“Does she know about me?” Vanni asked.

“She does,” he said. “God, I hope she and I can work together on this. Most of all, I hope you’re not making a big sacrifice because of my screwup.”

“I couldn’t let a child of yours go any more than you could.”

“Vanni, I want to marry you, take care of you and Mattie.”

She frowned slightly. “Wait a minute—is there anything else you should tell me before you propose? Any other little secret stuffed in the back of your closet?”

“Honest to God, that’s it. Until very recently, I had the most boring life in Grants Pass!”

“You’re sure about that? Because until last week, I thought I knew everything about you. I mean, I’ve known you for years, lived with you for months. We spent so many hours just talking…”

“That’s it. Jesus, isn’t that enough? I want to marry you and Mattie. In fact, once we get the lay of the land, I’d like to have more children. Maybe at least one that we actually make together. I’d give anything for that, Vanni.”

She smiled. “Let’s see how many you have so far before we make those kinds of plans, huh?”

“Then you’ll marry me?” he asked, brushing the hair away from her brow.

“You’re a very interesting guy, Paul. It takes you years to tell me you love me, and minutes to ask me to marry you.”

“I’ll wait till you’re ready, but I want us to be together forever.”

The corner of her mouth lifted along with one reddish brow, teasing. “Don’t you think we should see how we work out sexually? See if we’re good together?” she asked, grinning playfully.

“Vanessa, we’ll be good together. Well, you’ll be perfect and I’m sure I’ll catch on eventually.” He kissed her again. “Are you going to say yes or make me beg?”

“Do you think I want to live with my father and have a weekend boyfriend forever? Yes,” she said. “I’m probably going to marry you.”

“Oh God, thank you,” he said, grabbing her to him again. “Is tomorrow too soon?”

“A little bit. We’re waiting on the Grants Pass baby, remember? It won’t make a difference, but I think we should know how many people we’re bringing into this family.”

“We’ll do that. Right away. That’s perfectly reasonable,” he said, grinning. Then he shook his head in sheer wonder. “You’ve been wonderful about this. I didn’t really expect you to come around so quickly. I thought you were going to drive me crazy…”

“Well, I’ve turned it over in my mind for a while now. When it happened, we didn’t know where we stood with each other. It’s not as if we said the I love you’s and you went to bed with another woman.”

“Yet you insisted I try to see if I could love her?”

“I had to be sure. I don’t want another woman’s man, even if it’s you.”

“You’re remarkable, you know that? In fact, your whole family is remarkable. Your dad was pretty civil about it, too.”

She was quiet for a moment, a startled look on her face. “My dad?” she asked.

“Yeah. He just wanted to be sure I wasn’t playing with your feelings. And he seemed kind of interested in how I was going to manage, financially. I told him the company’s doing well, that’s not going to be a—”

“You told my dad?” she asked, cutting him off.

Paul was frozen, staring at her for a second. “No,” he finally said. “You told your dad. Because he asked me if I planned on…Oh shit, what did he ask me? Something about whether I had commitments in Grants—” He leaned over her shoulder and let his forehead bang against the tree. “And I said, ‘Absolutely, sir—I’ll support the woman and my child.’ Oh God.”

Vanni, laughing, pushed him away slightly. “You told my dad!” she exclaimed, laughter shaking her.

Paul grimaced. “You didn’t tell him, huh?”

“Of course not,” she said, her eyes alight and her smile huge. “That’s a little personal, don’t you think? Plus, you said you still had to be sure it was for real.”

“Oh God.”

“Paul,” she said, “what did you do?”

“I thought you’d told him. What did you tell him?”

She looped her arms around his neck, but she was laughing too hard to speak for a while. “I told him we shouldn’t be surprised to learn you’d actually had women in your life before you came to Virgin River. That there was a woman…” And she dissolved into laughter again.

He leaned against her once more, pressing her back to the tree. “It isn’t that funny.”

“Are you kidding? It’s hilarious!” She laughed a little more and finally said, “Paul, he’s a trained interrogator. You walked right into it!”

“I don’t see the humor…”

“Well, if you don’t have a sense of humor, I don’t know if I can—”

She was cut off by his mouth finding hers. In fact, he kept her from laughing for a long time, covering her with his body. They kissed and held on to each other. Finally he released her lips and asked, “You done laughing?”

“I am. I think you worked it out of me.”

He touched her swollen lips with tender fingers. “Do you think your father will shoot me?”

“Probably not,” she said, smiling. “But if you hear a rifle cock, you might want to duck.”

“Funny,” he said, kissing her again.

“I think I have whisker burn,” she told him.

“Yeah.” He grinned. “Looks good on you, too.”

“We have to go back. I have a baby to take care of.”

“I don’t want to go back.…He’s going to be waiting for me.…”

“You might as well just face it,” she said, and laughed again. “We’ve been out here a long time.”

“Not quite long enough,” he said, and kept her just a few more minutes, afraid to let her go.

She wiggled her hips against his. “Paul, it’s pretty obvious, pinning me against a big old tree turns you on.”

“I know,” he said. “We need to get alone.”

“Uh-huh. I need that, too. Probably more than you do. And the sooner the better.”

Vanni left Paul to tend to the horses while she rushed back to the house to check on the baby. It took him the better part of an hour to get them brushed down and stabled, the tack put away. He might’ve been dragging his feet a little when he went back to the house. By the time he got there, Walt was standing at the dining-room buffet fixing himself a short drink. Paul had lived with the man for months; even given the untimely death of his son-in-law, he hadn’t been a daytime drinker. If tragedy or depression didn’t drive him to the bottle, this had to be celebratory.

Walt turned, regarded Paul and lifted one bushy black eyebrow. “Fix you a little something to take the edge off, son?” he asked.

“Thank you, sir.” And mentally he added, “You dog.”

“Bourbon? Scotch? Canadian?”

“Crown?” Paul answered in question.

“My pleasure,” Walt said, selecting the bottle from the cabinet and pouring a short shot on ice. He passed it to Paul and said, “You didn’t do much undercover work in the Marine Corps, I guess.”

“No, sir.”

“Obviously.” He raised his glass. “Here’s to me winning the game I didn’t even know I was playing.”

“To you,” Paul said grudgingly.

After having a sip, Walt said, “I know you pretty well, Paul. Before today, I never had a doubt about you. So, I’ll only ask once—you plan to treat my daughter well?”

“Like solid gold, sir. Despite everything.”

“If you’re her choice, that’s good enough for me.” And he raised the glass again.

“Thank you, sir.”

“But really,” he said, chuckling. “You walked right into it.”

Vanni and her father were so alike it was scary. In addition, she had a fiery temper. And he asked himself, Do I want a general for a wife? The answer came quickly. Oh, yes. Oh my God, yes.

Eight

T he general, knowing things had been resolved and were now heating up between Vanni and Paul, made himself scarce after dinner, leaving the reconciled lovebirds to the kitchen cleanup alone. But Tom didn’t have the facts and caught them in a serious lip-lock while they were supposed to be washing and drying dishes. Paul had Vanni pressed up against the sink, devouring her with yet another passionate kiss.

To Paul’s back, Tom said, “I guess this means you two have things worked out?”

Paul whispered in Vanni’s ear, “Get rid of him, will you? Please?”

“Go away, Tom,” she said a little breathlessly.

“About time, Paul. Really, I was beginning to think you were a little slow or something. I’m going to Brenda’s.”

“No curfew tonight,” Paul said, though his voice was muffled against Vanni’s neck. “Stay away all night if you want.”

There was the sound of laughter, then the closing of the front door, and Paul’s lips were on Vanni’s again.

“Vanni, honey,” Paul whispered. “Will you pack a bag for yourself and Mattie and come away with me in the morning? Come back to Oregon with me for a few days.…”

“Hmm. Good idea.”

“We’ll leave very early,” he said. “Like in an hour…”

She laughed at him. “We’ll leave at nine. I don’t want to rush the baby.…” She gave him a little kiss, then wiggled away from him, putting away the last plate. “I have to go give Mattie his bath, then get him settled for the night.”

Paul spent what seemed to be an interminable two and a half hours in front of CNN, unable to concentrate on a word of it. After an hour he got up and fixed himself a drink, asking the general if he could get him anything. But the general declined—probably because he didn’t have what was best described as bridegroom nerves. Paul was asking himself a hundred questions.

He had no idea if he was a good lover. How does a man know? He’d been pretty successful at getting the job done, satisfying the woman he was with before thinking of himself. He couldn’t remember any complaints, but he wasn’t a man who’d been with a lot of women. Not by comparison to some of his friends, for sure. And never with a woman like Vanni. And with Vanni, he didn’t want to merely satisfy her—he wanted to bond her to him forever with the greatest pleasure of her life. He wanted their coming together to be sweet for her. Sweet and powerful. Paul wanted her to know he could be an adequate husband.

He heard the baby crying, then making sweet little noises while he enjoyed his bath. A while later he heard the tub fill again; Vanni was treating herself to a soak.

Would she cry over Matt when they finally made love? Would she remember him, long for him, miss him all over again? And how does a man handle that? Paul asked himself. He wished he’d thought to ask Jack; Jack had married a widow. There must have been special challenges. I’ve held her through a million tears, Paul thought. I can hold her through as many more as it takes.

He took a shower, mostly to distract himself, and when he came out of the bathroom only one light was left on in the great room, probably for Tom. There was a light under the general’s door and the sound of the TV in his room could be heard.

Paul stepped out onto the deck and stood under a cool, dark sky that was riddled with a million stars. The sky was so deep and clear, it was as if one could see into the next universe. He was barefoot and bare chested with his towel slung around his neck. He looked toward Matt’s grave, then toward the sky, holding on to the ends of the towel. I swear, he promised, I’ll do my best, buddy. I’ll do my best by both of them.