“Elizabeth drowned.”
I started slightly at the harshness of the two words in the silent room. Shivers swept down my arms, causing my skin to roughen.
“How horrible,” I whispered.
“Yes. It was,” he said, still not facing me. “I thought maybe you’d read about it. You told me back in San Francisco that you’d Googled her name—”
“There was very little information on her.”
“Her father pays a company to remove or bury most Internet search references to her… and himself, of course,” he added, bitterness entering his tone. I came up on my elbow and stroked his arm and shoulder.
“Did she drown near the house?” I asked hesitantly. My imagination leapt to the idea of her drowning in that safe, protected little beach enclosure, and I just couldn’t. Besides, wouldn’t Evan be paranoid about me swimming there alone, if that were the case?
He exhaled, and I imagined I felt his emotion. I sensed dread in every cell of his being.
“No. It was a boating accident.” He turned, resting his chin on his shoulder so that I could make out his profile in the evening light radiating from behind the curtains.
“I honestly wasn’t thinking about Elizabeth when I worried about you this afternoon. I was thi
nking about you, Anna. Why don’t you believe me?”
The bleakness of his question startled me. I sat up and came behind him. I wrapped my arms around his waist.
“I do believe you,” I said, my cheek pressed against his back. “I’m sorry I ran off without telling you this afternoon. But I kept myself safe, Evan. Have a little faith in me.”
He ran his hands along my forearms. “I have a lot of faith in you. It’s the rest of the world about which I have doubts.” He squeezed the back of my hands gently. “I’m sorry for snapping at you earlier. My imagination got the best of me, waiting for you to come back.”
I kissed his spine through his shirt, and then nuzzled him with my nose. A feeling of sharp longing rose in me.
“We’re both sorry,” I whispered.
He patted the back of my hand. “Ready for dinner?”
I swallowed back that strange surge of emotion and swung my feet off the bed.
“Let’s go. I’m starving,” I said, reaching for his hand.
I took the medication that night and spent a blessedly dreamless night. I was a little groggy in the morning, but my lethargy disappeared in an instant when I entered the sunlit kitchen only to find Evan there, dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, and hiking boots. He was in the process of placing a chilled bottle of chardonnay in a portable wine cooler.
“What are you doing?” I asked him in amazement as he slid the cooler into a black backpack that already had a baguette sticking partially out of it.
“I’m taking the day off. I thought we’d go hiking to this little secluded beach down the way, have a picnic, swim… “
He faded off, lifting his eyebrows expectantly. I realized he was waiting to see what I thought of his plan.
“It sounds fantastic.”
He grinned at my enthusiasm and resumed packing the bag. “Good. We should have done it sooner. I should have,” he added under his breath.
It was a gorgeous sunny day with a light, cool wind… ideal conditions for hiking. Evan led me to a trailhead I hadn’t yet located. It required a fairly strenuous hike uphill to a ridge.
When we got to the top, I gasped in pleasure between pants for air. We admired the scenery from our view at the top of the world.
I felt Evan’s gaze on me. “I stole a good painting day from you, I think,” he said.
I reached for his hand. “You gifted me with a day with you, which is something far better.”
We hiked for another hour and a half or so, passing through dense woods, and then a rough terrain of rocks, brush, and boulders. I’d never thought of myself as being afraid of heights, but there were a few drop-offs that I carefully avoided even looking at, because they made me dizzy.