A HOME FOR THE HUNTER

by Christine Rimmer

  When he woke it was growing dark outside and he was hungry.

  In a town the size of North Magdalene, his options for dining were limited. He could choose between the Mercantile Grill and Lily's Café.

  It wasn't much of a choice. Both places would no doubt be infested with people named Jones, or at the very least, crawling with people who were related to people named Jones. Right then, he didn't care much for Joneses.

  After a few minutes of consideration, he decided he'd eat his dinner at Lily's.

  However, when he got to the café, he saw that they closed at five on Sundays. He was too late.

  Grimly he turned for the Mercantile Grill.

  The first thing he heard when he entered the restaurant was Olivia's laughter. It was only a short trill of sound, but he recognized it, muffled by the wall that divided the kitchen from the main part of the restaurant. He deduced that she'd started right in at her new job.

  He asked for a secluded table and got one. For a few moments after he was seated, he kept listening to hear Olivia's laugh again. But then he realized what he was doing.

  He was here to fill his growling stomach, not to moon over a woman that he was soon going to have to learn to forget. To take his mind off her, he concentrated on his surroundings.

  The restaurant, surprisingly, was a nice one. The walls were warm looking, exposed brick, the carpet a deep forest green. He ordered steak, potatoes and a salad.

  The food was good. He ate undisturbed. By the time he got to that final cup of coffee, he was actually beginning to imagine he might get fed and get out without having to talk to anyone named Jones.

  But then, just as he was signing his credit card slip, Oggie Jones hobbled in from the Hole in the Wall next door.

  "Well, what have we here?"

  Jack stood. "I was just leaving."

  "No, you don't. Not so fast."

  "Listen—"

  "You play poker?"

  Jack looked at the old man, a chilling look, and didn't answer.

  Oggie blithely continued. "You come on next door. They got a good game going. It's just a friendly game. They never play for big stakes. Ask anyone." The old fool chortled to himself, as if he'd told some hugely funny joke.

  "No."

  "Aw, come on. What else you gonna do with yourself tonight? This here's North Magdalene. We ain't got a movie house, there's no place to go dancin' and the only stage show we get around here is when the school puts on Arsenic and Old Lace. That's comin' up in a month or so." There was more chortling. "But not tonight."

  Jack couldn't believe this. The old man refused to get the message. "Look. No, thanks. I've got to—"

  "You gotta nothin'. Come with me."

  The old geezer had a hold of his arm. Jack couldn't shake him loose without being rough about it. And he didn't really feel like being rough.

  What the hell, he thought. Tonight the old man didn't seem much worse than cordial. There were no strange looks or cryptic remarks.

  What harm could it do to go next door and have a beer or two? Especially when the alternative was four knotty-pine-paneled walls and a lumpy bed. He'd end up there soon enough.

  Oggie started pulling him toward an interior door, which Jack assumed led to the Hole in the Wall. Jack shrugged and went along.

  Four hours later and two hundred dollars richer, Jack headed for Swan's Motel. He was weaving a little as he went. He'd had a beer or two more than he should have.

  But all told, he felt pretty good. The night air had a real bite to it; it cleared his foggy mind a little. He stood beneath a street lamp and looked up at the sky and the rim of mountains all around and decided that this was a pretty nice little town, after all. He wondered woozily what it would be like to live in a place like this, where everyone knew everyone, and as a general rule people were open and friendly, willing to give a stranger a chance.

  Even a nobody from nowhere. A professional hunter of other people's lost loved ones, with no loved ones of his own and no place to call home.

  Jack leaned against the lamppost and chuckled at himself. Nothing like a few too many beers to give a man an excuse for a little self-pity.

  He hugged the lamppost for a while, pondering the friendliness of people in small towns, reaching no particular conclusion. Then with a grunt he straightened, aimed himself at the motel and started moving. He didn't stop until he reached his room.

  He was snoring before his head hit the pillow.

  The next morning, after swallowing a couple of aspirin for his mild hangover, he had breakfast at Lily's. The waitress called Sunshine wouldn't give him his coffee until he drank his tomato juice. He grumbled that where he came from, waitresses didn't tell their customers what to eat.

  She only beamed. "Aren't you glad you're here, then?" Next, she breezily informed him that his girlfriend was moving into her new house today. "You'll be there to help, I guess."

  He wanted to ask her where she'd heard that Olivia was his girlfriend—and what help Olivia could possibly need moving into a furnished house with nothing but the borrowed clothes on her back to take with her? But he didn't. He knew he'd only be asking for more bright smiles and another volley of impertinent questions.

  With breakfast over, Jack began to spare a thought or two for his business in L.A.

  Roper, Inc., was a very simple operation. It consisted of Jack and an answering machine. He hooked up with clients through an ad in the yellow pages and, more frequently, by referral.

  Jack returned to his room. He intended to pick up his messages from the machine at his apartment and then call back any potential clients to explain that he was currently tied up. It was a chore he didn't relish. While Lawrence Larrabee had been paying him big money for a simple job, it had made sense to put any other work on hold. But now he was on his own time. Being unavailable was throwing money away, pure and simple.

  However, there was no sense crying over it. What was left of his common decency demanded that he stay here until Olivia emerged from her mental fog and agreed to return home.

  He saw he had a problem when he got back to the room. Swan's Motel was a long way from the cutting edge when it came to the amenities. Not only was the mattress lumpy, the phone was an old rotary model—and he had no doubt all the calls would have to be channeled through Chuck out front, anyway. He needed a touch tone and a direct line to get through to his answering machine.

  He ended up standing at the kiosk by the grocery store, scribbling his messages on a notepad while Ben Quail sat nearby and pretended he wasn't listening. Before Jack hung up, he taped a referral to Swan's Motel into his message, thinking that it might be somewhat appeasing to impatient clients if they had another number to call.

  That done, he decided he'd go back to his room and phone the few prospects who'd left messages with the news that he wasn't available right now. Then he'd sign on for another day's lodging at Swan's Motel. And after that he'd take Olivia her suitcases, a chore he didn't relish, but which had to be done sooner or later.

  He asked Ben Quail where the house on Rambling Lane

  was, the one Delilah Fletcher had lived in before she got married. Obliging as ever, Ben told Jack what the house looked like and how to get there.

  The house was a tidy little clapboard structure. White with green trim, it had a small, sloping lawn and rose bushes in front of the porch.

  Jack could hear a vacuum cleaner going, which meant Olivia was probably inside. No doubt Delilah, the dragon lady, would be there, too.

  Grimly he pounded on the door. But the vacuum cleaner kept running. He rang the bell. No one came and the vacuum cleaner went on roaring.

  He turned the door handle, and the door swung inward. He stepped beyond the threshold, calling out, "Hello?"

  The house was as neat and simple inside as out. The front door opened directly into the living room. Right on the other side of the living room, through an arch, was the kitchen. To his right, a cheery fire burned in a potbellied stove. Beyond the
stove was another arch. The roaring of the vacuum cleaner came through there. Hesitantly he followed the sound.

  In one of the two bedrooms he found Olivia. She wore the same clothes she'd worn yesterday. Her hair was tied back with a scarf and her tongue was caught between her teeth. She was pushing a big, ancient-looking, upright vacuum cleaner back and forth on the small strip of beige carpet between a low, mirrored dresser and a double bed.

  The sight was so appealing that Jack leaned on the doorjamb and watched.

  Since she was thoroughly absorbed in her task, it took Olivia several seconds to realize she had a visitor. But when she at last noticed him, her face lit up in a delighted smile. Jack couldn't help but smile back.

  With more than a little maneuvering, she managed to switch off the machine and snap it into an upright position. "Jack. Hello." She gestured at the vacuum cleaner, her smile turning proud. "Just cleaning up a little." She blushed charmingly. "It's my first time."

  He gave her a questioning look.

  "With a vacuum cleaner," she explained. "I found it in the closet. I've never used one before."

  He bit the inside of his mouth to keep from chuckling.

  "Don't you dare laugh."

  "I wasn't."

  "Right." She wrinkled her nose at him, then stepped around the vacuum cleaner. "Come on. I'll give you a tour of my new house. It won't take long, I guarantee." She spread her arms. "This is the master bedroom."

  He made a great show of looking around. "Very nice."

  "I think so. Step this way." She edged around him at the door. He caught the smell of her, just a taunting whiff of soap and sweetness, and she was past him.

  "This is the bath." She stood in the tiny hall and pointed at the pink-tiled room.

  "The master bath?" he teased.

  "The only bath."

  He pretended to think deeply. "Very efficient."

  "My sentiments exactly. This way to the back bedroom." She turned around and pointed.

  He looked in. "Charming."

  "Thank you." She gestured some more. "Here's a storage closet, and there are the stairs to the attic. It's a real attic, complete with spiderwebs, a few spare bed frames and a dusty dollhouse."

  "Fascinating."

  "This house belonged to Delilah's mother."

  "I see. Speaking of Delilah," he wryly remarked, "where is she?"

  "At work. She's a teacher, you know. And it's a school day."

  He was still suspicious. "Then where are the rest of them?"

  "The rest of them?"

  "The Joneses. I expected to find them all here, helping you to get settled in."

  She shrugged and held out her arms to encompass the whole small, neat house. "What's to settle? There's a little bit of dust, but I need the practice wiping it up myself. Otherwise, the place is ready to use."

  She went on to explain. "When Delilah and Sam combined their households, they took the best stuff to his house, where they live. Everything else they store here. They let visiting, out-of-town relatives stay here sometimes. Very tidy relatives, from the way the place looks. So there's nothing to do but buy food."

  "I see." He was leaning against the doorjamb of the back bedroom now, thinking that he loved to watch her talk, to watch the different expressions flit across her face, to see the way her hands moved when she wanted to punctuate a thought.

  "Jack?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Would you like to go into the living room and sit down?"

  The minute the words were out of her mouth, he wondered what the hell was wrong with him. The sight of her pushing that vacuum cleaner had disarmed him. He'd been behaving as if this were a social call.

  He straightened from the doorjamb. "No." He made his voice flat. "I brought your things."

  She looked away, the movement a transparent masking of her disappointment that he wouldn't stay. When she looked back, she was smiling again. "Of course. I was going to call you about that. Thanks for bringing them."

  "It's nothing. I'll get them."

  When he returned with the small suitcase, the makeup case and the shoulder purse, she was waiting in the living room.

  "You can just put them down there."

  He did as she instructed. Then he backed away. It was time to go.

  "Listen, Jack…" Nervously she licked her lips.

  "Yeah?"

  "I do hate to impose on you any more than I already have, but I—"

  His heart rose, though he denied the sensation. After all, if she needed something, what else could he do but help? "What? Ask."

  "I haven't decided what to do yet about getting a car."

  "Yeah?"

  "And I wonder—"

  "What?"

  "I need to shop for food. And from what I understand, the local grocery store is a little limited in what it can provide. Delilah says that for major shopping most people in town drive down to Grass Valley to one of the supermarkets there and—"

  "You want me to take you."

  "Yes. Would you?"

  "When?"

  She hesitated. "Well, now would be fine. If you don't have other plans."

  "I don't."

  "You mean you will?"

  "Yeah. Let's go."

  "Well, gee." She was all smiles again. "That's great." She pulled off the scarf that held back her hair and tossed it onto a chair. Then she shook her head, so the honey gold curls fell, vibrant and silky, around her shoulders. She grabbed her purse. "Can you wait just a second and let me at least put on some lipstick?"

  "You don't need lipstick." He despised the huskiness that he heard in his voice.

  She laughed, a light, happy sound that caused a flaring of heat in his belly. "Oh, Jack. Of course I don't need lipstick. Anymore than I need to wear clothes. But I feel a lot better if I have it on."

  "Hell."

  "Please?"

  "Make it quick."

  "I will." She started to turn. Then she seemed to remember something. "Oh, one thing."

  "What?"

  "Let me cook you dinner tonight, since you're doing this for me."

  The idea held definite appeal. Too much appeal. "Don't you have to work?"

  "No. It's Monday. The Grill and the Hole in the Wall are both closed Mondays."

  He said nothing for a moment, thinking that he should say no. Yet he couldn't help imagining the evening he'd have instead—a sandwich at the café and then off to his room and his lumpy bed. Maybe he'd stop in at the grocery store and buy a magazine to read. Or perhaps there'd be an old Western movie on the late show.

  "Please, Jack." Her eyes were full of sweet appeal. "Let me do this for you. After all you've done for me."

  "All I've done for you?" His voice was harsher than he meant it to be. "I've brought you nothing but grief, and you damn well know it."

  She shook her head. Her eyes were shining. "That's not true, Jack. You brought me the most joy I've ever known. You know you did."

  Swiftly he turned away. "Go put on your lipstick."

  "What about dinner, Jack?"

  "All right." He growled the words, still turned away. "Now get a move on."

  At the big supermarket on Sutton Way

  , they filled three carts with staples and produce and all the sundry articles Olivia needed to set up housekeeping. When they reached the check-out line, Olivia flipped out a credit card to pay for everything.

  After they'd loaded the groceries into the car and were started on the half-hour drive back to North Magdalene, she gave Jack a sheepish look.

  "Today, Eden asked me if I had enough cash."

  "Who's Eden?"

  "She's my new boss at the Mercantile Grill, remember? Oggie's daughter-in-law."

  "Oh. Right." Jack shot her a swift glance and then took his gaze back to the road. "So Eden asked you if you had enough cash?"

  "Yes."

  "And what did you say?"

  "We had a long talk. I explained how I was thinking maybe I should make a totally new start he
re, that I should refuse to spend any money I hadn't earned from my new job."

  "What did Eden say to that?"

  "She laughed. She said if I was rich, I should learn to live with it. But on my own terms. She said money was only a tool, anyway.

  "She's really something, you know? When she came here a year and a half ago, the Mercantile Grill was nothing but an empty building and the Hole in the Wall was a rundown saloon where brawls broke out every other night. Eden changed all that. She's worked in bars and restaurants since she was in her teens. She really knows her stuff. People come from all over to eat at the Grill, did you know that?"

  He grunted, thinking of the good meal he'd had last night. "I can believe it. So what are you telling me? That you were considering throwing all your money away, but now you've changed your mind?"

  "Yes. That's exactly it. I'm going to use it frugally. I'll buy only what I need to be comfortable. Soon enough I'll be able to live on what I make at the Grill. And then eventually I plan to use the money I've inherited in places where it's needed. I don't know exactly where, yet. But I will know, when the time comes."

  Jack paid strict attention to the road. This sounded a little like what she'd told him yesterday, all that weird talk about "fate" and what was "meant to be." But it also made a strange kind of sense.

  And that disturbed him. Because it led to an obvious question. Could it be that his poor little rich girl really was coming to grips with her life, after all?

  If that was so, then he was holing up at Swan's Motel amid the plaid and knotty pine for no reason at all, while at home his phone kept ringing with job offers he could ill afford to pass up.

  "Jack?"

  "What?"

  "Are you all right?"

  He reminded himself that it was way too soon to know for sure what was going on with her. He needed to keep an eye on her for a while.

  "Jack?"

  "Huh?"

  "I asked if you're all right?"

  "Me? Yeah. I'm fine. Just fine."

  He was amazed at the meal she cooked him. There were little lamb chops that she'd marinated and then charred in a cast-iron skillet, new potatoes with parsley and butter, greens that had been steamed in some kind of tart broth, hot bread and a salad with more strange types of lettuce in it than he'd ever seen before.