Beach Blanket Bijou (Pajaro Bay) Read online

  Beach Blanket Bijou

  A PB Mini: A short story from the world of Pajaro Bay

  BARBARA COOL LEE

  •••

  http://www.BarbaraCoolLee.com

  Dr. Quinn, the handsome dog expert on the evening news, is sought after by every woman in town—except the one he loves from afar: his boss, billionaire heiress Carmen Cordova. So when she suggests a new segment training her dog Bijou at the family's lavish estate on the coast, he's happy to oblige. But little Bijou's got a secret—and it just might get them all killed....

  Also includes a sneak preview of the novel, Dashing Through the Surf.

  •••

  Copyright © 2015 Barbara Cool Lee

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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

  20150810a

  •••

  As always, for Mom, my co-writer.

  Poor Little Rich Girl: Cordova Heiress Dumped at the Altar by Gold-Digger.

  "Great," Carmen Cordova muttered. She stared down at the People magazine headline. It was a lousy picture of her, too, her face looking pale and startled in the camera flash.

  She tossed the magazine on the lawn by the pool. Bijou, her bratty Pomeranian, immediately attacked it and started tearing the paper to shreds.

  "Go for it, Girl!"

  With a shake of her head, Bijou pulled off a chunk of the magazine, then pranced over to Carmen's chair to present it to her.

  Carmen leaned over and took it, then patted the pup on the head. "Thanks, Bijou." She looked at the scrap. What poor reporting. That level of news writing would never be allowed on her TV station. Her staff knew better than to resort to innuendo to make a point. Facts, clear writing, and evenhanded reporting were the hallmark of KPB News. She had taken the little independent station from a refuge for old B-movies to the number one news channel on the coast. But to the gossip columns she would forever be the poor little crippled daughter of a billionaire inventor.

  She crumpled the paper in her fist, then threw it back on the lawn. Oh, well. The gossips had a first amendment right to be stupid.

  The breeze scattered the other pieces of the magazine across the emerald lawn of the Cordova estate. The day was glorious, warm and clear, with the same little breeze ruffling the tops of the Eucalyptus grove that sheltered the property from prying eyes.

  Dad's computer lab was completely hidden off in those trees, but the house itself lay sleek and low in this little hillside above Pajaro Bay. Far below them lay the fishing pier, and the homes of the working people down in the picturesque squalor of Wharf Flats. But up here all was quiet and filled with fresh air and peace.

  And lousy magazine headlines mocking her for trusting a man after her money. It had happened so many times. She'd trust, then get burned. It was harder and harder each time to believe that there could be people who loved her for herself. Nannies who used her to get to her dad, school mates who befriended her to play in the family pool, and men who claimed to care so they could get close to the money—each betrayal added a little more steel to the cage around her heart.

  She rolled her chair over to the edge of the Olympic-sized infinity pool. The only sounds were the fall of the water off the pool's infinity edge onto the tiles below, and the distant echo of the ocean waves farther away. The pool lining was custom-colored to match the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean, so the edge of the pool seemed to blend into the sea to become one endless swath of clear, cool water reaching all the way to the horizon.

  Carmen set the brake on the wheelchair, then leaned forward, letting gravity help her body form a neat dive into the pool.

  The water enveloped her in a familiar cocoon. In the water she was free, unfettered. She came to the surface, rolled onto her back, and then began to swim, her arms sweeping overhead in smooth, practiced strokes that carried her through the water. In the pool it didn't matter that she felt nothing below her hips, that her legs didn't help her swim. Her arms and torso were enough to make her body a sleek torpedo through the water.

  She reached the end of the pool and somersaulted, then repeated the roll onto her back, and the steady strokes. She swam on, trying to find that peaceful center swimming always gave her, and working hard to ignore the sting of embarrassment the magazine story had brought back to her. The wedding had been cancelled over a month ago, but they finally got around to printing a story about it now? Most likely it had taken Jeff that long to figure out a way past the confidentiality agreement so he could sell his story to the tabloids. She probably would see several of these stories in the next few weeks. Not that it mattered. She had been the subject of gossip all her life. This was no different than the other times.

  Better to be like Dad, she thought as she made another turn. He was oblivious to this stuff. He focused on his work, his research, his limitless wellspring of creativity, and he ignored what others thought of him. How nice it would be to have a focus like that.

  Bijou started barking in that piercingly loud way she had. Someone must be here. She kept on swimming. She'd finish her laps before dealing with whomever it was. And hopefully by then she'd feel ready to face the pity without wanting to punch someone in the face.

  •••

  "What do you have there, Bijou?" Quinn Timmons tried to get the bit of paper from her, but the little dog just pranced out of his reach. "Oh, it's a game, is it?" He turned his back, and sure enough, Bijou came trotting up to him, waving the paper.

  He continued to ignore her, and soon she dropped the paper at his feet. Quinn laughed, and reached for it, but then saw what it was: Poor Little R... it read, and he knew the rest. He'd seen the headline at the grocery store this morning.

  Idiots. Poor Little Rich Girl was probably the least-accurate description of his boss he'd ever heard. Strong, stubborn, smart, unwavering in her journalistic integrity, merciless at ping pong, and, oh yeah, breathtakingly beautiful—those were the words to describe Carmen Cordova. But pitiful she was not.

  He sat down on a lounge chair and watched her swim. She was, as she'd always been, a thing of beauty, taking his breath away with every stroke. Her sleek body moved with such grace through the water.

  She made one last turn, then swam to the side of the pool where her wheelchair sat. With a smoothness that he knew had taken her many years to achieve, she hoisted herself out of the water and rolled onto the decking next to the pool. From there she lifted herself carefully into the chair, and sat down. Finally, she lifted her legs one by one and positioned them properly on the footplates.

  Then she looked up and noticed him sitting in the lounge chair. She grinned. "Hey, Peanut!"

  "Hey, Lefty!" he answered with a smile.

  He looked at the scrap of paper in his hand. Mr. Cordova had offered Carmen's fiancé a million dollars to break the engagement, and the fool had taken it. He'd given up this incredible woman for money—money he'd lost, because of course Felix Cordova was not about to pay someone money for betraying his daughter. Jeff Yung was out, and Quinn couldn't be happier.

  Now, finally, it was his chance. Somehow, some way, he was going to convince Carmen that love had been sitting right in front of her all along.

  •••

  "So tell me how you want to do this," Quinn said to her a half-hour later. She'd gone to dress, and then met him out by the pool,
where they could talk while the sun began to set over the ocean, bathing the yard in a warm, orange glow.

  She felt better after her swim, and was ready to get on with things. "First we'll film you with Bijou now, before we lose all the light. You try to get her to obey—"

  "—and she won't," he completed.

  "Exactly." She smiled at the pup, who was lying on the lawn eating grass. "We'll get some good footage of her being a brat—"

  "—and then by tomorrow she'll be ready to pass her Canine Good Citizen Test."

  "Not quite," she said. "I know it takes even the great Dr. Quinn a bit longer than that. But I want you to show the steps you take to work with an untrained dog, so viewers can see what to do to achieve canine perfection."

  Quinn laughed. When he laughed, which was all the time, little crinkles formed around his eyes. Carmen looked down at her notes. She knew Dr. Quinn the Dog Conjurer wasn't just popular on her station for his training techniques. The gorgeous smile and handsome features helped. A lot. Good thing she was immune.

  "Uh, oh," Quinn said.

  She looked up in time to see Bijou throw up grass all over the patio.

  "Maybe we should film that?" Quinn said with a grin.

  •••

  An hour later, they headed over to Mr. Cordova's computer lab. Quinn had been there many times over the years, but he still enjoyed seeing it. The place looked more like a teenager's messy bedroom than a laboratory, with Star Wars posters on the wall, a big whiteboard with indecipherable scrawls across it, computer equipment everywhere, and model race cars on the floor.

  Carmen rolled up to the big desk in the corner, where her father sat talking with his assistant, Ben Freitas. The surface of the desk was invisible under a stack of external computer drives, three rubber dinosaurs, and parts that looked like they came from a robot's arm.

  "Dad!" she said in an exasperated voice. "Look at this!"

  There was a huge aquarium on a stand next to the desk. It was impossible to tell if there were any fish in it, because the glass was covered in a thick layer of green algae.

  There was a magnetic aquarium glass cleaner attached in one corner. Carmen started swiping it across the glass, leaving swaths of clean glass across the surface. Several fish came into view, including a giant goldfish with huge, bulbous eyes.

  "Why hello, Beauregard," Carmen said with a laugh. "So you're still in there."

  Mr. Cordova was deep in what seemed to be a serious conversation with Ben. Though Ben had glanced up when they came in, Carmen's father seemed completely oblivious to their presence.

  Finally, Carmen poked him in the shoulder with one finger.

  He turned to her. He seemed almost asleep, with a distant expression in his eyes. "Um," he said eloquently. Then, suddenly, he seemed to focus, and his gaze sharpened into the same clever, quick-witted look that was so much like Carmen's. "Busy, Hon," he said.

  Carmen laughed, and Quinn felt a treacherous glow deep inside. Her smile lit up the room.

  "I love you, Dad, but you can be pretty oblivious sometimes."

  He focused on her. "About what?"

  "Dinner."

  He looked startled. "What time is it?"

  "After seven. Even if you don't need food, your assistant might like to take a break." She grinned up at Ben.

  "I'm fine," Ben said. He looked distracted, too.

  "What's wrong?" Quinn asked.

  Both men looked at him like he'd appeared out of nowhere. "Oh," said Mr. Cordova. "You're here, Quinton."

  Carmen seemed to finally notice their strange behavior. "What is it, Dad?"

  "Edmund is missing."

  "Who's Edmund?" Quinn asked.

  "The only other one with the chip." Carmen pointed at her skull.

  It was hard to believe that there was a chip embedded under her skull, all ready to read signals from her brain and send them to one of the computers in this little room. The computer could convert the brain waves into electrical impulses that could move her legs. Somehow. He didn't understand it. But it was almost there. Dr. Cordova's twenty years of research into the mechanics of paralysis had led him to create a cutting-edge technique that would someday allow paralyzed people to use a computer to control their own limbs. It would be a practical way for paralyzed people to walk. And it was almost ready.

  "He's Patient One?"

  "Yeah," she said. Quinn knew that Carmen was Patient Zero. She had been Patient Zero since she was three years old, when her mother had fallen down the stairs while carrying her. The accident had killed her mother, paralyzed her below the waist, and set the computer genius Felix Cordova on a mission to find a cure for paralysis.

  "I don't have time to work on the process twelve hours a day, so Edmund Grant is doing it," she explained. Then she turned back to her father. "Are you sure he's missing, Dad?"

  Dr. Cordova nodded, then turned away to speak to Ben in a worried undertone.

  "I hope he's all right," Carmen said. "He's a really nice guy." She wheeled over closer to Quinn. "It's not only that. If he's had an accident or something, it will be a disaster for the research. There aren't any other chips."

  "Aren't there backups for this sort of thing?"

  She shook her head. "The prototype in the lab was damaged, so there's only mine and Edmund's. I'll have to have surgery to remove mine if anything goes wrong so they can try to duplicate it. There have been a lot of problems with the project. A computer backup was erased last week. The backup chip was destroyed. All kinds of freak accidents."

  "But I thought it was going so well. You said Edmund had actually walked under his own power."

  "Seven feet." She looked up at him. "Doesn't sound like much, but the YouTube video of it has almost a million views, and Dad has been approached by companies all over the world wanting to license the technology."

  "So maybe he took a hike?" He said it jokingly, but she shook her head again.

  "The software's here, in the lab. He can't do anything without all this technology. A device attached to his legs, a big mainframe computer to run the software. All of it to walk seven feet. But it's seven feet no paraplegic has walked under his own power before." She leaned back in her chair. "Imagine all the people this could help."

  "But where would he have gone?"

  "I don't know. I've only met him a couple of times. He's been working on this full-time since he was selected for the project. He's the perfect test subject. He's an Iraq War vet, recently paralyzed. He was an extreme athlete before he was injured, so he has the stamina and ability to put himself through the training to use the device. Now—if anything's happened to him it will set back research for months, if not years."

  "What about his girlfriend?" they heard Ben ask Dr. Cordova.

  Carmen's dad looked up from the phone, where he was apparently on hold. "They're trying everywhere. No answer at his girlfriend's place."

  Then he walked over to Carmen. "We'll break for dinner later, sweetheart." He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. "In the meantime, don't lose your head. We may need it."

  •••

  Bijou turned down another treat.

  "There's something wrong," Quinn said. He sat on the living room floor next to Carmen's chair while they watched the dog play with her tail. They had stayed up late talking, even long after her father had come in and gone to bed. Now it was after midnight, and the living room's french doors were open to the cool night, with a view to the Cordova's private dock—a ribbon of yellow light leading to the silent bulk of the huge family yacht on the glistening waters of the moonlit bay.

  "I've never seen a dog refuse food like this one does. And she's so fat."

  "I swear I'm only feeding her the quarter-cup of diet kibble you gave me for her." Carmen crossed her heart and grinned at him. "Honest, Peanut."

  "Well then it must be something else. You sure your dad hasn't been sneaking anything to her?"

  "He promised he wasn't, and he wouldn't lie." Carmen leaned back in
her chair. "This'll make a great segment: the dog conjurer finally meets his match."

  Quinn picked up the dog and held her up to his face. "What's going on in that tiny brain, Bijou?"

  Bijou smiled enigmatically at him.

  "I swear she knows something she's not telling us."

  He set her down and then rubbed her back. She rolled over for a belly rub.

  Carmen sighed. "Maybe this wasn't a good idea. You don't have to stay if you don't want to. We can scrap the segment."

  "Are you kidding? I love a challenge." Then he looked up at Carmen with an expression she couldn't decipher.

  "What?" she said.

  "I don't mind a challenge, Lefty." He brushed his hand along her arm, and it sent a shiver through her.

  She looked down, embarrassed. "What are you trying to tell me?" But she was afraid she knew.

  "Marry me," Quinn said.

  "How can you say those horrible words after the month I've had?"

  But he looked completely serious. "What better time? You've wasted enough time on the wrong guy—we've both wasted enough time. You know I've loved you since the third grade."

  "When I ran over Kyle's foot after he made you drop your ice cream cone," Carmen whispered.

  "We both know how we feel."

  Carmen shook her head. "But I don't. I just don't."

  "You don't love me?"

  "I know you care about me. But I don't know what I feel, can't you understand?"

  Now it was his turn to shake his head. "I don't understand. I'm sorry. What I feel for you is so clear to me. Do you think I'm lying? Have your father offer me a million dollars so I can turn it down."

  She backed her chair out of his reach. "It's not that simple."

  He looked up at her. "Yeah, Carmen. It is. It's that simple. You either love somebody or you don't. I love you. I want to know if you love me."