Heartache Falls Read Online Free Page A

she’d met him. After more than twenty-two years of marriage, he still made her mouth water when she saw him naked.
    Not that she’d seen him naked lately. Not for weeks. Okay, a month. Months.
    As he toweled off in the cold morning air, Ali indulged in a little fantasy where she exited the house, crossed the yard, and pushed him back into the pool. She’d done that very thing a few years ago when the kids were up in the mountains on a church youth group camping trip. She’d caught Mac by surprise and he’d teetered at the edge of the pool, his arms windmilling as he fought for balance. He’d fallen backward with a huge splash, and she’d been laughing when he’d surfaced, sputtering. His eyes had flashed. He’d scrambled from the pool and she’d started running.
    Of course he’d caught her. They’d both been laughing when he’d tossed her fully dressed into the pool, then jumped in after her. Before they were done, they’d made love once in the pool and again in the hot tub.
    Ali knew that if she pushed him into the pool today, she wouldn’t be playing, wouldn’t be laughing when he surfaced. It would be an act of meanness, plain and simple.
    “What happened to us, Mac?” she murmured.
    Tears stung her eyes and she tried to blink them away, but she had little success. Nothing new there. Lately she cried at just about everything—sappy commercials, country songs on the radio, and the color yellow. The yellow thing was a bit weird, she would admit, but yellow was just so … happy.
    Maybe, though, she should go for some yellow. Try to make some happiness happen.
    As he started toward the house, she stepped away from the window and decided to make an effort this morning. They could share a cup of coffee, a conversation, maybe even a meal. When was the last time they’d sat down for a meal together that didn’t involve either his work or one of her philanthropic interests? She honestly couldn’t remember.
    Ali grabbed a second mug from the cabinet—a yellow mug—and filled both cups with coffee. She added a teaspoon of sugar to Mac’s, then stood near the door just as he walked inside, a damp royal blue beach towel draped over one shoulder. Seeing her, he stopped abruptly. “Oh.” She heard surprise in the word. “Hi.”
    “Good morning.” She handed him a mug with a smile that, despite a sincere effort, probably didn’t reach her eyes.
    “Thanks.” He glanced at the clock as he sipped his coffee. “You’re up early.”
    She hesitated. She wanted to tell him that the cold woke her up, but she wasn’t ready to toss the issue out into the open like a bad piece of fish. One couldn’t ignore bad fish, and Ali wasn’t prepared to face the stink. Not here and now, anyway. It wouldn’t be … yellow.
    She cleared her throat. “I have a busy day ahead of me.”
    “Oh? What’s on your docket?”
    She didn’t miss the surprise in his voice, and for some reason it raised her hackles. The words Nothing you’d respect hovered on her tongue.
    This morning she had a meeting planned with her friend Celeste Blessing to discuss window drapes. Celeste had decided to redecorate her private suite of rooms at Cavanaugh House, the mansion once owned by Ali’s silver-baron ancestor and now the centerpiece of the Angel’s Rest Healing Center and Spa property in Eternity Springs. Recalling that Ali recently had chosen new draperies for her father’s Victorian home, Celeste had asked to see them next time she visited Denver. That was today, so draperies were on Ali’s docket.
    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