Temptation Ridge (9 page)

“No. Not yet,” she said. Then she shrugged. “Sorry if I’m teasing you.”

He pulled away and dismounted. “Shelby, I don’t think
you’re sorry. I think you’re in control here, trying to make me sorry,” he said, but he couldn’t help smiling.

“See you tonight. For a beer.”

“Maybe.”

“Come on,” she laughed. “It’s not possible I’m more brave than you. You’ve been in combat how many times?”

“This is so different. This is a small town. You’re a general’s only niece.”

“Yeah,” she said, taking Plenty’s reins with a naughty grin. “Man up.”

Luke manned up enough to get himself to that little bar five nights running. When the general was with his niece, Luke shoved off before dinner to bring Art and himself some of Preacher’s fixings, including pie, which Art lived for. When Shelby was alone, he stayed. It had been about a hundred years since he’d played kissy-face with a girl without groping her, but he was able to do that with Shelby and even look forward to it. It wouldn’t be much longer before he pressed the suggestion of more, the talk, and finally the event, the thought of which sent sparks shooting through his body.

During the days, he worked hard. He always made sure Art was set up for eating reasonably good food—his cereal and fruit for breakfast, his sandwiches for lunch and at least a microwavable TV dinner that included vegetables for supper when Luke was absent for the evening.

Almost a week had passed since the bear scare. Luke had since pushed all the furniture into the dining room of his house and was now sanding hardwood floors in the living room. He’d just started thinking about a shower and a refreshing beer at Jack’s with Shelby, hopefully accompanied by a few meaningful kisses, when he heard the
blast of a horn. He turned off the sander and went to the porch. His brother Sean pulled right up to the porch and jumped out of his Jeep SUV, all grins and a bright eyes. Luke frowned. This wasn’t at all what he had in mind.

“Hey, buddy,” Sean called. “Wassup?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I snagged a few days out of the squadron and thought I’d pleasure you with my company. Have a look at what you’ve got going on here.”

All Luke could think about was how much longer it would be until he could be alone with Shelby. “Good,” he said without enthusiasm. “That’s good. Why didn’t you call?”

“Since when do I call? You leaving town or something?”

“Nah. Just put in a long day…”

“Get cleaned up. Let’s go over to the coast. Have a couple, see if we can find a couple.”

Code for couple of beers, couple of girls. “Go ahead, buddy. I’m not into that tonight.”

“Since when? Come on.”

“I’m just going into town for a beer. There’s a little bar there. Nice little family place. You can come with me or go to the coast on your own. Or there’s a closer place you can try—a bar in Garberville. I’ve seen girls there.”

“Sounds really exciting. What are you, getting old?” Sean asked.

Luke frowned. This was not great timing. He was getting close to closing the deal with a twenty-five-year-old beauty and who shows up but the younger brother who is all of thirty-two. The hotshot spy-plane pilot. Younger, better-looking, plenty of money, exciting life. An
officer.
The general would no doubt prefer that. He looked Sean up and down—he was tan, had dark blond hair, a dimpled
bad-boy smile and no shortage of lines for picking up women. Good lines; Luke had actually borrowed some of them.

“You are
not
happy to see me,” Sean said. “What’s going on?”

“You going to work while you’re here?” Luke asked testily.

“In daylight. When the sun goes down, I’d like to enjoy myself a little. I sense that’s going to be a problem around here.”

“Tonight, I’m going to Jack’s. We’ll talk about tomorrow night tomorrow,” he said, heading for the house.

“Shew,” Sean said, annoyed. “This is going to be wonderful.” Just then Art stepped into the doorway of cabin number three with his broom. “Um, who is that?” Sean asked Luke.

“Art, come here, buddy,” Luke called. Art walked down toward the porch. “Art, this is my brother Sean. Sean, this is Art. He’s helping out around here. He’s sleeping in one of the cabins.”

“Hey,” Sean said, putting out a hand.

“Hey. Sean,” Art said, shaking his hand. Then Art turned and went back to the cabin he was sweeping up.

“Luke, what’s going on around here?”

“Just getting the job done, pal. Art turned up looking for a place to stay and he works hard all day long for room and board. But we’re not telling anyone he’s here. He’s going low profile for now. On the run from a bad group home.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Sean said.

Forty minutes later Luke and Sean were in Luke’s truck, on the way down the river to the town. When Luke pulled up in front of Jack’s, he saw General Booth’s Tahoe parked
there, and hoped Shelby was inside with him. He put the truck in Park, but before turning off the ignition, he said to his brother, “If you get a whiff of anything in there that has my scent on it, back away. If you touch it, you’re a dead man.”

Sean grinned. “Okay, now I’m catching on. Oh man, this is going to be fun.” He jumped out of the truck and bounded up the stairs, clearly dying of curiosity.

Luke was right behind him, but almost plowed into him. Sean stopped short right inside the door. Walt and Shelby were sitting up at the bar and both turned at the sound of someone entering. Luke put a firm hand, a reminder, on Sean’s shoulder. “Holy shit,” Sean whispered. Luke gave his shoulder a little shake and pushed him forward.

“General Booth,” Luke said. “Shelby McIntyre. Meet my brother Sean.”

“Sir,” Sean said. “Miss.”

Standing behind him as he was, Luke couldn’t see Sean’s dimpled grin, but knew it was huge. It made Luke’s frown a little deeper. God, he thought, why couldn’t I have had sisters?

Jack put up a couple of beers and Sean began to entertain himself at Luke’s expense. “So, I invited my brother to go over to the coast to have a beer, check out the women, and what does he tell me? Not interested in doing that—he wants to go to this little bar in Virgin River. But he doesn’t tell me why. What an incredible coincidence that you happen to be here, Miss McIntyre.”

She laughed at him, finding him darling and playful, two things Luke definitely was not. “Please, it’s just Shelby. He knew I’d be here. It’s almost a standing date.”

“Is it, now? Is there another one of you at home?”

“I’m afraid not,” she said. “But I understand there are more brothers.”

“Aiden, Colin and Paddy. But I’m the richest and most handsome.”

“And the biggest pain in the ass,” Luke inserted.

“Where do you fall in the pack?” Shelby asked.

“Number four. Luke’s the oldest.” He looked over his shoulder at Luke. “He’s very old, you know. And I think my family and your family were at war for thousands of years,” he teased. He sipped his beer. “Yeah, the McIntyre-Riordan wars. Sure am glad that’s over.”

“And none of you married?”

“At last count, two of them tried it and blew it. They insist it wasn’t their fault,” he said, grinning.

Luke was going to take him home and beat the shit out of him.

But Shelby was loving it. The sly grin on the general’s face was unmistakable and the amused crinkle at the corners of Jack’s eyes suggested he was getting too big a kick out of this as well.

And right on cue, the others began to file into the bar. Luke dutifully introduced everyone to Sean. After a few minutes Sean leaned across the bar and said to Jack, “Look at these women, man. What is this place? Stepford?”

“All taken, buddy. Unless you can get this fresh young thing away from your older brother.”

The general and Sean carried on a lengthy conversation about the Riordan boys. “How’d you get an entire military family?” Walt asked.

“I don’t know, sir,” Sean answered. “No imagination, I guess. Luke went first, right out of high school, but he scored a warrant officer promotion, flight school, and made it look fun. Big Irish-Catholic family like ours with a Da who’s an electrician, he wasn’t sending the lot of us to college, so we had to come up with alternate plans.
ROTC, military scholarship, active duty—whatever. But it turns out I like the life.”

Then Shelby told Sean about merely being here for a visit, and for the first time Luke had a catastrophic thought—what if he wasn’t quite ready for her to leave when she decided to go? He’d spent so much mental energy on the disaster that would befall him when he was through with her, it hadn’t occurred to him it might just go the opposite way.

If Luke was quieter than usual, it could be explained by the fact that Sean never shut up. That, and the fear he was losing a major chance with Shelby to this upstart who would be gone in a few days. A few
long
days.

Tables were pushed together as those present collected for dinner, and Sean grabbed the chair next to Shelby’s, entertaining her, making her laugh. Luke didn’t make her laugh so much. He wasn’t the comedian Sean was to start with, plus he was sulking. Sean stole the show. So after the plates were picked up, Luke stepped outside into the cool fall night.

He wasn’t out there long before she joined him. She gave him a little smile and shook her head. “You’re so unhappy,” she said, humor in her voice.

“I hate him,” Luke said miserably.

“Come on,” she said. “You don’t have to be so cranky. I like your brother.” She got a little closer to him. “You’re the jealous type, I guess.”

“I guess,” he grumbled. Truthfully, he was feeling old. Feeling thirty-eight, soon to be thirty-nine. Feeling less educated than Sean, boring and retired.

“Seems a little ridiculous for you to be jealous when you keep telling me I’m making a big mistake flirting with you.”

“I was going to stop saying that pretty soon,” he told her.

“I wasn’t exactly fooled,” she said. “You tell me that and then rattle my bones with a kiss that goes all the way to my belly button. You’re kind of obvious, Luke.” Shelby did something that a year ago, even a month ago, she couldn’t envision. But she’d had a couple of glasses of wine and Sean had made her laugh the night away even if Luke had not. She walked right up to him and put her arms around his waist. His arms went instantly around her. “It’s been a while since you kissed me like that. Couple of days,” she reminded him.

Finally, after all this time, he smiled. “Believe me, I know.”

“And now you’re in a bad mood.”

“It has nothing to do with kissing you. Kissing you is good.”

“Why not try that again? See if it’s still good?”

His arms tightened around her. “What about the general?”

She laughed. “It would probably thrill him. He’s been awful worried about my arrested development. I’m sure he thinks I’m pathetic and manless.”

“You’re not.”

“Pathetic?”

“Or manless,” he said, covering her mouth in a powerful and deep kiss, a possessing kiss. He moved over her mouth and her lips opened for him. It briefly ran through his mind that he had to have her this minute, but first he should remind her, she couldn’t count on him for the long haul. At best, it would be a fling. A fabulous, satisfying fling. Instead of talking to her about that, he received her small tongue into his mouth and moaned his pleasure. He didn’t want it ever to end and he concentrated on making it the longest kiss in history, hoping to get caught, hoping everyone would go on notice—this was his girl. His woman. He could feel her firm breasts pressing against his
chest and knew nothing would feel quite so good as to have one in his hand. At length, he released her lips. But didn’t let them get too far.

“Your brother is very cute,” she said against his lips.

“I’m going to take him home and beat the shit out of him.”

It made her giggle to hear that. “Would you two like to go for a ride tomorrow?” she asked. “We have another good riding horse. A beautiful Appaloosa named Shasta. All spotty and gentle.”

“I don’t want him to go anywhere with us.”

“Luke,” she scolded.

“Seriously. I want him out of here. I have things to do with you.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Riding and beers and dinner and…stuff.”

“You better be patient,” she said.

“How patient?” he asked.

She gave him a peck on the lips. “How long will Sean be here?”

“Seriously, I’m going to kill him and hide the body.”

“How long?” she demanded, though she smiled.

“He says a few days. But he doesn’t know about his impending murder.”

“How about tomorrow morning? After it warms up a little bit. Come to my house and we’ll ride along the river.”

“Is that what you really want?”

“I think it would be very neighborly of me.”

He sighed. “All right. But don’t laugh at his jokes. It makes me crazy.”

W
alt gave Shelby and Luke a little time alone on the bar’s porch. Not too much time, though. He walked outside noisily. He briefly glared at Luke, just to see if he could make him tremble in guilt and fear. To Luke’s credit, he didn’t. But he did pull his arm from around Shelby’s shoulders slowly, reluctantly. So, there it was. Walt had suspected.

“I’m headed out,” Walt said. “Coming now or later, Shelby?”

“I’ll go with you, Uncle Walt.”

On the way home Walt said to Shelby, “I bet those Riordan boys were a handful to raise.” Shelby only sighed. Dreamily, Walt thought.

Once Shelby was dropped off at home, Walt said he’d be going over to Muriel’s place for a nightcap. He had a couple of things in the Tahoe already—a surprise for Muriel.

He loved that Muriel knew the sound of his Tahoe engine, his boots on the wooden planks of her porch, his knock. “Come on in, Walt.” It gave him a crazy lift, that there couldn’t possibly be any other caller. He walked in,
shifted his stuff to under one arm so he could greet the pups, who would not leave him alone until they had a piece of him. She was wearing a comfy sweat suit, sitting on her bed, what looked suspiciously like a script in her lap and her reading glasses balanced on her nose. “What have you got there?” she asked.

“A little entertainment I didn’t want to get into alone.” He put a portable DVD player beside her on the bed along with four DVDs he’d gone to a great deal of trouble to find. Not so many of her films were available on DVD.

She fanned through them. “Oh, Walt!” she exclaimed. “What did you do?” Then she flipped one aside. “Not this one. I’m naked in this one.”

“Muriel, I’ve seen you naked. It’s a brilliant sight.”

“I know, but you’ve only seen me naked in the dark while we’re trying to keep the dogs off the bed. In this I’m naked with an actor, a director, an entire film crew and I think everyone from janitorial to the roach coach that brings lunch.”

He sat on the edge of the bed. “Is that hard to do? Get naked like that?”

She made a face. “You won’t get this, but it’s easier for me to do that than it was to get naked in front of you. I couldn’t care less what those people think of me—it was just work. It was right for the script or I would have declined.” She shrugged and added, “Plus, my parents were dead.”

He put a little kiss on her lips. “It was hard to take your clothes off for me?”

“It was,” she admitted. “I wanted to live up to your expectations. I’m getting better at it since you decided to be insatiable. Are you sure you’re sixty-two? You certainly haven’t slowed down much.”

“I feel twenty years younger with you. And you not only lived up to my expectations, you pretty much blew my mind.” He picked up the rejected DVD. “Let’s watch this one first.”

It made her laugh.

“Is that a script?” he asked, glancing at the sheaf of pages she held.

“Yeah. Don’t worry, it’s crap.”

“Good. Muriel, you have to start coming to Jack’s for dinner with us. It’s getting more interesting by the day. You wouldn’t want to miss it.”

“Really?” she asked, sitting up and crossing her legs in front of her.

“My innocent little Shelby has picked out a man. I’m sure she’s made a rash choice, he’s too much for her—a thirty-eight-year-old roughneck who flew Black Hawks for almost twenty years. He looks like he could take apart a big gang of Huns with his bare hands. But when he looks at her, sins of many varieties glitter in his eyes. And I scare the hell out of him—a thing of beauty. Well, tonight he showed up with his younger brother, who was a surprise visitor—better-looking, funnier, a lot more socially acute, more sure of himself around Shelby…” He laughed. “Almost caused the roughneck to take his own life. You don’t want to miss too much more of this stuff.”

“Shelby picked out this guy?” she asked. “This older guy?”

“Oh, there was no question about it. I suspect it was almost the second she saw him.”

“But he’s a roughneck. How do you feel about that?”

Walt leaned over and took off his boots. He straightened and looked at her with those scary general’s eyes. “If he does anything to hurt her, I’m going to kill him.”

Muriel shook her head and pulled the DVD out of the sleeve and loaded it in the portable player. “Shelby must be very grateful,” she said facetiously.

He climbed up next to her, leaning back against the wall, stretching out his long legs, shooing first Buff and then Luce off the bed. “I think she’s secretly enjoying his fear. I can’t wait for this movie.”

“It’s a chick flick,” she said.

“Clint Eastwood’s in it,” he said, settling back. “I like Clint Eastwood.”

“You won’t like him in this. He’s romantic. He doesn’t blow anyone’s brains out or say ‘Make my day’ even once.”

“But you took your clothes off in front of him. I want to see the look on his face.”

“Well,” Muriel said, “if you look very closely you might see an expression that approaches oblivion. He’s seen a huge number of actresses in the nude, and remains very much in control of his emotions. He wasn’t tempted in the least.”

“Poor fool.” Walt pushed Play.

“Are you determined to watch this?” she asked.

“I can’t wait.”

“This is going to bore me to death,” she said tiredly, leaning back against her pillows and yawning.

“Want me to wake you up for the naked part?” Walt asked her.

“Wake me up when
you’re
naked,” she said, yawning again.

Mel received a very important phone call at the clinic. She hung up, took a deep breath, looked at her watch: 10:00 a.m. She picked up the phone and called Shelby, but there was no answer at the ranch—they could be out riding. She called Brie. “Hi. I need a sitter. I can try to find Jack if you’re—”

“I just saw him leave the bar in his truck,” Brie said. “I’ll come and get the kids, how’s that?”

“Thanks. I have an errand and could be a few hours.”

After hanging up, she went into Doc Mullins’s office. “I did it,” she said. “I got a county rehab placement for Cheryl Chreighton.”

“How’d you manage that?” he asked, impressed in spite of himself.

“It wasn’t easy. I had to make a hundred phone calls. It would have been infinitely easier if she had committed a crime and could blame it on booze. She could have gotten treatment in sentencing. This was way harder.”

“She have any idea you did this?”

“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “I didn’t want to give her time to think about it. She’d just get drunk and change her mind. But if I blindside her, get her over there and they dry her out and get her in the program, she has a chance.”

“Exactly one,” he stressed.

“Yeah, I’ll never be able to pull that off again if she relapses. So—I’m going over there. I’ll take your truck and leave you the Hummer for patients.”

“Jack’s truck would be a better ride,” he said.

“Can’t do that,” she insisted. Jack and Cheryl had history. There was a time, long before Mel, that Cheryl had a fierce and embarrassing crush on Jack, and Jack had to put her down rather harshly. “I can’t get Jack or even his truck involved. It might send the wrong message. Besides, I keep reliving that nightmare of riding to the hospital in the back of your pickup with a patient, holding a bag of Ringer’s over my head. I’ll take your truck and leave you the Hummer,” she said, holding out her hand for the keys.

“Good luck,” he said, handing them over.

After Brie had taken the kids back to her RV, Mel drove
a few short blocks to the house she now knew to be the Chreightons’. It was in disrepair, which several of the houses on this block seemed to be. People tended to get used to things like peeling paint, sagging roofs. Plus, this was not a family with money. No one worked but Dad, and he only worked when there was work, piecemeal, probably with no benefits.

She knocked on the door and it was a long time before a morbidly obese woman answered. She had never seen Cheryl Chreighton’s mother before, which in a town this size was incredibly strange, but it was apparent why—the woman had probably not been out of the house for many months, perhaps years. She had a cigarette in her yellowed fingers and a frown on her face. She answered the door with a barking hack. Mel gave her time to catch her wheezing breath.

“Is Cheryl at home?” she asked.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Mel Sheridan,” she said. “I’m the nurse-practitioner and midwife. I work with Doc Mullins.”

“You’re the one,” she said, looking Mel up and down. “Jack’s woman.”

“Yeah, that’s me. So. She here?”

“Sleeping it off,” the woman said, turning to waddle back into the house, leaving Mel to follow.

“Can you get her up for me?” Mel asked, letting herself in despite the lack of invitation.

“I can try,” she said. Mel followed the woman into the little kitchen, which was obviously where she had set up camp. There was a collection of newspapers and magazines, stained coffee cups and empty Coke cans, an overflowing ashtray, an opened box of doughnuts, a small TV sitting on the counter. Mrs. Chreighton went into a room
off the kitchen, a crude add-on in the back of the house. The door didn’t close, didn’t seem to have a mechanism for closing—there was a hole where the doorknob should be.

Mel heard her in there, yelling, “Cheryl! Cheryl! Cheryl! There’s some woman here to see you! Cheryl!” After a bit of that, there was some muffled protest. Mrs. Chreighton came back into the kitchen, went back to her chair, which sagged under her weight.

It was a household of addiction, Mel thought. Mom is hooked on food and cigarettes, Cheryl’s hooked on alcohol, and Dad’s drug of choice was anyone’s guess. He was probably hooked on these two women and their problems.

Cheryl appeared in the doorway of her bedroom, wearing yesterday’s clothes, straggly hair hanging in her face, her eyes swollen and barely open. Mel took a breath. “Got a minute?” she asked.

“What for?” Cheryl asked.

“Let’s step outside and talk,” Mel said. She walked out the front door, leaving Cheryl to follow. Mel stood on the sidewalk in front of the house until Cheryl came out and stood on the front step. “How drunk are you right now?” Mel asked her.

“I’m okay,” she answered, rubbing her fingers across her scalp, threading fingers through her limp and greasy hair.

“You have any interest in getting sober? Staying sober?”

“I do sometimes. I don’t drink a lot of the time…”

“I can get you in treatment, Cheryl. Get you detoxed and cleaned up and in a program. You’d get twenty-eight days of sobriety therapy and a real good chance of going straight, off the booze. But you have to decide right now.”

“I don’t know…”

“This is your one shot, Cheryl. I’ll take you, check you in. The county will pick up the tab, but you only get this one chance. If you say no right now, that’s it. That’s all I can do.”

“Who told you to do this?” she asked.

“No one told me. I thought you could use a little help, so I found it for you. All by myself. And no, I haven’t even mentioned it to Jack. You could try this. You know you can’t do it on your own.”

“You ask my mom?”

“I haven’t asked anyone. You’re over twenty-one, aren’t you? You want help? Go shower and pack a bag—you don’t need much. They have washers and dryers. Clean sheets and towels. Healthy food. And a lot of people just like you who are trying to sober up. It’s hard for everyone, but they’re the experts and if anyone can help you, they can.”

She looked at her feet, her dirty, unlaced boots. “I get the shakes real bad sometimes,” she said.

“Just about everyone does. They have medicine to get you through the first days.” Mel looked at her watch. “I’m not hanging around while you think about it.”

“Where is this place?” she asked.

“Eureka.”

Cheryl shuffled her feet a little bit. Finally she lifted her head. “Okay,” she said.

“Fine. Go shower and pack. I’ll be back for you in thirty minutes.”

She came back and picked up Cheryl, who carried her belongings in a brown grocery bag. She had cleaned up; her hair was washed but only towel dried. She probably didn’t own a blow-dryer. She smelled of soap and a touch of liquor—a little nip to help her get into the truck, Mel suspected.

“Did you tell your parents where you’re going?” Mel asked.

Cheryl shrugged. “My mom. I told my mom.”

“And is she glad you’re going?”

Cheryl shrugged. She looked away from Mel as she answered. “She said it’s probably a waste of time and money.”

Mel waited for Cheryl to look back at her. Then she said, “No. It’s not.” She took a breath. “Come on, let’s get going.”

They didn’t talk much on the long drive to Eureka, but Mel did learn that Cheryl had been at a cousin’s house in some other mountain town for the past year until her father brought her home. And Cheryl had had some delusional and grandiose aspirations—she’d wanted to join the Peace Corps, travel to foreign lands, be a nurse, a teacher, a veterinarian. Instead, she drank her dreams away. She didn’t have any friends in Virgin River anymore, just her mother and father.

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t feel like talking about,” Mel began, “but I’m curious. I know you don’t go to Jack’s. How did you manage to get liquor?”

“Hmm,” Cheryl started. “There’s a liquor store in Garberville, but usually my dad would get me something to keep me from driving his truck.”

“Ah. I understand,” Mel said.

“I try to stop all the time,” Cheryl said. “But if I get shaky and crazy, my dad takes care of it. Just enough to get me straight.”

So Dad was the enabler, Mel thought.

The aftercare was going to be a huge problem, Mel realized. Because Cheryl had nowhere to go but back home to her parents, who seemed unable to support her in getting healthy. That would have to be her sponsor’s challenge—maybe they would find a place for her in Eureka where she could work, live, go to meetings, get a grip on sobriety before landing back in Virgin River, doomed.

It was late afternoon by the time Mel got back to town. She went into the clinic to give Doc his keys.

“Mission accomplished?” he asked.