She went for her digital camera and snapped a few sneaky shots. Then she loaded the pictures onto her laptop and dialed up the Internet, which took forever, but there was nothing faster out here. After she had sent the pictures to Joey, she called her.

“Go online,” she told her sister. “I’ve sent you something amazing.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“Just hurry,” Mel said. “You’re going to love it.”

There was only a short wait as Joey could get online and download in seconds as opposed to the length of time it took Mel. She heard her sister gasp. “Deer!” she said.

“In my front yard,” Mel said. “Look at the babies. Aren’t they adorable?”

“Are they still there?”

“I’m looking out my kitchen window at them right now,” she said. “I’m not leaving the house until they’re done with breakfast. Isn’t that the most wonderful thing you’ve ever seen? Joey, I’m staying a little longer.”

“Oh, Mel—No! I want you to come here! Why are you staying?”

“Joey, I’m delivering another baby pretty soon. After that last one, I can’t resist. It just isn’t like in the hospital where everything’s so sterile and artificial and there’s a surgeon and anesthesiologist right down the hall. It’s just me and her, getting the job done. So pristine and wonderful and natural. So country—like Doc taking Mom’s twenty-year-old husband across the street to the bar for a shot of courage so he can be a less nervous assistant.”

“Oh, lovely,” Joey said sarcastically, causing Mel to laugh.

“It was fantastic,” Mel said. “There’s another pregnant woman in town and I’m thinking of staying for her, too. The cabin is just great—you saw the pictures.”

“I saw. Mel, are you dressed for the day?”

“Yeah…?”

“Look at your feet. Tell me what’s on your feet.”

She sighed. “My Cole Haan boots. I love these boots.”

“They cost over four hundred dollars!”

“And they’re starting to look like crap, too,” she said. “If you only knew where I’ve been…”

“Mel, you’re not one of them. Don’t get them depending on you. Come to Colorado. We can accommodate your shoe fetish and you can find a good job here—close to us.”

“I sleep so well here,” she said. “I was afraid I’d never sleep well again—it’s probably the air. It’s so unbelievable, it almost wears you out—by the end of the day the bed feels so good. The pace is slower. I’ve needed a slower pace.”

“Are you that busy? With patients?” Joey asked.

“Not that much. They’re very sparse, actually. We only make well-visit appointments on Wednesdays and the rest of the week they either wander in with one complaint or another, or Doc goes to them. I go along most of the time. Or people wander in to talk, or drop off a pie, or some fresh baked dinner rolls. But the women—the pregnant ones—are so relieved after one look at my hands, compared to Doc’s.”

“What do you do with yourself?”

“Well,” she said, laughing, “every day I walk down to the corner store to watch a soap with Connie and Joy, two middle-aged best friends who have been watching televised adultery on Riverside Falls for about fifteen years. The side comments are more interesting than the show.”

“Gawd,” she said.

“I go out to the Anderson ranch and hold the baby—Chloe. She’s thriving there, and so is Lilly. More and more I know that was the right thing to do, and it just fell in my lap. Sometimes I take some of our leftover food out to this bunch of bums in the forest—they look so thin and hungry, but Doc says they’ll probably bury us all. I stop by the bar to see if anyone’s playing cribbage. If I can reel him in, Doc and I play gin—but it’s hard to catch him in the mood. He taught me to play and now he can’t beat me. Penny a point—I’m funding my retirement.”

“So—when do you think you’re going to get over this break from sanity?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just let me think about it. I’ve only been here a couple of months—it’s not an eternity.”

“But I hate to think of you rotting away in some dinky town, watching the soaps and growing bad roots.”

“I could visit Dot in that garage where she does hair…”

“Ugh. Aren’t you lonely, honey?”

“Not so much. At the end of the day, if nothing’s going on, we go to the bar—Doc has his one whiskey of the day and I get a cold beer. There are always people around. We eat dinner—someone usually says, come over and sit with us. There’s great gossip, that’s the cool part about small towns where everyone knows everyone’s business. Except, apparently, who gave birth to little Chloe. I just count it lucky that no woman who suffered post-partum hemorrhage or infection turned up. And also—no word from social services.”

“I miss you so much. This is about the longest we’ve been apart in years…Why do you sound happy?”

“Do I? Maybe because everyone around me is happy. They let me know they’re glad I’m here, even if my presence isn’t medically saving this town.” She took a breath. “I still feel out of place a lot, but I think I’m more content than I’ve been in eleven months and three days. I might finally be detoxing from the adrenaline.”

“Promise me you’re not going to stay in that godforsaken place, alone, watching soaps and drinking beer.”

Mel’s voice became soft. “It’s not godforsaken, Joey. It’s…” She struggled for a word. “It’s breathtaking. Oh, the architecture leaves something to be desired—most of the houses and buildings are small and old and could use paint. But the countryside is wondrous. And I’m not lonely—I have a town. I’ve never had a town before.”

Ricky and Liz were going to the spring dance at the high school. Except they didn’t. It gave Rick a twinge of guilt because he knew in his heart that Connie and Ron trusted him. And probably they shouldn’t.

The thing about living in a small town in the midst of dozens of small towns separated by forests was there were a million secluded places to park and make out. He always had a condom in his pocket, one that he was determined not to have to use, but he had it just the same. He hadn’t even needed Jack to supply him—he was on top of that. He felt protective toward Liz; he didn’t want to get her into trouble. What they were doing was working, even if it was getting them pretty worked up. And they were doing plenty. It got off to a roaring start. Lots of deep kissing, heavy petting, incredible rubbing. They’d done a lot of bumping and grinding on the outside of clothes, but now they were getting right down to the skin, deeper than skin, but not going all the way. They were catching on real fast. It hadn’t taken them long to figure out how to have orgasms without penetration, for which Rick was sublimely grateful. Even so, he wanted more. Wanted it real bad, and so did she. He was about ready to have the big talk with her, but he knew he had to save it for the clear light of day, not the dark of night while they were pawing each other in the cab of his little truck. He loved making her feel good; she really wanted to please him. He hadn’t imagined it could be this wonderful—holding someone, loving them, touching them, giving these feelings, receiving them. Nothing had prepared him for how you could be swept away by it all; it was as though the sheer pleasure had a life of its own. He had moved over to the passenger seat and held her on his lap, kissing her, hard and hot while she squirmed around deliciously.

His hand wandered under her short skirt and met with…Nothing.

“Oh my Jesus,” he whispered.

“Surprise,” she said, grinding on his lap. Then her hand went there, feeling him through his clothes, making him nearly cry out.

She scooted forward on his lap a little. He slid back in the seat slightly, knowing that she would now take him in her small hand. He lived for that. As she opened his pants to free him, he massaged her with his fingers of one hand, fondling her breast with the other, drowning in her mouth, holding her tight against him. She was moving roughly against his hand, wriggling, reaching desperately for her special moment, when suddenly she shifted her weight slightly. She was straining toward him, he was straining toward her, her hands went to his shoulders, his hands grabbed her fanny, her knee went across his lap and she was over him. She moved down, he moved up and they were suddenly disastrously, wondrously, exquisitely merged. She came right down on him. He lifted right up into her; she was all around him. It was a whole new world, a lot better than a hand. He couldn’t breathe.

“Holy God, Liz,” he whispered. “Oh my Jesus.”

She was oblivious, pressing furiously into his lap, on a mission.

“Liz. Lizzie. No. Lizzie. Holy God. Holy Jesus.”

He was half trying, half hoping to fail to lift her off him, to get out of her, when it happened for her and the sensation of her body squeezing around him, clenching in hot spasms as she moaned her ecstacy, caused him to lose his mind. He thought he might have been momentarily unconscious. He lost all will. And that wasn’t all he lost. He blew it—erupted inside of her with the force of a volcano. Right after he thought Ahhhh, he thought Oh, Fuck. Way to go, genius.

She collapsed into his arms and he held her, stroking her back as she calmed. As he calmed. As they caught their collective breath. Finally he said, “That could have been a huge mistake.”

“Oh-oh,” she said. “Oh-oh. Now what?”

“Well, I sure as hell can’t reel it back in,” he told her. “If I’d known that was going to happen…Liz, I have a condom, for Christ’s sake.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Well, I didn’t know we were going to do that.”

“I didn’t know, either.” She sniffed. “I’m sorry.” She dropped her head to his shoulder and cried. “I’m sorry, Rick.”

“No. I’m sorry. Okay, baby, take it easy. Can’t do anything about it now. Shhhh.” He held her and she rested against him, close in his arms. He kissed her cheeks and lips until her tears stopped. Then he took her open mouth again. God, her mouth was hot. And after a little while, as he held her, he began to grow firm again, and he was still there, inside. Without meaning to, without planning to, he began to pump his hips up and down again, driving himself into her. And she pushed into his lap. What the hell—the damage was done, he thought. And he said, “Can’t do anything about it now…”

Chapter Eight

T here were no patients in the morning and Mel took the opportunity to drive over to Clear River for gas, there being no service station in Virgin River. She took the pager with her so that Doc could call her back if something happened, but hardly anything ever happened.

Every time she went to one of the little surrounding towns she looked in particular at the women, wondering where Jack might have gone once in a while for “something a little basic.” It didn’t take her long to realize that he probably had his pick, and that there were plenty of attractive women around these towns.

She thought she might like to get something like a salt lick or some kind of feed for the edge of her property to draw the deer, so went to the very small strip mall on the main drag. As she passed the hardware store, she saw a window display of shears mounted on pegboard. They ranged in size from tiny scissors to clippers with six-inch, thick, curved blades. She stared at them, frowning, for a long time.

“Help you?” a young woman in a green store apron asked.

“Hmm. What do you do with those?”