Virgin River (Virgin River #1)(20)

He stroked her, kissed her and eventually made love to her again, as opposed to what he’d done before. This time sanely, but no less satisfactorily. At one in the morning he was searching around the floor for his pants.

“I thought you might be staying the night this time,” she said from the bed. He pulled on his pants and sat on the bed to put on his boots. He twisted around and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I can’t,” he said. “But you’ll be fine now.” He smiled at her. “Think of it as a little sleeping pill.”

As he drove back to Virgin River he thought, it’s over now. I have to end it. I can’t do that anymore, not with a clear conscience. Not when something else has my attention.

Chapter Four

J ack drove out to the cabin, the truck bed loaded with supplies. It was his third day in a row. When he pulled up, Cheryl came out of the house, onto the new porch. “Hey, Cheryl,” he called. “How’s it going? Almost done in there?”

She had a rag in her hands. “I need the rest of the day. It was a real pigsty. Will you be here tomorrow, too?”

He would. But he said, “Nah. I’m about done. I want to paint the porch this morning—can you get out the back door? I haven’t built steps yet.”

“I can jump down. Whatcha got?” She came down the porch steps.

“Just stuff for the cabin,” he said, unloading a big Adirondack chair for the porch, its twin in the truck bed.

“Wow. You really went all out,” she said.

“It has to be done.”

“She must be some nurse.”

“She says she’s not staying, but the place has to be fixed up anyway. I told Hope I’d make sure it was taken care of.”

“Not everyone would go to so much trouble. You’re really a good guy, Jack,” she said. She peeked into the truck. He had a new double-size mattress inside a large plastic bag lying flat in the bed. On top of that, a large rolled-up rug for the living room, bags from Target full of linens and towels that were new as opposed to the graying, used ones borrowed from Hope’s linen closet, potted geraniums for the front porch, lumber for the back step, paint, a box full of new kitchen things. “This is a lot more than repair stuff,” she said. She tucked a strand of hair that had escaped her clip around her ear. When he chanced a glance at her, he saw those sad eyes filled with longing. He looked away quickly.

“Why go halfway?” he said. “It ought to be nice. When she leaves, maybe Hope can rent it out to summer people.”

“Yeah,” she said.

Jack continued unloading while Cheryl just stood around. He tried to ignore her; he didn’t even make small talk.

Cheryl was a tall, big-boned woman of just thirty, but she didn’t look so good—she’d been drinking pretty hard since she was a teenager. Her complexion was ruddy, her hair thin and listless, her eyes red-rimmed and droopy. She had a lot of extra weight around the middle from the booze. Every now and then she’d sober up for a couple of weeks or months, but invariably she’d fall back into the bottle. She still lived with her parents, who were at their wits’ end with her drinking. But what to do? She’d get her hands on booze regardless. Jack never served her, but every time he happened upon her, like now, there was usually a telltale odor and half-mast eyes. She was holding it together pretty good today. She must not have had much.

There had been a bad incident a couple of years ago that Cheryl and Jack had had to get beyond. She had a little too much one night and went to his living quarters behind the bar, banging on his door in the middle of the night. When he opened the door, she flung herself on him, groping him and declaring her tragic love for him. Sadly for her, she remembered every bit of it. He caught her sober a few days later and said, “Never. It is never going to happen. Get over it and don’t do that again.” And it made her cry. He moved on as best he could and was grateful that she did her drinking at home, not in his bar and grill. She liked straight vodka, probably right out of the bottle and, if she could get her hands on it, Everclear—that really mean, potent stuff. It was illegal in most states, but liquor store owners usually had a little under the counter.

“I wish I could be a nurse,” Cheryl said.

“Have you ever thought about going back to school?” he asked as he worked. He was careful not to give her the impression he was too interested. He hauled the rug out of the back of the truck, hefted it over his shoulder and carried it to the house. To his back she said, “I couldn’t afford it.”

“You could if you got a job. You need a bigger town. Throw your net a little wider. Stop relying on odd jobs.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, following him. “But I like it here.”

“Do you? You don’t seem that happy.”

“Oh, I’m happy sometimes.”

“That’s good,” he said. He threw the rolled rug down in the living room. He’d spread it out later. “If you have the time, could you wash up those new linens I bought and put them away? Fix up the bed when I get the new mattress on it?”

“Sure. Let me help you with the mattress.”

“Thanks,” he said, and together they hauled it into the house. He leaned it against the wall and grabbed the old one off the bed. “I’ll go by the dump on the way home.”