Great-Aunt Sophia's Lessons for Bombshells (25 page)

She had the sudden, frightening feeling that her Ph.D. studies had all been an elaborate game of self-delusion to make it the world’s fault that she was not adored for being chubby, shy, and lacking in sexual confidence. After all, it felt better than blaming herself for not becoming what the world preferred: a sexually confident beauty who took no guff from anyone.

A knock came at her door, followed immediately by Darlene’s cheerless voice. “Fifteen minutes. Don’t keep her waiting.”

“Okay,” Grace called back.

Self-analysis would have to wait. She and her aunt had what Sophia had called a very important engagement, and she hadn’t started to dress yet. She didn’t even know which shoes she was going to wear. A flush of panic washed over her, anticipating Sophia’s displeasure should she choose incorrectly.

With a sense of guilty relief, she shoved aside the conversation with Cat and the disturbing doubts it had raised. Right now, she had to concentrate on looking her best.

She had her $20,000 priorities, after all.

CHAPTER

18

G
race clopped down the stairs in alligator mules, holding tight to the banister for fear of the slipperlike shoes flying off her feet and sending her tumbling to the marble floor below. Lali was waiting for her by the door.

“Hurry up, hurry up! You’re late.”

“I know, I know!” Grace said, reaching the floor in one piece and slip-stepping her way toward the door. She could hear the low rumble of a car motor out in the courtyard. “Do I look okay? I was told to put on ‘resort wear,’ but I’m not sure what that means.” She’d settled on an above-the-knee lemon yellow linen skirt, a bateau-neck cream shirt made of a fine-gauge silk knit, and a long necklace of tortoiseshell and citrine. Her hair had been curled, parted on the side, and pulled back into a low barrette at her nape. She’d topped it all with her big straw hat.

“You look great,” Lali assured her. “As far as I can tell, in Pebble Beach resort wear just means fake casual. You know, lots of sailor clothes that cost too much to wear on a real sailboat, and cashmere twinsets with pearls, and a skirt that looks like you could play tennis in it.”

“I should fit in, then.”

“Yeah, except you’re about forty years too young for this set.”

“You know where Sophia is taking me?”

Lali shooed her out the door and into the sunlight. “No time to talk! Go!”

Grace carefully navigated the steps, watching her feet, then at last looked up.

Stretched out before her was the biggest, shiniest, most ridiculously beautiful vehicle she had ever seen, even in photos. She gaped at the vision in royal blue, cream, and chrome. It was a convertible from sometime before the Second World War, with a long, narrow hood; huge round headlights; and sweeping fenders over the spoke wheels. Chrome pipes curled like whiskers from the sides of the hood and swept underneath the running boards.

Darlene sat at the wheel, dressed in an old-fashioned chauffeur’s uniform with a crushable hat and a high-collared black jacket that buttoned down each side. Sophia sat in the backseat, her head swathed in an Isadora Duncan-esque long scarf, enormous sunglasses hiding half her face.

“There you are,” Sophia said. “Do come along, darling. It’s not kind to keep me waiting in the sun.”

Grace shook off her shock and stumbled to the car, opening the back door and slipping onto the cream leather seat beside her aunt. “What is this thing?” she asked in awe.

“This, my dear, is the finest American automobile ever made, a 1929 supercharged J series Duesenberg.”

“It’s a duesy,” Darlene added from the front, and cackled as she put the vehicle into gear and they glided off.

“It’s stunning,” Grace said.

“It is, isn’t it?” Sophia agreed. “I’ve always felt that a beautiful woman should ride in an equally beautiful car. They set each other off. My second husband bought this for me. It was an extravagant gift even then, but he was an extravagant man.”

“How much is a car like this worth?”

Sophia tsked in disapproval. “Grace, you know that’s a rude question.”

Grace bit her lip, contrite but still curious.

“And besides, the value to me is in the memories of dear Chazz.” Sophia canted her head. “That would be husband number two, to you.”

Darlene stopped at the top of the driveway and then pulled out onto 17-Mile Drive. As the car smoothly picked up speed, Grace held her hat onto her head with one hand, the brim flapping in the breeze. “I’m sorry, you’re right, I shouldn’t have asked.”

“However, I suppose you’ll just look it up online as soon as we return, so if you absolutely
must
know the dollar value . . .” Sophia’s lips twitched in amusement. “A few years ago, one sold at auction for one million.”

“Excuse me?” Grace gasped.

“It wasn’t quite as nice as this one, I don’t think.”

“One million
dollars
? For a
car
? For
this
car?” Grace couldn’t grasp the reality. “And you drive it on the
road
?” she screeched.

“Of course,” Sophia said lightly. “It adds a bright spot to people’s day to see it. Beautiful things should not be kept behind glass, they should be used. Just as a beautiful woman should live fully and not let herself turn into a hothouse flower, pampered and useless.”

“But a million dollars! If we get into an accident—”

“
Pshh
,” Sophia said, waving away Grace’s worry. “And so what if we do mar the paint? It’s just a car. In fact, I think you should drive us home later.”

“No, no, no,” Grace said in panic. “Absolutely not!”

“It would be good for you. It would preserve you from ever
overvaluing a man based on the car he drove. You’ll always have the Duesenberg in the back of your mind, and know that you’ve driven better.”

“But, but,” Grace said, scrambling for an excuse, “but I can’t drive a stick shift!”

Sophia turned her head toward Grace, her eyes invisible behind the sunglasses, but the disapproving set of her mouth expressing all. “Did your parents teach you absolutely nothing of use?”

Grace pulled in her chin defensively. “We had only automatics. I’ve never needed to drive a stick.”

“
Every
woman needs to know how to drive a manual transmission.”

“Why?”

“There may be an emergency that requires it. But more important, men find it sexy.”

Grace laughed. “Oh, come on! Men hate being passengers in cars driven by women.”

“They hate being passengers in automatics with frightened, overcautious, or flighty women, yes. But put a man next to a woman in a short skirt who is working the gears with confidence and skill, and all he’ll be able to think of is running his hand up to her crotch.”

“Oh, like
that’s
safe! Talk about distracted driving.”

“You don’t
let
him, darling. Anticipation is always three-quarters of the fun.”

“I guess that’s just one trick I’ll have to leave out of my bag, then, because there’s no way I’m going to learn to drive a stick shift today, in this thing.”

Sophia patted her knee. “No, dear, of course not. That would be a wasted opportunity.”

Grace sank back in relief, but then was pricked by the
niggling question of what Sophia meant by “a wasted opportunity.” Before she could ask her aunt for clarification, Sophia was speaking again.

“We’re lunching today at the Beach and Tennis Club dining room; it’s open only to members of the club and guests of Pebble Beach Resort. The ladies who will be joining us are all longstanding members of the community here who have formed a charitable organization called the Altruism Society, and I expect you to charm them.”

Grace’s relief blew away in the passing breeze. “Charm them? How? You haven’t taught me anything about charming women!”

“The principles are the same as with men. Just tone it down, as women are quicker to scent insincerity, with the sole exception of any discussion of their children. It’s the one topic they will never tire of, and you may keep them on it for as long as you can stand it.”

“Great. What if they don’t have kids, or their kids are in prison for pushing drugs or something?”

“Then fall back on the skills you already have. The goal in any interaction is to make the other person believe that you thought they were fascinating, witty, and possessed of an unusually warm heart. Women, especially, always like to hear that they’re kind, even when they know that they aren’t. It comes as a pleasant surprise to them, and they won’t want to disabuse you of the notion.”

“This sounds like an awful lot of flattery and manipulation,” Grace said.

Sophia sighed. “Grace, Grace. It will only come off that way if that is what you believe it to be. Look at it instead as the Buddhists do, and seek to recognize the divine within each person.”

Grace gave her aunt a skeptical look.

“I am
trying
to make this easier for you,” Sophia said.

They turned off the main road and onto a drive that Grace knew, from the exploring she’d done on a bicycle, to lead to the Lodge at Pebble Beach, a white porticoed building that had been part of the resort since it was founded in 1919. They passed the lodge and went on to the Beach and Tennis Club. Darlene eased the Duesenberg to a stop at the main entrance and shut off the motor. Uniformed attendants rushed forward to open both Sophia’s and Grace’s doors and help them from the car, Grace less elegantly than Sophia, as she suddenly decided to leave her hat and sunglasses on the seat, realizing it would be ridiculous to have lunch with that enormous brim blocking out her neighbors at the table. Sophia cooed over the young male attendants, who addressed her by name and seemed delighted to see her, the car, or both.

Staff ushered them through the lobby, giving Grace time for only a moment’s glance through a doorway to an outdoor pool sparkling in the sun and dotted with swimmers, and then they came into the dining room. It had a simple, airy elegance, but the furnishings were only a stage for the wall of plateglass windows that looked out onto the cerulean waters of Stillwater Cove and the jade green seventeenth fairway of the famous golf links. Grace gaped at the view, the other lunch guests making no more impact on her awareness than murmuring shadows.

The sound of her name broke the spell, and Grace found herself being introduced to eight or nine women who immediately blended together in one well-coifed, conservatively made-up, extremely neat and moneyed phalanx of older women. Flash and bling were out with this set; tasteful neutrals and pastels were in. And reigning over them all was Sophia, dressed today in tones of camel and ivory, her jewelry reduced to a few heavy accents of matte gold.

Grace exchanged smiles with the women, and a few words of
chitchat with the woman seated to her right, named Ellen, who first ascertained that Grace was single and then made mention of her forty-eight-year-old son, presently also single. This prompted a mention of nephews from the woman two seats down, but despite this, it was obvious that something beyond matchmaking was on everyone’s mind. What it was didn’t come out until after they’d ordered their meals, a half dozen variations on lettuce and low-calorie protein, plus Arnold Palmers—half lemonade, half iced tea—or gin and tonics. An expectant lull followed the departure of the last of the waitstaff, and all eyes turned to Sophia.

“So where are we?” Sophia asked. “Gwennie?”

A woman with white hair in a sixties flip answered. “It’s worse than they originally thought. The pipe that broke above the ceiling of the vineyard’s banquet hall not only destroyed the plasterwork and warped the floor below but now there’s also mold inside the walls. It will be at least a month before the hall can be used.”

A gasp of dismay went round the table.

“But it’s only three weeks away!” the woman on Grace’s right said.

“We have to find another venue,” another woman said.

“There aren’t any,” Gwennie said. “Everything is booked for weddings and conferences. And we simply must have the gala during the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, so we cannot change the date. Everyone will be in town already, and our theme of ‘A Long Ago Night in an Enchanted Forest’ is too perfect a match for the mood of both the classic car show and this year’s special exhibition of the historic auto race on Seventeen-Mile Drive.”