Read Online The Surprise of His Life by Karen Keast - Free Book Online Page B

dressing like... like... I don't know, like he was twenty instead
of forty? Not that forty is old or anything," she hastened to add.
    Oh,
but it was, Walker thought, drawing the towel through the hair on his chest,
which was now as silver as it was black. It was at least old enough for a man
to know that he couldn't recapture his youth, which was what Dean was trying to
do.
    "Don't
be too hard on him, Lindsey. He's being hard enough on himself right now."
    "I
know that. I could hear his suffering. He practically admitted that he still
cares for Mother, but that he just can't be tied down right now. What does that
mean, Walker? I thought that loving someone was wanting to be tied down to
them—for forever."
    The
image of that kind of loving bondage was not an unpleasant one for Walker. It
was what he wanted, too. It was what he'd missed so sorely since his wife's
death. "Not everyone defines love the same way. Plus people change. Their
needs change. What you need or want today, you don't need or want tomorrow."
    "In
other words, people fall out of love?" Lindsey asked, then didn't even
give Walker a chance to answer. "I don't believe that. If people fall out
of love, they were never in love."
    Walker
heard the idealism of youth, an idealism that reality had not yet tarnished.
The hard, cold truth was that people did fall in love, then grow apart... and
the reasons were many and myriad. Life was never static. People were never
static. And yet, Walker had always believed that in an ever-changing, dynamic
world, love was the only thing that stood a chance of surviving. The commitment
that some couples were able to make did outlast everything, perhaps even the
people themselves. Hundreds of times over the years, he had imagined that he
could feel the love Phyllis had left behind. So, perhaps the truth was that
Lindsey was right. Maybe be was faulting her for her naivete when he should be
applauding her maturity. Maybe some people did fall in love for forever, while
others just fell into something less than love.
    "Are
you there?" he heard her ask. The tone of her voice suggested bewilderment
at the silence.
    "Yeah,
I was just wondering when you grew up on me.
    This
time the silence came from Lindsey. Her heart skidded to a stop before
galloping forward. "Is that what I've done?"
    "Yeah,
I think so," he answered, images of her playing through his mind once
more. He saw her standing in the airport, all prettiness and bright eyes. He
saw her standing in the office doorway, all curves and long, silky hair. He
heard her talking of love, all wisdom and maturity.
    "Well,
I hear that it happens to everyone sooner or later," she answered.
    "Yeah.
Sooner or later."
    Lindsey
made no reply.
    Neither
did Walker.
    Each
let the silence, like a soft, fluffy cloud, drift about them. A subliminal tension,
however, floated along with the silence. Even had he been aware of the tension,
Walker would have denied it, for it felt a lot like the tension, the sexual
tension, that crackled between a man and a woman. The right man and the right
woman. Unaware of his movements, Walker drew the towel into his lap in order to
hide his nakedness.
    "So,"
he asked, "what do you do from here? I mean, about your parents?"
    Lindsey
wondered what he'd thought about during the silence. She wondered, too, what he
would have thought if he knew what she'd thought about during the silence; namely,
did he swim in the buff? The thought that he might left her in definite need of
a full breath of air.
    "Well,"
she said, pushing this thought aside, "I'm not my father's daughter for
nothing. I've inherited every ounce of his stubbornness. I'm going to hang
around, at least for a little longer, to see if he comes to his senses. It's
obvious I'm going to have to lead him in the right direction."
    "Lindsey—"
    "Don't!"
she said. "Don't caution me about interfering. Don't tell me that it's
none of my business. Don't tell me that I shouldn't involve myself in someone
else's