Despite his caution, Conner caught a few minutes with Leslie every day that next week. And she grew more agreeable around him until finally she smiled at him and that caution melted like butter in the hot sun. He was back in her good graces.
With that awareness, he agreed quickly when, at the end of the week, Dan said, “Come on, let’s head for the office. Les made cookies. Bring your lunch.”
“Sounds good,” he said.
When they got inside, Dan put his plastic lunch bucket on the table and immediately headed down the hall to the office Leslie used. She followed him back out to the kitchen.
“Hi, Conner,” she said.
“Leslie,” he said with a nod.
She pulled a canvas tote out of the refrigerator and began to empty the contents onto the table—a half sandwich, an apple, a yogurt, a container of green tea. “How’s it going over there?” she asked, tilting her head in the direction of the two houses they’d been working on.
“We’re finishing up bathrooms this week,” Dan said. “We might take a couple of days next week, but that shouldn’t hold up work on the exterior. Paul mentioned a remodel in Redway that he wants to tackle next. What did he say to you?” Dan asked.
“He said we’re moving the trailer pretty soon. He’s got a sixty-five-hundred-square-foot custom home northeast of Virgin River ready to pour.”
Conner knew what that meant. It would be a long time before he’d be working on the interior of that custom job. Probably months. He might even be back in Sacramento to testify before it came time to do the custom house on the same property as the trailer. He wouldn’t be running into Leslie unless he drove to wherever that trailer was located to pick up his check. Even that wasn’t necessary. Paul would readily bring paychecks to Jack’s.
“Things have really improved since you’ve been here, Les,” Dan said, nodding at the big plate of cookies covered with Saran on the plywood table.
“I know,” she agreed. “Cookies and moderate cleanliness.”
“And paperwork on time, like estimates and contracts. I’m so damn glad Paul finally got around to hiring full-time office help.”
“It’s nice to work with Paul again. Even for a little while.”
“A little while?” Dan asked.
She ripped open her yogurt. “I don’t mean to make it sound like I’m leaving tomorrow. It’s just that my parents are in their late sixties and one of these days… Maybe I should say one of these years they’re going to need me. Right now they’re in great health, never slow down for a second, and Grants Pass isn’t very far away so we can visit each other frequently. But they’re sixty-eight, I’m their only child, I assume I’ll have to return to Oregon.”
“What’s your best guess?” Conner blurted out. “Months or years?”
“I promised Paul six months, maybe more,” she said. “Unless there’s an emergency back home, of course. And…excepting emergencies…I’m not going to leave him high and dry. Vanessa would kill me.”
Conner flashed his dimple in a smile, but he looked down at his sandwich. That gave him something to work with. Yes, sir.
Six months. He was a patient man. Most of the time.
“Didn’t I hear you’re planning a wedding?” she asked Dan.
“Not exactly. What we’re planning is a marriage. Cheryl and I have been together a couple of years, this past year dedicated to finishing our house together with a little help from friends. We’re in now, though still finishing things, and should be done by June. Then Cheryl wants a nice, quiet, private ceremony while we’re on our way up to the San Juan Islands for some serious fishing.” He laughed. “Gotta love a woman like Cheryl. She’s not only pretty and practical, she’s more fun than I deserve.”
“What about your families?” Leslie asked. “Won’t they want some kind of wedding?”
“That’s just it—our families are gone now and it’s just us. I think our friends will help us celebrate the new house with a housewarming, but we want to go off alone for the rest.”
Families gone…that turned over in Conner’s head a bit. His family was gone temporarily, but he’d get them back. At least until Katie met someone who would take over as husband and the boys’ father, and then it would be time for her to make a new life. And while they were very close, it wasn’t as though Conner told her everything that was happening in his life. Back in the day, if he dated, he didn’t run the details by his sister. He was more likely to mention it after the fact. Even with his wife, Katie hadn’t met Samantha until they were talking about marriage.
But somehow the idea that he might never tell Katie about Leslie ate at him. Bothered him. Leslie was the kind of girl you showed off to your family.
“You’re very quiet,” Leslie pointed out to him.
He chewed and swallowed. “Good cookies,” he said. Then he gave enough of a smile to cover his discomfort. When he looked at her, his cheeks felt warm. He hoped he wasn’t blushing like a boy.
He went back to work with Dan and conversation focused only on the work they were doing. Below the chatter, Conner thought about his next move—he was helpless in fighting the idea. Finally he decided—he was going to ask Leslie when she had that yoga class again because he might drop by that coffee shop at about the same time. They could sit on those girlie chairs and talk, without Dan or any other crew coming around. Maybe they could talk without her hating him. That would be a start.
He looked at his watch. It was four. They’d be knocking off soon, and he didn’t want to miss her if she quit and went home. “I’m going to walk over to the office,” he told Dan. “I have a question for Leslie.”
“Take your time,” Dan said.
But as Conner walked out of the construction, he saw a car pull up. It was a shiny black late-model Cadillac with Oregon plates, which pulled up to the trailer and parked next to Leslie’s SUV. A good-looking man in a wool coat and shiny shoes got out. He looked around, saw Conner in the front doorway, took in his surroundings and entered the trailer.
Conner had a very good idea who that might be. He wouldn’t barge in on them, but he wasn’t going far. He leaned against the porch post of the house in progress, near enough to rescue her if needed.
A half hour later, Dan joined him outside with his lunch pail. “You didn’t get far.”
“A guy went into the office,” Conner said. “He’s got Oregon plates,” he added, indicating the car. Not a construction worker’s car, that was for sure. “He might be here to see Leslie, so I’m waiting until he leaves.”
“He could be here to see Paul,” Dan said. “He could be a buyer or potential buyer.”
“Then he’d have an appointment and Paul would be here.”
Dan grinned. “You’re not just another pretty face, are you, Conner? Want me to wait with you?”
Way to go low-profile, Conner chided himself. “No, thanks. I can take him.”
Dan just laughed. “Then close up when you’re done, will you?”
“Absolutely.”
Leslie was nearly finished with the payroll books on the computer when she heard the door to the trailer open. She was used to crews coming and going, to Paul popping in now and then. But then she heard, “Leslie?”
She dropped her head on the desk. God. No.
“Leslie?”
She took a deep breath, pushed back her chair and stood up. She moved to the doorway of her office and looked down the long hall. There he was. Shit! “Greg, what are you doing here?” she said more patiently than she felt.
“Well, what do you think I’m doing here? You ran out on me with no forwarding address. You changed your cell number!”
She walked down the hall toward him, shaking her head. “Greg, we’ve been divorced over a year. You’re remarried. Your new wife is pregnant. I didn’t run out on you—I moved. I no longer have a relationship with you.”
“Now see, that’s just crazy! Of course we have a relationship, a very important one, just a different one than we had a couple of years ago.”
It was exactly this kind of talk that had pushed her over the edge. And while it used to just break her heart, she’d had enough. “Are you insane?” she demanded. “Are you seriously nuts? Because it’s different all right—I don’t like you anymore, don’t you get that? I don’t want to be in touch with you. I don’t want us to be friends. You wanted a new life, a different life. Go home! Wallow in it.”
Now he was doing the head-shaking. “Leslie, what’s happened to you? We’re going to have to work on that. We’re much too civilized to have hard feelings like this between us after all the good years we’ve had. We’re going to get past the misunderstandings and forge a new, stronger friendship. I care about you. You’re very important to me. Very important!”
She stared at him in disbelief that had become common for her when faced with Greg. “This is why I moved. Because you need medication. Listen to me carefully,” she said, stepping toward him. “You cheated on me. You left me. You somehow conned me out of my half of our community property, you remarried and your new wife is pregnant with the baby you didn’t want to have with me. If everyone in my life cared about me that much I would be the most pathetic creature on the face of the earth.”
“The way you look at things,” he muttered disparagingly.
“How did you find me?”
“I asked everyone we knew. Your parents wouldn’t tell me, your old boss wouldn’t tell me—”
“And did they tell you why they wouldn’t tell you? I asked them not to. It’s because of conversations like this one that I moved! So, who told?”
“One of the crew for Haggerty’s said he heard you went to work for Paul in Virgin River.”
“And you drove down here?” she asked, astonished. “Why didn’t you just call the site?”
“I want you to look me in the eye, Leslie, and tell me we can’t ever be on good terms. Because it kills me to think you hate me.”
She took another step toward him. “We can be on good terms, Greg,” she said with more confidence than she’d had even a few weeks ago. “As long as I never have to talk to you or see your face again. Now go home and leave me alone.”
“I want to make this right, because I—”
“I know. Because you care about me. You’re too late to make it right. You made your choice and I made mine and I’m done.”
“I wish there was some way I could make you understand. Everything changed in an instant. I became a different man with different needs, with different expectations. It was a transition, Leslie. It wasn’t something I thought about or planned. It was as if—”
In a second he was going to say, I’d never been in love like this before. He’d said it to her before, and she could still feel the ache. “Go. Leave!”
“Now, Leslie, listen to reason….”
She marched over to the kitchen sink, pulled the fire extinguisher off the wall, freed the hose and aimed it at him.
“Okay, now you’re acting unbalanced,” he said.
“If you don’t get in your car and head for Grants Pass immediately, I’m going to mess up your pretty cashmere coat. And your perfect hair!”
“Now look—”
She fired at his shiny John Lobbs.
“Hey!” he yelled, jumping back.
“Seriously, on the count of three. One, two—”
“You’ve lost it, Leslie,” he said, but he was backing toward the door. “You’ve never acted like this. I’m worried about you.”
“Then give me a real wide berth,” she advised. “Three!”
He nearly fell out the door.
Conner watched as Paul Haggerty was just pulling up to the trailer. Greg Adams was standing behind his car, trunk open, cleaning his shoes with a rag he’d pulled off his golf clubs. Paul screeched to a stop and jumped out of the truck. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t find Leslie anywhere in Grants Pass, and I heard she came to work for you, so I drove down,” he said impatiently. He showed Paul his golf towel. “She shot at me with the fire extinguisher!”
Paul rocked back on his heels and laughed. He tilted his head back and bellowed. Paul was much taller and stronger than Greg. And at the moment, much happier. “Did she now?”
“What’s going on here? Why would she do that?”
“Because, shit for brains, she’d like you to disappear and leave her alone. I’m sure she’d like to stuff you in a hole, but since that isn’t going to happen, second choice is you go home to your new wife and leave her the hell alone. You get that?”
Greg slammed his trunk closed. “What is the matter with everyone? I’m trying to be a gentleman! Leslie was my wife for eight years! I want to be sure she’s taken care of!”
“Best way to do that is to skip the cheating part,” Paul sagely advised.
“I wish I could find a way to explain about that. My whole life changed in a second and it was like… Oh, never mind, what’s done is done. I’m tired of saying that I’m sorry as all hell and would change it if I could, but some things just happen. Right now all I care about is that Leslie and I can be on civil terms. That’s very important to me.”
Paul got in his face, which meant he had to look down a little. “You better hear this, Adams. Pay attention. Go away and leave the girl alone. Copy? Now I’m going in my office and if she’s upset or crying I’m going to hunt you down and beat the shit outta you.”
Greg stiffened indignantly. “Threats, Paul. People get in trouble for talk like that.”
“If I have to drive all the way to Grants Pass,” Paul added. “Get outta here.”
Then Paul went to the trailer, opened the door and stepped up. Before the door closed Conner heard him yell, “Don’t shoot!”
Conner chuckled and went into the new construction to gather up his belongings and lock up.
Yeah, there were things about this place to like.
The showdown with the ex put Conner in a very social mood, and he went to Jack’s Bar. He happened to run into Paul Haggerty, which was just perfect. Since Paul had seen Conner standing in the doorway of the house in progress, Conner asked after Leslie. “I didn’t have any details,” Conner said. “But the idea of this guy I’d never seen before going into that trailer where Leslie was alone, well, I decided to stick around to be sure everything was all right.”
“Thanks for that, Conner. Around here it just doesn’t occur to me we have to be watchful. I guess I forget there are people around we shouldn’t trust.” It didn’t take Paul long to spill the basics of Leslie’s story, not knowing Conner heard it. “That was her ex-husband and he’s one of the reasons she preferred working in Virgin River to staying in Grants Pass, which has always been her home. He just won’t go away quietly.”
Jack put a beer on the bar for Paul. “Shot him but he just won’t die?” he asked.
“Something like that. But I ran him off and checked on Les. She was a little pissed, but fine.” He grinned. “She turned the fire extinguisher on him.”
“No kidding?” Jack asked with a laugh. “I knew I liked her.”
During the course of the conversation, Paul mentioned that he’d rented Leslie a little house he’d fixed up and it was just a couple of blocks from the bar. And then, beer done, it was time for Paul to get home to dinner.
Conner had his dinner at the bar, and when he was finished and it was time to go home, he just couldn’t shake off that social mood. He had an irresistible urge to check on Leslie himself; he just couldn’t talk himself out of it. He drove around town, and it didn’t take long to spot her yellow Volkswagen SUV in front of a small house. He parked on the street behind it and went to the door.
She opened it and tilted her head at him. “What are you doing here?”
“I was watching the trailer today, making sure the guy in the shiny Caddy wasn’t giving you any trouble.”
“You were?”
He nodded. “I was headed over to ask you something when he pulled up and went inside.”
She hesitated for a second. “Come in, Conner,” she said.
“I don’t want to impose,” he said. But he entered the little house quickly, before she could change her mind. He was quite impressed. It was a very homey, attractive place that seemed perfect for her, and it was completely settled, pictures hung, framed photos on the buffet, a dried flower arrangement and place mats on the dining table, a throw on the end of the sectional sofa. He followed her into the kitchen where he could see Dan’s handiwork in the granite countertops and darkly stained oak cupboards.
She had been sitting at the kitchen table with the newspaper spread out and a cup of tea beside it.
“So,” she said. “That was him—the cheerful ex, wondering why we can’t be more chummy.”
“He came out of the trailer with some white foam on his pretty shoes,” Conner said, and he couldn’t suppress a grin.
“I lost it. His utter lack of remorse, the way he takes so little responsibility for what happened, like we should all be grown-ups and overlook it. ‘But Leslie,’” she mimicked. “‘I can’t help what I feel. It’s not as if I planned for my feelings to change.’” She snorted. “Is that accurate? That we can’t help what we feel?” she asked Conner, an imploring look on her face.
“Probably,” he said. He hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans. “But we can help what we do.”
She took a breath. “Would you like some tea?”
“No, thanks. But I’ll sit a minute if you feel like talking. If you want to get it off your chest.”
She indicated the chair opposite hers, and she sat down. “I don’t know if this will make sense, but one of the reasons I took the job down here is so I could stop talking about it. Well, that’s not true at all—I was far from done talking about it, but my friends and family were done listening. Who can blame them after a year and a half? You know, I have friends who divorced, who have kids they have to co-parent with the ex, who have very manageable relationships with exes, and I admire them for it! What is wrong with me? Why am I not the least bit grateful that Greg wants us to be friends?”
Conner shrugged before he said, “Maybe because he considers himself totally justified?”
“You’re right. That whole business of how he just couldn’t help himself, he had no control—that’s what makes me feel like crap!”
Conner smiled at her.
“Should you smile at me when I say I feel like crap?”
He shook his head, but the smile remained. “I was just thinking, I’m not making any excuses for him—he’s a dog—but that feeling? That you just can’t help yourself? That’s a feeling I like.”
“Is that a fact?” She braced an elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand.
He nodded. “Yeah, it’s good. I can still control my actions when I feel that way, however.”
“And you do that, how?”
He leaned toward her. “By being strong.” He leaned back. “There’s something I thought you’d want to know—I don’t think it’ll be a problem for you, but Paul told me and Jack that the guy who came to the trailer today was your ex and that you shot him with the fire extinguisher.”
“Swell,” she said.
“Jack was impressed. Paul didn’t give any more personal details and I didn’t let on that I knew anything. But jeez, Les, it really made me want to be a chick.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “How so?”
“That was awesome. A guy couldn’t get away with that. I wish I could’ve hosed down my ex, but I had some serious training in how women had to be treated, even if they were very bad.”
“I guess I’m going to have this reputation now….” she speculated.
He gave his head a little shake. “I think you’re going to have admiration. Paul obviously feels very protective of you.”
“The whole Haggerty family has been really good to me, especially through this. Paul’s dad, the founder of Haggerty Construction, is a tough old bear of a guy who adores his wife. They’re the most wonderful grandparents, and I take it they have very strong feelings about loyalty and commitment issues.”
“I hope most people do,” Conner said.
She reached across the table and touched his hand lightly. “Conner, I don’t think most people do,” she said. “I think maybe it’s a rare and admirable quality.”
He felt a surge of heat at her soft touch, and he looked down at her hand. It was so perfect, her nails bleached white and filed short. Her skin was flawless. He wouldn’t mind feeling those perfect, soft hands all over him.
“Here’s something you might get a kick out of,” Conner said. “Paul got right up in your ex’s grille and told him he was going in the trailer, and if you were upset he was going to hunt him down and beat the shit out of him, even if he had to go all the way to Grants Pass to do it.”
Leslie smiled happily. “He did?”
“He did. I haven’t known Paul very long, but I’ve never seen him look so scary. I thought it was a great idea.”
Leslie laughed lightly. “And to think I almost opened fire on him!”
“I heard him yell ‘Don’t shoot!’”
“I wasn’t putting that fire extinguisher down until I heard Greg’s car drive away. I should have done that a long time ago. It was the first time I got so angry.”
“If he comes back and bothers you again, he’s mentally challenged.”
“You’d think so, huh?” she said. “Conner, I think Greg is a narcissist. He’s not a mean guy, at least not overtly. But everything is all about him, I see that now. He pays a lot of compliments, sucks up a lot, strokes a lot of people—influential and even not so influential—and it’s all so he gets what he wants.”
“And what the hell could he possibly want with you?”
“The perfect divorce. He has lots of image concerns. While we were married he wanted everyone to think we had the perfect marriage. He said he hoped to be a role model, to be admired, in business, in relationships and hopefully one day in a larger political arena than even the City Council. It’s very important to him to be respected. When I caught him cheating, he fessed up at once and all within the course of one hour explained how he’d fallen in love despite his intentions, he couldn’t help it, would be divorcing me and marrying her but that we would always be best friends because he would never stop loving me. He would just have to stop being married to me because his feelings had changed and he was going through a life transition. Oh—and as he put it—I wouldn’t want him to live a lie or be unhappy for the rest of his life, would I?”
“Wow.” Conner thought he couldn’t be more surprised by things like this, especially after what he’d gone through with Samantha. “Do you mind if I ask you? If it’s none of my business, just say so. But how’d you catch him?”
“Modern technology and celebrity gossip. I thought the whole idea that someone who was cheating on his wife would have a lot of incriminating texts on his cell phone was completely ludicrous. Especially famous someones. It actually made me laugh! How could anyone be that stupid? So just out of curiosity while Greg was in the shower, I read his texts. I didn’t expect to find anything. A lot were from me and his office and bingo, a lot of sexy snippets with someone named Allison. While he was blow-drying his hair, I texted her from his phone. I told her I wanted to lick her whole body, and she texted back that it was right where he left it, waiting and ready.”
Conner couldn’t help it, the laughter rumbled out of him and made his eyes water. “You didn’t do that,” he said.
“I did so. Greg was mortified.”
“Wow,” Conner said again, wiping his eyes. “Yeah. Mortified. He must have wanted to be caught.”
“I don’t know about that, but he was definitely ready to be caught. It turned out we had very few assets. And his new wife is an attorney.”
Conner shook his head. “There must have been no sharp objects in the house….”
“I was in shock for a while. I actually thought he’d come back to me. That didn’t last long.” She sipped her tea. “It was nice of you to check on me, Conner. But I’m fine. Totally fine.”
“You’re not in shock anymore.”
“Indeed not. So what did you want to ask me?”
“Oh. That. I was wondering if you were headed to that yoga class tomorrow, since it’s Saturday. Because I could be headed to that coffee shop at about the same time. And maybe this time we could get off on a better foot, as in, you not furious with me.”
“No,” she said. “Tomorrow I’m getting my exercise in the yard. I’m planting flowers. It’s spring. And I’m settling in.”
