LITMIR.BIZ

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       “Do you have a job yet?”

       “Tomorrow. One is all lined up for me.”

       “Will you let me know if you like it?”

       “Of course. Yes. Listen, I don’t know how much I can say, but if I don’t answer when you call, it’s because of bad cell reception. I have…” He almost said internet connection and stopped himself. “But I’ll definitely be in touch. One way or another.”

       “Okay, just let me know. Anyway, if I need help, you’re not the one I’m going to call. They gave me other, faster options. Please don’t worry. We’re being well taken care of.”

       “I won’t worry....”

       “Will you do me a favor? Will you try to make friends? You finally don’t have to work sixteen hours a day to keep me and the boys afloat, too, so just try to take advantage of that. Think of this as a vacation.”

       “Sure,” he said. He wanted to argue—vacation? I’m hiding from a murderer connected to mobsters and hit men. I’ve been separated from my family and left with nothing but a big question about where we’re going to start over. Great vacation.

       “I don’t know exactly where you are, but wherever you are there must be stuff local people do. Check it out. Go out for a couple of beers—you never do that sort of thing. And have a date....”

       “Date? I don’t think so....”

       “You deserve to grab a little bit of fun, if not downright happiness. I mean, come on—this is temporary.”

       “Fun? We’ll see. No happiness,” he said. “The last time I felt happy, I was punished by the entire universe.”

       She just laughed. “Have it your way. Be as miserable as possible.”

       He sighed. “I’ll try to enjoy this little bit of time, okay? Because when it’s finally over, I’m going to rebuild. Honey, are you and the boys really okay? Happy? They aren’t scared, are they?”

       “We miss you. They have a hard time understanding why we can’t be with you. But you know what? They have a nice school, and we haven’t been here long but they’ve already started soccer and had a couple of friends over for pizza and a movie. My boss is easygoing and flexible—I get the feeling I’m extra help and he’s getting me real cheap, maybe not actually paying my salary, if you know what I mean.” She yawned. “We’ll get through this with nobody hurt.”

       He’d always been the one to be there for T-ball or swimming lessons or soccer. It killed him to be this unavailable. “You’re always the positive one,” he said. He rubbed the sting out of his eyes. If they got through this, which they would, they would all be entirely new characters in this big drama—new identities, new locations. But they would be together again. “I think I admire you more than anyone I know.”

       “Aw, that’s so sweet. And I don’t deserve it.”

       But she did. She’d had some real rough breaks, yet she didn’t treat all that as baggage. If she suffered, she suffered and got it over with and resumed her sunny outlook on life.

       “Let’s not use up our minutes,” she said. “We’re fine, you’re fine. I want to talk to you again after you have a job…and remember—you promised you’re going to try to find something to enjoy.”

       “I will,” he said. “I am.” And he found himself wondering if it was reasonable to hope he could meet a woman who’d settle for a no-strings thing just to take the edge off? And he further wondered how that made him very different from Samantha.

       Paul told Leslie that he hadn’t planned to get into the landlord business, but with real estate in a mess and interest rates low, he’d picked up a couple of small foreclosures in town. He planned to sell them when there was a sufficient economic recovery to make money. In the meantime, he rented one of the spruced-up ones to Leslie. It was probably all of a thousand square feet and adorable. And she believed he kept the rent suspiciously low.

       “I’ll send someone over in the next couple of weeks to clean up the yard, put down some sod on a couple of bare patches and plant some flowers along the walk,” Paul told her. “When it dries out a little bit, I’m planning to pour a new drive and put up a decent covered carport with some storage. This March rain will give way to sunshine before you know it. And when you see spring here, you’ll have trouble catching your breath, it’s that beautiful.”

       The small two bedroom did have an inviting feel on this quiet and welcoming little street. The houses that lined each side were all simple, unpretentious little structures, some in better repair than others, but it had the feel of a neighborhood in need of one more good neighbor, and that was all she asked.

       “Let me plant the flowers,” she said. “It’ll help me settle in. I’ve always wanted to keep a little garden, but between work and then apartment living…”

       “You do anything you want, Les,” he said. “Treat it like it’s yours.”

       “I’ll take you up on the sod and driveway, if you feel like it. That would be nice—a place other than the street to park.”

       “Consider it done,” he said.

       If Leslie had worried that Paul’s wife would pity her, running away from her job in Grants Pass to escape her humiliating divorce, she would’ve been wasting her time. The reason for her being in Virgin River never even came up over dinner. Rather, Vanni really was grateful that Paul was finally getting some full-time help from someone who had worked for him before and knew the business. And the fact that she was an old friend of the Haggerty family as well, made it even better.

       When Leslie settled into bed in her little rented house that night, she felt more relaxed than she had in what seemed like years. And she knew exactly why—it was the distance between her and her past. Tomorrow, when she was out and about town, or when she reported to her new job, when she shopped for groceries or treated herself to a glass of wine at Jack’s, she would not run into Greg or Allison or any of their former friends. She might as well be on another continent.

       In the morning when she woke, she went out onto her front porch in her robe, a cup of coffee cradled in her hands. The tops of the trees were still lost in the early-morning mist that blanketed the little town, but she could hear voices—neighbors shouting hello, cars just starting up, children laughing and yelling, probably on their way to school or to the bus stop. It was still very early. By the time she was showered and dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt over a white collared blouse, the sun was struggling to break through.

       Paul had told her not to dress up, that the trailer where he kept his office was pretty rugged. She’d usually worn business attire, either skirts or slacks, to the Haggerty Construction office. In the course of a typical day she’d run into salesmen, customers, decorators, investors and developers. Paul told her the only people she was likely to run into besides himself in that trailer were crew.

       She took a cup of coffee along for the ride as she followed his directions. And there it was, the trailer, sitting on a large lot that held two houses in progress. It was actually a single-wide mobile home; she assumed the bedrooms would be offices and that there would be a kitchen and bathroom.

       There was one truck parked at the trailer, and it wasn’t Paul’s. She glanced at her watch. Seven forty-five. In the construction world, that was late. Not for the office staff, of course, but the crew usually got started as soon as they had light. Here she’d been trying to impress him by being early, and there didn’t seem to be anyone here to impress.

       Inside she found a man seated at what would pass for a kitchen table—a big slab of plywood balanced on sawhorses. He had a cup of coffee and appeared to be leafing through plans, but stood as she entered. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Dan Brady, one of Paul’s foremen. He went to meet a crew at another job and asked me to hang out until you got here. Make yourself at home. His office is down the hall,” he said, pointing. “He must be putting

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