Redwood Bend (Virgin River #18)(50)

“Katie, write down this number, in case you want to tell me something.” Then he reeled it off. “Call me if you want to talk. Anytime.”

“What if I interrupt something important?” she asked.

“Then I’ll call you back. But don’t worry about that, just call if you want to.”

“All right, then. I’m glad you called. I’d better—”

“I miss you, Katie,” he said again.

In the quiet that followed, he wondered if she was thinking about what to say next. But…

“Be safe, Dylan,” she said.

When they disconnected, he closed his eyes for a moment and took a breath. She wouldn’t say it; she was afraid to say it. He could hardly blame her. Why would she pour more emotion into a situation that had no clear resolution?

He would think about that. Where he was going. And with whom.

Katie looked at the number she’d scribbled down. She could hear his voice in her head. I miss you, Katie. She lifted the folded tabloids from the kitchen counter and opened the one with Dylan kissing some blonde’s neck.

“You’ll be fine,” she said. And then with sarcasm she thought, Be brave.

Conner couldn’t count the number of days he felt grateful for finding Leslie. Their lives had converged at probably the most challenging of times for both of them—he was in hiding and she was escaping from a painful divorce. Yet now, just a few months later, they were living together in this little town, at peace in their relationship, their complicated lives settled. He even had his sister and nephews close by, which gave him no small amount of comfort.

But all wasn’t cheery. Katie had grown quiet and distant. Well, he supposed that was to be expected—she’d had a fling with a guy who was just passing through and, unsurprisingly, he actually passed through. He was gone and she was left lonely. Again.

“Should I be worried about Katie?” he asked Les.

“Why? Because Dylan went to work?”

“Well…yeah, that. She seemed to be hanging tough for a while, but he’s been gone a couple of weeks and it’s like he took her sparkle with him.”

She grinned at him. “How many women did you have short relationships with over the years, Conner?”

“But this is Katie,” he said. “Unless she never mentioned it to me, I don’t think she’s had a guy she…” slept with, laughed with a lot and who put a shine in her eyes… “…liked a lot. Since Charlie. You know?”

“Why don’t you give her a call?” Leslie suggested. “See how she’s doing. Ask her if she wants to come over for ice cream. Or maybe we could bring the ice cream to her.”

So he did that, he called her. And then he went back to Leslie, a pained expression on his face, and said, “I’m going out to check on her. Andy said she’s in the bathtub. Crying. In the tub crying.”

Leslie shot to her feet. “Wait! Just wait. Grab the ice cream. We’ll both go. You can keep the boys busy and please, let me talk to Katie. I don’t think this is a job for a big brother.”

“Why not?” he asked indignantly. “I could hunt down the son of a bitch and beat the shit outta him.”

She stared at him coolly, her hands on her hips. “There you go—reason number one.”

Conner, not usually inclined to take orders from people, played it Leslie’s way. He grabbed the ice cream from the freezer and then drove a little too fast to his sister’s cabin. When they walked in and he went right to the kitchen to spoon up giant bowls for his nephews and himself, he was stopped short. “Les,” he said, pointing to some newspapers on the kitchen counter. “Isn’t this him? This is him!”

Leslie glanced at the papers. “Oh, man, this might be a little more complicated than I thought. I’ll explain after I talk to Katie. You and the boys go up to the loft and stay busy for a while. Play video games and chow down.”

Then she went to the bathroom. She knocked before she said, “I’m coming in.” And in she went.

Katie was mostly concealed by bubbles. Her hair was piled on her head, her body submerged, her eyes red and swollen, and when she saw Leslie, a new flood of tears escaped. She tried to catch them with the washcloth.

Leslie sat on the closed toilet lid. Though she wanted to cry with her, she forced herself to be cool. Both of them blubbering away wouldn’t help now. “What happened, Katie?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all…”

“And yet…?”

“He left, as he said he had to do—he has to earn money somehow. He said he didn’t know when he’d see me again, that movies are a lot of work. I can’t compete with Hollywood. Why would I try?”

“Are we crying over that? Hollywood?”

“Or a picture in a tabloid of him kissing some woman’s neck?” Katie asked with a hiccup of emotion. “He called. He misses me, he says. By the picture I saw in one of those icky gossip papers, he doesn’t miss me that much.” She took a breath and gave her face a little scrub with the cloth. “Les, we didn’t have any kind of agreement that after me, there would never be another woman. He admits he’s that way. He wasn’t callous about it. In fact, he was almost self-effacing. He called himself a bad bet—he said I’d be better off.”