Promise of Safekeeping : A Novel (9781101553954) by Lisa Dale

shifted, and heat rose within her. Whenshe spoke, she made sure her voice was even. “This is just a . . . a stress thing. I can get it under control on my own.”
    “What if you can’t?”
    “I can,” she said.
    Will brushed the slightly raised cord of a tendon with his thumb. “It’s getting faster.”
    When she looked up at his face, there was no way to describe what she felt except the word
collision
. The impact of one thing and another. In the streetlight, Will’s eyes were an indefinable shade of green gray that she wanted so much to name but that eluded her even as she looked directly at him. Her face flushed. She knew with certainty that he was attracted to her. She drew her hand away.
    “Let’s go in,” she said.
    From the back of the pickup Will retrieved a box of their picks, and then she followed him into the antiques shop. She had a good view of his body as he walked. He was fit and trim, dressed in work clothes but not quite as rumpled as he’d been on Belle Isle. At one point during the afternoon, he’d lifted the bottom hem of his shirt to blot his face with the fabric, and she’d seen the strong, coarse muscles of his stomach and chest, the slight shading of dark hair. She’d had to look away.
    Of course, she knew enough about herself to recognize what this was.
Rebounding
. Things had fallen apart with Edward only a month ago, and she’d done her best not to spend that month wallowing. Now here was Will—attractive and enthralling in the way that an overgrown garden could be enthralling: a tangle of thorny roses, a weedy flower bed, stems putting down roots on rock. Everything Will was, was the opposite of Edward. Lauren needed to watch herself and take care.
    “Ladies first,” Will said, pushing open the shop door with one hand. Inside, he went to the counter and set down the box of thingsthat he’d come away with today—a glass vase, a jump rope, a cast-iron horse. The old phone was still in the truck.
    “Arlen?” Will called.
    Lauren held her breath, coaching herself. This was what she’d come to do. To see Arlen. To throw herself at the mercy of his forgiveness. To confess to and face fully what she had done—and, maybe, be absolved.
    There was no answer.
    “Did you tell him I’d be here?” she asked.
    “He knew you were coming with me today.”
    Lauren frowned. She caught Will’s eye—the slight apology there—and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was.
    “I’ll just check upstairs,” Will said.
    Lauren held her breath as Will ducked into a room that must have been an office; then she heard the sound of his feet climbing stairs. She looked around at Will’s collected treasures. Some things stuck out from the heap: an original box of Crayola crayons. A folksy painting of a cow. A birdcage. A bell. Above her head, she heard Will’s boots thump the floor.
    When he came back, he didn’t need to speak for her to know that Arlen wasn’t here. What worried her was Will’s reaction. He was trying to appear calm but the set of his shoulders had shifted incrementally. He leaned forward, just a little, when he walked. He didn’t so much as glance at her. He walked to the counter, reached underneath, and pulled out a gray tin box with a flimsy lock on the front. Will popped the box open. It was empty.
    “What happened?” she asked.
    “I don’t know,” Will said. “He’s gone.”

Lesson Five: If you’re reading a person visually, you should be listening too. Tone, rhythm, diction, volume, even the micro-pauses we unconsciously take to breathe—all of these characteristics give insight into a speaker’s true feelings or character. Someone who speaks more loudly than a situation calls for may be insecure about being heard. Someone who speaks too softly might be shy, or she might be demanding your attention by asking you to focus, to lean in, to listen hard. The words we actually speak are only one tiny part of the way we communicate; words, after all,