Second Chance Pass (Virgin River #5)(29)

“Stop!” she said. “I haven’t asked you for anything except to stay in touch! Stop whimpering!”

He scowled. His neck got red. “I’m not whimpering!”

“Well, you sure as hell aren’t talking! Man up!”

“I’m trying! But you’re doing all the talking for me!”

She had a few more hot retorts, but bit her tongue against them. She pursed her lips. He had been in Virgin River for months, but he went back to Grants Pass almost every week for a day or two. He had said it was to check on the construction company he’d left in the hands of his father and brothers. And to check on her? It must’ve been pretty hard on her to be asked to understand he had to be away so much, tending to his best friend’s widow. Imagine now, being told he’d have to make frequent trips to Virgin River to make sure the widow and baby were doing all right. Talk about complicated. Well, she wasn’t interested in that kind of relationship.

“I think you’re trying to tell me there’s a woman back in Grants Pass who’s counting on you. You have obligations there.”

“Yeah,” he said weakly. “But, Vanni, I have obligations here, as well. You and Mattie, you’re awful important to me…”

Being referred to as an obligation should have made her want to cry, but instead it made her furious. “Well, don’t worry your little head. We’re getting along just fine—better every day. You have a life in Grants Pass. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of that.”

“You’re not listening,” he said, his voice raising to match hers. “I want to be here with you, as often as possible,” he said. “I’m doing my damn best!”

“It sounds like you have other things, other people you’d better pay attention to.”

“Listen, things can happen that you don’t plan, don’t expect!”

“Oh really?” she asked sarcastically. “Tell me about it,” she said. She hadn’t expected her husband to die, or to fall in love with Paul. If there was one thing she knew about the men in her life—her father, her late husband, Paul and all the guys who seemed to gather around him—they didn’t make commitments lightly, and once a promise was made, they never broke an oath. “I’m sure you’ll get everything straightened out,” she said. She tried to keep the angry edge out of her voice, but she was thoroughly unsuccessful. “Please, you have no obligations here. We’ll be fine. I don’t know why you didn’t just tell me—a long time ago! Did you think I wouldn’t understand you had to get home because there was someone there? Someone who was counting on you?”

“It isn’t like that!”

“You could have just told me!”

“Vanessa! For God’s sake—” Paul attempted.

Walt walked into the room. He looked stricken, startled. “Are you having an argument about something?”

“No!” they both said.

“Oh,” Walt said. “Poetry, I guess. Some new kind of poetry?”

Vanessa hissed and Paul just shook his head.

“I hear the baby,” she said, whirling out of the room.

“I hear something, too,” Paul said, leaving in the opposite direction, charging out the front door and letting it slam behind him.

Walt was left alone in the great room in front of a blazing hearth. “Well,” he said to himself. “Glad to know that wasn’t an argument.”

Vanni cursed herself. She’d lost it. She hadn’t given him much of a chance to explain, but then the time involved in him actually getting to the point might have taken a lifetime. She lay on her back on her bed, fully clothed, the back of her hand on her forehead. She kicked her feet furiously and groaned. She had a short fuse sometimes, she knew that. It rarely reared its ugly head like that, but Paul had frustrated her so much. How could you love and hate the same thing about a person? She adored that he was kind of shy and reluctant; that a woman had to mean everything in the world to him for him to speak at all, for him to embrace, smile, kiss. But she hated that he couldn’t take charge! Stake his claim! He should have told her long before Mattie was born that there was a special woman in Grants Pass, and that he had to get back to her!

Vanni was not going to be like Nikki, hoping to change a man’s mind. Or his feelings. More to the point, she wanted nothing to do with another woman’s man!

Then, despite the fact that her cheeks were still hot with anger, she cried. Then damned herself for crying.

Paul had a hard time sleeping through the night. He’d made a half-assed and totally unrehearsed attempt to explain things to Vanni and, in his bungling, left it undone, maybe worse. Of course, having the general right down the hall, maybe ready to walk into the room right at the moment Paul announced, “She’s pregnant!” didn’t help. But that was no excuse.

He had to get this done, and the very thought curdled his stomach.

If he was going to be a father he would be an involved father. He was more than committed to taking on little Matt and he hoped…no, he prayed, Vanni could accept his child as part of the package. But he had no idea how to go about telling her. Vanni scared him to death. She had a helluva temper.

It was just after dawn and the household was quiet. Paul dressed, made a pot of coffee and took a cup with him down to the stable, thinking of having a little morning chat with the horses. Maybe he could get some advice about the embarrassing fact that he was thirty-six years old and was still trying to figure out how to get close to a woman he’d been in love with for years. Not to mention the fact that he had this little complication of another woman having his baby.