Hidden Summit (Virgin River #17)(21)

“Sounds like you’re getting along fine,” he said.

“Are you so disappointed that I’m not sobbing myself to sleep every night?” she asked him. “I do miss you, Danny.”

“Names,” he reminded her.

“I’m sure we’re fine. I do miss you. The boys miss you and love talking to you. I’d put them on right now, but they’re tumbling. They were on the trampoline and now they’re on the mats. Are you getting along all right? Having fun, like you promised you’d try to?”

“Well…there is this girl....”

She choked. “Girl?”

“Woman,” he corrected. “Woman. I met her at work and she’s nice. Pretty. Funny.”

“Well, my God, a girl,” Katie said and burst into hysterical laughter.

“And this is so goddamn funny?” he asked indignantly.

“Because it’s just what you need and I never thought you’d have the guts. Oh, go for it!”

“She doesn’t like me that much yet,” he said. “Which is probably just as well. I’d end up just leaving her high and dry with no explanation,” he returned almost angrily.

“Now, calm down, that isn’t what’s going to happen at all. Not only will there be an explanation when you finally do your thing, there will probably be newspaper accounts and TV coverage. By the time all this is resolved, you’ll be able to tell her everything and bring her along with the happy party that includes me and two tumbling-soccer-T-ball players! Even if it makes more sense for her to let you go, it’s still a very good idea to enjoy yourself a little right now. You have no idea how happy that makes me.”

“Because if I could just hook up, you wouldn’t have to be stuck with me?” he asked her.

“Oh, my God, you can be such a drama mama. I have never been stuck with you—it’s been quite the opposite and you know it. Nothing would make me happier than to hear you’d given it up to some pretty, funny small-town woman. I’m on board with that. I just wish it would go as well with the dentist.”

“Are you getting involved?” Conner asked.

“Oh, no. It’s very professional,” she assured him. “I wasn’t the only employee he took to dinner. He also invited the office manager and his sister. It’s just friendly. But I think he’s the kind of guy I like. Stable and reliable. He loves children.”

“Don’t leave him alone with the boys!”

She chuckled again. God, how he missed her laugh. “Ah, I don’t think I’m going to be asking my boss to babysit.”

When they hung up he spent two minutes feeling ridiculous and twenty minutes remembering how level she had always made his life. And then he saw a shop owner putting out flats of flowers across the street. It had been a very long time since he’d taken a girl flowers.

Leslie had bought a flat of peonies and a bunch of starters of Hearts and Flowers ground cover, which were sitting on her front porch. She had just begun to till the ground in front of the porch when one of her neighbors stopped by to say hello. Mrs. Hutchkins had lived in the neighborhood for thirty years and had been widowed for only two. She was a spry seventy-six who reminded Leslie of her mother, and she walked a little white Shih Tzu named Puff.

While Leslie leaned on the hoe and visited, the last thing she expected was Conner, pulling in front of her house in his big truck. He jumped out. Smiling again. Funny, when she’d first met him, one of the things that had had an impact on her was how serious he usually was. He’d seemed almost brooding. Either that or he was smiling inappropriately, like when she said she felt like crap. Now every time she saw him he was grinning like a fool.

“I know I wasn’t invited to the planting,” he said as he came around to the rear of his truck. He wore a cap over his short, thick, unruly brown hair, and he touched the bill with a nod to Mrs. Hutchkins. “Ma’am,” he said politely.

“Young man,” Mrs. Hutchkins returned. “I’ll talk with you later, Leslie. Come along, Puff,” she said, moving down the street toward her house.

Leslie went to the back of Conner’s truck just as he lowered the hatch. The bed of the truck was filled with flats of flowers. “God above,” she said. “What have you done?”

He pulled off his hat and scratched his head. “I might’ve gotten a little carried away.”

She rolled her eyes. The truck was full of blossoming blue, yellow, red, purple, lavender, white.

“Daisies, wildflowers, peonies, lavender, garlic, bachelor buttons, poppies, lantana in three colors,” he said. “I didn’t get any roses or tomatoes. Roses and tomatoes are trouble.”

“Are you some kind of landscape expert or something?”

He let a huff of laughter loose. “Not before this morning.”

“I’m not mad at you anymore,” she reassured him. “I’m over it. I was a little insulted, but then I started to think—I have my reasons for being offended that you would think I was fooling around with a married man and maybe you have your reasons for springing to that conclusion.”

“Something like that,” he said.

“Who’s going to plant all this stuff?”

“I figured you and I would do it. And I was hoping it would take most of the day.”