Moonlight Road. Робин Карр

be empty tonight?” came a loud, demanding voice from behind a curtain.

      Noah immediately started to laugh. Aiden just looked at the nurse. “A good bop on the head didn’t hurt her hearing, did it?” he said as loudly as he dared. “I’m getting out of here, but when she settles down a little, tell her I’m going to use her tub and roll around in her satin sheets.”

      The nurse laughed at him. “I’m not getting into that, Dr. Riordan,” she whispered. “This is between you and the lady.”

      He shushed her with a finger to his lips. “Believe me, there isn’t anything between us. And there isn’t going to be. Let’s go, Noah.”

      When they were under way in Noah’s old blue truck, Aiden asked, “Are you in a big hurry?”

      “I don’t have all day, but there’s no rush. Need to make a stop?”

      “If I can find that cabin, can we swing by? I left all my stuff there. The stuff I hike with.”

      “My pleasure,” Noah said. “How’s the hiking going?”

      “Pure indulgence,” he said. “I’ve logged a lot of miles, seen a lot of the area, but I’ve never had time like this before. Sometimes I just hike around the mountains, the general Virgin River area. Sometimes I drive over to the coast or down Grace Valley way for a change of scenery. I’ve never felt better.”

      “Good for you! Sounds perfect. You’ll have to go back to work eventually, I assume.”

      “I spend a lot of time e-mailing friends and contacts, looking around at the possibilities, trying to avoid any offer that hinges on me starting right away. But I won’t hang out here any longer than midsummer.”

      Aiden didn’t have any trouble directing Noah back to the cabin, and it wasn’t hard to locate the things he’d dropped when he’d played rescue squad to the dish with the attitude. The machete and staff were lying in the yard between the house and trees. When he picked them up he noticed someone had outlined a good-size square by digging a border, but the inside of the square was still grass, dirt and rocks. Hopes of a garden?

      He grabbed the backpack, and in doing so, he noticed it looked as if she’d been attempting to plant a strip of garden along the back edge of the deck. Maybe the square in the yard was just too ambitious for her and she’d opted for a smaller, more manageable plot. The dirt was pretty packed and tough up on this mountain. It looked as though she had some semicomatose tomato-plant starters, a few marigolds that had dried into confetti and a couple of other plants with very uncertain futures.

      Still balanced on the railing was a plastic watering can and on the ground, a couple of garden tools that looked to be about the right size for tending house-plants. Also, for no reason he could fathom, there was a big iron skillet on the deck.

      Aiden took his things to Noah’s truck and tossed them in the back. “Gimme a second, Noah.”

      “What’s doing?” Noah asked.

      “I think she was in the process of trying to revive the poorest attempt at a garden I’ve ever seen. I’m going to give her dying plants a drink. It’ll only take a minute. Do you mind?”

      “I’m good,” Noah said. “I don’t see a garden.”

      “Yeah, I know. That’s the problem. Be right back.”

      Aiden grabbed the watering can off the deck railing. He put the tools on the deck and sprinkled some water on the plants. Then he took the watering can around to the back of the house to refill it from the faucet and saw a nearly empty box of Miracle-Gro sitting there. It was going to take a miracle, he thought wryly. He filled the can and watered again, drenching her little garden. Then he left the empty can on the deck and jumped into the truck with Noah.

      This was all very mysterious.

      “How did this happen again?” Noah asked with a slight frown.

      “I was hiking through the forest when I saw her. I was just going to say hello, but when I came through the trees, she screamed and jumped up and whacked her head. I dropped all my stuff to take care of her—my machete, bow and arrows, backpack, staff.”

      Noah glanced at him, wide-eyed. “You came through the trees with a machete? And you’re insulted that she had some attitude?”

      “I see your point.…”

      Noah laughed. “You might want to cut her some slack there, Aiden.” And then he laughed some more.

      Chapter Two

      While Aiden was staying in Virgin River, he rented one of Luke’s cabins. He actually paid the going rate, though Luke had a real hard time taking his money. But Aiden not only wanted his own space, he also didn’t want to impose too much on Shelby and Luke because he intended to stay all summer. And though the little vacation rental was about as lean as he’d lived since he’d been aboard ship, he liked it. Luke had graduated to satellite hookup for TV and Internet, but the cabins didn’t have phones yet. That didn’t bother Aiden; he’d e-mailed Luke’s home phone number to his contacts, revised the message including Luke’s phone number on his cell phone and could still pick up messages and texts in certain parts of the area out of the mountains. Besides, most of the people he was in touch with preferred the Internet. Every morning and evening he checked his e-mail.

      When Noah dropped him off, he found a note taped to his cabin door. Come to the house right away. L.

      Right away, Aiden decided, could afford him the time to take a shower. If Shelby had a problem with her pregnancy, they wouldn’t be waiting around for Aiden to finish what could be an endless hike.

      When he got down to Luke’s house a mere fifteen minutes later, he gave a couple of short taps and walked in.

      Shelby was sitting on the sectional with her feet up on the ottoman, a book balanced on her big belly. Luke was kneeling on the opposite side of that ottoman beside a large open box. He seemed to be looking through a few items spread out in front of him. He looked up at Aiden and said, “We got trouble.”

      “Trouble? What’s up?”

      Luke stood and handed Aiden a small stack of pictures, pages and envelopes. Aiden leafed through—second- and third-grade pictures, report cards, handmade Mother’s Day cards, memorabilia from his childhood. “So?” Aiden asked. “The problem?”

      “Mom sent this—a whole box of it. Even that book I wrote in fourth grade—the one about the meaning of life for me? Which at the time was finding a way to kill all my brothers and make it look like an accident.”

      Aiden chuckled. He remembered that. They still joked about it when they were all together. Ten-year-old Luke felt he had more than his share of responsibility and aggravation with four younger brothers, the youngest of whom was in diapers and followed him around relentlessly. “I guess we should all thank the Virgin you didn’t find a way. What’s the matter?”

      “You got one, too. Colin got his box yesterday, but Colin just figured he’d been written out of the will because he doesn’t call or visit enough and that was Mom’s way of letting him know. I haven’t checked with Patrick. Or with Franci to see if a box was sent to her for Sean. Mom’s unloading her house.”

      Before commenting further, Aiden ripped open his box. He pulled out an almost identical batch of pictures, papers, folders, and underneath it all was a shoe box. He opened it to find Christmas ornaments—the ones that he had made for the family tree when he was a child, as well as the purchased ones that were his favorites. He held up an old Rudolph ornament. “I loved this one,” Aiden said. “How does she remember the exact ones I loved?”

      Shelby sighed and ran a hand over her belly. “I hope I’m that good a mother,” she said.

      “Something bad is going on,” Luke said. “Either she’s dying or selling her condo and moving into a nursing home.”

      Aiden