The Grey Pilgrim by J.M. Hayes

formal and telling him her name had a Mrs. tacked on the front of it. J.D. hadn’t been involved in a serious relationship with a woman since before Spain and he made it a practice not to fool around with other men’s wives, even when only physical needs were involved. He didn’t let it matter even if they were bored or beautiful, so he’d simply written her off. She was great to look at but he hadn’t bothered getting to know her. He didn’t remember her in connection with the boy archaeologist, but he certainly hadn’t forgotten her. Women who look like that inspire masculine recall. And she was also intelligent enough to be working on a graduate degree. Beauty and brains could be a very dangerous combination.
    “Hello, J.D.,” she said. “You probably don’t remember me. I’m Mary.”
    “Oh, I remember you all right,” he said, then decided he’d done so too enthusiastically. It wouldn’t be a good idea to tell her he remembered her because she was easily the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. It would have sounded like a corny line even if she was single, and she wasn’t. He didn’t want it to sound like a come on.
    “At the Gibson’s, I think,” he said. “Some middle-aged professor of classics decked out in tweeds, bow tie, and an affected accent was pontificating on the situation in Europe. He said something about how, if Hitler was persecuting the Jews, it was because they’re so cliquish, so rigidly incapable of blending into the culture where they live. They were bringing most of their troubles on themselves. You straightened him out. Made him realize, probably for the first time, how equally out of place in Tucson’s culture he was. I seem to recall a colorful phrase or two that you used.”
    “Oh fuck!” she said. It came out involuntarily and she blushed.
    “That was one of them,” J.D. agreed, accelerating the process.
    She rolled her eyes. “Time for the cake,” she muttered. J.D. heard, but didn’t understand. Before he could ask for a clarification she went on. “So much for my sweet and innocent image.”
    She smiled. It lit up the world. J.D. hadn’t realized how dark it had been until then. He stood there and felt foolish and awkward, like he’d suddenly returned to puberty. He expected his face to start breaking out again. He brushed a hand at a cowlick he’d tamed in his mid-teens. Cut it out, he told himself, simultaneously delivering a swift mental kick to the seat of his pants. She’s married. You can’t have her.
    “If being in the presence of a woman with a sailor’s fondness for expressive vocabulary won’t offend you too much, come in. I promise I’ll try to watch my language.”
    She took his hat, gave it to a maple hall tree, and led him inside. The living room was large and comfortable with more than its share of overfilled bookshelves. Colorful Indian pots stood on the mantel, and blankets and intricate baskets hung where you would have expected to find reproductions of the masters or originals of those who never would be. He followed her, surprised to find his feet still worked and that he could nod and make appropriate, if simple, responses in her presence. He rather expected to fall down and maybe drool a little.
    “Larry’s out back, burning some otherwise perfectly good steaks on his grill,” she explained. J.D. hadn’t even started to miss him. “I let him ruin the meat because it makes what I fix seem so much better by comparison. Also, it keeps him out of my way when I’m in the kitchen.”
    She continued with the casual banter. Somehow, he filled in his parts. She got him a drink, the preference for which he could not remember having expressed, then ushered him back down the hall, across a narrow back porch, and onto a shaded patio where the boy archaeologist was sacrificing something on an altar of flame.
    “Hi, J.D.,” he said, giving the marshal’s hand another enthusiastic workout while the girl disappeared back into the house.