Second Chance Pass (Virgin River #5)(120)

She took a break to walk into the bar. To her surprise, behind the bar she found the general and Muriel. The woman gave her a bright smile.

“Hey, girl,” Walt said. “What can I get you?”

“Ice water, thanks, if you still have ice. I’m so dry. I think it’s the smoke in the air. It’s not exactly thick, but it works on the nose and throat.”

“How are you, Mel?” Muriel asked.

“A little tense today. Thanks for coming to help.”

“It’s nothing,” she said with a shrug. “I’m glad to. You have quite the circus out there.”

Mel gratefully drank down half her water. “We do, at that,” she said.

“I’m going back to the kitchen. I’ve been making sandwiches, the only cooking I’m capable of. I just about have a big tray ready to bring out. Cal Fire has rations, but they’re running low and we can pitch in. How about if we set up on the porch, along with water?”

“Perfect,” Mel said. “Hang on to the bottled water till the well runs low—we might need it later. I’m going to call the ranch, see how the kids are doing.”

She went to the phone. While Vanni assured her everyone was fine, she could hear Emma crying in the background. Amazing, she thought, how you knew your baby’s cry. It almost made her cry. Worse than that, it made her milk let down and she had to make a dash for the bathroom, open her shirt and lean over the sink. Women’s bodies, she found herself thinking. It was a miracle, the way they worked. Come back, Jack, she thought. We have to get back to our children!

“Mel,” Muriel was calling, tapping at the door. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she answered. “I’ll be right out.” When she opened the door, she found the older woman standing there, waiting, a concerned frown on her face.

“I saw you run for the bathroom, and I thought maybe you were sick. All this smoke in the air…”

Mel chuckled. “I called Walt’s house to check on the kids and heard Emma crying. It’s been too long since I nursed her. In seconds, I was dripping,” she said, pulling aside the white coat to show a large round wet spot on her breast. “I hope they get this fire under control before I explode.”

Muriel smiled. “I didn’t have children. And I guess you need to get back to yours.”

“I’m sure it won’t be much longer. Really, this has to be resolved soon. Don’t you think?” Mel asked.

“I don’t know, Mel,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s a lot of wood out there. It’s scary.”

“Yeah,” Mel said weakly. “Yeah it sure is.”



Walt was making sandwiches with Muriel. “You know, I’ve been hanging around your place, riding with you, throwing the stick for your dogs, and I never asked you about the husbands. Like, how many? And why you think it didn’t work out?”

“What makes you think I feel like telling you?” she asked.

“Aw, you’ll tell me,” he said. “You’re just that kinda gal. And I told you about my wife.”

“Okay,” she said, still slapping sandwiches together. “The synopsis. The first one was fifteen years older than me, my agent. He’s still my agent—he married the talent, not the person I was. He was very ambitious for me, for us both. He still thinks I divorced him because of his age, but I divorced him because all he cared about was my career. I don’t think he could tell you my favorite color…”

“Yellow,” Walt said.

Her head snapped around and she stared at him. “Yellow,” she said.

“That was easy,” he said. “It’s all around and you wear it a lot. Red’s important, too.”

“Right,” she said, shocked. She shook herself. “Okay, number two hit, number three cheated, number four had a child he failed to mention, number five—”

“All right, wait,” Walt said. “Is this going to go on for a real long time?”

She grinned at him. “Didn’t you look it up on the Internet?”

“I did not,” he said, almost insulted.

“We’re stopping at five. He had a substance-abuse problem. I didn’t know about it beforehand, obviously. I tried to help, but I was in the way—he needed to be on his own. That’s when I decided that, really, I should quit doing that. Marrying. But please understand, it’s not all my fault—Hollywood doesn’t exactly have a reputation for long, sturdy relationships. I did the best I could.”

“I have no doubt,” he said.

“Do you say that because you have no doubt? Or are you being a sarcastic ass to a poor woman who had to go through five miserable husbands?”

He chuckled. Then he slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek. It was the first time he’d been that bold. He’d been riding with her, showing up at her house to drink wine while they sat on lawn chairs in front of the bunkhouse, even talking to her almost daily on the phone, but he hadn’t gotten physical. “The Army was rough on families, too. I was lucky.”

“Hmm,” she said. “Maybe you’re just better at it than me.”

“I suppose that’s possible, too,” he said. Then he smiled at her.