by Cathie Linz
It wasn’t as if Gaylynn was using any fancy art supplies; she’d found a pad of blank paper in her car—a teacher was forever dragging around paper in some shape or form.
But are you still a teacher? an inner voice asked. She did find herself wondering what her kids were doing back in Chicago and feeling that she’d let them down by not being strong enough to see the year out. Several times she’d been tempted to call one of her co-workers at the school and ask how things were going, but something had held her back.
The two kittens provided a welcome diversion as Blue took the phrase “snug as a bug in a rug” literally, diving beneath one of the cotton throw rugs, then turning around and lying down so only her pink nose peeked out. To Gaylynn’s surprise a few minutes later, Spook crouched down, playing the unexpected role of “mighty hunter,” before pouncing on top of the rug and Blue. In a flash the two kittens were off chasing each other while Gaylynn laughed at their antics.
A knock at the front door around dinnertime sent all the cats diving for cover in the relative safety of her bedroom. “It’s just Hunter,” she reassured them as she opened the door.
He was standing on her front porch, wearing a gray sweatshirt with a hood. On top of that was an official-looking rain slicker. In his arms were three bags full of food. Not wanting the cats to get out while the door was open, she grabbed his arm and tugged him quickly inside.
“What’s all this?” she asked, pointing to the bags.
“Food. My fridge went on the fritz. I hated to see all this food go to waste so I thought I’d store it here.”
“You’ve got enough food there for an army,” she noted, peeking over the edge of the paper bag.
“Yeah, well, I’m a growing boy.”
“I don’t have much in my fridge right now,” she admitted, “so you’re welcome to store your stuff here.”
“Actually, I thought we might as well start eating it, since I don’t know when I’ll be able to get someone to come out here to look at my fridge.”
She eyed him suspiciously. She had a feeling this was his way of looking out for her, of making sure she had enough food in the house, but short of examining his refrigerator there was little she could do, except to cook for him.
So she said, “The least you can do is stay and help me eat some of this food, then.”
He needed no convincing.
Gaylynn liked to cook. She found the process soothing. She just wasn’t very good at it. So she kept it simple.
Seeing how good Hunter looked with his damp hair tumbling onto his forehead, accentuating the sharp lines of his face, she had a hard time concentrating on her culinary skills.
As she unpacked the food he’d brought, her earlier suspicions returned. “Soup?” she said, holding up one of the half-dozen cans he had in the bag. “Since when do you keep cans of soup in the refrigerator?”
“I had too many cans in the cupboard. They had a sale and I picked up too many. I couldn’t even close the door.”
Gaylynn wished she could close the door on the provocative thoughts running through her head. Here he was talking about soup and she was eyeing the curve of his lips as he said every word. Aside from the fact that he had to have the sexiest mouth in the northern hemisphere, it occurred to her that she’d never sketched him. And she wanted to. Wanted to keep his likeness beside her for the times when they were apart.
Great. Next, you’ll be putting his picture under your pillow, she silently chastised herself, frowning as she seemed to recall that that was part of a Gypsy love spell she’d heard or read about at one time. She didn’t need to evoke any more magic; she had enough trouble on her hands as it was.
While she finished preparing two steaks, boiled new potatoes and fresh zucchini, Hunter tried to convince the cats that he wasn’t Jack the Ripper. The soft voice he used was enough to make Gaylynn melt.
“You should have Laura check them over to make sure they’re all okay,” he told Gaylynn as Blue skittishly sniffed his outstretched hand.
“Who is Laura?” Gaylynn asked.
“She’s the local vet. She makes house calls in special cases. If I ask her, I’m sure she’d be willing to stop by.”
“You know her real well, then?”
His noncommittal “mmm” didn’t tell her much at all, and left her feeling as green as the zucchini—green with jealousy.
“She’s married,” Hunter finally said, his grin making her wonder if he could read her mind.
“That’s nice,” she managed to say.
“What’s this?” Hunter suddenly asked, noticing the engraved metal box on the end table.
“Um, it’s a box a relative sent us from Hungary.”
“Nice workmanship,” he said approvingly.
“Do you notice anything strange about it?” she asked.
“Strange meaning what?”
“It’s just that the box has a legend that goes with it.
I’ll tell you about it some other time.”
“Why not now?”
“Because dinner is ready now.”
“It looks good,” he said.
She could only hope it would taste the same.
Deciding not to test the kitties’ table manners, she’d made sure to put out cat food for them in the kitchen so they wouldn’t be tempted to jump on the table.
As she sat down, the image of her coaxing the cats inside the evening before suddenly reminded her of the way Hunter had coaxed her to go into his cabin after their basketball game yesterday. Which promptly made her feel like a stray herself.
She wondered if her hair looked all right. She hadn’t had time to really look in a mirror since Hunter’s unexpected arrival. She still hadn’t gotten it cut. And Hunter hadn’t gotten his cut, either. It now did more than just brush the collar of his blue shirt; it was at least an inch beyond that. The shaggier his hair got, the sexier he got.
“It’s time you got a haircut,” she informed him.
“You volunteering for the job?”
“Isn’t there a barber in Lonesome Gap?”
“Nope. Mostly the wives cut their husbands’ hair. But since I’m not married.”
Not falling for his poor-me routine, she asked, “Who cut your hair the last time you had it cut?”
“Some trendy salon over in Summervitle.”
“Somehow 1 can’t picture you in a trendy salon,” Gaylynn replied wryly.
“Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said with a slow smile that lit fires in her heart.
“I, uh. Uh, why don’t you go back to that salon in Summerville again?”
“They wanted to use mousse on me,” he declared with such a look of pure male outrage that Gaylynn cracked up.
“You poor baby,” she cooed, patting his arm reassuringly. “Wuz they tryin’ to mousse with you?”
He chuckled at her pun before growling, “No one mousses with me!”
At their shared laughter, Gaylynn wondered why it couldn’t always be like this between them—free and easy, fun and carefree. Then her eyes caught his and the flashdance of attraction tapped its message into her heartbeat. The want, the need, the yearning, was overwhelming. She checked his expression, wondering if she were the only one feeling these unexpected bursts of passion. His vivid green eyes gave nothing away.
She had to say something, put the conversation on an impersonal level before she let something slip. “Uh, how is your deputy doing? The one who injured his foot?”
“That’s a polite way of putting it. He’s using a cane to get around and is tied to desk duty for another two weeks.”
“Is that why you’ve been working all those extra hours?”
“So you noticed that, did you?” He seemed pleased.
Now what should she say? That she was as aware of his comings and goings as she was of her own breathing? That she didn’t breathe easily at night until she heard the gravel-crunching that heralded the arrival of Hunter’s car up the steep driveway. He had to go past her
cabin to reach his own. By now, she even recognized the ragged purr of his car’s engine.
In the end, Hunter let her off the hook by talking about an emergency call he’d gotten that day, to get Ma Battle’s ornery tabby cat out of a tree. “I’m lucky I made it out of there alive,” he noted. “Seems that Ma Battle had good ol’ Tom neutered and he didn’t appreciate the fact one bit.”
“Tom being the cat’s name, I presume?” Gaylynn inquired.
“That’s right.”
“Ma Battle is the one who enters all the sweepstakes, isn’t she?”
“Right again. Have you met her yet? She hasn’t been talking to you, has she?”
“No, I haven’t met her yet. Why do you ask if she’s been talking to me—is there some law against that?”
“No law against it, no.”
“So why did you ask?”
“No reason.”
Gaylynn’s raised eyebrow told him she wasn’t buying that for one minute.
“Okay, I happened to mention that you were a teacher,” he admitted reluctantly, “and some folks in town got together and wanted to ask you.something. But I told them not to bother you, that you were here to rest, not to get bogged down with a bunch of kids.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Don’t you even think about it for one minute. You need your rest. You certainly don’t need to go traipsing into town and getting involved in their problems.”
“What problems?”
“Nothing. Forget I mentioned it. Great dinner, by the way.”
“Yeah, right. I noticed you gave half of your steak to Blue.”
“I never could resist a pair of gorgeous eyes.”
“I know.” Which made Gaylynn wish her eyes were gorgeous instead of just brown. “You always did have the heart of a marshmallow,” she noted in teasing voice.
Hunter just glared at her.
“Why, you’re blushing,” she noted in amazement.
“I am not. Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ve got the night shift tonight.” As he put on his raincoat, he said, “And remember, don’t let anyone drag you into things in town, okay?”
“Will do,” she said with a cheerful wave, before closing the cabin door.
“Gaylynn will do whatever she damn well pleases,” Hunter muttered under his breath before grinning. “At least, I hope she does!” That’s what he was counting on.
Six
“You sure do go through that cat food mighty fast,” Floyd noted as Gaylynn plunked four boxes of dried food on the counter. “How many cats you aim on feeding up there?”
“They’re growing kitties.”
“Yeah, and at the rate they’re eating, they’ll be growing into ten-foot-high tigers,” Floyd said.
Instead of hurrying on her way, as she’d always done before, this time Gaylynn lingered to chat. She had a feeling that there wouldn’t be much that happened in Lonesome Gap that Floyd and Bessie didn’t know about. And she was curious to know what Hunter had been talking about last night—when he’d said that some folks in town had wanted to ask her something.
But the “something” Floyd and Bessie were talking about now was the semi-truck filled with fertilizer that had tipped over a few weeks before.
“Made a right mess, it did,” Bessie noted.
“Not to mention smelling worse than a skunk in heat.”
“Now, Floyd Twitty, you mind your manners!” Bessie exclaimed with a wifely bat at his arm.
“This young lady is from Chicago, I’m sure she’s heard worse,” Floyd retorted. “You’re just a worrywart.”
Bessie sniffed. “As I was saying, that accident made a right mess. My cousin Eldon works for the county and was part of the clean-up crew.”
“I told Boone he should have gone on down to Summerville and applied for the clean-up job hisself, but he was too busy working on that car of his,” Floyd stated.
Seeing Gaylynn’s confused look, Bessie said, “Boone is our grandson. His folks died when he was just a tike and we raised him. He’s a miracle worker with anything mechanical. He works at the garage attached to our filling station here. Folks bring their cars from all over the county to have Boone work on them.”
“I’ve been telling him he needs to charge them more,” Floyd said. “I’m fixing to leave everything to him when we retire, but first I got to see if he has good business sense. Right now all I see is that he’s stubborn as a mule.”
“He gets that from your side of the family,” Bessie told her husband.
“Umm, so has anything else been happening in town?” Gaylynn asked, still no closer to figuring out what it was that Hunter had been talking about the night before.
“Well, you no doubt heard about poor Deputy Carberry shooting hisself in the foot like that,” Floyd replied.
“It was so embarrassing,” Bessie added.
“Not to mention painful,” floyd tacked on.
“I meant for his wife,” Bessie elaborated. “Here she’d been putting on airs and bragging on about how Lonesome Gap was lucky to have a lawman like Charlie Carberry.”
“And we are. Ain’t many lawmen know how to shoot themselves in the foot like that!” Floyd said with a cackle and a slap to his knee.
“Now, Floyd, it ain’t seemly to be laughing at others’ misfortunes,” Bessie said as she bit back the laughter herself. “Is there anything else we can help you with, honey?” she asked Gaylynn.
“I guess not. Oh, wait. You could recommend a good place to eat lunch in town.” Gaylynn was getting tired of her own cooking, such as it was, and decided that while she was doing a little research and reconnaissance, she might as well grab some food while she was at it.
“Why, sure,” Bessie replied. “You just mosey on down to the Lonesome Cafe and get some of the best milk-breaded catfish you ever did taste.”
“The cafe is right next door to Hazel’s Hash House,” floyd added. “Well, actually, it’s in the same building, if you want to get technical about it.”
“Which I don’t,” Bessie stated. “There’s no need to get into the details of the feud between the Montgomeries and the Rues, and why Hazel Rue set up her hash house in the same building as dear Lillie Montgomery. This town would have been much better off if those trouble-making Rues had stayed over in their own hollow ‘stead of coming to town.”
Unable to stand the suspense a moment longer, Gaylynn asked, “Does this feud have something to do with a question the town wanted to ask me?”
“Why, no,” Bessie said in surprise. “But we’re not allowed to talk about that. Goodness gracious, Hunter would skin me alive if I said anything to you about. the other matter,” she ended in a confidential undertone.
“What ‘other matter’?” Gaylynn asked.
“I really can’t say. Now don’t you worry none. I didn’t mean to scare you with all this talk of feuding.”
“What caused the feud?”
“I don’t rightly know.”
“I do,” Floyd interjected. “Caleb Montgomery turned his neighbor, Paul Rue, in to the revenue men and the Rues. well, they had a nasty way of getting even.”
“By revenue men, you mean the Internal Revenue Service?” Gaylynn said. “This was a tax matter?”
“It was more of a moonshine matter,” Floyd replied.
“How long ago did this feud start?”
“I believe it was in 1927.”
“That’s almost fifty years ago.”
“Just a blink of an eye in these mountains’ time clock,” Floyd maintained.
“Do any Montgomeries or Rues live up near my brother’s cabin?” Gaylynn asked.
“No. What makes you ask?”
“It’s just that I saw an elderly man up near the woods, and he looked rather, um, disreputable.”
“That description would fit half the men in this town,” Bessie interjected.
Gaylynn didn’t know what the protocol was in matters of this nature. Were moonshiners still around
? Should she just come right out and ask if there were any stills up there? Even if she did, she doubted she’d get an honest answer. Friendly as Bessie and Floyd were, Gaylynn was still an outsider here. For the time being.
Not wondering what that mental amendment meant, she decided now was as good a time as any to head over to the cafe for some lunch. “Well, I’d better get going. Thanks for filling me in about the town feud.”
“Yep, Lonesome Gap has its very own feud,” Floyd bragged, “just like in that Shakespeare movie we rented on video, with the Montagues and Capillaries.”
“Capulets,” Gaylynn automatically corrected him.
“Caplets? No, we don’t sell any of that stuff here, but they might have some over at the cafe. They sell headache pills there along with those fizzie stomach caplets. Don’t know why. The cooking is good. Eating there never did give me any trouble, not that I can say the same for the wife’s cooking,” Floyd stated.
“Just for that, I’m making liver and onions tonight,” Bessie announced.
Floyd rolled his eyes and made a grimace that made his wrinkled face look even more like a basset hound.
Gaylynn left them to their marital sparring. Going outside, she paused long enough to bend down and pet Bo Regard—whereupon he lifted his head and actually moved one ear, as well. “Don’t strain yourself,” Gaylynn murmured teasingly.
The bloodhound responded by dropping his head back to the doormat he all but covered.
Lonesome Gap was small enough that Gaylynn could walk from one end to the next without much trouble. The day was clear and sunny, the mountains providing a verdant backdrop. She didn’t know which view she preferred most, the one from here in the narrow valley looking up, or the one from the top of the mountains looking across at the layer after layer of blue ridges that gave this area its name.
Situated as it was between the river and the highway, the town of Lonesome Gap was spread out like the beads on a necklace. Not that there were many beads on this particular necklace; there were less than three dozen buildings in all and half of those were homes. The others were a real estate/video store, several empty storefronts for lease, the Blue Moon Motel with four “cottages with color TV,” something called the Gallery of Gifts and a big roadside sign for the Laughing Horse stables in nearby Summerville.