Set Up

“Say hi to Doug at the car show.” Just because Keith is a good pal, has good intentions and has great taste in men doesn’t mean Terry wants his own personal matchmaker.  With his luck and past experience, he and the man Keith set him up with would hate each other on sight. Besides, Terry can’t look for the elusive Doug; he’s too busy ogling a certain gorgeous 1949 MG TC.

The sleek roadster stands out even among a field of classic beauties, and so does the driver. Is it too much to ask that the guy forget about Terry making a fool of himself over the right hand drive and sexy red fenders? Not likely he’ll forget Terry accidentally flinging a bowl of coleslaw at his chest.

If terminal embarrassment isn’t bad enough, now Terry’s had a dental disaster, leaving him with two choices: stay in agony for days, or see the new man in the practice.

Terry’s at the office by one thirty sharp. And he’s parked next to a red MG.

Excerpt: Set Up

Glenwood Springs, Colorado, was wall to wall classic cars. Terry Collins had planned on a weekend getaway of swimming and caving on the Western Slope, not dreaming he’d be plunged into a sea of vintage English roadsters—that many Sunbeams, Triumphs, Aston Martins, and Jaguars had never been seen outside the pages of Automobile Magazine. He swooned over MG T-types, even a couple of mid-60s Austin Healey soft-tops. He’d admire, he’d yearn, and he and his buddies would go home from the hot springs resort in Terry’s BMW. He’d brought his friends along in his old—no, call it classic—’75 BMW Bavaria, but even his little white sedan wasn’t in same class with these cars.

What had brought all this automotive exquisiteness to the mountains? Too late, Terry found the posters for the MG Club’s Classic Car Rallye. This weekend.

“Say hi to Doug if you see him up there,” Terry’s buddy Keith had advised him before the crew went on a weekend road trip, but his boss and pal hadn’t really explained who Doug was. Somehow Keith just expected Doug to both be there and be readily identifiable. Or Terry had missed a description while snarling about not wanting to be set up with anyone. Not even by Keith, whom Terry would admit had great taste in men.

Now Terry was in MG heaven without a guardian angel. He’d missed seeing the elegant old-timers running the obstacle course earlier this afternoon. He didn’t have a map for the road rally, and he didn’t have a ticket to get into the rally costume dinner, with or without a companion.

“You’re drooling!” his friends teased him, but the resort town was swarming with gorgeous coachwork.

“Worth drooling over,” Terry insisted, and on the way to dinner he hijacked the group for a slow cruise through the parking lot of the Hotel Colorado. Of course the venerable automobiles clustered at this nineteenth century relic of the Gold Rush, where Arabian princes, fairies with gauzy wings, and Mad Hatters would dine on rubber chicken and dance the night away. “There’s a parking spot!”

“Don’t even think about it, buddy!” came out of the back seat. “We’re hungry.”

“But—”

“Next year!” came in a chorus, and damned right, Terry’d be back next year, without this bunch of spoilsports. They wouldn’t even let him mourn out loud, grumbling about his woulda, coulda, shouldas.

Terry didn’t stop grieving the now, of course, not when he was taunted by vehicles he’d never own but that gave him almost as raging a hardon as a couple of the drivers did. Like the pirate captain in the 1949 MG TC. Damn. One more unreachable, unattainable beauty, all shoulders and dark waves with a smile as blinding as the wide white sidewalls on the classic red car.