Temptation Ridge

For a wedding that was thrown together in just over a month, it was beautiful and classy. Unlike those casual, low-key Virgin River weddings, this one was held in a charming downtown chapel with a fancy reception dinner and dance in the city’s prestigious Davenport Hotel’s ballroom. It was loaded with tuxedos and limousines, not to mention some amazing floral arrangements and a dinner menu that impressed even Preacher. Nikki had been Vanessa’s maid of honor twice, and Vanni was happily returning the favor. Also with them were their other two best friends, Abby and Addison.

When the four women started flying together, Abby and Addison had shared an apartment in L.A., while Nikki and Vanni had been roommates in San Francisco. The four of them bid all their trips together so that for three or four days every week, they had layovers in the same cities, at the same hotels. They had shopped together, partied together, gotten each other through a bunch of rotten boyfriends, kept each other afloat through the rough times, laughed through the good times. Now, with Nikki’s marriage, all four would be wed.

But Vanessa asked Addison, “Is Abby a little too quiet?”

“She won’t talk about it, but her husband has been on the road with his band since right after they were married…which has to be about a year ago.”

“I could tell it was a bad situation,” Vanni said. “Does he go home at all? Does she go to him?”

Addison shook her head. “I don’t think so. It’s like pulling teeth to get her to say anything at all about him. And of course, she’s here alone.”

Abby and her husband wed after a very short courtship and almost immediately Ross disappeared, along with Abby’s flush of romance and happiness. She grew evermore silent and distant.

“Abby, are you all right? Is everything okay with Ross?” Addison asked her in a whisper.

“Shh,” Abby said. “This is Nikki’s day. I don’t want to talk about that stuff now.”

Abby held it together pretty well, smiling for the pictures, raising her glass at the toast, but she disappeared from the reception at about the time the dancing started. Addison and Vanessa noticed at once. They talked about going after her, talking her through a bad patch. But in the end they decided to leave her be. She hadn’t wanted to talk about whatever was going on with her marriage, especially not at one of her best friend’s wedding. Maybe she just needed a good, strong, cleansing cry without a bunch of girlfriends in her business.

The Steak House in the Davenport Hotel was one of the nicest restaurants in Grants Pass and a favorite of Dr. Cameron Michaels’. Once a month he had dinner with his partners and their spouses and quite often, they chose this restaurant. He shared a practice with one female and two male pediatricians, all excellent doctors, all married. As had become typical lately, Cam didn’t have a date. He could’ve found a woman to accompany him. Women liked going out with him, and his partners were always offering fix-ups. There were plenty of pretty nurses signed up to take on that duty.

But he was thirty-six and heartsore. He’d been looking for the right woman for a long time, though it appeared he wasn’t going to find her. He had even felt himself beginning to fall in love with the beautiful Vanessa a few months ago and it had stung pretty bad when she let him know she’d given her heart to another man. She not only loved someone else, she married him immediately. Last spring; not all that long ago.

He wasn’t carrying a torch, he even admired the man she married—Paul Haggerty. He was a good man, strong and decent. The problem Cam was having wasn’t a broken heart so much as a tired one. He was a good-looking guy—dark hair and heavy brows over blue eyes, dimples, a bright smile. He was successful, masculine but tenderhearted—women were drawn to him. By now he should have found a woman he was just as drawn to. He wanted to fall in love; he wanted to love someone deeply enough to make her his wife. He was a family physician and pediatrician—having a wife and kids would mean a lot to him.

The women who fell for him were always the wrong ones. Plenty of the young mothers who brought him their children fixed big, vulnerable, doe eyes on him; young, pretty, married women. He was in the market for a wife, not an angry husband coming after him.

He’d had a couple of serious relationships that hadn’t lasted long. There had been a lot of women to fill the time—brief, superficial affairs. Frankly, he could have a woman whenever he wanted one, but he was so tired of that long string of meaningless relationships, weary of the nurses’ jokes about the playboy pediatrician and exhausted from looking.

So he remained the solitary seventh wheel, lately refusing his friends’ offers of blind dates and introductions. He had grown bored with it all and realized his failure to hook up had put him in a real mood. And sex without any feelings of involvement left him empty inside. He was better off alone.

When dinner with his partners was over, he watched them go off together, home to their marriage beds and children while he would go to his too-large, too-quiet house.

The prospect had him feeling gloomy enough to go to the hotel bar for a nightcap. It was late and the bar was nearly deserted; it seemed most of the hotel guests were caught up in a loud and annoyingly happy wedding reception in the ballroom. At the bar, he asked for a Chevis, neat. He didn’t feel like a drink so much as he didn’t want to go home yet, so he spent more time staring into it than sipping. Thirty minutes passed and he still had most of the drink in his glass when he started thinking about facing the loneliness of his house. He stood and pulled out his wallet to put a bill on the bar when he noticed her. A woman sitting at a small table in a dark corner. Also staring into a drink, also alone.

Cam thought about talking to her, but reminded himself how these encounters usually played out. He didn’t feel like another empty connection or worse, finding someone he liked and being let down. But she was pretty and looked a little sad…

The bartender wandered over. “Anything else, Doc?” he asked Cam.

“No, thanks. She been here long?” he asked, tipping his head toward the table in the corner.

“Longer than you.”

“Alone?”

The bartender shrugged. “Couldn’t tell you. I guess.”

Oh, what the hell… Cameron put down the bill and picked up his drink. He wandered over to her table. As he looked down at her, she lifted soft brown eyes to him. She had that classic, sophisticated look, her shiny ash-blond hair curled under on her shoulders. High cheekbones, oval face, arched brows the identical shade as her hair, and a sweet pink mouth. But she didn’t smile. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asked her.

“I’m just having seltzer,” she said. “I don’t think I’d be very good company.”

“I’m no prize tonight either, which is why I was killing time in the bar. I bet we’ll be able to tell in five minutes if we’re just two miserable people.”

Her shoulders gave a little lift with a silent huff of laughter.

“May I sit down?” he asked.

“Really, I think I’d rather be alone…” she said.

He sat down across from her anyway and said, “You sure I can’t get you something a little stronger? Something tells me you could use it.”

“No. You should really go.”

He chuckled lightly. “Man, I thought I was in a bad mood,” he said. “You’re working up a good funk. What’s wrong, kiddo? What happened?”

She sighed. “Could we please not do this? I’m not in the mood to be picked up or talk about my troubles, all right?”

“Okay,” he said. “I won’t pick you up or ask you about your troubles.” He finished the last swallow of his drink and got up. Cameron went to the bar and ordered another Chevis and a champagne cocktail, returning to her table. He put the cocktail in front of her and took his seat again.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Champagne cocktail. I figured you for something sweet and sexy.”

Her smile was mocking. “Great line,” she said facetiously.

“Thank you.” He smiled. “You obviously need a few lessons in how to feel sorry for yourself. You don’t do it with seltzer, for one thing.”

She lifted the glass and took a sip.

“There you go,” he said, smiling again. He reached across the small table and placed his hand over hers. “Sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I’m sure,” she said, removing her hand. “You want to talk? Let’s talk about you. You said you’re in a bad mood.”

“Fair enough. I was out to dinner with friends and when they left the restaurant, I decided I wasn’t ready to go home. See, I screwed up—I bought this house. Nice house, but way too big. Way too quiet and empty.”

“Buy furniture,” she said.

He grinned at her. “It’s full of furniture, ah…what’s your name?”

Abby thought for a second, trying to decide if it was a good idea to get that familiar. She glanced away from him, toward the bar, then back. Finally she said, “Brandy.”

“Nice to meet you, Brandy. I’m Cameron. Friends call me Cam. I have plenty of furniture. That’s not what’s missing.”

“I get it. You’re looking for a woman. There must be something in the Yellow Pages…”

That made him laugh. He picked up his drink and had a sip. “No, Brandy. In fact, that’s about the last thing I’m after tonight.” He leaned back in his chair. “Well, I take that back, maybe that’s what I am looking for. But it’s not what you think. I’m not looking for a date. I’ve had more than enough dates. I’m kind of amazed to find myself thirty-six and still single.”

“Never married?”

“Not even close,” he said.

She tilted her head to one side, looking at his face. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Couldn’t tell you. I have a good job, good friends, nice big house, I brush and floss…”

“You’re not that bad-looking,” she said. “You shouldn’t have any trouble finding a woman who’d want to marry you, spend your money.” The corners of her mouth lifted slightly.

“Amazing. You don’t look like my mother, but you sure just sounded like her.”

“You’re an escaped convict? Serial killer or something?”

“In Grants Pass?” he asked, laughing. “You can hardly get away with unpaid parking tickets in this town. Nah, I’m boringly law abiding. I don’t even speed.”

Abby lifted her drink to her lips. “I think you were right about the seltzer,” she said. “Not a great pity drink.” She took another sip. “How long has it been since you were, you know, involved?”

He slipped over into the chair next to her instead of across. “Hmm. Long,” he said. “I was working up a pretty good crush a few months ago, but before I could close the deal, she married someone else. Real fast. He’d been on her mind the whole time I was staging my seduction.”

“Oh,” she said. “Broken heart.”

“No, not at all. We weren’t involved. I was hoping to get involved, but once it was over I could see that it never really got started. She wasn’t into it at all. How about you? How long?”

“God,” she said, lowering her eyes and shaking her head. “That’s pretty hard to say. I think maybe we have that in common—I was involved. He wasn’t.”

He touched her hand again and this time she allowed it. “Just break up?” he asked.

“No. It was over quite a while ago. He’s been with someone else for at least six months.”

“Yet you’re hurting?” Cameron asked her.

She took a deep breath. “I was just at a wedding. Weddings are awful places for women alone. It works great in the plot of chick flicks because it’s tragically funny.”