Midnight Kiss (Virgin River #12)(15)

“I can’t enjoy it here?”

“With all of them watching you? Listening?” he asked with a lift of the chin to indicate the bar at large.

When she turned around to look, she caught everyone quickly averting their eyes and it made her laugh. She laughed harder, putting her hand over her mouth.

“Don’t do that,” he said, pulling her hand away. “You have an amazing smile and I love listening to you laugh.”

“Where would we go?”

“Well, it’s only ten. I could take you to Eureka or Fortuna—there’s bound to be stuff going on, but I’d prefer to find somewhere there’s not a party. I could show you the cabin Erin turned into a showplace, but I don’t have any ‘before’ pictures. Or we could take a drive, park in the woods and make out like teenagers.” He grinned at her playfully. Hopefully.

“You’re overconfident,” she accused.

“I’ve been told that. It’s better than being under-confident, in these circumstances at least.”

“I have to speak to Uncle Nathaniel,” she said.

He touched her cheek with the knuckle of one finger. “Permission?”

She shook her head a little. “Courtesy. I’m his guest. Grab our coats.”

The walk across the bar to her uncle was very short and in that time she realized that Drew wasn’t overconfident—Glen was overconfident. He preened, and had always managed to strike a pose that accentuated his height, firm jaw, strong shoulders. Drew clowned around. Laughed. Drew seemed to be pretty easygoing and took things as they came. But she’d known him for two whole hours. Who knew what secrets he harbored?

But what the hell, Sunny thought. I can experiment with actually letting a male person get close without much risk—I’m never going to see him again. Who knows? Maybe I’ll recover after all.

“Uncle Nate,” she said. “I’m going to go with Drew to see if anything fun is happening in Fortuna or Eureka. If you’re okay with that.”

“Well,” he said. “I don’t actually know—ow!”

Annie slugged him in the arm. “That’s great, Sunny,” she said. “Will you come back here or have Drew take you home?”

She shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know. Depends on where we are, what’s going on, you know. Listen, if the cells worked up here, I’d call, but…”

“Your cell from Fortuna or Eureka to my home phone works. Or to Jack’s land line. We’ll be here till midnight,” Nate said. Then he glared briefly at Annie. “Jack, can you give her your number?”

“You bet,” Jack said, jotting it on a napkin. “I’ve known Drew and his family a couple of years. You’re in good hands, Sunny.”

“Does he have four-wheel drive?” Nate asked.

Sunny grinned. “Oh, you’re going to be a fun daddy, yessir.” Then she walked back to Drew and let him help her slip on her jacket.

“Where did you say we were going?” Drew asked.

“I said Fortuna or Eureka, but I want to see it—the cabin.”

He grabbed his own jacket. “Hope I didn’t leave it nasty.”

“And is that likely?” she wanted to know.

“Depends where my head was at the time,” he said. He rested her elbow in the palm of his hand and began to direct her out of the bar. As they were leaving he put two fingers to his brow and gave the gawkers a salute.

Sunny was trying to remember, what was the first thing Drew had said to her? She thought it was something simple, like “Hi, my name is Drew.” And what had been Glen’s opening line? With a finger in her sternum he had said, “Yo. You and me.”

CHAPTER FIVE

“I’M NOT SURE THAT was the best thing to do,” Nate Jensen said right after Sunny and Drew left. “I’m supposed to be looking after her, and I let her go off with some guy I don’t even know.”

“She was laughing!” Annie stressed. “Having fun for the first time in so long! She didn’t need your permission, Nate. She was being polite, telling you where she was going so you wouldn’t worry.”

“You did fine,” Jack said. “Drew’s a good guy. A doctor, actually—in his residency now.”

“But is he the kind of guy who will take advantage of a girl with a broken heart?” Nate asked. “Because my sister…”

“I don’t know a thing about his love life,” Jack said. “He said he’d had a breakup, so that might make them sympathetic to each other. I’ll tell you what I know. Every time I’ve talked to him he’s seemed like a stand-up guy. His brother-in-law was a disabled marine in a nursing home for a few years before he died, and Erin said that Drew, along with the rest of the family, helped take care of him. Erin thinks that had an impact on him, drew him to medicine. And…he has four-wheel drive. That should put your mind at ease.”

“She was smiling,” Nate admitted. “You should’a been there last year. Sitting in that church, waiting for the wedding to start. Just like in all things, the rumors that the groom didn’t show started floating around the guests, maybe before Sunny had even heard it. It was awful. How do you not know something like that is coming? How could she not know?”