His Ordinary Life by Linda Winfree Page A

Blake’s punishment, Del had expected anger and rebellion. Instead, there’d been only quiet, albeit sullen, acceptance.
    That silence unnerved him because he recognized it. By the time he’d stopped talking to his father, he’d already made his mind up what he was going to do—marry Barbara. He’d sat and listened to his father’s berating and suggestions without a word. Blake was accepting their dictates, but the situation wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
    He turned at the deep end and swam underwater the length of the pool. Surfacing, he found Barbara standing on the concrete apron. She stared at him and pulled her short robe closer around her. On his feet now, he pushed back his dripping hair. A slight breeze rippled across the water, raising goose bumps on his skin.
    Damn it, what was she doing out here? He’d held it together through the evening—a tense, uncomfortable supper, helping Lyssa with her math homework, their come-to-Jesus meeting with Blake—but the whole time he’d been itching for escape, filled with the need to be alone and figure out where to go after their disastrous conversation that afternoon.
    If there was anywhere to go at all. Hell of a note to find out for sure everything good he’d believed about his marriage had been a lie.
    Unable to read her expression in the dim light, he shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep and thought laps might help. Sorry if I bothered you.”
    She shook her head, one hand keeping her robe closed. “No, you didn’t…I couldn’t sleep either.”
    Slogging through the water, he moved up the steps. With water sluicing from his body, he grabbed the towel he’d dropped on a lounge chair. He rubbed the moisture from his face and hair then draped the damp terrycloth around his neck. Grasping the ends, he stared down at her.
    Still clutching her lapels, she shifted under his gaze. “What?”
    “If you felt that way, why didn’t you ever say anything?”
    A tiny frown drew her delicate brows down. “I…I don’t know.”
    “You don’t know?” Anger prickled to life under his skin. He remembered the surge of nausea that had swept over him under the force of her resentment earlier. How could he have lived with the woman standing before him, watching him with wary blue eyes, and seen so little of her inner thoughts? “What the hell?”
    “Del, I don’t—”
    “I just need to understand, Barb. Help me understand what went wrong. Tell me why you couldn’t talk to me.” He hated the beseeching note of pain he could hear in his raw voice. “What did I do? Or was it something I didn’t do?”
    Tell me why you stopped loving me. Or if you ever really loved me at all.
    He couldn’t voice that, but the entreaty hung between them.
    “I told you, I don’t know.” She let go of the robe and brushed her hair behind her ears with both hands. A nervous laugh trilled from her lips. “It was simply…easier to go along with what you wanted.”
    “Easier.” He tightened his stranglehold on the towel at his neck. She’d dropped her gaze, an unhappy expression constricting her face. And she was biting the inside of her cheek. How many times had he seen her do that when she was anxious? God help him to tread lightly here.
    “Yes, easier.” She lifted her head, a pleading glimmer in her light blue eyes. “I was afraid if I—”
    She clamped her lips on the words and frustrated guilt fired in him. Damn it, obviously she’d done this a lot, kept her feelings locked inside, and he hadn’t been astute enough to see that, to draw her out.
    “Afraid of what, baby?” He gentled his voice deliberately. “Of me?”
    Lord, not that. Please not that. Hearing those words from her would break him.
    “Of course not. I’d never be afraid of you.” She shook her head. “How can you ask that?”
    “Because I’m trying to understand what’s going on with us, what went wrong. And I—” He exhaled, trying to clear the brooding tension from his body. He couldn’t begin