Wild Man Creek (Virgin River #14)(90)

“Yeah. Maybe, until they find out the truth.”

“I haven’t said anything to anyone about this.”

“You have to tell Mel,” Denny said.

“Of course I’ll tell Mel,” Jack replied. “But I don’t see why anything has to change between us. I don’t see why we have to alert the town. Give your mom a break here, kid. She had a dying wish. I don’t know if it was as much for you as for herself. She regretted that relationship. The only thing about it she didn’t regret was you. She wanted you. She loved you. She raised you right.”

“Yeah? Maybe so. But even considering that, I don’t feel like living a lie.”

“I know you’re offended. It wasn’t what you expected,” Jack said. “How about you just remember, it doesn’t have that much to do with us. We were friends for months before you laid this on me.”

Denny reeled in his fly. “Yeah. I understand. Listen, if it’s all right with you, I think I might be done fishing for today.”

Jill and Colin attended a great salmon dinner at Erin’s cabin; Jill brought a nice assortment of salad vegetables to contribute. Of course she already knew that she got along very well with Colin’s family, so no surprise there. And she not only offered a tour of the Victorian, she threw together a light dinner and invited them all to stay, including Denny.

But the real excitement in the weeks following the Fourth of July picnic came in the form of harvesting some of her most precious fruits and vegetables. The Russian Rose was in. Not quite as large as her nana used to get, but big, dark, delicious and beautiful. There were teardrop-shaped yellow tomatoes—a bush in the garden, a hanging basket on the porch. She had baby melons, miniature eggplants, a variety of colorful peppers, red lettuce, red brussels sprouts, tiny beets smaller than cherry tomatoes. Jillian and Denny boxed up some of her best samples of most rare and beautiful fruits and vegetables and shipped them off to Kelly via overnight express; she would know if they were just the sort of thing that high-end restaurants could use. Since they were free, Jill didn’t have to worry about licensing her farm and crop.

The rare heirlooms aside, she had a delicious assortment of organic fruits and vegetables—her zucchini, yellow hook squash, cucumbers, carrots, leeks and scallions were out of this world and she made baskets of them daily to be taken to Preacher. She even shared some of her rare lot with him; she couldn’t save it or eat it all. She did photograph everything, however.

Jillian and Denny were at the outside edge of the fenced garden gathering their crop in a wheelbarrow, separating what she wanted to eat and what she wanted to send to town.

“Don’t you want to take it to him, Jillian?” Denny asked her.

She shook her head. “No, go ahead. You were as much a part of growing it as I was, and don’t you usually stop there after work anyway?”

“Sometimes,” he said with a shrug.

The way he glanced away and shrugged wasn’t the first time she noticed that he might be a little quieter than usual. In fact, he’d been less excited than she had expected. “Hey, is something wrong? I thought you were all keyed up for the harvest! And this is just the beginning.”

He just ducked his head shyly. She grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and pulled him back to face her. She tilted her head and gave a sharp nod, urging him to answer.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s better than I expected. You’ve got something, Jillian. I don’t know what it is, but if you stick a seedling or starter in the ground and nurse it along, it returns the favor and gets big, beautiful and strong. I never thought I could get so jazzed about that.”

“Unless we want it small, precious and rare,” she said with a smile. “What’s up with you?”

“Aw, I don’t know…”

“Spit it out,” she demanded.

“It’s too soon to say, really.”

“Say it anyway!”

“You know I like this, right? And you know it’s been working, right? At least I think so. But Jillian, I don’t know if it’s going to work for me in the long term. I’d never run out on you during your harvest, especially your first harvest, but I think I’m going to have to get serious about finding something more permanent. And no offense, something that has more security and benefits and pays a little… Sorry, but a little better. I’ve been kicking around going home.”

“Home?”

“San Diego,” he said. “I grew up there.”

“I thought you’d decided to relocate?”

He shrugged and looked away again. “I don’t know if that’ll work.”

“But Jack’s here,” she said, because everyone knew the story about how this young man had come here to find his father.

“Nothing stopping me from visiting sometimes,” he said.

Jillian shook her head. “Something else is going on here. Something—” She stopped talking as she was distracted by the sound of a vehicle. She automatically assumed it was Colin in his Jeep, then remembered the Jeep was already here as Colin was in the sunroom painting. She squinted toward the drive that ran along the side of the house and recognized the BMW convertible. “Aw, shit,” she said. “Christ on a crutch. Son of a bitch.”

“Um, I take it you’re not happy to see this guy?” Denny said.