The Love of a Stranger

by Jeffrey, Anna

  “I think I’ve had too much to drink,” she mumbled. “Where did Ted go? Why did he leave?”

  “Couldn’t tell you. Where’s your keys?”

  She shoved her hand into the right pocket in her jeans, which slipped down her hips and exposed her smooth flat stomach. Doug clenched his jaw, stopping his runaway imagination.

  She came up with the keys and dangled them on two garnet-tipped fingers. He grasped them, then helped her onto the Jeep’s passenger seat. Cursing to himself, he buckled her seat belt and closed her into the Jeep. Rounding the Jeep’s rearend, he looked behind him to see if Butch had left the bar yet. He saw no sign of him, but he scooted into the Jeep, started the engine and headed toward Alex’s house anyway. She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes.

  Fifteen minutes later, they left the county road and began the climb up her driveway. At the jolt from the first pothole, she opened her eyes and straightened in the seat. “Ted said you’re a cockhound.”

  Doug’s neck did a sharp ninety-degree toward her.

  She giggled. “I’ll bet you thought I didn’t know a word like that.”

  Ka-thunk! The Jeep’s left tire collided with a boulder.

  “Oops.” She giggled again.

  He shifted gears and eased over the boulder. Had Ted really said that? Doug couldn’t imagine a man like Ted saying such a thing to any woman. For lack of a quick retort, he laughed.

  “Well?...Are you?” she asked.

  “You’ve had too much to drink. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I may have drunk too much tequila, but I still know what a cockhound is.” She giggled again.

  Now Doug was curious as well as amused. As he entered the tunnel of brush, he said, “What? What is it?”

  “It means you like to fuck.”

  Oh, boy. “Is that so?” He brought the Jeep to a halt in front of her house, near the steps.

  “Ted said that any woman who isn’t looking for it should stay away from you.”

  Now Doug began to feel annoyed that somebody who was supposed to be a friend had said that about him. He wondered in what context that conversation between Ted and Alex came up. He started to scoot out, but hesitated a minute and looked at her. “Ted said that, huh?”

  “Yep. He said that.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  He jerked the door latch and stepped out of the Jeep, rounded the rear, opened the passenger door and struggled to hold her as she half-fell, half-stumbled out. “The safest place for you, lady, is in bed,” he said. “I’ll help you upstairs.”

  “You want to go with me?” Her liquor-clouded eyes leveled on his face. “To bed, I mean.”

  At this moment, he would give a wad of dough if she were sober. But then, if that were the case, she wouldn’t be talking to him like this. “I am going with you. Into the house.”

  He put an arm around waist and supported her up the deck steps. He tried the front door and found it unlocked. “Jeez,” he mumbled, thinking about the treasures inside the house.

  Once they were inside, she pulled away from him. “It’s coffee you like, right?”

  “No, I—”

  But she had already sailed toward the kitchen, listing slightly to the left. He trailed behind her. She reached into the cupboard and brought out the package of Starbucks, dragged the coffee pot across the spotless counter and started the coffee-making process.

  “You could use a cup or two yourself,” he said.

  “Not I. It’s bad for you. I never touch the stuff.”

  In the midst of the flurry of activity, she set out two mugs, confusing him as usual. She pressed the ON button with a flourish, turned around and bumped into him. His hands automatically caught her waist and he could feel the heat of her bare skin against his palms. “Careful,” he said.

  She didn’t push him away.

  After the close dancing in the Rusty Spur and what she had said to him in the Jeep, he wasn’t embarrassed that she could probably tell he had a hard-on. He figured she already knew the plumbing worked anyway, had felt it the morning after they had spent the night on her sofa.

  She looked him dead in the eye, daring him. All he had to do was run his hands up a few inches and they would be filled with her bare breasts, like that day they had gone to Granite Pond together. “Wow,” he said softly. “does this mean we’re friends?”

  Before she could reply, a rumble erupted from the coffee pot. She started to turn toward it, but he stopped her. He didn’t want her to move, felt as if she was where she belonged. “Wait,” he said. He ran his gaze over every part of her face, halted on her parted full lips. “You’re a beautiful woman, Alex. And I have a feeling you know you’re making me crazy.”

  “You say that to all the girls,” she said.

  “No, I don’t. Can’t you tell how much I want you?”

  He watched her draw in a measured breath, then she left his grasp, turned away and poured coffee for both of them.

  He was no more in the mood for coffee than for a discussion of quantum physics, but he accepted the mug she offered and took a sip, trying to tamp down the rampant desire coursing through him. “So how come you’re out drinking with the guys tonight? You’re breaking all kinds of rules. First hard liquor and dancing. Now, coffee.”

  She sipped from her cup, peering across the brim with that catch-me-if-you-can look. All at once she poured her coffee down the sink drain. “I don’t know why I poured this. I really do not like coffee.”

  He set down his mug and caught her waist again. “What do you like, Alex?” Her face tipped up to his and he looked into her eyes. “I’ve been wondering since the first time I saw you.”

  Her head cocked, her eyes studied him and for the briefest moment he could feel a hum in the air between them. “That day in Boise,” she said. “In the parking lot. You did want to sleep with me, didn’t you?”

  Doug didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He couldn’t think of anything he wanted as much as he wanted at this moment to lie beside her. “Did....Do.”

  Her lips slowly curled into a smile. “Sometimes I get tired of sleeping alone.”

  Oh, Jesus. Another one of those Alex surprises was about to unhinge him. He eased her back against the counter, braced his hands on either side of her, caging her. He dipped his head and brushed her lips with his. “Baby, baby….It’s a damn shame, a woman like you sleeping alone.” He covered her mouth with his.

  A light flashed in the living room and an engine revved outside. Fuck! Doug lifted his lips from hers. “That’s my ride.”

  She stiffened and moved out of his reach. “That was insane. You’d better go.”

  Before he could organize thought, she was on her way to the front door. She held the door open. “Go.”

  He stopped in front of her at the door. Butch Wilson’s headlights spotlighted them in the doorway.

  “Don’t you dare kiss me,” she said.

  He caught her gaze with his. “Coward.”

  “Go.”

  On a testosterone high, he left her house and climbed into Butch Wilson’s truck.

  “I always hear people bitching about this road,” Butch said as they crept along. “But I ain’t never been up it.” He paused a few seconds, then added, “If you can call it a road.”

  Doug was in pain. He ached all the way up in his belly. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  “She’s sure an odd duck.”

  Odd. A short simple word to describe the most unpredictable, complicated woman Doug had ever met. He shifted his position. “Yeah.”

  “Every man in town’s wished he could get in her pants, but she don't have nothin’ to do with people around here much.”

  Doug grunted to hide both his discomfort and his annoyance at Butch’s remark.

  “Ol’ Kenny Miller’s plumb crazy about her. He told the woods boss over at the sawmill he’d sign one of them marriage agreement things and give her half his timber holdings if she’d marry
him. Every gal in this county would cream in their jeans to have Kenny come after ’em the way he used to chase after her. I can’t believe he belted her. She must’ve really pissed him off.”

  Butch had Doug’s immediate attention. “Were you in Carlton’s that night?”

  “Nah, but I heard about it.”

  “You know Miller pretty well?”

  “Been falling trees for him ten years.”

  “Long time,” Doug said. “Good guy to work for, I guess.”

  “He’s okay. Works hard hisself. Always has.”

  One thing Doug had started to learn about the citizens of Callister: Almost any sin could be forgiven if a guy worked hard. His curiosity veered to the document Miller had pulled out of his back pocket in Carlton’s. He remembered Alex asking about it. “I don’t suppose you’d know what the beef between him and Alex McGregor is all about? Why would he go into her place of business and jump on her like that?”

  “He’s prob’ly trying to get even. I thought you was there. They said you kept her from shooting him.”

  “But I didn’t know what the fight was about. I just didn’t want to see her shoot a man.”

  “She’s trying to screw him out of a way to get to his trees. Trees means everything to Kenny. Lord, he’d commit murder over a stand of timber.”

  An unwitting prophetic comment. Doug withheld a reply.

  “He paid Charlie McGregor extra for the right-of-way to Soldier Meadows,” Butch added, “but it was in cash. Since he can’t prove it, the blonde told poor ol’ Kenny to go fuck hisself.”

  “Did anybody see him pay?”

  “Nah. It don’t matter no more anyway. Kenny's found a way to fix it. That’s one thing about ol’ Kenny. He always finds a way.”

  “What’s he doing? How’s he gonna fix it?”

  “I don't know all of it. I heard him talking to the gal that works in the sawmill office. Somebody made a mistake a long time ago in a survey.” Wilson pointed his thumb back over his shoulder. “He’s gonna end up owning that old ridge road him and the blonde have been fighting over. He’s trading the Forest Service a hundred and twenty acres for it. She ain’t gonna be able to stop him from using it to haul his logs out.”

  Doug felt his brow squeeze in puzzlement. Something sounded screwy. He knew next to nothing about surveys and logging and how the Forest Service did business, but intuition told him that if a trade was good for Miller, it was bad for Alex. “The Forest Service does that? Trades land? How does that work?”

  “I dunno. It’s going on now. ’Course it takes a long time to get stuff done with the Forest Service. They always have all these papers to fill out.”

  “Sounds complicated,” Doug said.

  “Yessir, it is that.....A lot’s happened between her and Kenny. There’s just something about her....” Wilson’s voice trailed off as a boulder looming in the headlights caught his attention.

  Doug was glad Butch stopped talking. Sharing thoughts about Alex with him or any other man was something he didn’t intend to do.

  ****

  The next morning, with great effort, Doug skied in his living room. Eight o’clock and he was exhausted. Last night was the first time in more years than he could count back that he had been driven to relieve himself into a towel.

  In bed, he had mulled over the conversation with Butch Wilson for hours. Then when he finally dropped off, the familiar, bloody nightmare, absent for months, revisited him. The dream was always the same: himself in a dark, crumbling warehouse, lying on the floor wounded, bleeding and slumped against a wooden crate in filthy water. Two downed ATF agents lay nearby. His friend Rick Chavez’s head gushed blood onto his lap while hip-hop music boomed around them and faceless armed men closed in. When his automatic clicked empty, he always woke up with an outcry. He suspected the dream wasn’t far from the reality, though he remembered only surreal flashes of events after he had been hit.

  Unable to return to sleep, his mind had drifted to Alex and stuck there like an old phonograph needle on a seventy-eight record. He loved her, plain and simple. There was no other sane explanation for the possessive feeling he had about her. He was fascinated by the contradictions in her quirky personality, entertained by her cynical sense of humor, challenged by her quick wit and unconventional approach to life. And he believed she had more heart than any woman he had ever known. The fact that she was beautiful and sexy was icing on the cake.

  Last night convinced him she had an interest in him. All he had to do was scale a tall wall, swim a deep river and break down an unknown number of emotional barricades. And feeling all of that, how could he not be concerned about her problems?

  Bob Culpepper’s words echoed in the back of his brain: I believe she’s involved in something that could be dangerous.

  Just how dangerous was Kenny Miller?

  Doug had to get to Cindy Evans. She was the key that would open the vault of information that could expose Miller if he was guilty of something and possibly put the good sheriff away. As dark as Doug’s mood was, today was as good as any to see what he could wheedle out of the barmaid.

  But first he had to settle something with Ted. His old friend’s goals where Alex was concerned were unclear. Doug suspected they were based on hope more than anything else. Still, he couldn’t openly pursue Alex as long as Ted held an ideal of winning her. The way things were now, he felt as if he was somehow cheating with an old friend’s wife or girlfriend.

  Ted. His oldest friend was an intelligent, mature man, but he seemed to have no pride where Alex was concerned. His mooning over her like a lovesick calf had made him a laughing stock among his friends. Even if he succeeded in capturing her, a relationship between them could only be temporary and destructive to Ted. Christ, Alex would grind a soft-hearted soul like Ted into little pieces and spit him out and never notice what she had done. Doug didn’t want to stand by and watch a friend continue to humiliate himself.

  ****

  Alex shifted in bed but didn’t open her eyes. What had she done? The memory of Doug bringing her home, then the two of them standing in the kitchen making out like teenagers was veiled and distant, but the fact that he had wanted sex wasn’t. She had been tempted. If his ride hadn’t shown up outside, she might have invited him to stay. Oh, Lord. She prayed to die. She deserved it She would never drink again. Not even wine.

  She eased up to sit. Her head pounded, her tongue was paralyzed, her mouth tasted like moldy socks. How could she have spent the evening in a bar, and a competitor’s establishment at that, drinking and carousing with three men? Had she lost her mind?

  Guilt battered her. Getting drunk to wipe out memories was Charlie’s tactic, not hers. Ten of her daughter’s birthdays had come and gone since her passing and Alex had managed to get through them sober. What had happened yesterday?

  It had been the trip to the grocery store that unhinged her. She had overheard two girls, maybe nine or ten years old, arguing over a cake mix purchase and they had asked Alex to help them decide. A memory had steamrolled her, the day her daughter wanted to bake a birthday cake for Charlie. They had spent an entire afternoon laughing and baking and creating and true to form, where Holly was concerned, Charlie had gushed over the finished product as if it had come from the finest bakery in Los Angeles. She could still hear the laughter and fun they’d had. Tears burned her eyes. Was she going to be haunted until her dying day? She had dropped her guard for only an instant and there the memories were, lurking and luring her into a black canyon of self-pity. And on the canyon floor she had fallen into a river of tequila.

  “Stop this,” she said, sniffing away the tears. “Just stop this. It was a hell of a long time ago.” She would work outside today. All day. Many outdoor chores needed doing. She would work hard and not think.

  She stood up, waited for her head to clear, then padded to the shower.

  ****

  Doug came to a stop in front of the reception desk in the Forest Service lobby. “Hey, beautiful. Te
d in his office?”

  Gretchen giggled, showing deep dimples. “He’s back there, but we may have to call for the EMTs any minute. Pete’s already called in sick and I heard Mike Blessing's wife is looking for a divorce lawyer. You guys must have had quite a party.”

  “Don’t blame me,” Doug said with a grin and a wink. “I wasn’t even in town.” He saw Ted through the partially open door of his office, his elbows resting on the desk, his fingers massaging his temples. Doug tapped on the door and stepped into the office. “Hey, buddy. How about a shot of tequila?”

  Ted didn't open his eyes. “Shit.”

  “You look like hell. You’re pale as a ghost.”

  “I feel worse than I look. My head weighs fifty pounds.”

  “Shooters? You should’ve known better. That’s for young bucks with no brains.” Doug flopped into a chair opposite Ted’s metal desk and propped an ankle across the opposite knee.

  Ted’s hand trembled as he stopped his massage long enough to sip from his coffee cup. “Don't remind me.”

  “How about a big greasy breakfast over at Betty’s. I’ll buy.”

  “Food. Ugh. God, I might puke any minute.” He reached for his handkerchief and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. “I haven't had a hangover like this since college.”

  “Maybe you should go home and crawl back between the covers.”

  “That’s where I’d be if I didn’t have to go through this damn report.” A file folder lay open between his elbows. “I don't know how I'm going to concentrate on it. Just looking at it makes my eyes cross.” He closed his eyes and groaned. “This day will be forty-eight hours long.”

  “What was Alex doing there? I thought she didn’t drink.”

  “Just one of those things. She was running some errands in town. It was, uh—oh, one of those hard birthdays. She didn’t want to be alone.” His eyes opened to a squint. “How’d she get home?”

  “I drove her.”

  A swift flush flagged across Ted’s face. “That’s what I thought. That’s why I left.”

  “Somebody had to, Ted. You guys left her. She could hardly stand up.”