Heartache Falls Part 2

Unlike Mac, Ali didn't spend her days deciding the fate of criminals or corporations. Justice might be blind, but in Mac's case it was also arrogant. He considered drapery design little more than fluff.

So as he set down his coffee mug and opened the laundry room door, she shrugged and responded to his question about her plans for the day by saying, "Shopping."

"Of course."

Of course? What did he mean by that? Was it a snide observation or just filler because he didn't care to talk to her?

He lifted his robe from its hook and slipped it on. When he turned his back to her as he shucked off his swim trunks, the tightness returned to her chest. They were the only two people in the house. Since when did he feel he had to hide himself from her?

Anger and despair swirled inside her, and she blurted out the question. "Did you sleep well on the couch?"

His shoulders subtly stiffened as he belted his robe. He hung up his wet trunks, then turned and reached again for his coffee. He stared down at the mug and spoke with an apology in his tone. "No, I didn't. I intended to come up, but then time got away from me. I didn't want to disturb you."

She clamped her teeth against a sarcastic How considerate of you, dear. She was supposed to be making an effort here. "What were you working on?"

"Just reading a brief." He avoided her gaze and drank deeply from his mug, then crossed to the refrigerator. Opening the door, he gazed inside. "I think I'll have an omelet this morning. Would you like me to make one for you, too?"

Ali froze. Had he really asked that? She couldn't eat eggs; she'd never been able to eat eggs. They gave her a horrible stomachache. Mac darn well knew that.

Hurt sliced through her, a sharp, deep pain that lodged right beneath her breastbone. Ali shut her eyes, s.h.i.+vered, and shriveled. He knew eggs made her ill, but he simply didn't think, not about her, not anymore. She was of no more consequence to Mac Timberlake than the puddles of water he'd left pooled on the laundry room floor.

He pulled his breakfast ingredients out of the fridge. Eggs, milk, b.u.t.ter, cheese. He never glanced her way or gave any sign of listening for a response to his stupid, careless question. As had become the pattern of late for her, on the heels of hurt came anger.

Fuming, Ali set down her coffee mug and left the kitchen without a word. Forget yellow. Never mind sharing a meal or conversation. She'd forgo her usual yogurt and fruit this morning, stop off at Archie's and buy a hot glazed donut. And maybe a jelly donut, too. Shoot, she'd go for broke and add an eclair to her order. All that grease and fat and cholesterol. Yum. At least she'd enjoy her breakfast before it made her sick. That ought to make him happy.

The thought wasn't exactly fair. Ali knew very well that his offer had been thoughtless, not mean, but she didn't care. That single question summed up all the slights and hurts of the past seven months and left her furious. Marching toward the entry hall, where she'd left her purse and keys on a console table, she paused at the door to his home office and stared into the room.

Ali might have chosen the drapes, furnis.h.i.+ngs, and paint colors, but it had always been his s.p.a.ce. Woe be the family member who invaded it without invitation or permission. She'd not had a problem with that. She'd always agreed that the room and its contents should remain off-limits to the children. Wasn't she forever going in search of scissors that had "walked off" from her own desk in the den?

"But it's supposed to be your office," she muttered, taking in the tableau. "Not your bedroom."

His shoes sat on the floor next to the couch, socks tucked neatly inside, the big, square pillow moved from the window seat to one end of the sofa, the afghan mussed and thrown over the back cus.h.i.+ons. Like he'd just climbed out of bed.

Ali's temper rose. His sleeping downstairs was an insult. A slap in her face. The need to strike back at him was a living, breathing thing inside her.

She stepped into his office. His inner sanctum-his new bedroom-and strode toward his desk. There she brazenly committed a sin of significant magnitude and booted up his computer. She opened the browser. With her pulse thrumming, her heart pounding, she typed in her favorite luxury retailer's Web address, then navigated to bedding. After a brief search, she made her selection, filled in her credit card and delivery information, then defiantly clicked the b.u.t.ton to confirm the purchase. She was breathing as if she'd run a marathon.

"What do you think you're doing?"

It wasn't the question that prodded her temper but the tone. Clipped and condescending and challenging, all in six little words.

"I'm looking up omelet recipes," she returned in as snotty a voice as she could manage. Then she snapped her fingers and added, "Oh, no, wait. That wasn't it. I almost forgot. Eggs make me deathly ill. Actually, I was looking at p.o.r.n. You see, my s.e.x life has been lacking of late."

"Alison!" He stood in the doorway looking shocked, unhappy, and annoyed.

Her chin came up. "Guess that wasn't funny, was it, Mac? Okay, fine. What I really did on your computer just now was buy a down blanket for my bed to keep me warm at night. You can sleep on the couch forever for all I care."

"What is wrong with you?" He took a step into the room, his gray eyes a winter storm bearing down upon her, bitterly cold and dangerous.

"What is wrong with me?" she repeated. In that moment, she finally found the strength-or maybe surrendered to the weakness-and stepped out from behind the desk, folded her arms, and confronted the elephant in the room. "You don't sleep with me anymore. We haven't made love in months. I don't know, Judge Timberlake. You're the one with all the answers. What is wrong with me?"

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake," he said with disgust and a scowl. "Have you been taking your hormones?"

Ali sucked in an audible breath. At that moment, she truly hated him.

She rushed toward the door. When she pa.s.sed near him, Mac reached out and grabbed her by the arm just above her elbow. Not hard enough to bruise, but firmly. Flames of anger had replaced the coldness in his eyes.

Ali looked down at his hand. "Let go. You're hurting me."

He dropped her arm as if scalded and stepped away. When his gaze dropped to the spot where he'd held her, Ali wanted to smirk. She knew the man. He thought she'd accused him of physically hurting her. Was he worried she would call the cops? Charge the irreproachable judge with domestic violence?

As furious as she was at him, she would never do that. Mac Timberlake was many things, but he'd never been the least bit physically abusive. Not with the kids and not with her. The man never, ever lost control.

The devil in her urged her to push him, to prod him, to make him lose control. She'd like to make him lose control. At least that would mean he still cared.

Even as she debated her response, the anger left his face and he schooled his expression into an increasingly familiar pa.s.sionless mask. Standing with his hands relaxed at his sides, he said quietly, "I don't want to fight with you, Ali."

With that, the temper drained from her, too, leaving her exhausted, weary, and worn. Defeated.

In that defeat, she needed to know exactly how much she had lost. Ask him. Get it over with. Find out once and for all. She licked her lips. "Are you having an affair, Mac?"

His head jerked up and his gaze met hers, steady and piercing. "No."

Those gray eyes didn't waver, and she believed him. He was telling her the truth. It wasn't another woman after all.

She waited to feel a sense of relief. During the past few months, for the first time in their marriage, she had worried about his fidelity. However, relief didn't come. If not another woman ... "Then what's wrong, Mac? What is wrong with us?"

His square jaw hardened and he closed his eyes. "I don't know."

That she did not believe.

Now that she'd finally lobbed the stinky fish onto the table, she had to try again. They had to acknowledge the problem and confront it in order to fix it. "People say you're one of the most brilliant minds in the country. I've even heard murmurs that depending on the way the political winds blow, you could be headed for the Supreme Court. I can't buy the concept that someone so smart could be clueless about what's happening in his own life." Taking a chance, she reached out and touched him. "What is it, Mac? Why are we falling apart?"

His jaw relaxed, and she sensed an opening. He was finally going to talk to her!

She drew in a bracing breath, aware that whatever he said was likely to wound her, but knowing that it needed to be said nonetheless.

But instead of talking, his eyes shuttered. His s.h.i.+elds went up and he shut down, locking her out. "We're not falling apart."

Her hand fell away from him and she took a step backward. Sadness bigger than any she'd known before washed through her, and the tears she despised welled within her once again. Why wouldn't he help? They were broken and she couldn't fix them by herself. She couldn't fight this fight by herself.

She couldn't bear to hurt this way any longer.

She exhaled softly and closed her eyes, making a decision on the spot. Celeste wanted her help for more than simple decorating. "I've been offered a job, Mac, and I've decided to take it."

It obviously threw him for a loop. He gave his head a little shake as if he'd heard her wrong. "A job? You mean another volunteer thing?"

Ali told herself not to be annoyed at his reaction. After all, she had not held an outside job in all the years of their marriage, and Mac had been the one to always say that she worked just as hard as a volunteer as he did as an attorney.

"No, a paying job. I'm going to run a restaurant in Eternity Springs."

His lips twisted in a smirk. "Right."

Ali bristled. "The Bristlecone Cafe has been closed since its owners moved to Florida last fall, and Celeste Blessing rented it because tourism is so good that the town needs it. She offered me the position of manager." She named a salary that made his eyes go gratifyingly wide, then added, "I'm going to accept."

He stared at her for a long moment, then shook his head. "Eternity Springs is four hours away. You can't commute that far."

"You're right. I can't." Ali drew herself up and swallowed hard. "I can't bear it here, like this, any longer. I'll be staying there, Mac. At least for a little while, I'll be living in Eternity Springs."

With that, she turned and walked calmly upstairs.

Once in her bedroom, she went a little crazy. She kicked the pillow that had fallen to the floor, then yanked open the closet door and tugged out her biggest suitcase. She paid scant attention to what she packed, grabbing this and grasping that and tossing it all into the suitcase in careless disarray. When she went into the bathroom to fill her cosmetics case, a glance in the mirror revealed the tracks of tears on her cheeks. She angrily wiped them away. She was done with crying. Done with being sad and lonely and alone. Done with hurting.

Done with him.

She won't leave.

Mac told himself that as he returned to the kitchen, cooked his omelet, and sat down to eat with the newspaper and a second cup of coffee. This was just another one of her ridiculous dramas.

After more than two decades of marriage, he certainly knew what those looked like. The time a month after they'd met when her father forbade her to fly to Paris to attend cooking school over summer break, the panic around her pregnancy with Stephen, the boycott she inst.i.tuted at Mother's Day Out, the Little League fund-raiser revolt, the middle school tennis banquet incident, the high school drama club debacle ... It just went on and on and on. Not that she hadn't been right most of the time. Not that she hadn't been effective. But Alison Mich.e.l.le Cavanaugh Timberlake, American princess, had a way of turning an issue into an Issue. That's what she was doing this morning.

She wouldn't really leave.

Finished with his breakfast and unable to concentrate on his newspaper, he stood and carried his dishes to the sink. As he topped off his coffee, he heard her footsteps on the stairs, along with the clunk clunk clunk of a rolling suitcase.

Okay, so she'd actually packed. She still wouldn't leave. She might haul the suitcase downstairs, even go as far as throwing the thing in her car, but she wouldn't back out of the driveway. This was a grand gesture, an infantile attempt at manipulation. Ali was a master at that.

His temper simmered. She wanted to talk, did she? Now, on her timetable? Wasn't that special. Never mind that he'd tried for months to get her to talk to him. Finally he'd quit trying.

What a crock.

He fought to keep a neutral expression as she allowed the bag to bang its way down the staircase, step after step after step. She was mad, was she? Well, fine. He was plenty angry himself. In fact, he was furious. He was sick to death of the roller coaster she'd had him riding for months now. Sick to death of the games.

Mac's grip tightened around the handle on his coffee mug. Let her go. In fact, he hoped she did go. Maybe he'd carry her bag to the car. Start the engine for her.

At the entrance to the kitchen she stopped and stared at him. Her blue eyes were red-rimmed and wounded. The sight of them fed his fury. He wasn't a villain. He was sick to death of being stared at with wounded, suffering eyes. She'd been doing it for months, looking at him as if he were the source of all the ills on earth, and he didn't deserve it. What did she have to feel wounded about?

Something mean rolled through him. It must have shown in his eyes because hers widened slightly and registered caution.

Good-she should be wary of him. The emotions that churned inside him at the sight of her with suitcase in hand, her expression accusing him of all sorts of nefarious deeds, were as ugly as any he'd felt in years. He didn't as a rule go around a.n.a.lyzing his own psyche, but really, did she think this injured-party business was a one-way street? He had plenty of sc.r.a.pes and cuts and bruises and breaks, thank you very much.

So, now what? Did she expect him to drop to his knees and beg her to stay? Well, forget that. He was calling her bluff.

Masking his thoughts, he calmly lifted his coffee cup to his mouth for another sip, then pulled out his three aces. "What about the kids?"

At that, her eyes went big and round. Aha-hadn't thought of your children, had you? And you, the poster child for great motherhood.

She grimaced and cleared her throat. "I guess I should call them."

"I guess you should." He'd like to eavesdrop on those conversations, hear her attempt to explain this nonsense. However, he knew good and well that those phone calls wouldn't happen because any minute now she'd come up with an excuse to stay.

"What about the governor's dinner?" he added, throwing her a bone. He was slated to speak at a dinner honoring the recipients of the Governor's Award for heroics in law enforcement in a few weeks. He had two seats at the head table, and he knew Ali was looking forward to the event. "Shall I ask ..." The words "a date" hovered on the tip of his tongue, but when it came time to say them, he couldn't be that cruel. Instead, he subst.i.tuted their daughter's name. "... Caitlin to take your place?"

Ali pursed her lips. "That's so close to the end of the semester. Cait might have trouble getting away. I don't want to interfere with her studies." Then she lifted her chin and declared, "I'm not cancelling my commitments, Mac. I'll attend the dinner."

Well, lucky me. He'd expected her to lob out some sort of excuse that would allow her to attend, but this particular one touched an old nerve. Same song, ten thousandth verse. He loved his children. Truly, he did. But why did their needs invariably come before his with her? "Don't do me any favors, Alison," he snapped. "Maybe I don't want you there."

He saw the blow land as she sucked in a breath. Then she tilted her chin even higher and said, "Are you asking me not to attend?"

With that, he lost patience. "Give it up, Ali. You're not taking a job in podunk Eternity Springs. You're not leaving."

Her eyes went to ice. She removed her sungla.s.ses from her shoulder bag, then slipped them on. In a voice as cold as January, she declared, "Just watch me, your honor. Just f.u.c.king watch me."

Mac gaped at her. Had he heard right? Had his wife just dropped an F-bomb? His Ali? The woman never cursed. Ever! It was one of her most precious principles. And to start with that particular word? Whoa.

For the first time since she'd stormed upstairs, he wondered if she might actually leave him after all.

Needing something to do, he took another sip from his coffee mug. She gave her hair an angry toss, then strode toward the door leading to the garage. She opened it, stepped outside, then had to yank her suitcase hard when it got hung up on the threshold. She reached back into the house for the doork.n.o.b, shot him one last furious look, and slammed the door shut.

Mac heard another shocking curse, followed by the sound of the garage door going up. He remembered then that she'd forgotten to move her car into the garage last night, leaving it parked in the center of the circular drive in front. He moved to a window that gave a view of the front yard and watched with an unusual sense of detachment. By the time she dumped her suitcase into the trunk of her BMW and slammed the lid, it was as if he was staring through window gla.s.s ten inches thick.

He saw her climb into the driver's seat, and for some weird reason he recalled bringing Caitlin home from the hospital. When Ali started the car and pulled out of the drive, he remembered Chase pedaling his Big Wheel in that same drive. When she punched the gas and fishtailed her way down the street, he thought of the day Stephen got his driver's license and made his first solo trip to the grocery store to buy a gallon of milk for his mom. He watched the vapor from her tailpipe evaporate on the crisp morning air. Then she turned the corner at the end of the street and was gone.

Gone. Okay. Well, good. I'm glad.

She'd come right back.

He waited and watched the grandfather clock in the hall. Two minutes. Five. Plenty of time to drive around the block.

Mac looked out the window once again, but the street remained empty. Okay. Well, then. Fine. Just fine.

Mac brought his coffee mug up to his mouth. Just f.u.c.king watch me.

He jerked his arm back and sent the mug flying. Dark liquid splashed against b.u.t.terscotch paint as the mug slammed against the wall, then fell to the tile floor and shattered. "d.a.m.n her."

Mac stood with his fists and his teeth clenched, breathing hard. Breaking the mug wasn't enough. He wanted to hit something, to put his fist through the wall, to break something else. His body trembled with need of it.

His gaze swept around the family room and focused on the collection of photographs that sat in crystal frames atop the baby grand piano. He was seconds away from sweeping the pictures to the floor with a violent swipe of his hand, but common sense prevailed. Just because Ali was acting like a fool didn't mean he should.

She'd left him. He couldn't believe she'd actually left him.

He glanced at the clock and winced. He was running late for work. But instead of s.h.i.+fting into overdrive with his morning ritual, he stayed in the shower long enough to drain the hot water tank, then took twice as long as usual to shave. He felt numb.

She hadn't believed him when he claimed not to know the source of their problems, but he had told her the truth. Some difficulties in their marriage were obvious-s.e.x being the prime example. However, their lack of s.e.x wasn't the problem; it was a symptom of the problem. The underlying disease was more difficult to diagnose.

It would be easy to blame it on his job. He'd worked long hours during the Desai case, and it was true he'd neglected Ali from time to time throughout, but that wasn't anything he hadn't done in the past when he'd had a big case. She'd always been understanding in the past. She'd seemed to be understanding this time. Yet after the Desai case ended and his overtime hours disappeared, life hadn't returned to normal. Somehow, somewhere, they'd gone from being united to being apart.

They had little in common anymore. They hardly spoke and rarely touched-even casually, much less s.e.xually. Maybe he shouldn't be surprised that she intended, apparently, to physically move to the mountains. She'd been there mentally for months. It was as if sometime last fall Ali had taken up residence on the summit of a high peak surrounded by unscalable cliffs and deep snow that defeated him anytime he tried to reach her. He would lie beside her in bed, aching with want for her, sensing she wanted him, too, but knowing that the Ali he loved was beyond his grasp.