Redwood Bend (32 page)

“The one thing you insisted he learn,” Randy went on, completely uninhibited by the sharpness of her tone, “that he make his own way, learn to think for himself, not follow the crowd and definitely not expect happiness to come from taking the easy way or handouts from his rich parents or grandparents, whether it comes in the form of money or influence. Well, he learned it. And now you better live with it.”

Adele looked pointedly at Muriel, frowning. “We’ve taken some rather long road trips. Apparently I’ve been flapping my jaw to a person with a dangerous memory.”

Muriel just laughed. “Take it easy, Adele. You’re among friends.”

“Then I hope you won’t mind if we stay among friends for a while. Just a few days. Long enough for me to try to crack that nut I half raised.”

“You stay as long as you like. Weeks if you need to. It’s not fancy, but it’s very comfortable.”

“Groaning like that was rude,” Katie chastised.

“Shhh,” he whispered, kissing her. “Talk later…”

Adele hadn’t overstayed her welcome that first visit. She had Randy take her to her friend’s home where she’d be staying, Dylan made a spaghetti dinner with garlic bread, the boys showered, watched some TV in the loft, then were tucked in. Then Dylan tucked Katie in.

“Don’t go to sleep until we talk,” she insisted.

“I’ll be awake awhile,” he murmured, kissing his way down her neck. “Katie, have you noticed what happened to your boobs?” He held them in the palms of his hands. “They’re
magnificent!
”

“They’re temporary,” she said. “And sore.”

“Does this hurt?” he asked, gently kissing them.

“No. Thank you for being sweet to them. They’re…” She felt her panties sliding downward and Dylan’s fingers where there had been silk. “Oh, God…” And then his hands were again on her breasts, tender and soft, and something else was where the silk had been. “Dylan…” she whispered.

“Yeah, baby?” he asked, probing. “You want something?”

“You. I want you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Hmm. Sure. Any day now…”

He laughed and then covered her mouth with his just as he slid into her. He held her still, filling her. He moved a little, carefully, slowly.

“Don’t tease me,” she whispered.

“Easy,” he said. “Let’s go easy. I don’t want to disturb anything…”

“You’re going to disturb
me,
” she said. “Come on…”

He seemed to consider this for a moment. Then he grabbed her behind the knees, bent her legs to take him deeper, licked a taut nipple before latching on to it for a solid fit, and he pumped his hips. She threaded her fingers into his hair to hold him against her breast, dug her heels into the mattress to push against him, moving with him. She began to moan and cry out his name and his hand came up to gently cover her mouth. The boys were sound asleep and the door was locked, but still… He slipped the other hand down between their bodies and had barely made contact with that erogenous button when she blew apart, shattered, pushing against him for a moment as everything inside her clenched around him in hot spasms.

And he went with her, coming so hard and long he thought he might’ve lost consciousness for a second or two. When it let up, he let her nipple slide out of his mouth and he rested his head there on her swollen, tender breast, panting.

She laughed softly and began to run her fingers through his hair. “That’s more like it,” she whispered.

He lifted his head. “You’re a very demanding woman.”

“I’m so sorry,” she apologized with a big smile and very sleepy eyes. She was limp as a dishrag. Happy. And not sorry in the least.

He brushed the hair away from her face. “It’s a good thing I didn’t know about this unprotected sex business before now,” he said. “We’ll have to try something that has no latex in the equation after the baby.”

She didn’t open her eyes, but she smiled. “That sounds suspiciously like plans, Dylan. Could you possibly be a little excited?”

“Oh, sure, a little. And a lot terrified.”

“That’s understandable.” She opened her eyes. “You have to tell Adele.”

“I will when I’m ready. I love Adele, but she can’t just show up uninvited and throw her weight around.”

“But you love her,” Katie said. “And she might look like a million bucks, but she’s not that young.”

“She’ll be dancing on my grave,” Dylan said.

“She’s going to have a great-grandchild. My guess is she didn’t think she ever would. Tell her.”

“I’ll tell her when I’m ready,” he said.

Seventeen

D
ylan wanted to languish in bed with Katie, but he was up, putting on the coffee she wasn’t drinking these days. His first overnight in her house, she had been the first one up, dressed, making coffee, greeting the day. But that probably had been the night he put the curse of sleepiness and morning sickness on her.

The cabin was very quiet and he didn’t put on his boots. He wanted Katie to sleep as long as possible. When the coffee was brewed, he took a cup outside to the porch. He moved quietly in his stocking feet; there was a little movement in the trees at the edge of the clearing and he spied a fawn, nibbling at the grass under a tree. This was so like home....

He remembered how shell-shocked he’d been when Adele had yanked him out of his mother’s eight-thousand-square-foot house and toted him off to parts unknown. Adele had had a maid help pack two suitcases… Dylan had never traveled with so little. Adele had said to Cherise, “The boy’s in trouble. My son is deceased, you’re filming in Sri Lanka for the next six months, there’s no one but staff to look after him and his best friend is dead…do yourself a favor—don’t argue with me. Give me a chance. I failed his father, maybe I won’t fail him…”

Cherise had replied, “I should call my lawyer…”

And Adele had said, “Have your lawyer call my lawyer. You know I only want Dylan. Whatever
you
want is undoubtedly easier.”

He remembered like it was yesterday.

Dylan was pulled out of his concrete world where everything was about him and taken to what seemed, at first glance, a jungle. An amazing, beautiful, astonishing wilderness, but still… Nothing in those suitcases worked for him so some grizzled old ranch hand who worked on the property drove him in an old pickup truck to the next big town to buy Wranglers, what he called a proper belt, some boots and most important, underwear that wouldn’t embarrass him in the high school boy’s locker room.

Dylan chuckled silently. In Los Angeles he had to have designer boxers, silk. In Payne he couldn’t drop his drawers unless he wore tightie whities. Really cheap tightie whities.

Ham washed his new clothes a dozen times so they wouldn’t look new. “One pair o’ new ain’t a bad thing,” he had said. “
All
new’ll prolly get you beat up. Get out in the barn with those boots—work ’em over. And while you’re scuffing ’em up, muck them stalls.”

“Great,” Dylan remembered saying. And he had caressed his face. Get beat up? His primary job was to keep himself ready for the camera. If he was always ready to perform, he could have any other thing he wanted. In. The. World.

He’d been an actor since the age of six, starting with commercials, so he
acted
like a Montana kid in worn jeans, scuffed boots and really bad underwear. And while he was acting, he blended. While he blended, he started to like where he was—but he kept that to himself for as long as possible.

He had noticed things, however. It had been early spring when Adele snatched him and before he’d been in Montana long his shoulders had grown bulky from pitching hay and mucking stalls in the barn; his face had tanned and his hair was streaked from the sun, his Wranglers were worn in the knees and butt and he’d seen the shy appearance of new babies around his property—fawns, lambs, one foal, a couple of calves, cubs.

And old concrete jungle superstar Dylan Childress began to fall in love with the country, with nature.

The fawn at the edge of the clearing came into full view; the doe behind him was still half-hidden in the trees. And Dylan heard rustling in the kitchen. He put his coffee on the porch floor beside his chair and, moving slowly and quietly, peeked in the cabin. Andy was rooting around in the refrigerator.

“Psst,” Dylan whispered. When Andy looked at him he put a finger to his lips, warning him to be quiet. Then he crooked a finger for Andy to come to him. He very quietly led Andy to the porch. He sat down and brought Andy to stand between his legs and pointed toward the deer. “Look,” he whispered.

Andy let out a little excited gasp.

“Mother and child,” Dylan whispered. “The kid’s getting pretty big. You should see ’em when they’re brand-new, when they can hardly stand up.”

“He looks little to me…”

Dylan chuckled softly. “He’s doubled in size since he was born, probably last spring. He’ll be on his own before long, but they’ll have to move down the mountain where it’s warmer before the snow comes. I used to love the spring at home—not just because the weather got nicer but because… Look,” he said as more deer became visible. “There are more.”

“Home?” Andy asked.

“I live in Montana,” Dylan said. “It’s kind of like here—mountains, woods, wildlife. I have a couple of horses, some chickens, some cows and goats, a mean old bull. You’d like it.”

“I never been on a horse,” Andy said.

“You’re kidding me!”

Andy shook his head. “Or on a cow,” he added.

“Well, we don’t ride cows, we just milk ’em. I only have a couple milk cows and I don’t even know exactly why. Because they’re breeders, I guess.” Andy gave Dylan a totally perplexed look and Dylan laughed. “They have calves. I sell the calves.”

“Why?” Andy asked.

He delayed his answer. “We don’t want to talk about that… The chickens lay eggs—that’s fun. I eat a few, sell the rest. They’re trouble, though. Wildlife want to eat the chickens and keeping them safe can be a pain. So, I have a couple of barn dogs.”

“I never had a dog,” Andy said.

“Kid, I think you’ve been deprived,” he said with a laugh.

“You going home, Dylan?”

“You ready for me to go home?” he asked, giving the twin a little squeeze.

Andy shook his head. “Wish’t I could ride a horse,” he said.

“You ever been on a plane?” Dylan asked.

Andy nodded vigorously. “Two times. Moving away, moving back. It was big. And we had to be still and quiet.”

“Never been on a little plane, huh?”

“Nope. At Disney I was on a elephant…”

“Was it pink? Because if you were on a pink elephant, maybe you should keep that to yourself.”

“You ain’t going home, are you, Dylan?”

“I’m in no big hurry,” Dylan said. “I get a kick out of you and Mitch. And I bet you get a kick out of me.”

There were now five deer in the clearing. Dylan pulled Andy onto his lap. “I do have to think about getting home one of these days,” he said, half to Andy and half to himself.

He considered how awkward the situation he found himself in was. He was here because of Katie and he was not ready to leave her. But she was all that kept him here. There was no denying the beauty of the Virgin River area and the town appealed to him, but he wasn’t one for sitting around on a porch, someone else’s porch at that, whittling and counting deer. He had a home, one he’d been living in for twenty years, in a town he happened to love.

“There’s seven,” Andy whispered. “Look at ’em.”

“You ever live around so many wild animals before?” Dylan asked. Andy just shook his head. “When I was a kid and moved to Montana, I didn’t know anything about wild animals. I’d never been on a horse. But a friend of mine who worked on the property, he taught me to ride, took me off on a trail ride, showed me how to camp, how to shoot a shotgun, then a rifle, how to make it from the house to the barn in a blizzard, how to—”

“Huh?” Andy asked, twisting his head around.

Dylan chuckled softly. “Sometimes we had blizzards so fierce in Montana you wouldn’t want to set out for the barn to check on the animals without a rope tied to the house—you could get lost just hiking across the yard. My friend Ham showed me all kinds of survival things. You ever been in a blizzard, Andy?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“The answer is no, no blizzards,” Katie said from the door. She came onto the porch with her glass of juice. “Look at the deer!”

“That’s what we’re doing,” Dylan said. “We started with one youngster, obviously a scout for the group. Keep your voice down. Where’s Mitch? I don’t want him to miss this.”

Katie smiled at him. “Andy, go get your brother. Very quietly, don’t bang the door or the deer will run.” When Andy was inside Katie sat down on the porch steps and looked up at Dylan. “Are you talking about going home?” she asked him.

“I was telling Andy about Montana. Everything I have is back there. But, Katie, I’m not going to bail out on you. I gave you my word. I’m going to find a way to prove to you that you can trust me.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I have to run some errands and make some phone calls today. I can drop the boys at summer school for you. Will you promise not to go a round with the bear while I’m gone?”

“Promise,” she said.

Mitch came flying out the door, eyes wide, Andy on his heels. “Whoa!” he said. “How long have they been there?”

“A few minutes,” Dylan said. “Come here, let me tell you about my horses. I have two—did you know that? And a few cows.”

“And a bull and chickens,” Andy added.

“And goats and a couple of barn dogs,” Dylan said. “It’s a lot like this place, except I live in a valley and look out at the mountains instead of living in the mountains and looking down at the valley....” And by the time he was telling them about blizzards in Montana he had one twin on each knee.

And he knew
exactly
what he had to do.

Dylan hadn’t been to his grassy hill alone since leaving those texts that he’d be out of touch for a while. He turned on the phone somewhat reluctantly and saw what he expected—a ton of voice mails, emails and texts. Of course there were quite a few from Hollywood and while he was curious, he didn’t want to waste a lot of time going through them.

He called the one person who hadn’t left him a ton of messages.

“Yo,” Lang answered.

“Hey. You real busy?” Dylan asked.

Lang laughed. “You have reached Childress Aviation—busy is the one thing we’re not. What’s on your mind? Take your time.”

That made him wince, that the company was far from busy. But he pushed through the worry. “I haven’t told you anything about Katie Malone,” he said to his best friend. “You probably saw the kids in the car when we stopped to change her flat—twins. Five-year-old twin boys.”

Lang groaned. “You know, that’s one thing I’ve always been grateful for—that we had ours one at a time. They’re hard enough that way.”

“She had them and raised them almost entirely alone. Well, her brother has always supported her where he could—good male role model for a couple of little boys. Her husband was killed in the war before they were born. He was a highly decorated Green Beret, a hero, a Medal of Honor recipient.”

Lang just whistled.

“I said something about how hard that must have been to bury her husband while her twins were about to pop,” Dylan said. “And I asked her if she had any regrets about falling for this risk-taking soldier and you know what she said, man? She said she was grateful for every second.”