“Don’t be ridiculous. I was not sexually assaulted. Just because I’m a little jumpy doesn’t mean that anything like that happened to me!” Gaylynn said.
“And even if it had, you wouldn’t tell me, would you?” Hunter retorted.
“If you think that, then why ask me in the first place?”
“Because I’m trying to figure out how I can help you.”
His words were like tiny arrows piercing her pride.
Lifting her chin, Gaylynn stated, “I don’t need you to help me. I’m not one of those injured baby birds you used to take in when we were kids.”
“I’m still pretty good at mending broken wings,” he murmured, coming so close behind her that his breath stirred her hair and awakened silent yearnings.
Hunter was pretty good at plenty of things, not least of which was making Gaylynn feel like a young girl on her first date—filled with anticipation of what could be.
Curtly reminding herself that she was no young girl, Gaylynn squelched her wistful thoughts before they took further flight. “I’m sure the birds around here are glad to hear that you’re good at mending their broken wings,” she replied dryly. “But I don’t have wings and I don’t need your help.”
Gently brushing her shoulder blades with his fingertips, Hunter softly said, “Remember how Michael told you that these would grow into angel’s wings when you got older?”
“I was a gullible kid,” she admitted.
“And now? Are you still gullible now?”
“Sometimes,” she replied, stepping away from the magnetic temptation of his touch. “After all, I let you come over and badger me tonight, didn’t I?”
“You forgot to mention the delicious meal I made. Tomorrow night, you can cook.”
“Hey, I didn’t come to the mountains to cook,” she protested.
“Why did you come here?”
But she was on to his tactics now. “I’ve already answered that question several times. Maybe you need to get your hearing tested,” she mockingly suggested. “How old are you now? Almost forty?”
Hunter did not look amused. “I’m thirty-five and you damn well know it.”
His arrogant assumption that she would know his age irritated her. “Forgive me if I’ve been too busy living life to recall all the details of yours.”
“Yeah, I heard about you living life, traipsing all over the globe.”
She relaxed. This was something she felt more comfortable talking about. “That’s right. During my summer breaks I used to travel a lot,” she reminisced fondly. “I’ve been elephant-trekking in Thailand, slept on the beach in Morocco, shopped in Singapore, gotten rained on in England’s Lake District and visited the rain forest in Costa Rica.”
“You used to be a globe-trotter?”
“Yeah, well, now I stick a little closer to home.”
“Any reason for that?”
“Finances, and the fact that although I’ve seen a lot of the world there are still plenty of places right here in America that I haven’t seen yet. The Blue Ridge Mountains, for cexanmple. This is my first time down here.”
“Then you’ll have to be sure and drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway. We could do that this weekend. I’m off-duty-”
“I don’t need to go anywhere else,” she interrupted him. “I can see mountains from here.”
“There are even more spectacular views to be seen.”
“I’ll be fine right here.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you’re hiding away up here.”
That was exactly what she planned on doing, and she didn’t aim on having Hunter get in her way, regardss of how sexy she might still find him. His shaggy hair had just a touch of gray at the temples while his piercing green eyes reflected an interrogating intensity. She could easily picture Hunter as the embodiment of a gray wolf. He was certainly a natural born predator, trained to go after what he wanted and to get what he went after. She had to remind herself that all he wanted from her was the truth, but even that was too much for her to give him right now.
Seeing she wasn’t about to unload her innermost thoughts to him, Hunter chose a more nonthreatening topic. “So how’s the rest of your family doing?”
“Fine. Dylan flew in for the wedding.” If her rolling-stone younger brother hadn’t planned on flying out the morning after the reception, Gaylynn might have put off coming down to the mountains for a day or two. She hadn’t seen Dylan in a year.
“So what’s he been up to lately? Has he taken over your globe-trotting ways?”
“He pretty much sticks to the western United States, but he certainly doesn’t stay in one place very long. He been working the rodeo circuit out there as a saddle bronc rider. He’s even won a couple of championships. And did you hear that Michael and Brett have adopted a baby girl, Hope? She’s adorable. Smart, too. Naturally I’m her favorite aunt.”
“Naturally. Did she tell you that?”
“She’s not actually talking a lot yet. She’s a little over nine months old and is just about ready to walk on her own. I brought a picture of her.” Gaylynn retrieved a pocket-size photo album from her purse.
“You brought a photo?” Hunter said dryly. “Looks more like an entire book full to me.”
“Yes, but see how adorable she is?” Gaylynn’s expressive voice reflected her excitement as she showed him a series of pictures. “Isn’t she the cutest baby you ever saw?”
Hunter nodded accordingly. “I’m surprised you left her behind. They grow fast at that age, don’t they?”
“Yeah, they do,” she agreed wistfully.
“You know, I expected you to have a family of your own by now.”
“I could say the same about you.”
“Being a cop is hard on family life. I moved down here in the first place because my wife, Tricia, had a hard time with my being on the force in Chicago. I thought it would be easier on her if I worked for the county sheriffs department down here. The danger involved with the job is certainly less here in a rural area than it was in the city.”
“But there is still danger?”
He just shrugged. “Life is dangerous. But it wasn’t just the danger that torpedoed and sunk my marriage, it was the fact that my ex-wife hated living here. Said she was going crazy in this backwater hole-in-the-wall. Last I heard, she’d moved back up to Chicago and married a plumber.”
“Sounds to me like you’re well rid of her. You never did have the best taste in women,” she told him bluntly. “Remember that redheaded bimbo you went steady with in high school? Sindy spelled with an S.”
“I wasn’t dating her for her spelling skills.”
“That was obvious.”
“I’m surprised you remember her.”
“A chest like that is hard to forget. I was convinced she stuffed her bras with helium balloons. That was the only memorable thing about her. But I’m sure you’ve forgotten a lot about the old days.”
“I didn’t forget you.”
“Yeah, right. I treasured all the cards and letters you sent me over the years,” she said mockingly.
This time his shrug was just a tinge self-conscious. “You know I’m no good about things like that.”
He’d been married by then, so Gaylynn hadn’t expected to hear from him. Hadn’t wanted to hear from him. She’d wanted to forget him, and she’d succeeded for the most part.
Okay, so maybe a tiny part of her had compared all the men she’d dated with Hunter, and none of the city guys had quite stacked up when compared to Hunter’s rugged strength. But she hadn’t been unhappy with her life. Far from it.
And then her life had crumbled like a butter cookie, leaving her crumbs instead of substance.
Her sudden yawn scattered her dark thoughts.
“I guess that’s my signal to go and let you get some sleep,” Hunter noted wryly.
“Sorry,” she muttered, belatedly putting one hand to her mouth. “It’s not the company. I’m just tired.”
“I can see that.”
“Thanks for stopping by tonight, but I’ll be fine. Really.”
“I know you will,” Hunter told her. What he didn’t tell her was that the reason he knew she’d be fine was because he planned on sticking around and making sure she stayed that way.
That night Gaylynn’s dreams were spun around a wolf blending into the woods surrounding the cabin. A wolf with Hunter’s leaf green eyes. She was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, complete with red cape and hood. She woke up at the part where the wolf was in bed, seductively coaxing her to join him.
“In your dreams,” she muttered as she got out of bed and headed for the shower. No way would Hunter try and coax her into bed, unless she was sick…and then his intentions wouldn’t be romantic but practical.
The shower helped to clear the cobwebs from her mind. There was a nip in the air this morning, so she tugged on an aqua-colored sweater over top of her white T-shirt. Her jeans still had dirt marks on the knees, so she opted for a pair of black denims. There was no washer in the cabin, so she’d have to see if there was a Laundromat in town.
After the kitties finished the last of her canned tuna fish, Gaylynn bit the bullet and made a long list of things to stock up on. She didn’t want to be making the twenty-minute trip down the mountain any more often than was absolutely necessary. Not because she was intimidated by the rather harrowing drive on the narrow gravel road. Even the equally narrow one-way bridge that forded what the nearby sign proclaimed to be the Bitty River didn’t bother her—despite the fact that the chipped cement on the corners attested to the fact that more than one run-in had already occurred on that bridge. No, she didn’t want to be making the trip very often because she just didn’t feel like mingling with civilization yet.
As Gaylynn pulled in front of the compact building that housed “The Pit Stop Filling Station—Flling You And Your Car,” she realized that this might not quite qualify as civilization, per se.
The building was brick and resembled the filling stations of the forties. The pumps still had round glass tops, and a sign over the door advertised the virtues of a motor product that hadn’t been made in at least a quarter of a century.
In front of and across half the open threshold lay some sort of animal—large and lumpy and an auburn color—forming an unusual oversize and bumpy welcome mat. On closer inspection, she realized the animal was a bloodhound.
“He don’t bite and neither do I,” a voice boomed from inside. “Dog’s lazier than a hibernating bear. That ain’t his name a’course. His last name’s Regard. First name is Bo. Which makes him Bo Regard. Just step on over him.”
Gaylynn did, rather gingerly. The bloodhound responded by lifting its head, all of an inch, before letting it drop again with a muffled thump. “You’ve got a big dog there.”
“Oh, he don’t belong to us. He just comes visiting every day. Must be my scintillating conversation skills. Yer a sight forsore eyes.”
Startled, Gaylynn said, “Excuse me?”
“Now, don’t you mind him none,” an older woman stated as she stepped out from behind the counter. “Floyd here says that to every woman under the age of a hundred who walks through that door. My name’s Bessie. Bessie Twitty. And that grumpy-looking, talkative man over there is my husband, Floyd. And you must be the sister of Hunter’s friend. From up north, aren’t you?”
Gaylynn nodded, not even stopping to wonder how Bessie knew who she was already. “From Chicago.”
Bessie grimaced, making her wizened face look even more wrinkled. “I hate cities.”
“You never been in one,” Floyd retorted.
“Have so. I been up to Knoxville one time. Didn’t care for it atall.” Bessie said the words together, as if they were one.
“And my eyes are sore,” Floyd declared. “That’s why I have Bessie doing my post-office chores.”
“Did you come in to get some stamps for postcards?” Bessie asked Gaylynn. “We don’t get many tourists in these parts, so I don’t have much call for postcard stamps.”
“Unless it’s Ma Battle entering one of those doggone contests of hers,” Floyd inserted.
“I do declare that woman gets more mail than everyone else in town put together,” Bessie said. “How many postcard stamps will you be needing, then? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name, dear.”
“It’s Gaylynn and I don’t need any stamps.”
“You didn’t get any gas-o-leen,” Floyd said, enunciating it as if the word consisted of three separate parts.
“I came to stock up on some food,” Gaylynn stated.
“The Piggly-Wiggly over in Summerville is where most folks do their stocking up,” Floyd replied.
“How far away is that?”
“About a forty-minute drive,” Floyd said.
“An hour, if you obey the speed limits,” Bessie inserted.
“I was driving these roads before they had speed limits,” Floyd said.
“I’d rather not go that far away,” Gaylynn decided. “I’ll just get what I need here.”
“We don’t have the best selection,” Bessie had to confess.
“But we do have something of just about everything,” Floyd added.
“Just not much,” Bessie tacked on.
“And we don’t carry any of them fancy TV dinners, neither.”
“We have lots of ice cream, though.”
Gaylynn was getting a crick in her neck from turning her head back and forth between Bessie and Floyd. A conversation with the two of them was like a tennis match, short words volleying back and forth.
“What about tuna? And cat food?” Gaylynn asked.
“I reckon we can fix you up with something. You bring some kitties down from the city with you?”
“Actually, I found a family, a mama and two kittens, up in the woods. I was wondering if they belonged to anyone around here?”
“Not that I know of. Most likely they’re just strays. We get lots of those down here.”
Yeah, and I’m one of them, Gaylynn thought to herself. She gathered up her groceries, many things she hadn’t eaten in years—including oatmeal from the round cardboard box instead of a microwaveable packet. The bread they had was fresh baked by some one in town and the strawberry jam was homemade. She bought as many cans of tuna and boxes of dry cat food as they stocked. The Pit Stop didn’t have any fancy paper bags for her purchases, which made her glad she’d brought along a cloth tote bag to lug the stuff back to her car.
But first she had to step over Bo Regard again, who this time lifted his head all of two inches before letting it drop again. He had a face only a mother could love and was actually so homely he was kind of cute—even if he did drool.
As she loaded her trunk, she heard the telltale rush and ripple of the river. When driving in early yesterday morning, she remembered noticing that the buildings in Lonesome Gap clung to the small ribbon of land between the two-lane blacktop road and the river.
Beyond that were the mountains, lush and green, rising directly beyond the narrow valley floor.
Gaylynn might have lingered longer were it not for the Twittys’ curious stares as they watched her out the Pit Stop’s front window—their noses plastered against the plate-glass right beneath the neon Gas sign. With their eyes on her, she managed to spill half the contents of the tote bag before she got everything in the car.
Gaylynn didn’t realize how uptight she was until she pulled in front of her brothe’s cabin. Only then did the tension ease from her shoulders.
She spent most of her afternoon coaxing the kittens to let her pet them after they’d gobbled down theirfood. Spook still kept her distance, so that Gaylynn couldn’t even tell if she really was a she. But Blue did let Gaylynn briefly brush her fingertips over the kitten’s back. Gaylynn was reminded of Hunter touching her own back—with a similarly soothing movement.
Once Hunter was in her thoughts, it was real tough booting him back out again. The best she could do was relegate him to a back corner of her mind as she sat on the covered front porch and watched the feline family playing with leaves left from last autumn.
At first, she didn’t even realize she’d picked up a pencil and started doodling on the back of the old-fashioned receipt from the Pit Stop. Looking down, she was amazed to discover that she’d drawn the view of the woods in front of her. Even more surprising was the fact that it wasn’t half-bad.
Funny, she’d never been able to draw worth a hoot before. Her artistic abilities were somewhere between zilch and nada. It had been something of a joke at the school, where she’d had the crookedest display boards of any class. The kids were better at art than she was.
There was a lot she missed about teaching—the feeling of making a difference, the interaction with the kids, the expression in her students’ eyes when they first grasped a new concept in reading or math. For the first time in a long time the thought of teaching didn’t fill her with blind panic. She wasn’t ready to return yet, not by any means, but she could feel the peaceful surroundings beginning to work their magic on her.
Thinking of magic naturally led her thoughts to the Rom box she still had stored inside the cabin. And from there, her thoughts roved right on to Hunter. Would he stop by tonight as he’d said he would? Tomorrow you can cook dinner, he’d told her last night. She’d told him not to bother, but she had the feeling that he took her words about as seriously as he did learning how to tickle trout.
The sun was just about setting, and from her vantage point she could see the heavenly orange glow radiating from the western horizon. Hunter should be coming home from work soon.
As it turned out, Hunter didn’t stop by that night so he couldn’t sample the tuna-and-noodle casserole she’d made. In fact, he didn’t come home at all—at least, she hadn’t heard him drive up by the time she’d fallen asleep at almost 4:00 a.m.
The next morning, she’d woken up with the birds and taken a walk, not deliberately intending to head in the direction of his cabin. Her feet just took her there on automatic pilot, even though she’d never been to his place before. The cabin’s design matched the one she was staying in, with the addition of a stone chimney on one side.
Hunter’s car wasn’t in front and there was no one home. She tried not to worry about him, reminding herself that he’d been taking care of himself just fine for years now.
But the questions came, anyway. What if something had happened to him? Had there been trouble at work? Was heall right? She knew it wasn’t logical to be worried about him. As he’d said, this wasn’t Chicago-drive-by shootings were not a fact of life in Lonesome Gap.
Her fingers trembled as she fed the kitties back near her cabin. How would she know if something had happened to Hunter? There was no phone in the cabin and she hadn’t given him the number on the cellular phone her brother insisted she bring with her. Who would know to contact her?
Stop it, she told herself. Nothing has happened to him. Geez, what a sissy you are! Talk about a nervous Nellie!
Her anxiety only served to remind Gaylynn that she was in no condition to be able to cope with the danger involved with his life, and she hated being so weak. Hunter deserved someone as strong as he was.
Gaylynn had just stepped out of the shower when there was a knock at the cabin’s front door. Her heart leapt to her throat.
“Gaylynn, it’s me,” Hunter loudly announced from the other side of the door.
Forgetting that she was still wearing her rose-colored terry-cloth robe, she rushed to the door and opened it. Hunter looked haggard and weary. “Sorry I wasn’t able to take you up on that dinner invitation last night.”
“No big deal,” she lied. “It wasn’t really an invitation, at all. In fact, you invited yourself and then I uninvited you.”
“Yeah, well, there was some trouble in town.”
“What happened—were you hurt?” She ran the two questions together.
“Some idiot in a pickup truck decided to take a joyride down the main highway. On the wrong side of the street. Playing chicken with a semi-truck filled with fertilizer. Both vehicles swerved—luckily in opposite directions—to avoid an accident. As it was, the pickup ended in a ditch and the semi-trailer tipped over. After making sure the driver of the semi was okay, my deputy approached the pickup—only to end up with a bullet through his foot.”
“He was shot!”
Hunter nodded.
“Will he be okay?”
“He’ll live,” Hunter replied as he lowered himself to the lumpy couch. “Considering where he could have been shot, he’s mighty lucky.”
“You don’t sound very sympathetic.”
“I’m not. I spent the night doing the rest of his shift and then my own.”
“It’s not his fault he was shot!”
“It sure was.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said it’s his own fault he got shot. Who else’s would it be?”
“The man who shot him.”
“Exactly.”
“So did you arrest the man who shot him?”
“Don’t think I wasn’t damn tempted to.”
“You mean you let him go?”
“He’s at the clinic over in Summerville.”
“And then he’ll be arrested?”
“Unfortunately, stupidity isn’t against the law.”
“You let the driver of that pickup go?”
“Of course not. He’s locked up awaiting transferal to the county facility.”
“But you just said—”
“Deputy Carberry shot himself,” Hunter explained. “He was approaching the pickup truck and getting ready to withdraw his weapon from his holster when he tripped over something in the grass. His finger squeezed the trigger and, presto, he shot himself in his big toe. Damn fool wasn’t wearing his regulation shoes. By the time I got to him he was bleeding a lot, but it looked worse than it was.”
Bleeding a lot. Gaylynn paled at the words.
“You don’t look too good,” Hunter noted in concern. “You’re not going to pass out on me or anything, are you?” he demanded, getting up to put an arm around her and gently tug her against his broad chest.
With the contact, her sensitized nerve endings absolutely tingled. She could feel the heat radiating from his body. He was wearing his sheriff’s uniform—such as it was. A black leather jacket, blue shirt and black pants. The wide belt around his trim waist held official-looking things like handcuffs, bullet cases and a flashlight holder. Now that she looked closer, she realized the pants were actually black jeans. And they fit him to a T.
Stop it, she told herself, angry with herself for falling prey to her own emotions for him. Emotions that were from the past, not her present, she reminded herself.
“You’re shaking,” he declared in disbelief. Looking down at her through narrowed eyes, he said, “This reaction has something to do with what happened to you, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You might as well tell me, I’ll hound the truth out of you one way or another.”
Furious, Gaylynn said, “What gives you the right-”
Hunter interrupted her to say, “This does.” And then he kissed her.