Her eyes opened lazily. “Oh. It’s you.”

“I brought you something,” Leslie said, holding out the bag.

“You can put it right there,” she said, pointing to the floor. “Right beside my purse and shoes.”

Leslie put down the gift bag and looked around uncomfortably. “I was hoping we could talk. Maybe privately.”

“Unfortunately I don’t have time for a private meeting today, Leslie. You can pull up a chair and state your business or forget about it. This is just about the only time I have for myself all week. This is it. Take it or leave it.”

“It’s personal,” Leslie tried.

“Then speak a bit softly if you like. I assume it has to do with Greg.”

Leslie tilted her head. This wasn’t like Allison. She was usually much more pleasant. Not warm, certainly, but at least polite. Leslie looked around for a chair; there were only little ones on rollers, the kind the manicurist used to be seated at the client’s feet. She shrugged and pulled one over to the pedi tub, sitting at Allison’s feet. Like one of her subjects.

“Well,” she began. “I’m tired of telling your husband I don’t want to be friends. We’ve been divorced for two years and—”

“Not my husband much longer,” Allison said coolly. “I filed for divorce a month ago.”

Leslie’s mouth fell open, and she stared at Allison in shock; Allison returned the stare with cold eyes. “But you’re having a baby!” Leslie said.

Allison rolled her eyes. Right at that moment a young Vietnamese woman pushed a low chair on wheels over to the pedi tub and pulled on her latex gloves. She gently lifted one of Allison’s feet out of the tub and began to remove the polish.

“Please,” Allison said, not in the least intimidated by their audience. “I don’t need Greg to have a baby. He’s pretty useless anyway. What does he do? He does nothing but schmooze and network and try to impress people. Sometimes I wonder if he even has an office—it seems all his work is done on the golf course or at lunch and dinner meetings. It didn’t take me too long to get bored with playing on the Greg Adams team.”

“But, Allison, you haven’t been married all that long!” Leslie said.

“Long enough, in my estimation. I have a very busy practice. I don’t have time for more than one baby.”

“But, Allison,” she said, lowering her voice. “I thought the two of you were madly in love.”

Allison just shrugged. “I thought we wanted the same things. When I first met him, he was all about forming a power couple. His ambition was tantalizing. He put a very good face on it. I admit, I got a little hooked.”

“When did the two of you meet?” Les asked. “I don’t think I ever heard that story....”

Allison sought the answer in the ceiling tiles. “Hmm. I think it was at an investment seminar. He was talking with a couple of my partners about tax shelters and limited partnerships, and I asked him if I could buy him a drink to learn more about it. He was more than willing. And willing and willing. I thought he had a lot of money. I thought we were headed in the same direction. He said you were holding him back.”

“Me?”

“Uh-huh. It took me a while to figure out—he wanted me to play second chair. He wasn’t really interested in playing Bill and Hillary. He wanted to play George and Laura.” She made a little face. “I could go along with that as long as we were perfectly clear—I’m George. Greg just isn’t smart enough to take the lead.”

“And his money?”

Allison laughed. “Leslie, he doesn’t have any money. He spends money, he doesn’t save or invest, not exactly a big earner, either. Big talker, though. Thank God I kept our finances separate and wrote us a pre-nup.”

Leslie started to wonder if she’d ever be able to close her mouth again. “I’m not really hearing this.”

“You can have him back,” Allison said.

“I don’t want him back! But don’t you love him?”

“I suppose I did. For a while. He does seem to know how to treat a woman. Most of the time.”

Leslie frowned. “Most of the time?”

“He’s chivalrous. Amusing. He does things like bring flowers. Loved the engagement ring—I think I’ll go ahead and have the stone reset.” Then she leaned closer and whispered. “He does have that little bedroom issue.”

“Bedroom issue?” Leslie asked.

Allison leaned back again and ran her hand over her big belly. “Not exactly reliable in the erection department. You know what I mean?”

Leslie tilted her head and affected a perplexed expression. “I have no idea what you mean. Of all Greg’s shortcomings, that certainly wasn’t one of them. At least with me. In any case, it seems to have worked well for you—” she nodded toward Allison’s belly “—at least once.” She stopped herself just short of claiming Greg was a stallion. Leslie stood up from her little chair. Now she could look down at Allison. “So—what tipped you over the edge?”

“I decided to run for City Council. He informed me, in that extremely polite and superior way of his, that he would run first, and then, if I was still interested, I could file the paperwork for my own campaign. I told him to go to hell. It pretty much deteriorated from there.”

“Oh, my. And are you? Running for City Council?”

She nodded. “The baby’s due next month. The primary is in the fall.”

“Well, then. Best of luck.” She nodded to the gift bag. “Do you know if it’s a boy or girl?”

“Girl. Thank heavens. I don’t imagine Greg will take much interest.”

“Best of luck, Allison. I hope it all goes well…the delivery and everything.”

“Sure. Right.”

Leslie just looked into those icy blue eyes for a second, and without really meaning to, she uttered, “Poor Greg.”

“Poor Greg?” Allison repeated. “He’s a loser! Poor Greg?”

“He’s a lot of things, true. You’re right—he’s pretty self-centered. He’s also kind. There’s not an ounce of malice in him. I can’t say that about you.”

“Hit the road, Leslie. You’ve wasted enough of my time.”

Leslie left feeling as though she’d just had an out-of-body experience. And yet—she suddenly felt she understood everything. First of all—Allison had gone after him. He’d been what she wanted at the time. And while Greg was always looking for someone to promote him, Allison was undoubtedly every bit as inclined. She’d wanted Greg because she’d thought he’d be good arm candy. And she was also cruel. Cold and very, very calculating.

And where did that leave Leslie and what she’d experienced in her marriage and in her divorce? Well, it was pretty simple and awfully sad.

“I think I was a pleaser,” she told her parents with a shrug. “As annoyed as I could get with Greg, I never wanted any trouble. I just wanted a happy home. I wanted to laugh and relax and have harmony. I didn’t care if Greg wanted to be the mayor, if that made him happy. That Allison,” she said with a shake of her head. “Boy, she’s cold. I wouldn’t want to tangle with her. But if you ever have to go to court—you should hire her. Not a lot of emotion there.”

“Seemed like she adored him and he adored her,” Candace said.

“Birds of a feather,” Robert said. “I almost feel sorry for Greg.”

“Well, I do feel sorry for him,” Leslie said. “He’s always had these grandiose ambitions and this truly inflated image of himself and yet…he’s so totally alone. He has no one to believe in him. Even when we were married, I did what he asked me to do—wrote letters for him, took messages, kept his calendar. But I did all that to keep the peace, make him happy and show support, not because I really believed he was going to be a big political hero. I didn’t believe in him, either.”

“But he has a shiny Caddy and a very nice wardrobe,” Candace said.

“The poor slob,” Robert said. “He’s so shallow. You must have been so lonely while you were married to him!”

And she smiled. “Nah. I had you, I had a really fun job with a bunch of great guys, sometimes girlfriends. I was actually pretty happy. And yet…” She thought for a second and remembered what Conner had said to his ex-wife. I’m happy now in a way I was never happy before and it has nothing to do with you.

“I’m going to skip sushi and just drive back to Virgin River,” she told her parents. “I want to spend some quality time on my flowers tomorrow so that when Conner comes back from visiting his sister, the yard looks perfect.”

Seventeen

It took Leslie almost four hours to drive back to Virgin River, and during that time she thought a lot about her years with Greg. He’d wanted so much more than she had since the day she met him. Then he’d traded her in for a prom queen, but boy did he get a tiger by the tail. Not only had Allison dumped him, Leslie had no doubt the word was out—he’d been cast aside. Chucked. Humiliated.

Greg would never be a mayor. He might not even be elected to City Council. But she wasn’t worried about him—he would land on his feet. He’d find another woman because he wasn’t good at being alone—he needed reinforcements, needed an audience. Now this whole business of wanting to be friends with her—it didn’t matter anymore. She could afford to be charitable. She wasn’t angry. In fact, she was grateful. If Greg and Allison hadn’t driven her out of Grants Pass, she might’ve never found Conner.

She asked herself if she should have doubts about whether Conner would turn out to be a bad choice, but she just couldn’t summon any. In fact, while she wasn’t a religious person, she found herself uttering a little prayer. Please, please keep him safe!

And her cell phone rang.

“Are you out to dinner with the fun couple?” he asked.

“I was just thinking about you! No, I’m driving home. I did what I went to Grants Pass to do, felt much better about everything and decided to go home. Tomorrow is my day off and I want to spend it in the yard. If there’s time, I might drive my neighbor, Nora, into Fortuna just for fun.”

“And what did you go to Grants Pass to do?” he asked.

“Well, it was a very interesting day, now that you ask.” And she told him all about her visit with Allison and the conclusions she had come to. At the end of her story she said, “I feel a kind of peace about my divorce that I just didn’t feel before.”

“I understand,” he said. “I totally understand.”

“If I could just have your trial over and you back here, there wouldn’t be a tight nerve in my whole body.”

He laughed deep in his throat. “I really enjoy the job of loosening up those tight nerves of yours.”

“You’re very good at it, too. What’s on the agenda for you tonight?”

“We’re taking the boys to a pizza joint that will be crazy with loud kids and games and life-size singing puppets. We’re having a party because I’m headed for Sacramento in the morning. If there’s a God, it won’t take too long and I can do what I have to do and come home.”

“Aw. You think of this place as home....”

“I think of you as home, baby. You.”

His words wrapped around her like his arms had, and she knew she was more in love than she’d ever been. Her feelings had been quite real when she’d met and married Greg, even though she’d been so young, but with Conner, love had taken on a new dimension. It was grown-up love, steady and deep. Leslie didn’t have to worry about holding on to Conner by meeting his expectations. This love she felt for him, that she felt from him, was bigger than the biggest love she had ever imagined.

She embraced his pillow while she was falling asleep, inhaling his special scent, that woodsy musk with just a dash of his sandalwood cologne. They had talked for almost an hour as she drove, talked until his nephews were pulling at him and telling him to come on, come on, come on.... He had talked about how he not only wanted a life with her but a different kind of life than the one he had before, that life that had been drenched in hard labor and only punctuated by short breaks of leisure time with his family. Until this visit he had never spent more than a day with them. He’d rarely taken a weekend or evening off away from the store—they had been open almost 24/7. After the trial was over, he was in search of more balance. And that balance included her in a major role.

When he gave in to his nephews’ urging to hurry up, he said, “All right, all right. I love you, baby. I’ll call later.” And in the background Leslie heard a small boy’s voice say, “What baby do you love, Uncle Danny?” followed by Conner’s deep, sexy laugh.

She was dreaming about him when somewhere deep in the night she was awakened by a noise. At first she thought it was a cat, then she realized it was crying. A baby was crying and crying. There was the sound of a door slamming, more crying from at least one baby or small child, then a shout. And another shout.

She sat straight up in bed. Another slam, but she wasn’t sure where it was coming from. And then there was a pounding at her front door and she hoisted herself out of bed and she ran. Without thinking, she threw the door open. There stood Mrs. Clemens, looking tinier than ever, wrapped in a very old, faded blue chenille robe, her white hair all springy and misshapen from sleep.

“He’s back,” she said with a small cry. “That man is back and I think he’s hurting her!”