“We missed you,” Candace Petruso said. “And we have a surprise.”
“Why are you dressed like that?” Leslie asked.
“Part of the surprise. Leslie, I thought for sure you’d be up. It’s…” She looked at her watch. “My gosh, it’s ten!”
“It’s Saturday morning!” Leslie protested, a little flustered.
“You’re usually an early riser,” Robert said, pushing his way into the house. “Where’s the kitchen? I’ll put on the coffee. Candace, you get the music ready and we’ll push a little furniture back, make space.” And he was off in the direction of the kitchen.
“Music? What is going on?” Leslie demanded. “Did you get up at five to make this drive from Grants Pass?”
Candace came in and looked around. “Oh, Les, this is just as adorable as the pictures you sent. I think it’s really you. You know your father—he can’t sleep past four-thirty even though he has nothing in the world to get up for. And he can’t seem to be quiet, either. We had something we wanted to show you so we decided on the spur of the moment. It’s a nice drive.”
“Must have been kind of uncomfortable in your fancy clothes,” she observed.
“Don’t be silly, we stopped at a service station and changed,” Candace said. She put her iPod with speakers on Leslie’s coffee table.
Robert was back, brushing his hands together. “There! Coffee’s on. Let’s make a little room here.” He pushed the chair back against the wall, the coffee table against the sofa, the dining table back, chairs pushed in. “You’re going to get the biggest kick out of this, Leslie,” he said.
“I’d better.” Leslie crossed her arms over her chest.
“It’s spectacular,” Robert promised. “Now stay right there. Candace, press Play.”
Just as Candace pushed the button, before the music even started, Conner stepped into the room looking like pure sex. His short hair was mussed, and he had a scruffy growth of beard surrounding that tight, trim little goatee. He’d pulled on his faded jeans that hung low on his delicious hips, his feet bare. He wore his white T-shirt and had carelessly stuffed a handful of it into the low waist of the jeans right at the center, over the zipper. The hair on his chest was visible in the V-neck, and she wanted to run her fingers through it. His eyes were sleepy and his smile small and one-sided. He came to stand next to Leslie.
“Oh!” Candace said, startled. A tango began to play, and Candace looked at her husband. “Robert, we should have called! We’re intruding.”
“No problem,” Conner said.
Candace smiled. “You must be Conner,” she said.
“Luckily,” he said, causing Leslie to laugh.
Candace grabbed Robert’s hand and said, “We’ll be along now and call you in a couple of hours. Maybe we can get together for lunch or something….”
“Don’t be silly,” Leslie said. “You’re here now. Let’s see your surprise. Then we’ll plan lunch.”
“Are you sure?” Candace asked.
“The tango, I presume?” Leslie asked, lifting a brow.
“I guess we got a little excited. We’ve been taking some dance lessons.”
“Getting ready to knock ’em dead on the cruise! You’re the only one we’re showing,” Robert said. “This sort of thing was a lot easier when you lived in Grants Pass.”
“Well, let’s see, then,” Leslie said.
“Are you absolutely sure, honey?” Candace wanted to know.
“Go for it, Mother. Believe me, you have my complete attention.”
Candace started the music again, Robert swept her up in the traditional embrace, and they glided back and forth across the living room floor. Nicely, as a matter of fact. They were very agile and coordinated, and their moves were well matched. They looked into each other’s eyes like practiced partners ready for Dancing with the Stars. Her mother’s short, spiky blond hair even looked professionally done. Leslie tilted her head and glanced up at Conner. He lifted his brows in amusement.
After watching them dance for a couple of minutes, Conner turned and pulled Leslie into his arms. He put her arm around his shoulder and tucked her hand into his chest. Then with his cheek against hers, he simply rocked back and forth, dancing his own slower dance, keeping time with the music. Sort of.
“Your parents are very interesting,” he whispered in her ear.
She laughed. “Aren’t they?”
“Your mother is gorgeous for almost seventy.”
“I know. I hope I got her genes.”
“I do, too. Otherwise you might find yourself dying your hair with some reddish-black concoction.” She giggled. “Your dad has the worst dye job I’ve ever seen.”
“I know. Mom fusses about his thinning hair all the time, but apparently to him it looks good.”
“He got a lot of it on his bean,” Conner said. “I think he stained it good.”
“I know,” she said as she chuckled.
“They’re fun, aren’t they?” Conner asked.
“Sometimes a bit too much fun,” she answered.
“Look at them,” he said. “They’re having the time of their lives, doing the tango in their daughter’s living room. How long have they been married?”
“Forty-three years.”
“When the dance contest is over, here’s what we should do,” Conner said. “I should go home to shower, shave and change, you should have coffee with your folks and get dressed, and then we should meet at Jack’s for lunch so they can interrogate me a little bit.”
They turned and looked as Robert dragged Candace across the floor in a wicked tango move. They turned back.
“Okay,” Leslie said. “But you don’t have to be interrogated.”
“I don’t mind a little bit,” he said. “Basic information, you know. Name, rank, serial number. Let’s not tell them I was married to a sex addict, okay?”
“I still haven’t told them I was married to a guy who had trouble getting it up.”
Conner’s eyes flew open wide. “He did?”
“Shit. I was going to be classy and keep that to myself. Naturally I thought that was mostly my fault.”
He ran a knuckle down the curve of her jaw; his blue eyes got all dark and smoky. “No way.”
“Thank you,” she mouthed.
Candace and Robert ended the tango with an elaborate flourish that left Candace draped along the floor at Robert’s feet, one arm extended into the air.
Leslie and Conner parted and applauded while Robert helped his wife to her feet. He bowed and Candace dipped into a curtsy. “What do you think, honey?” Robert asked.
“I think you’re awesome, provided one of you doesn’t break a hip.” She stared pointedly at her mother. “You might want to go easy on the collapsing to the floor part, Mom.”
“I’m very careful and my bone density is excellent,” Candace said. “All right, we’ll get out of your hair. If you really do have time for lunch, just tell us—”
“I have a better idea,” Conner said. “I’m going home to shower and change. I’ll meet you at noon, if that works for you three.”
“Perfect,” Leslie said. “See you at Jack’s.”
As Conner drove to his cabin to change, he saw it as very strange indeed that he should consider the tango debut of Leslie’s eccentric parents absolutely normal, but he did. Sure they were a little out there, but they were clearly enjoying life and each other. And they loved Leslie.
When Conner had been twenty and Katie a mere seventeen a heart attack had dropped their mother like a stone. She’d only been fifty-three and hadn’t seemed the high-risk type at all—she had been trim and fit and very energetic, much like Candace. Three years later their father passed after a short, difficult battle with colon cancer—he’d been sixty-three.
Not only had they lost their parents too young, Conner and Katie had been left the house they’d grown up in and Conner’s Hardware. Twenty-three and the owner/operator of a substantial business. If he hadn’t had a few trusted employees who had worked for his father for a long time, he would surely have sunk out of sight. Now he found himself wondering what his parents would be like, had they lived. Nothing like Candace and Robert, that was for sure. His mom hadn’t ever been very fancy and his dad had been a real stick-in-the-mud. They wouldn’t be taking tango lessons or going on cruises. But his dad had had a dream of a retirement cabin on a lake that was full of fat fish. They both had looked forward to grandchildren…and had never met the boys.
Had Conner relocated to Virgin River for some reason other than this particular one, his parents would have enjoyed this kind of place. But he was living a whole new life in a whole new world, and he found himself hoping Leslie’s parents would like the new him.
Leslie jumped in the shower, then pulled on some jeans. With her hair still wet and wildly curly, she grabbed a cup of coffee and went in search of her parents. She found her mother sitting on the back porch enjoying a lovely late-April morning. Candace had changed into slacks, and Robert was nowhere in sight.
“Where’s Dad?” Leslie asked, joining her mother.
“He wanted to walk around the town a little bit. Leslie, I apologize again. How naive of me—I knew you had a young man in your life….”
“Don’t give it a thought.”
“Well, we’re so foolish. We might’ve come all this way and found you weren’t even at home! I promise, I’ll think ahead in the future.”
“I was home and everything is fine.”
“Conner went home to shower,” Candace said. “Does that mean he doesn’t exactly live here with you?”
Leslie laughed. “He doesn’t at all! Conner has a very small cabin by the river and I’ve never even seen it. His stay in Virgin River could be even more temporary than mine.”
“And what brings him here?”
“He has an old friend who found him a job with Paul after the contractor he worked for in Colorado Springs filed bankruptcy and shut down. But Conner has a sister who’s still back in Colorado Springs. She’s a young widow with a couple of little boys. Conner has mentioned more than once that he misses them, that he wants to be closer. They’re his only family.”
“He’s close to his family.”
“He is. And from what I hear from Paul, he’s a very talented finisher and carpenter. Great with cabinetry, stone countertops and such. No matter where he goes, he’ll land on his feet with work.”
“And the two of you?” Candace asked. “Is it serious?”
“In a way,” Leslie said with a little lift of one shoulder. “As you can tell, we’re very close, but we’re realistic. I came here to rebuild my confidence, and Conner is here to work until he can either go back home or find a place that’s right for himself, his sister and the kids. Our paths might only converge for a while. But he is such a good man, Mom. And I am so happy I met him.”
“And your confidence?”
She chuckled softly. “This is the best totally accidental move I’ve ever made. Not even two full months and I have friends, a great job, a good man in my life and I have a much better feeling about myself. Mom, I didn’t realize how Greg’s expectations of me hammered my self-esteem until I broke away from Grants Pass entirely! We were supposed to both be playing on the Greg Adams team, getting him all the things he wanted in business, in the city. And then he expected me to be the perfect ex-wife and wanted me to continue to play on his team. In fact, if he had things his way, it would be a bigger, stronger team—one including his new wife and their baby!”
“Phhhttt,” Candace said in disgust. “He was always like that. He was such a pain in my ass while we planned the wedding, I wanted to knock his block off!”
“He was?” Leslie asked.
“Oh, Lord! As if it was all about showcasing him!”
Leslie wrinkled up her forehead as she tried to remember the details.
“You know,” Candace went on. “We had to run about five suggested venues by him before we found one that was good enough for him! Your father finally asked him if he was picking up the tab, because his family certainly wasn’t stepping up—they don’t have a pot to piss in!”
“Mother, I’ve never heard such language from you! I mean, I can swear like a truck driver but you’re usually—”
“Greg Adams doesn’t bring out my best behavior,” Candace said with a definite curl of the lip.
“But, Mom, you were one of many people who said I should let go, move on!”
“Yes, sweetheart. And do you know how hard it was not to say you caught a break when he walked out on you?”
Leslie choked. “I thought you loved Greg!”
“Leslie,” Candace said, leaning toward her daughter, “you loved Greg. Therefore I couldn’t say anything negative about him.”
“Not even when he cheated on me and left me for another woman?”
“You still loved him. You were in terrible pain. How could I say you were crazy to love that weasel in the first place? Saying something like that makes you look foolish, and you are not foolish. At least not about most things. I have to be honest, I always thought you saw more in Greg Adams than there was.”
Stunned, Leslie took a moment to absorb this. “You did?”
“He was never good enough for you.”
Oh, God, life was strange, Leslie thought. All that time she’d had the feeling she wasn’t good enough for him, it was the other way around? But that was her mother—mothers always felt that way. “You should have said something….”
“I couldn’t. Marriage rule.”
“Huh?” Leslie asked.
“You know. I can call my husband an idiot and asshole but no one else can. It’s a rule. It’s almost a law.”
“There is that….”
“Besides, you wouldn’t have listened. And you would’ve gotten mad at me,” Candace said.
“Possibly. But okay, in the future, will you please risk it? Because I spent so much time…”
Candace was shaking her head. “I don’t know, my angel. I was at odds with so many of your decisions and really, you blew me off. Like the whole idea that Greg’s political career—” And right there a bark of laughter came out of her petite mother’s mouth, and she covered it with her hand. “Hmm. That his political career was so important you’d decided not to have children so you could focus on that. You, who had always said an only child wasn’t a good idea, and when you got married you’d have at least two, maybe three, maybe even four. And what political career?”
“He thought he was going places. He was the Chamber of Commerce president and aspired to—”
“Phhhttt,” Candace said with a wave of her hand. “Your father was president of the Chamber, the Rotary, a dozen city organizations. And I’m no slouch—I headed the Junior League for three years! In fact, I was asked to run for City Council but I just didn’t have the time.”
Leslie mentally checked her memory book. That was all true. Her parents had had more political influence before she married Greg than Greg had to date. Was I in some kind of romantic fog?
“I never put these things together,” Leslie said. “I thought he was wonderful for such a long time.”
“He had his fine points,” Candace said. “When you first met and were first married, he fussed over you. He definitely romanced you and treated you like the First Lady he wanted you to be. Of course he also treated you like his administrative assistant. Give Leslie a call and ask if I can squeeze that in. Check with Leslie and ask if we can make a donation. Leslie will know if I can speak at that event.”
“God! He did!”
“It was so annoying!” Candace said. “We had a fight once, you know.”
“You did? You and Greg?”
Candace nodded. “I didn’t want you to ever know. It was not my finest hour. You know how we had to split holidays with his family? One of us got Christmas Eve and the other got Christmas day? And it was every other Thanksgiving? And the Adamses always had first choice. Well, I always had a problem with that whole idea—I didn’t know why we couldn’t all be together. I welcomed his mother and father and even his no-account brother and that whole crew. But I called your house, and he answered when you weren’t home yet. I told him I wanted to nail down the holiday schedule, the plans for when we’d get to host. He very sweetly told me that you were managing his schedule because he was in such demand that he didn’t even know which days were free, and you were the manager of his ‘events’ calendar. What a load of crap—all he did was go to meetings and dinners and play golf with potential investors.”
“That doesn’t sound like a fight….”
Candace looked down briefly where her hands with the perfectly manicured nails were folded in her lap. “I told him to kiss my ass. And then I just called you at the office.”
Leslie laughed with delight. “Really? That’s awesome. I wish I’d known that.”
Candace was quiet for a moment. Finally she said, “It was a long eight years of you promoting him, Les. He knew how to choose restaurants, music, order from the menu, and his plans for his future were a priority. Not your future, but his. Your dad and I sometimes wondered if we’d have to have you deprogrammed.” She shook her head. “He must have been some kind of wonderful in the sack.”
A burst of laughter shot out of Leslie, not because her mother had been so candid but because she’d been so wrong.
“How would you have felt about us if our marriage had lasted?” Leslie asked her mother.
“Leslie, it doesn’t matter how other people feel about your spouse! Don’t you see? You chose him, you had to live with him, he was your package to adore or be fed up with! Once you made your choice, I didn’t have a right to an opinion. Your grandma Petruso never much cared for me and she let me know it—I learned a very important lesson from that. And I made a vow never to be that kind of mother-in-law.
“But he’s not my son-in-law anymore and I don’t have to pretend to have any hero worship. All I care about is that you find the happiness in life you deserve.”
Leslie felt her eyes mist. “Every time I saw him with Allison it felt like a knife. I wonder how long I would have suffered like that if I hadn’t decided to leave Grants Pass….”
“It was obviously a good decision,” Candace said. “And I dreaded it so much….”
“It’s temporary,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll be back eventually, and in the meantime we’ll visit. I’ll admit something, Mom—I was thinking of coming up for a weekend and I hated the thought of not spending my time off with Conner!”
Candace ruffled Leslie’s curls. “Speaking of Conner, we don’t want to keep him waiting. Go tame your wild hair—your dad should be back any second.”
When they were all seated for lunch at a table in Jack’s bar, Leslie’s parents first asked Conner where he was from and whether he had any family. Right after that Leslie redirected the conversation before it could turn into Twenty Questions.
“Mom, tell Conner about your last cruise and the friends-for-life you made.”
Candace was only too happy to comply, and now, at the age of thirty-two, Leslie was rediscovering her mother. Candace was not the least bit wrapped up in herself, despite allowing the conversation to revolve around the activities of this retired couple. In fact, she gave Leslie a little wink before she embarked on a description of their Alaskan cruise.
Candace used the excuse to talk as a way of not having an opinion about Conner. And Conner asked questions. “Did you fish while you were in Alaska?”
“No, but we definitely ate some of the best fish imaginable. We nearly had to fight bears for it. We went to an outdoor restaurant built along a river where the bear fish!”
“You can see that here all summer,” the eavesdropping Jack said while delivering drinks to the table.
“Is that a fact?” Robert asked.
And of course Jack hung around a while to extol the scenic virtues of Virgin River. And while he did so, Conner slipped his arm around Leslie’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze.
After lunch, Leslie asked her parents if they couldn’t stay through the weekend.
“Not this time, honey. But if you get some furniture for that second bedroom, we’ll happily come back. I wouldn’t mind learning to fish if there’s a bear sideshow to go with it.”
After lunch, the Petrusos left Virgin River, and Conner went back to Leslie’s house. Once there, he pulled a shovel and stakes out of his truck.
“Paul ordered cement for your drive and I asked him to let me get it ready. I’m going to trench it out so he can have it poured this week.”
“I’ll help,” she offered.
“Nah,” he said, giving her a kiss on the forehead. “Go find something relaxing to do. Read a book. Knit. Do you knit?” he asked. She shook her head, and he laughed. “Take a nap, then. I’ll be about two or three hours. Then I’ll grab a shower and make you a burger on the grill later, if you’re interested.”
“Always interested,” she said. “Why did you take this on?”
“I heard him mention it to Dan and I said I’d be happy to do it. I didn’t have plans. I guess there’s going to be a little building here, too. He wants to add on a covered carport with a storage closet. You knew that, right?”
“I knew that,” she said. “I didn’t know it would fall to you.”
“It didn’t, babe. I asked for the job. Now go find a way to kick back.”
So for the next three hours, while Conner sweated in the driveway, digging a wide path for concrete, Leslie sat on the porch with her feet propped up on the rail and a book in her lap. She didn’t get much reading done. She found herself watching Conner more than the book she held. And she smiled a lot. Because despite all their proclamations of finding themselves and working out their issues without becoming too involved, there was one thing she knew in her heart.
He was hers.
