Judith McNaught (38 page)

Zack saw her shoulders stiffen imperceptibly when he came up behind her at the windows, and her unpredictable reactions to him began to genuinely unnerve him. Rather than turning her into his arms and

kissing her, which was what he would have done if she were any other woman he'd known, he hit on a more subtle method of getting her where he wanted her to be. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he met her gaze in the window, tipped his head toward the stereo, and said with teasing formality, "May I have the next dance, Miss Mathison?"

She turned, her enchanting smile aglow with surprise, and Zack's spirits soared crazily simply because

she was pleased. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets to keep from touching her and said with a

wry grin, "The last time I asked a teacher to dance, I was more properly dressed for the occasion in a white shirt, maroon tie, and my favorite navy blue suit. She turned me down though."

"Really? Why?"

"She probably thought I was too short for her."

Julie smiled because he was easily 6'2" tall, and she thought he was either joking or else the woman had been a giant. "Were you really shorter than she was?"

He nodded. "By about three feet. I, however, didn't regard that as a serious obstacle at the time because I had a wild crush on her."

She caught on then and her smile faded. "How old were you?"

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"Seven."

She looked at him as if she knew the slight had hurt him, which, now that he thought about it, it had. "I would never have turned you down, Zack."

The little catch in her voice and the soft look in her eyes were almost Zack's undoing. Mesmerized by the feelings unfolding inside him, he pulled his hands out of his pockets and silently held his left palm out

to her, his gaze locked to hers. She laid her hand in his, and he slid his arm around her narrow waist, drawing her close against him, while Streisand's incredible voice slid effortlessly into the first bars of

"People."

A jolt shook him when he felt her legs and thighs coming into intimate contact with his own as she matched his steps with effortless grace, and when she laid her cheek lightly against his chest, his heart began to beat much too fast. He hadn't even kissed her yet, and desire was already pounding through every nerve ending in his body. To distract himself, he tried to think of an appropriate topic of conversation that would further his ultimate goal without immediately stimulating him more than he already

was. Recalling that it had felt good to joke about the tire he'd slashed, he decided that it would benefit both of them if they could laugh about other events that hadn't been one bit funny at the time. Linking his

fingers through hers, he brought her hand against his chest and said lightly against her hair, "By the way, Miss Mathison, about your unscheduled flight on that snowmobile today—"

She caught his wry tone immediately, tipped her head back, and affected an expression of such exaggerated, wide-eyed innocence that Zack had to fight not to laugh. "Yes?" she said.

"Where the hell did you go when you shot over the edge of the mountain like a rocket and vanished?"

Her shoulders shook with laughter. "I landed in the embrace of a large pine tree."

"That was very clever planning," he teased.
"You
stayed nice and dry and tricked
me
into acting like a demented salmon in that freezing stream."

"That part wasn't funny. What you did today was the bravest thing I've ever seen anyone do."

It wasn't the words she said that melted him, it was the way she was looking at him—the admiration in her eyes, the awed wonder in her voice. After the humiliation of his trial and the dehumanizing effects of

prison, it was heady merely to be looked at like a man, not an animal. But to have her look at him as if he

were brave and fine and decent was a gift more precious to him than anything he'd ever been given.

He

wanted to crush her in his arms, to lose himself in her sweetness, to wrap her around him like a blanket and bury himself in her, he wanted to be the best lover she'd ever had and to make this night as memorable for her as it was going to be for him.

Julie watched his gaze drop to her lips, and in a state of anticipation that had mounted to dizzying heights in the last hour, she waited for him to kiss her. When it became obvious he wasn't going to do it, she covered her disappointment with her best, brightest smile and tried to be amusing, "If you ever come to Keaton and meet Tim Martin, please don't tell him I danced with you tonight."

"Why not?"

"Because he picked a fight with the last person I danced with."

Despite the absurdity of it, Zack felt the first sharp twinge of jealousy in his adult life. "Is Martin a
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boyfriend?"

She chuckled at his dark scowl. "No, he's one of my students. He's the jealous type—"

"Witch!" he chided her, pulling her tightly against his length while John Denver began to sing "Annie's Song" on the stereo. "I know exactly how the poor kid must have felt."

She rolled her eyes. "You don't really expect me to believe that you were jealous just now, do you?"

Zack's eyes fixed greedily on her lips. "Five minutes ago," he murmured, "I would have said I was incapable of such a lowering emotion."

"Oh. Right," she said with amused derision, and then she added with laughing severity, "You are overacting, Mr. Movie Star."

Zack went cold all over. If he had to make a choice between having Julie Mathison imagine him as an escaped convict when he took her to bed tonight or as a movie star, he'd have chosen the former without hesitation. At least the former was real, not illusionary, sickening, and phoney. He'd spent more than a

decade of his life living with an image that made him into a sexual trophy. Like football players and hockey stars, he'd had his privacy and his life invaded by female groupies who wanted to sleep with

Zachary Benedict. Not the man. The image. In fact, this evening had been the first time he'd ever been absolutely certain a woman wanted him simply for himself, and it made him angry to think he'd been wrong.

"Why," she said cautiously, "are you looking at me like that?"

"Suppose
you
tell
me
why," he countered, "you brought up the expression 'movie star' at this particular

moment."

"You aren't going to like the answer."

"Try me," he clipped.

Her eyes narrowed at his tone. "All right. I said it because I have an aversion to insincerity."

Zack's brows snapped together. "Do you think you could possibly be a little more specific?"

"Certainly," Julie replied, repaying his sarcasm with uncharacteristic bluntness: "I said it because you pretended that you were jealous, and then you made it worse by pretending you hadn't ever, in your entire life, felt that way before. I thought it was not only corny but insincere, particularly because I know,

and
you
know, that I have to be the least attractive woman you've bothered to flirt with in your entire adult life! Furthermore, since I'm not treating you like an escaped murderer any more, I'd appreciate it if

you wouldn't start treating
me
like … like some witless fan of yours who you can charm into fainting at

your feet with a few words of empty flattery."

Belatedly registering the thunderous expression on his face, Julie jerked her gaze from his and stared at his shoulder, embarrassed and ashamed for letting her hurt feelings drive her to such an outburst. She braced herself for a verbal blasting, but after a moment of ominous silence she said in a small, contrite

voice, "I suppose I probably didn't
need
to be
that
specific. I'm sorry. Now it's your turn."

"To do what?" he retorted.

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"I imagine to tell me that I was rude and obnoxious just now."

"Fine. You were."

He'd stopped dancing, and Julie drew a long fortifying breath before she raised her gaze to his impassive

face. "You're angry, aren't you?"

"I'm not certain."

"What do you mean, you aren't certain?"

"I mean that, where you're concerned, I haven't been certain of anything since about noon today, and the uncertainty is getting worse by the moment."

He sounded so strange, so … off balance … that Julie felt a wayward smile touch her lips. She doubted

very much if any other woman, no matter how beautiful, could have put him in exactly this state.

She

didn't know how it had happened, but she felt rather proud. "I think," she said, "I like that."

He wasn't amused. "Unfortunately, I don't."

"Oh."

"In fact, I think we'd better reach some sort of clear understanding about what is going on between us and what we
want
to go on between us." In the back of his mind, Zack knew he was being completely irrational, but five years of imprisonment along with the harrowing emotional and physical events of the day and the roller-coaster ride she'd had him on for the last twenty-four hours were all combining to play havoc with his temper, his emotions, and his judgment. "Well, do you agree?"

"I—guess so."

"Fine, do you want to go first, or shall I?"

She swallowed, torn between dread and amusement.

"You go first."

"Half the time I have the craziest feeling that you're not real … that you're too naive to be twenty-six years old … that you're a thirteen-year-old girl pretending to be a woman."

She smiled with relief that he hadn't said anything worse. "And the other half of the time?"

"You make me feel like
I'm
thirteen." He could tell she liked that from the quick amused sparkle in her eyes, and suddenly Zack felt perversely compelled to shatter whatever remaining illusions she might conceivably have about him personally as well as his intentions for the evening. "Despite how you perceive what happened at the stream today, I am
not
a knight in shining armor. I am
not
a movie star, and I am a
long
way from being a naive, idealistic teenager. Whatever innocence and idealism I was born

with, I lost long before I lost my virginity. I'm not a child and neither are you. We're adults. We both know what's happening between us right now, and we know exactly what all of this is leading up to."

The

laughter left her eyes replaced by something that was not quite fear and not quite anger either. "Do you want me to spell it out, so there's no mistaking my motives?" he persisted, watching a heated blush stain

her smooth cheeks. Stung because the knowledge that he wanted to go to bed with her had doused her smile, he deliberately pushed his point. "My motives aren't noble; they're adult and they're natural. We
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aren't thirteen years old, this isn't a school dance, and my mind isn't on whether or not I'll be able to kiss you good night. It's already a foregone conclusion that I'm going to kiss you good night. The fact is that I

want you, and I think you want me almost as much.

Before this night is over, I intend to make sure you do, and when I've done that, I intend to take you to bed and undress you and make love to you as thoroughly and leisurely as I can. For now, I want to dance with you, so that I can feel your body against mine. While we're dancing, I'll be thinking of all the things I'm going to do to you—and with you—when we're in bed together. Now, have I made everything clear? If none of that suits you, then you tell me what you want to do, and we'll do that. Well?" he snapped impatiently when she remained silent with her

head bent. "What do
you
want to do?"

Julie bit her trembling lip and raised eyes glowing with laughter and desire to his. "How would you like to

help me rearrange the hall closet?"

"Do you have a
second
choice?" he demanded, so irritated that he didn't realize she was joking.

"Actually," she said, furrowing her brow and lowering her gaze to the vee at the throat of his open shirt

collar. "That
was
my second choice."

"Well then, what the hell is your
first
choice? And don't pretend I'm making you so nervous you want to

clean out closets, because I couldn't make you nervous at gunpoint!"

Julie added irascibility and obtuseness to the things she loved about him and drew a shaky breath, ready to call an end to the game, but she couldn't quite meet his gaze as she said softly, "You're right, you couldn't possibly make me nervous at gunpoint after today, because I know you wouldn't hurt me for the world. In fact, the only way you could make me nervous is by doing exactly what you've been doing since I woke up tonight and saw you standing by the fireplace."

"Which is?" he clipped.

"Which is making me wonder if you're
ever
going to kiss me the way you did last night… Which is acting like you very much want to do it one minute, and then, like you don't the next min—"

Zack caught her face between his hands, turned it up, and abruptly captured the rest of her words in his mouth, shoving his fingers through the sides of her hair as he kissed her. And when she proved she meant

it, when she slid her hands up his chest and around his neck, holding him close and kissing him back, he felt a burgeoning pleasure and astonished joy that was almost past bearing.

Trying to atone for his earlier roughness, he dragged his lips from hers and brushed a kiss along her jaw and cheek and temple, then he sought her mouth again, rubbing his lips over their soft contours. He traced the trembling line between her lips with his tongue, urging them to part, insisting, and when they did, he drove fully into her mouth—a starving man helplessly trying to satisfy a hunger by teaching her to

intensify it. And the woman in his arms was a willing and gifted student. Melting against him, she crushed

her mouth to his, welcoming his tongue and giving him hers with only the merest hint from him that he wanted it.

Long minutes later, Zack finally forced himself to lift his head, and he gazed down into her eyes, unconsciously memorizing the way she looked, all flushed and fresh and alluring. Trying to smile, he slid