Strays and Lovers Read online

Gray’s cheeks reddened. “I know. Sorry. I was really hungry.”

  Eddie pushed his own plate away. “You had every right to be. You worked hard today. Thank you for your help. I honestly couldn’t have done it without you.”

  Gray merely nodded, accepting the praise in silence, although Eddie noticed his cheeks got a little redder.

  As if embarrassed to be staring at each other for so long, they both turned toward the window at the same moment. Eddie looked at the new dog run in the backyard. The taut chicken wire wrapped around it caught the light just so, shimmering red in the sunset. The day was almost over, and Eddie was trying to remember where all the hours went. His afternoon had slipped past quickly and painlessly with Gray’s company to distract him.

  A lazy silence settled over them. Eddie liked the way it felt. He was about to ask if Gray wanted dessert. He had the inevitable array of donuts and cookies in the pantry. Before he could bring it up, he heard car tires crunching across the gravel driveway out front.

  As if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do, he reached out and patted Gray’s hand. “It might be a customer,” he said. “You stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  Eddie squeaked his chair back and was gone before Gray could respond.

  Sliding quickly through the house, he stepped through the front door and out onto the porch, all three dogs trailing along behind him. Afraid Louie might get run over since he was so small, Eddie bent and scooped him up. Putting on his business face, Eddie smiled at the woman and young boy stepping out of a shiny new Caddy Escalade parked alongside his dusty Jeep.

  The woman waved, and Eddie waved back before turning his attention to the boy. His name was Charlie, he remembered. Eddie tried to ignore the stainless-steel crutches the boy slipped his forearms through as he clumsily but eagerly exited the SUV.

  Eddie offered his widest smile, first to the mother, then to the boy. “So you’ve decided, then,” he said.

  Mother and son glanced at each other before Charlie took over negotiations. “Almost. We’ve been talking about it ever since we were here last week.”

  The mother rolled her eyes, but sweetly. “Endlessly talking about it, believe me,” she added around a smile. “His father and I bought our last house with less drama. Nations have gone to war with less turmoil.”

  Young Charlie stabbed at the dirt with his crutch. “Mommmm.”

  Eddie laughed, focusing his attention on the boy. This was clearly the child’s moment, the child’s decision. Eddie wanted to give him full control of the process. The mother seemed to step back with the same intent. Eddie admired her for that.

  He reached out and tousled Charlie’s hair. “You want to see the two dogs again before you make up your mind?”

  Charlie nodded, his young face suddenly bright with excitement. “Yes, please.” And without waiting for an answer, the boy took off around the side of the house. The two crutches he expertly wielded didn’t slow him down one little bit. Talking softly, Eddie and the mother followed along behind.

  “He’s so excited,” she said. “Thank you for this.”

  “No, you’re the one who should be thanked. Whichever animal he chooses, I’m glad the dog will have a good home. He’ll give Charlie a lot of love for a good many years to come.”

  “And vice versa.” She smiled. “In fact, Charlie will probably wear him out with love.”

  Eddie snorted back a laugh. “I’m guessing you don’t know much about dogs.”

  By the time they rounded the house, Charlie had reached the last Quonset hut and dog run, where the two dogs he had been visiting last week were housed. They were there waiting for him too, standing side by side, one a young cocker spaniel, the other a mutt of indeterminate breed and advanced years, with white around his muzzle. The two dogs were not only inseparable in their friendship with each other, they had also fallen head over heels in love with the young Charlie the first time they saw him. Their noses were pressed to the wire now, saying hello, all but tap-dancing in their eagerness to get to the boy, their tails flapping back and forth like windshield wipers.

  Charlie dropped his crutches and squatted on the ground, poking his fingers through the wire. He exploded into laughter when his two favorites started licking him in greeting.

  “Has he decided which dog he wants?” Eddie asked quietly, watching the boy but directing his question to the mother. For some reason he found himself getting a little choked up, and apparently it could be heard in his voice.

  The woman laid a hand on his arm, her eyes riveted on her son. “About that,” she said. “We couldn’t make up our minds.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  Her fingers gave him a gentle squeeze. “Don’t get me wrong. We came up with an alternate plan.”

  “And what plan is that?”

  “We’ve decided to take them both.”

  Eddie blinked. “Both dogs?”

  The mother sighed, as if the point had been argued into infinity already and she didn’t wish to discuss it another minute. “Yes,” she said. “Both dogs. Charlie thinks it will break their hearts to separate them, and looking at them now, I’m not so sure he’s wrong.” With that, she finally found the smile that had been lurking below the surface. She tore her eyes from her son and rested them on Eddie’s face. “We’ll take good care of them, Mr. Hightower. I promise.”

  Eddie couldn’t seem to tear his gaze from the boy. The happiness on his young face was enough to start choking Eddie up all over again. “I know you will,” he managed to say. And turning to the mother, he clapped his hands together and said, “Let’s get this show on the road, then, shall we?”

  Two minutes later, the two chosen dogs were freed from the kennel. They were so excited, they danced around Charlie, all but knocking the crutches out from under him and making him laugh all over again. While the three of them played in the dusty backyard, the sun slowly sank from view behind the cholla. Eddie led the mother into the office/ICU/reception area and laid out the paperwork for her to sign. With that out of the way, money changed hands, and the deal was complete.

  His heart still swollen to twice its size seeing the happiness on the faces of young Charlie and the two dogs as they piled into the SUV, heading out on their first car ride as a family, Eddie stood on the front porch and blew his nose while they drove away. Jesus, he was an old softy. As happy as he had been in a month, he creaked the screen door open and stepped back inside, hastening through his messyass living room toward the kitchen.

  But instead of Gray Grissom sitting there waiting for him, he found only the dirty plates neatly stacked by the sink. A note on the kitchen table said simply, Thank you for dinner.

  It was then that Eddie became aware of the old familiar silence echoing through the house. Somehow, after the day he had spent with Gray, and hot on the heels of young Charlie’s happiness, that silence was far louder—and emptier—than it had ever been before.

  Chapter Three

  THE DESERT Sky Pet Refuge had successfully placed more than 250 animals to loving homes in the past three years since its grand opening, yet as a paying business, it still occasionally walked a fine line between success and failure. This quarter had been especially bad. Counting the two dogs young Charlie took home two weeks earlier, there had been only twelve other adoptions during the past month. While Eddie managed to feed the animals regularly and with the best products he could find, he was starting to think about limiting his own dietary intake to Top Ramen and Vienna sausages.

  He hadn’t seen Gray Grissom since they’d shared dinner together, nor had he driven into Spangle at all, preferring to keep himself busy at the refuge. He had to admit his feelings had been hurt the way Gray ran out on him after dinner, and he wasn’t sure what they could possibly say to each other if they did come face to face.

  He had other stuff to worry about anyway.

  For one thing, it was April already. Tax time. Eddie stared down at the mass of paperwork scattered across the kitchen
table in front of him. Ledgers, receipts, bank statements, jottings about this and that on a hundred slips of paper—everything he needed to keep the IRS off his back for another year. He would have preferred scooping it all into a box and dumping it on the desk of a CPA, but that cost too much money. So here he was once again, struggling through the tax forms himself, trying not to cheat, but trying not to paint for the IRS too rosy a picture either, which was actually no problem whatsoever, since his finances basically sucked.

  As he sat in the kitchen, guzzling too much coffee and getting more depressed and jittery as the hours rolled by, Eddie finally faced the inescapable truth. He would have to let Josh and Blaize go. While he had so far managed to eke out enough extra money from either his income or his inheritance to pay them slave wages, the time had finally come to admit even that was more than he could afford. Eddie would simply have to find the time and the energy to do their jobs for them.

  Even with all these depressing thoughts tumbling through his head, Eddie allowed a tiny beam of sunshine to peek in one ear and light up the inside of his skull every now and then. That little beam of light was a memory that kept sneaking back to him out of nowhere on silent cat feet. The memory was of Gray Grissom standing shirtless on the ladder, arms stretched high, hammering a 2x4 into place at the top of the new dog run, humming to himself.

  Eddie pushed his chair away from the table and turned to stare through the kitchen window. The new dog run still looked out of place since it was the only construction on the property with perfect right angles. Unlike the others, the wood was still unpainted as well. He’d have to get on that one of these days. At least then it would blend in a little better with all the other dog runs and hand-built kennels at the refuge. At a tug on his foot, he looked down and saw Louie lying on his belly, gnawing on his sock. The pup was growing. Whatever his breed might be, it was starting to look like he would end up being the size of a small terrier.

  Eddie smiled watching him. The other two dogs, Lucretia and Fred, were out back wrestling in the dust by the wall of one of the Quonset huts. He could see them through the window. Louie, on the other hand, stayed close to Eddie at all times, padding along in his wake as he bustled around the compound, nestling close to Eddie in quieter moments, always maintaining contact. Pawing, licking, or chewing on some appendage or other like he was doing now.

  For the umpteenth time in the past two weeks, Eddie tilted his head to the side and simply listened. To the desert emptiness. To the mute sunshine blasting down on the house. To the lonely silence. It was funny he hadn’t always noticed it so much, that infernal quiet. It was funny too that his own thoughts never seemed to be at rest anymore. He had lost the ability to find peace and calm inside himself. There was always some sort of eddy swirling around inside his head. Some sort of malcontent, endlessly pecking away at him when he wasn’t looking.

  He would lie awake in the night sometimes now, analyzing everything he did that day, or everything he had done in the past. Forever finding flaws. It was like when you keep digging for a splinter even when the splinter’s gone, and your finger keeps getting sorer and sorer as you poke around with that goddamn needle. But still you can’t stop digging, can’t stop tearing at yourself, can’t stop trying to get at something that, in all reality, may not even be there.

  Eddie’s needle was that image he kept going back to of Gray standing shirtless on the ladder. The sunlight reddening his lean shoulders. The burnished hair on his head shifting in the hot breeze. A trickle of sweat sliding down the middle of his back and disappearing into that intriguing little patch of hair at the base of his spine. Like the needle digging for a splinter, that image kept coming back to Eddie. Over and over and over again. Poking. Always poking.

  Suddenly Eddie froze, remembering another moment he and Gray had shared on the day they built the dog run. A most spectacular moment. It came when the dogs started roughhousing and Gray, breathless with laughter, curled up against him in an attempt to evade the dogs’ attentions. While the dogs, laughing as hard as Gray, kept trying to lick anything that didn’t move, Gray had squirmed away from them, pressing his face into Eddie’s bare ribs. Eddie in turn, laughing as hard as everybody else, had folded himself over Gray to protect him even further.

  Unable to stop himself, Eddie’s lips had grazed Gray’s back and he had tasted the flavor of the young man’s skin, eliciting a tremor from Gray. To Eddie’s way of thinking, it was a heart-stopping epiphany of want. If not on Gray’s part, most certainly on Eddie’s.

  But even that was not the best moment of that day. Not by a long shot. The best moment came a couple of minutes later, when Gray, the laughter in his eyes slowly fading to a gentle gleam of wonder, reached out and stroked his fingers through the hair on Eddie’s chest. It was as if his hand had been drawn there without plan or forethought, working as a separate entity, unsteered by Gray at all. Connecting to Eddie for that one precious, unbidden instant before he pulled his hand away and tore his eyes from Eddie’s body.

  Eddie sat stock still at his kitchen window now, a sheath of receipts forgotten in his hand, while the electric feel of Gray’s fingers on his skin flooded through him yet again.

  Was the man gay? Was that it? And even if he was, did it all mean what Eddie thought it might mean? Even with the twenty-year difference in their ages, was there an attraction for Eddie to be found there in Gray’s gentle, testing touch? And had the touch been as surprising to Gray as it was to Eddie? Was that why Gray had quickly pulled his hand away as if he’d been burned? In that split second, his questing eyes had lurched away from Eddie’s chest. In embarrassment, maybe? Or simply because Gray was trying to hide the hunger in his eyes so Eddie wouldn’t know? Could that have been it? Could Eddie be that lucky? And could Gray actually be so dense that he failed to see the reaction his touch had caused in Eddie? Was he being so blind that he couldn’t see Eddie’s fascination with him through the whole long day they had been working together? The lingering looks. The shy silences. The reaching out to touch when touch wasn’t really called for.

  Unseeing now, still lost in his memories of that day, Eddie stared at the receipts in his hand. The quiet of the old house weighed down on him. Like the soundless walls and rooms were pressing Eddie’s loneliness into his very core. Stuffing him with silence. Filling him to the brim with white noise and empty air. But most of all with the memory of unrealized opportunities. The moments he had let slip past. The chances he had not dared to take. He had made a good start with Gray that day. He should have followed through. He should have pursued, if not romance, at least friendship with the younger man. Gray had been open to him—for a while. Eddie should have seized that openness and used it to get to know Gray better.

  Before a crystal-clear plan could formulate inside his head, Eddie impatiently shoved all the paperwork into the battered accordion folder he always kept it in, mainly so the cats wouldn’t scatter it to hell and back if he left it where it was. He tossed the folder on the table and snatched his car keys off the counter by the Mr. Coffee machine. After taking a moment to study his reflection in the side of the stainless steel toaster to check for boogers and make sure his cowlick wasn’t standing up off the top of his head like a TV antenna, Eddie quickly decided he looked as good as he ever would.

  As nervous as a cat and wondering if he was crazy to do what he was about to do, he headed out the back door, chomping on a mouthful of breath mints as he went.

  At the last moment, he scooped Louie off the floor and tucked him under his arm like a football. He figured if he didn’t, the pup would follow him anyway. Louie was kind of stubborn that way. Not that Eddie minded. Behind the wheel of the Jeep, Eddie perched Louie on his shoulder (which was the only way the tiny pup could see through the windshield), and off Eddie went. Headed for town. Headed for Spangle. Headed for the man whom he couldn’t, for the life of him, get out of his fucking head.

  Headed for Gray Grissom, the man whose bare skin his lips had once brushed across.
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br />   Apparently—and no one was more surprised by this than Eddie—he had finally gathered up the courage to try for another taste.

  EDDIE STOOD on the porch of the Spangle Hardware Store. He sucked in a great hot gout of desert air, attempting to build up his courage, and stared out at the street where a small herd of stampeding middle schoolers tried to beat the one and only stoplight in town and nearly got pulverized by a Ford Focus. While the kids barely noticed, the driver was left a quivering wreck. Even ten seconds later, after the kids were already gone, obliviously chasing each other up the street, laughing and chirping like magpies, Eddie could see the driver who had nearly killed them sitting ramrod straight, fists clenching the steering wheel, mouth open wide in a silent scream. Poor guy.

  Eddie bit back a chuckle and headed into the store with Louie prancing along at his heels.

  “Cat man’s here!” Tommy Wilson cried out from somewhere back in the shadows. “Try not to buy any more animals, wench!”

  Eddie figured that directive was aimed at Ruth, since she was the only wench on the premises. He knew he was right when he heard Ruth sing out, “Shut up, you old poop!” prior to poking her head up from behind the checkout counter, where she spent most of her days sitting on a wooden stool doing crossword puzzles, only rising to her feet to ring up the occasional sale or yell blistering comments at her husband.

  She turned her eyes on Eddie and Louie. “Hello, boys,” she said. Lifting her glasses off her nose to gaze under them as if she rarely needed them for anything smaller than a bowling ball, she studied Louie, who was in the process of dragging a roll of Gorilla tape off the bottom shelf like it was just what he’d been looking for.

  “Pup’s getting big. You there, dog! That Gorilla tape is six dollars. You got any money?”

  Louie looked surprised and dropped the tape. Eddie laughed, picked it up off the floor, and put it back where it came from. He picked Louie up too, in case he decided to shoplift anything else.