Page 49 of Her Rival

"Because Brynn is going to ask why I'm involved, and we haven't yet agreed on the answer to that question, and I'd prefer we agree on it before her mother is arranging the lawyers and her boyfriend is arranging the security and you and I are standing in a room with five other people we haven't figured out how to look at."

"You want to figure out how to look at me."

"I'm working on it."

"What's the working on it consist of."

"It consists of me sitting at my own kitchen island with you across from me at ten forty-five at night with your father's photograph between us, trying to do the next correct thing. And the next correct thing is to put you up in my guest room and lock the front door and not let anyone touch you. And the correct thing after that is whatever you decide it is in the morning."

She did not look away from me. She didn't say anything for a while.

"I drove here," she said.

"I know."

"I drove here because the number my hand reached for tonight was yours, and I haven't yet figured out what that means, and I'd like a little while not to figure it out."

"You can have a little while."

"Okay."

"Hartley."

"Yes."

"Do you want the guest room, or do you want to go home."

She thought about it. Actually thought about it. I watched her face do the work, the weighing, whether the safer thing was here in a strange bed or there in a strange building, whether the safer thing was alone or not alone, whether the safer thing was to drive forty minutes back down a desert road at almost eleven at night with a photograph she now couldn't unsee in her bag.

"Guest room," she said.

"Okay."

"For the night."

"However long you want it."

"And in the morning we talk."

"In the morning," I agreed.

I stood up. Took the photograph off the counter. Put it back in its envelope. Handed the envelope back to her. I did not keep it. It was hers. The keeping of it was hers. The reading of it was hers. The decision about what to do with it was hers.

She took it back. Put it in her bag.

"Come on," I said. "I'll show you the room."

I walked her down the hall to the guest suite I hadn't used since I'd moved in, the one I'd stocked with towels and toiletries and clean sheets the way you stock a guest room when you've hired a service to do it in a house you'll never let anybody see. The bed was made. The bathroom had toothbrushes still in plastic. The lamp on the nightstand turned on when I touched it. I didn't say any of this. I let her see the room. Let her decide whether it was a room she could sleep in.

She stood in the middle of it with her bag on her shoulder. Looked at the bed. Looked at the lamp. Looked at me.

"This room has never been slept in," she said.

"It hasn't."

"Why does a house this big have a guest room that's never been slept in."

"Because I haven't had a guest in this house in two years."