Then it happened. She felt a bump, then heard a pop. The big car swerved, then listed to the left and went
kathump, kathump, kathump.
She pulled over as far as possible, but was on a very short straightaway between two curves, so still stuck out into the road a bit. Here’s where having the supersized SUV wasn’t so convenient.
“Stay in the car, in your seats,” she told the boys. And she cautiously exited the car, watching for traffic coming around the curves in either direction. The rain came down in a steady sheet, although it was filtered by the boughs of huge pines and sequoias. Those pine needles didn’t do much to keep her dry, however. She shivered in the cold rain and wondered,
This is June?
It had been so warm in Sacramento, she hadn’t taken jackets or sweatshirts out of their suitcases. She hadn’t accounted for the temperature drop in the mountains.
She crouched, sitting on the right heel of her Uggs, and glared at the traitorous tire in disgust. Flat as a pancake, rubber torn away. What a mess. It wasn’t going anywhere, that was for sure.
Katie knew how to change a tire, but just the same, she got back in the car and took out her phone. On a vehicle this size, it could be a challenge. Maybe they were close enough to Virgin River for Conner to help.
No bars. No service. No help.
Well, that certainly diminished her options. She looked into the backseat. “Mommy’s going to change the tire and I need you to stay in the car and sit very, very still. No moving around, all right?”
“Why?”
“Because I have to jack up the car where the flat tire is and if you wiggle around it could fall and maybe hurt me. Can you sit still? Very still?”
They nodded gravely. She couldn’t have them out of the car, running wild in the forest or along this narrow highway. She shut off the SUV and went to the rear, lifting the hatch. She had to pull out a couple of suitcases and move the picnic basket to open the wheel well cover and floorboard. She pulled out the lug wrench and jack.
The first thing to do was actually the hardest for a woman her size—loosening the lug nuts before jacking up the car. She put her whole body into it, but she couldn’t budge a single one. Not even the slightest bit. This was when it didn’t pay off to be five foot four and a lightweight. She used a foot and two hands. Nothing. She stood up, pulled a rubber tie out of the pocket of her jeans and wound her long hair into a ponytail. She wiped her hands down her jeans and gave it another try, grunting with the effort. Still nothing. She was going to have to wait for someone to…
She heard a rumble that grew closer. And because today wasn’t turning out to be one of her luckier days, it couldn’t be some old rancher. Nope. It had to be a motorcycle gang. “Crap,” she said. “Well, beggars can’t be choosers.” And she waved them down. Four of them pulled up right behind the SUV. The one in front got off his bike and removed his helmet as he approached her while the others stayed balanced on their rumbling bikes.
Whew, wasn’t he a big, scary-looking dude. Huge and leather-clad with lots of hair, both facial and a long ponytail. He also jingled a little while he walked—there were chains around his boot heels, hanging from his belt and adorning his jacket. With his helmet cradled in the crook of his arm, he looked down at her. “Whatcha got?”
“Flat,” she said, and shivered. “I can handle it if you’ll just help me with the lugs. I’m in good shape, but I’m no match for the air compressor torque that tightened ’em down.”
He cocked his head and lifted one brow, probably surprised that a woman would know about the torque. He went over to the tire and squatted. “Dang,” he said. “Doesn’t get much flatter than that. I hope you have a spare.”
“In the undercarriage. Really, I can—”
He stood up and cut her off. “Let’s just get ’er done. That way the lugs on the spare will be as tight as these.”
“Thanks, but I hate to hold you up. If you’ll just—”
He completely ignored her, walking back to his bike and stowing his helmet. He pulled a few flat road warning triangles out of his side pocket and handed a couple to riders. “Stu, take these warning markers up the road to that curve. Lang, go back down to that last curve and put these out. Dylan, you can help change the tire. Let’s do it.”
And then he was walking back to where she stood, still holding the lug wrench. Now, Conner was a big man and this guy was yet bigger. As she stood dripping in the rain, she felt fully half his size. As two bikers rode away with their road markers, the fourth, Dylan, propped up his bike, removed his helmet and came toward them. And her eyes almost popped out of her head. Warning! Major hottie! His black hair was a little on the long side, his face about a couple of days unshaven, his body long and lean with a tear in each knee of his jeans. He walked with a slight swagger, pulling off his gloves, which matched his tan leather jacket, and stuffing them in the back pockets of his jeans, though they were so tight there couldn’t be much room for anything. She lifted her eyes back to his face. He should be on a billboard.
“Let’s make this easy,” Number One was saying to Dylan. “How about you lighten the load a little bit.” And then he applied the lug wrench, and with a simple, light jerk, spun the first lug nut, then a second, then a third. Piece of cake. For him.
Dylan approached her and she noticed his amazing blue eyes. He completely ignored her and began to pull things out of the back of the SUV—first a large, heavy suitcase, a smaller one, then the cooler. Meanwhile, the SUV was lifting, apparently already on the jack.
Dylan paused, cooler in his hands, looking down at her. She followed his gaze down. Swell. Her white T-shirt was soaked, plastered to her skin, her pretty little lace bra was now transparent, her nipples were tan bullets pointed right at him. He looked up and frowned. He put down the cooler, stripped off his leather jacket and draped it around her shoulders, pulling it closed.
Nice, she thought. Wet T-shirt display on the deserted road for a biker gang. “Thank you,” she mumbled. And she backed away so he could empty the back and get the tire from the undercarriage.
“Must’ve hit a pothole or something,” the first biker was saying. “That tire is done for.”
She hugged the jacket around herself and his scent rose, his very pleasant musk combined with rain and forest. It was toasty inside, dripping on the outside. Okay, maybe they weren’t Hells Angels. Just a bunch of nut balls out for a ride in the rain?
While Dylan took the spare around the SUV to his buddy, Katie got into the suitcase on top and pulled out a dark, cowl-neck sweatshirt. She put the leather jacket in the back of the car and pulled the sweatshirt over her wet T-shirt. She looked down. Better.
Not long after her clothing adjustment, Dylan came around the back of the car, carrying the useless tire, his long-sleeved shirt glued against his totally cut, sculpted chest. His shoulders and biceps bulged with the strain of carrying the heavy tire. But, God, what a body. He probably shouldn’t be out riding in the rain—he should be modeling or working with the Chippendales.
Stop,
she told herself.
Great to look at, but I’m sworn off. I’m concentrating on my future and my family.
After he stowed the tire, she picked up the jacket and held it toward him. “Here you go,” she said. “Thanks.”
“My pleasure. Hard to believe it’s June.”
“I was just thinking that.”
And then he did the most unexpected thing. He put the jacket down in the back of the SUV and stripped off his soaked shirt; he put the jacket on over skin. Her mouth fell open slightly, her eyes riveted to his body until he snapped the jacket closed. Then she slowly looked up, and he smiled and winked. He walked back to his bike, shoved the wet shirt in a side pocket and returned to the back of the SUV just as it was lowering onto a new tire.
Dylan began to reload the SUV and for a second she was just mesmerized, but then she shook herself and began to help, every once in a while meeting his eyes. Oh, God, he had Conner’s eyes—crystal-blue and twinkling beneath thick, dark lashes. She also had blue eyes but they were merely ordinary blue eyes while Conner’s (and Dylan’s!) were more periwinkle and almost startling in their depth. Paul Newman eyes, her mother used to say. And this guy had them, too! Her parents must have had a love child they left on the church steps or something.
No. Wait. She knew him—the eyes, the name. It had been a long time ago, but she’d seen him before. Not in person, but on TV. On magazine covers. But then, surely it wasn’t… Yes, the Hollywood bad boy. What had become of him since way back then?
“You can get back in if you want to,” Dylan said. “Turn the heat up. I hope you don’t have far to go.”
“I’m almost there,” she said.
Dylan put the cooler in, then the heaviest suitcase. He took a handkerchief out of his back pocket, wiped down his rain-slicked face and then began to wipe off his dirty hands. “You have a couple of stowaways,” he said, glancing into the car.
She peeked into the SUV. A couple of identical sets of brown eyes peered over the backseat. “My boys,” she said.
“You don’t look old enough to have boys.”
“I’m at least fifty now,” she said. “Ever been on a road trip with five-year-old twins?”
“Can’t say that I have.”
Of course he hadn’t, because he was some gorgeous godlike hunk who was as free as a bird and out either terrorizing or rescuing maidens in the forest. Wow.
“You’re all set, miss,” the big biker said as he came around the SUV, pulling on his leather gloves. Jeez, he had chains on those, too.
“Thanks for your help. The lugs get me every time.”
“I’d never leave a lady in distress by the side of the road, my mother would kill me. And that’s nothing to what my wife would say!”
“You have a wife?” she asked. And before she could stop herself, she added, “And a mother?”
Dylan burst out with a short laugh. He clapped a hand on the big guy’s back and said, “There’s a lot more to Walt than meets the eye, Miss… I didn’t get a name…”
She put out an icy hand. “Katie Malone.”
“I’m Dylan,” he said, taking the hand. How in the world he had managed warm hands after changing a tire in the freezing rain, she would long wonder. “And of course, this is Walt, roadside good Samaritan.” Then he addressed Walt. “I’ll ride back and get Lang. We’ll scoop up Stu on the way up the road.”
“You should be just fine, Katie,” Walt said. “Jump in, tell the little guys to buckle up, crank up the heater and watch the road.”
“Right. Yes. Listen, can I pay you for your trouble? I’m sure it would’ve cost me at least a hundred bucks to have that tire changed.”
“Don’t be absurd,” he said, startling her with his choice of words. It just didn’t seem like the vocabulary that would fit a big, scary biker dude. “You’d do the same for me if you could. Just be sure to replace that tire right away so you always have a spare.”
“You always go out for a ride in the rain?” she asked.
“We were on the road already. But there are better days for it, that’s for sure. If it had been coming down much harder, we’d have had to hole up under a tree or something. Don’t want to slide off a mountain. Take care.” Then he turned and tromped back to his Hog with the high handlebars.
Two
W
hen Katie pulled up in front of the house in Virgin River, she saw her brother pacing back and forth on the front porch. He had told her that if she arrived before five the front door would be unlocked, yet there he was. She barely had the SUV in Park before the boys were out and tearing toward their uncle. He scooped them up, one in each arm, and just that sight alone caused all the tension she’d been feeling to float out of her, leaving her almost weak. Conner, like a great, faithful oak, always strong and steady.
She went up to the porch. “Why are you here?” she asked him.
“I wasn’t really concentrating at work, so I came home to wait for you.”
“Oh, Conner,” she said softly, her voice quivering a little bit.
He frowned. “What’s the matter, Katie?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but only shivered. Finally she croaked out, “I got caught in the rain.”
“Let’s get you inside. I’ll get the bags. We can talk after the boys are occupied.”
An hour later, with Katie fresh out of a hot, soothing shower and the boys crashed on the living room sectional in front of a movie, Conner poured her a cup of coffee. “Feel better?” he asked.
“Tons. I had a flat, that’s how I got caught in the rain. Which, by the way, is freezing in the forest. A motorcycle gang stopped and changed it for me.”
“Gang?”
“Motorcycle group?” she tried. “Not the Hells Angels, Conner. Just a bunch of bikers out riding in the rain, which begs the question… Never mind. I could’ve changed it, but I can never conquer those lugs. They were very nice men, apparently unable to listen to a weather report.”
Conner sat opposite her at the small kitchen table. “What was it, Katie? You were talking about staying in Vermont. I didn’t like that idea and I like this one lots better, but it was a sudden change of heart.”
“Yeah, because I’m unstable, that’s what. I had myself convinced I should find myself a guy like Keith, my old boss, even though the most passionate thing he said to me was, ‘Great sea bass, Katie—you could open a restaurant’!” She shook her head. “That move to Vermont—it wasn’t all bad. I made a few friends, the boys had fun at school, the neighbors were great. But I just didn’t want to be alone anymore and I started thinking, I have to find a good man who could be a good father, and look what I almost did.”
“What did you almost do?”
She took a sip of coffee. “Keith’s an exceptional man and I bet there’s no better father alive—he’s gifted with kids. And right when my frustration level was about to peak because he still hadn’t made a move, his sister Liz broke it to me. Keith is gay. It makes him nervous to think how his conservative community would treat a gay pediatric dentist, so he keeps it quiet. I saw myself getting desperate enough for companionship that I almost talked myself into a relationship with a man who had no physical attraction to me. None. Nada. Zip.”
Conner sat back in his chair. “I thought he was a little on the gentle side, but I didn’t see gay. Not that I’m any expert.”
“Me, either. But to show you how off I was, I miss Liz more than Keith. And then…” She let that sentence trail off and glanced into her cup.
“Then?” he pushed.
“Then when I started sorting and packing, Andy asked if we had to move in the dark again and I knew—I have some work to do. On myself. On my family. The boys…they’re so resilient that it’s easy to miss the fact that they’ve been in a rocky place and they need stability.”
Conner let go a low, resentful growl. “My fault,” he muttered. “That goddamn trial…”
“I’m ignoring that comment. You weren’t in charge and neither was I. We did well with what we had to manage. But, Conner, I have to make a change. Charlie was completely devoted to me, he was the most committed man I’ve ever known—to me, to the army, to his boys in Special Forces. And he wanted me in every sense of the word, and let me know it. I still miss that, Conner. I miss him enough that I almost made a mistake that would not only affect me, but the boys. I have to find a better way.”
“You do great, Katie,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze.
“Thanks, but I have to do great on
my own.
It’s okay for the boys to depend on you, but I have to grow some independence. I want you for a brother, not the man I continually lean on. I’m going to lean on myself. Until I figure that out, I’m dangerous as a single woman on the hunt. Know what I mean?”
“Not really,” he said.
“I know what you mean,” a woman said.
Katie jumped in surprise, sloshing her coffee a little bit. There was a woman standing in the kitchen archway, a purse slung over her shoulder and some brown take-out bags in her hands.
“Hi, I’m Leslie,” she said, smiling. She put the bags on the table.
“I didn’t hear you come in, honey,” Conner said, standing up to give her a kiss.
“There’s a car parked out front, a movie playing to a couple of sleeping little boys in the living room, so I was extra quiet.” She gave Katie a quick squeeze. “I know what you mean. I was in that exact place a year ago.”
The open road or up in the air, rain or shine, were two of Dylan Childress’s favorite places to think. In fact, that was how he met Walt, years ago. Walt had come through Payne, Montana, where Dylan and Lang operated their own small, fixed base operation and charter air service. They rode together for a day, Dylan introducing Walt to some of his favorite mountain trails and off-road routes with the best views. Dylan took Walt up in the Bonanza, a six-seater airplane for a different perspective on the views and Walt had loved that. And Walt, who had gone back to Sacramento to open a bunch of Harley franchises, had kept in touch, eager to return the favor someday.
The time had come. Living in Montana, there were only a few months of the year Dylan, Lang and the head of their maintenance operation, Stu, could enjoy their motorcycles. They took very few vacations or days off, so once a year in summer they treated themselves to a road trip. The Harleys were cheap to operate and they usually camped. Dylan had begun to worry this might be the last time the three of them might indulge their annual road trip because the business was struggling, so he got in touch with Walt and asked for some of his best California routes. Walt insisted on setting up a ride and joining them.
After arriving at the cabins Walt had reserved for them, all the riders wanted to do was warm up, dry off and have a stout meal. The first order of business was to check in, which amounted to meeting their landlord, shaking his hand and deciding who was staying with whom. There was a little grumbling about who would take the pull-out sofa beds because God knew, men couldn’t share a mattress!
As far as Dylan was concerned, Luke Riordan’s cabins by the river were a custom fit, and he was more than happy with the sofa. And not a little relieved that he wasn’t camping on the wet forest floor.
When Dylan and one of his other pilots took a charter flight out of Payne or picked up passengers in Butte, Helena or some other city, they were frequently put up in nice hotels or lodges. A little luxury was granted the pilots since the kind of customers who could hire a jet could well afford it. But Dylan was a simple guy who preferred to relax in a more rustic setting. And this was definitely it.
The four men used two cabins. Dylan doubled up with Walt which left Lang to listen to Stu grumble about not having had a good date lately. Walt, being about the size of Goliath, got the bed.
Walt had found the Riordan cabins, operated by Luke, an ex-army Black Hawk pilot who owned his own Harley and had lots of tips about local, scenic, challenging rides. There were several things about this venue that Dylan looked forward to—maybe a little fishing in that river that ran by the cabin compound to see how it compared to some Montana rivers, the local bar and grill with the atmosphere and food Walt raved about, the challenge of the mountain roads around here, the remote location and, hopefully, some time with Luke, talking flying. Dylan would love to log a few hours in a Black Hawk.
When the men told Luke they were going to dry off, clean up and get back on the bikes to head for Virgin River for dinner, Luke said, “In this weather? Walt, take my truck, we’re staying home tonight.”
“That’s awful neighborly, Luke,” Walt said. “I’ll treat her real nice.”
“I know you will. The last time you were here you tweaked the engine for me and it’s been purring like a kitten ever since. I appreciate it.”
It took about thirty minutes to unload their packs into rooms, shower and pile in the truck, headed for town—enough bikes for one day. Walt took the wheel and talked the whole way about the cook who didn’t provide a menu, cooked what he felt like, catered to the locals and visiting sportsmen and was real proud of his stuff. “I’m thinking on a wet day like today, a soup or stew—and it’ll be something special.”
Dylan and Lang had flown monied hunters to primo lodges all over the U.S. and Canada, but neither of them was prepared for Jack’s. It was simple, but classy—well constructed and beautifully maintained. The interior was all dark, glossy wood, the animal trophies advertised for local wildlife and the ambiance was upscale in its own unaffected way. Even though there were a dozen empty tables in the place, the four of them sat up at the bar and the bartender immediately stretched out a hand to Walt.
“Hey! I’ve been wondering when you’d be back. This your crew?”
“My boys,” Walt said. He indicated each one. “Dylan, Lang, Stu. We just got in about an hour ago, maybe less. Say hello, then tell me what’s doing in the kitchen.”
“I’m Jack,” he said with a chuckle, introducing himself to each one. “And to the man with the appetite, you won’t be disappointed. It might sound like just another day in Virgin River, but you’ll be happy in the end. It’s rainy—so it’s soup. But you gotta trust Preacher—it’s thick and creamy bean with ham soup, full of the best ham and onion and secret stuff. He likes to sprinkle a little cheddar on top—makes it stringy and rich. And he made the bread today—he’s keeping it warm. He bakes when it rains, as predictable as my grandmother. And the pie of the day is apple from preserves he’s had hanging around. For you tenderfoots who don’t eat apple pie, there’s a chocolate cake that will knock you out. Now, anyone want a beer or drink?”
“Bean soup?” Stu said under his breath.
“Didn’t you hear the man? You gotta trust Preacher,” Dylan said. Then he laughed. “My grandmother practically raised me on bean soup. Not the kind we’re getting here, she could barely open a can. All she could do was scramble eggs, make toast, warm up soup and…” He laughed and shook his head. “She used to fry hot dogs, but she always bought all-beef so I’d have protein.”
“You had a very strange childhood.”
“You have no idea,” he said.
When Dylan said his grandmother practically raised him on that soup, he wasn’t talking about his early childhood, but much later, when she brought him to Montana to take over parenting him. She must have had nerves of steel to do that; he was a screwed up, spoiled, arrogant, defiant fifteen-year-old boy. Not just a challenging teenager, but a
star.
How she pulled him through to normalcy was one of the great mysteries of the universe.
Sometimes he felt like a Charles Dickens novel—
the best of times, the worst of times....
Being yanked out of his acting role and badass public life and carted off to some one-horse town in Montana, he thought he’d reached hell. On the other hand, someone finally cared about
him.
Focused on
him.
Worried about
him.
The first time Adele had given him bean soup, he spat it out, outraged. He’d been used to the very best; people had scrambled to keep him happy because if he was happy, they made money.