Midnight Kiss (2 page)

Drew kept moving. He was on automatic. Once he was standing right in front of her and she lifted her eyes to his, he was not surprised to find that she had the most beautiful blue eyes he could have ever imagined. He put out his hand. “Hi. I’m Drew. I just met your uncle.” She said nothing, didn’t even shake his hand. “And you’re Sunny. Sunny Jensen?” he asked.

Her mouth fixed and her eyes narrowed. “Archer,” she corrected.

Drew gave up on the shake and withdrew his hand. “Well, Sunny Archer, can I join you?”

“Are you trying to pick me up?” she asked directly.

He grinned. “I’m a very optimistic guy,” he said pleasantly.

“Then let me save you some time. I’m not available.”

He was struck silent for a moment. It wasn’t that Drew enjoyed such great success with women—he was admittedly out of practice. But this one had drawn on him like a magnet and he was unaccountably surprised to be shot down before he’d even had a chance to screw up his approach. “Sorry,” he said lamely. “Your uncle said you were single.”

“Single and unavailable.” She lifted her glass and gave him a weak smile. “Happy New Year.”

He just looked at her for a moment, then beat a retreat back to the bar.

Jack and Nate were watching, waiting for him. Jack pushed the beer toward him. “How’d that work out for you?”

Drew took a pull on his beer. “I must be way out of practice,” he said. “I probably should’a thought that through a little better….”

“What? Residency doesn’t leave time for girls?” Jack asked with a twist of the lip.

“A breakup,” Drew explained. “Which led to a break from women for a while.”

Nate leaned an elbow on the bar. “That a fact? Bad breakup?”

“You ever been around a good one?” Drew asked. Then he chuckled, lifted an eyebrow and said, “Nah, it wasn’t that it was so bad. In fact, she probably saved my life. We were engaged, but shouldn’t have been. She finally told me what I should’ve known all along—
if we got married, it would be a disaster.
”

“Bad fit?”

“Yeah, bad fit. I should have seen it coming, but I was too busy putting titanium rods in femurs to pay attention to details like that, so my bad. But what’s up with Sunny Archer?”

“Well,” Nate said. “I guess you probably have a lot in common.”

“Uh-oh. Bad breakup?”

“Let’s just say, you ever been around a good one?”

“I should’ve known. She didn’t give me a chance. And here I thought I’d bungled it.”

“Gonna go for round two?” Jack asked him.

Drew thought about that a minute. “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe I should wait until she gets a little more wine in her.”

Nate slapped a heavy hand on Drew’s shoulder. “That’s my niece, bud. I’ll be watching.”

“Sorry, bad joke. I’d never take advantage of her, don’t worry about that,” Drew protested. “But if she shoots me down twice, I could get a serious complex!”

D
REW NURSED HIS BEER
slowly and joked around with Jack and Nate over a plate of wings, but the subject of breakups had him thinking a bit about Penny. There were times he missed her, or at least he missed the idea of what he thought they would be.

He had met her while he was in med school. She was a fellow med student’s cousin and it had been a fix up. The first date had gone smoothly; the next seven dates in as many weeks went even better and before he knew it, he was dating Penny exclusively. They had so much in common, they grew on each other. She was an RN and he was studying medicine. She was pretty, had a good sense of humor, understood his work as he understood hers and in no time at all they had settled into a comfort zone that accommodated them both. And it didn’t hurt that the sex was satisfying. Everything seemed compatible.

Penny had been in charge of the relationship from the start and Drew didn’t have to think about it much, which suited him perfectly. He was a busy guy; he didn’t have a lot of time for flirtation or pursuit. Penny was very well-equipped to fill him in on their agenda and he was perfectly happy to go along. “Valentine’s Day is coming up,” she would say. “I guess we’ll be doing something special?”

Ding, ding, ding—he could figure that out easy. “Absolutely,” he would say. Then he’d get a reservation, buy a gift. Penny thought he was brilliant and sensitive and all was right with his world.

It had been working out effortlessly until he asked her to go to Southern California with him, to live with him. His residency in orthopedic surgery was beginning, he’d dated Penny exclusively for a couple of years and it seemed like the natural progression of things. “Not without an engagement ring,” she’d said. So he provided one. It had seemed reasonable enough.

But the move from Chico changed everything. It hadn’t gone well for Penny. She’d been out of her element, away from her job, friends and family, and Drew had been far too stressed and overworked to help her make the transition. She was lonely, needed attention, time, reassurance. And he had wanted to give it to her, but it was like squeezing water out of a rock. It wasn’t long before their only communication was in the form of arguing—make that fighting. Fights followed by days of not speaking or nights in which she cried into her pillow and wouldn’t take comfort from him, if he could stay awake long enough to give it.

Drew shook off the memory and finally said to Nate, “So, tell me about Sunny, who, if you don’t mind me saying, might be better named Stormy….”

“Well, for starters, jokes about her name don’t seem to be working just now,” Nate replied.

“Ahh,” he said. Drew was distracted by a sudden flash and saw that it was none other than Stormy Sunny herself with the camera, getting a shot of a couple in a toast. “What’s with the camera?”

“She’s a photographer, as a matter of fact. A good
one,” Nate said. “She started out studying business in college but dropped out before she was twenty-one to start her own business. My sister Susan, her mother, almost had a heart attack over that. But it turned out she knew exactly what she was doing. There’s a waiting list for her work.”

“Is that a fact?” he said, intrigued. “She seems kind of young…”

“Very young, but she’s been taking great pictures since she was in high school. Maybe earlier.”

“Where?”

“She lives in L.A. Long Beach, actually.”

Long Beach, Drew thought. Like next door! Of course, that didn’t matter if she wouldn’t even talk to him. But he wasn’t giving anything away. “Is she a little artsy-fartsy?” Drew asked.

Nate laughed. “Not at all—she’s very practical. But lately she’s been trying some new stuff, shooting the horses, mountains, valleys, roads and buildings. Sunrises, sunsets, clouds, et cetera.” Nate looked over at Sunny as she busily snapped pictures of a happy couple. “It’s kind of nice to see her taking pictures of people again.”

Drew watched Sunny focus, direct the pair with one hand while holding her camera with the other. Her face seriously lit up; her smile was alive and whatever it was she was saying caused her subjects to laugh, which was followed by several flashes. She was so animated as she took five or six more shots, then pulled a business card out of the pocket of her jeans and handed it to the couple. She was positively gorgeous when she wasn’t giving him the brush. Then she retreated to her spot by the hearth and put her camera down. He noticed that
the second she gave up the camera, her face returned to its seriousness. The sight of her was immediately obscured by partiers.

He wanted one of those business cards.

“Hey, buddy, you didn’t make out your resolution,” Jack said, passing him a slip of paper and pen. “That’s the price of admission.”

“I don’t usually do resolutions,” Drew said. “Well, except every morning when I resolve to fly under the radar of the senior residents.”

“Because?” Jack asked.

Sometimes Drew forgot that few people knew what the life of a junior resident was like. “Because they’re sociopaths with a mean streak.”

“Ah,” Jack said as if he bought that. “Maybe that’s your resolution—to avoid sociopaths? When you’ve written one, it goes in the pot here.”

“And then?” Drew asked.

“When you’re getting ready to leave, you can draw one—maybe you’ll get a better one than you wrote. Give you something new to strive for.”

Drew laughed. “I dunno. This is such a crazy idea,” he said. “What if the one I draw is to bike across the U.S.?”

Jack looked around. “Nah,” he said. “No danger of that around here. You could draw one that says to remember your annual mammogram, however. Now get on it,” he said, tapping the paper on the bar.

Chuckling, Drew wrote. Then he scratched it out. Thinking about the grumpy but beautiful woman in the corner he wrote “Start the new year by giving a new guy a chance.” Then he folded it in half and shoved it in his pocket; he asked for a new piece of paper. On his
second try he wrote “Don’t let past hurts ruin future possibilities.”

Then he took a bolstering swallow of his beer and said, “Excuse me a second.” And off he went to the other side of the room.

He stood in front of Sunny, smiled his handsomest smile and said, “So. You’re a photographer.”

She looked up at him, her expression deadpan. “Yes,” she said.

“You like being a photographer?” he asked.

Again there was that pregnant pause before she said, “Yes.”

“What do you like best about it?”

She thought for a moment. Then she said, “The quiet.”

He had to ask himself why in the world he was interested. She was beautiful, but Drew had never been drawn by beauty alone. He’d known lots of gorgeous women who fell short in other areas, thus killing his interest instantly. For a woman to really intrigue him she had to be fun, smart, good natured, energetic, driven by something besides her looks and above all,
positive.
So far this one, this Sunny, had only looks going for her and it was not enough. Still, for unknown reasons, he lingered. “The quiet,” he repeated. “Anything else?”

“Yes. It doesn’t require any other people. I can do it alone.”

“Just out of curiosity, are you always this unapproachable, or is it just at New Year’s Eve parties?”

She shrugged. “Pretty much always.”

“Gotcha. One last question. Will you take my picture?”

“For what occasion?” she asked.

Nothing came to mind. “Passport photo?” he attempted.

“Sorry. I don’t do passport photos.”

He smiled at her. “Well, Sunny—you’re in luck. Because that’s all I got. You are, as you obviously wish to be, on your own.”

O
H
, I’
M SUCH A BITCH
,
she thought as she watched Drew’s back weave through the people to return to the bar. When he sat up on the stool beside her uncle, she cringed in embarrassment. She adored her uncle Nate and knew how much he cared about her, how it had hurt him to see her in pain on what was supposed to have been her wedding day, how it killed him to see her struggle with it for so long afterward. But while she knew Nate had nothing but sympathy for her, she realized he was running short on patience with her bitterness and what could only be described as attitude a full year later.

He wasn’t the only one. Friends had tried to encourage her to let go of the heartache and move on. If she didn’t want to date again, fine, but being pissed off all the time was not only wearing on friendships, it was hurting business. And she was hearing a lot about the fact that she was only twenty-five! She wasn’t sure if twenty-five was so young it excused her for making such a mistake on Glen or if that meant she had decades left to find the right guy!

Then, right after she arrived in Virgin River, Annie had taken her aside, sat her down and said, “This rage isn’t going to help you get on with your life in a positive way, Sunny. You’re not the only one who’s been dumped. I found out the man I was supposed to marry
had three full-time girlfriends he lived with—each of us part time, of course.”

“How’d he manage that?” Sunny had asked, intrigued and astonished.

“He obviously kept a very careful calendar. He was in sales and traveled. When I thought he was selling farm equipment, he was actually with one of the other girlfriends.”

“Oh, my God! You must have wanted to
kill
him!”

“Sure. I was kind of hoping my dad or one of my brothers would do it for me, but when they didn’t I got past it. I realize I wasn’t left at the altar with a very expensive, non-refundable wedding to pay for, like you were. I can’t imagine the pain and humiliation of that, but even so, I was very angry. And now I’m so grateful that I found a way to get beyond that because if I hadn’t, I would never have given Nate a chance. And your uncle Nate is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

What Sunny wanted to tell Annie was that the pain and humiliation wasn’t the worst part—it was that her friends and family
pitied
her for being left. What was wrong with her, that he would do that?

She knew what was wrong, when she thought about it. Her nose was too long, her forehead too high, her chest small and feet big, her hips too wide, she hadn’t finished college and she took pictures for a living. That they were good pictures didn’t seem to matter—it wasn’t all that impressive. She sometimes veered into that territory of “if I had been a super model with a great body, he’d never have left me.” Intellectually
she knew that was nonsense, but emotionally she felt lacking in too many ways.

Instead she said to Annie, “Did you know? Did you ever have a hint that something was wrong?”

She shook her head. “Only when it was over, when I looked back and realized he never spent a weekend with me, and I was too trusting to wonder why he hadn’t ever asked me to join him on a business trip to one of the other towns where he stayed overnight on business. Oh, after it was all over, I had lots of questions. But at the time?” She shook her head. “I didn’t know anything was wrong.”

“Me either,” Sunny said.

“I probably didn’t want to know anything was wrong,” Annie added. “I don’t like conflict.”

Sunny didn’t say anything. She was pretty well acquainted with her own denial and that hurt just about as much as the hard truth.

“Well, there was one thing,” Annie corrected. “After it was all over I wondered if I shouldn’t have been more desperate to spend every moment with
him,
if I loved him so much. You know—Nate gets called out in the middle of the night pretty often, and I never make a fuss about it. But we both complain if we haven’t had enough time together. We need each other a lot. That never happened with Ed. I was perfectly fine when he wasn’t around. Should have tipped me off, I guess.”

No help there, Sunny thought. Glen had complained constantly of her Fridays through Sundays always being booked with shoots. There were times she worked a sixteen-hour day on the weekends, covering three weddings and receptions and a baptism. Slip in some engagement slide shows, photos of babies, whatever had
to be done for people who worked Monday through Friday and who only had weekends available. Then from Monday through Thursday she’d work like a dog editing and setting up proofs.

Glen was a California Highway Patrolman who worked swing shifts to have weekends off and she was always unavailable then.

She revisited that old argument—wait a minute! Here was a clue she hadn’t figured out at the time. Glen had a few years seniority with CHP, so why would he work swings just to have those weekends off when he knew she would be tied up with her clients the entire time? She’d been rather proud of the fact that it hadn’t taken her long to develop a strong clientele, to make incredibly good money for a woman her age—weddings were especially profitable. But she’d had to sacrifice her weekends to get and keep that success.

So why? It would have been easy for him to get a schedule with a Tuesday through Thursday, her lightest days, off. In fact, if he had been willing to take those days off, and work the day shift regularly, they could have gone to bed together every night. He said at the time that it suited his body clock, that he wasn’t a morning person. And he
liked
to go out on the weekends. He went out with “the boys.” The
boys?
Not bloody likely….

After being left at the church a couple of his groomsmen had admitted he’d been having his doubts about the big, legal, forever commitment. Apparently he’d worried aloud to them, but all he ever did was argue with her about it.
We don’t need all that! We could fly to Aruba, get married there, take a week of sailing, scuba diving…
He hadn’t said the commitment was
an issue, just the wedding—something Sunny and her mom were having a real party putting together. So she had said, “Try not to worry so much, Glen—you’ll get your week in Aruba on the honeymoon. Just be at the church on time, say your lines and we’ll be diving and sunning and sailing before you know it.”

Sunny shook her head in frustration. What was the point in figuring it out now? She grabbed her coat, her camera and headed out the door. The snow was still gently falling and she backed away from the town Christmas tree, snapping photos as she went. She zoomed in on some of the military unit patches used as decorations, caught snowflakes glistening against gold balls and white lights, captured angles of the tree until, finally, far enough away, she got the whole tree. If these came out the way she hoped, she might use them for something next Christmas—ads or cards or something.