Midnight Kiss (Virgin River #12)

Midnight Kiss (Virgin River #12)
Robyn Carr



CHAPTER ONE

SUNNY ARCHER WAS SERIOUSLY considering a legal name change.

“Come on, Sunny,” her uncle Nathaniel said. “Let’s go out on the town and see if we can’t put a little of that legendary sunshine back into your disposition!”

Out on the town? she thought. In Virgin River? A town of about six hundred? “Ah, I think I’ll pass…”

“C’mon, sunshine, you gotta be more flexible! Optimistic! You can’t lick this wound forever.”

Maybe it was cute when she was four or even fourteen to say things like “Sunny isn’t too sunny today!”

But this was December 31 and she had come to Virgin River to spend a few quiet days with her uncle Nate and his fiancée Annie, to try to escape the reality of a heart that wouldn’t heal. And if the hurt wasn’t bad enough, her heart had gone cold and hard, too. She looked at her watch—4:00 p.m. Exactly one year ago at this time she was having her hair and makeup done right before slipping into a Vera Wang wedding gown, excited, blushing and oblivious to the fact that her fiancé Glen was getting blitzed and ready to run for his life.

“I’m not really in the mood for a New Year’s Eve bash, Uncle Nate,” she said.

“Aw, sweetheart, I can’t bear to think of you home alone, brooding, feeling sad,” Nathaniel said.

And feeling like a big loser who was left at the altar on her wedding day? she wondered. But that’s what had happened. How was she supposed to feel?

“Nate,” Annie said under her breath, “this might be a bad night to push the party idea….”

“Ya think?” Sunny said sarcastically, noting to herself that she hadn’t been so irritable and sarcastic before becoming an abandoned bride. “Listen, you guys, please go. Party like rock stars. I actually have plans.”

“You do?” they both asked hopefully.

“I do. I’m planning a ceremonial burning of last year’s calendar. I should probably burn three years’ worth of them—that’s how much time and energy I invested in the scumbucket.”

Nate and Annie were speechless for a moment; they exchanged dubious looks. When Nate recovered he said, “Well all-righty then! We’ll stay home and help with the ceremonial burning. Then we’ll make some popcorn, play some monopoly, make some positive resolutions or something and ring in a much better new year than the last.”

And that was how Sunny, who wasn’t feeling at all accommodating, ended up going to the big Virgin River blast at Jack’s Bar on New Year’s Eve—because she just couldn’t let her uncle Nate and sweet, funny Annie stay home to watch her sulk and whimper.

THERE HAD BEEN A LONG HISTORY in Sunny’s family of returning to the Jensen stables for a little rest and rejuvenation. Sunny and her cousins had spent countless vacations around the barn and pastures and trails, riding, playing, inhaling the fresh clean air and getting a regular new lease on life. It had been Sunny’s mother’s idea that she come to Virgin River for a post-Christmas revival. Sunny’s mom was one of Nate’s three older sisters, and Sunny’s grandpa had been the original owner and veterinarian of Jensen’s Clinic and Stable. Now Uncle Nate was the vet and Grandpa was retired and living in Arizona.

Sunny was her mama’s only child, age twenty-five; she had one female cousin, Mary—who it just so happened had managed to get her groom to the church. Since Uncle Nate was only ten years older than Sunny at thirty-five, she and her cousin had had tragic crushes on him. Nate, on the other hand, who had grown up with three older sisters, thought he was cursed with females.

Until he was thirty, anyway. Then he became a little more avuncular, patient and even protective. Nathaniel had been sitting in the church on New Year’s Eve a year ago. Waiting, like everyone else, for the groom to show, for the wedding to begin.

The past year had passed in an angry, unhappy blur for Sunny. Her rather new and growing photography business had taken off—a combination of her kick-ass website and word of mouth—and rather than take a break after her personal disaster, she went right back to work. She had scheduled shoots, after all. The catastrophic twist was that she specialized in engagement, wedding, anniversary, belly and baby shots—five phases of a couple’s life worth capturing for posterity. Her work, as well as her emotional well-being, was suffering. Although she couldn’t focus, and she was either unable to sleep or hardly able to pull herself out of bed, she pressed on the best she could. The only major change she’d made in her life was to move out of the town house she had shared with Glen and back into her mom and dad’s house until she could afford something of her own. She had her workroom in the basement of her parents’ place anyway, so it was just a minor shift in geography.

During the past year at her parents’, Sunny had a revelation. The driving reason behind most young women her age wanting their own space, their independence and privacy, was their being involved in a serious relationship. Since she was determined not to repeat past mistakes by allowing another man into her life, there was no need to leave the comfort, security and economy of her parents’ house.

She was trying her hand at photographing sunrises, sunsets, landscapes, seascapes and pets. It wasn’t working—her images were flat and uninteresting. If it wasn’t bad enough that her heart was broken, so was her spirit. It was as if her gift was lost. She’d been brilliant with couples, inspired by weddings—stills, slideshows, videos. She saw the promise in their eyes, the potential for their lives. She’d brought romance to the fat bellies of pregnant women and was a veritable Anne Geddes with babies! But now that she was a mere observer who would never experience any of those things firsthand, everything had changed. Not only had it changed, it pierced her heart each time she did a shoot.