly. "We'l --"

"Beau."

He stopped talking, and fol owed the finger she pointed out the windows, to the platform beyond.