Reason To Believe by Kathleen Eagle Read Free Book Online Page A

didn't. Why should he? He knew she wasn't about to discuss his sins with anybody, especially not Anna. She was trapped in her own code of ethics, which was just the way he liked it. Damn him. He always came out looking like the good guy. How in the hell did he manage that?
    "When you come up to see her... what do you two talk about?"
    "Whatever she wants to talk about, which usually isn't anything earth-shattering. Just, you know..." He shrugged, clearly at a loss for memorable examples. "She asks about different ones she remembers. Some of her cousins. My sisters."
    "How are they?"
    He gave her a dubious look.
    "I want to know," she conceded. "I'm asking, too."
    "They're all about the same." He eyed her speculatively. "Annie always asks how I'm doin'. Like she really wants to know."
    "And what do you say?"
    "Depends on how I'm doin'. Usually I'm doin' okay." They shared a quiet moment, an unintentional exchange of soft looks. Then he asked, "How are you doing?"
    "Me, personally? I'm fine. I'm taking an exercise class. I just had my annual—" She forgot herself and readily reported everything to him, the way she used to. "You know, that checkup. The one I hate. But everything's fine. I think I've even lost a few pounds."
    "I think you've lost more than a few." He smiled. "But you look good. You look..."
    "Are you sure you don't want something to eat? There's plenty of—"
    "I'm not hungry. I'm not tired." He laid his hand over her knee, warming up the same spot he'd touched before—and disturbingly more—with a reassuring squeeze. "I'm doin' okay."
    She avoided his eyes as she stood quickly, shedding his hand. "I'll get the sheets on, so the bed will be ready whenever you are."
    She grabbed a set of sheets from the top shelf of the linen closet. She wished she had some new ones. They'd slept together on all the sheets she had for that bed. She wondered whether he'd recognize the old blue and white tulips.
    When she bent to the bed-making task, she felt his presence, even though he hadn't made a sound coming to the doorway. He stood there watching her, and she was certain she could hear his thoughts about the sheets. Sissy sheets, he'd called them, predicting the flowers would wilt the night they broke them in.
    But if the memory was truly in his thoughts, he kept it to himself.
    "You put more bookshelves in here, huh? Feels cozy."
    The room had been almost bare for a long time. When they'd bought the house it was going to be the baby's room. None was immediately on the way, not then, but they'd planned for it to be a bedroom for the second child they were going to have someday. It had, in the end, become the "spare" bedroom.
    "It's a guest room," she reminded him, putting him in his place, as though he'd said otherwise. "I wanted it to feel cozy. But it serves more purposes, with the desk and a place to put more books."
    "You get much company?"
    "No." She opened a dresser drawer—the dresser they had refinished themselves, making it almost a match for the bed, but not quite—and took out an extra blanket. "My mother was here last spring."
    "How did it go?"
    "It was fine. I took her to work with me. She wasn't very interested in the museum itself, but she enjoyed meeting people. She's good at that." Ben had always been most tolerant of her mother, who was at times quite difficult to tolerate. "Anna was on her best behavior. Her grandmother kept buying her things, playing the bestower of gifts."
    "Annie ate that up, huh?"
    "I think she accepted it for what it was worth. She's not easily fooled. Unlike her mother."
    She refused to look up when he came into the room, stationing himself on the other side of the bed. If she looked up, he would look into her eyes and see what she wanted him to say. That he was the fool. Not she. But he wouldn't say it because they both knew it wasn't true. Still, that was what she wanted to hear, and he would see it and know it for sure if she looked up at him. And he'd have something else over