He watched her face change and read it perfectly. Whatever kind of vibes he didn’t want to put out, she’d somehow detected something. But how to let her know he was the good guy without wrecking every bit of trust he wanted to build with her? Up to now, he’d faked everything. Shame flickered, and not just because lies were a sin. He ached to share her trust.
How could he avoid wrecking a chance of getting to be with her? How could he prove his interest in her wasn’t faked. Might as well try to reassure her.
“Somebody just walk across your grave?” He asked casually, and regretted the tomfool expression when she startled. Jaws clamped hard around his unruly tongue. Normally, he thought long and hard before he flapped his lips.
“What?” Her face paled.
He felt heat flush his face. “I saw you shiver a tad. Probably caught a breeze. But,”—he treaded carefully—“if you’re worried about something, well, I know you haven’t known me long. Nikki and Zak are far off for a while. But I’m here for you.”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, stiff. “I’m just tired. The days before the wedding were busy and stressful, and now, I’m a bit deflated it’s all over. That’s all.”
“Sorry.” For once, his instincts had failed. He’d said something stupid, something he rarely if ever did, and needed to make up for it, fast. “I didn’t mean to be flip. I guess I’m wondering if...if maybe God had us meet at this exact time, for a purpose.”
He did wonder it, ever since he took her weeping into his arms after the wedding. After all, his wealthy clients had only hired him to find her, not befriend her.
Not fall in love, or start to. Heat wracked him. Could all of the rest of it be part of God’s plan? He wasn’t tossing God into the mix just because he knew she’d liked to hear His name. Something honest burgeoned in his heart. He surged with need to help her, protect her, to stand by her side to face whatever it was. Sure, his help wasn’t Almighty, but maybe he was meant to be an instrument of God’s peace and wisdom. He almost shook his head in wonder at what yesterday would have been his craziest thought yet.
With all these thoughts tumbling through his head, he didn’t dare meet her gaze so she could read the story in his eyes.
Then it hit him. She wasn’t afraid of him, per se. There were other people after her, too. He had to convince her somehow without the actual words that he wasn’t one of them. Then new shame swamped him. He hadn’t swept her house for bugs last night because…he’d been blinded by the light of the cross, and it brought him back to the Cross he’d known as a child. He reckoned she wasn’t the bad guy anymore, but a victim just as much as the folks Everett had swindled. Was she, like himself, a Christian who’d lost her way and made bad decisions while floundering in the shadows? Now regret and fear for her clamped his skull. Who else was watching her, and how? He’d find out.
He had the technique and the technology to do it. He’d have to do it tonight while she house-sat. Missed opportunities weren’t Rhee Ryland’s MO. He shook his head so slightly he knew she couldn’t see.
For a while, they both ate silently, pups snoring in the shade, and he liked to think she was relaxed in his presence, that what he’d told her made sense to her. She hadn’t protested or argued, didn’t seem tense or antsy now.
Well, not that he could tell for sure. Normally he reckoned he could read folks perfectly from top to toe, but already he’d been off his game around her.
“I must admit, despite my being prejudiced about the Brew Basket, that sure was delish.” She smiled at him, big and real as she wadded her wrapper. At the sound, the puppies looked expectantly at her, and tenderness washed over her face. Almost envious, Rhee longed for that same tenderness in his regard.
“I share those same sentiments, ma’am.” He nodded and took a swig from his bottle of water. “You’ve got some employer there.” As he tended to his trash and a few leftover tidbits, he grinned. “Now, now. I am not getting ready to give them my scraps. I got told, and I listened first time around.”
At that, she laughed out loud, and the sound had him surge with a happiness all his own. He wasn’t about to leave town. Somehow, after today, he’d see her again. “You want to go for a walk?” He asked casually, aching to take her hand, to let their joined fingers swing between them down the pretty trail to the spring.
“I’d love it. I don’t dare leave the mutts behind, though. We’ll be hearing them whine for a mile.”
“Sure.” He attached the leashes. “No need to set the Humane Society on an investigation.”
“Rhee?” She tidied the picnic site while he did so, then said with a tinge of regret and a shrug. “Rhee, I…usually play Scrabble with Mrs. Warburton, my landlady, on Sunday evenings. She doesn’t get out much, and she’s lonely with me at Nikki’s every night.”
“Sounds fun and thoughtful all at once,” Rhee said carefully, wondering how she’d react if he tried to wangle an invitation.
Caffey shrugged as Darlin’ tugged at the leash in her left hand. “She’s a real sweetheart. Thing is…” her voice slowed and she didn’t look at him. “Thing is, it’s our special time, you know.”
He didn’t respond right away.
“I mean, if you had thought…” She bent to pet the dog’s head. “I mean…”
He had to let her off the hook although getting ditched wasn’t a cool feeling, not at all. “I understand totally. It’d have been nice to have dinner later, but I’ve got plenty to do tonight for work.”
“You’re not leaving town tonight?”
No doubt about it. He’d heard a hopeful lilt in her tone. As he bent down to kiss her forehead, he wished he could do more. “I have every reason to linger in Rancho Lorena for another day.”
Regret steeped. He couldn’t stay here, but he didn’t want to leave her.
“All right, then.” Her lovely face brightened as though he’d given her a special gift. “Let’s get these babies some exercise.”
****
About seven that night, a regretful, glum Caffey plunked a Lean Cuisine in Nikki’s microwave, feeling like a country song full of loneliness and desertion. However, this time it was all her own fault. Worse, she’d lied, something she hated in the long run even though she did it every day to save her skin.
But she had no other way or excuse to get rid of Rhee. Not that she didn’t want to see him again. She did. She all but ached for him with every pore, but something was off, somehow. She needed time to weed through her own thoughts and more than that, search some Scripture and talk to God in prayer. Whenever she’d made a decision without Him, she’d faced disaster right away.
However, she couldn’t get Rhee out of her thoughts. He stayed there, and she liked it. She sank onto a 50’s style dinette chair—red to match the kitchen’s cherry theme. What was Rhee doing tonight? Maybe she should relent, ask him over.
What was she thinking? She no longer owned Katherine Morton’s heart to give it away. And Caffey wasn’t real. She was a figment, better off alone than dragging Rhee down into whatever it was Everett had left behind.
Still…Rhee wasn’t staying in Rancho Lorena, neither of them was after anything permanent, and he had seemed disappointed at her Mrs. Warburton story. Surely he wouldn’t blow off meeting her for one last late supper or a cup of goodbye coffee. Hmm. She didn’t even have a cell phone number. But the Painted Cave. That phone number she could find. He was staying there, right?
The pups slept together in a golden tumble on a soft fleece bed in front of the gas-log fireplace, and for a moment, Caffey couldn’t help imagining a cold winter night in front of it, the dogs warming her feet and Rhee next to her. Dummy. She got up to find the phone book and dragged her finger through the yellow pages marked “hotels and motels.”
“There’s nobody checked in here named Rhee Ryland,” a mature female voice told her at the opposite end of the line.
Suddenly even her toes felt cold. “You sure? He checked in yesterday or perhaps Friday night. I’m sure of it.”
“Nope, miss. So sorry.”
Her breath caught cold in her throat like an ice cube one hadn’t meant to swallow, and she couldn’t find enough voice to thank the receptionist before she hung up. What did it mean? Where had he been? Where was he now?
Knees gone weak, she sank onto the overstuffed couch. Darlin’ got up and stretched and for once, Caffey paid the pup no never mind at all as she tried to stop the invisible fingers clawing her spine. She had no reason, no need at all to hurtle herself headlong into another situation that required caution and care. She needed time, and calm. Besides, she hadn’t done the one thing she’d set out to do tonight:
Take a gander at the Good Book and ask the Lord to guide her. She grabbed the Bible on the end table; she never travelled even two blocks from home without the little white leather zippered set of Scriptures her grandparents had gifted her with when she was born.
In the lamplight, her name “Katherine Christine Morton” blinked at her with its gold engraving above her birth date. She gasped again. It had been this very Book, Holy or not, that had given her away, her first Sunday at Hearthstone Church when Nikki had befriended her and inquired about the engraving. Well, that at least had worked out well.
After she unzipped the side, her Bible fell open on her lap and as she often did, she perused the first verse on the left. Often the random discovery led her to what she needed to explore. Tonight Matthew chapter twenty-four, verse four, didn’t disappoint.
“Take heed that no man deceive you.”
Her heart skittered to her feet before bouncing back up to her throat. Could it be Everett all over again, a man she couldn’t trust? Of course Everett had never cheated on her, but he’d cheated many people she’d cared about, and lies were betrayal, too. And Rhee had lied. If he weren’t up to something, why lie about where he’d stayed? She crushed the book to her breast, hands folded around it.
Lord, does this mean…it’s over? Whatever it was with Rhee? Mom and Dad always said a man who was kind to animals had a piece of You, the Creator, in his heart, and I guess I fell for that. Now, I’m not asking You what to do just because I’m attracted to him. I just…miss him and like being with him. And somehow, I almost feel I need him in some way. Let me know what to do. Or if I should do anything.
Sighing, she couldn’t help but feel the Lord’s peace. Even if He said no, or remained silent, there was nothing like the feeling of contentment His word brought to her now that she’d given Him back her life.
Sounds of a scuffle on the back porch sidetracked her devotion, and a puppy’s satisfied whines let her know one of the dogs had gotten into something it shouldn’t have. Dashing to find out, she gasped again, and Darlin’ looked at her with whites around her dark pupils. Caffey had left the picnic basket on the floor by the dryer instead of unpacking it, and now Darlin’ was busy licking up the shreds of paper napkins and wrappings.
“No,” she scolded gently, and Darlin’ slunk off to her fireside bed. As Caffey knelt to clean up the trash, something small and black, inscribed with silver, stood out in the detritus.
A business card. Rhee’s business card complete with a phone number and the logo of an unlocked lock. Why had he done this and not handed it to her himself? Nerves tingled where her hair met her scalp. Just who was he? Did he think she might need someone, need him somehow? She did have people, bad people, after her. The Carlito Cartel. Everett had cheated them bad. Could Rhee possibly know? Was he one of them? Red terror flamed, and she reckoned she knew the answer to her prayer.
Or not. She remembered her self-warning of just moments before, not to dive into a mire of stupidity.
Grabbing Nikki’s landline, she held the receiver, deep in thought.