“Bud, he was abusive.”

“Jesus Christ, you had a few problems. The guy was loaded, for Christ’s sake!”

Preacher thought he might explode, his heated blood was expanding so fast. He could hear his own heartbeat. And he felt a small, light hand on top of his coiled fist. He raised his eyes and met the dull, nervous stare of Paige’s mother, pleadingly looking at him from across the table.

“Bud doesn’t mean exactly that,” she said. “It’s just that we’ve never had a divorce in the family. I raised the kids to understand, you have to try to get beyond the problems.”

“Everyone has problems,” Gin said, nodding. Those same eyes. Begging.

Preacher didn’t think he could do it. Sit through it. He was pretty sure he’d never get to the steak without shoving Bud up against the wall and challenging him to keep his mouth shut through something like his fists. The struggle was, that was like Wes. Get mad, take it to the mat. Beat the living shit out of someone. Someone you could beat into submission real easy.

“They weren’t problems,” Paige said insistently. “He was violent.”

“Aw, Jesus Christ,” Bud said, lifting his beer.

A piercing cry came from the playroom. Preacher was on his feet at the same moment Chris came flying into the kitchen, holding his forearm with his other hand. He ran to his mother, with a look of pain and fear, his mouth open in a wail, tears on his face. Paige instantly drew him in, asking, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

Preacher leaned over, pulled Chris’s hand away, saw the perfect outline of a juvenile mouth, and with an expression of sheer horror and disbelief, leveled his gaze at Bud. “Someone bit him!”

“Aw, kids. They’ll work it out,” Bud said, waving his hand, as though leaving them completely unsupervised had nothing to do with him.

Gin said, “I’ll get something for that,” and jumped up.

Dolores left the table saying, “Ice. I’ll get ice.”

Preacher gently drew Chris away from Paige and lifted him up against his broad chest. Chris put his head on Preacher’s shoulder and cried. He met Paige’s eyes and he was sure that despite his greatest effort to remain calm, his were ablaze.

Paige stood, regally, Preacher thought with a touch of pride, and said, “We’ll be going now.”

“Sit down,” Bud said sharply, and Preacher was as close as he’d ever been to coming completely unhinged.

He passed Chris back to his mother as calmly as he could, then leaned both hands on the table, pressed his face close enough to Bud’s so that Bud actually leaned back a little bit. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Paige had her bag over one shoulder and Chris lying against the other, headed for the front door. “We’re going to miss those steaks,” he said in a very menacing whisper. Then he picked up the fork he’d been squeezing and saw that it was a little bent. He bent it the rest of the way, folding it in half with one meaty hand. He dropped it on top of Bud’s salad. “Don’t get up.”

By the time Preacher caught up with Paige, she was halfway down the walk toward the truck and already the women were fluttering out the door, calling after her. With no experience at this at all, having never before been in this position, Preacher knew what was going down. They were going to make excuses for Bud, maybe apologize for him, probably beg Paige to come back. He put a soft hand on her shoulder and she stopped, turning toward him. He reached for Chris. “Here,” he said, taking the boy tenderly. “Say goodbye. We’ll get settled.”

He got Chris in the car seat while Paige and the other women were still on the walk. Each one of them took one of Paige’s hands, but she pulled out of their clutch.

“Lemme see that arm, buddy,” Preacher said to Chris. “Aw, that’s going to be all right. Hey, how about pancakes? Breakfast for supper, huh?”

He nodded and sniffed back tears. Preacher wiped a big thumb under each eye. “Yeah, pancakes. And chocolate milk.” Chris nodded again, a slight smile on his lips.

Preacher got into the front cab and waited, watching as Paige finally embraced both the women, then walked quickly to the truck. She got in and he pulled away from the curb before she could even get her belt fastened.

They drove a little then Preacher said, “Chris and me, we’re thinking pancakes. And chocolate milk.”

She sighed deeply. “I really thought about trying to explain them,” she said. “And why I really didn’t want to—”

He reached across the console and picked up her hand, holding it, giving it a squeeze. He smiled and shook his head at her. It’s okay, he mouthed silently. He didn’t let go of her hand. “After pancakes, I’d like to take a swing by the hospital, see if there’s any change on Mike.”

“Of course,” she said.

Another moment of silence, then, “You know, my mother—she was a little like your mother. Skinny, but stronger than she looked. I was six feet by the time I was twelve. I might’ve been taller than my mother in the fifth grade. But my mother, Church Lady, she had this move—she could reach up and grab the top of my ear and give it a twist. If I swore or spit or showed disrespect, so fast you never saw it coming, she’d wrench that ear and bring me to my knees. She was still taking me down like that the week before she died. I think she learned it from nuns—some of ’em were mean as junkyard dogs. But she made her point.” He squeezed her hand. “I don’t think your mom ever perfected that move.”

Paige laughed lightly.

“Paige, the way you just stood up and left like that, I was awful proud of you. Really, you’re stronger than you let on.”

She sighed. “I should’ve stood up and left sooner. I was real close.”

“Me, too,” he said. “I think maybe we tried too hard with Bud. Both of us. He always act like that?”

“When he’s not real quiet and sulky.”

“He get along with Wes okay?” Preacher asked.

“Bud thinks Wes is awesome. Because he thinks Wes is rich. Wes thinks Bud’s an idiot.”

“Hmm.” Preacher contemplated. He didn’t let go of her hand. “You think Bud really believes it would be all right to get your head bashed in a few times a year for six thousand square feet and a pool?”

“I believe he does,” she said. “I really believe he does.”

“Hmm. Think he’d like to move into my big house—test that theory?”

She laughed. “Do you have a big house somewhere, John?”

“Not at the moment.” He shrugged. “But for Bud, I’d be willing to look around.”

It had been flowing over Preacher like a steady wave since the very first night she came to Virgin River, and it grew. Being around her gentled him, steadied him. Made him want to be a better man. It also had another, more disquieting effect; when she brushed up against him, when he caught a whiff of her sweet, natural scent, he could almost become aroused.

The three of them had been in each other’s constant company for weeks, and his attachment to Chris was strengthening, his affection for Paige deepening by the day. By the hour. When he took her small hand in his, she never pulled it away and he loved that. Sometimes he’d drape an arm over her shoulders, just to let her know he was right there, watching, caring, and she would lean into him a little.

He wanted this to never end.

They shared a hotel room while in Los Angeles—two queens. Preacher in one bed, Paige and her son in the other. Lying in the same room with her was both blissful and painful. He would hear every soft noise, every little snuffle in the bed, and wonder what it might be like to lie beside her, bring her against him. When he would shower after her in the morning, he’d get heady from the smells of her soap, shampoo and lotion.

Mike Valenzuela was sitting up and taking nourishment, though still in pain and a little goofy in the head. There was very little hope of him returning to the police force and his recovery and physical therapy was going to be intense. But with the crisis past, the number of cops sitting constant vigil at the hospital was thinning. Zeke and Paul had gone home; Jack and Preacher were talking about getting back to Virgin River.

At Preacher’s urging, and the last step before leaving Los Angeles, was a trip to Paige’s house. Right after loading a few things into the truck, they would head north. Christopher was dozing in the backseat of the truck in his car seat, for which Preacher was grateful. He had the passing worry that the boy would want to stay home, not understanding the dangers his father posed.

“I don’t think you’re prepared for this, John,” she said. “It’s a lot of house.”

“Yeah, so Bud said. It bother you at all, leaving a big fancy house?”

She shook her head. “I’ll be quick. There’s really not much I want.”

They drove through a security gate into an upscale, exclusive neighborhood and Preacher had to keep himself from reacting to the ostentatious setting, but he gulped. The houses within seemed monstrous to him, sitting back on manicured lawns, landscapers at work, cleaning ladies approaching front doors. Paige’s house was a big brick two-story with a wide, curving drive and wrought-iron gates. Like a country estate. They must have rattled around in there like marbles in a tin can. It was enormous.

Preacher backed into the drive so that the truck bed was handy for her things. “God, that’s amazing,” he muttered. “There has to be a part of you that felt, for maybe five minutes, what a big deal that was.”

She put a hand on his knee, looked up at him and said, “Not for five minutes. I begged him not to buy that house. He was constantly angry about the cost, the bills, but he had to have it. Do you want to come in? Look around?”

He didn’t. He was putting her up in a room above a country bar—a bedroom with no amenities. In a little town with no school. “Nah, I don’t need to see any more. I’ll wait out here and keep Christopher with me.”

When she opened the door with her key and went inside, Preacher leaned against the truck and thought, what must it be like for someone like Wes to lose all this—the woman, the kid, the big, fancy house? Would it ever cross his mind that if he’d treated this with care, it might still be his?

Paige filled four small, soft canvas bags with clothing for herself and Christopher. She packed up some toys and books. As an afterthought, she threw his Big Wheel tricycle in the back of the truck and Preacher drove them out of town. They were a couple of hours out of L.A. when she reached over to Preacher and put her hand over his. “God, that’s a relief. I hope I never have to walk in that front door again.”

“It’s too bad, to have all that and lose it. That’s like the American dream. What every man thinks is the perfect life. A family, success, stuff.”

“Is that your idea of the big dream, John?”

He laughed. “My idea is a lot smaller.”

She stared at his profile for a long moment. Then very quietly she said, “I bet it’s not really smaller. But maybe a lot less complicated.”

And he thought, not anymore. His idea of the perfect life, the best he could have in the universe, was sitting right next to him. So close, yet so far out of his reach.

Rick had lived in Virgin River his whole life, had gone to school with the same kids for years, and he enjoyed popularity among his peers. He was a senior, on the home stretch, when his high school experience made a drastic detour. Now, every morning, he was picking up a pregnant girl and taking her to school with him.

Liz was barely recognizable as the girl who had spent a couple of months in Virgin River the year before. In fact, the pregnant sophomore looked younger than the freshman girl in the short skirts and high-heeled boots of the year before. Lizzie had seemed much more worldly then. She was no longer strutting her stuff; she was shy, self-conscious and vulnerable. She was just a little pregnant girl, and totally dependent on Rick.