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When she opened the door, he stood there, leather jacket over an untucked shirt the blue of faded jeans, thumbs tucked in the pockets of dark pants.
Casual, she thought again. He certainly knew how to be.
“You look good.”
She started to step out. “Thanks.”
“Really good.” He didn’t move out of her way, but into her. A smooth move, she’d think later, that put his hands in her hair and his mouth on hers.
“You didn’t say where we were going,” she managed. “Or how . . .”
She spotted the car now, a low-slung beast in shining black. “That’s quite a car.”
“It’s heading toward cold tonight. I didn’t think you’d want the bike.”
She walked off the portico and had to admire the lines. Del had been right. It was very slick. “It looks new, but it’s not.”
“Older than I am, but it’s a nice ride.” He opened the door for her.
She slid in. It smelled of leather and man, a combination that only made her more aware of being female.When he got in beside her, turned the ignition, the engine made her think of a fist, coiled and ready to strike.
“So, tell me about the car.”
“Sixty-six Corvette.”
“And?”
He glanced at her, then shot up the drive. “She moves.”
“I can see that.”
“Four-speed close-ratio trans, 427 CID with high-lift camshaft, dual side-mount exhausts.”
“What’s the reason for a close-ratio transmission? I assume that was transmission, and the close ratio means there’s not much difference between the gears.”
“You got it. It’s for engines tuned for max power—sports cars—so the operating speeds have a narrow range. It puts the driver in charge.”
“There wouldn’t be any point having a car like this if you weren’t.”
“We’re on the same page there.”
“How long have you had it?”
“Altogether? About four years. I just finished restoring it a few months ago.”
“It must be a lot of work, restoring cars.”
He slanted a glance at her as his hand worked the gearshift. “I could point out the irony of you saying anything’s a lot of work. Plus it’s a driveable ad for the business. People notice a car like this, then they ask about it.Word gets around.Then maybe some trust fund baby who’s got his granddaddy’s Coupe de Ville garaged decides to have it restored, or some dude with a wad of cash wants to revisit his youth and hires me to find and restore a ’72 Porshe 911 wherein he lost his virginity, which takes some doing in a 911.”
“I’ll take your word.”
He grinned. “Where’d you lose yours?”
“In Cabo San Lucas.”
His laugh was quick. “Now, how many people can say that?”
“A number of Cabo San Lucans, I imagine. But to return to the car, it’s very smart.The idea of a driveable ad for your business.”
It did move, she thought. Hugging the curves of the road like a lizard hugged a rock. And like the bike, it spoke of power in subtle roars, smooth hums.
Not practical, of course, not in the least. Her sedan was practical. But . . .
“I’d love to drive it myself.”
“No.”
She angled her head, challenged by the absolute denial.“I have an excellent driving record.”
“Bet you do. Still no.What was your first car?”
“A little BMW convertible.”
“The 328i?”
“If you say so. It was silver. I loved it.What was yours?”
“An ’82 Camaro Z28, five speed, cross-fire fuel-injected V8. She moved, at least when I finished with her. She had seventy thousand hard miles on her when I got her off this guy in Stamford. Anyway.” He parked across from a popular chophouse. “I thought we’d eat.”
“All right.”
He took her hand as they crossed the street, which gave her, she told herself, a ridiculous little thrill.
“How old were you when you got the car?”
“Fifteen.”
“You weren’t even old enough to drive it.”
“Which is one of the many things my mother pointed out when she found out I’d blown a big chunk of the money I was supposed to be saving for college on a secondhand junker that looked ready for the crusher. She’d have kicked my ass and made me sell it again if Nappy hadn’t talked her out of it.”
“Nappy?”
He held up two fingers when they stood inside, got a nod and a wait-one-minute signal from the hostess. “He ran the garage back then, what’s mine now. I worked for him weekends and summers, and whenever I could skip out of school. He convinced her restoring the car would be educational, how I was learning a trade, and that it would keep me out of trouble, which I guess it did. Sometimes.”
As she walked with him in the hostess’s wake, she thought of her own teenage summers. She’d worked in the Brown Foundation, learning along with Del how to handle the responsibility, respect the legacy—but the bulk of her holidays had been spent in the Hamptons, by the pool of her own estate, with friends, with a week or two in Europe to top it off.
He ord
ered a beer, she a glass of red.
“I doubt your mother would’ve approved of the skipping school.”
“Not when she caught me, which was most of the time.”
“I ran into her yesterday.We had coffee.”
She saw what she’d seen rarely. Malcolm Kavanaugh completely taken by surprise. “You had . . . She didn’t mention it.”
“Oh, it was just one of those things.” Casually, Parker opened the menu. “You’re supposed to ask me to dinner.”
“We’re having dinner.”
“Sunday dinner.” She smiled. “Now who’s scared?”
“Scared’s a strong word. Consider yourself asked, and we’ll figure out when it’ll work. Have you eaten here before?”
“Mmm.They have baked potatoes the size of footballs. I think I’ll have one.” She set her menu aside.“Did you know your mother worked for mine occasionally—extra help at parties?”
“Yeah, I knew that.” His eyes narrowed on her face. “Do you think that’s a problem for me?”
“No. No, I don’t. I think it might be a problem for some people, but you’re not one of them. I didn’t mean it that way. It just struck me . . .”
“What?”
“That there’d been a connection there, back when we were kids.”
The waiter brought their drinks, took their order.
“I changed a tire for your mother once.”
She felt a little clutch in her heart. “Really?”
“The spring before I took off. I guess she was driving home from some deal at the country club or wherever.” Looking back, bringing it into his mind, he took a sip of his beer. “She had on this dress, the kind that floats and makes men hope winter never comes back. It had rosebuds, red rosebuds all over it.”
“I remember that dress,” Parker whispered. “I can see her in that dress.”
“She’d had the top down, and her hair was all windblown, and she wore these big sunglasses. I thought, Jesus, she looks like a movie star.Anyway, she didn’t have a blowout. She had a slow leak she didn’t notice until she did, and pulled over, called for service.
“I’d never seen anybody who looked like her. Anybody that beautiful. Until you. She talked to me the whole time.Where did I go to school, what did I like to do. And when she got that I was Kay Kavanaugh’s boy, she asked about her, how she was doing. She gave me ten dollars over the bill, and a pat on the cheek. And as I watched her drive away I thought, I remember thinking, that’s what beautiful is.What it really is.”
He lifted his beer again, caught the look on Parker’s face.
“I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
“You didn’t.” Though her eyes stung. “You gave me a little piece of her I didn’t have before. Sometimes I miss them so much, so painfully, it’s comforting to have those pieces, those little pictures. Now I can see her in her spring rosebud dress, talking to the boy changing her tire, a boy who was marking time until he could go to California. And dazzling him.”
She reached out, laid a hand over his on the table. “Tell me about California, about what you did when you got there.”
“It took me six months to get there.”
“Tell me about that.”
She learned he’d lived in his car a good portion of the time, picking up odd
