“All on your own?”
“I don’t see why not. I have a good job. My practice is doing very well. I’m just as capable as any adult of taking care of a baby.”
“Your parents moved to Florida a year ago,” he said. “You don’t have any other family remaining in the area, do you?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean much. I doubt my parents would have been super excited to get involved anyway. They’re pretty involved with their own life. But I have good friends in town, like Jane.”
“Your office manager?” he asked doubtfully.
She gave him a surprised glance. “Did you meet Jane while I was seeing patients?” she asked, referring to earlier, when he’d waited for her at her office.
He nodded distractedly. “She introduced herself. Besides, you talked about her on Christmas Eve, remember? You’d spent that evening with Jane’s family.”
“Oh, right.”
An awkward silence settled. It struck her how bizarre this situation really was. She’d only met Ryan in person on two other occasions before Christmas Eve—at summer picnics for families of members of the 28th Wing while Jesse and Ryan had both been based in the Bay Area. She’d liked Ryan very much, and knew that Jesse’s admiration for him bordered on worship. Ryan and she were both from Michigan, and Ryan had regularly spent his summers in nearby Harbor Town, so they’d had that in common. She’d enjoyed talking to him. She may have been married at the time, but she wasn’t blind. Ryan was a very attractive man. Still, he’d never been in the forefront of her mind. Aside from those casual social events and constantly hearing his name mentioned by Jesse, Faith had known little else about him.
Christmas Eve had brought knowledge, of course, of the lightening strike of passion variety. But sharing a wild moment of lust with a man hardly qualified as true intimacy.
Now they were going to have a baby together. The strangeness of the whole thing was almost mind-numbing.
“You don’t have enough people around you for support, Faith. I’m sure Jane is a good friend, but it’s not the same as a family. We even talked about that very thing at Christmas.”
Her mouth fell open. He’d been so approachable one second, but now his serious tone sent a prickle of alarm through her. Surely he wasn’t going to start dictating terms to her, was he? “I’ll make do, Ryan. I’ll figure things out.”
“I’m all the way out on the West Coast.”
“Well, I’m not moving.”
He blinked, and she realized how emphatic she’d sounded. “Sorry—I know you weren’t suggesting that, but well...please don’t. Suggest it, I mean.” She met his stare, hoping he’d understand. “I like my life here. I grew up in this area and think it’d be an ideal place to raise a child. I missed it during the years I traveled around with Jesse. Plus, I love my job. I’m proud of the practice I’ve built.”
He studied his hands on the steering wheel. “You should be proud of it. You did it all on your own. Starting up this airline charter business, I know how much work that takes. How much dedication.”
“Thank you for saying that,” she said sincerely, some of her former tension draining out of her. “I don’t blame Jesse for his job, or for the fact that it required him to be out of the country for a large chunk of our marriage. It forced me to be independent. I built my practice from nothing into something that’s not only a thriving business, but an emotionally fulfilling one for me.”
He studied her through a narrow-eyed gaze that she couldn’t quite interpret. She avoided his laserlike stare, looking at her hands folded in her lap.
“I probably should get back to work,” she said.
His hands slid along the steering will and he shifted the car into Reverse. He did a neat two-point turn and soon they were once again traversing the gravel drive.
“You mentioned being here on business.” Faith attempted to bring the subject around to less charged topics. “How is your airline company going?”
“Really well. I’ve just been operating with the one plane, with one other pilot besides myself, and an administrative assistant who does booking and some marketing work, but I’m about to expand,” he said as he turned onto the highway.
“Really? That’s wonderful, Ryan,” Faith said enthusiastically. He’d mentioned to her casually while they talked at one of those Air Force picnics that he wanted to start up a charter airline business when he finally retired from the military. She’d been thrilled to hear when he paid her that unexpected Christmas Eve visit that he’d finally begun to live his dream. She was a little surprised at how gratifying it felt to her to know that Ryan was thriving and happy.
He gave her a sideways glance and smiled.
“Yeah. I’ve been flying a woman back and forth from this area to Lake Tahoe and San Francisco quite a bit—she has business to attend to in all those locations. Anyway, because I’ve been flying in and out of Tulip County Airport a lot because of this client, I’ve had my eye on a Cessna a man is selling there. I was going to make an offer on this visit. After I get a second plane, I’ll be able to hire another pilot.”
“That’s great news,” Faith said, even though her brain had gotten stuck on one thing that he’d said. “Tulip Country Airport is so close.”
“Yeah. Only a few minutes from here.”
“So...you’ve been back to this area several times in the past few months?”
He glanced at her, doing a double take when he saw her expression. “Yeah,” he admitted.