Luke was ready to put down roots. He was just scared to death to ask anyone like Shelby to take that on. Because she might change her mind. And that would kill him.
So then Aiden got a little brazen and said, “There must have been something about this Shelby that really tripped you up. It’s not like you to get mixed up with some local girl, especially one with a general for an uncle.”
Luke chuckled. “Her looks. The first day I passed through town, I ran into her twice. I thought she was about eighteen and, brother, I knew better.”
“She was the only pretty girl in three counties?” Aiden asked.
“I couldn’t tell you,” Luke said. “I think I hit my head or something. I had a bad case of tunnel vision. I tried like hell to talk myself out of it, but it wasn’t long before all I could do was finish what I’d started. You’ve been there.”
“Been there,” Aiden agreed. After all, he’d married a woman because of tunnel vision. “And that’s when you started to lose interest?”
He was quiet for a second. “You don’t lose interest in someone like Shelby. No matter how hard you try.”
Aiden took a chance. “Been a while since you felt something like that, I guess.”
Luke leveled his gaze across the table at Aiden. “I know what you’re doing. I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about this. I don’t need the aggravation. What I need is time.”
“You fell hard,” Aiden said.
“It happens. Now, that’s enough.”
“I just want to be sure you’re going to be able to move on without…” His voice trailed off.
“Without going completely crazy? Listen, I think I learned a few things, Aiden. This is as bad as it’s going to get. Until it gets better. Leave it alone.”
“Damn shame you couldn’t just go with it, Luke. There’s at least a fifty-percent chance you’re all wrong about her, about yourself, about the way the whole thing could turn out. You might’ve been happy every day of your stupid life, and now you’re just working on getting over her.”
“There’s the thing, Aiden. Fifty-percent chance one of us is right. We just don’t know which one.”
After breakfast the next morning, Aiden threw his duffel in his car, shook his brother’s hand and said, “Go after her, Luke. Tell her the truth, that it scares you to death but you want her.”
Luke just smiled. “Thanks for coming, Aiden. I know you only want to help. Drive carefully.”
It was almost time for Shelby to leave Maui, but she wasn’t sure if she was ready and was considering another week before embarking on San Francisco. She didn’t know if the rest and sunshine was helping or if it would be better to take on a new challenge.
She’d packed everything at her uncle’s, loaded the Jeep and drove to San Francisco to fly to Hawaii so she wouldn’t have go back to Virgin River to pick up her car, her things. Her Jeep was in the long-term lot at the airport, waiting for her next step toward that new life, the one that didn’t interest her at all. The tall trees and mountains called her and the noisy din of the city didn’t sound appealing. Nothing could be as good as the quiet, the clear sky, the natural beauty that had surrounded her. She missed the horses. She missed so much…
She had chosen her vacation accommodations carefully—a hotel on the beach with a decent restaurant. She thought she’d do a little sightseeing around the island, but hadn’t. Reading a lot was part of her plan, but for the first time in her memory, her mind wandered too much to escape into good fiction. Even when her mother had been at her worst, she had been able to read; it had brought her great comfort to fall into a good story. The hotel restaurant was exceptional, but she still yearned for some of Preacher’s food and a blazing hearth, the laughter of friends, the touch of a lover’s hand under the table. Except for breakfast, most of her meals were delivered to her by room service. She was very alone, hidden behind her dark glasses, which was the way she wanted it.
Every day she walked along the beach as far as she could go, sometimes for a couple of hours. She’d lounge on a chaise on the beach and soak up the sun, sometimes relax under a cabana, her eyes closed so she looked as if she was napping. Resting. But she was bleeding inside. If anyone looked closely, they’d catch the occasional tear rolling into the hair at her temples. The crying—it was so much more than she’d imagined it could be. She was so busy holding it together while she was around her uncle and cousin, she’d had no idea how much emotion she’d been struggling with. The crying started as soon as the plane’s landing gear came up and in spite of her best efforts, she sobbed half the way to Hawaii. Luck was on her side and she was seated next to a kindhearted older woman who put an arm around her and said, “Oh, darling, there’s no mistaking a broken heart.”
The best fiction in the history of the world had not adequately conveyed just how much a broken heart could hurt or how much crying was involved. It was a kind of death made worse by the fact that there hadn’t been a death at all, unless you accounted for the demise of perfect happiness.
“Beautiful day,” a man’s voice said.
She turned her head to see him sitting on the chaise right beside her. There were dozens of available chairs on the beach and around the pool and yet he had to choose this one. “Beautiful,” she said quietly, turning her head back, trying to ignore him.
“I hear it rains here all the time. Have you seen much rain?”
“Please,” she said. “I was napping.”
“Think you’ll be done napping by dinnertime? I’d love to take you to dinner.”
She turned her head, lifted her glasses and said, “No, thank you.” Again she turned away.
“Then maybe I could buy you a drink? A mai tai or Bloody Mary?”
Without looking at him she said, “Do I have to move? Or will you?”
He chuckled. “Nothing shy about that, Shelby.”
She jumped in surprise, sitting up a little. “Did someone tell you my name?” she said, stricken. The last thing she needed right now was to feel at some kind of risk. She was alone here, depending on the hotel staff to be sure she’d be completely safe.
“No,” he said. “I already knew your name. I asked where I could find you. They’re very protective here, but when I described you, the towel kid knew where you might be.”
She sat up, her mouth open.
He put out a hand. “Aiden Riordan,” he said. “How are you?”
Stunned speechless, she slowly put out her hand. He was a nice-looking man, but didn’t resemble either Sean or Luke. He was dark-haired with heavy black brows, green eyes like his mother’s and a very pleasant smile. “The doctor?”
“OB-GYN, in fact. Nice to meet you.”
“What…? What in the world are you doing here?”
He gave a slight shrug. “I thought someone ought to explain Luke, if that’s possible.”
Still in something of a state of shock, she sat sideways on the chaise, facing him, her feet in the sand. “Did he send you?”
“Oh, no.” Aiden laughed. “In fact, when he finds out, it’s gonna be ugly. And maybe this was just a waste of my time, but I have a feeling there are some important things you don’t know about him. On the other hand, I’ll bet you know things about him I don’t even want to hear.”
“Oh, this is…this is crazy!”
“Tell me about it. We have some loudmouths in the family, but it’s kind of unusual for the boys to get into each other’s business to this degree. Luke’s kind of a special case, though.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, did he ever happen to mention he was married when he was much younger?” Aiden asked.
It took her a moment to absorb that. “Well, that would explain a few things,” she finally said.
“The explanation gets more complicated. You’ve probably heard a hundred nasty divorce tales, but this one combined a lot of events that worked out badly for Luke, and I think it’s safe to say he’s got some residual effect from it.”
She looked down. “I guess he didn’t trust me that much,” she said. “Or he might’ve told me.”
“It has nothing to do with trust, Shelby. He was trying damn hard to keep from getting too close to you. It didn’t quite work for him—you should see him. He looks like a dead man, he’s so miserable.”
She scooted forward. “When did you see him?”
“A couple of days ago. And no, I didn’t tell him I was going to try to find you. He wouldn’t have endorsed this idea.”
“Is he okay?” she asked, concerned.
“Nope. He’s a mess. I guess he could recover,” Aiden said. “But we have to talk, you and me, and then what will be, will be.
“Luke got married when he was about twenty-four. He was a brand-new Black Hawk pilot and he married a girl he met in Alabama—a real pretty Southern belle who turned his world upside down. Prettiest girl in the South, maybe. They dated, started making plans right away, had a wedding a few months later and he was the happiest man alive. Since he was the oldest, the rest of us were watching every move he made. We all wanted to be like Luke—he was so sure of himself, so well equipped. All the boys wanted to go into the military, excel, get a million ribbons and promotions, marry the prettiest, sexiest girl on the map, grab on to that perfect life filled with challenge, adventure and passion.”
“Something went wrong, I gather,” she said.
“Oh, boy. Let’s see, Colin was in the army, stationed on the other side of the country, I was in my last year of undergrad at the time, Sean was only nineteen and at the air force academy. Patrick was in high school. And Luke had a baby coming. First baby in the family, a son. First marriage for anyone. Luke was on top of the world, so happy, so in love, so excited about the baby, and then he was sent to Somalia, to Mogadishu. You ever see that movie, Black Hawk Down?”
“I did,” she said. “I don’t think I want to see it again….”
“Luke got shot down over there, had some injuries, but he’s the bravest man I’ve ever known. That was a horrible experience for the army—everything bad that could happen, happened. But he somehow got through it, performing heroically. He saved lives and was decorated for bravery. He got home as fast as he could because his son was about to be born. He was undoubtedly still battle scarred when he faced another battle. He wasn’t home five minutes when his wife told him the baby—which was conceived months before he left for Somalia—wasn’t his. She was doing some captain. One of Luke’s superior officers, in fact. A man Luke went into war with, took orders from on occasion. And she was leaving Luke to go with the baby’s father.”
“God” was all she could say.
“It humiliated him, this tough young soldier. He was your age at the time, Shelby—twenty-five. There was a stir on the army post—an officer messing with one of his men’s wives. It wasn’t only a divorce, it was just about front-page news, there were rumblings about pressing charges against the captain and Luke looked like a fool. He wasn’t close to being done dealing with war. He had some issues from that at the same time. Broken heart, scandal, humiliation, disappointment, PTSD from battle, grief from watching comrades die.” Aiden took a breath. “He was suicidal.”
“Luke?” she asked. “That’s so difficult to imagine. Anger, I can see that. But—”
“It didn’t present itself in a typical way. He went down like a torpedo—drank too much and drove, almost flew drunk, but someone pulled him off the flight line. He got in fights—he seemed to go places where he could count on getting the hell beat out of him by at least several men. He picked the fights. He landed in the hospital a couple of times, injuries from fights, from a one-car accident. He probably wouldn’t tell you this, but he told me. He just wanted to die.”
