Temptation Ridge (Virgin River #6)(37)

“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 naked in this one.”

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

“I know, but you’ve only seen me naked in the dark while we’re trying to keep the dogs off the bed. In this I’m naked 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 naked 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 naked 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.”

“You won’t like him in this. He’s romantic. He doesn’t blow anyone’s brains out or say ‘Make my day’ even once.”

“But you took your clothes off in front of him. I want to see the look on his face.”

“Well,” Muriel said, “if you look very closely you might see an expression that approaches oblivion. He’s seen a huge number of actresses in the nude, and remains very much in control of his emotions. He wasn’t tempted in the least.”

“Poor fool.” Walt pushed Play.

“Are you determined to watch this?” she asked.

“I can’t wait.”

“This is going to bore me to death,” she said tiredly, leaning back against her pillows and yawning.

“Want me to wake you up for the naked part?” Walt asked her.