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She stood shoulder to shoulder with Jane, her best friend of six years, staring at the wrecked car. She sighed. This definitely would not happen in Tuscany or Milan or Naples. They have sunflowers and wine there. Ruined villas with flowery vines. Endless vistas and possibilities.
A police car approached, its siren echoing off the shops, bars, restaurants and hotels that occupied the strip one block back from the ocean.
“Want me to do the talking?” Jane offered. “I know everyone in the fire and police departments. After all, I’m on the town council that pays their salaries. I’m your muscle.”
Nicole looked at her friend. Even at five-five, Nicole towered over Jane. An artist specializing in watercolors, Jane wore a smock and had her long red hair wound up and secured with a pencil.
“I’ll see how it goes,” Nicole answered. “But I’ll call out the big guns if I have to.”
An attractive, graying police officer stopped behind Nicole’s car, blocking the street completely and leaving his flashing lights on. Now that the initial shock was over, Nicole’s stomach lurched and her hands were clammy and cold.
“Any injuries?” the officer asked.
Both women shook their heads. A large crowd had gathered on the sidewalk. Many of them had cell phones in hand, taking pictures of the spectacle. What great spring break stories they were going to have. Someone had probably gotten the actual door destruction on video. Nicole thought it might come in handy for her case, but it was the last thing she wanted to see on social media.
“Want to tell me what happened?” the officer continued.
“A fire truck took off the door of my car,” Nicole said. She tried for a competent and neutral tone, one she had practiced in business meetings at her former job in Indianapolis. The tone that said everything is fine; we just have things to discuss.
“It was technically an ambulance,” Jane interjected. “The big rescue squad. Red.”
“Thanks, Jane,” the cop said. “How’s the painting business?”
“Good. Busy week with spring breakers. My kind of busy. I’d take a whole summer of this.”
“I hope you get it.” The cop smiled and turned back to Nicole. “So how did the ambulance grab your door?”
“It was open,” Nicole said.
“You were just getting out of the car?”
“Not exactly.” Nicole was starting to get that notguilty but not exactly blameless feeling.
“I see,” he said. He raised both eyebrows and wrinkled his forehead. “And was your car parked like this at the time of the accident?”
Nicole felt heat in her cheeks. She was the victim here! The ambulance wrecked her car. But...okay, yes, she was illegally parked. And, sure, she had left the door hanging open. The box with her computer and her desk supplies was heavy. It really was.
Rats.
“Yes, but...” she began.
Jane stepped between her friend and the police officer. “I think I can explain. Nicole just arrived from out of town after a very long drive. She’s my new business manager and an old friend. I had her pull up out front to unload a box of stuff. Very heavy stuff. There’s a delivery truck behind the grocery store next door. That’s where I usually unload. You should really talk to them about hogging the whole loading zone back there. Especially during tourist season.” Jane shrugged and smiled at the man. “I’d say it’s technically their fault.”
The police officer pulled a notepad from his breast pocket and clicked a silver pen against his shiny badge. “Out-of-state license plates, double-parked, left car door open, using the street as an unloading zone,” he said aloud as he jotted down notes.
“Hey,” Nicole said, hustling over and looking at what he was writing. “The ambulance never even slowed down. There were dozens of witnesses.”
The cop raised his eyes and looked at her for a moment before flipping his notepad closed and putting it away.
“I’m usually very responsible,” Nicole grumbled. This was true. Her life had been orderly and ordinary at one time. National Honor Society in high school, dean’s list in college, excellent credit score, not even a speeding ticket to put a black mark next to her name. But since last summer, she could only make it through a day by hanging on with both hands.
She’d hoped moving to a new town would help her let go. Perhaps she’d chosen the wrong place to start over.
The cop smiled and cocked his head. “I’ll send a report to the city’s attorney since it involved a city employee, although which one I don’t know.” He winked at Jane. “You know I’ll find out.”
“I thought I saw Tony Ruggles in the passenger seat, but I didn’t see who was driving,” Jane said.
“Chief’s son riding shotgun,” the officer commented as he wrote the fact in his notepad.
“And will the city replace my car?” Nicole asked. With each question her case grew dimmer.
“That’ll be up to the insurance companies. Yours and theirs.”
Nicole sighed. Maybe tomorrow would be the day her luck would change.
“Welcome to Cape Pursuit,” the police officer added. “I’ll call you a tow truck.”
* * *
HOURS LATER AFTER the art gallery had closed for the day, Nicole got in the passenger seat of Jane’s Volkswagen Beetle. The car was sunny yellow and decorated with ads for Jane’s art studio, Sea Jane Paint. It also enjoyed the luxury of having all its doors.
“I’ll drive next time,” Nicole offered, smiling and trying to be cheerful despite the events of the day. “Even if I have to steal a car.”
“Tourists leave rentals unlocked sometimes,” Jane suggested. “Just a thought.”
The spring break weather and happy vibe of the beachside town was something to celebrate. People in colorful shorts and T-shirts strolled the walks, lovers kissed under awnings and the calm sea appeared in glimpses between the buildings they passed.
The evening sky stretching over the Atlantic Ocean nearly transcended the sight of her almost-paid-for car being hauled off by a tow truck, its dismembered door tucked underneath it on the flatbed. Nicole had the feeling she was never going to see it again, but the insurance adjuster on the phone assured her that doors got lopped off all the time. The car might live to ride again—after a few weeks in the body shop.
“We could go to a restaurant,” Jane said. “There’s at least a dozen of them within walking distance of my studio, some of them really good. But I don’t feel like fighting the spring break crowds on the strip.” She turned down a residential street, heading away from the ocean. “I’m taking you to a place on the edge of town the locals like.”
“Do they have fried food and alcohol?”
“That’s all they have,” Jane said.
“Perfect.”
The low brown building’s painted sign said it all: Cape Pursuit Bar & Grill. It was not the kind of place that would attract the tourist crowd. Out of the way and under the radar, it had local watering hole written all over it, from the pothole-riddled parking lot to the mismatched faux shutters.
Nicole followed Jane inside to a row of dark, high-backed booths and slid in across from her. She picked up a colorful laminated menu and smiled. Fried macaroni bites. Fried mozzarella sticks. French fries. Fried onion straws. Five different kinds of burgers, nearly all with some combination of bacon, cheese, barbecue sauce, fried onions and fried pickles.
Her stomach growled. The car fiasco had robbed her appetite for lunch, but she was starving now. She deserved saturated fat after all she’d been through, and she had a feeling she’d be on her feet working hard in the art gallery. Life in a sunny beach town where she’d be likely to walk everywhere now that she was without a car was a far cry from the sedentary office job she’d left several states behind.
“Thanks for letting me stay with you until I find a place,” Nicole said. “I looked at some rental houses and condos online, but I was afraid to commit before I actually saw the properties.”
“Someone’s looking for a place to live?”
A man with a face straight out of a magazine slid into the booth next to Jane. He had blue eyes, rugged cheekbones, a day’s growth of beard and dark hair that was just a little too long. He wore a T-shirt with Cape Pursuit Fire Department screen-printed over the left side of his chest.
“Charlie Zimmerman,” he said, extending his hand across the table. “I can help you buy or rent a place if you’re interested. I’m a part-time Realtor here.”
“And a full-time pain in the butt,” Jane added.
“Keeps me busy,” Charlie agreed, smiling.
“This is Nicole Wheeler,” Jane said. “My best friend from college. We both went to Michigan State, but she majored in something far more practical than I did.”
Charlie turned his seaglass-blue eyes toward Nicole. “Horseshoeing? Latin?”
Nicole studied their guest and wondered what the heck he was talking about. Did she look like a horseshoer?
“Anything’s more practical than what my flaky artist friend here does,” Charlie explained jovially.
“Hey,” Jane said. “I helped personalize gifts for your last three girlfriends, not that it did you much good.”
Charlie’s smile faded for a moment and he drummed his fingers on the table. “Can’t blame a guy for trying,” he commented. “And there’s no doubt your paintings will easily outlast any of my relationships.”
Jane stacked up the menus and folded her napkin into neat triangles, creasing them mercilessly with one finger. “I hope so,” she said.
“So you’re not an artist?” Charlie asked, looking at Nicole.
Nicole leaned back in her seat. “I majored in business. I just finished my MBA and I’m trying to figure out what to do with it.”
“And you’re new in town.”
Five or six men, all big, all loud, burst through the door and headed straight for the bar.
“Yes,” Nicole said, raising her voice over the noise. “I’m going to be Jane’s business manager.”
Charlie exchanged a look with Jane, one eyebrow raised just enough to imply a question.
“Lucky me,” Jane said. “You know I’m lousy at spreadsheets and paperwork. And Nicole’s a great photographer—”
“Hey, Charlie,” one of the new arrivals, a big buzz-cut blond at the bar, shouted. “Get over here. You gotta hear this one.”
The man next to him on the bar stool turned around and locked eyes with Nicole. From a short distance away, his green eyes reminded her of a stormy sea. His dark hair and shoulders as wide as a truck combined with those stormy eyes mesmerized her. The blond buzz-cut guy slapped stormy-sea man on the shoulder.
“Kevin here has a peach of a story.” He paused to laugh. “He took the door off some stupid tourist’s car with the squad this afternoon.”
Nicole felt her face fall, all the warm blood draining away to be replaced by ice water.
“Those double-parking sons of guns,” one of the other guys added.
Charlie laughed and Jane elbowed him in the ribs.
“What?” he said. “I’m joining the cool kids at the bar.” He nodded to Nicole. “Nice meeting you. Jane can give you my number if you’re serious about finding a place.”
“Thank you,” Nicole said coldly. She made brief eye contact with him and then turned back to the group at the bar. So Kevin of the stormy green eyes was the man who welcomed her to Cape Pursuit by slicing off her car’s door?
“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,” Jane said. “I forgot Thursday night was Testosterone Night.”
A waitress appeared at their table, blocking off the bar stool crowd and asking for their drink orders.
“I’m not sure we’re staying,” Jane said, raising a questioning glance to Nicole.
“Sure we’re staying. They have fried everything on the menu, and we’re already here,” Nicole replied, her tone like that of a lion handler assuring the terrified crowd that everything is just fine. “I’ll have wine. Moscato, if you have it.”
“Still having your love affair with Italy?” Jane asked. A smile lit her eyes. She turned to the waitress. “Orange soda for me. I’m the driver for the night.”
“Rub it in that you still have a car,” Nicole said after the waitress left. “After I have that wine, I may just go over there and tell—what was his name? Kevin?—just how much I appreciated the special welcome he gave me this afternoon.”
Jane’s smile disappeared. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why? Will he accuse me of being one of those double-parking sons of guns?”
“Kevin didn’t say that. Rick did.”
“Rick of the blond buzz cut?”
“Affectionately known by several unflattering names,” Jane confirmed.
Loud laughter echoed from the bar. It wasn’t much of a mystery what they were all laughing about. Nicole’s cheeks heated. She swallowed. Maybe Jane was right. They should leave.
The waitress placed a wine glass on a paper coaster in front of Nicole. Little bubbles rose from the stem to the top. It smelled like heaven. Fermented heaven.
Maybe they could stay.
The twentysomething server parked a steaming basket of french fries in the middle of the table. “They’ll keep you company while you decide what to order,” she said. “Kitchen’s a little backed up tonight and we hate seeing people go hungry.”
They were definitely staying.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_75d6f801-4bc3-58d7-a905-9f30d20eb650)
NO MATTER HOW much fun the other guys were having, the accident was a dark cloud over Kevin’s day. He had no choice. He knew that. Kid not breathing, life or death. He couldn’t stop, and he couldn’t hit those teenagers on bikes. And who the heck had asked that red car to park right there in the street and leave the door open?
But still. He felt bad about it. The two-year-old lying on the sofa in the house where a panicked father had flagged them down was, technically, breathing. But he was unconscious due to a febrile seizure. It was the kind of thing Kevin had seen a number of times, but the child’s parents had not. And the terror in their eyes made Kevin wonder if he was ever brave enough to have children of his own.
But everything had worked out. The boy would recover once the hospital got his fever down. The damage to the front bumper of the ambulance was minimal. The department’s insurance agent had chalked it up to one more statistic, one more example of the 10 percent of emergency vehicles involved in scrapes and accidents every year. The chief had talked to him, and the write-up in his employee folder declared it not his fault, unavoidable. No disciplinary action assigned. The chief had even congratulated him on following the department’s mantra: life over property. No exceptions. Ever.
But he was never going to hear the end of it from his fellow public servants who were currently buying him drinks. They weren’t impressed by his life-saving defensive driving. They all did that kind of thing every day. The firefighters and cops leaning on the bar were raising their beers over the gritty details.
“Did the door actually get airborne or was it more of a twist-off?” Rick asked. He punctuated his question by twisting the cap off his beer with his bare hand.
Kevin’s cousin Tony slid a basket of fries down the counter to Kevin. “No air,” he declared. “Saw it all in the side mirror.”
Kevin stuffed a handful of fries in his mouth and hoped desperately for a kitchen fire. A false alarm. Anything to change the subject.
“Kev here had his eyes on the road, so I’m the one you should be asking,” Tony added. “Barely even felt it when the bumper tore off that door and dropped it right in front of the car. Like roadkill. Glass shattered to hell.” He paused and swigged his beer. “Great story for the Wall of Flame. Hope one of the hundreds of tourists who witnessed it got it on video. Maybe they’ll put it on social media.”
