The Kiss on Castle Road (A Lavender Island Novel) (8 page)

“So do you want your usual?” Cynthia asked.

“Yep. Double everything, though. My sister eats a lot.” Paige tucked the menu back into the holder.

Several of Olivia’s friends seemed to know they’d be there and came over to their table to introduce themselves and say hello. Tag wasn’t one of them, much to Natalie’s relief. She knew Olivia was trying to set her up with friends to lure her out here—trying to show off how awesome Lavender Island was and get Natalie immersed in her community and lifestyle. And maybe lure Paige out here, too. But Natalie didn’t want to be lured. She didn’t want to settle down. Especially not on an island—she didn’t like the idea of everyone knowing everyone else’s business. It all sounded so suffocating.

When the last friend left, Paige leaned over the table. “Tell me about this new job.”

While Natalie explained it, their appetizers came, and they both dove in as Natalie finished her story about all the famous people who apparently lived at Casas del Sur. When Steve Stegner had given her the tour, he’d told her that four previous Rose Parade chairmen lived there, a former Los Angeles Rams owner, a trumpeter from Les Brown and His Band of Renown, the woman who’d invented the No Lines girdle in 1960, and two former state senators.

“How fun,” Paige said. “Sounds like it could be a great opportunity for you.”

“I’m not looking for ‘opportunity.’ I’m just looking to make a little money while I’m here.”

Paige’s eyebrow lifted.

Clearly Paige wanted to say something about that, but Natalie avoided asking and sipped her cocktail instead. The 1970s jukebox in the corner fired up—Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Going Out with Him?”—and Paige’s silence lengthened. Finally, Natalie couldn’t stand it any longer. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“What did you want to say?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes, you did. Tell me.”

Paige gave a long-suffering sigh. “I’m just thinking that maybe that’s what you’re missing. You’re missing the opportunities that are floating in front of you. You’re so focused on avoiding boredom and staying in motion that you’re missing some wonderful possibilities that could pan out if you just threw some energy behind them.”

“I don’t want a lecture, Paige.”

“You
wanted
me to tell you!”

They both shook their heads and sipped their drinks at the same time. It was their long-standing argument. Paige the workaholic and Natalie, who avoided sticking around.

After a few seconds of sulking, they both smiled at each other, which was their way: quick to snap, but quick to forgive. Paige leaned forward and ducked her head conspiratorially. “Speaking of opportunity, I wonder if that’s the rest of the dart league.”

Natalie turned to see the most recent crowd pushing through the bar doors, then sucked in her breath a little when she saw Dr. Nerd himself. Arriving with another pretty blonde.

Elliott made his way across the terracotta tiles of the Shore Thing bar, to the scent of hearty beer and the loud strains of Joe Jackson on the jukebox, hesitantly guiding Lynne at the small of her back. She’d told him right away—when he’d met her on the sidewalk—that she didn’t like to be touched, so he moved his hand away as soon as he remembered and glanced through the dim lighting.

He frowned at the strange sea of tie-dye and adjusted his glasses, which he’d worn tonight instead of the contacts, despite Nell’s warning. Those contacts were killing him. Lynne would just have to deal.

They shuffled past a white-leisure-suited John Travolta look-alike and a woman dressed as Elvis in the
Aloha from Hawaii
special, and Elliott frowned again, desperately searching for a table. He was still confused about why Lynne had wanted to come here. When Nell had told him the date was set up for the Shore Thing, he’d tried to change that plan. The Shore Thing was fun and all—he’d been there exactly twice, both times with Jim for a quick after-work beer—but it was a bar, not a restaurant, and he’d thought first dates should probably happen in a restaurant, right? Nell had argued that first dates were wherever the woman wanted. Elliott had just shrugged and said, “Let’s get it over with then.”

“There’s a booth over here,” he said to Lynne, resisting the urge to guide her again.

Lynne was aggressively pretty, with carefully lined red lips and heavily black-lashed eyes. She looked a bit too pretty, actually, and he had a moment of disbelief that Nell thought she was right for him. Plus, she seemed a little too much into primping. She’d already checked her purse mirror three times, and they weren’t even at their booth yet.

She looked around before she slid in, then frowned at the sticky tabletop, lifting her elbows off the brown table and tucking them into the sides of her sundress. Her dress was attractive—it gave him a nice glimpse of her shoulders; a pretty, tanned collarbone; and even a tiny bit of cleavage where her top began to dip. He waited for the little surge of lust that normally accompanied such a view, but for some reason it wasn’t happening here. Maybe he just needed more time. Maybe if he got to know her first . . .

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to Figaro’s?” he shouted.

“No, that’s okay,” she said.

He looked around at the crazily dressed patrons. “You think it’s sixties night or something?”

“Seventies,” she said.

Of course.
He reassessed some of the costumes. “Maybe we should have dressed up.”

“It might have helped,” she said.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She pushed her hair over her shoulder and pulled her phone out of her purse, scrolling through a few messages. It struck Elliott as rude, but he decided not to say anything. Maybe it was an emergency or something.

He scanned the menu and let her finish her messaging, then tried to engage her on what sort of appetizers she might like. She delicately picked up a laminated menu from the chrome salt-and-pepper holder.

He ordered a beer, and she ordered water, and he asked her a ton of questions about herself, but she gave him only brief answers, her eyes still darting around the bar.

“Can you take off your glasses?” she suddenly asked.

Elliott blinked back his surprise. “Take them off?”

She nodded.

“Why?”

“Nell said you had pretty eyes.” She threw a little smile into that line that looked vaguely flirtatious.

Elliott quickly removed his glasses and laid them on the table. He could barely see her now. But he thought she might still be smiling.

“You do have pretty eyes,” she said. Or at least that’s what he thought she said. With both his hearing and vision impaired now, he suddenly felt flustered and wasn’t sure where to look next.

“I’m going to run to the little girl’s room,” she announced. He thought she was holding up a finger.

“Do you want me to order for you?” He squinted at the menu.

“No, I’ll be right back.” She slid out of the booth before he could say anything else, dragging her huge purse behind her.

A disco song lit up the jukebox—Gloria Gaynor, he identified—and the bartender grabbed a microphone and announced round one of a dart tournament.

Elliott turned in his seat. He’d always liked darts. He shoved his glasses back on and watched the teams assemble. Eventually, he switched to the other side of the booth so he could have a better view.

A hot-pink-wigged woman in bell-bottoms on the dart team captured his attention, and he found himself leaning forward at the table, staring at her stance as she practiced her aim. She had good form. And
a
good form. His eyes made a quick assessment of her shapely behind as she leaned over a bar stool and laughed lyrically at something one of the other players said. He didn’t stare at women often—his granddad had taught him to be respectful—but this one held his attention. Her joyful laugh, her confident movement, the way she didn’t seem flattered by the fact that every guy in the bar was checking her out—he found himself peering much too long over the top of his menu. Damn, he didn’t know what was happening to him here on Lavender Island. He was on a
date
, for God’s sake. With someone Nell thought was in his league.

Stay focused, man . . .

He tore his eyes away and scanned the menu again while he tried to think of what else to talk to Lynne about.

A buzz on the booth seat caught his attention, and he glanced down to his left. It was Lynne’s phone. It must have fallen out of her purse. He didn’t mean to zero in on the screen, but the message flashed clear and blue:
Hey, sorry he’s a loser. I’ll call you in five and you can make your excuses.

Elliott blinked at the display a few times. He read it again. Then another time. Then, as realization slowly dawned, he moved back to his side of the booth and removed his glasses with a sense of defeat.

When Lynne returned, she gave him a placating smile, then saw her phone.

“Here it is! I thought I lost this.”

She slid back into her seat to the sound of Rick Dees singing “Disco Duck” on the jukebox. She started to throw her phone into her purse when it buzzed in her hand.

“Hello? . . . Oh no.” She glanced up at Elliott and gave an Oscar-worthy performance—complete with hand over her mouth.

He pretended to study the menu.

“I’m so sorry—that was work. It seems there’s a late thing I have to go in for.” She stood abruptly, dragging her bag up over the table, and knocked his glasses to the floor. They skidded to a halt right behind a huge crowd at the bar.

He swung forward to pick them up, and she bent at the same time. The crowd at the bar moved back just an inch until the terrible sound of crunching glass somehow drifted through the disco-duck quacks.

“I’m so sorry, Elliott!” She gave him a ridiculously exaggerated look of disappointment.

He always had a hard time acting and couldn’t even come up with an appropriate expression of surprise. He simply nodded and collected the broken pieces of glass in his hand. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

“No! No, that’s okay. You stay. The calamari is good here. I’ll catch you soon, okay? I’m so sorry about your glasses.” She was already on her way toward the door.

He shuffled to the bar to enjoy the last of his beer and pay for it. He’d just sit for a minute, listen to this next song by Earth, Wind & Fire, and then find his way home and tackle some gene sequencing. At least the sea lions needed him.

As he waited for the bartender to come by—studying his glasses to see if he could find a quick fix, trying to concentrate on how he’d expand his notes on the sequencing—his mind kept drifting to what he’d done wrong. He wasn’t cut out for dating. That was the bottom line. He wasn’t cut out for marriage either, truth be told. He couldn’t imagine giving all his attention to someone else when there was so much work to do. He should call Nell and just cancel this ridiculousness. These dates were excruciating for all parties involved.

A figure to his left crowded him, and out of his peripheral vision, he caught sight of the hot-pink wig. It was the sexy woman in the bell-bottoms. She leaned over the bar, directly at his elbow, and asked for a gimlet. His body reacted to her before his brain could. He felt the heat from her polyester blouse, smelled a spicy scent from some kind of exotic perfume. His heart began pounding. He tried not to look directly at her and scooted away—why torture himself with reacting to gorgeous women when he couldn’t even make a date last? But she turned toward him ever so slightly and closed the gap between them just as he was trying to elongate it.

“Whoever your matchmaker is, she’s doing a terrible job,” she said, her voice drifting toward his ear during a brief instrumental from Earth, Wind & Fire.

He turned his head over his beer and—in disbelief—met the feisty brown eyes behind pink heart glasses that had been part of his dreams just last night.

“Natalie?” he breathed out.

Damn, chemistry was a funny thing . . .

CHAPTER 7

Natalie had seen the whole debacle.

Dr. Nerd’s latest date—who Paige had told her was dental assistant Lynne from Main Street Dental—had given him the classic Have-a-Friend-Call-You-Away brush-off. And had even managed to get his glasses trampled as she’d practically flown out the door.

Natalie had watched the whole thing over the rim of her pink glasses, between dart throws and sips of her gimlet. She’d had to look away at the end, trying to remember if she’d ever employed that ruse herself, and instantly felt bad when she realized she had. Although she’d done it because she’d thought she was in danger from a three-hundred-pound biker in LA. Not faced with a kind man like Dr. Sherman. And she certainly would have offered him a ride home after breaking his glasses.
Sheesh.
Sometimes her own kind embarrassed her.

“So who’s your matchmaker?” Natalie asked, leaning farther toward him and deciding she needed to get to the bottom of this issue with Dr. Sherman and his revolving door of dates.

“How can you tell I have a matchmaker?”

“These just don’t seem like women who suit you.”

“Ah.” He lifted the beer bottle to his lips and eyed her over the rim. “Thanks for not mentioning the alternate possibility.”

“What’s that?”

“That I don’t suit
them
.”

She took in his soulful eyes, his sexy-messy hair, his tanned wrists, his long fingers, and thought she might be able to think of a few women he’d suit just fine. But she shrugged the thought off and leaned more casually against the bar top.

“My sister is my matchmaker,” he finally answered. “She’s set me up on dates every night this week. I’m on date three, and zero for three, I think.”

Natalie cocked her head and leaned a little closer. The next song came on the jukebox—“Werewolves of London”—and she took her heart-shaped shades off so she could see him better. Dr. Sherman had really remarkable eyes—a sharp, crystalline blue, seeming to take in everything, with the most ridiculously long lashes. He kept inching away, which kind of hurt her feelings, so she backed off a little.

“Maybe I can help,” she blurted. As soon as the words left her mouth, Natalie questioned their wisdom. She didn’t even know where that idea had come from.

He turned more toward her, though, which made the comment feel like a success. At least she’d finally gotten his attention. “And how is that?” he asked.

“I can coach you.” As she said it, the idea began to take shape. It would be fun to spend time with him. She could still be on a mancation. And his matchmaker was obviously throwing him to the wolves. “How many dates do you have left this week?”

“Two.” He winced as if the very idea hurt.

“Where?”

“Tomorrow night’s is at the art walk downtown.”

“Oh, the Wednesday Art Walk. I’m going to that anyway. Where is the other one?”

“Thursday’s is at the new restaurant next to the pier—the tiki one?”

“The Wanderer?”

“That sounds right.”

“Maybe we’ll run into each other and you could secretly sign to me how things are going. I’ll see if I could lend you some tips.”

“Why would you do that?”

She took a sip of her drink. How much could she admit here? Could she say he sort of fascinated her and she just wanted to spend time with him? She didn’t want to act as though she were coming on to him.

“You seem like a nice guy,” she said instead.

He looked at her skeptically.

“You’re good with the sea lions. But I know women. And I know Lavender Island women in particular. And I know dating. Trust me, I’ve got this.”

B. J. Thomas came on the jukebox next with “(Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song,” and Dr. Sherman glanced into the mirror behind the bar, then stared into his beer. “I’m not a charity case.”

“You sort of are.”

He shot a look her way, his eyebrows raised, but then eventually laughed. He had a low, sexy laugh—deep and reluctant, as if it was a gift to anyone who cared to pull it out of him.

“Maybe you’re right.” He took a swig of his beer and looked at her sideways. “So, what are you doing here tonight, and who am I stealing you away from?”

“I’m here with my sister, but I’m sure she’s not missing me. We’re playing darts, and she brought me here to apologize.”

“Apologize for what?” He took another drink.

“For laughing at my mancation.”

He choked a little and brought his bottle down. “Is a ‘mancation’ what I think it is?”

“It depends on what you think it is.”

“Sounds like it could be either a vacation to find men or a vacation
from
men.”

“Which do you think?” she asked.

“Well, I doubt you need a vacation to find men, so I’ll guess the latter.”

“Yep.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before,” he said. “How long does a mancation usually last?”

“I had planned three months, but my sister bet me that I couldn’t keep it going for three weeks.”

“And she was apologizing for . . . ?”

“For laughing that I couldn’t last for three weeks.”

“Ah. So you know dating, huh?” Dr. Sherman asked.

“I’m pretty good at it.”

“You like to date?”

“I used to.”

“What’s different now?”

“I’ve had some bad experiences.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Hence the mancation.”

“Nice hypothesis.”

He smiled at that. The dart crowd erupted into a cheer, and they both looked that way. But Natalie soon turned back to Dr. Sherman. She scooted a little closer—he smelled so good, like sandalwood and earnestness. And she liked the look of his sinewy forearms along the bar—it reminded her of the way he’d had them wrapped protectively around Alice last night.

But he casually sidled a little farther away. She sighed.

“Plus, my sister invited me here to play darts,” she added, her disappointment hopefully covered up by her voice.

“Ah. Yes. I noticed you earlier. You have good form.” He cleared his throat and pushed at his cocktail napkin with the beer bottle.

“Do you play?”

“I do.”

Somehow she’d guessed that. “Do you want to play with us?”

He studied her, then pushed a bill across the counter to the bartender with a wry smile. “I think I’ve embarrassed myself enough for one evening.”

He picked up his broken glasses, then gave her a quick nod as he tried to move out of the small gap she’d left between them. “But I’ll see you at the center Thursday, right? As Doris said, Larry, Curly, and Moe should be out of ICU then. You could bring your niece by.” A piece of his sandy hair flopped into his eyes in the cutest way, and he swiped at it.

“Oh! Yes!” She was surprised he was leaving so abruptly. Did she say something wrong? “You know I—” She tried to move away as he politely stepped around her. She wondered if he didn’t like her. Maybe she came off as too aggressive. She’d cultivated a long life of being aggressive when necessary, but she needed to learn to back off when faced with situations that didn’t warrant it. Or men who didn’t warrant it. “I um . . . I got a new job. And it might be at the center some of the time.”

He stopped and snapped a look back at her. “Where?”

“At Casas del Sur. I’ll be driving the seniors around—and sometimes to the center.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

A crowd right behind them let out another loud cheer and clattered bottles together in a toast as Dr. Sherman seemed to think over her news. “I might see you sooner then.”

“Yes. And maybe you’ll let me help you with your date tomorrow?” she asked.

He gave an embarrassed laugh. “Why don’t we talk about that if you come to the center tomorrow? I might’ve had one too many beers to agree to that right now.”

“How many have you had?”

“One.” He squinted toward the door, as if trying to figure out where it was, then headed toward the exit sign.

“Wait—you probably can’t drive with your glasses like that.” Natalie glanced at the mess in his hands. “Would you like me to drive you home?”

But he’d already shoved his glasses and his hands in his gabardine slacks and was making a beeline for the door.

Natalie sighed.

Maybe smart, kind men just would never be attracted to her.

Elliott pushed his way through the crowd, which was spilling out into the street.

It would be a pretty long walk home, but his glasses were a bit beyond hope right now, and his driving through the night, even in a golf cart, would be reckless at best.

But there was no way he was going to accept a ride from Natalie Grant.

He was just too nervous around her. Gorgeous women could do that to an introvert.

Best to get her out of his mind. Or at least out of his mind as someone he could date. She’d laid it out pretty clear with her mancation story.

Of course, she
did
seem to think of him as a charity case, so that was an option, he supposed, if he wanted to be fully pathetic. He could be her pet project and let her help him with his dates.

But no. As much as he liked being near her, he had to draw the line somewhere between his testosterone and his pride.

He shoved his hands deeper into his trouser pockets and squinted at the busy street, trying to remember where the back canyon road was on this little island. He knew there was a path leading the back way to his house—he’d even run it once—but now, in the dark, without being able to see clearly, he couldn’t quite locate it.

He walked another two blocks, following the sound of his beloved ocean, and then pulled his glasses out of his pocket and peered through the shattered left lens at the street sign.
Ah, Oak Lane.
That sounded right.

He glanced back over his shoulder to make sure no one from the bar could see his goofy self, then shed his shoes and socks, shoved the lens back into his pocket, and took off in a cross-country-style gait toward the trail he was pretty sure would lead back home.

He’d forget about Natalie. He’d just get through these next two dates for Nell, then refocus his life on the sea lions. He would probably leave Lavender Island as soon as he could.

He was striking out here.

Story of his life.