All things considered, if he had to be someplace, maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad one. It had a lot of charm. The pace seemed slow and friendly. He was due some of that.
The couple down the bar were kind of intense, Conner decided. Their heads were close together as they talked, and if he wasn’t mistaken, the Sunday-school teacher was close to tears a couple of times. Were they a couple? His hands on her were friendly, affectionate. Maybe they hit a rocky patch or something. Whatever it was, the man was consoling her while they had a drink. After about twenty minutes of that, the man plunked some bills on the bar and, with his hand at the small of her back, escorted her out.
Conner felt that grinding ache of resentment. Because of his ex, because of witnessing a crime and being driven into hiding, he wasn’t going to experience that. He wasn’t going to feel the satisfaction of escorting a pretty Sunday-school teacher out the door and off to some quiet and private place.
His heart was as heavy as it was hungry.
“Anything else for you, buddy?” Jack asked him.
“No, thanks. You were right about the trout—outstanding. Let’s settle up.”
Jack slapped a ticket on the bar, Conner dug out some money and headed out.
Back on the road, Conner passed the turnoff to the cabins and drove down the mountain until he could see service bars on his new cell phone. Finally he saw the potential for a phone call. At the first opportunity, he pulled over and called the number he had already memorized. She answered sleepily. “Aw, Katie, I woke you....”
She laughed. Katie didn’t need an alias—she wasn’t the witness. “We’re not supposed to talk about time zones, weather, landmarks, names or anything.”
“You could be asleep at any time,” he said, though he knew that wasn’t true. She went to bed early. She snuggled in about the same time her little boys did to keep from being too lonely. “That other thing, names, I might have trouble with that.”
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
“I’m good. I’m ready to get this over with, get things back to normal.”
“Things might never be normal again, have you thought about that?”
“What else is there to think about? Things won’t be the way they were, maybe, but they could be normal. We’ll be somewhere new, maybe, but before the boys forget what I look like, we’ll be done with this and rebuilding. Tell me about you, Andy and Mitch. Everyone okay?”
“Names,” she reminded him with a laugh. “Better than I expected. I have a good job with a cute, single dentist. Who knows?” He could hear a smile in her voice. “Maybe things will work out and you’ll join me here.”
“Who knows,” he repeated with a laugh.
“Do you have a job yet?”
“Tomorrow. One is all lined up for me.”
“Will you let me know if you like it?”
“Of course. Yes. Listen, I don’t know how much I can say, but if I don’t answer when you call, it’s because of bad cell reception. I have…” He almost said internet connection and stopped himself. “But I’ll definitely be in touch. One way or another.”
“Okay, just let me know. Anyway, if I need help, you’re not the one I’m going to call. They gave me other, faster options. Please don’t worry. We’re being well taken care of.”
“I won’t worry....”
“Will you do me a favor? Will you try to make friends? You finally don’t have to work sixteen hours a day to keep me and the boys afloat, too, so just try to take advantage of that. Think of this as a vacation.”
“Sure,” he said. He wanted to argue—vacation? I’m hiding from a murderer connected to mobsters and hit men. I’ve been separated from my family and left with nothing but a big question about where we’re going to start over. Great vacation.
“I don’t know exactly where you are, but wherever you are there must be stuff local people do. Check it out. Go out for a couple of beers—you never do that sort of thing. And have a date....”
“Date? I don’t think so....”
“You deserve to grab a little bit of fun, if not downright happiness. I mean, come on—this is temporary.”
“Fun? We’ll see. No happiness,” he said. “The last time I felt happy, I was punished by the entire universe.”
She just laughed. “Have it your way. Be as miserable as possible.”
He sighed. “I’ll try to enjoy this little bit of time, okay? Because when it’s finally over, I’m going to rebuild. Honey, are you and the boys really okay? Happy? They aren’t scared, are they?”
“We miss you. They have a hard time understanding why we can’t be with you. But you know what? They have a nice school, and we haven’t been here long but they’ve already started soccer and had a couple of friends over for pizza and a movie. My boss is easygoing and flexible—I get the feeling I’m extra help and he’s getting me real cheap, maybe not actually paying my salary, if you know what I mean.” She yawned. “We’ll get through this with nobody hurt.”
He’d always been the one to be there for T-ball or swimming lessons or soccer. It killed him to be this unavailable. “You’re always the positive one,” he said. He rubbed the sting out of his eyes. If they got through this, which they would, they would all be entirely new characters in this big drama—new identities, new locations. But they would be together again. “I think I admire you more than anyone I know.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet. And I don’t deserve it.”
But she did. She’d had some real rough breaks, yet she didn’t treat all that as baggage. If she suffered, she suffered and got it over with and resumed her sunny outlook on life.
“Let’s not use up our minutes,” she said. “We’re fine, you’re fine. I want to talk to you again after you have a job…and remember—you promised you’re going to try to find something to enjoy.”
“I will,” he said. “I am.” And he found himself wondering if it was reasonable to hope he could meet a woman who’d settle for a no-strings thing just to take the edge off? And he further wondered how that made him very different from Samantha.
Paul told Leslie that he hadn’t planned to get into the landlord business, but with real estate in a mess and interest rates low, he’d picked up a couple of small foreclosures in town. He planned to sell them when there was a sufficient economic recovery to make money. In the meantime, he rented one of the spruced-up ones to Leslie. It was probably all of a thousand square feet and adorable. And she believed he kept the rent suspiciously low.
“I’ll send someone over in the next couple of weeks to clean up the yard, put down some sod on a couple of bare patches and plant some flowers along the walk,” Paul told her. “When it dries out a little bit, I’m planning to pour a new drive and put up a decent covered carport with some storage. This March rain will give way to sunshine before you know it. And when you see spring here, you’ll have trouble catching your breath, it’s that beautiful.”
The small two bedroom did have an inviting feel on this quiet and welcoming little street. The houses that lined each side were all simple, unpretentious little structures, some in better repair than others, but it had the feel of a neighborhood in need of one more good neighbor, and that was all she asked.
“Let me plant the flowers,” she said. “It’ll help me settle in. I’ve always wanted to keep a little garden, but between work and then apartment living…”
“You do anything you want, Les,” he said. “Treat it like it’s yours.”
“I’ll take you up on the sod and driveway, if you feel like it. That would be nice—a place other than the street to park.”
“Consider it done,” he said.
If Leslie had worried that Paul’s wife would pity her, running away from her job in Grants Pass to escape her humiliating divorce, she would’ve bee
n wasting her time. The reason for her being in Virgin River never even came up over dinner. Rather, Vanni really was grateful that Paul was finally getting some full-time help from someone who had worked for him before and knew the business. And the fact that she was an old friend of the Haggerty family as well, made it even better.
When Leslie settled into bed in her little rented house that night, she felt more relaxed than she had in what seemed like years. And she knew exactly why—it was the distance between her and her past. Tomorrow, when she was out and about town, or when she reported to her new job, when she shopped for groceries or treated herself to a glass of wine at Jack’s, she would not run into Greg or Allison or any of their former friends. She might as well be on another continent.
In the morning when she woke, she went out onto her front porch in her robe, a cup of coffee cradled in her hands. The tops of the trees were still lost in the early-morning mist that blanketed the little town, but she could hear voices—neighbors shouting hello, cars just starting up, children laughing and yelling, probably on their way to school or to the bus stop. It was still very early. By the time she was showered and dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt over a white collared blouse, the sun was struggling to break through.
Paul had told her not to dress up, that the trailer where he kept his office was pretty rugged. She’d usually worn business attire, either skirts or slacks, to the Haggerty Construction office. In the course of a typical day she’d run into salesmen, customers, decorators, investors and developers. Paul told her the only people she was likely to run into besides himself in that trailer were crew.
She took a cup of coffee along for the ride as she followed his directions. And there it was, the trailer, sitting on a large lot that held two houses in progress. It was actually a single-wide mobile home; she assumed the bedrooms would be offices and that there would be a kitchen and bathroom.
There was one truck parked at the trailer, and it wasn’t Paul’s. She glanced at her watch. Seven forty-five. In the construction world, that was late. Not for the office staff, of course, but the crew usually got started as soon as they had light. Here she’d been trying to impress him by being early, and there didn’t seem to be anyone here to impress.
Inside she found a man seated at what would pass for a kitchen table—a big slab of plywood balanced on sawhorses. He had a cup of coffee and appeared to be leafing through plans, but stood as she entered. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Dan Brady, one of Paul’s foremen. He went to meet a crew at another job and asked me to hang out until you got here. Make yourself at home. His office is down the hall,” he said, pointing. “He must be putting you in the room next to that because there’s a desk in there. It’s old and kind of dirty and you might have to clean it up and maybe put a shim under one leg of it, but it hasn’t been spoken for. Must be yours.” He put out his hand.
She felt herself smile. The whole place was a wreck, messy and mud-tracked. There was a thirty-cup coffeemaker on the kitchen counter, covered with fingerprints. That would explain the tracking of mud. “I’m Leslie Petruso. Let me guess, the guys grab a cup of coffee in here.” And then she took his hand in greeting.
“Especially when it’s cold. When it’s nice out, they’re more likely to take a break sitting on the back of their trucks or something. It looks a little worse than usual, what with the rain. I hope you’re not completely disgusted.”
She laughed. “I’ve been working for a construction company for ten years now, so every now and then I did have to visit a job site. Nice to meet you, Dan.”
He indicated her cup with a jut of his chin. “Can I warm that up for you?”
“Thanks,” she said, handing it to him. “So, did Paul say what he’d like me to do?”
Dan gave the cup back, refreshed. “He said you’d know what to do. He carries his laptop around in the truck with him, but there’s a paper schedule on his desk. I’m waiting for a crew to work on interiors on these two houses and Paul will get here when he gets here. Will you be all right if I get to work?”
“You bet. Don’t worry about me.”
He smiled at her. “Welcome aboard, Leslie. We’ll all be happy if Paul has a little help organizing the paperwork.”
“Gets a little behind on that, does he?” she asked on a laugh.
“He’s a builder,” Dan said with a grin. “It’s hard to keep him in the office. I’ll be in the house on the left, if you need me.”
“Not to worry. I’m going to poke around Paul’s desk and see if I can make sense of anything.”
“Go for it,” Dan said with a salute.
Leslie took her time looking around after Dan left. She didn’t concentrate on Paul’s desk or even on his office—there was plenty of time for that. She opened every cupboard and closet in the trailer before she attempted Paul’s desk. And it happened spontaneously—she wiped out the sink, which led to scrubbing the countertop, which led to first sweeping, then mopping the kitchen floor. She filled the sink with soapy water, and, with rag or mop in hand, she moved through the place with a vengeance.
By the time Paul showed up at around ten, the muddy tracks and finger smears had disappeared. Even the stainless-steel thirty-cup coffeemaker was shining. And the coffee in it was fresh. “Whoa,” he said.
She straightened her spine and blew a curl of hair off her forehead. “Prepare your crews for intensive training—they’re going to learn to keep things clean around here.”
“Oh, they know how,” he said. “When we turn over a house, you could eat off the floor....”
“Yeah? Really?” she asked. “Because if you ate off that bathroom floor, you’d be dead in ten seconds. I’m not cleaning it. It’s vile. The next man who comes in here with a need for it is getting the job. And then they’re going to keep it clean because I can’t even think about putting my—” she cleared her throat in lieu of a key word and added “—on it.”
The door opened and a man looked in with blue eyes that almost knocked her out. “Oh. Excuse me. I should’ve knocked....”
Paul laughed and kind of rocked back on his heels. “Not a problem, come on in. The new secretary was instructing me in keeping a clean shop.”
“New?” he asked.
Paul didn’t respond to the question but stuck out a hand. “Paul Haggerty. How can I help you?”
“Conner Danson,” he said, accepting the handshake. “A friend of mine said you might have some work....”
“Would that be Brie?” he asked.
“That’s her. Old friend of mine. My last boss shut down....”
“She said something about that. And you’re friends from college?”
Conner smiled. “I took a few classes after high school, but I’m not a college man. I quit, joined the army for a couple of years, then apprenticed with a carpenter. Custom kitchens and bathrooms.”
Paul gestured to an album Conner held under one arm. “I bet you have some sample photos I can look at.”
“You bet,” he said, handing over the album.
Paul opened it and began leafing through the photos, Leslie looking over his shoulder. She kept glancing up at Conner—short brown hair, tanned face, thick eyelashes, goatee…very handsome. She’d like another look at his eyes; the blue was almost shocking.
“Wow,” she said of the pictures. “Very nice work. And you say your boss shut down?”
“Not a great time for custom builders right now.”
“This work is so pretty,” she said. “Did you give any thought to going out on your own?”
“Lots of carpenters and refinishers out of work right now,” he said with a shrug. “I contacted everyone I knew and Brie said…” He didn’t finish but let it hang in the air.
“I have one good interiors man, my foreman. He’s a good leader and can usually handpick crew to wo
rk with him, but I bet he’d be happy to have some talent like this to partner up with.” Paul closed the album and handed it back. “I have enough contracts for custom buildings and remodels to employ you for as long as six months, but I can’t guarantee any more than that.”
“I’ll start with that,” Conner said.
“Thing is, this is the kind of stuff I like to do,” Paul said. “But if I spend too much time on the detail work the big picture gets shortchanged.”
“I’d be happy to watch your details,” Conner said. “Besides, I don’t know if I’ll take to this place for the long-term. I’m a city boy. More or less.”
“From?”
Conner answered according to his new bio. “Colorado Springs. If you don’t mind me asking, how is it you have enough work to take on one more hire in a little place like this?”
“A combination of things,” Paul said. “This place was a little light on general contractors when I first got here—not a lot of competition. And, because of the kind of place it is, beautiful and with a distinct shortage of industry, the only people who move here come because they can. Take my father-in-law, retired general—he found this place because it was perfect for hunting and keeping his horses. His lady friend is a semiretired actress—also loves hunting and has dogs and horses. Then there’s Jack of Jack’s Bar—not so rich and important, but a hardworking man, a retired marine who saved a couple of bucks and wanted to build his wife a nice house to raise their family.... You get the idea. People are here on purpose. And they tend to build or remodel the homes they’ll have forever, homes they’ll leave their children.... I love making homes for generations. My dad taught me that.”
“And you’re here because…?” Conner asked.