“Beautiful day,” a man’s voice said.
She turned her head to see him sitting on the chaise right beside her. There were dozens of available chairs on the beach and around the pool and yet he had to choose this one. “Beautiful,” she said quietly, turning her head back, trying to ignore him.
“I hear it rains here all the time. Have you seen much rain?”
“Please,” she said. “I was napping.”
“Think you’ll be done napping by dinnertime? I’d love to take you to dinner.”
She turned her head, lifted her glasses and said, “No, thank you.” Again she turned away.
“Then maybe I could buy you a drink? A mai tai or Bloody Mary?”
Without looking at him she said, “Do I have to move? Or will you?”
He chuckled. “Nothing shy about that, Shelby.”
She jumped in surprise, sitting up a little. “Did someone tell you my
name?
” she said, stricken. The last thing she needed right now was to feel at some kind of risk. She was alone here, depending on the hotel staff to be sure she’d be completely safe.
“No,” he said. “I already knew your name. I asked where I could find you. They’re very protective here, but when I described you, the towel kid knew where you might be.”
She sat up, her mouth open.
He put out a hand. “Aiden Riordan,” he said. “How are you?”
Stunned speechless, she slowly put out her hand. He was a nice-looking man, but didn’t resemble either Sean or Luke. He was dark-haired with heavy black brows, green
eyes like his mother’s and a very pleasant smile. “The doctor?”
“OB-GYN, in fact. Nice to meet you.”
“What…? What in the world are you doing here?”
He gave a slight shrug. “I thought someone ought to explain Luke, if that’s possible.”
Still in something of a state of shock, she sat sideways on the chaise, facing him, her feet in the sand. “Did he send you?”
“Oh, no.” Aiden laughed. “In fact, when he finds out, it’s gonna be ugly. And maybe this was just a waste of my time, but I have a feeling there are some important things you don’t know about him. On the other hand, I’ll bet you know things about him I don’t even want to hear.”
“Oh, this is…this is
crazy!
”
“Tell me about it. We have some loudmouths in the family, but it’s kind of unusual for the boys to get into each other’s business to this degree. Luke’s kind of a special case, though.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, did he ever happen to mention he was married when he was much younger?” Aiden asked.
It took her a moment to absorb that. “Well, that would explain a few things,” she finally said.
“The explanation gets more complicated. You’ve probably heard a hundred nasty divorce tales, but this one combined a lot of events that worked out badly for Luke, and I think it’s safe to say he’s got some residual effect from it.”
She looked down. “I guess he didn’t trust me that much,” she said. “Or he might’ve told me.”
“It has nothing to do with trust, Shelby. He was trying damn hard to keep from getting too close to you. It didn’t quite work for him—you should see him. He looks like a dead man, he’s so miserable.”
She scooted forward. “When did you see him?”
“A couple of days ago. And no, I didn’t tell him I was going to try to find you. He wouldn’t have endorsed this idea.”
“Is he okay?” she asked, concerned.
“Nope. He’s a mess. I guess he could recover,” Aiden said. “But we have to talk, you and me, and then what will be, will be.
“Luke got married when he was about twenty-four. He was a brand-new Black Hawk pilot and he married a girl he met in Alabama—a real pretty Southern belle who turned his world upside down. Prettiest girl in the South, maybe. They dated, started making plans right away, had a wedding a few months later and he was the happiest man alive. Since he was the oldest, the rest of us were watching every move he made. We all wanted to be like Luke—he was so sure of himself, so well equipped. All the boys wanted to go into the military, excel, get a million ribbons and promotions, marry the prettiest, sexiest girl on the map, grab on to that perfect life filled with challenge, adventure and passion.”
“Something went wrong, I gather,” she said.
“Oh, boy. Let’s see, Colin was in the army, stationed on the other side of the country, I was in my last year of undergrad at the time, Sean was only nineteen and at the air force academy. Patrick was in high school. And Luke had a baby coming. First baby in the family, a son. First marriage for anyone. Luke was on top of the world, so happy, so in love, so excited about the baby, and then he was sent to Somalia, to Mogadishu. You ever see that movie,
Black Hawk Down?
”
“I did,” she said. “I don’t think I want to see it again….”
“Luke got shot down over there, had some injuries, but he’s the bravest man I’ve ever known. That was a horrible
experience for the army—everything bad that could happen, happened. But he somehow got through it, performing heroically. He saved lives and was decorated for bravery. He got home as fast as he could because his son was about to be born. He was undoubtedly still battle scarred when he faced another battle. He wasn’t home five minutes when his wife told him the baby—which was conceived months before he left for Somalia—wasn’t his. She was doing some captain. One of Luke’s superior officers, in fact. A man Luke went into war with, took orders from on occasion. And she was leaving Luke to go with the baby’s father.”
“God” was all she could say.
“It humiliated him, this tough young soldier. He was your age at the time, Shelby—twenty-five. There was a stir on the army post—an officer messing with one of his men’s wives. It wasn’t only a divorce, it was just about front-page news, there were rumblings about pressing charges against the captain and Luke looked like a fool. He wasn’t close to being done dealing with war. He had some issues from that at the same time. Broken heart, scandal, humiliation, disappointment, PTSD from battle, grief from watching comrades die.” Aiden took a breath. “He was suicidal.”
“Luke?” she asked. “That’s so difficult to imagine. Anger, I can see that. But—”
“It didn’t present itself in a typical way. He went down like a torpedo—drank too much and drove, almost flew drunk, but someone pulled him off the flight line. He got in fights—he seemed to go places where he could count on getting the hell beat out of him by at least several men. He picked the fights. He landed in the hospital a couple of times, injuries from fights, from a one-car accident. He
probably wouldn’t tell you this, but he told me. He just wanted to die.”
She took a moment to absorb that, then said, “No wonder he won’t have a close relationship…”
“There are a lot of things that can screw a guy up, but Luke had a full menu. It wasn’t just a bad marriage, Shelby, but everything, with a no-good cheating wife in the middle of it. It took a couple of years for him to get straightened out. He changed everything—he stopped being calculating and just took too many chances, and he moved real fast. It turned out he couldn’t give up women, but he seemed to give up attachments.”
She tilted her head. “That explains so much,” she said. “He told me he didn’t fall in love, went through women like a shark goes through scuba divers….”
Aiden smiled. “That sounds like Luke.”
“I absolutely believed him,” she said. “I thought I could handle that. And then I stupidly thought something was different for him with me. That’s where I screwed up.” She took a breath. “I must have blown his mind with that talk about children….”
“What talk was that?” he asked.
“I told him that I wanted a committed partner, at least one child. He said it was never going to happen with him, but I thought…” She shrugged.
“He’s been saying that for quite a while. Maybe he believes it by now, but when he thought he had a child coming, I never saw a happier man. I’m sorry he lost that.”
“He made the excuse he was too old. I guess if he trusted me, he could have told me about his marriage, his reasons, given us a chance to work through it…”
“Yeah, well, he has a lot of denial about that. And, by the things he said, it sounded like he started out protect
ing himself, but later in your relationship, he was protecting you.”
“Me?”
“He told me about your mother, about how dedicated you were for a few years, that you didn’t have any real freedom… My condolences, by the way.”
“Thanks. Maybe you’ll understand this, since you’re a doctor—Luke sure doesn’t get it. It wasn’t a sacrifice. I wasn’t held hostage. I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. I was very close to my mother. Helping someone close the door on this world and move on to the next—it’s very special. Intimate. I wasn’t giving anything up—I was getting something most people will never experience.”
He smiled at her. “That’s a pretty remarkable take on things.”
“I’m not remarkable,” she said with a self-effacing smile. “I was in a support group and learned an awful lot.”
“You’ve had some tough blows in the last year,” he said. “First, losing your mother. Then Luke.”
Her eyes became moist, but she held steady. “I don’t regret what I gave either one, Aiden. I wouldn’t change any of it. I would never have left my mom in someone else’s care. I couldn’t help falling in love with Luke.” She gave a tremulous smile. “I knew almost right away, he should be the one. My first love.”
Aiden touched the hand that rested on her knee. “You never fell in love like that before, I guess.”
“I never fell in love at all,” she said. “It wasn’t very long after high school that my life got pretty isolated, and I wasn’t one of the girls who got around a lot in high school. Luke was right about one thing—I haven’t lived much in those ways. I could’ve stumbled onto some insensitive jerk, but it was Luke. He was so good to me, so tender, so won
derful. I can’t regret that,” she said, shaking her head. “Much as it hurts now, I wouldn’t take away one day with him. When he said he wanted to keep it just between us because it was so special, I guess I started to think his pattern of never getting involved could change…with me….”
“Just between you?” Aiden asked in spite of himself.
“That he was the first one. Ever.” She dropped her gaze. “The way I feel, he’s probably going to be the only one. Ever.”
Aiden was silent, looking at her sweet face, stunned. After what Luke had been through with his wife, he stumbled onto someone pure? Untouched? Oh, man, no wonder he was so screwed up. He must have glimpsed a kind of impossible dream—a sweet and good woman who could be trusted, who would belong only to him. “Oh, Jesus,” Aiden said, hanging his head. “No wonder this is so bad….”
“Huh?”
“Shelby, the girl he married—she was about the furthest thing from a virgin a guy can get. She was a sexy little flirt. She’d been around, and apparently never stopped getting around. You gotta imagine—Luke must have been thinking that if that one hurt, if something like that happened with you, it would kill him.”
She shook her head. “I can’t believe he ever thought I’d be like that….”
“I think it’s time for us to have that Bloody Mary,” Aiden said. “Take a walk on the beach. Then dinner.”
When Aiden left in the morning to go to the airport, she hugged him goodbye like an old friend. They had talked the rest of the afternoon, through dinner, and then sat on the beach in the moonlight until very late. Most of that time
was focused on Luke and her relationship with him, but also on the other brothers and Aiden’s movement through medical school and practice, aboard ship and at naval bases and Camp Pendleton. And he learned about her childhood, her mother, the rest of her family, her love for the mountains and rivers, the horses, the quiet tranquility of Virgin River. They became good friends.
“I’ve had the strangest thought,” she told Aiden as he stood by his cab.
“What’s that, sweetheart?”
“Luke’s trying to rescue me by letting me go. He doesn’t want me to sacrifice anything, to give up anything, to settle. But really, he’s a mess. He’s the one who needs to be rescued.”
Aiden laughed. “Yeah, maybe. But since he’ll never admit it, it’s probably impossible.”
“Take care of him, Aiden,” she said as he got in his cab at the hotel.
“I’ll do what I can,” he said. “Will you go to San Francisco now?”
“I might take another week. Really, there’s no big hurry for me to get there. I just felt like I had to be moving on, to be doing something. It’s strange how long it takes to forget.”
“You don’t forget, Shelby. You just adapt.”
She laughed softly. “Thank you, Aiden. For coming all the way here just to talk to me. You don’t realize how much it mattered, helped.”
“I hope so, Shelby. Luke’s right about one thing—you’re special. Best of luck.”
“Same to you.”
Luke was sitting in front of his fireplace, feet up, listening to a CD while looking off at nothing in particular, when headlights dashed across his living-room window. It
was wet out there; he wasn’t expecting anyone. He looked at his watch; it was eight o’clock. If this was another brother or, worse, his mother, he wasn’t going to be able to control himself. He’d been answering the phone, for God’s sake. He hadn’t been conversational, but he’d answered. It was still a little raw, this thing with Shelby, but he was making progress. He slept now at least….
He opened the door and saw the Jeep. She stood in front of it, leaning against the hood, arms crossed over her chest, getting wet in the freezing drizzle. His heart lurched. Almost three weeks since he’d seen her and his feelings hadn’t given him a break. He still wanted her so bad it hurt.
“You never told me about Felicia,” she yelled at him.
“That was a long time ago,” he said loudly. “How do you know?”
“Never mind. Didn’t you trust me enough to tell me?”
“It was years ago,” he said. “It had nothing to do with anything.” He took a step onto the porch. “I didn’t hear anything about you coming back.”
“No one knows I’m here,” she said. “Do you think I’ll be as bad as she was, is that it?”
“No. I know better than that. You think I’m the best you can do?”