Nothing Personal (26 page)

“How about going away with me this weekend
?” Alec asked Rae a week later. The investigation and its aftermath had shaken even his optimism, and he didn’t like how tense she’d been looking. It would be good for both of them to leave the City for a day or two, even if there were some work sessions involved.

They’d
just come from his place, where they’d showered after another yoga session, during which he’d actually managed to balance on one leg, lean forward, stick both arms and his other leg into the air, and stay there, which he’d been fairly proud of.  He didn’t know what it was called, but he’d done it. And watching Rae in her stretchy little shorts, twisting her sweat-soaked body into those interesting positions, always gave him good ideas. But right now, he was taking her out to eat, which was another of his favorite things.

“I was thinking abou
t Point Reyes,” he said. “Remember that thing about walking barefoot on the beach? We haven’t done that yet. I’m falling behind here.”

“That sounds wonderful
,” she said with a little sigh, “but I told my grandma I’d come visit. It’s the three-month anniversary of her heart attack, do you realize?”

“
Yeah, I can certainly see why she’d want to celebrate that milestone.”

She laughed, took another bite of
roasted rock cod with Italian peppers, another sip of Chardonnay, and he watched her savoring both. “She does want to, though. A survival celebration, I guess, and I thought I could take her out to lunch on Saturday with the girls and Lupe, let them splash out a little. That’s my big weekend plan.”

“Well,” he found himself
saying, “I should probably visit my folks too. Why don’t I take you, give us both some company on that drive? Much as I know you enjoy driving your clown car. We could go up Friday night, come back Sunday afternoon. Sound good?”

You are so screwed
.
Gabe’s words after that Christmas lunch were right there in his head, loud and clear, and he knew why he was really offering. Because he didn’t want to spend the weekend without her.

And it was even worse than that, because he ended up taking them all to lunch. Rae and her grandmother, Lupe and Mrs. Sanderson and Mrs. Chang, and Mrs. Calhoun too, the fourth member of the pinochle group.

He wasn’t even sure how it had happened. He’d started out by offeri
ng his services as a chauffeur so the ladies could have a drink, all except Rae, the other designated driver in the party. He’d ended up, somehow or other, at a big round table in Olive Garden with five women. And when he’d convinced Rae that she really ought to have a margarita or two and let him worry about the cars, with five
toasted
women who hadn’t made more than a token effort at the “lunch” part of the outing.

“He was
scampering down that corridor,” Mrs. Sanderson was saying now, barely able to get the words out, her gray curls shaking, “naked as a jaybird, laughing his fool head off, with two nurses running after him, shouting, “Mr. Williams! Mr. Williams! Get back in here!”

The others were holding onto the table, tears running down their cheeks,
and an older man sitting with his wife at the next table caught Alec’s eye, shook his head with a resigned smile.

“This is . . .
empty,”
Rae said when her laughter had subsided. She picked up the margarita pitcher and waved it in an extravagant motion. “That is so sad. Don’t you think that’s sad, Alec?”

“That’s sad,” he agreed.
He raised a hand for the waitress. “Another iced tea for me, please,” he told her. “And another pitcher for the ladies. Another virgin margarita for you?” he asked Dixie.

“Oh, I’d better
.” She wiped her eyes. “One’s my limit now, and that’s what’s really sad.”

“You know what, Alec?”
Rae asked him, midway through the next round. She’d grabbed his arm, was looking up at him seriously.

“No, what?”

She snorted a little, worked her face into seriousness again. “You’re very, very handsome. Everybody wants to go out with you, but you know what?”

“No, what?”

“They don’t get to,” she proclaimed. “Not any more. Just me. Just only me, did you know that?”

“I did know that
.” He grinned back down at her. “Just only you.”

He turned to Dixie.
“What do you think? Time to go?”

“Oh, honey
,” she laughed, “I think we’d better. Desiree’s going to have a headache tonight, that’s for sure. Never seen her so silly.”

When the waitress came with the c
heck, Rae lunged for it, missed completely, and Alec handed it back along with his credit card.

“I’m supposed to pay,”
she told him plaintively. “I always pay.”

“
Nope. Not any more,” he told her. “Just only me.”

It was a bit of a hilarious effort sorting them into his car and the waiting taxi, but he managed it in the end. Sent Rae, Dixie, and a sleepy Lupe off with a word to the cab driver, installing Rae in the front seat, of course, and delivered the other ladies himself, with Mrs. Sanderson as his final stop.

“
We had an unexpected change of plan,” he told the old man who’d come to the door of the mobile home at his wife’s rather noisy entrance. “I’m afraid your car’s still at Olive Garden. If you want to give me the keys, I could get a cab back there to pick it up.”

“
Naw.” Mr. Sanderson reached for the cane beside the door, grabbed a 49ers cap from the hanging rack and settled it over his scant white hair. “No need to spend good money on that. I’ll go on with you, get it myself.”

“They got a little loopy, did they?” he asked when he’d lowered his skinny behind in its tan slacks into the big car, pulled his cane in after him, and Alec had shut the door and got in on his side.

“Y
es, sir,” Alec said with a reminiscent smile, pulling out of the mobile home park and onto the main road. “They sure did.”

“Well, you know, women need to have
their fling now and then to be happy,” the old man said with a chuckle. “You should see them on Pinochle Night. When it’s at our place, I go on over to Stuart Grainger’s and watch TV, ’cause those girls get
loud.”

Alec laughed. “Not too hard to imagine at all. They sure seemed to be having a good time today.”

“Yup. They’ll have enjoyed that, ’specially having Desiree take them out on the town. Desiree, now, she’s got a special spot in everybody’s heart. Always been a good girl, and she still is. She does our taxes every year, did you know that?”

“She does?”
Alec asked, since Mr. Sanderson seemed to be expecting an answer.

“Yup. Ours, and
Iris Chang’s, and her grandma’s too. Started out with Dixie’s when she was, oh, ’bout sixteen. Dixie was all set to go to H&R Block like usual, but Desiree looked it up on that computer, figured it out. Smart as a whip, that girl. Dixie bragged on her, of course. We wasn’t too sure, but Dixie got her check right enough, and Desiree said, now that she’d done it for her grandma, she might as well do ours too. Course, we tell her she doesn’t have to bother, now that she’s got that big job and all, but she does it just the same.”

“I didn’t know that,” Alec said when the other man paused
again.

“Yup. Always been smart like that. And hard-working? Phe
w,” the old man said with a wave of one scrawny brown arm in its baggy white short-sleeved shirt. “Now, Dixie’s a hard-working woman, don’t get me wrong, but Desiree? You never saw her without some big book, full of math or what-not. That’s when she wasn’t working all the hours God sent to pay for that college. Hasn’t forgot her roots, either. Visits, calls, and I know she sends up a check every month. Do anything for her grandma.”

“Now, woman like that,” he went on, as Alec had another light turn yellow on him, pulled to a stop, “woman who’s had the kind of hard time she has, too, she deserves good things. I’m sure you got a big house to go along with this fancy car, and you ride around in limousines, drink champagne and what-not, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about fur coats and diamond rings. I’m talking about a man to treat her the way she deserves, be good to her. Appreciate her the way a man should appreciate a good woman.”

“Yes, sir,” Alec said, putting his foot thankfully on the gas again. “You’re right.”

“
I heard you was hanging around her,” Mr. Sanderson said. “Now, I’m not saying your mama and daddy didn’t raise you right. We’re Lutheran ourselves, but everyone knows Reverend Kincaid’s a good man. But who knows what kind of ideas you’ve gotten into, down there in San Francisco. Maybe you’re thinking, just ’cause Desiree doesn’t have a daddy who cares about her, you can go on and mess with her, break her heart. But she’s got plenty of people who think the world of her, and I’m telling you here and now, you treat that little girl right.”

Alec had a vision of a posse of senior citizens
, chasing him down and beating him to death with their walkers if he screwed up.

“Yes, sir
,” he said again. “I will.”

“
And I’m sure you’re thinking,” the other man went on as if he hadn’t spoken, “if you needed a lecture from some old man, you’d go on home and get it from your own grandpa. But young people today, they seem all mixed up to me. The girls think they got to run after the boys somehow, try to get them interested. They don’t realize we was
born
interested. They’d do better to let us know they’d be doing us a favor by even noticing us, but they got it all backwards, maybe ’cause they don’t have daddies at home, I don’t know.”

“
Well, don’t worry,” Alec said, turning into the Olive Garden parking lot with a prayer of thanksgiving. “Desiree’s got that down. In fact,” he couldn’t help saying, “maybe you want to have this conversation with her, about not messing with
my
heart.”

“Huh.” The sharp little eyes
took him in from beneath the brim of the ball cap. “You fall in love with that girl?”

“Yes, sir,” Alec admitted, pulling up beside the old Taurus. “I sure have.”

The old man shook his head slowly, chuckled a little.

“Then, son,” he said, reaching for the door handle
and shoving it open, “Lord help you.”

“Your phone rang while you were gone,” his mother said a few hours later from her spot at the stove when Alec had pulled off his running shoes, wiped his face on his T-shirt, and come in through the laundry room after a very long run that had shaken some of the cobwebs from his mind.

He went over and picked it up from the kitchen table, smiled, and pressed his thumb against the
name.

“Hey,” he said when she picked up. “
Feeling better?”

He heard the rueful
laugh. “Yeah. I took an
extremely
long nap, and I have a bad feeling it’s going to be followed by an early bedtime.” She did sound sleepy. “I can’t believe I drank that much. And I’m pretty sure I remember that I left you to pay the bill. Let me know how much it was, and I’ll pay you back, and for the taxi too.”

“Oh, no, you won’t
. My pleasure. Getting five beautiful women the worse for wear? Are you kidding?”

“Wait a sec,” he said, ignoring her protest. “My mom’s hissing something at me.” He held the phone against his chest, looked at his mother, and asked, “What?”

“Lunch,” she said, gesturing furiously. “Tomorrow.”

“I think my mom’s inviting you to lunch tomorrow,” he said, to the accompaniment
of her emphatic nods. “You and your grandmother. And Lupe too,” he went on, correctly interpreting his mother’s circling hand.

“Oh. Let me check.” She was gone a moment herself. “My grandma says yes,
thank you, but Lupe goes to Spanish Mass, and she’s having lunch with friends afterwards, so it’s just us. And,” she said, and he heard the resignation in her voice, “my grandma says she’ll bring her Jell-O salad for dessert.”

“Desiree,” he said sternly, “you really need to learn how to cook.”

She laughed. “Hey. You want to see us, or what?”

“I want to see you. And
on that note, how’s that couch working out for you? That can’t be too comfortable. Want me to come get you tonight? You could sleep in Alyssa’s room.” He raised his eyebrows at his mother again, got her nod in return, and stepped back out into the laundry room, shut the door behind him. “And if I happen to wander in there during the night,” he said more quietly, “well, as long as you can keep it down, nobody has to know about that.”

“Alec,” she said, and he could hear the giggle that he hoped was only partially the residue of the margaritas, “I wouldn’t dare. Not with your dad there. We’d be struck by lightning or something.”

“Gabe and Mira sleep together when they’re here,” he pointed out. “And they’re not married.”

“Yet,” she reminded him. “Engaged is different.”

“Well, we’re engaged up here, remember? I told that nurse so and everything. That probably gives it the American Nursing Association seal of approval.”