“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready,” she said, turning to lock the door and flinging her white fringed scarf over her shoulder. He stood aside to let her proceed and she suddenly stopped because there in the driveway was the shiniest, cranberry-red, restored car. “Wow.”
“I guess you can appreciate an old car.”
“Nineteen-seventy Chevy El Camino. Car or truck? That’s the question.”
“You know your cars,” he said, coming around her to open the passenger door. “You into cars?”
“Not in a big way, but this is beautiful.” But she did know her cars. She could identify just about any vehicle make and model on sight. That was part of police work. She could also remember license plates without the need to write down the numbers—not exactly a common thing among law enforcement officers, but she had a skilled memory. Beyond skilled, really.
A beautiful restored classic was all about aesthetics and Laine had a sudden and respectful appreciation for what Eric could do. When he joined her in the front seat she was caressing the dash. “Did you do this?”
“I did,” he said, turning the key and bringing the engine to life. “A friend saw her at a farm, a nonworking farm, along with four other old, wrecked cars. The property owner was ancient and didn’t give a hoot about those junkers, so I went there and made him a quick deal, handed him some cash and hauled them back to Oregon to work on. This one, I got attached to. I upgraded it, obviously—it’s not all original.”
“So you buy and restore old cars?”
“Sometimes. I have a steady clientele that comes to me for body work and I’m always on the lookout for deals, steals and old abandoned classics, not to mention original parts. Just body work...”
“This isn’t just body work,” she said, running a hand along the smooth dash. “This is art.”
That made him smile. “That’s my business.”
“I thought your business was mechanics, maintenance. And gas.”
“That’s part of it. We mean to take care of the town if we can. But body work and restoration is my first love. We’re finishing up a new paint bay in the shop. I left a lot of our specialty tools behind and this is a little like starting from scratch, but building a business makes sense. And it’s already working.”
“Wait a minute—left behind?”
“Oh,” he said with a laugh. “Okay, here’s how it went. I bought a failing business a little over ten years ago in Eugene. Over the past decade, with the help of some great mechanics and body men, we made it good and developed a loyal clientele and then some moneybags comes along and wants it bad enough to keep upping his offer until I started looking around for another place to work. Norm’s station had been for sale for years. It’s not much of a garage, really, but it sits on a real nice piece of land with plenty of room to expand. Norm never paid much attention to the space he had—all he wanted to do was pump gas, fix small stuff like brakes. He let a lot of junk collect on his lot rather than putting the space to use. I bought it, cleared it, poured a big slab and we’re expanding, literally one wall at a time. Plumbing and wiring takes more time than anything and in three months, we have a body shop and full-service garage up and running, not to mention new pumps. I’m hoping a couple more former employees from Eugene decide to join me here. We work well together. And I like the ocean.” He glanced at her, eyes twinkling. “Nice little town.”
“Nice little town,” she echoed.
“You’re the mystery,” he said.
“Me? Nah. I’m just someone who finagled an off-site telecommuting job because I had shoulder surgery. We can call it rehab plus leave of absence plus vacation, but it really boils down to—I can’t travel or manage temporary duty assignments, so I get to work from home when I can. And home can be anywhere, right?”
“Yet you drove three thousand miles to get ‘home’?”
“I can trust you to keep your mouth shut about that, right?”
He shrugged. “Who am I gonna tell?”
“Good,” she said.
“No, Laine. I mean, who am I gonna tell?” Then he peered at her with those haunting green eyes.
“The IRS? Because those sons of bitches are mean as snakes.”
He laughed. “Who’s your boss?”
“President Obama. And there could be a supervisor or two between me and Mr. President.” Then she gave him her teasing smile.
He laughed. “Why Thunder Point?”
She sighed. “The short answer is, I have a friend here. Devon is a friend of mine and once she moved here she just couldn’t shut up about this little town. I went online—my specialty, remember—and got a Realtor to send me a bunch of pictures. The longer answer—I put together a plan to take an extended leave from the government job, time to rehab, to think about whether I want to continue to live in the D.C. area, to work that much, that hard. To think about whether my heart’s still in it... It’s complicated. The pressure is terrible sometimes. I’m good at what I do, but seriously, what’s too much? I mean, do you have pressure?”
“Yes,” he said instantly. “But only the kind I like. And that wasn’t any brilliance on my part. I chose this—I like the kind of pressure I have. I serve some pretty high-dollar masters and their half-million-dollar classics. I can’t make too many mistakes. But then, I don’t make too many mistakes. Not at that, anyway.”
I don’t make many mistakes, either, Laine thought. I’m the best at what I do. Yet I can’t keep doing it.
Four
Eric had been optimistic regarding his date with Laine, but he had not really expected it to go as well as it did. First off, she asked a million questions about the restoration of the El Camino, right down to the vinyl truck-bed cover and dash instruments, where he found parts and how he pulled it all together. He wasn’t an idiot, he knew she was appealing directly to his male pride. But he could also tell she was genuinely interested, not just trying to pump him up. By the time they got to the restaurant in Bandon, he had already passed the point of no return. He was no longer just attracted to her, he really liked her.
“I hope this is okay,” he said, pulling into the parking lot of a small restaurant. “It’s not fancy but Cooper says the food is great and it’s not loud.”
“Perfect,” she said, unfastening her seat belt and reaching for the door handle.
He grabbed her wrist. “Wait,” he said. “Let me be a gentleman. At least for tonight. I’m trying to make a good impression.”
“Well, knock yourself out,” she said, waiting as he came around and opened her door.
When they were inside, he rejected the first table the waitress showed them. “How about that one?” he asked, pointing to a table in the corner rather than in the middle of the room. Then he leaned close and said to the waitress, “First date.”
“Gotcha,” she replied, smiling approvingly.
When they were seated, Laine said, “Either you’re very experienced with first dates or you’re actually suave.”
“How old are you?” he asked. “You look young, very young, but when you open your mouth there’s a whole lot of experience there.”
“Thirty-three,” she said. “Looking young was a problem when I was fifteen. When I was twenty-one, too. But at thirty-three I don’t mind that much and I think when I’m fifty I’ll be grateful. And you are...?”
“Thirty-six. For one more month.”
She ordered a glass of Cabernet, he ordered a beer and they looked at menus. Once they had decided and ordered, he said, “Now it’s your turn, Laine. I want to hear about being a researcher.”
“Aw, no you don’t. But let’s get this out of the way. I work for a government agency on a task force that involves a lot of different government agencies. Like I told you before, I do a lot of background checks, all over the place, none of which I’m allowed to talk about. I have a security clearance. Ninety percent of the time it’s not interesting and when it is interesting I really can’t talk about it. I don’t mean to be dismissive and I’m certainly not being coy, but that’s not what I’d like to talk about, if you can live with that....”
“Secret clearance, huh?” he said. “I bet you’re connected to spooky stuff.”
She shrugged. “I used to think so. But seriously, since that’s not what I’m doing right now...”
“All right, tell me what you’re interested in besides cooking.”
It was unmistakable, how her eyes lit up. “Lots of things. I love horses, though I haven’t had one since college. I rode as a kid—English saddle and dressage competition. I also took karate and competed. First my mom had me in gymnastics, which I remember as great fun, but then I grew into karate, which I still love. I love parasailing and rock climbing—all things I can’t do right now because of a weak arm, but my shoulder is healed and getting stronger all the time, so one of these days... The family had a sailboat, so I know how to sail. By the time the weather warms up, I’ll be ready to strengthen the shoulder with a kayak paddle on a bay that’s usually still and calm. I really love being outdoors.”
“You did all those things as a kid?”
She gave a nod. “What did you do?”
He laughed. “Laine, I think we had very different childhoods. My dad was a postal carrier and my mom was a housewife. I played Little League and sandlot soccer—teams and uniforms were pretty expensive. I suspect you had lots of advantages.”
“My parents were both surgeons. My mother passed away a few years ago and my dad is approaching seventy but he has an active practice and still operates. Not the way he used to—just sometimes. He’s winding down, his partners doing the bulk of the cases, but he’s still involved. Orthopedics.”
“You were a lucky kid,” he said, smiling at her.
Their salads arrived and they talked while they dug in. She told him she had no idea she was a lucky kid and spent far too much time focusing on things that didn’t satisfy her and he admitted that in his neighborhood, he’d had no idea he was poor, until much later, when he could see the difference between the haves and the have-nots.
“And you come from Thunder Point?” she asked.
He shook his head. “We moved there when I was in high school. My folks only lived there a few years, then moved closer to my older sister and her family.”
“And you’re definitely not poor now,” she said.
“I get by. I have some money saved. Not a fortune. I’m pretty tight, when you get down to it.”
“A by-product of growing up not having enough?”
He chewed a mouthful of salad. “More likely a by-product of worrying that I don’t deserve what I have. I didn’t even graduate from high school. I got my GED later.”
“At least you got it!”
By the time their entrées came, they were talking about the differences in their lives to this point in time—she admitted to a successful college experience, while he claimed a few college courses. He told her it was his brother-in-law who helped him buy the first auto body shop in Eugene, but he managed to pay him back and buy him out. Eric was enjoying the conversation, even though he was the poor cousin to her privileged little girl. That didn’t bother him—his parents were good people, just not rich people. He was well aware that their differences ran far deeper, but he wasn’t going to get into that tonight. He wanted to get to know her first; wanted her to get to know him for the person he was now, not the person he had been in years past. Besides, she was playing some cards very close to her own chest—like the top secret jazz she couldn’t talk about. Surely her good friend Devon had been privy to what Laine actually did for a living. And he was willing to bet it wasn’t “research.”