Redwood Bend - Робин Карр

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he did the most unexpected thing. He put the jacket down in the back of the SUV and stripped off his soaked shirt; he put the jacket on over skin. Her mouth fell open slightly, her eyes riveted to his body until he snapped the jacket closed. Then she slowly looked up, and he smiled and winked. He walked back to his bike, shoved the wet shirt in a side pocket and returned to the back of the SUV just as it was lowering onto a new tire.

       Dylan began to reload the SUV and for a second she was just mesmerized, but then she shook herself and began to help, every once in a while meeting his eyes. Oh, God, he had Conner’s eyes—crystal-blue and twinkling beneath thick, dark lashes. She also had blue eyes but they were merely ordinary blue eyes while Conner’s (and Dylan’s!) were more periwinkle and almost startling in their depth. Paul Newman eyes, her mother used to say. And this guy had them, too! Her parents must have had a love child they left on the church steps or something.

       No. Wait. She knew him—the eyes, the name. It had been a long time ago, but she’d seen him before. Not in person, but on TV. On magazine covers. But then, surely it wasn’t… Yes, the Hollywood bad boy. What had become of him since way back then?

       “You can get back in if you want to,” Dylan said. “Turn the heat up. I hope you don’t have far to go.”

       “I’m almost there,” she said.

       Dylan put the cooler in, then the heaviest suitcase. He took a handkerchief out of his back pocket, wiped down his rain-slicked face and then began to wipe off his dirty hands. “You have a couple of stowaways,” he said, glancing into the car.

       She peeked into the SUV. A couple of identical sets of brown eyes peered over the backseat. “My boys,” she said.

       “You don’t look old enough to have boys.”

       “I’m at least fifty now,” she said. “Ever been on a road trip with five-year-old twins?”

       “Can’t say that I have.”

       Of course he hadn’t, because he was some gorgeous godlike hunk who was as free as a bird and out either terrorizing or rescuing maidens in the forest. Wow.

       “You’re all set, miss,” the big biker said as he came around the SUV, pulling on his leather gloves. Jeez, he had chains on those, too.

       “Thanks for your help. The lugs get me every time.”

       “I’d never leave a lady in distress by the side of the road, my mother would kill me. And that’s nothing to what my wife would say!”

       “You have a wife?” she asked. And before she could stop herself, she added, “And a mother?”

       Dylan burst out with a short laugh. He clapped a hand on the big guy’s back and said, “There’s a lot more to Walt than meets the eye, Miss… I didn’t get a name…”

       She put out an icy hand. “Katie Malone.”

       “I’m Dylan,” he said, taking the hand. How in the world he had managed warm hands after changing a tire in the freezing rain, she would long wonder. “And of course, this is Walt, roadside good Samaritan.” Then he addressed Walt. “I’ll ride back and get Lang. We’ll scoop up Stu on the way up the road.”

       “You should be just fine, Katie,” Walt said. “Jump in, tell the little guys to buckle up, crank up the heater and watch the road.”

       “Right. Yes. Listen, can I pay you for your trouble? I’m sure it would’ve cost me at least a hundred bucks to have that tire changed.”

       “Don’t be absurd,” he said, startling her with his choice of words. It just didn’t seem like the vocabulary that would fit a big, scary biker dude. “You’d do the same for me if you could. Just be sure to replace that tire right away so you always have a spare.”

       “You always go out for a ride in the rain?” she asked.

       “We were on the road already. But there are better days for it, that’s for sure. If it had been coming down much harder, we’d have had to hole up under a tree or something. Don’t want to slide off a mountain. Take care.” Then he turned and tromped back to his Hog with the high handlebars.

      Two

      When Katie pulled up in front of the house in Virgin River, she saw her brother pacing back and forth on the front porch. He had told her that if she arrived before five the front door would be unlocked, yet there he was. She barely had the SUV in Park before the boys were out and tearing toward their uncle. He scooped them up, one in each arm, and just that sight alone caused all the tension she’d been feeling to float out of her, leaving her almost weak. Conner, like a great, faithful oak, always strong and steady.

       She went up to the porch. “Why are you here?” she asked him.

       “I wasn’t really concentrating at work, so I came home to wait for you.”

       “Oh, Conner,” she said softly, her voice quivering a little bit.

       He frowned. “What’s the matter, Katie?”

       She opened her mouth to speak, but only shivered. Finally she croaked out, “I got caught in the rain.”

       “Let’s get you inside. I’ll get the bags. We can talk after the boys are occupied.”

       An hour later, with Katie fresh out of a hot, soothing shower and the boys crashed on the living room sectional in front of a movie, Conner poured her a cup of coffee. “Feel better?” he asked.

       “Tons. I had a flat, that’s how I got caught in the rain. Which, by the way, is freezing in the forest. A motorcycle gang stopped and changed it for me.”

       “Gang?”

       “Motorcycle group?” she tried. “Not the Hells Angels, Conner. Just a bunch of bikers out riding in the rain, which begs the question… Never mind. I could’ve changed it, but I can never conquer those lugs. They were very nice men, apparently unable to listen to a weather report.”

       Conner sat opposite her at the small kitchen table. “What was it, Katie? You were talking about staying in Vermont. I didn’t like that idea and I like this one lots better, but it was a sudden change of heart.”

       “Yeah, because I’m unstable, that’s what. I had myself convinced I should find myself a guy like Keith, my old boss, even though the most passionate thing he said to me was, ‘Great sea bass, Katie—you could open a restaurant’!” She shook her head. “That move to Vermont—it wasn’t all bad. I made a few friends, the boys had fun at school, the neighbors were great. But I just didn’t want to be alone anymore and I started thinking, I have to find a good man who could be a good father, and look what I almost did.”

       “What did you almost do?”

       She took a sip of coffee. “Keith’s an exceptional man and I bet there’s no better father alive—he’s gifted with kids. And right when my frustration level was about to peak because he still hadn’t made a move, his sister Liz broke it to me. Keith is gay. It makes him nervous to think how his conservative community would treat a gay pediatric dentist, so he keeps it quiet. I saw myself getting desperate enough for companionship that I almost talked myself into a relationship with a man who had no physical attraction to me. None. Nada. Zip.”

       Conner sat back in his chair. “I thought he was a little on the gentle side, but I didn’t see gay. Not that I’m any expert.”

       “Me, either. But to show you how off I was, I miss Liz more than Keith. And then…” She let that sentence trail off and glanced into her cup.

       “Then?” he pushed.

       “Then when I started sorting and packing, Andy asked if we had to move in the dark again and I knew—I have some work to do. On myself. On my family. The boys…they’re so resilient that it’s easy to miss the fact that they’ve been in a rocky place and they need stability.”

      

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