Within Reach by Barbara Delinsky Page A

the perfect corporate wife had fallen within that realm.
    How to cope. That was the issue she faced. In actuality, she followed Blake’s formula to the letter. “You have to think clearly. You have to analyze the facts and your options. You have to make decisions and see them through.”
    The fact was very simply that she was involved in a marriage that gave her little reward or pleasure. The options were also simple, since she couldn’t quite abide by the concept of divorce. The decisions, ah, those were harder to reach.
    She rose to the occasion. First, she realized that she had to accept Blake for both his strengths and his weaknesses. What he lacked on the human side of the scale he made up for as a provider, as a man well-known and respected among his peers.
    Second, she realized that she was, at some point, going to have to look for work. It might take time, both to secure a job that would conform to her life-style and then to garner the courage to confront Blake with her decision, but she was increasingly convinced as each day passed that it was the wisest course open to her.
    Third and finally, she was going to Maine. She had thought it all out. She wanted to be away from the city, away from the emptiness that seemed to characterize her life there. She wanted fresh air, open space, time to herself in a less prescribed environment.
    She had also thought a great deal about Michael, and specifically, her attraction to him. In the weeks since she had seen him, she had put into perspective what she’d felt that day on the beach. She liked him very, very much. He stirred her in ways that might have been wrong if she hadn’t been so committed to her marriage. True, she fantasized about him, but that was okay. The reading she had done—and she’d done a great deal of it on the subject since that last trip north—had said that fantasizing was normal and, in its way, healthy. Put in its proper place, it could do her no harm.
    Michael knew the facts of her life, that she was married, that she could never offer him more than a friendly hug or companionable hand-holding. God only knew she needed both of those things. Should she deprive herself of a very lovely, very warm, close relationship?
    Her real source of protection, though, came from something that was as yet only the merest suspicion, the faintest hope. She was overdue for her period, and she had always been punctual to the day. If she was pregnant, her problems might be solved. Not that she set great stock in Blake’s attentiveness as a father—nothing he had done in recent years as a husband had warranted such faith. But she would be a mother, and a whole new world would open to her.
    Thus fortified, she headed for Maine on the twenty-third of June. It was a Friday morning. Blake, surprisingly enough, was accompanying her, taking the Mercedes while she drove the Audi so that he could return to Boston the following day. He had said that he wanted to see her settled, and indeed, she had brought along several cartons of things—clothes, a stereo, records, books—so his help was appreciated. He hadn’t even suggested that Marcus do the dirty work; perhaps he had known she would have insisted on doing it herself given that particular choice. Then again, perhaps he felt guilty.
    He was a fine caretaker; she had to say that much. And though she sensed his accompanying her was more a conciliatory gesture than anything else, she couldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
    Ironically, Blake was more satisfied than she had ever seen him in Maine. He patiently helped her unload what she had brought, spent several hours out on the deck with her explaining all he would be doing back home that would keep him from joining her for several weeks at least, took her into Ogunquit for dinner, and was perfectly amiable the whole time. He made no attempt to touch her that night, and she felt no urge for him to do so, but he did kiss her sweetly before he set off the next day, and