Paradise Valley (Virgin River #7)(89)

“I do,” she laughed.

“You make me feel twenty-one,” he said. “Honest to God. And when the fabulous sex simmers down a little, you’re the best friend I’ve had in a long time. Muriel, you’re not a convenience. I’d walk across a mile of cut glass in my bare feet to hold your hand and talk to you for one hour. You’re everything to me.”

She sighed deeply and her eyes glistened a little. “I’d better go before I give up the only Oscar of my lifetime by playing house with you.”

“Tell me I’m everything to you, too,” he said.

“Damned if you aren’t,” she said. “Now kiss me in a way that will hold me for a couple of weeks.”

“Kind of took you by surprise, didn’t I?” he teased. “Admit it, you didn’t think this would turn out to be so much, did you?”

“Walt, the second I saw you blush when you asked if I was married, I knew. And I wanted you. Right then. Right there. Sweaty and na**d on the trail.”

That made his smile huge. “You didn’t let on.”

“I hadn’t wanted something like that in a long, long time,” she said, smiling. Then she rose on her toes and planted a big sloppy one on his lips, holding him close. “I adore you,” she whispered against his lips. “I’ll count the seconds until you’re back.”

Cheryl brought sandwiches to the park the next Sunday afternoon and Dan brought them the Sunday after that. It didn’t take them long to fully share their unfortunate pasts. When Cheryl began telling him about when she started drinking heavily as a teenager, he said, “You don’t have to tell me all this, you know. It doesn’t make any difference to me. I like having a picnic with you because of who you are now.”

“Are you opposed to hearing it?” she asked.

“It’s not that. But you don’t have to run it by me to see if I’m going to stick or run scared.”

“Dan, I’ve told the story so many times, I can do it in my sleep. That’s what we do at AA—tell our stories. It’s kind of amazing how we can still find new things in the old story after months. After years.”

So he listened. It started in high school and just got worse and worse until by the time she was in her mid-twenties, she was drunk most of the time. Then she told about Mel Sheridan coming for her one morning, carting her off to a treatment program right in Eureka and now she couldn’t let herself get very far away.

“I think that’s a good woman there,” Dan said of Mel. “That man of hers, now, there’s a piece of work.”

“Jack?” Cheryl asked. She laughed. “Oh, I had a bad thing for Jack, back when I was drinking. Bad. I’d have followed him anywhere!”

Dan picked up her hand and held it. “You over that now?”

She got a strange look on her face. “Listen, I can’t handle anything more complicated than friendship….”

He gave the hand a squeeze and smiled. “Try not to get ahead of me, Cheryl. I don’t have anything complicated in mind. This is all I’m looking for—Sunday picnics with a nice woman, maybe a little handholding sometimes. Maybe we’ll get closer down the line, maybe we’ll just be friends who have a sandwich and tea. This is okay, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” she said doubtfully. “It’s just that I haven’t had a regular, normal, healthy relationship that I can remember.”

“Me neither,” he said. “It’s kind of scary wonderful, isn’t it?”

Dan wasn’t making any fast moves, and it was extremely deliberate and well thought out. He didn’t call during the week except to be sure they were on for Sunday. It wasn’t just because she was so skittish—it was also him, cautious. After a wife leaving him and a son dying was followed by a stint in jail, he wasn’t at all interested in a relationship that was going to suck the life out of him. All of a sudden, after all the healing he’d had to do, he was real reluctant to threaten what turned out to be peace of mind.

His recovery had been a long, arduous one. He came home from Iraq wounded and with some emotional issues, a lot like young Rick now. In fact, from the time he left for Iraq until he was released from prison, it had been one excruciating journey. Well, he was barely coming out of a long, dark tunnel. He wasn’t going to throw it away by moving too fast with a woman who had her own recovery to worry about.

But he liked her. She was cool and didn’t know it. When she could let go of that whole town-drunk thing, they talked about when they were real young kids and what they thought they’d grow up to be. Dan had always liked to build, but he thought he’d be building race cars. Cheryl loved animals, but never had a pet growing up. She had wanted to be a veterinarian, but in fact had barely finished high school. Their jobs right now were real mundane, construction and waiting tables on the early shift in a diner, yet just filling in the blanks for each other could soak up at least a couple of hours. They talked about the people they dealt with on the job and friends of theirs. Cheryl had a whole network of friends through AA who’d become her lifeline and Dan claimed some of his newer acquaintances from Virgin River.

He filled her in on Rick—Cheryl had known Rick since he was about two. “He’s really struggling with all his stuff—the war, the amputation, the girlfriend, the body image—you name it. He has a smorgasbord of crap to deal with. I keep looking for an in to tell him we could talk about some of that stuff. I’ve been there, man. But he’s got me at arm’s length. He’s not letting anyone close. I think it’s killing Jack slowly.”