She smiled gently. “Are you afraid I’m going to ask you not to go?”

“Maybe a little bit,” he said, shaking his head. “Mostly, I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you.”

“Because you give me everything you’ve got night after night and pretty soon that’s going to end?”

“Something like that,” he said.

“But, Colin, I understand about the rush!”

He sat back a bit. He almost stuttered. “No offense, Jilly, but I have to think what I’m talking about is a little more dramatic than sticking a seed in the ground or picking a tomato.”

She laughed. “You know I’m not just a little gardener, Colin. I helped build a major software corporation. I worked eighty-hour weeks bringing that company to one of the biggest public offerings in that industry. I wasn’t diving off literal cliffs, but figurative cliffs, betting everything on the outcome of an IPO. The pressure was intense, the fiduciary risk was high, the potential for failure extreme and the potential for success over the moon. And I loved it! Loved it! It felt like Olympic Gold every time we succeeded.” She laughed. “Or every time we failed to fail. I gave every day, every weekend, every holiday to keeping that company strong and successful. You call Harry Benedict today and ask him which three executives he would credit with helping him make BSS a household name and a multi-multimillion dollar company and one of them would be me. I guarantee that. When that was taken away from me, I nearly crumbled. It was hard to live without the risk, the daily pressure.”

He looked completely perplexed for a moment. “But you were able to walk away and stick little seeds into the dirt and—”

She was shaking her head. “I was driven out, which is what happens to big kids who swim with sharks. And it nearly killed me. I was terminated even though my old boss, Harry, considers it a leave of absence. He told me to take a break, to think, to learn to relax. There might be an opportunity for me to go back to BSS—that’s kind of up in the air. But for now I’m gardening and thinking and feeling more like a real person every day. But, Colin, I don’t think I’ve lost my edge. I still feel that edge inside me every day—that rush.

“I’m not going to try to change you, Colin. I understand…. And I know what it feels like to be robbed of the life that felt perfect.” She shrugged. “You do it your way—going after the big adventure. I’ll do it my way. I don’t want you to feel like you’re missing something in your life. I’m not that kind of person.”

He looked a bit stunned. “Okay, that makes you the first woman in the history of the world who isn’t pissed because her man is off chasing some excitement.”

“You’re arrogant,” she said with a laugh. “You assume you’re the only person with needs, with dreams. I like what I’m doing and even though I haven’t been invited, I don’t want to go to Africa or Alaska or New Zealand. One compromise we should make, though.”

“What?” he asked.

“Before you leave, you should try to sell a painting or two, just to see what happens. Not to keep you from going, but to show you what you’ve got to look forward to. I don’t think you know. I don’t think any of us really knows what we’ve got or who we are until we risk it, put it to the test. You’re perfectly willing to risk your life, but shy away from risking your ego or your art. You’re a wimp, Colin.” And then she smiled.

He was speechless; he’d never known a woman like this in his life. He’d never encountered this kind of selfless support.

“So,” he finally said. “You think you’ll go back to BSS?”

“I honestly don’t know. Some days I think so. And some days I feel that part of my life is moving farther and father away. My life is mostly calm and quiet right now, but I’m happy.”

He looked a little confused. “But what are you doing for that edge?”

She grinned at him. She ran her fingernails down through his beard. “You,” she said softly, leaning toward him. “I’m doing you.”

That took him a moment. Then he suddenly wrestled her to the ground and went after her mouth like a dying man. When he broke from kissing her, he was out of breath, hard as a baseball bat and his eyes were glowing like embers. And he said, “I think I have to have you, right here, right now.”

She ran her fingers through his longish, curly hair. “Now this is going to be difficult to give up….”

Nine

Come date night, Luke had a difficult time focusing on his wife because his thoughts were consumed with his brother Colin. When Colin appeared for his babysitting duties earlier that evening, he was not alone. He brought a woman, and not just any woman, but Jillian Matlock! Luke couldn’t stop speculating on that odd match all through what was supposed to be a special dinner in Arcata with Shelby.

“I don’t know why you should be so shocked,” Shelby said. “They make a handsome couple. And Jillian’s very nice.”

“He’s a wreck. He’s all screwed up. Plus he looks a mess,” Luke argued. “I guess he used to be okay-looking, if you like the big, dumb type, but look at him now!”

Shelby shook her head. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you—Colin is a very handsome man! That scarring he got in the accident doesn’t detract from his good looks at all. And he is far from dumb! Luke,” she said gravely, “sometimes you just wear me out!”

“It’s not just the burn scars, which I admit aren’t that noticeable, but what about that long hair and beard? You just don’t understand, Shelby—he’s just a grunt like me, and Jillian is like some big corporate vice president! I figured she came up here and started poking around in the dirt because she doesn’t have to work. She’s rich, made all her money in the software industry. Even if I didn’t know that about her, I’d know she was smart. Not just a little smart, but very smart! Smarter than any Riordan I’ve ever met.”

“How ridiculous—all the Riordans are smart and handsome. Aiden’s a doctor for heaven’s sake.”

“Well, that’s Aiden,” Luke said, cutting off a piece of his steak. “He’s always been a nerd.”

Shelby just shook her head. The Riordan men were all drop-dead gorgeous and pretty damn smart, Luke’s current idiocy notwithstanding.

“But that’s not the half of it, Shelby—I’m telling you, Colin doesn’t lean toward smart, beautiful, classy chicks like Jillian. He goes more for the pole-dancer type.” He chewed thoughtfully on his steak. He swallowed. “Course, so did I. I should never have been lucky enough to find you. You’re way outta my league.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Are you trying to make up?”

“Oh, baby, I’m not saying that to flatter you—it’s just the God’s truth!” He shook his head. “To think Colin got all his rough edges filed down nice and smooth by Jillian. I thought it had to be illegal drugs.” He chewed another bite of meat. “I can’t wait to call Aiden!”

“Why don’t you just, for once, mind your own business?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I’m a Riordan,” he said simply.

Much later that night, after pie and coffee with Colin and Jillian, far too late to be placing phone calls, Luke dialed up Aiden.

“What?” Aiden answered gruffly.

“I didn’t wake Erin, did I?” Luke asked. “I’m sorry if I did, but this just couldn’t wait.”

“Are you drunk dialing, man?”

“Colin’s got himself a woman. He was so relaxed and pleasant, I was sure it was drugs, but it’s a woman.”

“Big surprise,” Aiden said. “Colin always seems to have a woman somewhere. What else is new? And what does this have to do with me at…” He paused as if to look at the clock. “Jesus, it’s eleven-thirty! The only people allowed to call me at eleven-thirty are in labor!”

“This one would just knock you out,” Luke said. “She’s not only really smart, I think she’s probably rich and she’s beautiful! I only see her in her dirty gardening clothes most of the time and she even makes those look like high fashion, she’s so pretty. And she’s real, real clean-cut. She has freckles!”

“Good for him,” Aiden said tiredly.

“But you know Colin,” Luke insisted. “He tends to go for girls who are—Shelby, honey? Put your hands over your ears for just a sec.” Back into the phone he said, “He likes the real slutty ones. Ow!” he yelled when he received a wop on the back of the head. He dropped the phone and when he got back on the line all he heard was a dial tone.

Aiden had hung up on him.

As the cloudy April skies led to a bright sunny spring, Jack was conscious of tongues wagging all over Virgin River. New relationships were always springing up, so the emergence of a couple of newcomers who had hooked up—Jillian and Colin—didn’t throw the River crowd too much. They were used to watching unexpected love bloom all the time.

But when the new relationship between Jack and Denny Cutler came out of the closet, the talk really launched into high-speed chatter.

“It’s probably too late for a baby shower,” Connie observed. Connie and her husband owned The Corner Store across the street from the bar.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jack replied with a wink. “Denny’s looking for some better fishing equipment.”

Denny was proving to be a pretty good angler in a very short period of time, but casting and catching trout was secondary in importance to getting acquainted on a new level. Before this revelation they’d talked about everyday things from the Marines to car engines, but now Jack felt the need to fill Denny in on the Sheridan family tree. And being the only son in his family, he had always been very close to his father, so he tried to tell Denny everything about Sam Sheridan, his new grandfather. And he told him all the things he could remember of his growing-up years, things he wouldn’t ordinarily talk to a friend about—subjects ranging from Boy Scouts to high school football to having sisters.

To Jack’s great relief, he learned that Denny’s life hadn’t been all stormy seas. When Denny was a real little guy his mother might’ve had a hard time with her difficult and sometimes abusive partner, but Denny was cushioned from much of it by loving grandparents. His “father” left the scene not long prior to his grandparents’ passing, leaving just him and his mom and a small inheritance that helped them get by. “Me and my mom had a good life. She even dated a real nice guy, a man by the name of Dan Duke—we stay in touch even though they never got engaged or anything. I played football and he never missed a game. We were like a family. She found that cancer the first time when I was barely seventeen. When I went into the Marines at eighteen, we both thought she had it licked—she was doing so well. But no. She died when I was twenty-one—almost five years from start to end. I’m gonna be honest with you, Jack. That’s the hardest thing I ever went through.”

“I know, son. I lost my mom when I was in my thirties and it was terrible, and I still had a big family around. Preacher, he lost his mom when he was a senior in high school and he had no other family. He moved in with his football coach.”

Denny chuckled. “I moved back in with the Marines,” he said.

“I’m surprised you didn’t come and find me right away,” Jack said.

“I had to think about it for a long time,” he answered. “What if I found you and you turned out to be like Bob?” He shook his head. “I had to put a plan together in my head. My mom got involved with him too fast. I wasn’t going to make that mistake.”

“You had a pretty solid plan, I’ll give you that,” Jack said. “Even if it took years.”

“I tripped and fell along the way an awful lot. All that business of losing my mom, going to Afghanistan and no father that I knew of—I did some lame-ass things. I had a girl, Becca. I didn’t want her to suffer if anything happened to me, so I just broke up with her.” He turned and looked at Jack. “Lame. I really cared about that girl.”

“You check back in with her lately?”

“When I got back, but she was still mad. She said she was with someone else. Who can blame her, huh?”

“Sometimes we just do the best we can,” Jack said. “Sometimes our best isn’t worth all that much.”

Jack had spent a lot of time thinking about things lately—like for example the fact that he couldn’t remember Susan Cutler. He couldn’t remember if she was “Susan,” “Sue” or “Susie.” That led to thoughts of how he had put together his master plan when he was all of eighteen or twenty—the only kind of plan that a sexually driven young man has. If we have an understanding, me and the woman, and if we’re careful, have protection, we’re consenting adults, he had told himself. We aren’t obligated to each other; we’re not going to be sad or hurt when we pull apart because from the start we knew it was just for now, not forever.

What a lot of happy horseshit that was.

Clearly he must have had such an arrangement with Susan Cutler and twenty-four years later the sheer idiocy of such a plan was all too apparent—he’d had a son for more than two decades and had done exactly nothing for him.

He just couldn’t figure out in his head how he could’ve worked that out differently. He’d never felt in love enough to marry and the idea of living without any sex? Sex had always worked real well for him—he found doing without hard to imagine. But at the moment, standing beside Denny, fishing with him, listening to him tell about his mom dying, breaking up with his girl, going to war, all without the support of a father…? It made Jack kind of wish he’d just taken the matter of sex into his own hand for about twenty-five years instead of always looking for a pretty girl to pass the time with.