Heartache Falls Read Online Free PDF

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 shields 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 Café 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 wasdone 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 instituted 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 Michelle 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