Nerd Girl(94)
He turned me to face him. I rolled over to gaze into his soulful blue eyes and sucked in my breath as I saw the depth of his emotions.
Ryan pulled me in and kissed me deeply and thoroughly. “I am crazily and madly in love with you, Julia Hayes.”
I was so in love with this glorious man and by some miracle, he loved me, too.
Later that morning, we met Ryan’s real estate agent for breakfast at the Hotel de Haro restaurant. Ryan wanted to invest in a vacation home and it was a good time to buy due to the low housing market. His agent was planning to show him several vacation properties for sale.
Renee Highland was already seated with a latte when we arrived. She was an attractive woman in her mid-to-late thirties with long, blond, Barbie hair. Her arms were chiseled and wickedly toned; I couldn’t help staring. She was wearing beige linen pants and a white summer blouse and looked both professional and casual, a good combination for showing someone homes on a vacation resort island. As we approached the table, she stood and greeted Ryan with a hug, which I noticed seemed to linger longer on her end than his. I spotted well-manicured red nails as her hand still lingered on Ryan’s arm.
She eyed me curiously, a little surprised to see Ryan with a guest or maybe because it was me; I wondered if she was expecting Catherine. I gave her credit for being discrete enough not to comment. Ryan introduced the two of us, and after a polite handshake, her attention was focused solely on him. I disliked her instantly.
The rest of our breakfast meeting entailed Renee giving Ryan the rundown of the three properties we were about to go see. All three were waterfront homes and each was priced at over a million dollars. I couldn’t help wondering how much a CVP made at MS—apparently enough to own two multi-million dollar homes.
Okay, make it three homes. He already owned a small one on Whidbey Island and had a property management company maintaining it. He wanted to do the same here, and if things went well with the San Juan Island property, he would be interested in potentially buying more properties on the island or one of the other islands surrounding it.
Renee was a touchy person. Not mood touchy, physical touchy. She touched Ryan’s arm lightly several times during their conversation and kept her body angled in his direction. She laughed almost too quickly and too loudly at anything remotely humorous and often flipped her hair back over her shoulders. She was totally hitting on him! The nerve of that bitch!
She never asked for my opinion, making the assumption that I was not involved in the decision. Even though this was true, Ryan still made a point of including me in the conversation several times. He was so sweet, allowing me to view all the photos and ensuring that their conversation wasn’t boring me. I appreciated his efforts and it left me with a warm, smug feeling inside. Despite this woman’s overtures towards Ryan, he was clearly only interested in the properties and me.
Since Ryan and I had no vehicle on the island, we rode in Renee’s car, a black Mercedes, to tour the homes. The first property was located only five minutes from Roche Harbor, on Westcott Bay, which was famous for its oysters. We drove along the narrow road that followed the southeast coast of the bay and I sighed as Renee turned onto a long driveway lined by cherry trees. At the end of the driveway sat a lovely, Northwest-style, multi-story home. Stone masonry surrounded the entry and the roof was made of green metal. The house looked like something straight out of Sunset magazine.
I consulted the house marketing flyer as she ushered us in. This home had three bedrooms and two full bathrooms. It was furnished with cozy rustic furniture, the kind you would see in a luxury ski resort, and there was a lot of stone and dark wood, which I thought was lovely. The living room had a beautiful fireplace with more stone that reached all the way up to the vaulted ceilings. The most stunning and immediately noticeable feature of the home was the floor-to-ceiling rear window, showcasing a pristine and calming view of the bay. It reminded me a bit of Ryan’s home back in the city.
Ryan took my hand and I followed as Renee led us out to the deck. Stairs to the left of the deck opened to a winding dirt path that led to another, lower deck about twenty feet below where we now both stood. There was plenty of room for the outdoor dining table, the swing bench, and a few other chairs already positioned on the deck. From the lower deck, another set of stairs went further down another twenty feet or so, where we finally met the rocky beach. Renee said that when the tide was at its highest, the water would come almost up to the bottom step. Thankfully, she left us alone and headed up to the house so that Ryan and I could have some time to discuss the property or maybe to just enjoy the view ourselves.