“No,” Joe said, stunned. “No, you’re too smart for that…”
Paul laughed. “I guess I’m not. Maybe I should sue Trojan, huh?”
“Oh, Jesus,” Joe said. “Oh God. Someone special? I hope?”
“Nice girl,” Paul said with a shrug. “But it wasn’t… Aw, man. It was… We aren’t… Shit. It was just one of those things. You know? I’ve known her about a year, but I’ve only been out with her a few times. We really didn’t have anything going on except…”
“Oh, Jesus,” Joe said again.
Paul turned toward Joe. “While I was in Virgin River last fall I didn’t talk to her once during that time—that’s how casual. I came back here all the time to check on the company, my dad and brothers, but I never even called her. And she didn’t call me. But…”
“But…？”
“But I came home with my gut in a knot after everything that had happened in Virgin River and I called her. On instinct, probably. And guess what happened?”
“Oh damn,” Joe said. “What are you gonna do?”
“What are my choices?” Paul asked, hanging his head. “I’ll take care of her, of my kid. What else do you do?” He shook his head sadly. “I want it,” he said. “I know—it’s stupid. I should probably try something, like buying her off or something. Get her to make it go away—but if I have a kid coming, I want a part of that. I’m nuts, right?”
Joe smiled patiently. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re not nuts about that—but what about the mother? Is she someone you’re going to be able to work with on that?”
“No telling,” he said. “She wants to get married. I can’t do that. I’m only planning to do this marrying thing once, and then it’s going to be to a girl I love so much I can’t stop myself. If I married this woman, it would really fuck her up, worse than she already is. I can’t fake it—not something like this. I’d be the worst husband. You don’t marry someone that fast.”
“It’s a big, permanent step,” Joe said. “Only you know if you can make something like that work. If you can’t, you do the next best thing,” Joe said. “Man up. Take care of her.”
“It’s just that I slept with her when I love someone else. Why the hell did I do that? What kind of sorry bastard does that? What was I thinking?”
At this point in the conversation Joe was completely lost. Paul loved someone? It wasn’t as though men got together and talked about women they had crushes on—they just didn’t. They rarely said how they felt, period. He’d known Paul a long time and there’d been very few women. He was the quiet one; he kept back. Even when they were abroad together, at war, with a lot of tension to unload, Paul never hustled the women.
The bartender delivered Paul another beer, from which he took a deep drink.
“Love someone else?” Joe repeated.
“I’m such a screwup…”
“You love someone?”
“It’s wrong, that’s all. I had no business…”
“Paul. You love someone?”
“Yeah. I was a real horseshit best friend for years. Vanni. I just couldn’t help it. I didn’t want it to be that way, but—”
Joe drank a big gulp. He was prepared to help Paul through just about anything, but he never saw this coming. And why hadn’t he? Probably because he’d have done for Paul what Paul did for Matt—stay with the widow through everything. “Whoa,” he finally said. “Oh, shit.”
“Oh, shit,” Paul echoed.
“Vanni?”
Paul nodded grimly. “You wanna try to imagine how guilty I feel about that? I tried like hell to talk myself out of it. Sometimes I got damn close. I stayed away from them, you know? Because I could talk to Matt just fine, but if I saw Vanni, my heart wanted to explode…Aw God.” He put his head in his hand. “And now I’ve got someone else pregnant. Think I could’ve messed things up any worse?”
Joe shook his head, but he was thinking—yeah. You could’ve been the dead guy. “You sure this baby is yours?” Joe asked. “Maybe it’s not yours.”
“I thought about that,” he said. “Then I decided that was probably wishful thinking on my part. She said there hadn’t been a guy in a long time, which is why she got lazy on the pills. And what did I have? Some poor old condom in the wallet that thought it was never gonna get out of that package. I probably wore a damn hole in it just getting in and out of the truck. Nah, it’s mine.”