“You know what, kid? You walked out on a bad situation. That sounds both intelligent and stable. Now you just need a little time to get on your feet.”

“You know what they say about getting out of the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat…” she said, shaking her head dismally. “I’ve become the cliché. What are you doing here anyway? In Virgin River?”

“Me?” he asked. “Just looking for a quieter place. And I like to fish and hunt. Made to order.”

Suddenly Jack was in front of them. “How are you two doing?”

“You know what? I think we’re doing great!” Kelly said. “This was just what I needed—a stiff drink and a little conversation. Amazing how much it helps.”

“You good, then?” Jack asked.

“I’ll have one more in a couple of minutes. And bring my friend Lief a beer on me. He’s a good listener.”

“Sure thing,” Jack said. “Dinner?”

“Not for me, but I’ll have some more nuts, thanks.” When Jack had turned away, she faced Lief again. “Quieter than?”

“Los Angeles. My wife died a couple of years ago and my daughter is still having a hard time of it. She really needed a fresh start and a slower pace. Well, so did I.”

Kelly looked stricken. “Oh, man, I’m so sorry. That really puts things into perspective for me. Here I am whining about my nonboyfriend and a mean chef…”

He laughed at her. “You weren’t whining—sounds like a movie set. Lots of temper tantrums, scandal and dysfunction on the set.”

“You’re an actor?”

“Nope. I built sets for years and now I do some writing,” he said. “I don’t have to spend much time on-set, but when I do it’s usually pretty nuts and I always think about how glad I am that I don’t do it all the time.”

Their new drinks arrived. “How’d you manage working in that environment, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Cotton in the ears is very useful. I just wouldn’t participate in the insanity. And hardly anyone forced the issue.”

“How do you not need a full-time job?”

“Oh, I have a full-time job,” he corrected. “I write screenplays. The producers and directors order them rewritten and hire their own writers. Those writers have to endure the set—I’m usually just a consultant. I work alone, at home.”

“I thought all scripts were written by teams of writers,” she said.

“Not all scripts. Original screenplays are often written by a single writer.”

“Wow. I wish I could figure out a way to be a ‘consulting chef’ rather than some lunatic’s whipping post. Tell me what it’s like to work alone. At home.”

He took a breath. “The best word I can come up with is comfortable. I’m kind of introverted. But I can entertain myself very easily. All the things I like can be done alone. I fish—fly-fishing. I like to build—there’s nothing to build right now but I’m chopping wood for the winter. I’ve been writing since junior high, but it took me many years to sell a script. I’ve never been good at those activities where everyone looks at you. I’d rather stay home. The best part of my life is fishing and being home.” Then he grinned. “Of course my daughter hates fish, but she’s fourteen—she hates air right now.”

“Yikes. How is that working?” Kelly said.

“She’s rebellious, snotty, antisocial, experimental and so irreverent.” He laughed uncomfortably. “Underneath all that she’s a teenage girl who misses her mom and is stuck with me. She’s a beautiful girl with a high IQ and a confidence problem. I’m trying, but we’re not getting better. Next week we’ll meet with a counselor who specializes in troubled teenagers. I hope to God it works!”

“But you’re drying!” she said.

Drying? Lief frowned. He looked at her glass—second drink, half gone. It was a strong drink, but still. She shouldn’t be slurring. He wondered if it was his imagination.

“Are you slurring?” Couldn’t hurt to be sure.

“’Course not,” she said. But her eyelids started to drift lower. Then they snapped back open.

“How are you planning to get to your sister’s place?” he asked.

“I frove. Drove. I have everything I own in the car ’cept my couch and recliner.”

“Kelly,” he said, leaning closer to her, speaking softly. “You know that stress you were talking about? You wouldn’t be taking medication for that, would you?”

“Hm. Just a little something for the prood blessure and xiety. I’m not taking those sleeping pills, no way. If I fall asleep, I dream about the whole thing!”

“I guess that’s good news,” he said, gently moving her second extra-dry martini out of her reach.

“Hey!”

“I bet it said something on those pill bottles about alcohol not being a good idea while taking that medication,” he said. “You’re a little loopy.”

She straightened indignantly. “I leg your bardon.”

He smiled before he laughed outright. “Drunk,” he clarified.

“I certainly am snot.”

He laughed again. Then he lifted his hand to beckon Jack. And as he did that, Kelly put her head down on the bar. Gonzo.

When Jack came back, he wore a perplexed look.

“It turns out Kelly’s been taking medication and probably shouldn’t have had a couple of power drinks,” Lief said. “She’s going to need a ride to her sister’s.”

Jack looked around. “Crap! The place is full!”

“I’ll be glad to give her a lift, Jack. I should get home anyway to see if Courtney has burned the place to the ground yet. You might want to call her sister and let her know she’s…ah…coming for a visit.” He laughed again. “And that she’s wasted.”

“What’s she taking?”

Lief shrugged. “Something for ‘prood blessure’ and ‘xiety.’” Then he grinned. “I guess the girl’s not used to taking much prescription stuff—never crossed her mind. Just tell her sister.”

“What about her car?” Jack asked.

Lief shrugged. “Better parked here than on the road with her behind the wheel.”

“Right,” Jack said. Then Jack tapped her on the head. “Kelly?” he asked. “Kelly?”

“Hmm?”

“Um, Lief is going to drive you home. Okay?”

She lifted her head briefly. “Lief who?” Then she put her head down again.

“All right,” Jack said. “Here’s how to get there.” He grabbed a notepad near the register and scribbled out directions. “I’ll call Jillian and tell her you’re coming.”

Lief retrieved Kelly’s jacket. He sat her up, and she roused briefly as he helped her put her arms in. “I’m going to give you a lift to Jillian’s house, Kelly,” he said. “I think you just got too…tired.”

“Hmm. Thanks,” she replied.

He grabbed her purse and put the strap over his arm, making her giggle. Meeting Jack’s eyes, he said, “Put it on my tab. I’ll see you soon.”

“Drive carefully.”

With a strong arm around her waist, he stood her up and walked her out of the bar, but outside on the porch, her legs became noodles and he lifted her into his arms to take her down the steps.

“Wow, I don’t think anyone’s ever carried me,” she slurred. “Except maybe a paramedic—maybe he did.” She patted his chest. “You’re fun. I’m glad we met. What’s your name again?”

“Lief,” he said. “Lief Holbrook.”

“Very nice,” she said, laying her head on his chest.

He stood her up long enough to open the door to his truck. “I wish you’d try to help me get you into this truck, Kelly. It’s high. If you pull, I’ll push.”

“Shertainly,” she said, grabbing the inside.

Lief positioned her right foot on the running board, pushed her butt upward and landed her in the seat. She made a loud ooommmph when she was inside. “Good,” he said. “I shouldn’t have any trouble getting you out.”

Her head lolled against the seat all the way to Jillian’s, and she blubbered in a drunken, semiconscious state—she loved Luca. They took her away in an ambulance, yet not one person came to check on her! She was too embarrassed by how foolish she’d been to call her sister and confess everything that had happened to her.

Oh, man, he thought. A woman with almost as much baggage as me.

Courtney thought that sometimes Lief just didn’t get it.

She had all her beauty gear, for lack of a better word, spread out in her bathroom—mousse for the hair, eye-liner, lipstick. She was giving her short fingernails a once-over with the black polish.

Lief. She used to call him Dad. In fact, when he had married her mother and she was only eight, she had asked him if that would be all right—could she call him Dad? He’d said he would love that.

Of course that meant she had two of them, but since they were never in the same room at the same time, it wasn’t a great challenge. And she saw even less of her real dad after Lief and her mom married. She thought her real dad, Stu Lord, was relieved, and she knew the stepwitch was. Stu had been the first to remarry after her parents divorced; she’d been two. She had her visits with him and her stepmom, Sherry, whom she never offered to call Mom. Her dad and stepmom had a couple of kids together, boys. Aaron was born when Courtney was four, Conner when she was seven. Her visits with them became fewer and fewer.

Courtney didn’t mind that, her diminishing relationship with Stu. Stu and Sherry fought frequently, something that didn’t happen with her mom and Lief. And the little boys were wild brats who screamed, threw things, pulled her hair and messed with her stuff. She was happy with her mom and Lief. Her mom and dad.

Then, right at the end of the school year of her sixth grade, her mom died. Just died! Something they didn’t know she had exploded in her head when she was at work, and she went down, dead, never to come back. It hurt so bad, Courtney wanted to die with her.

Then there was a blur of shifting movements that she could barely remember, except that it always involved her suitcase, which seemed to stay packed. She went to live with Stu, where she didn’t even have her own bedroom. She stayed in the guest room unless Sherry’s mother visited and then she was shuttled to the toy room or family-room sofa. She visited Lief on at least a couple of weekends a month. Then, after six months of that, she went back to living with Lief and visiting Stu. Then after she cut and dyed her hair several colors, painted her fingernails black and wore black lipstick, Stu told Lief he could have her full-time, that she didn’t have to visit anymore. He actually said it way worse than that, and she’d been relieved. She’d heard her stepmother call her “that weird little monster.”

But Lief got furious that her father not only didn’t want her full-time but didn’t even want visits, so she got it—no one wanted her. Oh, Lief said he did, but he didn’t. If he did, he would have been happy with her father for giving her back, but he was not happy. There was a huge fight; her two dads were yelling and got real close to hitting and she wished they’d just beat each other to death.

She didn’t hear from her father again after that blowout. That had been months ago. The whole back-and-forth thing ending with Lief had started in seventh grade. And that was when she started calling him Lief.

She blew on her nails and checked them. They were dry. She applied the lipstick and gloss.

She had stopped growing then. She used to be a chubby little girl, and now she was a skinny short girl with a couple of bumps on her chest that were supposed to pass as boobs. Her Goth, biker-chick look meant no one would expect her to be all giggly.

She started looking up suicide clubs on the internet until Lief had caught her and taken her to a counselor who told her she was angry. Duh. She had to sit with that lame counselor every week, and on top of that, they did some stupid grief counseling with all grown-ups. She almost got back to liking Lief after he said he thought the counselor was lame, too, and that a grief group for adults was no place for her and refused to take her. She liked him for that.

They might still be in L.A. where she was born and had lived right up to ninth grade, if she hadn’t gotten in some trouble, and she might not have gotten in trouble if her friends hadn’t all disappeared on her. First it was because they couldn’t stand her feeling sorry for herself, then she wasn’t like them anymore with her black clothes and weird hair. So she found herself a few new friends who did things like get into their parents’ medicine chests, score a little pot sometimes, lift money from their moms’ purses and dads’ wallets—for the pot, of course—and, about the only thing she found any fun at all, snuck out after the folks were asleep. They didn’t really do anything; they hung out where they wouldn’t get hassled, smoked some cigarettes sometimes. Bitched about the rules. Courtney wasn’t into the pills and pot; she just experimented a little. She felt weird and bad enough; she didn’t like not knowing how she was going to feel. She pretended, mostly. She had to. She couldn’t stand the thought of being all alone again. If the good kids dumped her and the bad kids dumped her, who was left?

So Lief said, “This isn’t working, this city. You find too much trouble and I’m sick of the noise and traffic. We’re getting out of here. I’m going to find us something sane. I’d like if we could get back to at least being friends, like we used to be. And you could use a chance to start over. Maybe on the right side of the law?”