Shelter Mountain (Virgin River #2)(83)

“Wouldn’t he want to be with one of your sisters?”

“Actually, I think he’s been trying to get away from them for years now.” Jack laughed. “Haven’t you noticed how bossy they are? No, you wouldn’t notice because—” He stopped suddenly and she threw him a look. He thought, What am I? Suicidal? “Because you all get along so well.”

“Nice save,” she said. “What do you need all those bedrooms for?”

“You never know.” He shrugged. “Emma might be having company.”

“As in siblings? Jack, we weren’t supposed to get this one!”

“I know. And yet—”

“That’ll never happen again,” she said. But she shivered.

“What was that?” he asked.

“I can’t help it. Sometimes when I think about that night…That first night…You know, I think she was conceived the second you touched me.”

He was sure that was accurate. “Thus, the bedrooms,” he said.

“And Jack?”

“Hmm?”

“There will be no dead animals on the walls of my house.”

“Awww.”

“None!”

Jack and Mel immediately labored over a floor plan and rendering that they could send to Joe Benson, the Marine architect in Grants Pass, Oregon. After Joe’s first tour in the Corps, he went into the reserves, got his degree and started his business, but then was called up for Iraq, where he served with the others under Jack. He was thrilled to be asked to draw up their plans. In January, the initial plans were complete and Joe brought them down to Virgin River. When he walked into the bar, Mel was there with Jack. Joe had the plans rolled up under one arm and Mel jumped up with an excited gasp.

Joe stood right inside the door, a smile growing on his lips and a wonderful warmth lighting his eyes as he looked her up and down. “Oh, honey,” he said in a breath. “Look at you. You’re gorgeous.”

Mel laughed. These guys, she thought. To the last one, they loved pregnant women. It was very amazing, very sexy. No one could better appreciate that kind of man than a midwife.

He dropped the plans on a table and moved toward her with his hands stretched out, tentative.

“Go ahead,” she said.

His hands were on her belly in no time. “Ah, Mel.” Then he pulled her into his arms to give her a hug. “Ripe and ready,” he said. “You’re so beautiful.”

“I’m right back here,” Jack said from behind the bar.

Joe laughed. “Be right with you, buddy. I have my hands full of woman right now.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “My woman.”

“You need your own woman,” Mel said. Another one who was, like her husband, a big, handsome man, an angel of a man, and though he was surely over thirty-five, completely unattached.

“I do,” he said. He touched her nose. “Why don’t you find me one?”

“I’ll get right on it,” she said, pulling out of his arms and grabbing the rolled-up plans from the table.

They looked them over together, then Jack and Joe went out to the property to walk it. Before pounding in stakes or painting an outline on the ground, Mel and Jack would take at least a couple of weeks to consider changes. Joe stayed over one night, Grants Pass being a four-to six-hour drive, and had a nice evening with Preacher, Paige and Mike.

The plans tended to stay at the bar. Every time someone who was interested in their house came in, they asked to see the plans. Doc Mullins said, “Lot of wasted space in that kitchen.”

“I like a big kitchen,” Mel said. Though for what, she was uncertain, since Jack seemed to do most of the cooking when they were at home and they took the majority of their meals at the bar. “Jack likes a big kitchen,” she amended.

“That Jack,” Connie said. “You sure have him trained.”

“I found him trained,” Mel said.

“Love this bathroom,” Connie said. “What I’d give for a bathroom like that.”

“All I need in a bathroom is a hole in the floor,” Ron said.

Jack and Mel spent a lot of their time together looking at the plans, people looking over their shoulders. One morning Mel came into the bar to have coffee with Jack, who was out splitting logs. Preacher and Harv were found poring over the drawings by themselves.

Mel backed out of the bar and went around back to find Jack. He stopped what he was doing as she approached.

“Do you know what’s going on in there? Preacher and Harv have our plans spread out and are going over them. Our house has become a community project.”

“I know. Don’t let it worry you. We’re going to do what we want.”

“But does it bother you that everyone has an opinion? That usually disagrees with our ideas?”

He grinned proudly. “I hired excavation,” he said. “They start the first week in February. They’ll clear and level the land, widen the road. I’m having them clean and stack the trees for firewood.”

“It’s happening,” she said. “It’s really happening.”

“Yep. It’s happening.”

“Jack? Not even fish. No dead animals.”

Rick was cleaning out the ice machine under the bar, whistling. “Looks like you’re doing better these days,” Preacher observed.