Virgin River 09 - Angel's Peak

by Robyn Carr

  As these thoughts raced around her brain she had to admit she was afraid of his reaction. If anything happened to hurt Rosie, she’d never forgive herself, and yet she dreaded the thought of never having another night like last night again in her life. Because when he found out what she’d done, he’d be furious first, then he’d be gone.

  In Franci’s bed, Sean rolled over with a moan, opening his eyes. He smelled coffee. She was up ahead of him. His very next thought was that maybe he could get her back in here. Soon. If he had the strength. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d experienced a night like that. At least four years ago, he thought with a smile. He sat up slowly. He found his jeans on the floor along with a lot of clothes. Stumbling to the bathroom, he took a look in the mirror; yep, it was him. Good—he was afraid he’d just been hallucinating again. He rinsed his mouth, peed, then pulled on his jeans.

  Sean found Franci sitting at the breakfast bar behind a steaming cup of coffee, and the first thing that came to mind was that she looked like a mere girl—her cheeks rosy, lips pink and swollen from hours of kissing, her face a mixture of innocence and something that seemed almost shy, but she was a demon lover. A phenomenon. There were times during the night he felt as if he’d rubbed up against both death and eternity at the same time. He took a step; he intended to kiss that mouth before there was any talking.

  “We have to talk,” she said.

  Oh, Jesus, she was thinking again. If there was one area in which they were complete opposites—Franci took everything so seriously. He, on the other hand, had trouble getting serious about much of anything and it drove her crazy. He stopped where he was and just stood there, trying to get his bearings. “Can I have a cup of coffee, please? Before you get started?”

  “Help yourself,” she said, tilting her head toward the pot.

  He leaned against the counter and took a few sips, trying to clear his head. She took a few sips, remaining blessedly quiet. He could tell by the expression on her face, there was going to be some drama about last night. He mentally prepared himself; she was going to warn him it didn’t mean they were getting back together. She could say that all day; he wouldn’t argue with her. But he wasn’t leaving; he wasn’t letting her walk away from him again.

  Franci was thinking, too. She thought maybe the best thing would be to just blurt it out—Sean, I left you because I was pregnant. I have a daughter, your daughter. I have twenty reasons why I didn’t feel I could tell you before now and I—

  Just then there was a sound at the front door and Franci gasped. She knew instantly what had happened. Franci and Vivian had an understanding. Vivian would go out to get the newspaper from the end of her sidewalk, look down the block at Franci’s house and, if there was a car in the driveway, Rosie would not be allowed to go rushing home to her mother until after a long, leisurely breakfast at Grandma’s house. And a quick phone call to clear the way.

  There was no car in the driveway! Sean’s car was parked across the street along the curb.

  Rosie pushed the door open, all grins and bouncing red curls. “Mama, we watched a scary moobie and ate pizza on Grandma’s good couch!” She ran to Franci, her coat not even buttoned, and Franci reached for her. Rosie threw her arms around Franci’s neck and Franci lifted her up, hugging her fiercely, rocking her back and forth. Once she had her daughter in her arms, she wasn’t afraid anymore. It was that way with Rosie and Franci—little else in the world really mattered.

  “Morning, cupcake,” Franci said. “You didn’t let Grandma sleep in, did you?”

  She shook her head, giggling. Then she spied Sean, leaning against the stove in the small kitchen. He held a coffee cup in one hand; his green eyes were wide and fixed, his mouth open in shock and disbelief.

  “Where’s his shirt?” Rosie asked.

  Franci pulled Rosie onto her lap more firmly, one leg on each side of her. “I think he forgot something,” she said. “Rosie, this is Sean. Sean, this is my daughter, Rose.”

  “Wide Iwish Rose,” Rosie corrected her mother.

  “That’s right,” Franci said with a smile. “My wild Irish Rose.”

  “Mama, what’s Iwish again?”

  “A country. A beautiful country that’s green like your eyes.” She glanced at Sean. He was in a state of shock. She hoped she wouldn’t have to resuscitate him in front of Rosie.

  Franci heard footsteps. The door squeaked open farther and the doorknob rattled. “Good Lord, Franci, you left your keys in the lock! Not exactly safe! And presumably not locked, either, since Rosie—”

  Vivian stopped dead in her tracks as she spotted Sean. She gulped.

  “Mom, you remember Sean, don’t you?”

  Sean recovered himself. His eyes were no longer wide, but narrowed, and his mouth was fixed in an unhappy smile. “Vivian,” he said with a nod. Then he sipped from his mug.

  “Sean,” Vivian said, her hand rising to her cheek as she looked at the purple bruise on Sean’s.

  “It’s healing up nicely,” Sean said. “How’ve you been, Viv?”

  “Good,” she said a bit weakly. “Very well. Thank you.”

  “Mama, did he fall down?”

  “Yes, poor thing. But he’ll be just fine. Will you do something for me, peanut? I’d like to have a cup of coffee with Sean before he has to leave. Would you mind having breakfast at Grandma’s? Then I’ll come get you, and later, after we clean our rooms, I think we should take Harry to the dog park, then maybe we’ll bake something and put on one of your best movies.”

  “Aww,” she whined.

  “Come on, Rosie,” Vivian said authoritatively, a hint of panic in her voice. “I’ll let you scramble the eggs. Come on, right now.” She plucked Rosie off Franci’s lap and had her out the door so quickly it was almost a magic trick.

  That left Franci and Sean standing in a very small kitchen in deafening silence. No one moved as the seconds ticked by. Then Sean lifted the coffeepot and filled both their cups. He pulled out a bar stool and sat down. He focused on her eyes and waited. When she didn’t speak, he said, “Tell me you didn’t—?”

  She gave a brave nod. “I was just about to tell you when she came bounding in the front door. Rosie doesn’t walk anywhere.”

  “You were just about to tell me? A few years after the fact?”

  “I told you I needed a commitment, that I wanted a child…children. You were adamant—you were not interested in the same things I was.”

  “You might’ve left out a couple of things—like you were pregnant. That red hair and those green eyes—they’ve been in my family for generations.”

  “Did you really think I would tell you? After the way you acted about the whole idea?”

  “I didn’t have the facts,” he said, anger seeping into his tone.

  “Do you even remember how it was? Do you remember that I cried and said it was the most important thing to me and you said I’d have to come up with other important things because you weren’t getting into all that? Do you remember telling me not to let the door hit me in the ass? Do you remember saying, ‘Fat chance! Not in this lifetime’?”

  “And do you remember telling me I was a child, an irresponsible fuck-around who would never grow up? That if I couldn’t settle down and have a wife and children, you weren’t interested in wasting any more time on me? Remember, Franci? But you didn’t tell me you were pregnant!”

  “I couldn’t! I was afraid to!”

  “Aw, Jesus, Mary and Joseph—afraid? You’ve never had any reason to be afraid of me!”

  “I was afraid you’d marry me!”

  “That was what you wanted!”

  “I didn’t want you to marry me because I was pregnant! I wanted you to marry me because you loved me!”

  “I did love you! I just didn’t want to be married!”

  “Or have children!” she shouted back. She pinched her eyes closed and took a steadying breath. She spoke quietly. “I didn’t want you to be stuck with us. More to the point, I didn’t want
us to be stuck with you, regretting our accident every day of our marriage. I wanted my child. I wanted to raise her knowing she was wanted. Loved. You will never understand this, Sean, and I don’t expect you to—but when my period was five minutes late, I started to love her. Passionately. And it grew by the day. If I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure that you’d love her just as much, I wasn’t willing to take a chance on you.”

  “Were you never going to tell me?” he asked. “If I hadn’t bumped into you, were you—”

  “Yes, I was going to tell you. I was going to have to—Rosie has just started asking questions. I was dreading it, but I was going to tell you.”

  “Dreading it? Because you knew how pissed I’d be?”

  She gave a huff of laughter. Sometimes he was so dense. “No, Sean,” she said patiently. “I don’t care if you get mad at me. I was afraid you’d hurt Rosie. Reject her. Ignore her. Break her heart.”

  Sean got that stunned look on his face again because he hadn’t even gotten that far yet with processing all that had happened. In his mind he’d just found out Franci was pregnant, and it really ticked him off that he hadn’t been told. But life had hit fast-forward; she was almost four years old and asking questions about her father. He had absolutely no idea what a father did with a four-year-old. He had even less idea what a single father did!

  “I won’t,” he said, though he was afraid, through ignorance, he just might. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Thank you,” Franci said. “If you don’t want to see much of her, I can find ways to get around that so she isn’t hurt, and if you—”

  “Franci,” he nearly barked at her, stopping her. “Gimme a minute, huh?” He took a breath. “I just found out you were pregnant!” He shook his head, trying to clear it. “You haven’t told her yet?”

  Franci shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “Okay, first you have to let me digest this—I think I’m in shock. Then we’ll talk about how we’ll manage things. When we’ve had a little time to work things out, then we’ll tell her. But first—” He took another deep breath. “You’ve had a few years to get used to this idea. I’ve had a few minutes.” He lifted one brow and peered at her. “And I haven’t had much sleep.”

  In spite of herself, she flushed.

  “Now, I’m going to get dressed. I’m going to leave. I need a little time to think. I need some fresh air and you made promises to your ‘wide Iwish rose.’ I’m going to call you tonight.” He tilted his head. “Are you going to give me a phone number now?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Don’t tell her until I’m ready, Franci.”

  “Do you want to help tell her?” she asked, frankly surprised.

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I just don’t want you to tell her until I have some time to think. I want to work things out in my head, then we’ll get to…” He gave a half smile. “Rose? Why’d you name her Rose.”

  “That hair,” she said, smiling. “She came with a head full of that hair. I thought I was going to name her Taylor, till I saw the hair.”

  He couldn’t quite smile back. Then he pushed back from the breakfast bar and went into the bedroom to gather up his clothes. As he limped out of the kitchen, she saw the scratch marks she’d left on his back and winced. “Oh, God,” she whispered, mortified. When he came back into the kitchen he was fully dressed, though he couldn’t button his shirt. She said, “Please, whatever you decide, let Rosie be your first consideration. Her feelings, her little heart.”

  “Whatever I decide?” Sean asked. “You mean there’s some kind of choice? She’s mine, right? Nothing I decide will change that, right?”

  “She’s yours. I wouldn’t be able to hide that.”

  “Then you don’t have to worry about her heart,” he said. He buttoned his leather jacket over his destroyed shirt. “Write down your number for me. When does she go to bed?”

  Franci scribbled down the number on a notepad. “Eight or so.”

  “I’ll call you after that so we can talk,” he said, grabbing the paper. And without touching, hugging, kissing or the smallest display of affection, he left her house.

  Six

  It wasn’t even eight on Sunday morning when Sean left Franci’s, so he drove around Eureka and Arcata for a couple of hours, hoping to spy an open bar. Of course the kind of classy bar where Sean preferred to spend his time wasn’t open on Sunday morning, or any early morning for that matter, but he was willing to settle for a dive if he could only find one.

  Pregnant, he kept thinking. Then he would remind himself, not pregnant anymore. There was a child, a little girl. How could Franci do something like that to him? Man, he could use a stiff drink.

  Right away the many things he’d have to do assaulted him. He’d have to step up, offer to marry Franci and somehow become a father. He’d have to act like a father to a little girl who hadn’t had one since birth. Even though he had plenty of friends with young children, he hadn’t been paying attention; he wasn’t sure how that was done. Nor was it something he felt like doing! Next he’d have to tell his family and they were all going to go crazy, his mother, Maureen, at the head of the pack.

  He’d have to get over being angry long enough to convince Francine to move to Beale AFB as his wife, living with him full-time, and he had only five weeks of leave to do it in. Joint checking account, sharing a dirty clothes hamper, knowing each other’s whereabouts at all times, working out child-care issues. Maybe he could convince her to be a housewife and take care of everything.

  Sean began to feel claustrophobic.

  His cell phone vibrated in his pocket and then let out a little ping. He pulled it out and looked at it—a text message from Cindy. A long text message; he didn’t try to read it while he drove. In fact, he might not read it at all. Ever.

  Cindy had been a very brief girlfriend. He should have broken off their relationship, which wasn’t much of one to start with, when he took leave to go to Luke’s. Instead, Sean, being Sean, had kept the thread alive just enough to think about it a while longer because Cindy liked him a lot, and that meant regular sex. She was a civilian who worked on base, twenty-five years old, kind of cute. They had met at the officers’ club one Friday night. The girl went from zero to naked in twenty seconds—they were in her bed that very night. Though he knew better, he took her out a couple of times after that. He knew it wasn’t going anywhere, but she didn’t. She started calling him, having expectations, getting serious. He tried to slow her down, but she was very hot to trot and not easily discouraged. Sean was a gentleman most of the time and returned her calls or texts when she asked him to, and that was probably another mistake. So he told her he was going to his brother’s place, would be gone a couple of months, and this would be a good time to cool it. He wasn’t interested in having a steady girl.

  She was interested. She left voice-mail and text messages on his phone at least once a day, sometimes the cheery how are you variety and sometimes the desperate why don’t you call me I miss you so much type.

  What he wanted was a message from Franci that said, “Come back here, I can explain.” But he wasn’t likely to get that. She didn’t want him if he was merely taking responsibility. She wanted him in all the way, wanting her and a baby. Was it some kind of felony to be a guy who didn’t feel like having kids? He knew a lot of guys who didn’t feel like breeding up big families! It didn’t make him a bad guy.

  Sean found himself driving back toward Luke’s in Virgin River. And he was thinking that he really liked the guy he’d been with Franci, before all this. And he liked the plan he’d had. He wanted to travel, do fantastically adventurous things with her: see the world, ski the Alps, snorkel in coral reefs, dive in clear, warm waters, parasail, balloon, four-wheel, do a motorcycle cross country, go mountain climbing. He hadn’t ruled anything out. And Franci seemed to be having a great time; they were good together. An air force pilot and a nurse pulled together a decent enough income to indulge in all the
fun entertainment life had to offer.

  She had no right to do what she’d done. Without even telling him. She was wrong to do that. Franci was the one who was wrong, not him. He’d been honest!

  He pulled up to Jack’s Bar, the only game in town. The open sign was lit. Sean wandered in and found the place deserted. He went up to the bar and said hello to a smiling Jack.

  “Morning,” Jack said. “Breakfast?”

  “Shot of Chivas, if that’s okay.”

  Jack lifted his eyebrows. “Fine by me,” he said, getting a glass and the bottle. “Rough night?”

  Beautiful night, Sean thought. Maybe that’s what pissed him off the most, that he’d had that old, familiar, phenomenal, mind-blowing sex with Franci and had started thinking, I’m home, I’m home, I’m home with my woman! He’d begun formulating how they’d work things out; he’d convince her their life was good; he’d assure her she was secure with him. He loved her; he looked forward to a life with her. It was the trappings of marriage and children that made him nervous, made him feel like the confinement would suck all the fun out of him. But if that was the price of having her in his life he would compromise. He could do the marriage thing, but that whole family thing—he was maybe years away from that.

  Think again, idiot, his conscience chided him. It’s here. Your Wide Iwish Rose.

  “Sean?” Jack asked, putting the drink in front of him.

  “Oh. Thanks. Just a lot on my mind.”

  “Oh,” Jack replied. “Well, can’t say I haven’t resorted to Scotch before 10:00 a.m. Sunday morning to clear my head. A time or two.” Then he turned away like a good bartender and busied himself behind the bar.