The Love of a Stranger Page 12

  Chapter 12

  Alex topped the last long hill just outside the Callister city limits in such an upbeat mood she looked forward to seeing Carlton’s Lounge & Supper Club again. She was a new woman driving a new vehicle, a sleek silver Acura MDX. The 4 x 4 SUV would be more useable all around than her Jeep Wrangler. And that was important because she had made a firm decision to move to Callister permanently. She had already set the wheels in motion.

  In the past ten days in Los Angeles, her life had changed in ways she couldn’t have imagined a month ago. Her brokerage partner met her in L.A. with not only a buyer for Charlie’s car, but a buyer for Charlie Boy’s Old South Barbecue as well.

  Now, the entire chain was under contract for more than a fair price and she had negotiated retention of ownership of the valuable real estate on which the ten restaurants sat. The monthly lease revenue from the land and buildings would allow her to live comfortably for a very long time even if she had no other income. When she got her hands on the money from sale of the furniture and fixtures, she would invest it in Boise income property.

  The sale of Charlie Boy’s was more than a windfall. It was a victory. The buyer had surfaced from out of nowhere, but if he had not, she would have had to either stay in California and fight to pull the restaurant chain back from ruin or see its assets and years of hard work dissolve on a bankruptcy auction block. The first choice would have taken so much effort and time, her summers in Idaho, Kenny Miller’s offensive logging operation, even her real estate business would have had to take a backseat. But the second choice would have broken her heart.

  The Salt Lake retirement community deal would close soon and generate additional income. Scaling back her sales activity, if not quitting it altogether, seemed, at last, a real possibility. In terms of how and where she wanted to live, her future looked rosier than it had in years. With so much good news under her belt, even battling with Miller the Menace seemed less daunting.

  Settling Charlie’s affairs and negotiating on Charlie Boy’s had kept her too busy to think of Doug Hawkins in the daylight hours, but the minute she relaxed for the evening and went to bed, he had come back into her head. Him and that damn movie they had watched in Boise. And sex. Whenever he came to her mind, sex was her next thought.

  She had told her assistant Judy she thought Doug might be interested in her. A long heart-to-heart ensued and Judy, as excited as a teenager, urged her to go for it. But Alex feared stepping out onto that limb. What if she slept with him, which might lead to caring about him? And if she let herself care about him, what if all he wanted was a warm body and in reality, one much younger than hers? She couldn’t keep from thinking of Brandi, the restaurant hostess who had flirted with Doug the day they’d had had lunch in Boise.

  She hadn’t taken the time to research the scandal that ended his career with LAPD, but he obviously was an outlaw. And no sane woman would get involved with an outlaw. Even after all of Judy’s encouragement, she had made a decision to give Doug Hawkins a wide berth. She didn’t need him, or any man, meddling in her new life.

  ****

  When Doug looked up and saw Alex, his heart nearly leaped from his chest. Silhouetted in the doorway by the afternoon sun’s rays, she looked six feet tall. Like a mysterious stranger who “just rode in,” she stood there, as if assessing the room for danger.

  After a few seconds, she moved through the space like royalty greeting her subjects, smiling and chatting with imbibing customers seated at the bar and at the beat-up tables, unbuttoning the jacket of a severely tailored suit as she went. Her hair was sleeked back and pinned up. A mannish watch encircled her left wrist and a delicate diamond tennis bracelet looped around the right. The dichotomy could be a metaphor for her personality. Mike’s earlier remark flashed back. She did look a little like Sharon Stone.

  She glanced toward their table, but her gaze slid right past him. Had she not seen him? Was she snubbing him, refusing to acknowledge he had witnessed her vulnerable and needy? Bullshit. The familiarity they had shared, be it brief, couldn’t be erased for her any more than for him.

  The scent of the clean-smelling perfume that intrigued him every time she came near accompanied her. It hadn’t been expunged by her week and a half absence. That was the thought process going on in his head, but what was going on in his jeans was more raw. The thing that had plunged him into a pit of lust was her blouse. Light colored and soft, it draped around the shape of her breasts. Too well he could imagine his hands lifting their weight, his thumbs brushing her nipples that showed as little raised bumps through her blouse.

  “Hi, guys.” Her voice sounded low and smoky, like Lauren Bacall from an old forties movie He, Ted and Mike stood as she neared, but Pete stayed seated, his chin resting on his palm, his expression bored.

  “You don’t have to get up.” Her mouth curved into a slow smile. Light from the Budweiser sign above their table glinted off the pea-sized rocks pinned to her earlobes. Doug had no doubt they were diamonds.

  Ted was grinning like he had won the lottery. “You look gorgeous. As usual.” He reached for her hand and they brushed cheeks.

  Doug stood there like a nervous teenager waiting to be acknowledged. When she dropped him no crumbs, he sank to his seat, embarrassed at his foolishness.

  Ted sat down, too, but didn’t release her hand. “Just get back?”

  “Yesterday. I spent the night in Boise. I'm brokering an orchard in Marsing. For a sub-division.”

  Marsing. Since hearing her mention it in the park, Doug had made it a point to learn it was a small farming community a short drive from Boise.

  She withdrew her hand from Ted’s, placed it on his shoulder and lifted one foot, flexing a slim ankle and showing dusty shoes. “Today was the second time I've tramped through it.”

  “In your high-heels?” Ted’s expression had grown even sillier as he tried to be playful. Watching him fawn over her made Doug uncomfortable as hell. As the question of her sleeping with Ted zinged anew through Doug’s mind, he chastised himself. Even if she did, it was nobody’s business. Then the thought of her sleeping with Ted, or any man, fell on him like a rock and he realized just how badly he wanted to make his own erotic fantasies about her real. But how could he scratch that itch with a woman who ignored him?

  Finally, her gaze moved his way and lingered long enough for him to tip the rim of his beer glass to her. She had a way of lowering her chin, but looking up with her eyes, which, with some women, a man might interpret as an invitation to something. With Alex, who knew what it meant? Or if it meant anything at all.

  Her heart-shaped lips turned up into another smile. He waited for her to say hello or at the very least, spear him with one of her sarcastic barbs, but she did nothing that included him. Instead, she turned away and waved for Estelle's attention.

  The bar tender waddled to them, turning sideways to pass between the tables. She set down a glass of white wine and four fresh glasses of beer, then smothered Alex with a hug as they exchanged greetings.

  When Estelle started back to the bar, Mike sprang to his feet and brought a chair from another table.

  “Thank you, Mike.” She gave him a smile as she folded her jacket across the back of the chair.

  Doug was irked. Not once had she smiled at him like that, even after he had bailed her out of the jam she was in with Miller two weeks ago, whatever it was, or when they’d had lunch in Boise.

  She took a dainty sip of wine, then turned back to Ted. “Why aren’t you off fighting a fire?”

  “Oh, guess they don’t need me right now. I’ve got things to do here anyway. You’re working on a big deal, huh?”

  “Not so big. It’s a favor for a friend, actually. It’s an old couple’s property. They have to sell to pay medical bills. It’s a sad situation. Meeting with them makes me want to cry.”

  She seemed distant and preoccupied, but hell, that was nothing new. Doug had seen her zone out and leave the planet in front of her cupboards that night i
n her kitchen.

  “That’s too bad,” Ted said. He reached for her hand again, lifted it and looked at it. “Hey, you got a manicure. Looks like your fingers are all healed up now.”

  Doug looked, too. Her nails were long and crimson. She was wearing diamond rings. Like her earrings, they glinted in the neon glow of the beer signs. Doug wondered if they were gifts from the deceased husband or some high-roller boyfriend down in L.A..

  She removed her hand from Ted’s again. “This old couple. They’re in their eighties. They’ve been married all their lives. Now, they’re at the end. They're still in love and she’s dying.” She raised her eyes and looked past all of them, zoned out again. “I can't keep from thinking about how I’m getting older myself, and I’ll never—” She stopped and beamed a wide, warm smile at Ted. “I think I’ve been driving too long.”

  Never what? Doug wanted her to finish. He wanted to hear anything that might give him a clue what made her tick. And he was envious of his old friend’s relationship with her. Jee-sus Christ.

  Ted’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. A noise came from Pete’s direction and Doug turned toward him. His face was a picture of disgust.

  “You guys have fun,” Alex said, rising. “I appreciate your business. I'll buy you another round.” She shot a glance at Pete. “You, too, Pete.” She picked up her jacket and wine glass and sauntered in a loose-hipped gait toward the bar.

  Ted appeared to be on the verge of leaping from his chair and following her. Doug silently swore he would tackle him if he so much as made the attempt.

  Pete leaned toward Doug “Now that’s a sickening mess if I ever saw it.”

  Doug watched as she rounded the end of the bar. Tension coiled in his groin, drawing him up tight. What the hell was wrong with him? He navigated encounters with most women without an alert from down below, but every time he was around her, it happened.

  She withdrew a rolled newspaper protruding from a purse so big it could only be called a satchel. Beside an avocado-green refrigerator stood a tall stool. She pulled it out, positioned a hip on the edge and hoisted herself up to sit, exposing a knee and a few inches of thigh. Then she toed off her shoes, raised her feet to rest on something he couldn’t see and disappeared behind the newspaper.

  He squinted to see what she was reading. The Wall Street Journal. That figured. She peered over the top edge and their eyes connected. She jerked the paper back to cover her face.

  Shit. Doug turned away and involved himself in the BS going on at his table, watching her from his peripheral vision. Soon she closed her paper and folded it, slid down from her perch and put on her shoes as if readying to leave.

  Goddammit, he didn’t intend to be ignored. She had dragged him into her problems and then been remote and secretive. Her conflict with this logging dude stirred Doug’s most primitive protective instincts.

  He carried his glass to the end of the bar where she had begun to stack magazines and newspapers on the bar top. “Hello again.” He leaned forward and rested his forearms on the bar near the stack of papers. “Good trip?”

  ****

  Alex stared at the stranger who was testing her determination to put plenty of distance between them. A part of her she hadn’t acknowledged for years took in his muscled chest straining against his knit shirt that said Nebraska. She had to admit she enjoyed looking at him. And she liked the way he smelled. Like soap. “It was fine.”

  “You know, you’ve got just about the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

  What kind of remark was that? And what did he expect? Her pulse rate had kicked up, but years of experience at thinking on her feet enabled her to answer in a level tone. “They work well. What do you want?”

  “I got your check. Thanks for sending it.”

  “Okay.” She had no desire for conversation about an incident she wanted to forget. She reached below the bar, dragged out her purse and plopped it on top of the stack of papers she had gathered to throw away.

  “Did you feel guilty?”

  She gave a little huff and fixed him with a look. “For what?”

  “For beating the shit out of my fender.” He grinned.

  She might have felt a smattering of guilt when she had first seen the damage she had done, but it had lasted no more than a millisecond. She couldn’t keep from smiling. Men never teased her. “Maybe you should have kept your fender out of a place it had no business being.”

  “Touché.” He lifted his glass to her, then tipped his head back and swallowed the last of his beer.

  She stared at the cords working in his neck. A little tuft of hair stuck out of the neck of his T-shirt. As had happened before, a weird uneasiness slithered through her. She had to get away from him. She switched her attention to rummaging inside her purse, searching for her keys. “As far as I’m concerned, I paid you, so the matter’s closed.”

  He grinned again. “So, how’d it go in the City of Angels?”

  “Fine.” Dammit, where were her keys? She dug deeper, sure she had dropped them into her purse.

  He gestured toward her stack of newspapers. “That looks like serious reading.”

  Though he had been to school a hundred years, one thing she suspected he did not read was the Wall Street Journal. Then again, maybe he did. Maybe he read everything. One more reason to keep herself separated from him. No way would she put herself in a position to be looked down on by an overeducated jock. “Reading’s what I do. In Callister, if you don’t drink or pester the wildlife, there isn’t much entertainment.”

  He winked. “Bet I could think of something.”

  Indeed. She rolled her eyes. “For your information, entertainment isn’t why I come here.” She removed her wallet and makeup pouch from her purse and laid them on the bar, followed by a packet of Kleenex, then plunged her hand inside the purse again.

  “I’ll bite. Why do you come here?”

  He sounded as if he expected an answer. She could no more explain her reasons for her devotion to Callister to a stranger than to herself. And she wouldn’t even attempt to explain them to this stranger.

  Something sharp pierced her finger. “Ow.” She yanked her hand from inside her purse and examined her fingertip.

  He reached for her hand, looked at her finger and rubbed it. Then he leaned to the left and picked up her key ring loaded with keys off the end of the bar. “This what you’re looking for?”

  She snatched back her hand and the keys. “What do you want from me, Mr. Hawkins?”

  “So we’re back to that Mr. Hawkins crap.”

  She gave him a little cat smile as she began to throw items back into her purse. “I assure you, that’s preferable to the name I’m thinking.”

  He shook his head and raised his palms. “Okay, okay. Time out. Your tongue’s sharper than mine.” The teasing tone left his voice. “I’m trying to make friends here. Come back to the table and sit with us.”

  She leaned to the side and looked past his shoulder. Ted, Pete and Mike were behaving like chimpanzees and at least a dozen empty glasses sat on the table in front of them. They were tight as ticks. No doubt the air was rife with profanity and locker room humor. Typical for Saturday night. Eventually they would wind up across the street at the Rusty Spur where a band always played on weekends. She slid a look back to her tormentor. “Why would I do that?”

  He turned around and looked, too. “Okay, I see what you mean,” he said on a sigh. “Then have a drink with just me. We could go somewhere else.”

  Nope, not doing that, for sure. She had already had lunch with him and gone to a sex movie. That was enough. She reached under the bar for a dry cloth, lifted his beer glass and wiped away the small puddle underneath. “There is nowhere else, and even if there were, I don’t drink.”

  He picked up her empty wineglass. “You're drinking wine.”

  “Not that it's any of your business, but I never drink more than one glass. And I don't drink hard liquor at all.”

  “Why not?”
/>
  He was staring at her mouth and she fought an urge to lick her lips. “I don’t like alcohol.”

  “Then why are you in here?”

  Well, really. She could say she was afraid to let go of Carlton’s as long as it provided her with a small income. She could tell him running a bar and restaurant was one of the few things she knew how to do with her eyes closed because she had done it for what seemed like forever. Or she could reveal that she would lose her mind and fall into some kind of deep, dark hole if she weren’t able to keep herself occupied with more tasks than one human could perform every day. But she wouldn’t say any of those things because they all called for explanations she had no desire to give, especially to a stranger

  “You seem determined to pry into my life.” She reached under the bar again and pulled out the bar’s money bag, stuffed it into her purse. Estelle would be happy to be relieved of responsibility for the bar’s money. “This is none of your business either, but I’m unhappy to say that as much as I keep trying not to, I own this dump. The only consolation is, as revolting as it is, it isn’t quite as bad as the boar’s nest across the street.”

  “You mean the Rusty Spur. When Ted told me you owned a bar, I admit I expected something different.”

  She squared her shoulders, ready to hear his criticism. “So?”

  His head tilted back and he laughed. “Why do I think there’s a story here that needs to be told?”

  “Really, Mr. Hawkins, I’m sure you’d find it dull.”

  “Hey, c’mon. Don’t be so tense. Laugh with me.”

  “I’m not tense,” she snapped. But she was more tense than if she were working a million-dollar deal.

  “See there? You’re tense. Try me. My shoulder’s just as dry today as it was in the park down in Boise.”

  What was he talking about? She hadn’t cried on his shoulder, but unfortunately, in a moment of weakness, she had told him more than she had told anyone else in Callister. “This isn’t a soap opera, Mr. Hawkins.”