Always Dakota - Debbie Macomber [94]
Not responding, Dennis walked into the bathroom and proceeded to climb out of his coveralls.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,” she cried, refusing to be ignored.
“I’m not.” He turned on the shower and started to undress.
“Answer me, will you?” After waiting all afternoon to talk to him, she wasn’t willing to be put off.
“We’ll talk about this when I’ve had a chance to unwind.” With that, he eased her out of the bathroom and shut the door.
Standing in the hallway, her arms crossed defiantly, Sarah blinked. He’d actually removed her from the room, then calmly closed the door in her face.
Not knowing what else to do, she returned to the kitchen and chopped green peppers and tomatoes for the dinner salad. By the time she’d finished, the vegetables looked pureed.
Ten minutes later, Dennis entered the kitchen, his hair damp from the shower. He wore a clean pair of jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, suitable for the unseasonably warm May weather.
“Are you ready to talk now?” she asked, doing her best to hold back her irritation.
“In a minute.” He got himself a beer from the fridge, poured it into a glass. Then he sat down at the table. “All right,” he finally said with a beleaguered sigh, “what do you want to know?”
“Did you or did you not have words with Calla?” She was incredulous that it’d taken nearly a week for news of the confrontation to get back to her.
Dennis nodded.
“You didn’t say anything about it to me,” she accused him, furious that he’d hidden this from her.
“I couldn’t see the point. I knew it would upset you, and—”
“You’re damn right I’m upset! I can’t believe you’d do something like this.” In all the years of their relationship, Sarah had never known Dennis to lose his temper. She couldn’t imagine what had happened, what Calla had said or done that would evoke such a reaction from her husband. And she worried that this might further damage her own fractured relationship with her daughter.
“Did Calla tell you?” Dennis asked, his eyes narrowing.
“No!” Calla rarely shared anything with her, and dammit, that hurt. Now Dennis was excluding her, too, and that hurt even more.
“Jeb?”
“No, Maddy happened to mention it. But she didn’t do it maliciously.” Her sister-in-law didn’t have an unkind bone in her body. The conversation had occurred earlier in the day, when Maddy had driven into town on some business concerning the grocery. She’d stopped at the quilt shop to say hello and innocently asked about Calla. Reading between the lines, Sarah soon understood that her daughter had visited the ranch the week before and been upset and shaken by a confrontation with Dennis. Apparently Calla had talked to Maddy about it at length.
“I suppose you want to hear my version?” Dennis asked in a tired voice.
“Of course I do!” Since Calla’s return from Minneapolis, Sarah had slowly but surely been rebuilding their relationship, taking one small step at a time. In the space of a few minutes, her husband had ruined months of effort.
“She insulted me, and—”
“What did she say?” Sarah broke in, not allowing him to finish.
Dennis cupped the glass with both hands. “For starters, she asked Jeb what I was doing at the ranch.”
Still pacing, arms folded, Sarah frowned, sure she’d misunderstood. “That was an insult?”
“I was standing right there. The least she could have done was address the question to me.”
Sarah felt sick.
“Sit down, Sarah,” he urged, pulling out a chair. “All this anger can’t be good for the baby.”
“Let me worry about the baby.”
“It’s my baby, too!” He took a deep breath. “Look, Sarah, I’ve stayed out of the situation with Calla because that’s what you wanted. You insist on handling everything yourself, carrying the full load. I’m your husband—”
“Then start acting like one,” she cried. She saw the hurt in his eyes, but ignored it. “Don’t you realize how hard I’ve tried with Calla? Everything is so tentative with her…. Your little outburst might have destroyed everything