“Here? In town?”

“Virgin River doesn’t usually have a real bad time, being at this elevation. But there are areas around that will have issues. But down the mountain could be a challenge. A few years ago, our friends in Grace Valley were just about wiped out. We helped where we could.”

“You always help where you can,” she said. “I can see why Denny has become so attached to this place.”

Jack grew suddenly serious. “Becca, I hope you know I support Denny in his decision to leave, to go to a place he can have a life and family with you.”

“I know,” she said. “I appreciate that. Where will you go tomorrow? To check on people?”

He thought for a moment. “Mel will go out to the Thicksons and check on the kids. She’ll check on the young mother. Noah will see about some of his elderly congregation. Me and Preacher, we’re kind of in charge of the outlying areas. There are folks out on the ridge and up the mountain a ways that need help digging out. Thank God no one got out on a trail and lost!”

“Has that happened?” she asked, sitting straighter.

“It’s happened in good weather! This is no place to wander if you don’t know where you’re going. Becca, you haven’t seen the half of Virgin River.”

She laughed. “I’m going to miss this place.”

“And this place will miss you. You were a huge, one-legged help.” She just laughed at him. “Seriously,” he said. “Terrific meat loaf and potatoes. And there will be terrific meat-loaf sandwiches for a long time!”

“Thanks. Although I don’t have a future in a bar and grill kitchen, I’m finding it kind of hard to leave….”

“Is that so?”

She shrugged. “A couple of weeks ago I was feeling like I’d been real lucky to meet such nice people. By now I feel like you people are the closest friends I’ve had in a while.”

He laughed. “That kind of happens here. We get bonded real easy when we pull together for a cause. A big snowstorm is a cause.”

“I was scared to death,” she said, but her smile was huge. “I had fun.”

Jack stilled. “Let me get this right…”

“Yeah, scared to death and fun. It’s kind of a pattern. I’ve always been like that. My mom always said I just didn’t like things easy. She’s the mother of the century, you know—managed the perfect home. Everything was always stable, secure, perfect. I mean, she wasn’t the kind of mother people write bad mother novels about—she really is awesome. So what did I always need? I needed to jump out of airplanes or surf the biggest waves or barrel race on horseback. Anything with a rush.”

He grinned largely. “My wife’s the same,” he said. “Mel’s a longtime adrenaline junkie. She spent ten years in an inner-city E.R. If it wasn’t scary and risky, she was unenthused.”

“I get that.” Becca laughed. “Yet Denny is the one who went to war. Twice.”

“Totally different,” Jack said. “He’s a trained Marine. He’s not looking for war, he’s responding. You and my wife? You like the edge.”

She laughed happily. She felt so understood. “Mel doesn’t seem like that now,” she said.

“She’ll be like that forever. She holds the health of this town in her hands—a very big job. They depend on her completely. We have a good doctor, but Mel is still delivering a lot of the babies, sometimes under adverse conditions, getting financial assistance, writing grants, you name it. Before we were married, she let a pot grower take her out to a grow site to deliver a woman in big medical trouble. I found out later that he took her at gunpoint. I almost lost my f**king mind… Sorry.

“It’s okay,” she said. “She did? She did that?”

He grew serious. “That was not smart—adrenaline junkie or not.”

“Of course,” she said. “Not smart.”

He relaxed. “Thing is, life around here seems balanced against two extremes. Calm and challenging. That’s why we stick together. When you get down to it, that’s the only option. Fortunately, it’s calm and beautiful most of the time. It’s also a frontier.”

“Denny’s right about one thing—it would be a good place to raise a family. Too bad I don’t have a job here.”

“That job thing? I could make that happen,” he said.

She leaned an elbow on the bar. “And how are you going to do that? I don’t think you need another cook or waitress.”

“A school. We’ve been wanting a school. At least, for the little kids.”

“Don’t tempt me,” she said.

He turned away from her briefly, just long enough to pour her a glass of the white wine she seemed to enjoy. He put it in front of her. “Would tempting you work?”

“Ha ha. You don’t happen to have a school.”

“I could have one in a matter of weeks. Remember my friend Paul? He could throw up a prefab modular building in no time at all. The construction would insult him—he’s very proud of his work and never cuts corners. But the price and speed would fit right into this town’s needs.”

“Where would you put it?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Probably down the street—there’s a lot of available land between the most populated part of town and Noah’s house. For that matter, I think the church basement is mostly available. But the town should have an elementary school.”

“How many teachers do you plan on luring here?” she asked, sipping her wine.

“I was thinking one. One teacher. And probably teacher’s helpers. It would be good if, for starters, the little kids didn’t have to ride that bus into the valley. When you add up all the kindergarten, first, second and third graders, there aren’t all that many…”

“Oh, stop,” she said, putting down her wine and covering her ears.

He pulled a hand off her ear. “It could happen.”

She stared into his eyes. Hard. “My family is in San Diego!”

“You’ve been away from them for a month, I know,” Jack said. “You’ve probably never been separated that long before.”

But of course she had. “College,” she said. “But it was in L.A. and I went home almost every weekend.” At least, when she could see Denny. When Denny was in Iraq, she went home once a month, if that.

“You must be missing them a lot right about now. After a whole month.”

Oh, and what a month! A beautiful month of reunion with the love of her life. Better than she had dared dream. “I have a nice, furnished, two-bedroom apartment in San Diego,” she said. “Denny has one room over a garage.”

“Easy-peasy,” he said.

“Don’t!” she warned.

“Rick Sutter’s house is on this block. Two bedrooms. Small and cute. Empty. He might get back here in a couple of years. I hope so, anyway—he grew up here. He’s in college in Oregon and has his grandma in a nursing home up there so he can visit her often. But he hasn’t talked about selling the house so I think he’s hoping to come back. He might end up working with Paul.” He poured himself a cup of coffee. “The kids would love it. Having you for a teacher. Right now, the people who can afford it are carpooling their kids all the way into the valley for private preschool. We ought to have one of those, too. Even if there aren’t more than a dozen preschoolers. Mel says the kids who miss that have a disadvantage.”

“I think you’re the sneakiest man I’ve ever known in my life,” she said.

“Yeah, so I’ve been told a time or two. But you have your plans. It was just a thought. I know better,” he said. “Too bad you have to miss the pageant, though, after all the time you put in helping.”

Ha! The pageant was just one thing! There were other, far more exciting things to her. Spending her days with children who were just learning to learn. Helping them construct art projects that showed their imaginations. Having learning games that were fun and funny. And field trips—she loved field trips! The parents of her kids were always running for their lives and hiding under beds to avoid being chaperones, and Becca loved field trips.

“You couldn’t do it,” she said to Jack. “You have to have it certified—the whole school. That’s the only way you get funding. You’d need a school board. You’d have to form a PTA.”

“Hey, if we can pull a bunch of church deacons out of this run-down, sinful town, we can manage a school board and PTA.” He grinned.

A bunch of guys came into the bar, all rosy-cheeked and laughing. Jack excused himself and set them up a few drinks, absorbed the latest news and left Becca alone to think. She had a good ten minutes before he was back. He wiped off the bar in front of her.

He studied her for a moment. Then he said, “If I screwed up your last night in town by tossing out crazy ideas, I’ll have to apologize.”

She turned those crystal-blue eyes up at him. “I kind of miss my mom,” she said. “She wasn’t exactly supportive of me coming up here.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t as last minute as I said. I was sort of plotting it….”

He turned a fake shocked expression on her. “No way.”

She smirked. “I really had no idea what I was walking into. It was quite a gamble. After all, Denny could have been committed.” She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “It’s not as though that’s the kind of thing he’d be likely to tell Rich.”

“It worked out for you, Becca. And I’m glad.”

“Thanks. He’s a really special guy.”

“You’re a special young woman.” He leaned on the bar. “Tell me something. Aside from Denny, who is now your slave till the end of time, what do you really want? What’s your big dream?”

She shrugged again. “It’s totally crazy,” she said, staring into her wineglass.

“Come on,” he urged. “Lay it on me.”

She looked up. She took a steadying breath. “When I was a little girl, I had a couple of teachers who were so awesome, I sometimes liked to pretend they were my big sister or aunt or even my mother. We had one of them to dinner once—Miss Tindle. She was young and sweet and made me love school. Then there was Mrs. Dallas—she helped me love school again after an awful teacher just traumatized me. I had a teacher in junior high, Mr. Hutchins… I loved that man. I had such a hard time in his math class and he still managed to make me feel smart. He was so funny, so patient, so there for every one of his kids.” She blinked. “That’s what I want. I want to be that teacher to some kids. I want some twenty-five-year-olds or forty-year-olds to say, ‘I’ll never forget Miss Timm—without her, I’d probably be nowhere.’”

He covered her hand with his big paw. “I have a feeling about you, Becca. I have a feeling you already are that teacher.”

She smiled. Then she said, “Are you serious about that prefab modular school?”

He gave a nod. “As a heart attack.”

“I think you might’ve just totally screwed up my plans for Christmas….”

Seventeen

Becca begged a moment of privacy in the Middletons’ house to call her mother. “You were right,” Becca said. “I was taking a big chance coming up here like I did.”

“Oh, honey,” Beverly said. “This doesn’t sound good. What happened?”

“What happened is, I fell totally in love. With Denny, of course, but also with the kids. With the bartender and his wife. With the town. Denny wants to live here and…” She took a breath. “And I have a job offer. Jack offered to put up a schoolhouse for me. So I can teach the little kids.”