She shrugged away his hand. “Just drop that. That day will never come.”
He leaned forward, too, his bare knee touching her denim-covered one. “Yeah, I know. It was just a smart-aleck remark. Now, tell me what’s got you so rattled.”
“I feel so damn stupid.” She pressed the tips of her fingers against her forehead. “It’s my fault for ignoring it. I should’ve done something, back when I could have.”
She stood up and walked around his coffee table, her arms crossed under her breasts. He stayed seated, waiting for her to confess the mistake she thought she had made.
She walked over and stared out his living room windows. Looking at her home on the mountainside across the valley, he assumed. “You remember me showing you Old Ridge Road that day we went up to Granite Pond?” she asked.
He remembered more than that, like the sweetness of her mouth and the warmth of her body pressed to his. And that she had run away from him like he might hurt her in some way. “Yep.”
“Well, it travels on up the mountain. When it gets to my back fence, it turns left and runs along the back line of my property. It’s a strip of land about twenty feet wide. Remember me telling you about the old army campsite in Soldier Meadows?”
“Yep. I remember that, too.”
“A long time ago, that strip of land was a road that went to that campsite. You can still see the remnants of the old wagon tracks. When Charlie and I got the divorce and I was given the Idaho property, I got a stack of old documents that were sort of the history of the property. I don’t know where Charlie got them in the first place, but some of them were copies of field notes from the original government survey. I was reading through them one day and I found where the surveyor had written the description of the army’s road in 1870.
“I was blown away because Idaho wasn’t even a state then. I researched and learned the government started surveying in this part of the country soon after the Civil War. By 1870, what’s now my property had already been claimed, so the government laid out the road on adjacent unclaimed property.”
Doug loved true historical tales. “Wow. Wonder what the army was doing camped in that spot?”
“Maybe they were protecting miners,” she said absently. “The Sioux were all around this valley then and a lot of mining was going on.”
She turned back and faced him. “Anyway, after World War II, the government made a big push to get the western lands surveyed and accurately identified. They re-surveyed this whole area. They found errors in the original documents related to the road and made corrections, which took the road away from the government and made it part of what’s now my property.
“The people who owned it back then fenced it, but the government contested the re-survey. The owners of the property fought with them for years. When the Forest Service took it over, they continued the fight. I couldn’t find any record where the true ownership was ever determined by a court. But during all of that, apparently, no one ever made them move their fence, so it’s been there in the same place for more than fifty years.”
She resumed pacing in front of the coffee table. “Soon after Charlie and I bought the place, the government made more corrections in township corners in this area and the road ended up on Forest Service land again. But it’s still inside my fence, which has been there since 1947. When we took ownership, no one said we had to move the fence, so we didn’t.”
A light went on in Doug’s brain. “So you’re saying the Forest Service land that’s inside your fence, and has been for fifty years, is what they’re trading to Miller?”
“I’m not sure yet, but I think so. And I don’t know how to stop it.”
All that Doug had heard about Miller paying Charles McGregor for the right to use the road came back to him. “Why would Miller pay your ex-husband for the right to use a road that you and he didn’t even own?”
“At the time Charlie sold Soldier Meadows to Kenny, Charlie and I didn’t know we didn’t own the road, but I suspect Kenny knew. Once thing prudent loggers do is research property before they start cutting down trees. It’s lawsuit city if they cut timber on real estate that doesn’t belong to them or drive their equipment where they have no right to go and so on and so on. So I suspect that when he did his research, he discovered the road.
“When someone buys landlocked land, they can go to court and force a right-of-way, but Kenny probably thought it would be cheaper to just pay Charlie something for it rather than start a row that would call for lawyers and court.
“I knew all of this could become a problem if and when Kenny ever decided to log. And of course he would log at some point. What other reason would he have for buying steep, landlocked land? But Charlie and I were still married then and he was drinking heavily. That situation used every ounce of spare brain space I had. My concentration was so fractured by all of the chaos and trying to maintain my business, I couldn’t focus on the property sale to Kenny.
“Wow. That’s a convoluted mess,” Doug said. Apparently, Alex truly didn’t own what she was fighting over. “Can’t Culpepper help you? Or Ted? How about Ted?”
She heaved a sigh.
“Ted doesn’t know about it. I’ve never told him. I guess I hoped that if I just kept quiet no one would ever make an issue of the fence or the road. It isn’t like a mob of people ever go up there. I haven’t been up there myself in over two years. I usually end my hikes at the glade and Granite Pond.”
“Isn’t there some kind of rule that says if a fence has been there a long time it stays there?”
“Sometimes that applies to private property. But not necessarily to government-owned land. In my real estate business, at different times, I’ve had experience trying to negotiate with the Forest Service and the BLM over unclear boundaries. They always win.”
“Always?” It was a rhetorical question. Doug knew the answer.
“Always.”
“So where does this leave you?”
She released another heavy breath. “I’m waiting for Bob to tell me. He hasn’t returned my call.” She walked toward her purse. “I have to go. I came here because I hoped you knew more details about the trade.”
He opened his palms. “I wish I did.”
She picked up her sunglasses and purse. As she hooked the purse on her shoulder, she gave him a long look. “I came for another reason, too. I’ve been thinking about how you didn’t have to get involved in this, but you did. How you’ve showed me friendship. Kenny’s a terrible person. Now you’ll be on his enemies list. I’m sorry about that.” She wiped the corner of her eye with her fingertip. A tear?
The conflicting stories about Alex he had heard from Culpepper and Cindy rushed into his memory. He stood, too, walked to her and smiled, wanting to reassure her. “Hey, he’s not the first bad guy I ever met.
“I’m sure he isn’t. I should add I’m sorry I’ve been mean to you.”
For some reason, he didn’t like hearing her apologize. He took her sunglasses and purse again and re-placed them on the half wall, then clasped her elbow and steered her toward the kitchen. “I’ll bet you didn’t eat breakfast. So how about some lunch. I’ve got some sourdough bread I bought down in Boise and some great fresh ham. Believe it or not, they stock Boar’s Head at Fielder’s.”
She smiled wanly. “You’re really into food, aren’t you? Why don’t you weigh three hundred pounds?”
He flashed her a grin. “I work hard.”
He urged her to a chair at his round oak table.“Now you just take a seat while I make us a couple of gourmet sandwiches.”
****
Alex let him seat her on an oak straight-backed chair that needed refinishing. Indeed she was hungry. She hadn’t eaten since yesterday. She looked around. His house had an open airy feeling she liked and it smelled of freshly-taped Sheetrock. It was also neat, even with construction debris stacked here and there, and it was spotlessly clean.
He began gathering sandwich fixings from the refrigerator. He was
obviously right at home in a kitchen, even when the cabinets were wooden crates with plywood laid across them for a countertop.
“This is temporary,” he said of the cabinets, as if she wouldn’t conclude that. “I’m buying new cabinets from Home Depot. I’m gonna install them myself.”
He hadn’t buttoned his shirt, so a long strip of his chest and flat stomach were exposed. He didn’t seem embarrassed by his scant clothing and she had to admit she didn’t mind looking at him. He was long and lean, tanned to golden and beautiful.
“This is a small house,” he was saying when her mind came back to the conversation. “It’s the only one I’ve ever owned. In L.A., I lived in apartments until I bought a condo, which wasn’t much different from an apartment.”
“Where did you live?”
“Santa Monica. Not too far from the ocean. Want your bread toasted?”
He turned and gave her a frontal view of his body. She took full advantage of the sight. His torso showed well-defined muscles and dark hair that trailed down his flat stomach in a whorl and disappeared behind the waistband of his cutoffs. His maleness clutched her and she found herself wondering if he had on underwear under those cutoffs. “Uh, it isn’t necessary.”
As he spread mayonnaise on slices of sourdough, he launched into an explanation of the changes he had made to his house and those he had planned for the future. “I’m going to add a couple of rooms soon,” he said. “One for the exercise equipment”—he gestured toward the NordicTrack with a knife—“and a big master bedroom and bath.”
He reminded her of a little boy who maybe wanted her approval. “It looks like it’ll be wonderful when you’re finished.”
He smiled. “It will. And if it isn’t, I’ll work on it until it is.”
“I was never in this house when the Stewarts owned it, but I remember the family. They used to farm. I thought they had several hundred acres. I thought all of it was for sale.”
“Three hundred twenty acres, but who needs all that land? I bought just twenty acres. The rest of it’s still for sale.”
He sliced the two thick sandwiches in half and brought them to the table, then returned to the refrigerator where he pulled out ice trays and broke out ice cubes. As she watched him, she sensed that he was a steady man, calm and confident he was right. Nothing like Charlie who had spent his life hanging from the roof edge by his fingertips.
“You should always buy land when you can,” she told him.
He returned to the table carrying the glasses of ice and cans of Pepsi “Good financial advice from a pro, huh?”
She smiled at the compliment as he took a seat adjacent to hers at the table. “I can’t even remember all of the land I’ve bought and sold over the years,” she said. “I’ve always made a profit. Sometimes a substantial one. You know what the real estate market is like in L.A.”
He nodded and picked up his sandwich. As they ate, she wondered how it would be to routinely share meals with a man like Doug Hawkins. It wasn’t a serious thought, really. Just something to fill the time it took to chew. She ate half the sandwich, but pushed the other half away. “This is a good sandwich, but I can’t eat any more. Maybe you can save it for later or something. It’s a shame to waste it.
“Not hungry, huh?” he said.
She shook her head. “I don’t need much food.” She wiped her hands on her napkin. “Thanks for feeding me, but I really do have to go.”
She stood and he did, too. He came around, pulled her chair back and took her hand, rubbed the top with his thumb. “I wish I knew more.”
She liked her hand in his and didn’t pull it away. She looked up into his incredible serious, silver eyes. “I’ll get to the bottom of it. I probably already know most of it. I just have to figure out a strategy. This is what I get for trying to be sneaky. If I had dealt with this back when I first discovered the survey error, I wouldn’t be facing disaster now.”
“You’re not alone, Alex. Don’t ever think you are.”
She had to smile at that. She had always been alone, in every battle she had waged. But at this instant, she couldn’t find it in herself to worry about it because she could see his lips parting and she knew he was going to kiss her.
She could describe his mouth on hers only as delicious. He tasted of mayonnaise and fresh bread and ham. And goodness—something she had never tasted on a man’s lips. He didn’t push, didn’t press, just gently molded her lips to his mouth and easily played with her tongue. His hands moved to cradle her face and he lifted his lips from hers. “I’m in so much trouble,” he said gruffly.
“I—I should go,” she said, her voice almost a squeak.
“Yeah, you’d better.” He released her, but held her gaze as he slid one hand all the way down her arm to the tip of her little finger.
She walked over to the half wall and picked up her sunglasses and purse. He followed her to the front door. A part of her didn’t want to go, so she stopped before leaving. “What does this mean, what we just did?”
“You don’t know?”
“I’m not very experienced at this. I don’t mind telling you, you scare me.”
Chapter 22
At Alex’s desk in her office, the phone insistently warbled. She abandoned straightening a book shelf and keyed on the SPEAKER button. Bob Culpepper. They exchanged small talk before the lawyer finally broached the land trade. Alex had already given his assistant the scant details she knew. “I’ve made a few phone calls and done a little research,” he said. “Here’s the bad news.”
A nervous titter escaped her throat. She sat down at her desk and picked up the receiver. “Okay, I’m seated. Let me have it.”
“The trade is near completion. A hundred twenty acres off Miller’s north side in Soldier Meadows for the no-man’s-land strip across your back boundary line.”
Alex almost stopped breathing. It was one thing for a disaster to be under speculation, but another to hear about it officially. Panic crawled up her throat and her mind raced in all directions. “Then, we—we have to get to the Forest Service. I know they can’t protect Granite Pond, but they won’t want Swede Creek to be damaged.”
“I don’t know how important that will be to them,” Bob replied. “It’s my understanding they like Miller’s deal because it squares up their boundary abutting his property on the west side. When it’s done, the boundary that’s presently in dispute will be firmly established and the matter settled once and for all. If Miller doesn’t stop the creek’s flow altogether, they might be ambivalent about collateral damage from building a road across it.”
“And he—he’ll own the access to his timber.” Alex hung onto the receiver white-knuckled, as if she could squeeze a positive answer from it. “There are legitimate environmental issues. Radical groups have stopped countless logging jobs. Some Eskimos in Alaska stopped road construction northeast of Sterling Mountain on the risk of pollution to the Big Salmon and they don’t even live in Idaho. All they did was write a letter to the right people and a big logging job has been on hiatus ever since.”
“That was on public lands, Alex, not private property. Besides, do you really want to start a firestorm in the community where you own a business and are making your permanent home? It might be different if you could be sure you’d win, but—”
“Okay, okay. I get the point.”
“I’ve already presented a brief to Judge Cobb making the environmental argument. It’ll be a week or two before we hear, but I don’t expect him to rule in our favor. This isn’t California. Here, they don’t tell people what they can or cannot do with their own land. And they don’t offer any special protection either. Then there’s the economic impact to consider. Look at Callister. Half the community is unemployed. The same is true of most of the neighboring towns. Judge Cobb is a conservative man. He’ll consider how important logging is to the economy in that part of the state.”
She fought back tears. “Dammit, Bob, why didn’t this come up when Charlie and I bou
ght this property ten years ago? Or when we sold the five sections to Kenny? Why hasn’t it ever shown up in a title report?”
“I don’t know, but that’s another matter. Did you have it re-surveyed when Miller bought the five sections?”
“No. We used a metes and bounds description. I knew this meandering road problem was hanging out there, but when it wasn’t mentioned anywhere, I assumed the Forest Service had resolved it in our favor.”
She heaped recrimination on herself. A woman who had been in the real estate business seventeen years should know better than to assume anything.
“Lesson learned,” the lawyer replied. “If you’re skeptical, my pride won’t be hurt if you check everything out for yourself.”
“I don’t need to check it out. I trust what you say.”
“You’ll be down Tuesday, right?”
As Alex envisioned the value of her home and surrounding property flying out the window, dollar signs raced through her mind at such a velocity, she could hardly compute them. And Granite Pond. An ancient irreplaceable natural wonder of exquisite beauty was on the brink of disappearing forever.
Bob’s voice sounded far away.
“What? I didn't hear you. What did you say?”
“The twenty-seventh. Next Tuesday. The fund raiser for Ralph Cumley, remember? You’re supposed to make contact with Hayes Winfield. Ed and Martha Anderson, remember them?”
“Of course I remember them. Yes, I’ll be there.” In truth, she hadn’t thought of the Andersons lately, but she did remember them. She sighed mentally as she paged through her desk planner, studying her schedule, had no trouble finding the note she had written about the appointment.
“You know, Bob, I should leave here a day earlier so we can sit down and talk face to face. I can be in your office after lunch on Monday.” She scratched a note into her planner and returned to the pending disaster. “What are the chances of getting some help from your friend Senator Cumley on this? As hot as everything environmental is right now, he should want to jump in with both feet.”
The Love of a Stranger Page 24
