Cards of Love: The Hermit Read online

  And no reason to have much to do with another living soul.

  After I toured the small rooms and noted with satisfaction that everything looked clean and comfortable, I finished carrying my belongings indoors. The days on the road were catching up with me and I was so tired my bones ached. I wasted no time stripping my grubby clothes off and tested out the shower, yawning all the while. Although the shower stall was barely large enough to allow me to shave my legs and the low water pressure left something to be desired, it felt like heaven to me.

  Moments later I was dripping water on the floor of the bedroom as I carelessly held a towel across my body and rifled through a duffel bag, cursing as I tried to find the particular pair of elastic gym shorts I was fond of wearing to bed. I’d just dropped the towel and was in the process of stepping into the elusive shorts when I glanced up and was confronted with a square of inky blackness. Somehow I had failed to notice that the room’s only window was uncovered. There were no blinds or window shades. I yanked a clean white shirt over my head and turned off the light, figuring I could worry about that problem tomorrow. The chances that anyone besides a curious lizard had a view into my bedroom were slim to none.

  “I saw you.”

  It seemed I’d miscalculated. Something besides a prowling coyote had been watching me after all. What had he seen exactly? Maybe he’d just been passing by and glimpsed me walking from room to room. Or perhaps he’d enjoyed a fully frontal view me dripping and naked.

  I didn’t know. And I couldn’t ask him because he was already long gone, leaving behind only a cloud of dust and a few important questions, like who the hell was he and why was he skulking around near my windows.

  Exhaling with some frustration I sought refuge in Burgers/Souvenirs/Museum.

  The interior was every bit as eclectic as the name promised. I blinked as my eyes adjusted to being indoors. The rows of shelves contained a rather chaotic mix of merchandise ranging from neatly folded t-shirts to fool’s gold paperweights to stuffed rattlesnakes with white felt fangs. A crude wooden counter along the back wall topped a display case full of silver jewelry and pocket knives. There was a powerful smell of fried food emanating from the small diner on the right where a hand lettered menu presided over a shallow chrome counter. A pair of very old gentlemen occupied one of the four vintage dining tables. They were so still they looked almost like mannequins. To my left was a beaded curtain beneath another stenciled sign indicating that the room behind it was the ‘Museum’ portion of the establishment. An old hound dog slept in a ball in the corner. He raised his head, cracked a yawn and then resettled his jowls on his front paws, disinterested in my arrival. All in all, I had the rather dizzying sense that I’d stepped back in time at least fifty years, to an era that was a little less polished, a little more homemade.

  And then I met Betty Grable.

  She popped up from behind the counter where she’d been straightening the pocket knives. She greeted me by announcing that she was the owner of the place and bore no relation to the dead Hollywood star. When she heard I was more than a passing tourist she excitedly waved me over.

  “It’s D.C., right?” she asked. “That’s your name?”

  I was a little surprised to be known although maybe I shouldn’t have been. The neighborhood wasn’t exactly crowded.

  “D.C. Paskevich,” I confirmed.

  She clapped her hands together and bobbed her head with excitement. “We heard all about you. You’re renting the old O’Hara house on Dead Horse Way. You’re a writer?”

  “I teach history at a small college in Pennsylvania,” I said, starting to feel embarrassed by her enthusiasm and twirling the end of my ponytail around my finger. I did that a lot. An old habit that never died, probably never would. I’d be sixty years old and still twirling my ponytail. “And yes, I’m here to write a book about the Superstition Mountains.”

  Betty Grable smiled. She had tiny teeth, yellow as corn kernels. “Ah, there’s already quite a few books on that subject.”

  “I know. But my research is focused less on the practical questions, such as the search for the gold mine, and more on the people who wound up being part of the area’s history.”

  Betty nodded. “There have been a lot of interesting folks around here over the years, that’s for sure.”

  I smiled. “People are always the most interesting pieces of history.”

  And often the most terrible.

  I didn’t want to say those words to Betty Grable. She seemed like she’d already lost interest in the topic anyway. Betty told me she’d been living here for over twenty years, that she and her husband, Sherman, were actually the owners of Prickly Flats.

  “And you live here?” I asked, fascinated by the concept of owning an entire town, even a miniscule one.

  “Sure do,” she answered with a proud grin, dimples appearing in her broad weather beaten cheeks. “If you walk around the back you’ll see our house about fifty yards off. Built it ourselves years ago, before my knees went bad and Sherman’s arthritis started giving him a time. I run the register here while my Sherms works in the kitchen. That lazy pile of canine bones over there is our old boy, Tractor. It’s the quiet season now but things always pick up in the winter with the snowbirds and the tourists. If you look at the back shelves you’ll find some basic supplies here too.” She winked. “Might save you from taking a few trips all the way to town.”

  My eyes landed on a mounted snakeskin that hung a few feet above Betty’s head. Some people believed that snakeskins were a talisman, a good luck charm. But Betty didn’t strike me as the mystical sort. And the sight of the white price tag sticker confirmed that the object hadn’t been placed there for any spiritual reason. It was just another souvenir for sale.

  I cleared my throat because Betty was waiting for me to respond. “The realtor who rented me the house told me I could pick up my mail here. I’ve already arranged for a package to be shipped.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Shoot, I’m glad you reminded me.” She shuffled over to a tall metal cabinet, selected a key from the ring she’d pulled out of her back pocket and hummed Beautiful Dreamer while unlocking the door and pulling out a square brown box.

  “You must have mailed this days ago,” she observed, setting it on the counter.

  I tucked the package underneath my right arm.

  “It’s a signal booster,” I explained.

  Normally I wasn’t in the habit of explaining things to people I’d just met but Betty Grable was obviously curious about me.

  “I figured cell and internet service would be spotty out here and someone I spoke to in the college IT department suggested this might help.”

  Betty’s thin mouth twisted into a doubtful expression. “Don’t have much use for those devices myself. The screens give me bad headaches although Sherms likes to use one to play games. Honestly I don’t know how much luck you’ll have getting service where you’re at. Reception is okay right here but tends to cut out the closer you get to the hills no matter what you do.” Betty crossed her arms over her ample chest and squinted past me. “Some say it’s because of all the haunted energies that roll off the mountains. There’s a lot of bad history up there and some of it’s true, some of it isn’t.” She smiled. “But you probably know even more about it than I do, given that you’re here to write a book.”

  I’d been researching this area for six months. My entire academic life had been spent immersed in stories of the past. Yet I didn’t believe in things like ‘haunted energies’. Places didn’t bear the unseen scars of things that happened in their midst. Only people suffered that way.

  “I’m trying to learn as much as I can,” I said and responded to Betty’s smile with one of my own so she wouldn’t think I was impolite.

  Betty wasn’t finished offering helpful advice. “The best thing you can do living out in this wilderness is get to know your nearest neighbor. Booster or not, you can’t only rely on technology for help.”

 
; I could have argued that technology tended to be more reliable than people but that would have been rude. “Thanks, I’ll do that.” The green-eyed man was still fresh in my mind, the man whose powerful muscles had made me briefly think of things I wasn’t used to thinking about anymore. “So, you must know everyone who lives around here.”

  Betty was eager to keep talking. “Sure do. And speaking of neighbors, you just missed running into yours. He only comes in once every few weeks and he happened to be here picking up provisions right before you arrived.” She clucked her tongue. “It’s a shame you didn’t show up a few minutes earlier. His place is real close to yours and it’s true he’s not the friendliest soul but in the five years I’ve known Jeremy Gannon I can vouch for him being the decent sort. He likes to stay off the grid but I’d bet all my silver fillings you can count on him for help if you ever run into trouble out there. I already told him he should look out for you.”

  “What does he look like?” I asked.

  “Young guy. Maybe younger than you. Tall. Big shoulders, lots of muscle.” Her grin turned mischievous. “It damn well doesn’t hurt the eyes to look at him.”

  “Does he have a beard?”

  “Sure does.”

  “Green eyes?”

  She cocked her head. “That’s him. You’ve met him already?”

  So the window stalker had a name. Jeremy Gannon. It didn’t suit him somehow. I’d expect a Jeremy to be a softer kind of man, not one who looked like he hunted rattlesnakes in his spare time.

  “I think I might have seen him driving away,” I said, leaving out critical details like the possibility that Jeremy might have gotten an eyeful of my naked, wet body.

  Betty grew thoughtful. “Of course I understand why he is the way he is, after what happened to him. His whole family died in a plane crash, fiancé too. His brother was the pilot. The hell of it was they were on their way to see him because he was headlining an event in Vegas. It was all over the news at the time. Couldn’t have been more than six months later he turned up here, although he doesn’t like to talk about who he really is. He doesn’t like to talk about anything.”

  I felt like I’d missed something crucial, a vital hint about Jeremy’s identity. I still couldn’t explain the flash of recognition I’d felt upon encountering him and was on the verge of asking a question but Betty had already moved on.

  “You don’t look like a vegetarian,” she said, examining me for carnivorous signs. “You’re not, are you?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Good.” She laughed and then decided to emerge from behind the counter. There must have been a raised step back there. The top of her head barely came up to my shoulder and I was only average height. She ran a hand over her graying bun and started walking toward the kitchen. “I’ll tell Sherms to fry you up a burger.”

  Since reaching my destination last night I’d only been snacking on pretzels and chocolate bars. My neglected stomach suddenly grumbled.

  “That would be great,” I said and followed her to the eatery, taking a seat in one of the wobbly chairs. The two men who’d been there when I walked in were in the same place and were now playing a very serious game of checkers. They did not acknowledge my presence. They did not acknowledge anything except the red and black plastic circles in front of them.

  Sherman Grable was a man who spoke few words and wore a set of bright red suspenders but he had a kind face and he knew how to cook a burger. He smiled with pleasure when I thanked him. Betty insisted the meal was on the house but I left a twenty on the table anyway. On any other day I would have been eager to check out whatever was behind the beaded curtain in the museum but after so many long days on the road my weariness was catching up with me and I still had a long list of things to do. Before I left I purchased a few snacks and a pair of cheap sunglasses to combat the sun’s glare. Because my eyesight was dreadful I had no choice but to stick the pair over my regular glasses before getting behind the wheel. It was an awkward fashion statement but it took care of the sun problem.

  As I left Burgers/Souvenirs/Museum behind in the rearview mirror something clicked inside my brain. People had often wondered if I had a photographic memory. I didn’t. But once I absorbed a piece of information I rarely forgot it. It was a handy talent for a historian. Not so handy for a damaged soul trying to escape the trauma of the past.

  None of that mattered right now though. I knew exactly why Jeremy Gannon had seemed familiar to me. I knew where I’d heard his name before. He didn’t look the same. I could remember seeing his picture on the cover of a magazine in the grocery checkout aisle years ago. He was in profile; clean shaven, young, bearing little resemblance to the man I saw today. His professional nickname was Tulsa Kid. It wasn’t a very imaginative tag, considering he was from Oklahoma and his youthful looks belied the number of boxing titles he’d acquired. I had never followed his sport. I hated fighting in any form. But I did remember the tragedy Betty had referred to, the plane crash that killed his entire family. He disappeared from public life and I couldn’t recall hearing anything about him since then.

  Until today.

  Jeremy Gannon, the long lost Tulsa Kid, was living in isolation all the way out here in the Arizona desert. And he was my neighbor. It sounded so incredible, like the start of a modern fairy tale.

  Yet I knew better than to be idealistic. Jeremy was just a man with a sad backstory. Still, I sympathized with him even if he’d been less than friendly in the parking lot.

  I didn’t know if we’d speak again but if we did I might tell him that I understood a few things.

  I knew the feeling of being burdened by a heartbreaking personal history.

  It felt like the weight of the world.

  Chapter Two

  JEREMY

  Shit.

  I hadn’t meant to scare her. But I knew I’d fucked up when I saw the way her eyes widened behind those owlish eyeglasses as she took a step back like she was about to make a break for it.

  Of course she was alarmed.

  Any woman in her right mind would be panicked if some strange dude stopped her in a parking lot and said he’d been looking through her windows. The words had come out wrong. I’d been trying to be helpful. I just sucked at it. So I took off before I could make things any worse.

  My fist tightened around the steering wheel and I glanced in the rearview mirror though I knew she’d be out of sight by now, probably still standing there in front of the Grables’ place and trying to guess how much I’d seen last night and if I was dangerous. If I had any decency I would have stuck around for a minute and figured out how to explain myself. I would have at least given her my name and reassured her there was no danger, at least none coming from me.

  After a bend in the road I cut right into the familiar turnoff that snaked into a dirt path toward the place I called home.

  I’d been out here too goddamn long, that’s all. I didn’t know how to talk to people anymore. Men could be brushed off with a grunt and a nod. Women were different. They were more curious, more talkative. That was a big reason I avoided them if I could help it. I didn’t have much to say and my story wasn’t one that anyone would be excited to hear.

  A few weeks back when Betty Grable mentioned that the O’Hara house had been rented to a woman I didn’t think much of it and didn’t ask any questions. I figured the tenant had to be some old lady from up north looking for a warm place that offered peace and quiet. My future neighbor wasn’t on my mind at all last night when I went out for a walk after dark just like I did most clear evenings.

  I was picking my way through the brush and watching the sky because my almanac indicated there would be a meteor shower. Thanks to a low hill and a cluster of mesquite trees the O’Hara place wasn’t visible from my property. Since my eyes were trained upwards I didn’t even notice the lights were on until I was ten yards away from the small house that had been built in another era by a man who returned from a distant war and wanted to forget what h
e’d seen.

  Then my eyes were drawn to the lit window and landed on the last thing I was expecting.

  A beautiful woman.

  A beautiful naked woman.

  As sensual and tempting as a siren straight out of mythology.

  She held a towel loosely against her body and she was searching for something in a suitcase. Her lips twisted into a sexy scowl and she mouthed a curse. It wasn’t hard to imagine my hands gripping the sweet curve of her hips, my mouth hungrily closing over one of those full tits.

  I didn’t know the first thing about her.

  But I wanted her.

  Holy fuck, I wanted her.

  My dick’s response was so primal and instant I groaned out there in the darkness, my hand automatically wandering down for a quick rub.

  Then the woman looked up and her hand flew to her mouth as she realized she stood naked in front of an open window.

  I spun around and sprinted into the darkness, ashamed of the ache in my balls and what I’d fucking become. Some night prowler, unfit for civilized company, ready to get off over the sight of an unsuspecting woman going about her business in her own house.

  Despite all the thorny things that covered the desert floor I put distance between us in record time and returned to my own desolate corner of the world. This had been my refuge for the past five years, ever since fate dealt me the cruelest blow imaginable. And there, still mortified by my own thoughts, I dropped to my knees, pulled my dick out and jerked off beneath a canopy of shooting stars while my traitorous mind played pictures of bare tits and shapely legs and long hair that would feel good wound up in my fists as I guided soft lips to do the dirty work. I could almost feel her mouth on me and it would be so fucking good until her mouth wasn’t enough and I had to have her. All of her. I cursed and stroked the rigid length of my cock as I came hard right there in the dust but there was no one to see or hear. I was alone, rolling onto my back and panting in the sweaty aftermath as a particularly bright meteor shot across the sky.