She sat up drowsily when he moved, turning over on her side to face him. It was a little late for someone to be calling. Through heavy eyelids, she watched him answer.
“Hello?”
His brow furrowed as he listened.
“Oh...hi,” he said after a moment. He gave Faith a flickering glance and sat up straighter in bed. She sensed his tension. Her nerves prickled into alertness when she distantly heard a female’s voice resounding from the receiver. Whoever it was, she sounded upset.
“I don’t know. I don’t think that’d be a very good idea,” Ryan said cautiously. This time, Faith was sure of it. His glance at her was furtive. Wary.
It suddenly felt as if lead had replaced her insides when he suddenly stood and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him, the phone still pressed to his ear.
Faith just lay there, trying to sort out why the phone call had upset her so much. She realized it was because she’d been in this position before. She’d been with Jesse a few times—maybe more times than she cared to remember—when he’d gotten a phone call and suddenly walked out of the room. It wasn’t until that moment, that very moment, that Faith realized those awkward phone calls had probably been from other women.
His lovers.
The realization had just never hit her until now. She’d found out about Jesse’s infidelities while he’d still been overseas. He’d died soon afterward. She’d never had any reason to put two and two together and resolve puzzling little moments like that from her previous marriage.
Feeling cold and heavy, Faith turned over and curled up beneath the covers. When Ryan came back to bed later, she pretended to be sleeping.
* * *
By the next afternoon her glacial insides had thawed out quite a bit. Her busy day at her office had gone a long way to bringing her around to her senses. That phone call last night might have been anything—an old school friend, an old girlfriend, even his new female employee, for all she knew. By the time Ryan walked through her office front door to pick her up, she’d recalled what Brigit had told her.
Try to trust in Ryan unless you see some clear reason why you shouldn’t.
He certainly had done nothing offensive, she reminded herself. She became so disgusted with her paranoia that she vowed to herself not to even ask him about the strange phone call.
When he came to her office to pick her up at around five-thirty that evening, he seemed preoccupied.
“Are you all right?” she asked him when they got in the car and he pulled out of the parking lot. “You seem sort of...worried or something.”
“No, no I’m fine. Well, maybe a little concerned. But it’ll be okay,” he seemed to say to himself as much as to her. “If you don’t like it, it’s no big deal. You’re not under any obligation to—”
“Ryan, what in the world are you talking about?” she interrupted, starting to get worried now herself.
“You’ll see,” he said, giving her a smile of reassurance and grabbing her hand.
“Are we going to visit Brigit?” she asked a while later when he drove into Harbor Town and turned right onto Sycamore Avenue. “Is Mari in town or something?”
“No. It’s not that.”
“Well, what th...” She paused when he slowed down the car, staring out the window in bewilderment when he pulled into the drive of the house she recognized as being the large, handsome one that had once been the Itani summer home. A woman wearing a beige-colored suit walked down the front steps as if to greet them. Faith gaped, aghast, when she saw that the for sale sign that had conspicuously been displayed when they’d passed weeks ago was missing.
“Ryan,” she began numbly. “You didn’t...we’re not...”
“I put down a small fee to hold this house until you saw it,” he said quietly. “I’d like to buy it, Faith. For us.”
Chapter Thirteen
“What? Why?” Faith asked, utterly floored.
He took her hand. “It’s a beautiful house. I don’t know when it’ll come up for sale again, if ever.” Ryan scanned her expression, looking anxious.
Faith’s dazed shock was fractured slightly when she saw movement near Ryan’s window. He glanced around.
“That’s Mrs. Reynolds, the real estate agent. Why don’t you just take a look at the house? You don’t have to say yes. It’s not like I put down a full down payment or anything, I just asked her to put it on hold for us until the weekend.”
Faith managed to shake her head and mutter a passable greeting to a smiling Mrs. Reynolds. Her numbness fractured slightly when she entered the beautiful home and saw the gleaming hardwood floors, the spacious rooms, the luxurious kitchen, the wonderful detailing and craftsmanship that had gone into the building of the house. She’d regained the power of speech by the time they entered the dining room with the lovely built-in china cabinet and elegant chandelier.