When they reached tall grass, she stopped and pulled a tufted blade. A soft breeze brushed their faces. The grass rustled around their legs as they passed through it. Doug, too, bent and pulled a stalk of grass. They walked side by side, de-tufting grass stalks. “Was he belligerent? Obnoxious?”
She shrugged again. “He didn’t pick fights, if that’s what you mean. But what drunk isn’t obnoxious? The last year or two, he…well, he was lost. Pathetic, really. I felt sorry for him.”
“That’s a charitable attitude.”
“He didn’t have the nerve to blow his brains out. His method of suicide was alcohol. It was hard to watch.” She stopped and cut him a sharp glare. “You were curious to see how I’d behave up here, weren’t you? You came to observe me, to see if I’m the unfeeling bitch everyone says I am.”
“Not true. I wanted your company.”
“That’s nervy of you. You must know by now that I hate men.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Well, believe it. I’ve met few men I trust. Most of them lie and scheme and their egos have to be constantly stroked.”
“Some men would tell you the same thing about women. Neither sex has an exclusive claim on selfishness.”
The heat in her eyes softened. She gave him a measured look. “I guess not. I admit I’m cynical.”
They had reached the edge of the pond, giving him an opportunity to ease out of this conversation that could only end in another argument. Their images looked back at them. The action of the waterfall on the far end of the small pool created a shimmy in its crystalline surface. The temperature was noticeably cooler. “I’ll bet a dip in this is eye-opening,” Doug said, and shivered.
“It’s glacier water. I’ve never known anyone who tried to swim in it.” She peered into the clear depths. “Isn’t it amazing? They say no one has ever been to the bottom of it. It must be thousands, maybe millions of years old.”
Doug had never seen her so animated. Her eyes danced with excitement and he wondered what he, as a mere man, could ever do that might put the same look on her face. Mother Nature was tough competition.
On that challenging thought, he looked at the pond, too. It was amazing—a granite-lined oval, maybe thirty-by-fifty feet, with water as clear as glass. Humans couldn’t have laid the granite lining as precisely as the huge slabs came together. Water entered by way of the waterfall and spilled out into the creek at the opposite end, which explained the purity of the water. It looked shallow enough for wading, but Doug had seen plenty of mountain streams that looked more shallow than they were. “Nobody knows how deep this is, huh?”
“Oh, I’m sure the depth has been measured sometime, somehow, but not since I’ve known anything about it.” She made an arc with her arm that took in the whole small valley. “Now do you see why I don't want Kenny ruining this?”
“You don’t think the fire has ruined it already?”
“The grass and underbrush will grow back. The Forest Service brings in tree planters every spring. When they come next time, after they finish their work for the government, I’ll hire them to plant saplings on my hillside.” She pointed toward the mountain crest. “Up there is where Kenny wants to build his logging road. This creek and pond are in the watershed. The soil has high talc content. If its disturbed, it’ll wash into the stream and turn the water cloudy. It won’t settle out for years. And it’ll suffocate the fish.”
“There’s fish in here?”
She crouched on her hands and knees and leaned forward, ignoring the cloud of mosquitoes that rose from the thick grass. “Look. You can see them. Little trout.”
If she could stand a million mosquitoes, so could he. He squatted beside her and leaned forward, too. Sure enough, the fish were there. Small ones, maybe six inches long.
One broke the surface as it darted away. She jumped back, startled, then she laughed. “They’re after the mosquitoes. We must have interrupted their lunch. They’re wild. They never see people. I usually don’t bother them.”
He rested his forearms on his thighs, brushed hungry vampires off his bare arms as he looked around. “I’ve spent a lot of time in the outdoors, but I’ve never seen a place quite like this. It suits you. It's like you are. Dramatic and wild.”
Her head snapped to face him, suspicion in her eyes. “I’m neither of those things.”
“I meant it as a compliment. I’m just saying you’re out there with the way you think and live. You don’t appear to be trapped in the conventions most of us are.”
She smiled and gave him a teasing look. “Ah. Well, that’s a new description. I suppose it’s an improvement over mean and crazy.”
She stood then, and he did, too. They were side by side, her shoulder touching his arm. She seemed unconscious of it, but he wasn’t. She turned her head and looked up at him as if she intended to say something, but what she might have said was forever silenced by his hand cupping her nape and his mouth settling on hers. He couldn’t help himself. He had to taste her. He could think of nothing else.
She didn’t resist. Nor did she return the kiss. “Kiss me,” he murmured against her mouth. Her lips parted and let his tongue slide into her mouth. He delved for more. She must have thought it felt okay because she didn’t stop him.
****
Alex didn’t stop him because she was shocked. But more than that, she had fantasized about kissing him. His lips were as soft and warm and as nimble as they looked. They caressed her mouth. He tasted sweet and clean and he smelled spicy and male. She lost track of how long they kissed, but heat began to rise within her, and for a reason she knew not, she moved her tongue against his.
A soft rumble came from deep in his chest. His arm went around her waist and he hauled her against him. His hand crawled beneath her shirt, covered her breast and his fingers gently stroked her nipple. She began to feel dizzy and fluttery inside.
Something reminded her that barely a month had passed since she had seen him ready to screw Cindy Evans in almost this same spot. She had no business doing this. She wouldn’t do this. She leaned back, putting space between them. “Don’t,” she choked out.
Her breath came in shallow shudders, his, shaky. His lips were wet, his eyes heavy-lidded. He whispered her name and bent toward her again, but she jerked her head sideways and reached behind her, pulled his arm away and stepped beyond his reach. “I wish you hadn’t done that. I wish I hadn’t let you. I wish I hadn’t kissed you back.”
She made for the hill.
His hand shot out and caught her wrist, stopping her. “What’s wrong?”
“I don't know why I let you come here with me. This place means nothing to you.” She yanked back her wrist and kept hiking, scrambling to stay ahead of him.
He caught up on the ridge road and grabbed her arm again. “Alex, stop,” he said, his chest heaving. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
She broke away from him and ran down the hill. Despite slipping on the steep surface and sliding in loose rocks, she stayed ahead of him and he was well behind her by the time she reached her back deck. When he arrived, she had just finished removing her boots. He stood between her and the back door. She looked into his eyes. “Leave me alone. Please. Just leave me alone. Please let me go inside.”
He stepped sideways, allowing her to open the door. She passed in front of him through the back doorway and slammed the door in his face.
****
From her living room windows, Alex watched the white Silverado bounce down the driveway and enter the green tunnel of trees and brush. She felt shaky inside. Still tasting his kiss, she covered her lips with her fingers.
She had to stop this. While in California she had decided to stay away from him. That decision had been the right one. But she liked him. She liked his keen intelligence, his no-nonsense approach to things and he had a mysterious allure she couldn’t put a name to.
Why couldn’t he be just her friend, like Ted was? Silly idea, she thought then. He was like a charact
er in a romance novel. Sexuality oozed from his pores, sparked from his too-knowing eyes. Instinctively she knew he was an all-or-nothing kind of man. He wouldn’t settle for friendship.
Scarier still, even if he could be “just friends” with her, she didn’t know if she could be “just friends.” She had this odd awareness of sex every time she was near him.
Sex. “Face facts, Alex,” she mumbled. She was thirty-six years old, had been married and given birth, but she was as dumb as a virgin when it came to men and sex. She and Charlie had fumbled through Sex 101 together and the result had been she had gotten pregnant at sixteen.
Sex with her husband must not have been spectacular because she could scarcely recall it. Bells hadn’t rung, she hadn’t seen the stars she read about in novels. She hadn’t wanted to tear off his clothes, hadn’t wanted him to tear off hers, hadn’t felt overpowering emotion. Sex with Charlie had mostly been a lot of trouble and made her want to take a shower. She hadn’t missed him in her bed.
Damn Doug Hawkins for stirring up feelings she had no business having, for arousing urges she had no business pursuing, for making her long to experiment just one time.
She abandoned woolgathering in front of the windows, went to the phone in her office and dialed her Manhattan Beach office number. If there was anyone she could discuss Doug Hawkins and sex with, that person was her middle-aged assistant and mother of six kids, Judy. There was nothing Judy Moore didn’t know about sex.
****
To say Doug wasn’t in a bad mood by the time he returned to his own house was like saying a hungry wolf wasn’t dangerous. No adjective existed in the English lexicon to describe his frustration. He had never met a more impossible woman. Not once had an encounter with her had a favorable outcome.
What had happened to him that he couldn’t leave her alone and move on? A shortage of women had never existed in his life. He hadn’t ever had to pursue sex. It had always just been there. He had taken it or not taken it, as it came. The possibility that he wouldn't be able to hook up with a willing woman once he settled in Idaho hadn't occurred to him once. That he might find one who would affect him like he hadn't been affected in years, if ever, hadn't occurred to him either.
What he needed was to forget about Alex McGregor and meet someone with no problems, some normal woman with whom he could spend time and share a normal sexual relationship. Or at least as normal as a single man could have. Good plan. All it needed was execution.
He was banging and slamming in the kitchen, hunting for something to devour, when he heard a car engine out front. Long strides took him to the front door. When he stepped out onto the deck, Ted had just killed his engine. “I managed to escape for the afternoon,” Ted called from the driver’s seat of his truck. “Get your tackle. Let’s go up to Sterling Creek.”
At the moment, nothing could have made Doug happier. He gathered his waders and his fly rod and flies, which he hadn’t so much as looked at since unpacking them and climbed into Ted’s truck. They headed north out of town. Ted had brought a couple of pints of milk and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They ate as he drove. Within an hour they were casting lines into an exquisite clear stream hemmed in by wooded, high canyon walls.
Peace crept into every part of Doug and Alex and her quirkiness drifted off, a million miles away. The majesty of Nature always had helped him regain his perspective. In Southern California, he had fled the city at every opportunity and spent time camping out, backpacking and fishing in the High Sierras. The escape had helped save his sanity.
They fished hard, wading the edges of the rugged bank and Doug lost himself in the solitude, the dramatic scenery and the roar of the white water. By late afternoon, they had hooked enough Rainbow and Brookies to make a meal.
“I’ll ask Mary Jane to cook these up for us,” Ted said. “If it wasn’t so dry, we could build a campfire and do it here, but I don’t want to risk it.”
Mary Jane fried the trout along with potatoes and onions. She added a salad and homemade bread and Doug gorged himself. By the time they helped her clean up the kitchen, the hour was late. Ted leisurely drove him home. Doug was more at ease than he had in more than two years. He felt so comfortable in his old friend’s company, over beers on the back porch, he told Ted the sordid tale of how his affair with the wife of a powerful politician and the fateful shooting of their drug-dealing thirteen-year-old son ended a stellar law enforcement career.
“Did you know the kid was theirs?” Ted asked.
Doug had been on the receiving end of a morphine drip the day he learned he had shot and killed the child of his mistress. He could scarcely remember hearing it. “Not at first. I didn’t wake up entirely for three weeks. When I did, I was in ICU. You don’t get much news in the ICU. After that, I was stoned on pain killers half the time, in and out of surgeries.”
One thing he did remember vividly. After being moved from ICU, he had taken the longest walk of his life—a half dozen steps from his hospital bed to a chair while standing between two nurses. “A good three months had gone by before I got a clear picture of all that happened. Too late. Events were already headed downhill at warp speed. Unstoppable.”
“Was she somebody you loved?”
Even now, Doug didn’t know the answer to that question. He shrugged. “She was good-looking and fun. And needy. Bascomb pushed her around. That’s how I met her, investigating a domestic abuse call. She said she wanted to leave him, but he scared her into staying. She couldn’t seem to help herself.”
“What happened to her?”
“Far as I know, she’s still Mrs. John Bascomb. Wife of one of the most powerful politicians in Los Angeles. I couldn’t see it then, but that’s what she wants to be. She thinks the status is worth the price she pays. By now, she’s probably fucking some other dim-witted bastard on the side.”
“Wow. Shit just happens, doesn’t it?” Ted yawned and stretched. “Well, I gotta hit the road. Riding fences with Pete tomorrow.”
Ted pushed up from his chair and stepped off the porch. Doug walked with him to his truck. As he started his engine, he gave Doug a sober look through the open window. “You’ve used up a lot of capital on women, haven’t you?”
Chapter 18
The tranquility Doug had found in the solitude of a mountain stream didn’t hold over. Alex's rebuff at Granite Pond continued to nip at his heart. An ache akin to grief pressed against his rib cage. The alien emotion had him bewildered as well as depressed.
Work on and around his house kept him busy in the daylight hours and he could avoid thinking of her so much, but he had no such distraction in the evenings. Reading or watching TV didn’t help either. He went to bed night after night with her on his mind. He re-lived a dozen times the few seconds it took for her to look up at him with a tender gaze and say his name in that soulful voice and the night she had slept in his arms with her head on his chest. And he couldn’t forget the kiss at Granite Pond.
For therapy, he threw himself into working non-stop on his house, finished half-done tasks, which included cleaning the old place’s every nook and cranny. He scrubbed his bathroom plumbing hardware with lye and a toothbrush and discovered he didn't have to buy new plumbing fixtures after all.
A week later, he was still irritable. Food had lost its taste, a blow to his quest to gain weight. Music on the radio annoyed him. He couldn’t even get interested in pre-season football on TV.
He finished up his work for Bob Culpepper and Malcolm Higgins, driven only by the thought of receiving payment for his services. He decided to take the files to them in person instead of sending them by e-mail or Fed Ex. Leaving Callister for Boise felt like being released from prison must feel.
He hadn’t seen his employers since the initial meeting. Renewing the acquaintance, he was pleased they still appeared to have no concern about the scandal he had left behind in Los Angeles. He couldn’t keep from thinking he should be looking over his shoulder, in case it jumped up to bite him.
&nb
sp; At the end of the meeting, Culpepper followed him into the hallway. “Let’s get a cup of coffee.”
Such an invitation coming after a meeting always aroused Doug’s suspicions. He strolled with the attorney up the street to a Starbucks, wondering what bomb Culpepper was about to drop on him, but still enjoying the eighty-degree temperature.
The lawyer bought two coffees and led the way to a shaded table outside, away from other patrons. He slipped off his coat, draped it over the back of a chair and sat down, then rolled up his shirt sleeves and loosened his dark blue tie. Usually, Doug liked seeing a man roll up his shirtsleeves and get down to business. Today it made him nervous. He took a seat on the opposite side of the table.
Culpepper leaned forward and spoke in a low tone. “I’ve got a client in Callister I’m concerned about. I’m wondering if you’d be interested in doing some investigative work up there.”
Doug continued to sit back in his chair, keeping distance between himself and the lawyer. “I don’t do that kind of thing anymore.”
“This would be an investigation just for me and on the QT. I’d pay you well. It might not amount to anything, but— ”
“Who’s the client?”
“A summer resident. Her name’s Alex McGregor. You might know of her. She owns a tavern and restaurant in town. Her former husband burned to death a month or so ago.”
The hair on the back of Doug’s neck threatened to rise. He swallowed a gulp of coffee that burned all the way down his gullet. “I’ve met her.”
“Good. I’m glad you know her. I believe she’s involved in something that could be dangerous. Have you seen her in the past week or so?”
Now Doug leaned forward, his interest aroused. “Last Tuesday.”
The Love of a Stranger Page 19