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there.”
    “You’re there a few months a year. Listen, that was a hard enough gig when I had a husband coming home to me. It’s not going to work with my dead husband’s best friend.”
    “It could,” he said. “I will always be there for you.”
    “You are a saint and might live to regret it. I could be calling on you till I’m a lonely ninety-year-old widow. What you need, Patrick, is a woman.”
    “Oh, really?” he said.
    “You and Leigh parted company a long time ago, and unless you’re really good at covering your feelings, you weren’t real surprised and not all that disappointed.”
    “I was very surprised and disappointed!”
    “All right, all right,” she said, surprising him with a laugh. “You bounced back well and good for you. What I’m saying is, you can find a good woman now. It no longer has the danger of rebound written all over it. Just look around, Patrick.”
    “In Virgin River? Right.”
    “They’re forming a line in Charleston as we speak,” she said, teasing him. “Paddy, you’re there for me, I’m there for you, but, my darling friend, you’re going to find the right woman before long. You just have to be open to it.”
    Having chili with a cute little package tonight, he thought. Just not girlfriend material . “Right. Sure. Meantime, I have a house in Charleston where you had a life—where you can still have one. Keep an open mind, all right? Because you and Daniel are family to me.”
    “You’re very sweet,” she said. “The best friend a widow girl could have.”
    He didn’t say much to that, just asked after her folks, Daniel and the weather and then said goodbye. It was too soon for her to think of him as more than a friend. But he had begun to formulate a plan in his mind. He was almost thirty-four and wanted stability in his life—a woman he could depend on, a family, a future he could trust as much as was possible. And here he was—committed to his best friend’s widow. Wasn’t it smart to form a committed relationship with someone who was a best friend, someone he could depend on, someone he really knew? He wasn’t in love with her, at least not in the conventional sense, but how important was that in the grand scheme of things? She was an awesome woman, very pretty, extremely smart, an excellent mother and had unshakable values. He could step into Jake’s shoes effortlessly. He could love her for a lifetime; he would never regret it. He was trying to remember what more there was to consider, to hold out for, when there was a knock at the door.
    He opened it to find Angie huddling into her thick jacket, a fresh young beauty wearing a smile sent to earth by the angels. Her hair was thick and soft, her eyes large and dark, her cheeks flushed and lips full and pink. Had he warned her not to get mixed up with the likes of him? What a damn fool he was—the mere sight of her made him forget Marie and long to hold her. She tempted him beyond sanity. A young woman like this would be his downfall for certain. He needed maturity; he wanted the kind of woman he knew he could count on. What did a woman know at twenty-three?
    “Your directions were fine, but because of the dark I missed the turnoff three times.”
    “Sorry,” he said lamely, standing in the open door.
    “Are you all right?” she asked.
    He shook himself. “Sorry,” he said again. “I just hung up from talking to Marie, my friend’s widow. I’ll shake it off in a second. Come on in.”
    “Listen, if you need to cancel, if this turned out to be a bad night, after all…”
    “Nah, come in.”
    She stepped into the cabin uncertainly. “It probably puts you in a kind of sad, grieving place.”
    “Not usually,” he said. “I try to talk to her for a few minutes every day. Can I get you a beer? I saw you have a beer at Jack’s so I bought a six-pack. Sam Adams okay?”
    She laughed softly. “You bought it just for tonight? You might be the only guy I know who doesn’t stock beer. Sam