Hidden Summit (Virgin River Book 17)

She felt herself smiling and yet on the verge of tears. He held the bulk of his weight off her, his eyes closed. Then his features slowly relaxed, and he kissed her several times, on the lips, the cheeks, the neck, chin, forehead. She reached up to his thick eyebrows with her fingertips and smoothed them, and he opened his eyes.

He took a deep breath. “That was the most amazing…”

“Oh, my God,” she said. “I had sex on the first date!”

“You and I had very good sex on the first date,” he said with a laugh. Then he frowned again and wiped a thumb along her temple. “Hey, forget what your mother said. It’s not a bad thing! We’ve been over this—it wasn’t really a first date! Are you crying?”

“Sorry… I might be a little emotional or something….”

“Leslie, was I rough? Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head. “You were wonderful. I think I might be a little crazy,” she said. “I can’t believe I was worried. I was so worried….” She gave a little hiccup of emotion.

“Because it was so long since the last time?” he asked.

“More than that,” she said. “Oh, Conner, you just can’t imagine the kinds of things I’ve believed about myself. That I wasn’t much of a lover, for one thing…”

“You can’t be serious. You put me on another planet….”

She laughed through a tear. “I’m just overthinking things again.” She put the palm of her hand against his cheek.

“Tell me,” he insisted.

“I’ve been told I…” She took a breath. “That I could be more interesting.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. “Whoever said that probably needed practice.”

“I’ve always wondered…you know…if that was one of the reasons…”

“That he strayed? That he left?” he asked.

She gave a weak little nod.

He laughed in spite of himself. “You’re wonderful, Leslie, you can trust me on this. You make love like a goddess. An angel. A very wild, wonderful angel.” He laughed again. “Jesus, what a mean way to undermine a woman’s confidence. From what I could tell, we worked together just great. Hmm?”

She let out a shaky breath. It was one of the most exciting, intense moments she’d ever had with a man, but she’d hold on to that information a little while. “Are you uncomfortable? Holding yourself up like this?”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to move. Ever.”

“Me, either. I think it’s the mustache that makes the difference.”

“Oh, we haven’t even put the mustache to work yet.” She shivered, and he laughed, a low rumbling. She put her arms around his neck to hold him and just closed her eyes, comfortable and relaxed like never before. “Do you need to fall asleep?” he asked.

“Nope. Not tired.”

“Good. I’m not tired, either,” he said. “I’d like to check and see if it can get better than perfect….”

Her eyes opened in surprise. “Really?”

“Oh, really,” he said. And then he clutched her close and rolled with her until they were on their sides, still locked together.

In the early morning, Conner pulled Leslie close and nuzzled her, kissing the back of her neck. She mewled and snuggled closer, and he splayed a big hand over her belly. He wanted her again, but he didn’t want to wear her out. They’d made love three times in the night, and while it seemed she slept, curled up against him, he didn’t sleep much. Instead, his mind was working.

She was perfect. Sweet, funny, passionate, smart. He couldn’t imagine what more a man could want. She should want a lot more than him, that was his next thought. And he was a little angry, too. He hoped it hadn’t shown, but the very idea that a man would tell her she wasn’t enough, it roared inside him with a carefully held fury. He knew who that would have been. She hadn’t been with many men. It would have been the cheating ex, the bastard. It made Conner want to mess up his face because it was becoming clearer by the hour just how much that asshole had hurt her. And hurt her. And hurt her.

People hadn’t acknowledged her hurt; they’d wanted her to move on. People did that because they get tired of hearing about it. No one ever knew what to say or how to help. He’d gotten a lot of sympathy after Samantha, but then they’d divorced, she’d gone into a treatment facility in another state, and in the mind of his few supporters, it had been time for him to let go before he made them any more uncomfortable.

He and Leslie shared another trait—he, too, wondered how badly he’d been lacking that his wife had needed others, so many others. He hadn’t revealed that to anyone and probably never would, but it made a man wonder. He would have given her anything she wanted, everything she wanted.

But no more. Now he was all for getting past it and hoped Leslie felt the same about her situation.

He was holding in his arms one of the best reasons to move on he’d rubbed up against in a couple of years. And it surprised him that he had absolutely no doubts about her. He wasn’t the least bit afraid that he’d come home someday and find her bouncing up and down on the cable guy. In fact, Leslie was so different that he instantly knew if he’d met her first, his entire life would have been different.

In fact, he wanted her like he’d never wanted a woman, including his wife. But he’d be very good to her, and when the time came, he’d tell her the truth about his dilemma and leave because he valued his life. And the lives of his sister and nephews.

She turned in his arms, facing him, burrowing her face into his neck.

“I woke you,” he said. “I didn’t mean to, but I have to get up.”

She made a protesting noise and snuggled closer.

“I have to drive to my cabin, shower and change. It’s Monday morning.” He pushed her curls away from her eyes. “Maybe you should call in….”

She giggled a little. “Call in what? Orgasmed to death?”

“You did say you were dying at least once,” he reminded her.

“We’re putting framers on the new construction today. I have to go.” She lifted her head. “When will I see you now that we’re not working on the same site?”

“When do you want to see me?”

“Will I scare you off if I say soon?”

“I don’t scare easy. Want me to sleep with you tonight?” he asked, running a hand down her spine.

She nodded. “I’ll make us dinner. I’ll even buy a six-pack to keep in my refrigerator.”

“What if you make me too comfortable?” he asked. “Could be as bad as feeding a stray cat.”

“If you’re worried about getting too involved…”

He shook his head. “I don’t think we can get too involved—we’re both in this weird place, trying to overcome having been in even weirder places. But I’m not worried about it. When I first saw you, I knew you were special.”

“You thought I was involved with a married man!”

“I’m jaded. Cynical sometimes. I apologized for that, didn’t I?”

“Yes, quite nicely, I think. So…? Dinner?”

“Yes, tonight. I have to get up now.”

She slid a leg over his hip, wiggling closer. “It doesn’t feel like you want to leave me yet.”

He smiled and gave her a kiss. “I didn’t dare ask. Now lie back and let me make you really late for work….”

The next night, very unlike the way a typical man thinks, Conner was relieved that they made love only once. Superbly, but once. He had serious reasons to be suspicious of a woman who would take it to the obsessive level.

And a few nights later, because she had mentioned she liked it, he found himself stopping in Fortuna for Thai takeout to bring for dinner to her house. It was Conner’s intention to have a serious talk with Leslie over dinner—

But he was barely in the door before that plan changed. She was standing in the doorway wearing a pair of snug jeans, a blue chambray shirt opened almost to her waist with a little white tank under it. He caught that scent—soap and flowers. Her hair was all those dark blond, streaky curls that made her look so cute, and her cheeks were flushed, which made her look already ravished, and he said, “Oh, my Jesus…”

“What?” she asked.

“God, you turn me on. Just seeing you.”

“Is that the same as hello?” she asked with a smile.

“I don’t know. How fast can you get naked?”

“Conner,” she said and laughed. “Wanna tell me what’s in the bag?”

“Thai. It’s for dessert….”

“And the main course?”

“I’m thinking mustache rides.”

“I guess that means you missed me,” she said. And she took the bag off his hands, and no sooner had she deposited it in the kitchen, than she headed straight for her bedroom. He caught her there, spun her around and fell with her on the bed, covering her mouth in a searing kiss.

It was an hour before they could get to the Thai takeout, and when they finally did, they sat on her sofa. He had pulled on his jeans and T-shirt, and she wore a robe. She put the cartons on a tray between them, and they ate directly out of them—she using chopsticks while he had to have a fork.

“I can teach you to use chopsticks,” she offered.

“Why would I do that? Nah. But I wanted us to talk.”

“The talk?” she asked, digging into the Nam Sod—minced chicken with ginger, peanut and onions. “About expectations and stuff?”

His eyebrows lifted curiously. “You want to give me the talk?”

“I know how men think. You think that if I’ve slept with you, I’ll expect you to marry me. And you want to be sure I don’t.”

He tilted his head and thought about this. She was damn close. “Well, not exactly. Being with you is good—but I’m afraid I’m going to let you down. I have serious baggage. Things to overcome, work through, you know.”

“I know.”

“I should tell you about my ex-wife….”

“Only if you feel like it. I don’t think she has anything to do with me. With us.”

“Well, she might. You’re trying to get over a divorce after what you thought was a good eight-year marriage. My marriage lasted a year. I only knew Samantha for six months before we got married. And she cheated, too, but with something like a hundred guys….”

Leslie coughed and choked. Conner slapped her back until she recovered.

“I know. It’s a lot to swallow, no pun intended. I thought I had a great marriage, too. It worked for me. But my wife cheated, we had a confrontation and she said she was…” He paused. It was still hard to say. He cleared his throat. “She said she was a sex addict.”

Leslie’s eyes grew very large. “Is that so?” she asked cautiously.

He gave a nod. Then a shrug. “Maybe that’s correct, that’s what her problem was. My sister didn’t exactly forgive her, but she did kind of defend her, saying she was dealing with a compulsion. She went into a treatment program, though. I have no idea if it worked. She asked me to come to some kind of family week session so I could understand her and the disease, but I couldn’t. I was done. I said that I wasn’t family anymore and wouldn’t be. In the one year we were married, she was unfaithful more times than she could count. Or remember.”

“Oh, Conner, I’m really sorry.”

“So as you might expect, I have world-class trust issues. Not the way you think—I really don’t have a single problem trusting you. But I sure don’t trust me. I never thought I was the kind of guy who couldn’t see what was right in front of my face. I never suspected a thing. I never even had enough imagination to suspect something like what was going on right under my own nose.”

Leslie left her chopsticks standing in the Yum Woo Sen.

“Listen, I’ve been divorced almost two years and I’ve been completely checked and checked and rechecked,” he assured her. “There hasn’t been anyone since. I’m safe.” At least in that regard, he thought.

She was quiet for a moment. Finally she said, “It must have been awful.”

“I’m one of those guys like your old boss—I have strong feelings about that kind of commitment. My parents married for life. My sister married her husband for life, though his life was cut short way too early. I assumed any woman who made those promises meant them. I guess I can be naive. Put it another way—I had no idea how naive I could be.”

She smiled. “I know exactly how you feel.”

He smiled in spite of himself. “Well, you don’t know exactly. You caught a text message. I came home early and found her banging the kid who delivered bottled water.”

Leslie gulped, trying to imagine.

“When I think back about it, it’s pretty ironic. I actually delivered bottled water part-time during my one semester in college.” He snorted. “No one ever met me at the door naked.”

She let herself give a short laugh. “I guess she hasn’t been in touch.”

“There have been letters, but I didn’t open them, just put them right in the shredder. I had made it pretty clear to her it was over for me, no grudges, nothing. It was a lie, of course—I was mad and I was carrying a grudge. But really, she needed to pick up the pieces somewhere else.”

“I’m shocked,” she said. “I can’t imagine a woman attached to you even having enough desire leftover for another guy. You’re pretty efficient.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Is this where I say thank you?”

“Not yet. Let me tell you a couple of things. You’re not the only one with a few revelations. Moving here a little over a month ago was the first time in my adult life I didn’t live in the same town with my parents and husband or my ex-husband and his perfect new little wife. And you know what happened? I immediately started learning a few things about myself. For years I had wondered if I deserved Greg, the fabulous future governor he thought he was, and now that I’ve had some distance from all that, it’s pretty clear I deserved much better. I give you a lot of credit for that, by the way, for really seeing me, and not just seeing me as a reflection of you. With my husband, I was always fading into the background, like an overexposed photo. Even though I was the one who did most of the work in our marriage, from the scut work around the house and yard to paying the bills to constantly supporting my wonderful spouse, I had a hard time thinking of myself as valuable. As competent. I didn’t even feel competent between the sheets!”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Les, you’re way past competent. Trust me.”

“Since I’ve been here, I’ve been liking myself a lot more. I like my little rented house, all the new flowers, my yoga classes, my job in the construction trailer. The crews respect me and do things my way, my boss already needs me. I have a kind-of boyfriend,” she said, pausing to grin at him, “who lets me call the shots. I’m getting to know myself, Conner. It’s okay that you don’t feel like marrying me because I don’t feel like marrying anyone. I feel so good being on my own. Take care of your issues, I’ll take care of mine and if we meet along the way and have a good time, more the better.

“Oh, and one more thing. I trust this isn’t going to be a problem, but while we’re having fun together, there will be only one man’s shoes under my bed and I expect to be the only pair of high heels—”

He held up his hand. “It goes without saying.”

“I assumed so. Now, are we squared away on the expectations? Because I’ll miss you if you go, but you shouldn’t worry you’re going to let me down.”

He took in her bright eyes, her confident smile, the flush of happiness which included him but wasn’t only about him. She was remarkable. “I’m not going to let you down,” he said. And he wasn’t sure how he’d manage that, but it had suddenly become the most important thing in the world.

“Of course, there is one little issue that’s getting in the way of my striking out with complete independence….”

“Oh?” he asked.

“I don’t want to mention it if it’s going to make you all clingy….”

“Throw it on out there, Les,” he said.

“I’m having trouble with the garbage disposal….”

He smiled broadly. “It will be my pleasure to have a look at your garbage disposal. Don’t get any ideas, though.”

“Part of learning real independence is knowing who to ask,” she informed him.

“Then, if you’ve had just about enough shrimp curry, why don’t you ask me back to bed.”

Leslie had always been close to her parents, both of them, and talked to one or both of them at least every couple of days. But they had been married for ten years before she’d come along and to say they were tight as a couple was the understatement of the century; they made good role models for a successful marriage. In fact, it would occasionally occur to her to worry what would happen if one of them passed. Surely they would fit into that classic model of the spouse who followed his or her partner to the other side rather quickly.

When Leslie married Greg she had wanted that kind of relationship. She’d always known she didn’t have it, but until it was over she hadn’t realized how far from that ideal they’d been. “In fact,” she had said to her mother during a recent phone conversation, “it’s only since I came here that I’ve really begun to see how much was missing from our marriage. Greg had the kind of marriage he needed and I helped him achieve it by going along with everything he said he needed. Isn’t that what a good wife tries to do? No wonder his defection was so hard on me. I couldn’t figure out what more I could’ve done for him!”

“Oh, Les, it sounds like you’re finally getting ready to really let go of him,” Candace Petruso said.

“Not just getting ready—I have!” She told her mother about Greg’s surprise visit and her fire-extinguisher attack on him, which sent Candace into a fit of laughter. “And,” Leslie confided, “I’m kind of seeing someone.”

“And who might that be?”

“Oh, one of the carpenters who works for Paul. Very nice man, very handsome. He’s helped me with a few things around the house—helped me with some landscaping and fixed my garbage disposal. We sometimes grab a movie or go to a restaurant or just hang out together. I’ve cooked for him a few times and recently he surprised me with a small backyard grill so he can cook for me. You’d like him.”

“I can’t wait to meet him,” her mother said.

Leslie’s conversations with her parents were usually dominated by all that sixtysomething Candace and Robert were doing to stay busy, which had saved Leslie from revealing too much about Conner or her deep fondness for him. Her parents were so busy that sometimes they joked they had to take a vacation to get a rest from retirement. The latest thing they’d taken up was learning Italian in preparation for a Mediterranean cruise in a few months. Some of their friends would also be going, and Leslie’s parents were in a fever of excitement.

Now, as Leslie mentioned Conner to her parents, she tried to cover the subject quickly. She couldn’t help sharing news, but wanted to keep him to herself for now. Her connection with Conner seemed strangely wrong yet miraculously right. Wrong because she shouldn’t have that kind of rapport with someone she’d barely met when she couldn’t find it with a spouse of eight years. And right because it just was.

Leslie thought the best of both worlds suited her magnificently—an independent life and a man who was free to spend two or three nights a week with her. Sometimes she’d sit on the back porch with Conner and just admire the setting sun and the flowers and the fragrant spring weather, talking. It was rather amazing how much beyond a couple of crappy marriages and divorces they had to talk about. In fact, once the facts of those had been shared, they found many more interesting things to discuss, from global warming (on which they did not agree) to American Idol (upon which they did).

Many of their conversations, whether over dinner, breakfast, on the back porch or cuddled up in bed, touched on values like honesty, loyalty, just plain knowing what was the right thing to do.

“How about being unfaithful in a marriage?” she asked him.

He grunted before he spoke. “Look, it’s too easy to say just plain never do that, even though that’s what I want to say. I know all marriages aren’t made in heaven. Sometimes there are circumstances that are hard to understand.”

“Like Greg falling in love for the first time after eight years of marriage?” she asked.

“I was thinking of my own shortcomings, to tell the truth. Giving your word on something usually requires a sacrifice, and it’s the measure of a man by how much he can live up to his word. I gave my word, Les, but I wasn’t able to keep it when it came to my ex-wife. A stronger man would’ve tried to understand and give her a chance to at least make amends, but I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. And Greg stepping out on you like he did? Not only do I think he was wrong, I think he was a fool. But damn, did I end up getting the good end of that deal or what? Because now that I know you, I know you wouldn’t have looked at me twice if you were married.”

After a moment of thought, she said, “I think the best happened for me, too. You, naturally. But a lot of other useful lessons, as well.”

There was a lot going on around Virgin River as April neared May and the Virgin River School neared completion. The town had big plans for a grand opening. People around town were furiously scouting secondhand stores, closing schools with content to sell, eBay and other resources for items to stock the school with. Dan and Cheryl’s house was finished, thanks to the help of many friends, including Conner, and they were planning a party, immediately after which they were headed north for that fishing trip Dan had mentioned.

“I spent a lot of time in charity work,” Leslie told him while they were lazing around in her bed late on a Saturday morning. “It’s good but not quite as fulfilling as actually helping out a friend, you know? It’s fun helping Dan and Cheryl plan their party or helping Becca look for furnishings and supplies for the actual school in which she’ll teach.”

Her doorbell rang, followed by a rapid knocking.

“I’ll get it,” she told him. “I think the kid down the street has been selling candy for school. Stay where you are. I’ll be right back.” She got out of bed and grabbed her terry robe.

“We should probably get up,” he said.

“Just give me a minute.” She tied her robe and blew him a kiss.

The doorbell rang again; the knocking followed.

“Hold your horses,” she said, throwing open the door.

And there stood the sixty-eight-year-old fun couple she knew so well. Her father had that oddly colored, thinning hair and her mother’s short blond was all teased up and spiky, Ms. Modern. They were dressed…in evening clothes? Cocktail party attire.

“Coffee on?” her father asked, beaming.

“Mom? Dad? What are you doing here?”