Redwood Bend (Virgin River #18)(80)

He considered how awkward the situation he found himself in was. He was here because of Katie and he was not ready to leave her. But she was all that kept him here. There was no denying the beauty of the Virgin River area and the town appealed to him, but he wasn’t one for sitting around on a porch, someone else’s porch at that, whittling and counting deer. He had a home, one he’d been living in for twenty years, in a town he happened to love.

“There’s seven,” Andy whispered. “Look at ’em.”

“You ever live around so many wild animals before?” Dylan asked. Andy just shook his head. “When I was a kid and moved to Montana, I didn’t know anything about wild animals. I’d never been on a horse. But a friend of mine who worked on the property, he taught me to ride, took me off on a trail ride, showed me how to camp, how to shoot a shotgun, then a rifle, how to make it from the house to the barn in a blizzard, how to—”

“Huh?” Andy asked, twisting his head around.

Dylan chuckled softly. “Sometimes we had blizzards so fierce in Montana you wouldn’t want to set out for the barn to check on the animals without a rope tied to the house—you could get lost just hiking across the yard. My friend Ham showed me all kinds of survival things. You ever been in a blizzard, Andy?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“The answer is no, no blizzards,” Katie said from the door. She came onto the porch with her glass of juice. “Look at the deer!”

“That’s what we’re doing,” Dylan said. “We started with one youngster, obviously a scout for the group. Keep your voice down. Where’s Mitch? I don’t want him to miss this.”

Katie smiled at him. “Andy, go get your brother. Very quietly, don’t bang the door or the deer will run.” When Andy was inside Katie sat down on the porch steps and looked up at Dylan. “Are you talking about going home?” she asked him.

“I was telling Andy about Montana. Everything I have is back there. But, Katie, I’m not going to bail out on you. I gave you my word. I’m going to find a way to prove to you that you can trust me.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I have to run some errands and make some phone calls today. I can drop the boys at summer school for you. Will you promise not to go a round with the bear while I’m gone?”

“Promise,” she said.

Mitch came flying out the door, eyes wide, Andy on his heels. “Whoa!” he said. “How long have they been there?”

“A few minutes,” Dylan said. “Come here, let me tell you about my horses. I have two—did you know that? And a few cows.”

“And a bull and chickens,” Andy added.

“And goats and a couple of barn dogs,” Dylan said. “It’s a lot like this place, except I live in a valley and look out at the mountains instead of living in the mountains and looking down at the valley....” And by the time he was telling them about blizzards in Montana he had one twin on each knee.

And he knew exactly what he had to do.

Dylan hadn’t been to his grassy hill alone since leaving those texts that he’d be out of touch for a while. He turned on the phone somewhat reluctantly and saw what he expected—a ton of voice mails, emails and texts. Of course there were quite a few from Hollywood and while he was curious, he didn’t want to waste a lot of time going through them.

He called the one person who hadn’t left him a ton of messages.

“Yo,” Lang answered.

“Hey. You real busy?” Dylan asked.

Lang laughed. “You have reached Childress Aviation—busy is the one thing we’re not. What’s on your mind? Take your time.”

That made him wince, that the company was far from busy. But he pushed through the worry. “I haven’t told you anything about Katie Malone,” he said to his best friend. “You probably saw the kids in the car when we stopped to change her flat—twins. Five-year-old twin boys.”

Lang groaned. “You know, that’s one thing I’ve always been grateful for—that we had ours one at a time. They’re hard enough that way.”

“She had them and raised them almost entirely alone. Well, her brother has always supported her where he could—good male role model for a couple of little boys. Her husband was killed in the war before they were born. He was a highly decorated Green Beret, a hero, a Medal of Honor recipient.”

Lang just whistled.

“I said something about how hard that must have been to bury her husband while her twins were about to pop,” Dylan said. “And I asked her if she had any regrets about falling for this risk-taking soldier and you know what she said, man? She said she was grateful for every second.”

Lang was quiet for a moment before he said, “So, you found her. The one.”

“I found her. There is no one like her in the world. And she’s pregnant.”

There was a chuckle that came all the way from Montana. “You always did get ahead of yourself.”

“I have a lot to prove,” Dylan said. “You probably know this already, but I don’t have one freaking medal to my name. I have a lot to prove to her. To myself.”

“It’s going to come naturally, you’ll see.”

“The boys have never been on a horse or in a small plane. They’ve never reached under a hen for an egg, and they don’t know what a blizzard is.”