Temptation Ridge (Virgin River #6)(36)

“He says a few days. But he doesn’t know about his impending murder.”

“How about tomorrow morning? After it warms up a little bit. Come to my house and we’ll ride along the river.”

“Is that what you really want?”

“I think it would be very neighborly of me.”

He sighed. “All right. But don’t laugh at his jokes. It makes me crazy.”

Seven

Walt gave Shelby and Luke a little time alone on the bar’s porch. Not too much time, though. He walked outside noisily. He briefly glared at Luke, just to see if he could make him tremble in guilt and fear. To Luke’s credit, he didn’t. But he did pull his arm from around Shelby’s shoulders slowly, reluctantly. So, there it was. Walt had suspected.

“I’m headed out,” Walt said. “Coming now or later, Shelby?”

“I’ll go with you, Uncle Walt.”

On the way home Walt said to Shelby, “I bet those Riordan boys were a handful to raise.” Shelby only sighed. Dreamily, Walt thought.

Once Shelby was dropped off at home, Walt said he’d be going over to Muriel’s place for a nightcap. He had a couple of things in the Tahoe already—a surprise for Muriel.

He loved that Muriel knew the sound of his Tahoe engine, his boots on the wooden planks of her porch, his knock. “Come on in, Walt.” It gave him a crazy lift, that there couldn’t possibly be any other caller. He walked in, shifted his stuff to under one arm so he could greet the pups, who would not leave him alone until they had a piece of him. She was wearing a comfy sweat suit, sitting on her bed, what looked suspiciously like a script in her lap and her reading glasses balanced on her nose. “What have you got there?” she asked.

“A little entertainment I didn’t want to get into alone.” He put a portable DVD player beside her on the bed along with four DVDs he’d gone to a great deal of trouble to find. Not so many of her films were available on DVD.

She fanned through them. “Oh, Walt!” she exclaimed. “What did you do?” Then she flipped one aside. “Not this one. I’m na**d in this one.”

“Muriel, I’ve seen you naked. It’s a brilliant sight.”

“I know, but you’ve only seen me na**d in the dark while we’re trying to keep the dogs off the bed. In this I’m na**d with an actor, a director, an entire film crew and I think everyone from janitorial to the roach coach that brings lunch.”

He sat on the edge of the bed. “Is that hard to do? Get na**d like that?”

She made a face. “You won’t get this, but it’s easier for me to do that than it was to get na**d in front of you. I couldn’t care less what those people think of me—it was just work. It was right for the script or I would have declined.” She shrugged and added, “Plus, my parents were dead.”

He put a little kiss on her lips. “It was hard to take your clothes off for me?”

“It was,” she admitted. “I wanted to live up to your expectations. I’m getting better at it since you decided to be insatiable. Are you sure you’re sixty-two? You certainly haven’t slowed down much.”

“I feel twenty years younger with you. And you not only lived up to my expectations, you pretty much blew my mind.” He picked up the rejected DVD. “Let’s watch this one first.”

It made her laugh.

“Is that a script?” he asked, glancing at the sheaf of pages she held.

“Yeah. Don’t worry, it’s crap.”

“Good. Muriel, you have to start coming to Jack’s for dinner with us. It’s getting more interesting by the day. You wouldn’t want to miss it.”

“Really?” she asked, sitting up and crossing her legs in front of her.

“My innocent little Shelby has picked out a man. I’m sure she’s made a rash choice, he’s too much for her—a thirty-eight-year-old roughneck who flew Black Hawks for almost twenty years. He looks like he could take apart a big gang of Huns with his bare hands. But when he looks at her, sins of many varieties glitter in his eyes. And I scare the hell out of him—a thing of beauty. Well, tonight he showed up with his younger brother, who was a surprise visitor—better-looking, funnier, a lot more socially acute, more sure of himself around Shelby…” He laughed. “Almost caused the roughneck to take his own life. You don’t want to miss too much more of this stuff.”

“Shelby picked out this guy?” she asked. “This older guy?”

“Oh, there was no question about it. I suspect it was almost the second she saw him.”

“But he’s a roughneck. How do you feel about that?”

Walt leaned over and took off his boots. He straightened and looked at her with those scary general’s eyes. “If he does anything to hurt her, I’m going to kill him.”

Muriel shook her head and pulled the DVD out of the sleeve and loaded it in the portable player. “Shelby must be very grateful,” she said facetiously.

He climbed up next to her, leaning back against the wall, stretching out his long legs, shooing first Buff and then Luce off the bed. “I think she’s secretly enjoying his fear. I can’t wait for this movie.”

“It’s a chick flick,” she said.

“Clint Eastwood’s in it,” he said, settling back. “I like Clint Eastwood.”