The Bikini Car Wash (28 page)

Andi thought about that for a moment. “Are you sure I shouldn’t just wait for him to tell me? Or should I ask him?”

“I think you should ask him,” Pop answered. “And it looks like your chance is walking right up.”

A second later, Pete was there, cutting in. He looked so good. What had made her think that he was not still the high school hottie? The guy was gorgeous.

“You’re a difficult woman to get my hands on,” he told her.

“Oh, I don’t know, you manage it fairly regularly,” she answered.

They danced together, smiling at each other for a couple of minutes.

“Did I mention you look beautiful today,” he said.

“No,” she replied. “And you didn’t tell me Miss Kepper was leaving either.”

“Ahh,” he said. “The Plainview gossip machine still hard at work. News really spreads fast in this town.”

She nodded. “Was there a reason you didn’t tell me?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “There’s always a reason of some kind.”

“You didn’t want me to apply for her job.”

Andi stated it as a fact and then swallowed hard. She was determined to be okay with this. There were good reasons not to hire her and she was not going to allow her longing for the job to override her sense of doing the right thing.

“I’m doing away with that position,” Pete said. “Executive secretary is kind of an antiquated job. We’re such a small company, even the executive does most of his own paperwork. So why have a whole position tied up in something like that.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve been talking about it a great deal with the management board,” he said. “The management board? That’s just you and your mother.”

He nodded very soberly. “And that’s one of the problems,” he said. “Two people are not a board, they’re just partners. What if we disagree on something. Then it’s just her against me. We need a tiebreaker. We need to add another person to the management board. Someone who’d be willing to put some hands-on time with the company.”

Andi nodded.

“And since we’re a family-owned company, it really should
be a family member,” he said. “Guthrie Foods in all its history has never had outsiders on the management board.”

“Well, who do you have in your family?” she asked.

“There’s Aunt Sylvie out in Idaho,” he said. “But she’s almost eighty and I doubt she’d want to relocate. We have some Grosvenor cousins in town, I think. But they’ve never been involved in the business.”

“I guess people can learn,” she said.

“Yeah, sure, whoever takes the seat will have to put in a lot of time learning the business,” Pete agreed. “But those guys are not the ones I have in mind.”

“Who then?”

“I have an outrageous plan,” he said. “I mean it’s something so crazy that you might even have thought it up.”

“Hey,” she complained.

“You
are
the Bikini Car Wash entrepreneur after all,” he pointed out.

“Anyway, this idea is really out there and it’s totally fearless.”

“Tell me.”

“I’m going to get married and put my wife on the board.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a proposal, Wolkowicz, please don’t make me get down on one knee. I can do it, but it would really be embarrassing.”

Andi stopped in mid-quickstep and nearly fell over his feet. He had to wrap his arms around her waist to keep her upright.

“So what do you think, Andi,” he said. “Great benefits, you get a job, a house and a man who loves you. It seems like a good deal if you want it.”

“I do!”

Jelly lovingly clutched her brand-new photo book. It was pale green with little white ribbons on it. She ran up to her new room at the back of the big house. That’s what she called the place she lived now, the big house. It was a big room and Andi had helped her fix it up so that it was a young lady’s room and not with a bunch of stuffed bears and bright colors. Jelly still had the stuffed bears. She kept them on shelves in the closet. And when she wanted them, she’d bring them out to sit on the bed or the chairs or wherever they wanted to sit.

She snuggled up in her window seat that overlooked Pete’s house. No one was at home, of course. They were in Italy, but only for a week more, Pop promised.

Jelly opened the book and there she was on the first page. She was wearing the beautiful green dress that was in her own closet this very minute. And her hair was very cute and she was holding a bunch of flowers. Beside her, Andi looked good, too. They didn’t have matching dresses. Andi’s was white and gigantically poofy. They were standing by the big tree in front of St. Hyacinth’s. They were both smiling.

Jelly let out a heavy sigh. This was why she loved the photo books. It was as if she could live the good moments again and again and again.

We hope the following book club questions will enhance your enjoyment of this book.

1. Why is wearing a bikini at the pool different than wearing one on Main Street?
   
2. Pop wanted Andi to have choices, even when he didn’t agree with them. When must you allow your own children to risk a bad choice?
   
3. Successful fathers and their sons often have difficult relationships. Are the seeds of this implicit in a competitive personality?
   
4. Guilt played a big factor in Andie’s relationships with both her mother and sister. Why wasn’t guilt an issue for her with her father?
   
5. Do we ever outlive high school if we don’t move away?
   
6. Tony’s grandmother had no one to help her care for her grandson. Special needs families sometimes require special help. What services are you aware of in your community?
   
7. Religious differences kept Walt and Rachel apart for decades, yet Rachel didn’t want her sons to marry outside the faith. Is her position hypocritical or just practical?
   
8. Grassroots protest groups can be necessary and effective for drawing attention to problems in the community. What did you think of M-CAM? What mistakes did they make? What would you have done differently?
   

ISBN: 978-1-4268-5986-1

THE BIKINI CAR WASH

Copyright © 2010 by Pamela Morsi.

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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