“It’s not like that. Listen, I just need some time on this. Some patience. Because I really intend to do better by you than I have. I know I haven’t been here for you like I meant to be and—”
“Stop!” she said. “I haven’t asked you for anything except to stay in touch! Stop whimpering!”
He scowled. His neck got red. “I’m not whimpering!”
“Well, you sure as hell aren’t talking! Man up!”
“I’m trying! But you’re doing all the talking for me!”
She had a few more hot retorts, but bit her tongue against them. She pursed her lips. He had been in Virgin River for months, but he went back to Grants Pass almost every week for a day or two. He had said it was to check on the construction company he’d left in the hands of his father and brothers. And to check on her? It must’ve been pretty hard on her to be asked to understand he had to be away so much, tending to his best friend’s widow. Imagine now, being told he’d have to make frequent trips to Virgin River to make sure the widow and baby were doing all right. Talk about complicated. Well, she wasn’t interested in that kind of relationship.
“I think you’re trying to tell me there’s a woman back in Grants Pass who’s counting on you. You have obligations there.”
“Yeah,” he said weakly. “But, Vanni, I have obligations here, as well. You and Mattie, you’re awful important to me…”
Being referred to as an obligation should have made her want to cry, but instead it made her furious. “Well, don’t worry your little head. We’re getting along just fine—better every day. You have a life in Grants Pass. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of that.”
“You’re not listening,” he said, his voice raising to match hers. “I want to be here with you, as often as possible,” he said. “I’m doing my damn best!”
“It sounds like you have other things, other people you’d better pay attention to.”
“Listen, things can happen that you don’t plan, don’t expect!”
“Oh really?” she asked sarcastically. “Tell me about it,” she said. She hadn’t expected her husband to die, or to fall in love with Paul. If there was one thing she knew about the men in her life—her father, her late husband, Paul and all the guys who seemed to gather around him—they didn’t make commitments lightly, and once a promise was made, they never broke an oath. “I’m sure you’ll get everything straightened out,” she said. She tried to keep the angry edge out of her voice, but she was thoroughly unsuccessful. “Please, you have no obligations here. We’ll be fine. I don’t know why you didn’t just tell me—a long time ago! Did you think I wouldn’t understand you had to get home because there was someone there? Someone who was counting on you?”
“It isn’t like that!”
“You could have just told me!”
“Vanessa! For God’s sake—” Paul attempted.
Walt walked into the room. He looked stricken, startled. “Are you having an argument about something?”
“No!” they both said.
“Oh,” Walt said. “Poetry, I guess. Some new kind of poetry?”
Vanessa hissed and Paul just shook his head.
“I hear the baby,” she said, whirling out of the room.
“I hear something, too,” Paul said, leaving in the opposite direction, charging out the front door and letting it slam behind him.
Walt was left alone in the great room in front of a blazing hearth. “Well,” he said to himself. “Glad to know that wasn’t an argument.”
Vanni cursed herself. She’d lost it. She hadn’t given him much of a chance to explain, but then the time involved in him actually getting to the point might have taken a lifetime. She lay on her back on her bed, fully clothed, the back of her hand on her forehead. She kicked her feet furiously and groaned. She had a short fuse sometimes, she knew that. It rarely reared its ugly head like that, but Paul had frustrated her so much. How could you love and hate the same thing about a person? She adored that he was kind of shy and reluctant; that a woman had to mean everything in the world to him for him to speak at all, for him to embrace, smile, kiss. But she hated that he couldn’t take charge! Stake his claim! He should have told her long before Mattie was born that there was a special woman in Grants Pass, and that he had to get back to her!
Vanni was not going to be like Nikki, hoping to change a man’s mind. Or his feelings. More to the point, she wanted nothing to do with another woman’s man!