Okay, this was more proof in Aiden’s mind that she was a liar and a con. Part of that divorce decree demanded that she resume the use of her maiden name—Kovacevic. And yet she was still using his name? How long had she really known the divorce hadn’t worked? And had she had anything to do with that?
“We don’t get cell reception in the mountains, Annalee,” he said as calmly as possible. “My sister-in-law is in labor and I’m going to the hospital with them. There are some nice motels in Fortuna—go there. If you’re anywhere near Virgin River, I’ll get a restraining order. I’ll call you when I’m free to talk.”
She shook her head and tears poured out of her large blue eyes. “Why are you so cruel?” she asked him. “This isn’t my fault. None of this is my fault.”
“You’re supposed to be using your maiden name,” he said. “Not Riordan. You’re just playing me again, Annalee, and you’d better move on. I mean it.”
“Oh, Aiden…” She let her chin drop and she cried, placing trembling hands over her face.
He just stood in front of her, hands in his pockets. When she looked up, her tearstained face looking for all the world authentic, he said, “Save it. I don’t buy it. Now, get out of here.”
He heard his mother gasp in shock. Annalee lifted her chin and said, “All right, Aiden. I’ll go. Please just take care of the divorce. You have my phone number and e-mail address if there’s a problem.”
“Fine. Go. Now.” Then he watched as Annalee bravely turned, got in her late-model Lexus and backed away from Luke’s house until she could turn around.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you speak to another human being like that in my life,” Maureen said, clearly appalled. “Especially a woman. A woman in tears.”
“Not just any woman,” he said without looking at his mother. “Sean, I’m going to the hospital—Luke wants me to be there. It’s not as though I can do anything—maybe he wants someone who can help him understand how and why things are happening. I’ll take you, Mom, if you want to ride with me. Or if you don’t think you can stand my company, George can take you.”
“I don’t think George wants to sit around a hospital, waiting for a baby to come, and I won’t miss it. Besides, I’d like a chance to talk to you.”
He shook his head a little bit. “I don’t think there’s any possible way I can satisfy your curiosity, but I’ll tell you what I can.” He turned to his brother. “Sean, please hear me on this—make sure Annalee isn’t hanging around here. She’s destructive. I wouldn’t dare try to predict what she might do next.”
“Aiden,” Maureen began, “she’s just a slight little woman who—”
“I won’t let her hang around,” Sean said.
“The thing you have to remember about her—no lie is too big a lie. Her stories have been so extraordinary, I think she believes them. I’m not even sure where she grew up—not in this country, that’s for sure. Russia or maybe Bosnia—probably a place of grave unrest. The lying and manipulations—it might be something she learned in childhood, a survival thing. It’s pathological…it’s automatic for her. I’m not telling you that to make an excuse for her, but so you’ll be on your guard. She’s very convincing.”
He felt his mother’s hand on his shoulder. “What kind of lies, Aiden?” she asked him. “Do you think she’d lie about wanting another chance?”
He looked at his mother levelly, his expression angry. “Absolutely. She’d lie about anything, Mom,” he tried to say gently. “She has lied about anything.”
Annalee already had a little hotel room, though it was not in Fortuna. She was staying in Garberville for the time being, but not under the name Annalee Riordan. And she wasn’t alone, but Aiden didn’t need to know that. Annalee was with Mujo, her partner in every sense of the word.
Annalee drove around the countryside for a little while, then finally pulled into the little town of Virgin River. She sat in her car, refreshed her makeup and made sure her hair was just so before walking into the little bar at the center of town. It was a crapshoot—she had to choose between the bar, church or medical clinic. Since Luke’s truck was not outside the clinic, she assumed they had not gone there to have the baby.
Baby. She wished she’d had a baby with Aiden. That was a major miscalculation of hers, not having a baby. That would have been a much better long-term arrangement. But at the time they’d married and divorced she’d been so young, the very idea of being tied down to an infant made her feel claustrophobic. Truthfully, it still made her cringe—she wasn’t crazy about kids. But—she could have let him have the kid, then come back regularly to discuss taking over custody…That thought made her smile. An arrangement like that would be like an annuity.
She walked into the bar and, wearing her prettiest smile, jumped up on a stool in front of one of the best-looking bartenders she’d ever seen in her life. “Hi,” she said cheerily.
“Hello, there. You must be lost.”
“No,” she said with a laugh, shaking her head. “Not in the least. But my timing is really off today. I was just visiting family and almost the second I arrived, my cousin-in-law was in labor, heading off to the hospital to have her baby, and the entire family was following. To tell the truth, I wanted to go along, but I’d barely met her, so it didn’t seem like a good idea to horn in.”
He lifted a handsome brow. “Shelby, by chance?”
“Exactly!” she said as if surprised. “My gosh, you must know everyone!”
“Pretty much,” he said. “And sometimes it seems like all the women are pregnant, but that isn’t really the case. I know she was due any second, and my wife was called out for a delivery.”
“You’re married to Mel, the doctor?”
“Midwife,” he corrected. He put out his big hand. “Jack Sheridan,” he said, introducing himself.
She put her much smaller hand in his. His palm was callused; she loved his hand. “Annalee,” she said. “Annalee Riordan.” Too bad the guy was just a poor country bartender. He was hot. She loved a big, rugged man. But she had to think about the future and she wasn’t about to hook up with some low-income country boy. Well, she thought, smiling. Maybe for an afternoon or something. But she had bigger fish to fry. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
“Can I get you something?” he asked. “Late breakfast? Early lunch? Cold drink?”
“Well, let’s see.” She looked at her watch. “I’ve been driving since about five this morning. Do you think it’s too early for a bloody Mary?”
“Coming up,” he said, turning away from her to fix her drink. When he put it back in front of her, he said, “Where’d you come from?”
“I just drove from San Francisco today,” she said. “I was there on business and since I was on the right side of the country and most of the family seemed to be here, I thought I’d take a little extra time to visit. I actually live in New York.” She slid her hand into the thin clutch and pulled out a fancy business card, sliding it across the bar to him. “There’s a designer in San Francisco I wanted to visit, look at some of his new designs. I have some very important clients in New York who will probably be interested.”
He looked at the card. “Aren’t there a lot of fashion consultants in New York?”
“Exactly,” she said, grinning widely. “That’s just it—everyone in New York sees all the same things. They count on me to bring something new to the party on a regular basis.”
He slipped the card into his pocket. “I guess it’s pretty obvious—I wouldn’t know the first thing about fashion. My wife used to have a lot of fun with it, before she settled here with me. I guess when she lived in L.A., she spent all her money on designer this, designer that.”
“Woman after my own heart.” She took a sip of her drink. “So…who’s Aiden seeing? There wasn’t much time to catch up. Like I said, the second I got there, everyone piled into cars and headed for the hospital.”
“That would be Erin,” Jack said. “Erin Foley. Nice woman. Up here for
the summer.”
“In town here?” she asked, sipping slowly.
“Nah. She’s got a cabin about ten or fifteen miles out of town—out on the ridge. A view that would just knock you dead it’s so beautiful.”
“All the views around here are beautiful,” she said. “I can’t believe I’ve never seen this part of the country before. It’s awesome. Just fantastic.”
Jack lowered his chin and looked up at her from under hooded brows. “I hope you brought along some more practical clothes if you want to see more of it. I don’t think you’re going to enjoy yourself much, traipsing around the redwoods and rivers in your church clothes.”
She straightened and a delighted look crossed her face. “Church clothes? I love it! You’re absolutely right—I’m dressed for a business meeting, but I did throw some jeans in my suitcase. I just wanted, you know, to make a good impression on the family.”
“You look kinda young to be such a high muckety-muck businesswoman,” he said.
“I am, as a matter of fact. Twenty-five. But I graduated college at twenty—I was early getting out of high school. I studied and drew and designed every spare second and didn’t really take time for my family. I haven’t seen any of them since…I don’t know when.” She laughed lightly. “And as it turned out, I didn’t see much of them today, either.”
“I’m sure they’ll all be around tomorrow. Or at least the next day,” he said.
“So—tell me about this town. Tell me how you ended up being a bartender here,” she said, leaning an elbow on the bar. “Been here all your life?”
Annalee knew how to get a man talking. She had perfected the smile and exactly the right technique of asking a guy questions about himself. Jack was a former military man who came to Virgin River for all the outdoor pastimes it offered; he was a fisherman, hunter, hiker, camper. He built the bar so he’d have something to do to pass the time when he wasn’t enjoying nature. Then the midwife came to town and he married for the first time at forty, had a couple of kids.
She got a sense from him that he’d be really good in the sack and that he’d go a long way to protecting the woman of his current interest. It was somewhat tempting, now that she knew he was the owner of the bar, not some small-time barkeep. But it could screw up the rest of their plans, hers and Mujo’s, so she acted as sweet and virginal as she could.
She had a little lunch, pushed the bloody Mary away after drinking only a third and left.
She drove to Garberville where she and Mujo had rooms. He was lying back on his bed, watching the news. “Well?” he said without looking at her.
“It isn’t just Aiden visiting his brother. It’s every goddamn Riordan you ever saw.”
“Great,” he grumbled.
“No, it is great,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “He was really angry to see me, but his mother was shocked at the way he treated me. He’s going to have a time trying to keep me away from his family. And his woman.”
Mujo sat up. “Woman?”
Annalee smiled. “I get the sense my husband is going to really need a divorce. Right away. And gee, I specialize is greasing wheels like that. I know exactly how to be very cooperative.”
But clearly, Mujo wasn’t pleased. He frowned. “We don’t usually mix it up with a lot of people. Gets too complicated. It’s a lot safer when you just go one-on-one. Like we planned.”
“Trust me,” she said.
He softly touched her hand, lacing his fingers in hers. Then he bent back her pinkie until she yelped. “Do not fuck this up. We’re running low on money.”
“Stop!” she said with a cry, pulling her hand away. “Relax. Be nice.”
She used her disposable cell phone to get a number for Erin Foley and called. Her phone came across a caller ID as unknown—if they even had such a thing back here in the sticks. In a very professional, businesslike voice, she said, “This is the postal service. We have a package to deliver to Erin Foley. The address is smeared on the packing slip. Can you give me the address and some directions, please?”
And Erin said, “Sure.”
“This is every man’s nightmare,” Aiden said to his mother as they drove to the hospital. “That his most embarrassing, shameful moments will have to be described to his mother. Is this what happens when you die and go to hell?”
“You’d better help me understand, because right now I can’t help but think some darling young woman who was your wife is desperate and needs someone to lean on.”
“Mother, she’s acting exactly the way she did when I met her. Here’s the stuff I’d rather you not know, so brace yourself. After med school, after my tour aboard ship, I was pulling GMO duty at the hospital until my residency started. I met her. She was the woman you met today—sweet, very young, beautiful. A walking dream. I’m not sure I actually fell in love with her, but that was tough to call. Except what I didn’t know—she was enlisted while I was not only commissioned, I was in a position of authority. My boss found out—very interesting that he found out, since I’d been seeing her less than a week. She swore she never leaked it and I certainly didn’t. To avoid coming up against charges of fraternization and possibly losing my residency bid, he suggested I marry her and that she accept a discharge, not honorable, not dishonorable. So that’s what we did.”
“Oh, Aiden, you must have been very involved with her,” Maureen said.
He didn’t blush; he was too angry to blush. “Very,” he said. “We weren’t married a week before it got strange. She had violent mood swings, and the sweet little girl would become a lunatic who screamed and threw things.” He gave a hollow laugh. “I tried to get her help. I wanted her evaluated, but she wouldn’t go along with that. She’s not mentally ill, Mother—she knows exactly what she’s doing. I can’t prove it, but I’m convinced she saw me coming—young doctor, just off a boat and without female companionship for a long, long time…”
“But there are lots of women in the navy,” Maureen naively pointed out.
“Mom, I couldn’t date women who served on the ship—we were working together.”
“Of course,” she said quietly.
“Annalee, she told the most outrageous stories—she was everything from a spy for the resistance in Bosnia to a homeless teenager in L.A. She even once said she had cancer! I still don’t know the truth about her. She wouldn’t be around here unless she was after something. I need to get her out of our lives.”
“But, Aiden, how can you be so sure?”
“Ask Luke,” he said. “I called him, described how crazy my life had gotten and he came out right away. I met him at the airport and brought him back to my apartment. Annalee wasn’t home when we got there, so I shoved him in the second bedroom and told him to stay put and listen when she walked in the door. I confronted her about a huge credit-card bill and she started screaming and throwing things. He witnessed it. He understands what I’m talking about. He drove her to a hotel, gave her some money to hold her off and called Sean.” He stole a glance at Maureen as he drove. “Luke and Sean got me through the worst of it. Mom, she wouldn’t sign the divorce papers without a lot more money. I gave her ten thousand dollars to go away.”
Maureen groaned. To her, ten thousand dollars was a fortune. And to Maureen, who couldn’t lie if her life depended on it, this story must seem bit otherworldly.
“Now she tells me we’re not divorced. Well, if that’s true I’ll get it taken care of right away. But here’s the thing—don’t listen to her, don’t get sucked into her stories, her manipulation. I don’t know what she’s after, but five gets you ten it’s got commas and decimal points. Money, Mother. Really, I don’t know how far she’ll go. She’s a user and a liar.”
Maureen was quiet for a moment. “I never knew all this. And you boys—you used to joke about your crazy wife. You laughed about it.”
“After it seemed pretty apparent she was long gone, we laughed. What are you gonna do? I was an idiot—I fell right into it. But damn, I thought I
was done paying for that lapse in judgment…”
“Aiden…” she said. “If you’re really not divorced, what can you do?”
“Get a really good lawyer,” he said.
When Aiden and Maureen got to the hospital, Mel was already there. Shelby was doing great but was only at four centimeters. It would likely be at least a few hours before it got interesting. Aiden visited her briefly, then begged off to run a couple of errands.
He returned the tux, then he called Erin. “Well, our evening is probably off. I got back to Luke’s to find Shelby in labor. I just returned the tux and am on my way back to Valley Hospital to wait with my mother. I’m sorry.”
“Good for her, too bad for us,” she said.
“Yeah…”
“Are you all right?”
“Fine. I just hate missing the night with you. But Luke wants me to be at the hospital. He’s been nervous about this.”
“But everything is all right?”
“It’s all good. She’s going to have a nice delivery…”
“Aiden? What do I hear in your voice?”
He was going to tell her, but not now, not like this. “Disappointment, probably.”
“Well, be tough. And no matter what time it is, please call me and tell me when the baby arrives. All right?”
“I will,” he promised. “Erin…?”
“Hmm?”
“Erin, I—Listen, thank you for last night. It was really…special…”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. “It was. It’s always special with you. But something’s—”
“I should probably get back, see how the mom and dad are doing. I’ll give you a call when something happens. How’s that?”
“Please,” she said. “And whatever’s bothering you? Try to let it go, will you? You’re the one who takes everything in stride. I’m the one who stews.”
He laughed slightly. “Let’s not stew. I probably won’t talk to you till morning. First babies tend to take their time.”