The Love of a Stranger

  What others are saying about “The Love of a Stranger”

  “Delicious…Jeffrey’s hot-blooded heroine, hot hero, complex story line and polished writing make this a riveting read.” — Publishers Weekly

  “I became a Jeffrey fan when I read Love of a Cowboy. This one just may be better.… One of those that keeps you saying “Just a few more pages, and then I’ll stop.” But you won’t stop because the book is too good to put down.” —Reader, 8/27/04

  ****

  THE LOVE OF A STRANGER

  by

  ANNA JEFFREY

  Published by Anna Jeffrey on Kindle

  The Love of a Stranger Copyright © Jeffery McClanahan, 2005

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  License Note: This ebook is for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Cover design by Kimberly Killion – www.HotDamnDesigns.com

  THE LOVE OF A STRANGER

  By Anna Jeffrey

  Chapter 1

  From behind a wall of windows two stories high, Alex McGregor drank in the peaceful beauty of an exquisite panorama stretching below her—endless silver sky, pillows of majestic blue mountains, a patchwork of emerald valley pastures. She was alone in her favorite place in the universe, her hundred-year-old home on the side of Wolf Mountain in Callister Valley, Idaho.

  The mid-July afternoon was quiet and hot. The incessant chittering of uncountable birds and the soft roar of Swede Creek a few hundred feet to the north drifted through her open windows. Her gaze swept down to the valley floor and landed on the Callister County road a mile away. There, a light-colored vehicle sped along, raising a plume of dust on the hard gravel surface. It slowed and made a right turn into her driveway. Everything inside her stilled. No one casually dropped in to visit her. Only her best friend, Ted Benson, and her housekeeper, Lucille Arnold, ever came uninvited. And only a stranger would hazard her driveway without first calling for a report on its condition. “The Longest Mile,” Ted had named it.

  From so far away, she couldn’t recognize the make of the intruder, but like a wary rabbit, it inched up the steep grade with jerky stops and starts. She knew why. Ragged potholes, oil-pan-busting stones and deep eroded ruts prevented faster progress.

  When the rig reached her cattle guard and the second NO TRESPASSING sign, she saw it was a white pickup with a black canopy mounted on the bed. It disappeared into a shadowy passageway of brush and thornbush at the driveway’s midpoint. Plowing through the jutting limbs and scratchy branches could ruin a paint job. The damage might be avoided if a driver dropped two tires into the deep drainage ditch paralleling one side, but only those familiar with the road were aware of that option.

  Alex knew the precise length of time required to pass through the brushy tunnel. She drew one side of her lower lip through her teeth and watched and waited for the pickup to emerge.

  Minutes later, the bumper and grill came into view. The late-day golden sun gilded the license plate, making the letters and numbers unreadable, but one thing was clear. Its color was wrong to be an Idaho tag.

  Tourists. Outsiders. Probably lost. Otherwise, how and why had they veered this far off the beaten path? More troubling was the fact that they had disregarded her NO TRESPASSING signs, which, after numerous confrontations, even the local teenagers no longer ignored.

  She strode to the binoculars hanging beside one window, snatched them off their peg and homed in. The pickup was a late-model Chevy, the plates, California. She was able to distinguish the silhouettes of a male and female inside.

  She lowered the binoculars and watched.

  The pickup slowed to a creep where the driveway forked a few hundred feet from her front deck. There, the driver had two choices. The Y’s left leg would bring them straight to her front door where she would tell him he had made a wrong turn and send him back to the county road. The right leg would put him on an old two-track known as Old Ridge Road. It ran along the crest of a long rocky hogback to the north side and behind her house.

  To her amazement, the white Silverado turned onto the right fork, picked up speed and rolled along Old Ridge Road. As she watched it sink out of sight into dense green forest, she felt a little quake in her serenity. He could have only one destination—Granite Pond, a mile from her back door.

  Two summers ago, she had ceased to tolerate anyone traveling beyond her house or visiting Granite Pond without her permission. Nothing had changed that, so who did today’s trespassers think they were? She charged through the kitchen, then the utility room and down the back stairs. In the basement garage, she mounted her Jeep Wrangler, backed out and followed the track of the Chevy up Old Ridge Road.

  In minutes, she reached the intersection where a hundred-year-old wagon trace teed with the road. Erosion had turned the old wagon tracks into two knee-deep gouges, now grown over with grass bleached to beige by the merciless summer sun.

  She braked and considered her options. She could follow behind strangers with an out-of-state license plate and confront them, taking a chance they weren’t axe murderers. On the other hand, the old wagon trace, only a slightly better choice than driving cross-country, would lead to an obscure horse trail where she could look down on Granite Pond and the surrounding glade without being seen. She knew the horse trail well, had hiked it many times.

  Choosing caution, she yanked the Jeep into the lowest gear and turned onto the wagon trace, straddling the deep ruts as she ground her way higher up the hill.

  Passable road soon played out and she parked, grabbed the binoculars and set out on foot. She began to sweat. The air felt hot, as if heated by a furnace, and heavy as a tapestry. All around her, the eerie ambience of volatility showed itself in the dull, crinkled leaves of the underbrush. Dry grass and twigs crunched underfoot. Even the normally lush kinickkinick had yellowed and become sparse from lack of moisture. In the ten years she had been spending summers in her Idaho retreat, she had never seen conditions riper for wildfire. A match, a spark, a lightning strike and the whole mountainside could combust.

  At the top of a steep wooded slope, she knelt and looked Down on Swede Creek. Fed by a glacier atop Wolf Mountain, it rushed from a gorge to the west, then tumbled along the flatter meadow. Eventually it reached a granite cliff where it became a waterfall that plunged into Granite Pond, a crystal-clear pool so deep and cold no one she knew had ever been to its bottom.

  The pond dominated center stage of a natural amphitheatre, with limestone monoliths and tree-covered slopes rising on the sides. Even in today’s dry conditions, thick green grass and a profusion of ferns grew around its banks. On the hottest day, standing at the edge of the glacier water, she could feel a chill in
the air.

  Magnificent natural wonders abounded in the Northwest and Alex had seen many of them. But Granite Pond had a single unique feature—it was located on private property, bought and paid for by her.

  And there beside it, the white pickup had parked.

  Some two hundred feet from the pond’s bank, a low-roofed log cabin crouched almost hidden among tall evergreens, its one visible door framed on either side by small square windows. A Forest Service archaeologist had studied it and identified it as a Chinese miner’s cabin, circa 1849, a rare and tangible insight into the local history.

  She loved it, had paid workmen to cover the dirt floor with wood and install glass panes in the windows. Then she had added an antique iron bed where she slept on warm August nights, a reclining chair where she spent hours reading or working intricate needlepoint designs that cleared her mind of all else, a wood-burning stove to take the chill off a cool day. The idea of a thoughtless stranger dropping a cigarette or building a campfire anywhere near this precious place jarred her. Her resentment of the trespassers doubled.

  Though Alex didn’t recognize the pickup, the woman who climbed from the passenger side looked familiar. Alex watched her walk around to the driver's door. Even above the sounds of the waterfall, giggly, feminine laughter echoed up the steep canyon walls. The driver climbed out and pulled her to him. Alex could see only his back, but he appeared to be tall with wide shoulders and short dark hair. She re-focused on the woman and finally recognized her.

  “My God. Cindy Evans.”

  Alex could think of no female alive for whom she held more contempt than her ex-husband’s trashy girlfriend, Cindy Evans. She would fight tooth and toenail to keep that woman away from Granite Pond and the old cabin.

  She marched back to the Wrangler and rummaged for a weapon, found the handle to a heavy duty jack in the back. Other than protection, she didn’t know her intentions, but the hard, heavy feel of cold steel against her palm gave her courage. A search among scattered broken limbs on the ground yielded a straight thick branch adequate for a staff. Using it to keep from slipping, she side-stepped down the hill.

  At the bottom, the waterfall’s roar absorbed the sounds of her descent. She crept from behind a wide-trunked pine tree to the front of the pickup for a clearer view. A few feet from the cabin's front door, Cindy teetered on one foot peeling off panty hose while the stranger's hands did something beneath her skirt. Without a doubt, they believed no one else was within miles. The waterfall’s roar would have masked her Jeep‘s engine noise.

  “Hey!”

  Alex swung the jack handle with all her strength and struck the pickup’s left front fender with a thwack! The impact vibrated up her arms.

  The stranger’s head jerked toward her. Cindy shrieked, doubled over and grappled with her panty hose. “I didn't know you were home,” she cried, as she twisted into her clothing.

  “What difference does that make?” Alex stamped forward. “You can’t come here any time.” She planted herself in front of the stranger. “And you. Get off my property.”

  The stranger struggled with his zipper, sputtering curses and glowering at the dented fender.

  “I’ve called the sheriff,” Alex shouted.

  A snort came from Cindy, accompanied by a glare of superiority. “Don't worry, Doug. She ain’t really done that.” She sauntered around the Silverado’s bed toward the passenger door, straightening her hair. “And even if she did, he ain’t gonna do nothin’. I know him. He’s a friend of mine.”

  The stranger’s eyes cut to Cindy.

  “C’mon. Let’s get outta here,” the tramp said. “She’s crazy and she’s got guns. I wouldn’t put it past her to pull one out.”

  “And don’t you forget it,” Alex yelled at her back.

  “Oh, yeah?” The stranger’s voice rumbled out in a raspy baritone. “If anybody's got a right to be pissed off here, lady, it’s me.” He stepped toward her, jabbing his finger at the Silverado’s front end. “Look at what you did to my fender. This is a new rig.”

  Fight-or-flight streaked up Alex’s spine. He was a head taller than she, much bigger than he had looked in the lens of the binoculars. She had taken an urban self-defense class in Los Angeles, could remember a knee to the groin, but no way would she let him get that close. She tightened her grip on the jack handle and backed up, putting space between them. “Stay away from me!”

  “Doug,” Cindy yelled from the pickup. “C’mon. Let’s go.”

  The next thing Alex knew, the stranger had wrenched her weapon from her hand and was standing in front of her nose to nose. “I oughtta wrap this around your neck.” He threw the jack handle to the side. “You owe me, lady. It’ll cost at least a thousand dollars to get that fender fixed.”

  Alex backed up again, her eyes burning with tears. She hated crying, hated feeling afraid.

  His expression softened. “Christ, don’t cry.” He raised both palms. “Look, let’s calm down here. I didn’t know”—he pointed behind himself in Cindy’s direction—“the lady with me didn’t know we weren’t supposed to be here.”

  “That’s a lie. She knew.”

  He stooped, picked up the jack handle and handed it to her. “Here. This looks like something you might need.”

  Alex could see in his eyes that he wouldn’t harm her, though he might be mad she had struck his pickup. The sense of danger past, she forced her spine stiff again and snatched the jack handle from him. “I meant what I said. You get out of here.”

  “We’re going. But don’t think I’m forgetting that fender.” He marched to the pickup, got in and slammed the door. She waited until the rig had crawled back onto Old Ridge Road before she climbed up the hill to her Jeep.

  By the time she reached her house and the living room windows, she could see the pickup making its way down the driveway, the taillights bobbing as it crossed bumps and potholes. Her thoughts churned. Long before she and her ex-husband Charlie divorced, he had taken Cindy to the cabin for clandestine trysts. Alex had even caught them there. That was bad enough, but what kind of arrogance made the woman believe she had the right to drag a stranger to it? Charlie no longer owned any part of it.

  And who was the stranger? Though Cindy called his name, Alex had been so steeped in anger, a triviality like a name hadn’t registered. His face seemed familiar in a distant, nagging way. With thick brows framing silvery eyes, a strong square jaw and defined lips, it wasn’t a forgettable face.

  Good Lord. When had she noticed all that? She hadn’t paid attention to such details about a man’s appearance in more years than she could remember.

  Chapter 2

  Doug Hawkins cursed to himself and switched on his headlights. What in the hell had he stumbled into? The last thing he wanted in his newly adopted hometown was a fight with one of the local citizens over something as dumb as trespassing. Oh, sure, he had seen the NO TRESPASSING signs, but Cindy—he couldn’t remember her last name—had told him they didn’t apply to her. Obviously, that was wrong.

  A dark tunnel of bushes, made darker by twilight loomed just ahead. Their branches had already scarred the shit out of the right side of his truck on the way up.

  “If you drive over to the right, your rig won’t get scratched up,” Cindy said.

  If she knew that, why hadn’t she already told him? He swore and followed her direction. A front tire dropped into a deep hole and brought them to a jolting halt. “Goddammit! Shit!” He shifted to a lower gear and labored forward.

  After a good five minutes, they left the bushes to face an unbelievable rock-strewn path. It had been rugged enough driving up in daylight. Now, going downhill in the fading light, it defied description.

  Ka-thunk! A tire collided with a boulder. Their bodies lurched. He swore louder and hoped for nothing more than to reach civilization without further damage to his truck. He only half listened as his companion seethed and fumed beside him.

  “That’s my special place. She won’t let me go near it.�
��

  Her special place? Doug suspected it was the belligerent blonde who owned it, though Cindy and she evidently knew each other. He didn’t reply. Navigating the steep rock field took all of his attention.

  A few minutes later, to his relief, he reached the county road with neither flat tire nor broken axle. Turning onto the smoother surface, he could now drive and talk at the same time. “Who the hell is she anyway?”

  “Her name’s Alex McGregor. She lives in Los Angeles, but she comes up here in the summer. She owns that ugly-looking old house we passed. Mean bitch. I wish she’d stay in California. Nobody wants the likes of her around here.”

  Doug called back a visual of the log, stone and glass structure that sprawled over a substantial part of the mountainside and decided his passenger’s opinion of the house was about ninety-nine percent wrong. It might be old, but when it had been built, no doubt it had been a mansion. “She’s from L.A.? What is this, a second home or something?”

  “I guess so.” Cindy stared ahead, her mouth set in a pout.

  “She doesn't work? Is she rich?”

  “Humph. Richer than me. She acts like some prissy big shot, but she’s nothing but a plain old real estate salesman.”

  “You said that cabin belonged to a friend of yours. I wouldn’t have gone up there if—”

  “She’s jealous. Just because—” His companion sighed and paused, apparently changing her mind about telling something. “Nobody in town can stand her. She thinks she’s better than everybody.” She hugged her midriff and stared out the window. “She’s crazy. Half the time, she’s either talking to herself or talking to cats.”

  Doug studied the woman he had picked up, or to be more accurate, who had picked him up, in the Rusty Spur Saloon in town. Long dark brown hair, pale skin, a few freckles. Late twenties. Not jailbait, but could be ten years his junior.