Temptation Ridge (20 page)

“I will.” She grinned.

“Muriel, this house… It’s beyond my wildest expectations. You’re gifted. Your talent is unsurpassed. I just can’t express how impressed I am. And proud. I’m just so proud of you.”

“Thank you. I’m proud of me, too. We should have a drink and cigar.”

“I’d never have thought to bring cigars,” he said.

“Not to worry. I bought us a bottle of Pinch and box of
cigars. I’ll leave all the lights on in the house. We’ll sit on the bunkhouse porch, freeze to death, have a scotch and a Cuban and stare at the house. Is that brownish-lavender porch the best?”

“Cubans? You have Cubans?”

“I do. You don’t think Mike V. will arrest me, do you?”

“If he finds out, it’ll be tough to keep the local marines off your porch.”

She chuckled. “I want to have a housewarming after the furniture is in and pictures hung. Do you think anyone would come?”

He frowned. “You’re Muriel St. Claire. I think the whole town will come.”

“Really?” she asked, surprised. “That would be so wonderful.” Then her brow wrinkled as she thought it over. “What will I do for food?”

Luke and Shelby fell into the nice little pattern of new lovers, with Shelby sleeping over almost every night. Then she would start her day real early, going first to Walt’s stable to help with the horses, maybe have a ride and breakfast with him, shower and grab a change of clothes. Next she’d go to town where her main industry was keeping Mel’s professional life manageable. She helped in the clinic, sorted and filed, watched the kids. Luke marveled at her energy, her industry.

Luke and Art worked together on the cabins every day and Luke took great pride in the fact that Art was quite functional. He wasn’t a gourmet cook, but he could warm a nourishing dinner in the microwave a few nights a week, eating with Luke and Shelby the other nights. He showered and shaved daily, took good care of his teeth, laundered his clothes, fixed his bed every morning. Luke had stocked his
cupboards with decent food and nontoxic cleaning supplies. Art had fruit to add to his breakfast and lunch. He kept his bathroom and little kitchen spotless with spray cleaner.

Art was absolutely competent to live on his own, as long as he had someone trustworthy nearby in case he needed advice or ran into a problem, or maybe to remind him of things like, “Time to wash the sheets and towels, Art.” Luke told him that when the cabins were finished, Art could be the custodian. He’d make sure the trash was handled, that things were tidy, and they’d work together on upkeep, cleaning, yard maintenance, whatever needed fixing or painting.

“Do you miss your old friends at the group home?” Luke asked him.

He shrugged. “I miss Netta and Payne,” he said. “I miss my mom.” Then he smiled. “But I like it here by the river. I like my own house where I don’t have to sign up to use the washer.”

“You’re doing a great job for me, Art. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Luke,” he said, beaming proudly.

At the end of her day, Shelby would either meet Luke at Jack’s or pick up dinner and go straight to his house. They were together every day. They were outed. They were a couple and everyone in town knew it.

This was something Luke hadn’t thought about, this couple status. But the price of holding her through the night was this public recognition. People were nice enough not to make too many invasive comments, though there were lots of jokes about the water in Virgin River. It seemed plenty of men had made their way to the little town looking for peace and quiet, maybe some hunting and fishing, and found themselves tethered to a woman. Luke was able to chuckle and ignore them because it gave him
strange satisfaction to be connected to her in this way; he was oddly content to be able to put his arm around her in public, to not worry about being caught kissing on the porch. Shelby had him so loose and relaxed, he wasn’t likely to complain.

When it was obvious to the whole town that Luke and Shelby were together, it was time to bring Art out of the closet, introduce him around, give him a chance to make friends, even if they were only casual friends. Art had been out at the cabins less than two months and of all the residents of Virgin River, only Shelby and Paul had seen him, knew about him. They’d been cooperative about staying quiet while Luke had been paying attention to newspapers, radio and TV to see if Art was being looked for. There didn’t seem to be any missing persons bulletins.

Art already loved Shelby. If she had a short day at the clinic and the weather was nice, she would ride over to the cabins with Plenty in tow and put Art on the horse. He was like a one-hundred-and-ninety-pound ten-year-old and the guy’s sheer thrill with it made Luke laugh until he had to turn away to not offend. Luke started to take Art to the bar once in a while to buy him a cold drink, maybe dinner with Shelby. It held positively no surprise that he was accepted very kindly.

It was seeing Art on that horse that prompted Luke to buy some fishing gear for the man, an inexpensive rod and reel he could keep in his cabin. He taught Art to drop a line first. Casting was more of a challenge, but Art loved learning new things. The river was close enough for Art to get in a little fishing when he wasn’t working. He took to it right away. It made Luke happy to see the big guy wander down to the river on his own, independent and content.

There was a small town party out at Muriel St. Claire’s
house that Luke, Shelby and Art attended together. It was newly remodeled, or as the general insisted on pointing out,
restored.
Indeed, it looked like a brand-new hundred-year-old house. Even the pictures, which she insisted were of family members, were antique. The oldest were tintypes. Besides a modern sectional and chair, everything was vintage, even the huge, antique wardrobe that concealed her TV and stereo equipment.

Luke was astonished by the work she’d done, impressed, but some of the townfolk, especially the women, were looking for something a lot more Hollywood. Most of them already had all that old stuff—it had been passed down from generation to generation and they took it for granted. Of course, their old stuff hadn’t been pampered and restored like Muriel’s, but they were small-town folk and lusted after more modern furnishings. What they wanted to know was, had she dated Clint Eastwood or Jack Nicholson? When she replied she hardly knew them, though she’d been in films with them, they seemed disappointed in her. For a movie star, she wasn’t all that provocative.

At least a hundred people wandered through her open house and she beamed every time surprise was expressed that she would prefer this old farmhouse to a big marble palace in Hollywood.

Life was exactly as he liked it. Being a man, he wasted no time thinking deeply about it; feelings weren’t exactly something men spent a lot of time pondering. All he wanted was for nothing to change.

To that end, he called his mother and explained that he wouldn’t be able to come to Phoenix for Thanksgiving. It turned out it would only be Sean this year anyway; Colin
was in Iraq, Paddy out to sea and Aiden was pulling call at the hospital over Thanksgiving to get Christmas off. His mother was disappointed; she hadn’t seen him since August. So he told her about Art. Of course, Maureen Riordan told Luke to bring Art with him. “I don’t think I can do that, Mother,” Luke said. “He’s on the run from a group home because someone abused him. I’m pretty sure I’m not breaking the law by giving him shelter, but I don’t think it would be a good idea to take him out of state. At least not until I’ve had a chance to get his situation sorted out a little, which is going to take some investigating and probably legal help. It’s just one Thanksgiving. I’ll probably see you at Christmas. Be a big girl. Don’t nag.”

“I don’t nag,” she said.

“Oh, you nag.” He laughed. “There’s no mercy in it.”

“I don’t want you to be alone on Thanksgiving,” she said.

“I’ll be fine, Mother. Don’t worry.”

But Luke wasn’t going to be alone. He was going to the general’s house, and he was bringing Art. The invitation had come through Shelby and he recognized right away that it was mandatory. He’d rather not get any more enmeshed with the family, but it was impossible to avoid. When it came to living in a place like Virgin River, you were enmeshed the day you hit town. It was all right—a holiday dinner wasn’t too much to ask. Art was welcome and Luke happened to like the general and the Haggertys. He couldn’t deny that if Shelby had been his young cousin or niece, he might feel just as protective as they did, yet they’d managed to act as though they respected her choice and treated him fine.

Just as he was coming to accept it all, Luke’s well-organized life was derailed by a phone call from his brother Sean.

“So, you put in a no-show for the turkey,” Sean said. “What’s up with that? You’re stateside, you’re not that far away….”

“I have things to do here, Sean,” he said. “And I explained to Mother—I can’t leave Art and I can’t take him on a trip.”

“So I heard. And that’s your only reason?”

“What else?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, as if he did know what else. “Well then, you’ll be real happy to hear this—I’m bringing Mother to Virgin River for Thanksgiving.”

Luke was dead silent for a moment. “What!” Luke nearly shouted into the phone. “Why the hell would you do that?”

“Because you won’t come to Phoenix. And she’d like to see this property you’re working on. And the helper. And the
girl.
”

“You aren’t doing this to me,” Luke said in a threatening tone. “Tell me you aren’t doing this to me!”

“Yeah, since you can’t make it to Mom’s, we’re coming to you. I thought that would make you
sooo
happy,” he added with a chuckle in his voice.

“Oh God,” he said. “I don’t have room for you. There’s not a hotel in town.”

“You lying sack of shit. You have room. You have two extra bedrooms and six cabins you’ve been working on for three months. But if it turns out you’re telling the truth, there’s a motel in Fortuna that has some room. As long as Mom has the good bed in the house, clean sheets and no rats, everything will be fine.”

“Good. You come,” Luke said. “And then I’m going to kill you.”

“What’s the matter? You don’t want Mom to meet the girl? The helper?”

“I’m going to tear your limbs off before you die!”

But Sean laughed. “Mom and I will be there Tuesday afternoon. Buy a big turkey, huh?”

Luke was paralyzed for a moment. Silent and brooding.

He had lived a pretty wild life, excepting that couple of years with Felicia, when he’d been temporarily domesticated. He’d flown helicopters in combat and played it loose with the ladies, taking whatever was consensually offered. His bachelorhood was on the adventurous side. His brothers were exactly like him; maybe like their father before them, who hadn’t married until the age of thirty-two. Not exactly ancient, but for the generation before theirs, a little mature to begin a family of five sons. They were frisky Irish males. They all had taken on a lot: dared much, had no regrets, moved fast.

But one thing none of them had
ever
done was have a woman who was not a wife in bed with them under the same roof with their
mother.

“I’m thirty-eight years old and I’ve been to war four times,” he said to himself, pacing in his small living room, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “This is my house and she is a guest. She can disapprove all she wants, work her rosary until she has blisters on her hands, but this is not up to her.”

Okay, then she’ll tell everything, was his next thought. Every little thing about me from the time I was five, every young lady she’d had high hopes for, every indiscretion, my night in jail, my very naked fling with the high-school vice-principal’s daughter…. Everything from speeding tickets to romances. Because that’s the way the typical dysfunctional Irish family worked—they bartered in secrets. He could either behave the way his mother expected, which she considered proper and gentlemanly and he con
sidered tight-assed and useless, or he could throw caution to the wind, do things his way, and explain all his mother’s stories to Shelby later. Including the story about Felicia.

It really didn’t make sense for Luke to expect his mother to be a prude. She was obviously much too with it for that. She was a beautiful, statuesque sixty-one-year-old woman who’d been widowed at fifty-three when Luke was only thirty, and remained single and devoted to her military sons. She still had her hair dyed the flaming red of her youth. With some ambivalence, he sometimes wished his mother would find a romantic interest that would take her mind off her boys and their personal lives.

Maureen Riordan was smart, energetic and funny. She was fearless; despite her commitment to her Catholic faith, she had some rebellious ideas. After five sons in ten years, the priest had told her to keep the faith and reject birth control, and she had told him to do something to himself that was never again repeated. But there hadn’t been a sixth child. Getting down to it, she didn’t have that many flaws—just this rigid set of principles she could be coerced into being quiet about if her demands were met. And there was her relentless dissatisfaction with her sons’ inability to marry successfully and bring her grandchildren. That was getting real old.

The boys ranked thusly: Luke, Colin, Aiden, Sean, Patrick. Ages thirty-eight to thirty, down the line. All bachelors. Maureen might be getting a little bewildered and desperate.

As it stood, they had a firm family law that had evolved through bitter fights—no one told embarrassing or family secrets to newcomers without paying, and paying dearly. Frankly, Luke thought the story about his mother standing up to the priest about birth control was hilarious—but
she
didn’t find it funny. And a trade was a trade. He could keep
her quiet by respecting her principles and not telling stories on her. He could keep his mother’s mouth shut by not sleeping with Shelby while she was in town. For
five
nights.

He was going to have to kill Sean.

“Shelby?” Luke began while she relaxed in his arms in the aftermath of yet another amazing sexual experience. “There’s a complication with Thanksgiving.”