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He turned away and walked to the dining area, where several rolls of building plans were partly unfurled, held down by a heavy coffee mug at one end.
“Looks like you’re busy,” she ventured, wandering over to see what he was working on.
The warning look in his eyes stopped her in her tracks. “Excuse me. I didn’t know...didn’t realize that all of that might be confidential.” She backed away, feeling suddenly lost. “Where are the kids?”
“Mandy drove them to school for a fund-raiser carnival tonight. They’ll be home around eight-thirty.”
A few days ago an hour and a half of privacy to spend with just Matt would have seemed wonderful. Now, it felt impossibly awkward.
After ten minutes of flipping through magazines and trying to concentrate on a novel, she finally rose and headed back to the dining area and watched Matt from a distance.
He stood over his plans, his hands braced on the desk and an intense look of concentration on his face.
“Tell me what’s going on,” she asked, leaning against the entryway. “A few days ago, we were getting along just fine. Now,without a word of disagreement, we seem to be on opposite sides of a war. Did I say something? Do something?”
“No.” He didn’t look up.
“Then what’s wrong?”
He straightened. “I’m going over plans for a project. Verifying that everything—our estimates, our materials list,everythingis absolutely perfect. It has to be turned in tomorrow.”
There was something else in his eyes...a weary acceptance. “So...that’s all it is? You’re stressed over a deadline?”
“Yeah.” He bent over the documents again, then shoved them all aside. “No.”
She stilled—frozen by the terrifying sensation of teetering on the edge of a cliff, knowing that his next words were ones she didn’t want to hear.
But she would not give him—or anyone else—the satisfaction of knowing how much it hurt. And she wasn’t going to let him off easy. “Sooo...”
“We’re just too different to work things out.”
“Different?”
“Education. Backgrounds. Career.”
“If you met someone who was, say, a waitress, would you say it could never work with her because you had a better job?”
“Of course not. I mean, of course it wouldn’t matter.”
“But you think it matters to me.”
“It will.”
“And if I said it didn’t?”
“I’d say you have no idea what you’d be giving up if—” He stopped. Swallowed hard. Then continued, his voice raw. “There are my kids to consider.”
“Yourkids?”
He turned away with a heavy sigh. “When—if—I remarry, it has to be someone who’ll be a great, stay-at-home mom for them. Someone...I can love.”
If he’d slid a knife between her ribs, he couldn’t have hurt her more.
FRIDAY MORNING JOLIEpacked her things as soon as Matt took the kids to school, then moved back to her cabin. She hid her rifle in the closet nearest her bed.
Facing the unknown here at the cabin would be easier than having to face Matt again at the end of the day, andno onewas going to keep her away from her home. Not anymore.
Thankful the telephone lines had been repaired, and she’d already called a local electrician about installing motion-detection floodlights on all sides of the cabin.
