Redwood Bend

by Robyn Carr

  She flung herself into his arms, then flung herself out of his arms and ran for the bathroom where she proceeded to hover over the commode, really on the verge.

  “I know I smell bad, but that’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think,” he said, standing in the bathroom doorway, unlacing his boots and stripping off his BDU. “Take it easy, I’ll get right in the shower.”

  He was down to his fatigue pants, stinky bare feet and broad, delicious, tattooed chest, when she turned watering eyes up to him. “Charlie, I’m pregnant.”

  “Oh, baby!” he said, falling to his knees to take her into his arms. “Baby…”

  “Charlie!” she yelled. “Shower, for God’s sake! Please!”

  “Yeah,” he said, rising and getting rid of what remained of his clothes. “You bet, baby. Then we’ll celebrate! Do pregnant women have sex?” he wanted to know as he turned on the shower.

  He was one of a kind, that was for sure. It took a special woman to be married to Charlie Malone and his lifestyle. And it was going to take a lot of patience to make peace with Dylan Childress and draw him safely into her heart. She wondered if she had the time or the faith.

  With her eyes closed, she thought about the differences between Charlie and Dylan…and their similarities. Both shockingly handsome, smart and confident men, at first glance you’d think they were alike. Beyond those obvious similarities they were opposites. Charlie was bold while Dylan was more reserved. Charlie grabbed what he wanted without the slightest hesitation while there were lots of emotional connections that still terrified Dylan. Charlie had waited a long time to really fall in love but once he recognized it, he was all in. Dylan had too many childhood ghosts to make that leap of faith.

  Both men were phenomenal lovers; she could never have resisted either one of them.

  She must have nodded off in the warm, beach sunshine because she felt Dylan curve around her. He was lying on his side, his arm casually crossing over her waist. His breath was warm on her ear and inhaled her scent, exhaling slowly. He nuzzled her softly. “Don’t fall asleep, honey,” he said. “We have to watch the time. The boys…”

  She smiled and snuggled a little closer. He remembered they had to pick up the twins. And stop by her brother’s house.

  Yes, it was going to take a special kind of patience to let him know he’d be safe with her. And she would require a special kind of courage to take a chance on him. Green Berets were a piece of cake compared to movie stars.

  Dylan sensed a sort of peacefulness about Katie as they left the beach and drove back to Virgin River. Or maybe it was just that she wasn’t as uptight about this peacemaking confrontation with Conner as he was. He remained quiet while Katie talked about Dylan’s mysterious special pizza for dinner, about how to make peace with her bear, about how the sound of the waves had been so relaxing she’d fallen asleep, but then she was so sleepy these days she could fall asleep standing up.

  “I know I’m not very talkative right now, Katie, but it’s not you,” he said.

  “I don’t care, Dylan, because my mind is made up about how I’m moving forward. I’m sure when you work out a few things in your head, you’ll talk a little more.”

  He turned toward her. “Exactly,” he said.

  When they pulled up to the little prefab schoolhouse, the boys were busy on the play set that Dylan had helped to erect. “Katie, when we get to Conner’s house, can you get the boys occupied with something so I can talk to your brother without the boys around?”

  “If you promise you’re not using that as an excuse to get into a fistfight…”

  “Look at my eye. You think I want to sacrifice the other one? I just want to talk to him, but if he gets angry the boys shouldn’t be there. If you want to, I can take you and the guys home and come back by myself for this talk.”

  “No—I’ll find them something on TV they can watch. But behave!”

  He didn’t reply to that but he didn’t feel that he was the loose cannon—behaving was his sole intention. And he knew the road to hell was paved with good intentions.

  He and Katie got to Conner and Leslie’s house before they were home from work. “The door will be unlocked,” she said. “I’ll take the kids in and get them settled in front of the TV with a snack. Conner has a few of their favorite movies and games here. Would you like something to drink?”

  “How would he feel about me having a beer from his refrigerator?”

  She flashed him a teasing smile, lifting her brow. “Need a little calming courage?”

  “Baby, after what I learned about an hour ago, I should probably have a six-pack. I’ll wait on the front porch.”

  He leaned against the porch rail and waited. This must be what it felt like to be a teenage boy who was meeting a girl’s father when he’d gotten her in trouble, except it was probably the rare father who launched an attack. Even with all the siblings Dylan had, he’d never been close enough to one to feel that kind of protectiveness. In fact, he felt more protective toward Katie after knowing her for half a summer than he ever had toward one of his own family members. He wondered if that little bun in the oven was making the difference.

  She finally brought him a beer. “Sure you don’t want to come inside?”

  “Nope,” he said. He walked down the porch steps.

  “Where are you going?”

  He turned to look at her. “I’m not doing this in front of you, Katie. I mean, you might see us, but I’m not having this conversation for your entertainment.”

  “Trust me, I don’t feel real entertained.”

  “If I’m away from the house, you won’t be tempted to put in your two cents’ worth.”

  “Well, jeez, you’re a little bossy there, aren’t you?”

  “Making us a very well-matched set, when you think about it,” he said, and he walked back to the street where her SUV was parked. He leaned against it. It was his own damn fault he had this mess to clean up and he was going to figure it out before it got any worse. When he thought about what Lang would do it didn’t really help his situation much. Lang wouldn’t hesitate to try to convince his woman to marry him, provided the woman had been Sue Ann.

  Finally the yellow SUV that Leslie drove pulled up to the house and into the drive, all the way forward to the carport. Right behind her was Conner in his great big truck and Dylan thought, I should’ve rented a bigger truck. Conner got out of the truck and briefly glared at Dylan, and Dylan had to look at the ground in front of his crossed legs to keep from laughing. Conner had white tape across his rather swollen, purple nose.

  Conner took his lunch tote into the house, but momentarily he was back, striding toward Dylan. Dylan just couldn’t help it, he grinned stupidly.

  “You look in the mirror, idiot?” Conner asked.

  “So,” he said, ignoring the taunt. “I’ve been told to work this out with you, so let’s work this out. I learned about one hour ago why you lost your temper.”

  “Because you weren’t here!” Conner returned rather loudly.

  Dylan came off the truck and stood straight, meeting him eye to eye. “You want the women involved in this conversation?” he asked. “Because at the first sign of trouble, they’re right in the middle of it, I guarantee it. I wasn’t here because I had to go to work. I told Katie from the day I met her, I was going to have to go to work, but because she’s Katie, I put it off as long as I could.”

  “And you abandoned her,” Conner ground out between clenched teeth. “Left her pregnant and alone!”

  “I didn’t realize what was going on and I apologized. Listen, it doesn’t really matter to me if you understand or sympathize or hate my guts, but I told her the truth, that I was not in the market for a girlfriend or steady relationship, that I was temporary here at best, and whether she believed me or not, she accepted that. At least when she had the chance to tell me to just hit the road then, she didn’t. I don’t know you, don’t know anything about you, but you’re at least my age and just barely hooked u
p with this woman,” he said, lifting the chin toward the house. That’s when he noticed Katie and Leslie sitting on the porch, watching them. He cleared his throat. “I’m guessing you had one or two situations like that in your time.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “This is my sister.”

  “Noted,” Dylan said. “And now that I know the situation, I’ll take care of it. And you better back off or you’re going to screw it up for all of us.”

  “How do you plan to take care of it?” he demanded.

  “That’s going to be between me and Katie. We’ll work it out.”

  “Don’t you even think about making her do anything she doesn’t want to do!”

  Dylan couldn’t help it, a huff of laughter escaped. In his mind he saw her struggling with the lug nuts, standing up to an angry bear, telling him, Don’t even go there—it is what it is. “Are we talking about the same woman?”

  “She was hurt,” he said. “No matter what you said, the way you just dumped her, hurt her. Don’t you do anything to her that makes her cry again. Do you get me?”

  “I’m going to do the best I can” was all he promised.

  “Your best better be some improvement.”

  Dylan was quiet for a long moment. He gathered himself internally. “I know you love her,” he said with as much understanding as he could muster, “but you can’t fix this for her. She has to deal with me because we made this situation together, Katie and I. If you don’t back off, if we don’t make our peace for her sake, it’s going to get more complicated than it needs to be.”

  Conner was stubbornly silent, frowning.

  At long last Dylan said, “So. How about those Red Sox?”

  About an hour after Dylan and Conner shook hands and Dylan walked away down the street, Katie picked him up at Jack’s. When he was sitting beside her in the car she said, “You couldn’t sit on the porch with my brother and have a beer? A friendly conversation?”

  “Not today, Katie,” he said. “Soon,” he added.

  He wasn’t real happy with the idea that Conner punched him before talking to him. Before they made their peace, Dylan had many things to come to terms with. That was only one of them.

  When they were back at the cabin, he made his special pizzas, which were basically a simple bread dough covered with tomato sauce, lots of cheese, some pepperoni and on one, some mushrooms and black olives. He asked the boys to help cover them with stuff. The pizzas couldn’t lose because the boys were involved.

  After dinner, he took the boys outside and kicked the soccer ball around with them, though he was wearing boots to their tennis shoes. Then he sat on the porch and watched as they climbed all over the jungle gym. When Katie came outside and sat in the chair next to his he said, “I’m wearing them down for you.” And he smiled.

  “What are your plans, Dylan?”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like your couch for a while. I need some time to figure out how to handle our…situation. I want to do the right thing. For many reasons.”

  “You do understand that it’s not entirely up to you, right? I have no husband and three children to think about so whatever you come up with, I’ll definitely listen. But you’re not going to decide our lives for us.”

  “Can I have the couch?” he asked. “Or not?”

  “You can have the couch and the kitchen. You’re a good cook, as it turns out.”

  Right now Dylan didn’t want to be distracted—he wanted to figure out how he felt and what he should ultimately do with his life. The day after his forced handshake with Conner, he drove down the mountain and checked in with Lang. All was status quo in Payne, Lang assured him. So he texted his grandmother, the agent working on his movie contract, Jay Romney, Lang, Sue Ann and Stu—I’m staying in the mountains for a few days and cell reception isn’t great. I’ll check in when I can, but might be out of touch. No problems, just out of touch. I’ll be in touch when I’m back in service. Thanks.

  And then he turned off the phone.

  Over the next several days Dylan hung pretty tight to Katie and the boys, stayed close to the cabin except for errands. When he wanted to go off on his own he made Katie promise not to have a standoff with any wildlife, especially the bear. He went to the larger towns for groceries, more than happy to be responsible for dinner.

  The one thing that kept him on the couch and from sneaking into Katie’s room at night or from begging her to make love while the boys were at school was the fact that he felt he had their entire lives to figure out before he could think about things like that. He also thought there was a good possibility she might clobber him.

  But Dylan had plenty of confidence in other things—like his ability to think rationally about business. He knew he was levelheaded and fair. And while he might have siblings who were assholes and idiots, he was a nice person and good with people. He played to his strengths.

  On a night he’d taken Katie and the boys to McDonald’s and afterward to a park to further wear them out, he thought he had it together. As they were pulling through Virgin River on the way to the cabin he asked, “After the boys have gone to bed, can we talk about things?”

  “Well, butter my butt and call me biscuit! Only six short nights on my couch and you’re ready to talk about our situation?”

  And he laughed.

  “I’m not sure I can stay up until after they’re asleep. But I’ll make a compromise—I’ll meet you on the porch after they’re bathed and rooted in front of a movie in the loft. Will that do it for you?”

  “That will do it.”

  It was hard to stay on track with Miss Funny Bones teasing him, but he was determined. He had come up with what he thought was a fantastic idea. He was sure she’d be relieved.

  She brought a couple of steaming cups of tea to the front porch and he noticed, not for the first time, she seemed to be looking better. He was only too aware of her brief fits of nausea, when a smell or something else would trigger a wave of it, but she no longer looked like she’d been ill or starving. It made him feel a rush of pride because although he’d never tell her, that had been his goal—to cook her at least one hearty meal a day and hopefully put back those pounds he’d robbed from her.

  He took the cup she offered. He’d never been a tea drinker but this stuff Katie made didn’t gag him. In fact this was one of the ways he always knew Sue Ann was pregnant again—she’d offer them tea. He and Lang would make gagging sounds and go get a beer or a Crown Royal on ice.

  Behind them in the house, he could hear the TV in the loft. He obediently sipped his tea. “Are they almost ready to go to bed?” he asked.

  “Almost.”

  “Katie,” he said. And then he just looked at her. There were times he’d catch a glance and think he’d never seen such a pretty girl in his life. It made him frown slightly as he wondered if she was really that beautiful or just to him. After all, he thought Sue Ann was pretty but Lang was completely hypnotized by her. Well, as it should be. But Dylan had never been in that place before.

  “After six nights on my couch, cat’s got your tongue?”

  And that mouth—she was relentless. Why did he love that so much?

  “I’ve got a few ideas,” he said.

  “Well, let’s have it. I can’t wait.”

  “Let’s start with that movie I’m supposed to make,” he said. “That could come in handy under the circumstances.”

  “Oh?” she asked. “You said the whole idea was to get your charter business and airport on its feet.”

  “That was the whole idea, but now there seems to be more on the table. I could use a portion of that movie money for the baby.”

  It was as if she came to attention. Her neck straightened a bit, her eyes brightened. “Oh?”

  “How about a trust for the…ah…baby. For his education. That sort of thing.”

  And as he watched, it seemed she showed first shock and then disappointment. The dusky night was darkening and he wondered if he hadn’t seen quit
e right. Shouldn’t she be thrilled?

  “A trust?” she asked.

  “Something put aside to be sure he’s always taken care of, in case something should happen to either of us. You know.”

  “Wow.”

  He waited for some huge, grateful reaction, but it didn’t come. After a few moments, he said, “It seemed like an even more important reason to make that movie than the company. I thought it would make you happy.”