Judith McNaught (84 page)

Julie shuddered in his arms at the mention of the airport. "I'm sorry," she whispered brokenly, turning her

face into his chest. "I'm so sorry. I don't know how either of us is ever going to forget that."

Zack registered her reaction and made a decision, but he withheld that for a few minutes. Instead, he tipped her chin up and said, "What in God's name ever possessed you to go to see Margaret Stanhope?"

The doorbell rang and they both ignored it.

With a sigh, Julie explained, "You said in your letter that you wished you'd reconciled with her long ago.

You even suggested that I give her our baby to raise.

And on the phone you said you felt like we were inviting a curse by leaving so much unhappiness behind us. So I decided to go to her and explain to her

that you loved her and regretted the estrangement."

"And she laughed in your face."

"Worse. Somehow, the subject of Justin came up, and the next thing I knew she was telling me that you

murdered him after a fight over a girl and handing me a file full of news clippings where you admitted shooting him. And I—" She drew a shaking breath, hating to accuse him. "I realized you'd lied to me, Zack. I tried to tell myself you lied to her, not me, but when Tony Austin was murdered, that was three people whom you'd quarreled with, and all of them had died at your hands, or so it looked. I thought …

I started to believe, as your grandmother believed, that you were insane. I betrayed you. I thought it was for your own good."

"I did not lie to you about Justin, Julie," Zack said with a harsh sigh. "I lied to the police in Ridgemont."

"But why?"

"Because my grandfather asked me to, because a suicide brings down an investigation as to possible causes, and my grandfather and I wanted to protect that vicious old woman from having to face Justin's
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homosexuality when the cops discovered it. I shouldn't have bothered," he added tightly. "I should have

let her wallow in what she would have felt was disgrace. Justin couldn't have been hurt by it."

"Knowing how she felt about you," Julie said, "how could you possibly have thought she'd care for our baby?"

He raised his brows in amused challenge. "What baby, Julie?"

The infectious smile that had brightened his life in Colorado dawned across her face with a touch of beguiling guilt to add to its appeal. "The baby I invented so you'd let me come to you."

"Oh, that baby."

She opened another button on his shirt and pressed a kiss against his throat. "Answer my question."

"Keep doing that and you stand a better chance of getting a real baby than an answer to your question."

With a laugh, she leaned her forearms against his chest, but her eyes were slumberous. "I'm terribly greedy, Zack. I want both."

Tenderly, Zack cupped her face between his hands, his thumbs rubbing over her cheeks. "Do you, darling? Want my baby?"

"Desperately."

"We'll work on that tonight if you're up to it."

She bit her lip, her shoulders shaking with laughter.

"Going strictly from fading memory, you understand,

I think it's a matter of whether you are."

"Up to it?" he provided, enjoying the sexual banter and the exhilaration of the unique combination of laughter and love she'd always made him feel.

She nodded.

"Actually, I've been 'up to it' most of the time since I read your letter this morning. The proof is within your reach."

The doorbell rang again, and they ignored it again, but it made Julie guiltily jerk her hand away from what

he'd hoped was going to be her search for 'proof.'

"Are you going to finish answering my question?"

she

asked.

"Yes," he sighed. "If you'll think back to the letter I wrote you, you'll remember I specifically said I'd write to her before I sent you there with our baby.

Actually, I'd have written to Foster first, not to her."

"Foster? You mean the old butler?"

Zack nodded. "My grandfather and I swore him to secrecy, but he knows what happened. He was in the hall when the shot came from Justin's room, and he saw me run from my room down to Justin's. I would have released Foster from his promise and told him to speak to his employer and tell her the truth."

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"She's your grandmother, Zack. Stop avoiding calling her that. I think she loved you more than you imagine. If you saw her now, talked to her, you'd realize how much of a toll all this—"

"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?"

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"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."

"
W
hat 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."

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"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?"

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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