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she said, “I don’t know . . .”
    Kyle ran his hand over his chin. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You show him the truck, and if he can’t see past the cosmetic, bring it back and we’ll get him in something he likes better.”
    “Just not the Mustang,” she said, offering him a conspiratorial smile. She looked inside the cab. Like the engine, it was the product of loving hands. “All he really needs is something that will get him from point A to point B for the month we’re here.”
    She spoiled Christopher. He was as aware of it as she was, and they both knew why. He tolerated it the way he tolerated his work-addicted mother’s need to keep busy and his own need to follow in his father’s footsteps, from the sports teams he’d championed to the college he would attend in the fall. In a perverse way, even the riding was a result of his father’s influence. Christopher had turned to the ring as an escape from a world where he had no control.
    “I’ll make this as painless as possible,” Kyle said on the way back to the office.
    Before going inside, he took a minute to wave to a middle-aged couple wandering around the lot. “Most of the new ones are on the back row,” he called to them. “Let me know if you have any questions. If you want to take one of them out for a spin, you know where the keys are.”
    They returned his wave and said they knew where to find him.
    “Kind of high-pressure, don’t you think?” Alison teased.
    Kyle indicated the chair on the opposite side of his desk. “They’re at the planning stage right now.”
    She sat and waited for him. “Which means?”
    “Deciding what kind of car they’re going to buy when Fred is employed again. They come in every couple of weeks to see what’s new. If there’s anything that appeals to them, I give them the keys and they take it out for a test drive. It’s a way to kill an afternoon.”
    The kindness of the simple gesture touched Alison. She was going to have to reconsider her prejudices about used-car salesmen. “That’s incredibly generous, considering there’s no chance for a sale.”
    “I’ve never given anything that hasn’t come back tenfold.”
    Suddenly, and with inexplicable reasoning, Alison hoped Christopher didn’t like the truck. It was the only legitimate reason she could come up with to see Kyle Tanner again before the end of her thirty days in California. “So, how are we going to do this?”
    “I’m going to give you the keys, and you’re going to show the truck to—?”
    “Christopher.”
    “—to Christopher, and if he likes it you’re going to come back and put down whatever mutually agreed-upon deposit we come up with to cover one month’s use. I can’t see any reason to do all the paperwork for a sale and then have to redo it at the end of the month.”
    She liked his plan. She especially liked knowing she would see him again before she left at the end of the month.
    Now, what to do with the other twenty-five days.

Chapter 3
    Alison saw Kyle a lot sooner than they’d arranged. The plan had been for him to follow her to the beach house, driving the truck while she drove the rental car, and then she would take him back to the car lot—a minimum of three hours out of his day. When he suggested she use the truck so that she could become familiar with any of its idiosyncrasies, she did fine right up to the point of putting the key in the ignition and reaching for the shift.
    A quick glance at the floorboard where there were three pedals instead of the familiar two was like dropping a lead weight in the pit of her stomach. Christopher’s plane arrived in six hours, and she’d hoped to meet him with a grand flourish of implied independence when she handed over the keys to his own vehicle. “I haven’t driven a stick shift since I was a kid,” she said, fighting to keep the disappointment from her voice.
    “It will come back. It’s like—”
    She turned to face him. “Don’t you dare say