“I have to wash my face,” she mumbled, keeping her tear-streaked cheeks averted from him.
He considered going with her. It irked him that he still couldn’t trust her not to try to escape the moment she was out of his sight. But then he realized that the attached bath had no windows, and the bedroom was still boarded up. She would have to go through the bedroom door to get out of the cabin, and she would find Gabe waiting in the other room.
“All right. But don’t take long,” he warned.
He could almost feel her resentment of his tone, but she only nodded and headed for the bathroom.
Pushing his unsteady hand through his hair, Gabe went into the living room. He needed to get out of the bedroom, away from that rumpled bed.
He was still cursing the unfortunate timing of Blake’s call. If the phone hadn’t disturbed them, would Page have told him everything? Or would she have withdrawn from him even without the interruption?
The contents of her purse were still scattered on the couch, and her suitcase lay open on the floor. Though he’d already made a thorough search of each, Gabe felt himself being drawn back to them.
There had to be something he’d missed before.
He found nothing new from her purse, nothing of particular note except the rather large amount of cash in the leather pouch. He set that aside, telling himself he really should find a safe place to stash it for her.
He turned to the suitcase, taking each item out and examining it before setting it aside. Her clothing was unremarkable, made of sensible fabrics and styled for comfort. Her undergarments were plain, serviceable—unlike the filmy bits of lace she’d once worn for him.
His fingers tightened spasmodically around a pair of white cotton panties, and then he threw them aside and continued his search.
He emptied the suitcase, finding not even the vaguest of clues. He searched each pocket, unzipped every zipper. Nothing.
He was just about to give up when he felt the odd lump in the bottom.
It took him only moments after that to discover that Page had created a false lining. He studied it closely and found the hidden closure. With a sense of satisfaction and expectation, he revealed a thick manila envelope that had been hidden within the secret recess she’d devised.
Sitting on his knees on the floor beside the suitcase, he stared for a moment at the envelope in his hands. His first impulse was to rip it open and examine the contents, hoping he would find his answers there.
Something made him hesitate. Maybe it was the conscience he’d been deliberately suppressing for the past few days. The strict code of ethics he’d tried to live by until his search for Page had hardened his heart
Whatever was in this envelope was obviously intensely personal.
Page’s secret
Did he really have the right to invade her privacy so arrogantly?
He thought of her tears. Her obvious fear. Her broken admission that she couldn’t take the risk of unburdening her problems to him.
She needed help, though she wouldn‘t—or couldn’t—ask for it And he knew of no way to help her if he didn’t have all the details:
So, whether he had the right to look or not, he had no other choice.
His hand wasn’t quite steady when he opened the clasp on the envelope. “What the—”
The envelope contained photographs. Candid snapshots, grainy and somewhat blurred, taken, apparently, with a long-angle lens, without the knowledge of the subjects.
Most of the shots were of him, Gabe realized to his stunned dismay. And they had been taken over the two and a half years since Page left him.
There was a shot of him on a job site, talking to a foreman. Another of him coming out of a church with his mother and sister—his great-aunt’s funeral last year, he remembered.
Another photograph showed him getting out of his pickup in front of the trailer where he and Page had lived together such a short time, and in which he still lived. Some of his friends had tried to talk him into buying or building a house, getting out of the trailer park, but he’d chosen to spend his money on the private investigators who’d been searching for his runaway bride.
He studied a snapshot of himself at a playground with his toddler nephew. His namesake, little Gabriel. And another shot of him coming out of a restaurant with a lovely brunette.
It had been a dinner date his sister had arranged for him, he remembered. Sometime last year. He couldn’t recall the woman’s name, only that he’d spent the evening regretting his weakness in allowing his sister to talk him into a date he hadn’t wanted.
There was another photo of him at a job site. That one, he realized dazedly, had been taken only weeks ago.