Perfect, p.64
Perfect, page 64
part #2 of Second Opportunities Series
“She is dead to me, Julie,” he interrupted with a bite in his voice. “After tonight, I never want to hear the woman’s name or have you refer to her.”
Julie opened her mouth to argue, then made a different decision, but she withheld it for the time being. With a smile in her voice, she said, “No one gets a second chance from you, right?”
“Right,” he said implacably
“Except me.”
He brushed his knuckles over her smooth cheek. “Except you,” he agreed.
“How many chances do I get?”
“How many do you need?”
“A lot of them, I’m afraid,” she said with such a gusty sigh that Zack burst out laughing and snatched her into his arms. When he let her go, he noticed the small silver chain peeking out from between the side of her collar and her throat. “What’s that?” he asked.
She put her chin against her chest. “What’s what?”
“This,” he said, looping his finger under the chain.
Afraid that the sight of the ring would remind him of the ugliness of Mexico City, Julie hastily put her hand against her chest, trapping the ring. “Leave it alone. Please!”
Zack’s eyes narrowed at her anxiety, and he felt again the unfamiliar stirrings of suspicion. “What is it?” he asked, careful to keep his voice reasonable. “A gift from an old boyfriend?”
“Something like that. I’ll stop wearing it.”
“Let’s see it,” Zack said.
“No.”
“A man has a right to know something about the taste of his predecessors.”
“He had wonderful taste! You’d approve. Leave it alone.”
“Julie,” he warned, “you are a rotten liar. What’s attached to that chain?” Without giving her a chance to stop him, he brushed her hands aside and pulled out the chain.
A platinum wedding band gleamed in his hand, diamonds sparkling in the light.
Tenderness washed through him, and he pulled her onto his chest. “Why were you afraid for me to see that?”
“I’m afraid of anything that might remind you of Mexico City. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget the way you looked at me before you realized I hadn’t led them to you by accident . . .” Her voice shook, “Or the change in your face when you realized it was deliberate. I know I won’t. Not ever. I’ll always be afraid to see that look.”
Zack regretfully postponed making love to her and moved her off his chest, sitting up. “Let’s get it over with.”
“What?” she said, panicking already. “Where are you going?”
“Do you have a VCR?”
Her fear turned to puzzlement. “In the living room.”
79
WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” SHE asked as Zack sat down beside her and the videotape he’d taken out of his briefcase began to run. Nervously, she teased, “I hope it’s Dirty Dancing and not a sexy scene from one of your movies.”
He put his arm around her and quietly said, “It’s the tape I’ve watched several times today, the one the FBI confiscated of us in Mex—”
She shook her head wildly, trying to grab the remote controller. “I don’t want to see that. Not tonight! Not ever again!”
“We’re going to watch it together, Julie. You and I. After that, it won’t be able to come between us or hurt us, and you won’t have to be afraid.”
“Don’t make me watch this!” she said, shaking as the voices began to explode in the airport. “I can’t stand it!”
“Look at the screen,” he said implacably. “We were there together, but I never knew until today what you were doing while they were taking me into custody, and I have a feeling you don’t have a clear recollection of it either.”
“Oh, yes, I do! I remember exactly what they were doing to you! I remember that it was my fault!”
He turned her face to the screen. “Watch you, not me. Watch and you’ll see what I did—a woman who was suffering more than I was.” Julie dragged her gaze to the television set, staring blindly at a scene she only wanted to forget. She saw herself screaming at everyone not to hurt him, saw Paul yanking her back, shouting at her that it was “all over,” saw Hadley walking up to her with a malicious grin and dropping the ring into her hand. She saw herself clutching the ring and weeping.
Zack’s voice was aching and tender, “Julie,” he whispered, pulling her tight, “look at you, darling, and see what I see. It was just a ring, a piece of metal and stones. But look at how much it meant to you.”
“It was the wedding ring you picked out for me!” she said fiercely. “That’s why I was crying.”
“Really?” he teased softly. “I thought you were crying because the diamonds were so small.”
Her mouth dropped open, and an hysterical giggle slid out even while she blinked back the tears from her wondrous eyes.
“Now watch this,” he added with a grin, pulling her tighter. “This is my favorite part. Don’t watch what they’re doing to me,” he said quickly when she started to jerk her gaze away from the Federales’ raised clubs. “Watch what you’re doing to Hadley on the right of the screen. That,” he added admiringly, “is one hell of a right hook you have, lady.”
Julie forced herself to watch and was slightly surprised and shamefully pleased to see herself attacking that particular human being. “I don’t actually remember much of that,” she whispered.
“No, but I’ll bet Hadley remembered what comes next. When Richardson dragged you off and you couldn’t get at Hadley with your nails or hands, you—”
“Kicked him!” Julie narrated, watching in shock.
“Right in the groin,” Zack said proudly with a laugh as Hadley doubled over, clutching himself. “Do you have any idea how many men there are in this world who’ve longed to do that?”
Julie shook her head in silence, watching the end of the film as a doctor rammed a hypodermic into her arm and Paul held her. Zack let the VCR keep running and sobered as he looked at her. “I’m going to tear Hadley to pieces legally before I’m done. I have a meeting scheduled with the Texas Board of Criminal Justice week after next. When I’m finished with him, he’ll be occupying one of his own cells.”
“He’s a devil!”
“And you,” Zack said somberly, tipping her chin up, “are an angel. Do you have any idea how I’ve felt every time I watched you on that film?”
She shook her head, and he said, “I felt loved. Incredibly, completely, unconditionally loved. Even when you thought I was a deranged murderer, you were still fighting and crying for me.” Lowering his mouth to hers, he whispered, “I have never known a woman who has as much courage as you . . .” He kissed the corner of her eye, dragging his lips across her cheek to the corner of her mouth. “Or as much love to give.” His hands slid under her sweatshirt and down the waistband of her jeans. “Give it to me, darling,” he whispered, “all of it . . . now.” He opened her mouth with his, deepening the kiss, his hands moving over her soft bare skin, his tongue searching her mouth, driving slowly into it, and when she unbuttoned his shirt with shaking fingers and spread it open and touched him, the moan he heard was his. But the ringing in his ears came from the doorbell, and the pounding in his brain he slowly realized was a fist hammering on the door. Swearing, Zack sat up, intending to take her into the bedroom, and held out his hand.
“Julie!” Ted’s voice accompanied the second round of hammering on the door.
“It’s my brother!” she said.
“Can’t you suggest he go away and come back tomorrow?”
She was about to nod, when Ted’s laughing voice called, “Answer this door for your own good. I know you’re in there,” and she shook her head instead, hastily tugging her shirt back down and trying to restore order to her hair. “I’d better see what he wants.”
‘I’ll wait in the kitchen,” Zack said, raking his hands through his hair.
“But I want him to meet you since he’s here.”
“You want him to meet me now?” He glanced down meaningfully and then at her in amusement. “Like this?”
“On second thought,” she said, blushing gorgeously, “you’d better wait in the kitchen,” then she headed for the door while he walked in the opposite direction.
Julie pulled it open just as Ted raised his hand to knock again, and his gaze swept over her in a knowing, laughing scrutiny. “Sorry to interrupt. Where’s Benedict?”
“In the kitchen.”
“I’ll bet,” he laughed.
“What do you want,” she said, exasperated, embarrassed, and beaming at him because she belatedly realized that he had to have given her letter to Paul.
“I might as well tell both of you at the same time,” he said, sauntering down the hall, pausing to look in the bedroom, obviously and irrationally enjoying himself hugely.
Zack was drinking a glass of water at the sink when Julie said behind him, “Zack, this is my brother Ted.”
Startled by their silent arrival, Zack turned, his eyes riveting on another familiar face.
Ted nodded. “You’re right, I was in Mexico City with Julie.”
Recovering from his surprise, Zack extended his hand, and said, “I’m happy to meet you under better circumstances.”
“But not at this particular moment,” Ted joked, shaking his hand, and Zack felt a surprising and instant liking for the younger man. “If I were you,” Ted continued to Zack with a grin, “I’d fix myself something stronger to drink than water.” Glancing at a puzzled Julie, he explained, “Dad wants to see both of you at the house. Immediately,” he emphasized in a comically dire tone. “Katherine is over there now with Mother, helping to convince Dad that it will be so much nicer if he waits there calmly instead of coming over here, which was what he was determined to do when he couldn’t reach you on the phone.”
“Why is he so anxious to see us?” Julie asked.
Slouching against the wall, Ted shoved his hands in his pockets, lifted his brows, and looked at Zack. “Can you guess why Julie’s father might be a little, shall we say . . . determined . . . to have a word with you upon your unexpected arrival in town?”
Zack swallowed the rest of the water and filled the glass again. “I think I can guess.”
“Julie,” Ted ordered with a chuckle, “go and comb your hair and try not to look so . . . ah . . . delightfully rumpled. I’ll call Dad and tell him we’ll be there shortly.”
She turned on her heel and fled toward her room, calling over her shoulder that the phone was off the hook in the living room.
When Ted came back into the kitchen after making his phone call, Zack was in the bathroom, shaving. He emerged a few minutes later wearing a fresh shirt, his hair combed, and walked into the kitchen. Ted paused in the act of searching through all the cabinets and said over his shoulder, “I don’t suppose you know where Julie put the vodka this time?”
“This time?” Zack said, shifting his thoughts from his forthcoming meeting with his future father-in-law.
“Julie has a peculiar little habit,” Ted explained, bending down and looking under the sink. “When something is bothering her, she rearranges things . . . puts them into order, you could say.”
A tender smile quirked at Zack’s mouth when he remembered seeing her do that in Colorado. “I know.”
“Then you won’t be surprised,” Ted continued, opening the refrigerator in his fruitless search for the liquor, “to learn that since you were released from prison, she has rearranged every closet, drawer, and cabinet she has and repainted her garage. Twice. Take a look at this refrigerator,” he said pointing to the shelves on the doors. “You will note that the bottles and jars are all arranged in descending order by size, tallest on the left. Now, on the next shelf, she has reversed that for artistic purposes, so that the tallest items are on the right. Last week, everything was arranged by color. It was something to see.”
Torn between amusement at what he was hearing and regret for the heartache that had caused her to do it, Zack said, “I’ll bet it was.”
“That’s nothing,” Ted continued dryly. “Take a look at this,” he said, and opening a cabinet, he pointed at the cans and boxes on the shelves. “She’s filed her groceries in alphabetical order.”
Zack choked on a laugh. “She’s what?”
“Look for yourself.”
Zack peered around the other man’s shoulder. All the cans, bottles, and boxes were mixed together but standing at military attention in precise rows across the front. “Applesauce, asparagus, beets,” he murmured in amused disbelief, “cauliflower, Cheerios, flour, Jello, beans . . .” He looked at Ted. “She misfiled the beans.”
“No, I didn’t,” Julie said, walking into the kitchen and trying to look perfectly nonchalant when both men turned to her in laughing amazement. “They’re under L.”
“L?” Zack said, trying unsuccessfully to keep his face straight.
She dropped her embarrassed gaze to an invisible speck of lint she was flicking off her sweater. “L—for legumes,” she informed him. Zack choked on his laughter and pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her hair, basking in the joy of her. “Where’s the vodka?” he whispered in her ear. “Ted wants it.”
She tipped her head back, her eyes filled with laughter. “It’s behind the legumes.”
“What the hell is it doing there?” Ted asked, shoving the cans of beans aside and seizing it.
His shoulders shaking with suppressed mirth, Zack managed to say blandly and correctly, “It’s under L—for liquor. Naturally.”
“Naturally,” Julie confirmed with a giggle.
“Too bad there’s no time to drink it,” Ted said.
“I didn’t want any,” Zack replied.
“You’ll be sorry.”
Ted’s squad car was waiting at the curb, and he held the back door open for them. Zack reluctantly slid into the back seat behind Julie, his expression turning tense.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, so vibrantly attuned to his presence that she instantly sensed the slightest change in his voice or expression.
“This isn’t my favorite mode of transportation, that’s all.”
Zack saw her eyes darken with sorrow, but she rallied almost instantly and deliberately made a joke he knew was designed to lift his spirits. “Ted,” she said, keeping her smiling eyes on Zack, “you should have brought Carl’s Blazer. Zack thinks it’s much more . . . attractive.”
It made both men laugh.
80
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, ZACK WASN’T laughing; he was seated across from Julie’s father in his small study, getting his ass chewed out by Reverend Mathison, who was pacing angrily in front of him. Zack had expected the ass-chewing, he even accepted it as his due, but he had expected Julie’s minister-father to be a small, meek man who would deliver a monotone lecture on whatever commandments he felt Zack had broken. He had not expected Jim Mathison to be a tall, robust man, capable of delivering a scathingly descriptive, eloquently worded tirade that would have put George C. Scott’s monologue at the opening of Patton to shame.
“I cannot excuse or condone anything you did! Not one thing!” Jim Mathison finished at last, flinging himself into the worn leather chair behind his desk. “If I were a violent man, I’d take a horsewhip to you. I’m tempted to do it anyway! Because of you, my daughter was subjected to terror, to public censure, to heartbreak! You seduced her in Colorado, I know damned well you did! Do you deny it?”
It was insane, but at that moment, Zack admired everything about the man; he was the sort of father Zack would have wanted—and wanted to be someday—a deeply concerned parent with strong principles about what was acceptable and what was not—a man of integrity and honesty who expected the same behavior from those around him. He intended for Zack to feel ashamed. He was succeeding.
“Do you deny you seduced my daughter?” he repeated angrily.
“No,” Zack admitted.
“And then you sent her back here to confront the media and defend you to the world! Of all the cowardly, irresponsible—how can you face yourself or me or her, after that?”
“Actually, sending her back here was the only decent thing I did,” Zack said, defending himself for the first time since the tongue-lashing had begun.
“Go on, I’m waiting to hear how you figure that.”
“I knew Julie was in love with me. I refused to take her to South America and sent her back here instead for her sake, not mine.”
“Your sense of decency was certainly short-lived, wasn’t it! A few weeks later, you were scheming to have her join you.”
He waited again, demanding an answer with his silence, and Zack reluctantly complied. “I thought she was pregnant, and I didn’t want her to have an abortion or endure the humiliation of unwed motherhood in a small town.”
Zack sensed a subtle reduction in the other man’s hostility, but it wasn’t evident in his next acid comment. “If you’d exercised any decency, any restraint over your lust in Colorado, you wouldn’t have had to worry about her being pregnant, would you?”
Torn between anger, embarrassment, and amusement at Mathison’s scornful, biblical use of the term lust, Zack lifted his brows and looked at him.
“I’ll thank you for the courtesy of an answer, young man.”
“The answer is perfectly obvious.”
“And now,” he said angrily, leaning back in his chair. “Now you come breezing back to town in your private plane to make her into a public spectacle again, and for what? So you can break her heart! I’ve heard and read and seen enough about you before you went to prison and after you got out to know what sort of life you lead in California, to know what sort of licentious, superficial, amoral life it has been—wild parties, naked women, drunkenness, dirty movies. How do you answer to that?”
“I have never made a dirty movie in my life,” Zack replied, tacitly admitting to the other charges.
Jim Mathison almost smiled. “At least you aren’t a liar. Are you aware that Paul Richardson is in love with her? He wants to marry her. He’s asked for my blessing. He’s a fine, decent man with principles. He wants a wife for life, not just until the next buxom blond movie star comes along and turns his head. He wants children. He’s willing to make sacrifices for her—even to the extent of going to California to see you. He comes from a close, loving family like Julie does. They could have a wonderful life together. Well, what do you say to that?”
