A Virgin River Christmas (Virgin River #4)(2)

In the year since Bobby had moved into a quiet and peaceful death, she had passed his birthday, their anniversary, every holiday, and still, it was as though there was this unfinished business. There was a big piece missing; something yet to be resolved.

Ian had saved Bobby’s life. He didn’t make it out whole, but still—Ian had braved death to carry Bobby to safety. And then he’d disappeared. It was like a hangnail; she couldn’t leave it alone. Couldn’t let it go.

Marcie didn’t have much money; she’d had the same secretarial job for five years—a good job with good people, but with pay that couldn’t support a family. She was lucky her boss gave her as much time as she wanted right after Bobby was wounded, because she’d traveled first to Germany, then to D.C. to be near him, and the expenses had been enormous, far more than his paycheck could bear. As a third-year enlisted marine, he’d earned less than fifteen hundred dollars a month. She’d pushed the credit cards to the max and took out loans, despite the willingness of Erin and Bobby’s family to help her. In the end, his military life insurance hadn’t gone too far to pay those bills, and the widow’s death benefit wasn’t much either.

The miracle was getting him home to Chico, which was probably entirely due to Erin’s bulldogging. Many families of military men who were 100 percent disabled and in long-term care actually relocated to be near the patient, because the government wouldn’t or couldn’t send the patient home to them. But Erin managed to get them into CHAMPUS, a private nursing home in Chico paid for by the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services. Most soldiers were not so fortunate. It was a complicated and strained system, now heavy with casualties. Erin had taken care of everything—using her exquisite lawyer’s brain to get the best benefits and stipend possible from the Corps. Erin hadn’t wanted Marcie to be stressed by benefit or money worries on top of everything else. Erin had done it all, even paid all the household bills. In addition to all that, she was somehow managing the cost of Drew’s medical college.

So, for this excursion, she couldn’t take a dime from her sister. Erin had already given so much. Drew did have some pocket change, but being a poor medical student, he didn’t have much. It would have been far more practical to wait till spring—until she’d had a chance to put aside a little more—to head into the small towns and mountains of Northern California looking for Ian Buchanan, but there was something about the anniversary of Bobby’s death and Christmas approaching that filled her with a fierce longing to get the matter settled once and for all. Wouldn’t it be nice, she kept thinking, if the questions could be answered and the contact renewed before the holidays?

Marcie meant to find him. To give peace to the ghosts. And then they could all get on with their lives….

One

M arcie Sullivan drove into the small town, her sixth small mountain town of the day, and found herself face-to-face with a Christmas-tree trimming. The assembled staff didn’t look big enough for the job—the tree was enormous.

She pulled up beside a large cabin with a wide porch, parked her Volkswagen and got out. There were three women at work on a Christmas fir that stood about thirty feet. One was about Marcie’s age, with soft brown hair and she held an open box, perhaps containing ornaments. One woman was old, with springy white hair and black-framed glasses, who pointed upward, as if someone had put her in charge, and the third was a beautiful blonde at the top of a tall, A-frame ladder.

The tree stood between the cabin and an old boarded-up church with two tall steeples and one stained-glass window still intact—a church that must have once been a beautiful structure.

While Marcie watched the trimming, a man came out onto the cabin’s porch, stopped, looked up and cursed, then took long strides to the base of the ladder. “Don’t move. Don’t breathe,” he said in a low, commanding voice. He took the rungs every other one, climbing quickly until he reached the blonde. Then he slipped an arm around her, somewhere above what Marcie realized must be a little pregnant bulge and beneath her br**sts and said, “Down. Slowly.”

“Jack!” she scolded. “Leave me alone!”

“If I have to, I’ll carry you down. Back down the ladder, slowly. Now.”

“Oh for God’s—”

“Now,” he said evenly, fiercely.

She began to descend, one rung at a time between his big, sturdy feet, while he held her safe against him. When they got to the bottom, she put her hands on her h*ps and glared up at him. “I knew exactly what I was doing!”

“Where is your brain? What if you fell from that height?”

“It’s an excellent ladder! I wasn’t going to fall!”

“You’re psychic, too? You can argue all you want, I’m not letting you that high up a ladder in your condition,” he said, his hands also on his hips. “I’ll stand guard over you if I have to.” Then he looked over his shoulder at the other two women.

“I told her I thought you wouldn’t like that,” the brown-haired one said with a helpless shrug.

He glared at the white-haired woman. “I don’t get into domestic things. That’s your problem, not mine,” she said, pushing her big glasses up on her nose.

And Marcie became homesick. So homesick. It had only been a few weeks that she’d been driving around this area, but she missed all the family squabbles, the tiresome complications. She missed her girlfriends, her job. She longed for her bossy older sister’s interference, her goofy younger brother and whatever current girlfriend was shadowing him. She missed her late husband’s large, fun, passionate family.