Under the Boardwalk Read online

  Under the Boardwalk (A Pajaro Bay Romance)

  Barbara Cool Lee

  ~*~

  Copyright © 2012 by Barbara Cool Lee

  Excerpt from Christmas in Pajaro Bay copyright © 2012 by Barbara Cool Lee

  First Kindle Edition, September 2012

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part, without written permission from the author.

  Under the Boardwalk is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ~*~

  Have you been to Pajaro Bay?

  The Honeymoon Cottage

  Under the Boardwalk

  Christmas in Pajaro Bay

  Shadow's Lady

  And coming in 2013, the Pajaro Bay Seasons Novellas:

  Blast From the Past (spring)

  Beach Blanket Bijou (summer)

  Billion Dollar Baby (autumn)

  Dashing Through the Surf (winter)

  ~*~

  Dedication

  As always, for Mom, my co-writer.

  ~*~

  Table of Contents

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Epilogue

  Christmas in Pajaro Bay Excerpt

  Notes

  TOC Start

  ~*~

  CHAPTER ONE

  Pajaro Bay, California

  June 17, 2:23 p.m.

  "Yo! Paging Ms. Reed!"

  Hallie headed for the bubblegum pink 1969 Volkswagen Beetle pulled up at the bus stop.

  "Took you long enough," Windy Madrigal said through the open window. "Get in."

  "Hi." Hallie struggled to open the bug's door, finally getting a grip on the slippery handle and opening it with the familiar screech of the old hinges. "The bus was late," she explained.

  "You're here now," Windy said with a laugh. "That's all that counts. No classes, no flipping burgers at Rudy's joint, nothing but fun." She flicked a strand of black hair out of her face. "We're going to have a great summer, girl!"

  Hallie got in and held her backpack on her lap. "I still have to work."

  Windy giggled. Even for Windy she was giddy. "Don't you worry about that. That's the best part. I've got the greatest surprise just for you."

  Hallie knew that Windy felt everything was the greatest and the most incredible ever so she just asked, "surprise?" and waited to hear the latest: that Windy's little brother had won the basketball game at school, or she'd planned a bicycle trip to Pacific Grove with the gang, or she'd discovered that putting peanut butter on chocolate graham crackers was a taste sensation. Hallie sometimes wondered if she'd been as silly when she was nineteen, but knew it wasn't possible. Still, she sometimes wished she could believe that life was wonderful and full of exciting surprises around every turn, too.

  "So what's up?" she asked.

  Windy didn't respond, just pulled out into traffic and started meandering down the main street of Pajaro Bay at a crawl. The town was chock-full of tourists, and in five minutes the little car had gone about a block and a half through the crowds.

  Hallie lurched forward suddenly when Windy braked hard to avoid hitting a couple in matching orange Hawaiian print shirts. She winced as her hands hit the dashboard with a sharp crack. "Ouch!"

  She put her hands in her lap and rubbed them to ease the ache. "It's not like you could've missed seeing them in those outfits, kid. Should I start praying now, or wait until we get another block?"

  "Not yet. Save your prayers for when we pass Paco's Bluff up on the mountain. It's the rule. Gotta say a prayer for old Paco—"

  "—and the horses," Hallie finished, having heard the story many times in the past year.

  The legend of Paco's Bluff was one of Windy's endless tales of her family's history. Many nights in the dorm, when they should have been sleeping, Windy had kept her awake telling the stories of the Madrigal family and Pajaro Bay. Windy's family were Californios who had received one of the first Spanish land grants in the state hundreds of years ago, and they still owned half the town of Pajaro Bay. Windy's California history thesis would be a compilation of her family's papers into a book, and each new chapter led to more late-night storytelling sessions. But Hallie hadn't minded. Having no family history of her own made hearing of great-grandmothers who did trapeze acts at the old amusement park, and cousins twice removed who drove stagecoaches off mountainsides on rainy winter nights, seem fascinating and romantic.

  Then the car lurched again, and Hallie shouted, "Watch it!"

  "Don't worry," Windy said. "We've been playing 'dodge the tourist' down Calle Principal since I learned to drive." She patted the car's dashboard. "Haven't we, Little Guy? We haven't winged one yet."

  "You know most people don't have conversations with their cars," Hallie said.

  "Yup."

  "You also know you're nuts." It wasn't a question.

  Windy giggled again, then honked the Beetle's horn at a pair of cyclists in skintight Golden State uniforms. One of the cyclists made a rude gesture at her. Windy just laughed, then slowed to a crawl and let the bikes go ahead of her.

  They'd been roommates for a whole year now, and Hallie knew the kid well enough to know something was up. Windy's lopsided grin still lingered as she continually shifted gears, first gear to second, then back to first. The summer traffic was intense in the little town. But Hallie knew that grin had nothing to do with the traffic. Windy had a secret she was dying to let out.

  The last time Windy had looked this excited was when she'd thrown Hallie a "wake" for her 30th birthday in the UC Davis dorms. Hallie had known something was up days in advance, since Windy couldn't stop grinning and giggling every time she looked at her.

  Hallie smiled at the memory of coming home from her job at Rudy's that night, wearing her green polyester uniform and smelling of fry grease, only to have Windy shout "Surprise!" and reveal her big scheme: a full-fledged wake, with the group from jazz class playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" amid the black crepe paper and candles, a coffin-shaped cake with an angel rising out of it, and Windy's eulogy declaring Hallie's life story to be "born/married/divorced/reborn."

  That was a pretty good summary of her life up to now. And Windy had been the only person who really understood how important that rebirth had been—leaving the old life in the past, and starting fresh, with everything in front of her. "Thanks, you nutcase."

  "For what?"

  "For inviting me to stay with your family this summer. For dragging me out of my shyness. All that junk."

  Windy shrugged, and laughed again as she expertly wove between two cars fighting over one of the last parking spaces in front of the general store.

  "Okay. I give up. What are you scheming now?"

  Windy bumped her with her elbow as she shifted the old bug into first gear yet again. "You have no idea, roomie. Glad you came?"

  Hallie nodded. They were passing candy-colored storefronts with names like Robin's Nest Real Estate and The Surfing Puggle. Through the car's open windows, the sounds of the tourists' chatter mingled with the squawk of seagulls overhead, almost drowning out the little car's puttering engine.

  The sky was a true Grumbacher cerulean. Artistic license, she'd always thought when she'd seen an oil painting of the seashore with a perfect, almost glowing blue sky. But the sky on this June day in Pajaro Bay really was like that intense shade straight out of the paint tube, without a wisp of Van Dyke brown mixed in to tone it down to something less... "perfect," she said.

  Windy giggled. "Just wait."

  "All right. Out with it."

  Windy turned those big green ey
es on her. "I have no idea what you're talking about." It would have almost been convincing except she snickered at the end of it, ruining the innocent effect.

  "Come on, Windy."

  "You have to wait until we're home. Zac and I want to tell everyone at once."

  Zac was one of the twins, Hallie knew that much. Windy had three brothers, one older, and the fifteen-year-old twins. She felt she knew them all, though she'd never met them. The oldest was the father figure, the one who called weekly to make sure Windy had enough money and was doing her homework. Chris was the basketball player. And Zac was the one who shared Windy's obsession with family history.

  "So is this about your family? Something you and Zac worked out?"

  "It's about you, too. Just you wait."

  "Come on, kid. At least give me a hint."

  Windy shifted gears again as they finally turned onto a road leading up the hill out of town. "Just sit back and enjoy the view...."

  ~*~

  "Boy, did you take a wrong turn."

  Kyle Madrigal flushed more water through the sprinkler head and another tadpole wiggled out and plopped into the mud at his feet.

  "Of all the sprinklers in all the world, you had to wiggle into mine," he muttered. He'd better quit soon. Carrying on a conversation with a couple of wanna-be frogs was definitely delusional behavior. He checked one last time to be sure the sprinkler was unplugged, and then screwed it back onto the irrigation line.

  "Ninety down and"—he looked down the row of raspberries and sighed—"ninety to go." The afternoon fog was just beginning to drift in from the coast, and soon he wouldn't be able to see more than a few feet in front of him, but he didn't need to. He'd learned the lay of this land at his father's side, and he'd had thirteen years to learn how to coax a profit from these fields on his own.

  "Move it, punk," he said, pushing the gasping tadpole into a puddle, where it swam happily around in circles. "Yeah, yeah, I'm a sucker for a hard-luck story."

  He picked up his pipe wrench and moved down the row toward the next sprinkler. Along the way he stopped to push an errant cane back into place, slipping it between the guide wires that held the plants in tidy rows.

  It was amazing how one little thing could cause so much trouble. Some momma frog had slipped through a broken screen over the irrigation intake, and he ended up spending hours pulling her babies out of every sprinkler head on the ranch.

  It wasn't the worst way to spend his time. The sky had been glorious today, and now, just when it threatened to get too hot, a gentle mist had started drifting in from the ocean. As he walked through the fields as familiar to him as his kids' faces he couldn't find a thing to complain about—it was restful to be out here walking the land his grandparents had walked, and their grandparents before them.

  He unscrewed the next sprinkler head. "You're surrounded, Kermit," he said. "Come out with your hands up."

  A metallic screech interrupted him before he could get to his Kermit the Frog impression. He dropped the pipe wrench. Some idiot was taking the mountain road too fast again.

  He heard tires squeal, then the crack of wood breaking.

  Kyle was off and running toward the sound before the echo died away.

  ~*~

  The world was silent and gray around the little pink car, except for a lone owl hooting somewhere nearby. Hallie felt cold. She wondered if that was a sign of shock.

  She sat very still in the driver's seat and tried to think about what had just happened. Nothing had happened. Last thing she remembered she had been—

  "—over there." She looked at the passenger seat next to her. It was empty. Her duffle bag was on the floor. But the seat was empty.

  Wait a minute. Had she been driving the car?

  She touched her forehead. She felt a stickiness, and when she lowered her hand, she saw blood. Not too much blood. Just a bit, like she'd bumped on the steering wheel.

  "Hmmm," she said, trying to make sense of that. So she'd been driving—Windy's car—yeah. This was Windy's Little Guy. The bright pink curve of the Beetle's hood outside the windshield was unmistakable.

  She'd been driving the car, she thought, and realized she was repeating herself.

  Where was she? This whole thing felt surreal. Hallie briefly considered the possibility that she might be dead, but dismissed the thought when she realized that her hair had come loose from its customary ponytail, and a cloud of dark curls was blocking her vision. She doubted that people on their way to the afterlife had to worry about bad hair days.

  She moved—just a little bit—in the seat, holding her breath. She exhaled with relief when she didn't feel any sharp jabs of pain. One by one, she tried her arms, her legs. Getting more brave, she wiggled her fingers, then her toes. Other than what felt like a big bruise where the seat belt gripped her across the chest, and a massive headache, she seemed to be okay. She pushed her hair back behind her ears. Now, where was she?

  "Hey!" The driver's side door was jerked open. "Are you okay? Where'd you come from? What happened?" The voice was masculine, and so was the man. He knelt beside the open door, which brought him eye to eye with her. Green eyes, she noticed.

  "Um, yeah," said Hallie, answering the first question, since it was the only one she knew the answer to. "I'm all right. Nothing's broken anyway." She moved to unbuckle the seat belt, but he immediately leaned into the car and put his hands on her shoulders to stop her.

  "Hold still." It sounded like an order. "You're not going anywhere." The car seemed warmer all of a sudden, with the two of them so close together in that small space.

  "I said I was all right," she protested, but she stopped moving. He immediately let go of her and sat back on his heels.

  "You could be injured," he said, his voice softer. "Let me check you out before you move around."

  "If you're a doctor where's your white coat?"

  "I guess I left it back at the office."

  He was wearing jeans and a plain white tee-shirt, she noticed. His body was long and lean and fit into those jeans and tee-shirt remarkably well, she also noticed, although that was completely irrelevant.

  She tried again to unbuckle her seat belt.

  "No," he said. "Seriously, you could have internal injuries or neurological problems or something like that. You shouldn't move."

  "Neurological problems? And how would you know if I had internal injuries?"

  "I was pre-med at Stanford—never did get to the 'med' part, but I did get my first aid merit badge when I was twelve."

  "Impressive credentials."

  He laughed. "I think we can rule out brain damage. You're doing a pretty good job of keeping up your half of the conversation.

  She had to smile at that. "Then I'm getting out."

  "Wait." There was that authoritative tone in his voice again. "Just indulge me for a minute here. My family's already held one wake for you, and that's all you're entitled to as far as I'm concerned."

  "Your family?" She must have brain damage not to have noticed before. The dark, curly hair, emerald eyes, the quick smile. "You're a Madrigal."

  He doffed an imaginary hat. "Kyle Aidan Madrigal, at your service. And you're Windy's divorcée. Glad you could, uh, drop in to see us." He winced. "Sorry. That was really bad." He leaned in closer to her.

  "Now hold still." His fingers brushed across her forehead. "That's a bad bruise. Are you sure it doesn't hurt?"

  "If you'd stop touching it, it'd stop hurting."

  "Sorry," he whispered. His hands continued their inspection of her body.

  All of a sudden she became aware of just how thin his cotton tee-shirt was, how the heat from his body seemed to radiate right through it. She felt an urge to put her hands up to his chest, like warming herself in front of a fire.

  He looked concerned. "Do you feel dizzy?"

  "Huh?"

  "Dizzy, light-headed, disoriented in any way?"

  She sure hoped he couldn't read her mind. "Nope. I'm okay. I'm sure. Just a head
ache." If she could get distracted by a man's chest, she must be doing all right.

  "And you don't feel any pain anywhere?"

  She shook her head.

  "No numbness?"

  "No. But if I don't get out of this car I'm going to scream."

  Silently he reached across her to unbuckle the seat belt. She gave in to the urge and put her hands on his chest. It was warm. Her palms seemed to fit naturally against the hard muscles.

  "Don't be scared," he murmured. "I'm not going to hurt you." Gently he lifted her out of the driver's seat until she found herself standing in the mud next to the car, still with her hands resting lightly on his chest. "That didn't hurt, did it?" His voice was soft.

  He looked down at her hands and frowned. She had forgotten about her hands. She pulled them away from his body and put them behind her back, trying to ball them into fists, but of course they didn't cooperate, and three of the fingers stayed stiffly pointing at odd angles as if they had a mind of their own.

  "Your hands?—"

  "They're old scars," she said, closing the subject.

  There was an awkward moment of silence, then Kyle's ready smile was back. "So, what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? You know, we would've let you in the front gate. You didn't have to crash your way in."

  "I didn't crash."

  He looked at her blankly. "You have to admit you came to an abrupt stop."

  "Not funny."

  "No, it isn't," he agreed. "You're lucky to be all right." He leaned against the hood of the car. "Maybe you oughta tell me what did happen. You missed a turn in the fog, right?"

  "No... Maybe?" She tried to figure it out, but she couldn't seem to remember anything after they'd left the main street. Had she been driving? "I needed to pray at Paco's Bluff," she mumbled.

  "Paco's Bluff?" Kyle shuddered, as if he were shaking off a bad thought. "You didn't go off Paco's Bluff. That's a good half-mile from here, gracias a Dios."