Sunrise Point (Virgin River #19)(54)

He touched the jacket. “Nice,” he said.

She brushed the place he had touched, though he had washed his hands in the barn. “Cashmere,” she whispered to him. “So, when are we going out? Soon?”

“I can’t think of anywhere to take you that will justify that jacket,” he said. “I need a shower…”

Maxie was busy at the sink, washing up some of her baking dishes. “Long day, Tom?” she asked.

He frowned, then almost laughed at her. No one knew better than Maxie what the harvest was like. Two things occurred to him—Nora would have been helping with the dishes even though she hadn’t dirtied them and Darla hadn’t asked him if he was tired, if he’d had a hard day. But of course he wouldn’t say that. “Give me fifteen minutes.” He looked at his watch. “It’s still early.”

“I know,” she said. “But I’ve been reading all day and I’m bored. I’m ready for a change of scenery.”

Maxie turned from the sink. “I put your books on the stairs, Darla. Tom, since you’re going up for a shower, take them upstairs for Darla.”

“Oh, no, I’ve got them,” she said.

“I can do that,” Tom said.

“I’ll…I’ll read a little while you’re showering, then I’ll carry them—”

But he was already at the foot of the stairs. He picked up a stack of books—two textbooks and a paperback. He was transfixed by the paperback, the cover of which had a sexy vampire about to plunge his teeth into the neck of a beautiful woman on it. “Hmm,” he said. “I guess in pharmacology you have to be ready for anything,” he said.

She took the books away from him. “Sometimes I have to let my brain rest for a few minutes—what I study is pretty intense.”

He put the vampire book on top. “Yeah, this looks very relaxing…” Then he watched as she went up the stairs ahead of him. He followed. He braced both hands on the door frame of the guest room, leaning in. “Fifteen minutes, Darla. Just let me get cleaned up.”

“Take your time,” she said sweetly. “I’ll go downstairs and visit with Maxie.”

Twenty minutes later Tom was back in the kitchen and when he walked in, Darla’s eyes lit up as she looked him up and down. “Look at you,” she said, smiling. He wondered how he’d managed to please her; he wasn’t as spruced up as she was. He wore black jeans, a dark sweater and camel suede jacket. Instead of work boots, of which he had several pairs, he wore his going-out boots—polished and shiny like a good marine. She stood on her tiptoes and smoothed her hands along his shoulders. “This is a very good look on you. And I swear you must be six-five in your boots.”

“I doubt it,” he said. “Maxie, I don’t know where we’re going. You and Duke okay?”

“Oh, I think we’ll manage,” she said with a laugh. “Just have fun.”

“Want me to bring you home a dessert?” he asked.

She shook her head. “You eat two for me.”

“Let’s take my car,” Darla said. “That truck of yours is so high off the ground, I’m afraid I’ll break my neck getting in and out.” She held out her keys. “Want to drive?”

“Sure.” Then with a hand on the small of her back, he escorted her to her car. “This is new,” he said. “When did you get it?”

“Oh, about six months ago. Maybe nine. I can’t remember.”

“Nice,” he said. And when he got behind the wheel, “Lots of leg room.”

“You like it? You can heat your seat. Want me to show you how?”

“I’ll be fine,” he said with a chuckle.

This was all he had ever wanted, a woman just like this—sophisticated, accomplished, beautiful and already set up in life. A woman who would bring pride to his name, to his family. Darla was established and came from a good, strong, close family.

And yet it felt all wrong.

All the way to Arcata she told him about her current course of study, about drug trials and experiments and the FDA and the DEA and how people in her position had to be cognizant of the laws. As she had done before, she segued into the bonus perks after major sales and contracts, not to mention the generous expense account for the wining and dining of doctors and hospital administrators, as if these were the really important parts of her job. “That’s one of the best parts,” she admitted. “Entertaining my clients. And I’m good at it—I have one of the best client lists in the company, and I haven’t been there that long.”

“But what if Bob had lived?” he asked before he could stop himself. “You wouldn’t have been able to stay in one place long.”

“We’d been married less than a year,” she said. “Before he deployed.”

And it occurred to him, there was no Marine base in the Denver area. “How did you meet?” he asked.

She gave a heavy sigh, as if she’d rather not talk about it. Possibly the memories were still painful. “He was on leave, skiing with friends. I met him in Vail.”

“But he wasn’t stationed around there… .”

“No. But I traveled so often anyway, it was easy to go to him. Like all the time. I can work from home a lot as long as I have a phone and laptop, so I sometimes spent several days in a week with him.”