Redwood Bend (Virgin River #18)(52)

“I’m not sure,” she told him. “Katie said he was looking at small airports around here to see if he could learn anything that would help his charter business, but she didn’t mention he was leaving here to return to movies until after he was gone. I think it was his sudden departure that came as a shock, even though he’d been warning her that he had to go soon. And she really liked him. And here’s the thing about women—we always say we’re up for that fling, that we don’t need commitment, and we’re always lying to ourselves.”

“Bull, I had flings…”

“I didn’t say you men were lying to yourselves…”

“I never heard from women that they were all upset!” Conner said defensively.

She looked at him sharply. “Don’t you have an ex-wife still pestering you from time to time?”

“Oh, her—well, that’s not the same thing. She never said she didn’t need commitment and she has problems.” He shook his head. “Katie is completely normal.” He glanced at Leslie. “Isn’t she?”

“She is,” Leslie confirmed. “And your completely normal sister kind of fell for the guy. It wasn’t part of the plan, but stuff like that happens. I guess he didn’t fall for her or maybe it wouldn’t have turned out the way it did.”

Conner growled.

“Really, Conner, I want to hate him, too. But as Katie said, it was an honest relationship—he never misled her. We didn’t get into it, but I don’t think she has any regrets. She’s just having the hurt right now. You have to let her get through it. You can’t fix it.”

“I could punch the bastard in the face,” Conner said.

“Hmm. Very sensitive. But somehow I don’t think that’s going to make Katie feel a lot better…”

He gave a deep sigh. “All I wanted for my sister was happiness. She’s had such rotten luck, you know? Not just bad guy luck—but losing our mom and dad, losing Charlie when she was pregnant with the boys, being stuck with a brother as her only security, losing the hardware store, our inheritance… I just wanted her to have a real life. A good, stable, happy life. You know?”

“I know, Conner. I know.”

“After Charlie, I couldn’t call her after eight at night,” Conner said softly, almost mournfully. “It used to break my heart. She’d go to bed when the kids did, because staying up and having a whole long evening alone, it was too lonely. She said she was never too lonely in the early morning or the afternoon, but the nights were always hard. She missed going to bed with her man at night. It never got easier to go to bed alone, she said. It’s kind of hard to get used to the idea that your beautiful little sister has that kind of loneliness.”

“Even though you’ve had some serious loneliness of your own?” Leslie asked him.

“Even though. So when I met that Dylan character, I tried not to count on him too much, but there was no missing that her eyes were brighter. Her smile was pretty loaded, like she had one helluva secret. She was happy. And I’ll admit, I hoped this was something that would work out for her.”

“She did, too,” Leslie said.

“She’s okay now?”

“Conner, she might be a little emotional for a while. You have to let it go, let her grieve it in her own way and time.”

“Yeah,” he said grumpily. “You’re probably right… So, did she say what she’s going to do tonight? Since we left her?”

Leslie looked at Conner sympathetically. “She said she’s going to bed early.”

Grrrr came from the driver’s side. “I’m going to have to beat the shit out of that son of a bitch.”

Twelve

The phone didn’t ring again for Katie, not that she expected it to. She did have this wild and uncontrollable wish that Dylan would call her every day or several times a day, to have him say he’d been a fool to leave her as he had, to promise to be back to see her because he couldn’t stay away. She wouldn’t even consider it, of course. She would say, Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice… That she wanted to see him, that went without saying. But she wouldn’t take that chance again. It couldn’t possibly make the whole thing hurt less.

She had a few shameless problems over the following week. She couldn’t stop herself from going to the grocery store in Fortuna and lingering in the magazine aisle and at the checkout, looking for a familiar face. He was still an item, it appeared, though there didn’t seem to be any more kissing on the front pages. It was hard not to buy those papers, bring him home with her, but she resisted valiantly. Still, she kept the ones she had, tucked away in the trunk that held other keepsakes.

She had read and reread the articles, however. It was so like twenty years ago when her Teen magazine was shredded from use. One story said that Dylan had been living on his famous grandmother’s Montana estate. Wow. You’d think he could afford jeans without holes in the knees, right?

She cried some, but not malignantly. She knew her twinkle was gone. In fact, she just didn’t feel quite right—the whole ordeal had robbed her of appetite and unsettled her eating and sleeping patterns. No big surprise there—that’s why the term divorce diet had been invented. Katie really didn’t have weight to spare, however. If Dylan made her gaunt and thin in addition to everything else he’d done, she was really going to be pissed off.