Heartache Falls (16 page)

“You know,” she ventured, “it might not be that expensive to track him down. The Internet has made—”

“No,” Sarah snapped. “To quote one of Gabe Callahan’s favorite sayings, ‘That way there be dragons.’ ”

Trying one more time, Ali said, “High school sweethearts can have powerful connections. First love and all.”

Sarah deflected by asking, “Did you have a high school sweetheart?”

“Nope. Mac was my first love.”

“Powerful connections,” Sarah repeated, giving Ali a significant look. “You haven’t talked about him, Ali, or what’s going on with you. Nic and Sage would be amazed to hear me say this, but I won’t pry. I will listen if you want to talk.”

Ali stared moodily into her glass. “Thanks, but no. I don’t even know what to say.”

“Fair enough. Just remember, I’m here if you need me.”

“Thanks, Sarah.”

Later, while she walked back to Angel’s Rest, Ali brooded about first loves. First love. Mac.

She was lonely tonight. She missed him. She missed
them
together.

When her cell rang and she saw Stephen’s name, a warmth of love rushed through her. “Hello, honey.”

“Hey, Mom. Do you have a minute?”

“For you, anytime.”

Five minutes later, she wished she’d left her cell phone at the Bristlecone. Stephen conferenced in his sister and the two of them explained that Chase had filled them in about seeing her painting yesterday. “With a bare-chested man!” Caitlin wailed.

Ali’s children proceeded to explain that she was naive, vulnerable, and, to quote her eldest child, off her flippin’ rocker.
For crying out loud
. Keeping tight
control of her motions, Ali sought a calm tone as she said, “Zach Turner is my friend, Stephen. I’m allowed to have friends, even if they are male.”

“But you have to be careful, Mom,” Caitlin cautioned. “You’re up there running around with cougars. You might just become one!”

“Excuse me?”

“A cougar. That’s what they call older women who chase after younger men. Cougars on the prowl.”

Ali lowered the phone from her ear and stared at it for a few seconds before saying, “For heaven’s sake, Caitlin. Please.”

“Mom, we know you’re not up in the mountains chasing the sheriff,” Stephen said, verbally stepping between mother and daughter. “It’s just that if you’re not careful, you might find yourself in a situation where you make poor decisions you’ll come to regret.”

Is it role reversal time or what?

“Thank you for your concern, but you need not worry. Thanks for calling, you two. I need to run. Goodnight.”

She hung up without giving them the chance to say much more than good-bye. She continued her walk back to the carriage house trying not to obsess about the call from her kids. She wasn’t aware that she’d begun to angrily kick at a stone until she ran across Sage’s sister, Rose, on the grounds of the estate and Rose asked, “Ali? What’s the matter?”

Ali stopped and looked up, filled with misery and heartache. “Ah, Rose. It’s such a mess.”

“The remodel going poorly? I’d heard you’d had some delays. My sister said she had a devil of a time
getting work done when she remodeled her art gallery.”

“Not the remodel,” Ali corrected. “That’s going fine. It’s my life that’s a mess.”

“Oh, dear.” Rose clicked her tongue and switched into comfort mode. “You look like a woman who needs a bit of girl talk.” She looped her arm through Ali’s. “Come upstairs and tell me about it.”

Rose was a former army doctor and now the resident physician at Angel’s Rest. After undergoing a hysterectomy as part of treatment for endometrial cancer, she had separated from the service and come to Eternity Springs to reconcile with Sage, from whom she’d been estranged. She’d fallen in love with both the town and the Angel’s Rest suite she’d rented. Last winter, when the doctor Celeste had hired for the healing center decided he didn’t like the mountains in winter after all, Rose accepted Celeste’s offer of a job and the suite and became a permanent resident of Eternity Springs.

Now, as she led Ali up to her Angel’s Rest apartment, Rose said, “I’ll put the kettle on for tea, or I have wine.”

“Don’t go to any trouble.”

“No trouble. Celeste often drops by this time of the evening and we have a nightcap together. Which would you prefer?”

“Do you have any chocolate? That’s what I really need.”

“I have an emergency stash of M&Ms. Will that do?”

Ali gave her a grateful smile. “Bless you.”

Rose gestured for Ali to have a seat, and then she
pulled a big bag of dark chocolate M&Ms from the back of her pantry. She poured the candies into a big ceramic bowl, then made an executive decision and opened a bottle of cabernet. Setting the bowl and a glass in front of Ali, she said, “Talk to me.”

Ali rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “I’ve hurt my family, and I hate that. Maybe I should just go home.”

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Ali nodded. She talked about her husband, their separation, and how she’d decided she was done with the arctic winter of her marriage. She spoke of her guilt for having caused her children pain, and finished by saying, “I’m a bad mother. A bad wife.”

“Why do you say that? Why does any of this make you a bad wife and mother?”

“Because I made the decision to make this huge change in my life, my husband’s life, and my children’s lives, and I can’t articulate why.”

Rose shook her head. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re not a bad wife and mother. I think you’re brave and honest.”

“Because I left my husband? Left my family?”

Rose searched for the right words to convey the idea floating through her mind. “Because you won’t settle for half. Not when you’ve had whole.”

“That’s what I tried to tell myself, but now I don’t know.” Ali sipped her wine and sighed glumly. “If Mac had offered half, I might have gone for that. Probably lots of wives only get sex four or five times a month, and I’d think intimacy would have to burn off some of the frost, don’t you?”

Rose gave her a startled look. “Wait a minute. You had sex ten times a month? And you’ve been married twenty years?”

“Yeah. We made love two or three times a week for most of our marriage.” Her wistful smile melted away when she added, “Then we stopped.”

“Holy cow.” Rose didn’t know whether to be envious or tired at the thought. She liked sex and she really, really wished she had someone to like it with, but wow. Three times a week?

Rose considered this new bit of information. Based on her knowledge of the human condition, the usual reason a couple’s sex life went south was because one of them began an affair. Ali must have seen the question in her gaze, because she shook her head. “It wasn’t an affair. I was afraid that was the deal, but I finally asked him. He said no and I believe him. Mac doesn’t lie.”

Rose knew the polite thing would be to move the conversation on from Ali Timberlake’s sex life—or lack thereof. But the woman was obviously in the mood to talk, and this
was
all primo info. “Okay, this is a really nosy question and it’s totally none of my business, and if you want to change the subject just say so, but since we’re already talking personal, I have to ask. Was it something physical?” In fact, she was wondering if he’d worn it out.

“No.” Ali sighed heavily. “That I could deal with. But watching him roll out of bed sporting a morning erection broke my heart and crushed my self-confidence.”

Rose scooped up a half dozen yellow M&Ms. For
some reason Ali had picked around the yellow ones. “So what did trigger the, um, cessation? Did you two have a big fight?”

“No. Not out loud, anyway.” Ali rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. “We just … I don’t know … we had this anger between us. I don’t even know how it started, but at some point it became a living, breathing, freezing thing that lay right between us in the bed.”

She paused a moment, then added, “Before Caitlin went off to college, I slogged my way through a few months of depression. I took antidepressants and that muted my sex drive. But Mac knew the deal; he said he understood.” She sighed heavily. “My sex drive returned after I got off the pills, but by then the anger was there. I thought that if I was away from the hurt, I’d be able to figure everything out. I think it’s been working, too. With the distance, I’ve started to relax. I’ve started to think about my life and about what I want to do with the rest of it. I needed this space. I still need it.”

“Then don’t forget the bottom line. For your children to be happy, for your husband to be happy, you need to find your way back to happiness.”

From the open doorway, Celeste said, “That is excellent advice. You should listen to Rose, Ali. She’s a wonderful doctor.”

“I’m not a psychologist,” Rose warned.

“No, but you’re a friend. A good friend. That’s what Ali needs around her right now. She’s spent half a lifetime being there for others. It’s her turn now. Her time.” She joined the other two women at the
table, reached out, and gave Ali’s hand a comforting squeeze. “Listen to your instincts, Ali. They won’t let you down.”

“I hope you’re right, Celeste,” she said with a sigh. “I do so hope you are right.”

NINE

July

“Adjourned.” Mac banged his gavel, rose from the bench, and exited the courtroom through the connecting door to his chambers. Striding down the small hallway past his clerk’s office, he paused at the doorway to his administrative assistant’s office and asked, “Anything that can’t wait until Monday?”

“No, sir.”

“Excellent. In that case, I’m gone.” In his own office, he unzipped his robe and hung it on the antique coat tree Ali had found for him at a small shop in Colorado Springs. Loosening his tie, he took a seat at his desk and made a couple of quick notes to himself before checking his phone for messages. Good, nothing pressing.

He entered his private bathroom, where he changed into the sport shirt, jeans, and hiking boots he’d left there that morning. Five minutes later, he was out the door and headed for the garage, dialing the neighbors’ house on the way.

“Hi, Donna,” he said when the wife answered. “Thought I’d check on Gus before I hit the road.”

“He’s doing fine,” she assured him. “Tim just left
the house to take him on another walk. Both boy and dog are in heaven.”

“Great. Thanks. I won’t worry about him, then. Y’all have a good weekend and I’ll see you on Sunday.”

“You too, Mac,” she replied. “Tell Ali we said hello.”

Mac responded with a simple good-bye. He was on his way to Eternity Springs, but he wasn’t at all certain what he would do once he arrived. He had not spoken to his wife since the night of the awards dinner two months ago. Since then, all their communication had taken place by text message, email, and one voice mail she’d left on the machine at home during a time when she had to have known he’d be at work.

For a while after Chase had called to inform him about Ali’s new painting partner, Mac had told himself he didn’t care what his wife did up in the mountains or whom she did it with. Once when he had a free weekend, he’d driven down to Colorado Springs to play golf with a colleague. Another weekend when he could have made the trip, he’d flown to California to visit Stephen instead.

After that, events in the Sandberg trial had gone nuclear and effectively tethered Mac to Denver. It wasn’t until earlier this week, when he’d come entirely too close to doing something infinitely stupid, that he’d realized the situation had to change.

It had started out innocently enough. Carla Hubbard managed the little Italian restaurant Mac passed on his way home from the office. After Ali had left him—taking her Italian-cooking talents with her—he began stopping there for dinner once or twice a week.
Carla was a lovely woman, dark and slender, with a fondness for flirtation and necklines that plunged. A couple of times when business was slow, she’d joined him at his table, and over dinner he’d learned that she, too, was separated from her spouse. The commonality created a bond of sorts between them, and to be honest, Mac had enjoyed her attention. So when he’d stopped for spaghetti Tuesday night and found her on her way to an art show opening at a local gallery, he’d accepted her invitation to accompany her.

He’d enjoyed himself. The artist was talented, the hors d’oeuvres delicious, and the company both witty and good for his ego. She’d been dressed to kill, and sexual awareness had hummed between them, adding an edge of danger to the event. She’d sent out signals a blind man wouldn’t miss, and when he’d driven her home—she lived within walking distance of the restaurant—and she invited him in for a drink, he’d thought of Ali and their cold bed and her shirtless sheriff and decided,
What the hell. Why not?

Inside, Carla Hubbard had poured them each a scotch, tasted the drink and purred, then licked her lips with a slow, seductive sweep of her tongue. Mac accepted her third invitation of the evening and kissed her. She was as intoxicating as the scotch, and he lost himself in the pleasure of having a woman in his arms. Of holding her against him. Of the sweet, soft melting of her body against the hardness of his.