The force of his seething reply caught Ruby off guard. She pushed back the hysteria that threatened to rise biliously to her voice and asked, more calmly than she felt, “Why do men feel threatened when women become successful? Why can’t they accept professional women combining a career and a home?”
“I refuse to get involved in this women’s-lib debate with you again,” Jack said with cold finality, putting more tapes in his briefcase and slamming it shut.
“I suppose you’ll end up with some twenty-year-old chippie in spandex who’ll talk you into buying a motorcycle or Corvette or something,” Ruby mocked cynically, biting her bottom lip to hold back the tears.
A sad smile played at the corners of Jack’s mouth. He countered in the quick, easy manner that came with years of living together, “Nah, I’m thinking more of a thirtyish woman with a Dolly Parton body, a Barbara Walters mind and a Joan Rivers sense of humor.” Jack’s grim eyes belied his light banter.
Ruby couldn’t deny the pain and jealousy that surged through her. “Dolly Parton! Get real! I could see Jane Fonda, maybe, but Dolly Parton!”
Jack still grinned at her teasingly, which gave Ruby the nerve to offer, “Except for the Dolly Parton body, I could fill the other two criteria… I think.”
The glint of humor faded from his face as Jack asked seriously, “What will you be looking for?”
Ruby cringed, momentarily deflated at his failure to respond to her offer. And did he really think she wanted another man?
Bruised pride stiffened her neck, but embarrassment soon turned to annoyance. She met Jack’s eyes defiantly. “Movie-star looks would be nice but aren’t the most important thing. Besides, I have to be realistic, I guess. I’m no raving beauty, and, at my age, men look at younger women.”
“Oh, Rube, that’s not true. You could get any man you wanted.” Tenderly, his appreciative eyes traveled over her all-too-familiar body.
Any man except the one she needed, Ruby thought, but, instead of speaking her mind, she swallowed with difficulty and gently upbraided him, “Jack, take off the rose-colored glasses and be honest. Thirty-eight-year-old men don’t look at thirty-eight-year-old women.”
“They do when the women look like you.” Jack studied her a moment, then went on, “You still haven’t answered my question. What are you looking for in a man? It obviously isn’t me.”
Pain, stark and intense, formed a huge knot in Ruby’s throat, and Jack asked her silly questions. Still, she continued with her pointless description of an ideal mate. “He should be intelligent. Yes, intelligence is essential. And successful… oh, not moneywise success, just good at whatever he does…”
Her voice trailed away and her bravado failed for a second. When she regained her composure, she steeled herself to go on. “Actually, none of those things matter at all. I’d just want a man who loves me. You know, the way you used…” Ruby’s voice cracked and she couldn’t continue.
Jack tried to touch her shoulder but Ruby shrugged his hand away angrily. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t want your pity. Just go if you’re going. You’re right. We can’t keep postponing the inevitable. Go!”
After a few seconds, she heard Jack moving toward the door. “I’m staying at the lake house until I can find an apartment,” he said in an oddly rasping voice. “I’ll call the boys tonight.”
Ruby forgot her pride then in the face of this final, wrenching end to a twenty-year marriage. Lord, how many times had she sworn she wouldn’t ask the stupid question, the one most women invariably ask at some point in their lives?
“Don’t you love me anymore?”
Jack froze in the doorway and then turned woodenly.
Ruby’s heart lurched. This handsome man could still make her pulse do flip flops with just a glance—even after twenty years of marriage and despite the light sprinkling of gray in his dark blond hair. The past year of stress had etched cruel lines in the chiseled planes of his mature face, but years of disciplined jogging and racquetball had kept his six-foot-three body lean and well-conditioned. He’d have no trouble at all attracting a woman. Ruby closed her eyes for a moment at that painful thought before searching his face once again.