Coming Up Roses (40 page)

Still clutching the locket he had given her, she said, "Just for the record, if you decide to leave me, I'm going with you. So all this talk about strong-arm tactics is uncalled for."

The starch went out of his legs. He took an unsteady step toward her. "Katie, are you all right?"

As he drew close, she tilted her head. As she did, her body nearly followed, and he grabbed her shoulders to catch her from toppling. "I'm fine," she assured him in a wobbly voice. "It's just a little upsetting when you go on about divorce. You can't change wives as casually as you do your socks."

She sounded so put out with him that Zach nearly smiled. The unfocused look in her eyes forestalled him.

"Honey, do you remember everything that happened this morning at the trial?"

The question made her look all the more disgruntled. "Of course I remember. How could I forget?" She pressed her lips together in an obvious effort to stop their quivering. "I'm in a world of trouble, aren't I?"

Zach's heart caught at that. She did remember. "Yes, and it's all my fault." He sat beside her on the cot, keeping one hand on her shoulder to steady her. "Aren't you angry with me?"

"For what?"

His throat ached with the effort it took to get his next words out. "For not telling you about Serena."

"Serena… Your wife?" She blinked and frowned slightly. "Of course I'm not angry."

"I should have told you straight off." Zach couldn't quite believe what he was saying. He had come here with every intention of arguing his case, not the opposite. "The fact that I didn't is unforgivable."

She passed a hand over her forehead. "At first I was angry. I'll admit that. I couldn't understand how you could have kept something so serious from me."

A heavy silence fell between them. Zach could almost feel her tension and knew she had to force herself to look up at him.

"It seemed to me," she went on, "given your insistence that we have no secrets between us, that you owed me the truth."

"Kate, I—"

She held up a hand. "I figured there had to have been plenty of opportunities for you to broach the subject."

Zach couldn't think of a single thing he could say to defend himself. "I wanted to tell you," he inserted quickly.

"A dozen different times, I tried to think of a way…" He looked into her eyes, heartened by the warmth he saw there. In a ragged voice, he said, "Honey, I know it was wrong. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?"

Her mouth tilted in a quavery smile. "Forgive? I think understand would be a better word. Once I tried to put myself in your shoes and really thought about it, I realized there probably wasn't a good time for you to have told me." She wrinkled her nose, putting him so much in mind of Mandy that he nearly hugged her. "Right after you discovered Joseph's body would have been a great time—immediately after I told you Joseph had held Miranda's hand in the fire, perhaps? I can almost hear you. 'Not to change the subject, Kate, but my wife burned to death, and a lot of people think I set the blaze.' Or on our wedding day, maybe, when we were rushing to town and signing papers?" Her mouth curved in a slight smile. "Or maybe later? Right after Miranda burst into our bedroom would have been an ideal time. 'By the way, Kate, I forgot to mention that I was once suspected of murdering my wife. Not that I want to alarm you, or anything.'"

A startled chuckle erupted from Zach's throat, and he followed through on his urge to hug her. When she came willingly into his arms and snuggled against him, he got a taste of what heaven must be like. "Katie McGovern, you are priceless," he whispered shakily. "I've suffered the agonies of the damned all afternoon and evening, worried sick that you'd never forgive me. I really did intend to tell you. I swear it. But there just never seemed—

It's not easy to talk about at the best of times."

She looped a slender arm around his waist. "I know."

He pressed his face against her hair and inhaled the scent of her. Roses and vanilla, his sweet Katie girl. There had been times today when he had wondered if he'd ever hold her like this again. "I was afraid you'd think I was guilty, that I would have told you if I didn't have something to hide."

She nuzzled closer. "Never. And it was silly in the extreme for you to think such a thing. You aren't a violent man, Zachariah. And I do love you, with all my heart."

The fear that had been gnawing at him all day slowly fell away, and he absorbed the feeling of her pressed against him. After a long while, he finally found his voice. "I think I should tell you about Serena now so you won't get any more ugly surprises thrown at you."

She touched a gentle hand to his scarred cheek. "It isn't necessary. I know everything I need to know about you."

Zach believed she truly meant that, and the fact that she did touched him as nothing else could. He remembered how humbled he had felt by Miranda's unquestioning trust in him; he felt the same way now. If he tried the rest of his days, he wasn't sure he could ever measure up to it, but he could make a good start tonight.

"I want to tell you about her. But, God help me, I don't know how to start."

She turned up her face and brushed her lips across his throat. "At the beginning, that's the only place to start."

And so he began. Zach felt separated from himself as he talked, hearing his voice, but not quite sure it was really him speaking. Serena—beautiful, witty, and gay. Himself—young, handsome, with the world just waiting for him to grab it by the tail. The perfect match, everyone had said. Yet in a twinkling, their marriage had become the perfect hell instead.

Zach never knew why. That was the worst of it. The heartbreak of it. The torment of it. He had come home one day to find Serena sipping sherry while she cooked supper. He had poured a glass of wine and joined her, never dreaming he'd rue the day, never dreaming that Serena had a weakness that would destroy her, and him along with her. Within months, his lovely young wife had become a drunk and an adulteress. A staggering, slurring, slobbering drunk who would go to bed with anything in pants. The hired hands, her friends' husbands, even the preacher who had come by the house to pray for her.

"At first I thought it was a failing in me. I guess, if I'm honest, I still wonder about that. I thought maybe I wasn't providing well enough for her. Or that maybe I wasn't spending enough time with her. Or that I wasn't a good enough lover."

Listening to him, Kate blinked away tears. The puzzle that was Zachariah slowly fell into place. Tightening her arms around him, Kate sought to comfort him the only way she knew how, with her love.

"I started getting up earlier so I could put in a longer day without cutting our evenings together short," he went on. "I built another house, a bigger one. I used the money left to me by my folks and took her on a second honeymoon trip to France ." His voice turned thick with humiliation. "I even spent a night with the local whore, not for the obvious reasons, but to pick her brain. I went home with a dozen new tricks up my sleeve, guaranteed to make me a better lover…"

Kate pressed her cheek hard against his chest, remembering how sweetly he had made love to her. Her pulse quickened just at the thought. "Oh, Zachariah, it wasn't you. Trust me."

She felt his arms quiver as he drew her closer. "I was convinced otherwise. If you'd known her, Katie, you'd understand. Before we got married, you couldn't have met a nicer person. And then, overnight, she changed. It was as if the bottle sucked her dry, draining all the good out of her and leaving only her flaws. She wasn't the same person."

She ran a hand up his chest, tracing the ridges of hardened muscle, aching for him. "Yet you still loved her."

"For a long time," he admitted. "The irony of it was that every once in a while, when she sobered up, I could see in her eyes that she still loved me. She'd promise not to drink anymore, and I'd believe her. She'd swear never to trifle with me again, and I'd forgive her one more time. Then I'd come home and find her drunk, sometimes with another man, sometimes not, and we'd go through it all again. After years of that, the love turned to hate, and then the hate to detachment. I finally reached a point where I no longer cared. The problem was that before I finally did, she and I aired our dirty laundry in public one too many times, and everyone in town knew about our marital problems. And about the rows we had."

Kate sensed that he was about to tell her of the fire, and she set her hands to the task of kneading his tense back muscles, recalling the many times he had done the same for her.

"The night she died, I came home from a cattle-buying trip and caught her in bed with one of my hired hands."

His breath caught, and he exhaled with a bitter laugh. "He was just a kid, skinny as a rail with more freckles than he had sense, drunk as a skunk, and her right along with him. When I walked in and saw them together in my bed, I didn't feel anything but disgust. I know that sounds hard to believe, but it's the truth. I hadn't touched her myself in months. I was tired from the trip. And I just didn't have it in me to start a quarrel. Can you understand that?"

Kate recalled the emptiness she had felt the night she buried Joseph. Beyond anger, beyond pain, beyond regret.

"Yes, Zachariah, I do understand."

His voice turned thin, and by that she knew how difficult it was for him to go on. "I grabbed a blanket and went to sleep in the barn," he said hollowly. "That's the honest-to-God truth. I went to sleep, and the next thing I knew, I woke up and the house was ablaze. Our bedroom was on the second floor. I could hear Serena screaming up there."

With a suddenness that startled her, he began to sob, a great, soul-shaking cry that wracked his large body and sent tremors through her own. Kate twisted to put her arms around his shoulders. When he buried his face against her neck and she felt his tears, her heart twisted for him.

"I still loved her," he said brokenly. "Not the way I did at first, but I still cared. I had hated her for so long I didn't think I felt anything for her, but all it took was hearing her scream. When I ran out of the barn, I saw her at the window. I tried to get her to jump, but she panicked. Either that or she was too drunk to think clearly. She kept screaming my name."

Kate realized she was shaking as badly as he was. "And you went in," she whispered.

Knowing Zachariah as she did, that wasn't a question. She touched her fingertips to his scarred cheek, picturing that night, and his frantic attempts to reach his wife through a blazing inferno. It was so easy for Kate to visualize, and no small wonder. He had gone through a pit of rattlesnakes to save her daughter.

"I couldn't get to her," he whispered. "I tried, and the second I hit the stairs, they started to collapse. My shirt caught fire, and I ran back out to roll in the dirt. Then I climbed the porch post and got onto the roof. Before I could reach her, the fire—" He broke off and swallowed. "It was like a blast. It exploded out all the windows, blew me clear off the roof. Just that fast, and the whole house was afire. There was nothing I could do but watch it burn."

"Oh, Zachariah, it breaks my heart to think you kept this to yourself, afraid to tell me. I'm so sorry."

He gave a dry laugh. "You're sorry? You could end up being convicted of murder because of it, and you're sorry?

Jesus, Katie, I feel bad enough as it is. Don't make it worse."

"It isn't your fault. None of it."

"I could have at least told you the kind of man you were tying up with and let you make your own choice, but the honest truth is, I never dreamed Ryan would go snooping into my past. I was never charged with anything, and when I left the Applegate Valley , I thought I left all the gossip behind me. I'd never have hurt you."

Kate ran a hand over his hair, loving the thick texture and the way the waves curled around her fingers. "I knew exactly what kind of man I had tied up with," she told him fiercely. "If I had it to do over again, knowing what I know now, I'd still marry you, Zachariah. The devil take the trial."

"You can't mean that."

"I do mean it. For better or worse, remember? The gossip about you wasn't your fault when it happened, and it isn't now. We'll simply have to weather it, that's all, and pray the jury isn't swayed by irrelevant hearsay."

A peaceful quiet settled over them. For a very long while, they sat there, enfolded in each other's arms, the only sound the unsynchronized thrumming of their muted heartbeats. Kate wished their shared closeness could go on forever. She felt so safe and secure with his arms around her, confident against all reason that everything would come out fine in the end. It was an impossible wish. Eventually Zachariah stirred, and she felt the tension flow back into his body.

"There's one thing more I haven't talked to you about. Something I have to ask you."

Kate craned her neck to look up at him. "What's that?"

He took a deep breath. "Just don't say no until you think about it. Promise me that? Try to trust me."

"Zachariah, what?" she prodded.

He drew away and gripped her by the shoulders. "The judge has asked to question Mandy. No cross-examination or anything. Just a few gently phrased questions from him."

Kate's heart caught. "No." She gave her head a vehement shake. "No, absolutely not. I won't allow it."