Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [84]
Dione laughed. “He thinks you’re sitting there alone, brooding, and he wants you to get out of the house for a while. Shall we make him happy and go out to lunch?”
“Why not? I’ll pick you up at twelve.”
“I’m not brooding,” Serena said firmly a few hours later as she bit into a crisp radish. “Richard wanted some time to himself, and I gave it to him. We didn’t have an argument or anything like that. He’s in Aspen. He loves to ski, and I’ve never learned how; he hasn’t been since we were married, because he wouldn’t do anything that I couldn’t enjoy. I’m not athletic,” she explained, grinning.
“You’re not upset at all?”
“Of course I’m upset, but I’m borrowing a page from your book and keeping it all under control.” She shrugged lightly. “We had a long conversation before he left, got everything out in the open. That’s a first for Richard. He’s so good at keeping his thoughts to himself that sometimes I want to scream. We decided that he’s been under so much stress that the best thing to do was to get away from each other, let him relax and catch up on his sleep, before we did any more talking.”
“Have you talked to him since he left?”
“No. That was part of the bargain. When he comes back we’ll settle things once and for all.”
Serena had changed a lot in the months since they had met, becoming a self-assured woman. Things might not work out for her, but she was facing the future with her chin up; Dione only hoped that she could do the same. While Blake was making love to her, she could forget that he was growing away from her, but they couldn’t spend the rest of their lives in bed. The ruby heart rested warmly in the valley between her breasts; he had said that it was his heart, and she wouldn’t be selfish. She would give his heart back to him.
“I know what we can do,” Serena said firmly. “Let’s go shopping! We can look for your wedding dress.”
Shopping was Serena’s cure-all, and Dione went along with it, though she couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for any of the dresses that they looked at. How could she be concerned with a dress for a wedding that would never take place?
Blake was so tired when he came home that night that his limp was more pronounced, but he cross-examined her over dinner, asking for a word-for-word repetition of everything Serena had said, how she had looked, if she had seemed worried. Dione tried to reassure him, but she could tell that he was anxious about his sister.
The passion of the night before wasn’t repeated; when he finally came to bed he threw his arm over her and went to sleep before his mumbled “good night” was out of his mouth. She listened to his steady breathing for a long time, unwilling to sleep and miss a moment of her time with him.
With calm resignation she made plans the next day for her future; she contacted Dr. Norwood and accepted a case, then booked a flight to Milwaukee. Her next patient was still hospitalized, but in three weeks he would be able to begin therapy, so that gave her three weeks to spend with Blake.
Every day he became more distant from her, more involved in his work, needing less from her. In her weak moments she tried to tell herself that it was just because he had so much work to do, but she couldn’t believe that for long. She responded by doing as she had always done, shoving her pain and misery into a dark corner of her mind and building a wall around them. If it killed her, she would still leave him with her shoulders straight and not distress him by crying all over him. He wouldn’t like that, and she wasn’t the weepy type, anyway. She wouldn’t just hit him with it; she would tell him that she was having doubts about their marriage, and that she thought it would be a good idea for them to spend some time apart. She would tell him that she’d taken another case, and that when it was finished they would discuss their situation.