“He is that. How are you doing?”
“Great,” she said with a smile. “Totally great.”
“Good. See you later.”
“I’ll chill the beer.”
“Luke says dating is talking and holding hands and watching TV.”
Aiden thought, I don’t remember Luke dating like that.
“Maybe dating with a girl is drinking beer, too,” Art said.
Aiden chuckled. “You know, Art. Sometimes you catch more than you miss. Listen, would you do something for me, please?”
“Sure, Aiden. What?”
“Would you mind if we didn’t tell anyone about the garden?”
“Why?”
“Well…” Aiden thought for a minute. “Well, at the end of summer when there are fresh tomatoes and some vegetables from the garden, I might get to have some. And I could surprise Luke and Shelby with them.”
“Oh,” Art said. “Okay, then.”
By the time Aiden and Art got back to the cabins, Sean had just arrived and the carnival atmosphere had been cranked up a notch. There was nothing to compare to the air of celebration surrounding a returning soldier, or in this case, airman. The crowd wasn’t limited to the Riordans and Booths; some folks from town had stopped by—Jack and Preacher, their wives and kids, other friends and neighbors. Luke had pulled out the large gas grill and two coolers were filled with ice, sodas, bottled water and beer. Walt Booth had brought wine; he uncorked the white and settled it against ice in the cooler and uncorked the red and put some bottles out on the picnic tables to breathe. Even the folks who rented the cabins were invited to join them.
After embracing his younger brother, Aiden set about helping Luke turn hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill. The women put out condiments, chips, potato salad and coleslaw. Preacher brought a couple of pies and Jack contributed a big tub of ice cream.
Sean could not be urged very far from Franci’s side; he hadn’t seen his wife in six months and his first night stateside in a San Francisco hotel was spent with his wife and little girl. His arm was securely attached to Franci’s waist or shoulders, pulling her closer whenever he could. His mother finally came to his rescue.
“Rosie, would you like to spend the night with Grandma tonight?”
“Do you still lib in dat RB?” Rosie asked, her eyes wide.
“Yes. There’s an extra bed. And we can have popcorn and watch a movie if you like.”
“But Daddy said you din’t lib in dat RB right now. He said you libbed in sin. Where is dat?”
There was a slight hush just before laughter rocked the whole compound. When it finally let up, Maureen replied coolly to her granddaughter, “Ask your daddy, sweetheart. He’s an expert.”
Sean flushed scarlet, but when the laughter subsided he looked at his watch and announced, “Time to pack up Rosie for Grandma’s, honey. Then we better get to bed so all these nice people can go home!”
Once the party had broken up and Aiden had helped Luke with cleanup, he retired to his cabin and turned on his laptop. He had seventeen e-mails, but he checked the one from his friend Jeff first. You didn’t call her, you loser, and she won’t stop calling me. No matter how many times I tell her that calling me won’t get you to change your mind, she won’t stop. Do a guy a favor, huh? Call Annalee. She says it’s urgent. She won’t tell me what’s urgent, but she won’t stop! Here’s the number you probably threw away.
Aiden wrote back at once. She won’t tell you what’s urgent because nothing between us is urgent and talking to her at all is like inviting the plague into my life. Please—just tell her I’m dead.
“Well, sweetheart,” he said. “What brings you to my office?”
Brie jumped up on a stool. “I was hoping we could talk,” she said.
“Sounds serious. Can I get you a drink to go with that expression?”
His sister didn’t answer. “Jack, there’s a pink elephant in the living room and it’s a surrogate pregnancy.” Jack’s chin dropped and he stared down at the bar. “Are we going to talk about it or keep pretending it’s not there?”
He lifted his chin. “What can I say?”
“Say something, Jack,” Brie insisted. “Because Mel has been asking me to contact her old fertility doctor in L.A., to get familiar with all the legal ramifications so that I’ll be ready to negotiate a contract. Meanwhile, she’s got an appointment set up for later this summer to have her eggs harvested. Where do you stand on this?”
He looked away uncomfortably. “I don’t want to,” he finally said.
“Why? What’s going on?”
Again he glanced away. Then he grabbed a glass and dish towel from under the bar and began to absently wipe out the water spots.
Brie closed a hand over his glass-and-towel action. “Put it down and talk to me. I’m all grown-up now and among other things, I’m your attorney.”
“Did Mel ask you to talk to me?”
“No. In fact, we were on the phone a little while ago and she said she had a patient at Valley Hospital, so I thought it was a good time to come over here. Let’s stop screwing around, Jack. It’s obvious you and Mel aren’t on the same page here—she’s hounding me to get moving on this and you haven’t even weighed in!”
“I’m worried about her,” he said softly. “I was hoping this would go away.”
“It’s not going away, it’s gaining momentum. Now, what’s going on?”
Jack shook his head. “We don’t need a baby. We’re having enough trouble hanging on to two little ones with our schedules and obligations. Three might really tip the scales, but that’s not it, Brie—if Mel hadn’t had a hysterectomy and another one happened along, we’d manage. It’s this idea she has that she has to beat the odds. Even a hysterectomy won’t make her vulnerable. If she wants another one, by God she’ll get one. Even if it costs thirty thousand dollars and involves a third party we’ve never met.”
“Is it the money?” Brie asked him.
“God, no! I’d buy her the moon, you know that! What do we need money for? Our family is priority. It’s just the whole idea. The way it happens.”
“People do it all the time, Jack,” Brie said softly. “It’s a great solution for people who can’t just have children the old-fashioned way. A growing number of people, by the way.”
“I know this,” he said. “I asked Preacher to look it up for me. He printed me off a lot of stuff from the Internet. Sometimes there’s an infertile husband or wife and donors are used. I guess that’s so people can grow their own rather than adopt. Whatever works, I say. This would be ours. Her eggs and my sperm would meet in a tube and then grow inside the body of some woman we’ve interviewed. Some woman we’ll pay to be the incubator.”
“Is that it, then? The idea that you don’t know the woman and you pay her to do the job?”
“Partly,” he said with a shrug. “That much is irregular, if you ask me. I mean, if we were a couple who met, fell in love and said to each other, ‘By God, we gotta have at least five kids to be happy,’ maybe I’d feel different. But we weren’t that couple, Brie. We were a couple who thought we were using birth control in the first place. Mel kept saying two was one more than she’d counted on. A couple years ago Mel almost died in a uterine hemorrhage. John did all he could, but taking the uterus saved her life. And he told me to be prepared for her to struggle with the loss—but not Mel. She bounced right back, just grateful we have each other and a couple of healthy kids. Now, all of a sudden, she’s hell-bent to have a third one, even though it’s not something we ever talked about.” He leaned his elbows on the bar. “Brie, she’s ready for you to draw up a contract and has an appointment to get her eggs harvested and I haven’t said I’d do it.”
“Could it be she knows you will if it’s important to her?”
“I’m afraid she’s trying to push back time,” he said. “I’m worried she’s not really okay with being a thirty-six-year-old woman whose childbearing is over. It’s like she’s not okay with us, the way we are.”
“No, Jack…”
“Do you know what I felt like when she got pregnant even though she wasn’t supposed to? I felt like Atlas, that’s what. I felt like a small god. Like an Olympian. Watching her get fat and moody, it was a
miracle
to me. My woman took me inside her body and created a life for us to share. Jerk off in a cup and watch it grow in someone I don’t know?” He shook his head. “We don’t need to do that, Brie. We just don’t need to.”
Brie’s mouth actually hung open for a moment. Then she said, “Whoa.”
He absently wiped the bar. “It’s not the process that bugs me,” he said. “Understand, it’s not the process. I think the fact that this can happen at all—this surrogate thing—this is a gift from God. If Mel came to me—you know, when we met—without that uterus, and wanted a baby bad enough to do it the surrogate way, oh, hell, yes, I’d do anything for her. You know that, right? That I’d do anything for her? But I don’t know if I’d be helping her much by going along with this. I’m not sure where this is coming from.”
“Well, you better find out, Jack. Talk to her.”
“Brie, she’s not exactly talking to me. She’s waiting for me to come around. When I bring the subject up, she just asks me to keep an open mind. She wants me to discuss my reservations with John Stone.”
“Then talk to John. But don’t let this thing fester between you. I’m dangerously close to getting in the middle of it, and I don’t want to be there.”
June was growing old, she was on her fourth week in the cabin and she had stacked all the inner-growth books in a corner to be given away. On the deck beside her chaise where she relaxed between cookie batches was a tall glass of tea and a paperback with a pair of long, shapely female legs on the cover and a provocative title. Marcie was right about one thing—the damn book totally had her! Nothing like seduction to totally seduce her. She smiled to herself—she might just be learning this relaxation thing.
She had a huge bowl of cookie dough on the counter and when the timer went off, she went inside to scrape hot cookies off the cookie sheet onto the counter and make another batch. She inhaled deeply; the aroma was heavenly. Erin had a pretty healthy sweet tooth that she kept under control, but there was absolutely nothing quite as alluring as that fresh-cookie smell. After sliding a sheet of cookies into the oven, she dashed into the bathroom. Ah, how fantastic that she wasn’t going to the loo out back! Besides, it was a spectacular bathroom for a cabin and she was proud of it.
Before she came out, she heard a noise and wondered if a hearty breeze was blowing things around in the kitchen. There was a bad smell. It almost hinted at a plumbing problem. Or perhaps that breeze had picked up a bit of garbage on its way through the French doors. When she came out of the bathroom she saw it was not a breeze.
It was a bear.
It was a very large bear—and he was eating her cookies and cookie dough, scooping it up with hands that sported long, dangerous claws.
She yelped in surprise and the bear lifted his head out of the bowl and it sounded like he belched. That’s when Erin screamed.
She ran back into the bathroom and slammed the door, locking it. Then she dashed through the adjoining door to the bedroom and slammed that door. To be safe, she pushed the chest from the end of her bed up against the bedroom door. Then she closed the door that joined the bath to the bedroom and pushed her bureau in front of it. That was it—all the movable furniture she had. And it wasn’t all that heavy.
Then she sat on the foot of her bed and said, “Fuck.”
She hadn’t even considered this possibility—a bear. Marcie had told her a story about a mountain lion trapping her in the outhouse. From that point on, Marcie had carried the iron skillet with her whenever she was outside. For that reason, Erin always had that big skillet with her. But while Marcie was just the type to plaster a threatening wild animal in the head with a skillet, Erin was more the type to squeal and run.
She remembered she had cookies in the oven.
Oh, this is rich
, she thought.
The cabin is going to burn down and me with it. Hopefully the bear dies first. Maybe I can get away before it’s all one big ash.
She did a mental inventory; there was only one phone—a cordless that was on its base in the kitchen. The computer was actually running—and it was out there, too. If her car keys were in the bedroom, she could climb out the window and make a dash for the SUV, but of course the keys were in their assigned place, on the hook by the door. Erin was very well organized and tidy—a place for everything and everything in its place.
There was a crash and she winced. She jumped off the end of the bed and started for the door to scream at the damn bear. This was a terrific lesson for Erin—for just a moment she was more concerned about the bear trashing the place than about it mauling her or burning the cabin down.
She forced herself to sit down. Then she flopped back on the bed. “I hate my life,” she said out loud. “If I live through this I’m going home and back to work and I’m never doing anything like this again.” There was another crash. Oh, that sounded like something very expensive. She lay there in misery for a long time. She could hear him moving around out there.
There was a little tapping at her bedroom window. She sat up and listened. Yes, a very light tapping. Would a nine-foot-tall black bear high on chocolate tap at the window? Wouldn’t he just tear off the door and eat her? She crept quietly and carefully to the window and peered through the tiniest slit.
And saw green eyes and a red beard.
She opened the shutters and the window. “Aiden!”
“Hi,” he said. “There’s a bear in the kitchen.”
“Run, Aiden! Run!”
“I’m going to come in, but you have to give me a hand. Help me take off the screen, then I’m going to throw my stuff inside and climb in. You might have to pull me—this window’s kinda high.”
“Why?” she asked, backing away a little.
He shrugged. “Well, first of all, there’s smoke coming from the kitchen. And I was thinking about a beer.”
“There’s a bear in the kitchen!” she whispered furiously.
“Yeah. We better get him outta there.” They pried off the screen and he threw his backpack and machete through the window. Then he leaped at the opening, got his arms locked on the bottom sill, pulled himself up and somersaulted right into the bedroom.
Erin got out of his way. The second he was sitting on the floor, she closed the window
and
the shutters. Then she crossed her arms over her chest. “Great. Now we’re both held hostage in the bedroom.”
“How long has he been out there?” Aiden asked, getting to his feet.
“I don’t know. Half an hour?” There was another crash and again she winced. “He’s obviously done eating and is busy tearing up the place. I swear to God, if he shits on my Aubusson carpet, I’ll kill him with my bare hands!”
Aiden couldn’t help but laugh as he dug around in his backpack. He pulled out what looked like a large can of hair spray or a small fire extinguisher. “Do you have anything in here that would make a loud noise, kind of like a metal spoon clanging inside an aluminum soup pot?”
“Huh?”
“They don’t like that. This is repellent. A little clanging and some repellent and they usually just run off.”
“Usually?”
“What are the options? I’ve been thinking about that beer all week.”
“I know you have easier ways to get a beer.” She sneered.
“You’re right. Should I take my repellent, climb back out the window and leave you here to rot? You can sit in your bedroom until someone passes by and smells your decomposing body.
Or—
you can find me something that clangs!”
“I don’t have anything in here that clangs!”
Aiden looked around, doing a three-sixty of the bedroom. His eyes stopped in the corner. He went over to a fancy potted tree; he opened the shutters and window, dumped a three-foot tree upside down out the window and banged the empty pot on the side of the house to get rid of the excess dirt.
“Hey!” she yelled. “That’s
brass!
”
He walked toward the bedroom door with his arsenal in hand—brass pot and tall can of repellent. “Brass, brass, could save your ass…” He pushed the chest away from the door. “Erin, listen to me. Do
not
scream. It’s a black bear and I didn’t see a cub, so it should just run off. But don’t scream and get it riled up. It could make him or her feel threatened.”
“I already screamed at it,” she informed him. “He didn’t run off! Maybe he doesn’t know he’s a black bear!”
“Just stay in the bedroom. Quietly.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to step into the next room and clang. If he comes at me I’m going to spray his eyes with this pepper spray. Then I’m going to have a beer.”
“Oh God…”
“Yeah, praying works…” He opened the door, looking into the room. “Oh, good,” he said quietly.
The bear was exiting the house through the opened French doors. On the one hand it was probably best to just let him go, but on the other—would he remember where to find the food? Aiden hated to think of Erin lounging in her hammock, dozing, while a bear rummaged around in her house. But Aiden didn’t have a lot of experience with bears. He’d have to ask someone.
He let the bear lumber off. He wasn’t a very big bear—six feet. Had to be a guy—in spring and summer the females came with at least one cub, unless she was a teenager and hadn’t mated yet. Aiden followed slowly, cautiously. He got all the way to the deck in time to see the furry guy disappear into the woods. Then he put his pot and can of repellent on the table, picked up Erin’s glass of tea and her book and closed the French doors. He looked curiously at the book, lifting one eyebrow.
Then he rescued the charred cookies and turned off the oven.
“Is it safe?” he heard from within the house.
“Well, unless you wanted a cookie. There were some casualties.”
“The bear?”
“His work here was done,” Aiden said. “He was alone and he’s gone.”
Erin walked into the great room. She looked around—the giant bowl she’d used to mix the cookie batter was in pieces on the floor, a chair was turned over, a cookie sheet was across the room on the floor. The three crashes were minor losses and the bear was gone.
“I’m getting the hell out of here,” she muttered.
Aiden stooped to pick up the pieces of broken ceramic bowl. He dumped them in the trash. No mess there. The bear had cleaned it thoroughly. “You don’t have to.” He picked up her paperback. “I rescued your dirty book,” he said with a smile.
“It’s not dirty!”
“Oh? Too bad. It looks pretty good.”
“It’s just a…a…women’s book…you know…”
He pulled a couple of beers out of the refrigerator. He took the tops off two bottles and handed her one. “I’d like to sit out on your deck with this,” he said. “Especially since I walked ten miles to get here today and I know I’m not wearing your fragrance, but under the circumstances, maybe we’ll just stay in. What do you say?”
“I’m getting the hell out of here!” But she took the beer; then she took a slug.
“It’ll be okay, Erin,” he said softly. “He’s gone. I’ll leave you the repellent. They don’t have grizzlies around here. Black bears will usually run off unless you’re between a mother and cub. Apparently they like chocolate-chip cookies. I don’t suppose you tucked any away before Yogi came in?”
“No! And you can be damn sure I’m not making any more!”
He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table. She pulled out a chair and sat. He leaned toward her. “You don’t have to go. If the doors are closed, I don’t think they’ll break in. Well, a raccoon might sneak in, but they’ll often run if you just bang a pot.”
“Do you have any idea what you’re saying?” she asked.
“I’m saying—don’t go, Erin. Just give it a few more days and you’ll see—the wildlife won’t bother you if you’re unobtrusive. If you see a bear, bang a spoon inside a soup pot. Really, they don’t like people.”
She frowned. “Unobtrusive? What kind of a word is that for an EMT to use?” she asked.
He lifted a brow and grinned. “Big?” he asked hopefully.
“I don’t know. I should pack and start driving….”
“Don’t,” he said. “We can have some fun, you and me….”
“I haven’t seen you in days! I’m going—”
“The family was gathering and I had to help. To tell you the truth, they’re already on my nerves. But I think they’re all settled in now. Stay a few more days at least.”
She leaned toward him. “Why?” she asked earnestly.
He shrugged. “You’re the prettiest girl I’ve seen in Virgin River.” He grinned. “I’ll leave you the repellent, but you’ll have to drive me to town. There’s a bear hopped up on chocolate out there and I’ll be unarmed.” He leaned toward her. “Listen, take your phone and repellent into the bedroom and close those doors when you go to bed tonight. Put the dresser in front of the door if you want to. Make sure you don’t have any food or garbage out where a bear could smell it or get to it, and see if you don’t feel better about this in a day or two. You can always call the sheriff’s department and tell them a bear got right in your house—they might put out an alert, just in case it’s a troublemaker.”
“My good sense says that staying would be taking a ridiculous chance.”
“Really,” he said. “Don’t go. Not yet. Honest—I wouldn’t suggest it if I thought there was any real danger.”
She thought for a minute, then she shook her head and said, “If a bear eats me, you’re going to feel terrible.”
“I think if you leave I’ll feel terrible.”