Dreaming in Technicolor (2 page)

He guffawed. “Don't apologize. That's one of the things I really like about you, Phoebe. You just say what you're thinking. I wish more people would.”

Really like?
I lingered over the first part of his sentence. With apologies to Sally Field, “really like” is just a step away from the Big L!

He went on, oblivious to my lovestruck trembling. “My father died when I was six. He was drunk and driving.” A bitter note crept into his voice. “Of course he didn't have insurance, so that left Mom and me practically on the streets.”

“I'm sorry, Alex.” I reached over and touched his hand. “I had no idea.”

No wonder we'd had an instant connection—beyond the whole movie thing, I mean. I'd lost my dad in high school.

Alex shrugged. “That was a lifetime ago—a lifetime I hardly remember. Mom became a live-in housekeeper to a wealthy English family, and when the son and heir came over for a visit, they fell in love.” He smiled. “Quite the scandal, at first, but my stepfather is the kind of man who tends to get his way. Any rate, six months later they were married, and a year after that we moved to England. By that time, I was eleven and my parents had a baby.” He slid me a sly grin. “I believe you know Cordelia.”

My face flushed. “Don't remind me.” When I first heard of Cordelia, I'd mistakenly assumed she was his girlfriend and had jumped to foolish conclusions.

But I was still confused. “If
you had a different father, how come your last name's Spencer?”

“David Spencer was a far better father to me than my own dad had ever been.” Alex's eyes darkened. “And a far better husband to my mother. He never once made me feel like an unwanted stepchild. So when he asked if I would like to become his son legally, there wasn't anything I wanted more. I've been a Spencer ever since.”

Before I could go and get all mushy on him, he added with a grin, “And the Spencer publishing family has been swooping down and buying up struggling newspapers since I came into the fold. There's even talk they might start buying up entire towns now too.”

“You're never going to let me forget that, are you?”

“Not in this lifetime, George Bailey.”

Shortly after Alex moved to our Central California valley town as the new owner and publisher—and therefore, my boss—of the Barley
Bulletin
, I'd jumped to yet another foolish conclusion. The town was trying to save my beloved Bijou movie house, so we'd been selling theater seats in a desperate fundraising attempt. But even if we'd sold every seat in the house, it still wouldn't have been enough to save the cherished building from the wrecking ball. Then someone anonymously rode to the rescue with a huge donation, and I assumed it was Alex since he was the richest man in town. To me, that sounded way too much like mean old Mr. Potter from
It's a Wonderful
Life.
I was sure Alex was going to take over the entire town and turn it into Potterville—uh, Spencerville. So I'd flown into full Jimmy Stewart righteous-indignation mode, accusing Alex of false philanthropic motives.

I'd had to eat some major crow when it turned out I was wrong. Unfortunately, I'm well acquainted with the taste of crow. Which is why I've been trying hard to reform.

No more jumping to conclusions. No more living in movie fantasies. No more longing meditations on certain newspaper publishers with amazing, kissable lips . . .

“Hey, are you going to eat that, or just play with it?” He pushed a packet of jelly my way and his voice took on a mock stern tone. “Eat, Phoebe, eat. You'll need your strength for our shopping marathon.”

That's another thing I love about you—uh, I mean like, l-i-k-e, not
love. You never say, “Are you sure you want to eat that?” like some guys I've
known who have a thing for anorexic model types.

I lifted my bagel to my mouth but asked before taking a bite, “So, what was it like growing up in England?”

Alex released a homesick sigh. “It was a change, but I really liked it. Part of it was finally living in a happy family. But we moved into this ancestral home in the country that looked like a castle, with horses and all this acreage to explore, so that was great. Then I went to boarding school in Oxford and—”

“Wow. Like Harry Potter?”

“Minus the wizards and dragons and creepy creatures hiding in the basement,” he said dryly. “Just itchy uniforms, dreadful food, and ridiculous bedtimes. But my family also has an apartment in London, so it was always fun to go down to the city.”

“Uh, how close is Oxford to London? Aren't they right next to each other?” Geography had never been my strong suit in school. Math either. But if they'd had a class in film, this movie lover would have made straight As.

“No, Oxford is a bit northwest of London—about an hour or so by train.”

“Train? I've never been on a train.” I gave a wistful sigh. “Is it as romantic as they show in films? All that swirling steam as they say good-bye, and she runs alongside the departing train as her sweetheart goes off to war. Except in
Doctor Zhivago,
when Omar Sharif was on the train and saw Lara through the window and tried to get her attention, but she never saw him and he died of a heart attack without her ever knowing. So sad. Although . . . come to think of it—
was
that a train? Might have been a streetcar.”

“Wow. You didn't even take a breath.” Alex shot me an admiring glance. “I never thought of riding the train as particularly romantic.” He winked at me. “We'll have to take a train trip together one of these days.”

Like on our honeymoon, maybe?

Down, happily-ever-after girl, down,
my voice of reason commanded.
You've only been dating a little while. Rein in the romance. He hasn't even
kissed you yet.

And just why
is
that exactly?
my familiar, neurotic self nagged.
Doesn't he find me attractive?

My common-sense self stepped up to the romantic plate:
Of course
he finds you attractive. Hasn't he told you so?

But I glanced at Alex just to be sure. I was pretty sure he was giving me more than a “just friends” smile.

See, he's just exercising restraint like the strong, upright Christian man
he is. Remember what it says in the Song of Solomon—“Do not awaken
love before its time.”

Yeah,
my impatient self grumbled,
but just how much time is it going
to take?

“Phoebe? Still with me?”

Forever and ever, amen.
I affected a nonchalance that belied my romantic fantasy. “Sorry. So, tell me more about England. Is the scenery really as gorgeous as it looks in all those Jane Austen movies?”

He smiled gently. “Well, not everywhere. We've got our share of urban blight, you know. But the countryside . . .” He got a faraway look in his eye. “You should see the Cotswolds, where my dad's estate is. Lush green hills dotted with sheep, villages with ancient churches and pretty stone cottages.” Alex grinned. “And flowers
everywhere
. The English are quite proud of their gardens, and there are plenty of wildflowers too.”

“I wandered lonely as a cloud,” I murmured, “that danced on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils . . .”

He stared at me. “You know Wordsworth?”

“Not personally. But I studied him in English Lit.” I didn't add that I'd first heard the poem on reruns of the
Rocky and Bullwinkle
show
.

Alex continued to stare at me in amazement. “I didn't know you liked poetry.”

“There's a lot you don't know about me,” I said, tossing my hair. Or trying to. It's kind of difficult to execute a haughty flowing-tresses toss when you have a short, spiky cut. “I have hidden depths.”

“I already know that.” He gave me a flirtatious smile. “And I look forward to exploring more of them.”

Note to self: Resist urge to climb over this table and kiss that adorable
mouth and those to-die-for dimples this very second.

“But for now,” he glanced at his watch, “we'd better go explore the stores before there's nothing left.”

A few hours later, with several shopping bags between us but no shoe boxes—I'd salivated over some Jimmy Choos and Manolo Blahniks but had sacrificially passed them by in the spirit of the season and in deference to my reporter's salary—we made our way to the top of Neiman Marcus to have lunch in the rotunda.

Intent on the menu, I didn't notice the couple that had stopped at our table until a familiar voice interrupted me. “Excuse me, is this seat taken?”

I looked up to see my two best friends from Cleveland grinning at me. “Phil! Lins! What are you doing here?” I jumped up and hugged them both.

“We had a long holiday weekend, so we thought we'd come see what it is about California that could drag two of our Lone Rangers all the way out here,” Phil said.

Alex and I had both been members of the No More Lone Rangers church singles group in Cleveland—back when I was a lowly obits writer for the Cleveland
Star
and he was the corporate type who cost me my job. Phil and Lindsey were still official Lone Rangers, but seriously dating ones.

“Wow, Alex, isn't this a great surprise?” I intercepted a grin between him and Lindsey as we sat down. “Wait a minute. You knew all about this, didn't you?”

Phil laughed. “Of course he did. How do you think we knew what restaurant to come to? Logic has never been your strong suit, Pheebs,” he said affectionately.

“Never mind him,” Lindsey said, shooting a dirty look at her boyfriend and patting my hand. “I totally get your chick logic.”

“Of course you do, sweetie.” Phil returned her dirty look with a mushy one. “And I wouldn't have it any other way.”

Now it was her turn to return his gooey look.

“Okay, you guys, stop.” I grabbed a sugar packet and shook it in front of them. “I'm about to have a sugar attack.”

“Too bad,” said Phil, grinning and leaning over to plant a big kiss on my best friend's waiting mouth.

All I could do was watch longingly . . . and pray that my kissless days would be over soon.

“Talk about eye candy,” Lindsey said as we wandered around the fine jewelry department for some friend shopping time while the guys did their male-bonding thing.

I snorted. “Yeah. Expensive eye candy. Reminds me of Tiffany's. I couldn't afford anything there either.”

Lins scrabbled around in her purse and held up her sterling silver key chain. “I could.”

We burst out laughing as we remembered our grand adventure in New York not so many months before. She'd done her petite, blonde
Sweet Home Alabama
Reese Witherspoon impression to the upscale saleswoman while I'd tried unsuccessfully to be Audrey Hepburn from
Breakfast at Tiffany's.

“May I help you?” A cool Grace Kelly blonde in a cobalt blue silk blouse and straight black skirt wafted subtle waves of Chanel No. 5 toward us from the counter.

“No thanks,” we hooted, clinging to each other as the giggles overtook us again. I sucked in my cheeks in another attempt to be Audreyesque, but wound up looking more like Dory the blue fish from
Finding Nemo
.

We beat a quick retreat from Neiman Marcus to the misty streets of San Francisco, where we wandered around for a while like Humphrey Bogart in
The Maltese Falcon
—minus the trench coat and

T

pilgrim tracks.

“Hey, look! It's a movie store.” I peered in the window past the life-size cardboard cutout of the Duke. “I'll bet I can find a Christmas present for Alex here.”

And I did. A really cool
Casablanca
wall clock for his office. Since Alex and I had watched that beloved black-and-white film on our first date and were forever quoting to each other from the movie, it was perfect. I began humming “As Time Goes By,”
Casablanca
's unforgettable signature song. Then I saw a paperweight bearing the line “I was misinformed” and snatched that up too.