Yesterday's Tomorrow, Nathan Wolf, Wolf [jenna bush book club .TXT] 📗

Title Page

Secrets of Liberty Mountain: Book One

Yesterday's Tomorrow

(A Work in Progress - 97,650 words)

Copyright 2019 by Nathan Wolf
All rights reserved.

 

Author's Disclaimer

This is an adult work of fiction intended for mature readers.

Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents either are the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is too weird for words and 100% purely coincidental.

 

Chapter 1

 

I stuffed my last cardboard box of belongings into the cargo hold of my girlfriend's Toyota Rav4, jumped into the passenger seat, and waited while she fussed over a map with directions to our new home. Darlene is like that--a stickler for details.

She flipped her shoulder-length hair out of her eyes for the umpteenth time and squinted to read the tiny letters. Mapmakers tend to hide the most critical information in the smallest print known to man.

Finally finished, she turned to me and smiled. "Let's go!"

She put the Rav into gear, and we started on our way. We were going to start a new life off the grid.

Darlene was a smart, feisty, and petite brown-haired woman, a hair under five feet, five inches tall, with small breasts and a freckled baby face. Her soft and innocent musical voice accented her thoughts with honey and desire. To me, she sounded like exotic ear-candy.

She was more than she seemed and used a different song for every mood and season. When angry, sarcastic sandpaper replaced honey as her words scoured lies and deceit away from facts until only the unvarnished truth remained.

We met at a local tavern where we developed an unlikely May-December relationship. She played the part of May at the youthful age of thirty-five. I fulfilled the role of December at the tender age of sixty-mumble.

Through the process of elimination, we had become drinking buddies at our local tavern. I'm not sure "buddies" is the correct word. More often than not, we happened to be the last people still standing when the bartender bellowed out, "Last call for alcohol!"

Initially, geography was our common bond. The tavern, built in the 1890s, featured a walnut and mahogany bar with an odd little 'L' shaped hook at the far corner of the saloon. The bar and a back wall of brick formed a naturally cozy alcove spacious enough to accommodate three stools.

According to local legend, the original owner ordered the hook's construction to allow him to observe activities of untrustworthy bartenders while also keeping an eye on equally unreliable patrons. The voyeur and hermit in me loved the location, and I had it all to myself for several months until the day Darlene arrived. She also loved the strategic observatory.

At first, I was annoyed at the invasion of my secret space. After a while, I looked forward to her company. Like commuters sharing an across-town bus, we got used to each other's presence on the installment plan. Familiarity grew comfortable and silence gave way to conversation as we observed the ebb and flow of tavern life.

It all started with casual flirting. She flirted. I was casual.

Hell, she flirted with everyone: men, women, and even the bartender's mangy tomcat. While I enjoyed the sometimes risqué banter, I never considered Darlene as potential girlfriend material. She was a young vixen, and I was an old wolf. I amused myself by trying to sneak a peek down her blouse or up her skirt when I thought she wouldn't notice.

One Friday evening, the stars governing our relationship aligned like the bars on a slot machine. Heads turned as Darlene strutted into the tavern: a blur of legs, cleavage, and the predatory smile of a fox. Her outfit left little to the imagination. Her mini-dress must have been a belt in a previous life, and her tissue-thin blouse was unbuttoned down to her navel. She wore no bra.

"That's a nice outfit you're almost wearing."

I did a double take when she hopped up on the adjacent barstool.

"Panties optional dress code?" I asked with a nod of my head as I filed that image into my long-term memory vault.

"Like it? I'm going to get laid tonight. One of these stud-muffins is going home with me," she chuckled with a little shiver and scanned the tavern for targets of opportunity.

I grimaced; my envy was flavored a bit oddly by jealousy. What a curious blend of emotions for a virtual stranger. I did an inventory of my own.

The tavern was a working man's watering hole and most the guys looked like drop-outs from Blubber Buddies or some such weight-watching group. Too many six-packs left many on the fat side of hefty. Over the last few years, I had gone from two-hundred-seventy-six pounds to a hundred and sixty-seven. I felt authorized to gloat.

Wives or girlfriends escorted most of the men. Boyfriends accompanied several others. Darlene's field of viable targets appeared limited unless she lowered her standards or went in for a threesome.

I pitied the lucky guy who won Darlene's attention. She had the uncanny ability to read people like a book and play them like a deck of cards.

"Compliments of the house."

Our curious barkeep did a visual inventory of his own as he set a beautifully mixed and handcrafted White Russian in front of Darlene.

She took a small sip and savored it like a gourmet. "Splendid!"

She tilted her head back and wolfed it down in one long gulp. Yikes! Talk about power drinking. Darlene hopped down from her seat and like Alexander the Great, set out to conquer the known world.

I had to admire her style. She was the Alpha-Fox loose in the hen house, radiating sexual availability like a neon sign in the night. Darlene was in a class by herself, and that was a problem. She sparkled like a diamond in a coal bin and scared the crap out of the men she approached.

If anything, she was too beautiful and too self-assured. The males she flirted with as she worked her way around the tavern were flattered, flustered, and fearful of her attention. None of them dared to take the bait.

After ten or fifteen minutes of flagrantly flirting, Darlene returned to her seat to regroup and refuel. Our bartender presented her with another complimentary White Russian as his sacrifice to the gods of Wishful Thinking.

"Thank you so much! You are such a sweetheart. Can I have another one to keep this one company?"

Darlene touched his hand, and if her smile had been any warmer, the barkeep would have erupted into flame. A few moments later, our generous drink master returned with three tall White Russians.

"One is for you and the other two are honor guards for the dead soldiers." He pointed to the two empty glasses.

"I love this drink."

She inhaled the beverage, chugging it down in one long gulp. I widened my eyes in puzzlement. How can anyone love a drink without taking the time to appreciate the subtle by-play of flavors?

Thirst quenched for the moment, Darlene resumed her quest for the night's bed partner. Her second expedition of seduction ended in bewildered frustration.

"What the fucking hell? I usually have to beat men off with a stick." Shaking her head in disgust, she demolished another White Russian.

"Maybe you should offer to beat them off with a stick, you know, fifty shades of kinky?"

Darlene's eyes gave me a hard look. She was not amused. "Why? Do you want to get beat off with a stick?" she smiled coyly before dispatching the last White Russian.

"Hell no! I hate splinters," I said.

"He shoots. He scores!" Darlene laughed as she raised her index finger and traced a point on the invisible blackboard in the air. "Nice one."

I shrugged my shoulders. I could feel the rising heat of a blush. I squirmed in my seat under her gaze. As Darlene studied me, her dark look of frustration gradually brightened and her emerald eyes sparkled as her grim expression transformed into the predatory smile of a fox once more.

"I'm as horny as hell. Wanna screw?"

She leaned into me until our noses touched while her hand moved to my knee and slowly slid along the inside of my leg. I answered by placing my hand on her knee and mirrored her journey of exploration.

"Your place or mine?" I whispered.

It was as cliché as hell, but I couldn't help myself. What could I say? She had just made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

Thus began our unlikely love affair. We became romantically involved as much out of laziness as out of lust. Neither of us cared to invest the necessary time to search for the ideal mate, so we settled for close enough for now. After we moved in together, I would joke that I was "robbing the cradle" when I took her to bed. She would always laugh and respond, "I guess that would make me a grave robber."

A few things attracted me to Darlene. The first was her personality. She was so easy going that I once tried to give her the nickname "Lake Placid." Still waters run deep, and it didn't end well.

"Enough! Dennis, that was a twofer."

The book she was reading sailed across the room, missing my head by less than an inch.

"Watch it, you nearly hit me! What the hell is a twofer?"

"A twofer is the first and last time something happens. I loath nicknames. Why the hell would I want to be named after a stagnant pond?"

Her smile was a weird combo of mischief and annoyance. I took pet names off my to-do list.

The other thing was her attitude toward sex. Everyone needs a hobby and sex was her diversion from work. She collected orgasms like some folks collected postage stamps.

She'd allowed me to move in with her and we'd shacked up to save money when my landlord evicted me because I refused to pay until he fixed the bathroom in my crappy apartment. He decided a new tenant would be cheaper than new plumbing. Darlene and I believed that two could live as cheaply as one. We were right, but only for half as long.

After a few months together, the real estate development corporation in which Darlene had invested fifteen years of her life went belly-up, and then her last two paychecks bounced. The rubber checks set up a cascading overdraft chain reaction.

Darlene's rent check went south, along with about twenty-five or thirty personal checks and ATM transactions; each bad check racked up a thirty-five dollar bank charge and twenty-five to thirty dollars in returned check merchant fees; her account was bleeding red ink by several thousand dollars.

The certified letter ordering our eviction was the last straw. Our financial camel lay mortally wounded with a back broken beyond repair. We needed a new place to live, and we needed it fast. We crisscrossed Denver and the surrounding suburbs, chasing every "For Rent" sign we could find. We were always an hour or a day late, or the price was way beyond reach.

"Well, if you hear anything,