Judith McNaught (83 page)

Besides, you may need a friend in that crowd."

Zack didn't hear him, he was already striding into the school, following the direction of the noise coming

from behind the double doors at the end of the corridor to his right.

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He spotted Julie in the crowd before the gymnasium doors swung closed behind him. She was

conducting a chorus of children dressed in various costumes, some of whom were in wheelchairs, while a

pianist accompanied them up on the stage.

Mesmerized, he stood there, listening to the sweet sound of her voice, watching her incredible smile, and

the shattering tenderness he felt made his chest ache.

Clad in jeans and a school sweatshirt, with her hair pulled into a ponytail and tied with a scarf, she looked adorable … and thin. Her cheekbones and eyes

were more prominent now than before, and Zack swallowed over the knot of guilt in his throat when he

realized how much weight she'd lost. Because of him. The cab driver said Zack had shamed her in front

of the town; he was going to undo some of that now if he could. Ignoring the startled glances and exchanged whispers beginning to circulate around the room as people in the bleachers and on the floor noted his presence and recognized his face, he started forward.

"Okay, you guys, what's the problem?" Julie said, when several of the older children stopped singing and

began to whisper and point. Behind her, she was distantly aware of the hush falling over the cavernous

room and the echo of a man's footsteps on the wooden floor, but she was preoccupied with the increasing lateness of the hour and her students'

flagging attention. "Willie, if you finally want your chance

to sing, then pay attention," she warned, but he was pointing to something behind her and whispering furiously to Johnny Everett and Tim Wimple. "Miss Timmons," she said, looking up at the pianist who was also gaping open-mouthed at something behind her. "Miss Timmons—let's run through it again." But when Julie looked back down, part of the children's chorus was breaking up and moving forward in a small group being led by Willie Jenkins.

"Where do you think you're going?" Julie burst out as they passed her. She spun around. And froze.

Zack was standing fifteen feet away from her, his hands at his sides. He'd finally read her last letter, she

thought wildly, and he'd come at last to get his car.

She stood there, afraid to speak, afraid to move, gazing at the sternly handsome face that had haunted her dreams and tormented her days.

Willie Jenkins stepped forward, his gravelly voice loud and belligerent. "You Zack Benedict?" he demanded.

Zack nodded silently, and suddenly several other boys moved forward, fanning out in front of Julie, three

of them in wheelchairs—all of them ready to defend her against the monster in their midst, Zack realized.

"Then you better just turn around and get outa here,"

the one with the bullfrog's voice warned, thrusting out his chin. "You made Miss Mathison cry."

Zack's solemn gaze stayed on Julie's pale face. "She made me cry, too."

"Guys don't cry," he scoffed.

"Sometimes they do—if someone they love hurts them very much."

Willie glanced up at his beloved teacher's face and saw tears sliding slowly from her eyes. "Look at that!

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You're making her cry again!" he warned with a ferocious glower. "Is that why you came here?"

"I came here," Zack said, "because I can't live without her."

Everyone in the auditorium gaped at the famous tough-guy movie hero who was humbling himself by making these astonishing admissions in front of them, but Julie didn't notice their stares. She was rushing

forward through the children, walking fast, then running … running into the arms that were opening wide

to her.

They closed around her with stunning force, his hand cradling her tear-streaked face against his chest,

shielding her from their audience as he bent his head and whispered hoarsely, "I love you." Her shoulders shaking with sobs, she slid her hands around his neck, her face buried against his chest, holding him fiercely to her.

At the far end of the auditorium, Ted put his arm around Katherine and drew her close. "How did you get so damned smart?" he whispered.

Herman Henkleman was of a more practical, albeit equally romantic, mind. Winking at Flossie, he shouted, "Rehearsal's over folks!" Then he slapped the light switches off, plunging the room into total darkness, and trotted off to get his taxi.

By the time someone found the light switch, Zack and Julie were gone.

"Hop in," Herman said with a grand gesture of his general's hat as they raced out the school doors, hand in hand. "Always wanted to drive a getaway car," he added, shoving the accelerator to the floor and sending the cab jolting away from the building.

"Where to?"

Julie was past all rational thought for the moment.

"Your house?" Zack asked.

"Not if you want to do any smoochin'," Herman said.

"Whole town'll be comin' by and callin."

"Where's the closest hotel or motel?"

Julie looked at him uneasily, but Herman was more blunt: "You tryin' to tear her reputation up or fix it?"

Zack looked down at her face and felt speechless and helpless and desperate to be alone with her. Her eyes told him she felt the same.

"My house," she said. "We'll take the phone off the hook and disconnect the doorbell if we have to."

A minute later, Herman pulled the cab up in front of the house, and Zack reached into his pocket for more money. "How much do I owe you this time,"

he asked dryly.

The man turned in his seat and with a look of wounded dignity handed Zack's hundred-dollar bill back

to him. "Five dollars, round trip, including picking up your pilot. That's a special rate," he added with a startling boyish smile, "for the man who wasn't afraid to admit he loves Julie in front of the whole town."

Oddly touched, Zack handed him a twenty-dollar bill and said, "I left a suitcase and another briefcase on the plane. Would you bring them back here after you take my pilot to his motel?"

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"Sure thing. I'll leave them at Julie's back door so you don't have to answer the doorbell."

Julie walked into the living room and turned on a lamp, but when Zack reached out for her hand, she came wordlessly into his arms, kissing him with a silent desperation that matched his own, holding him to

her, crushing her soft mouth to his, her hands rushing over him. Zack clutched her tighter to him, his lips

ravaging hers, his hands hungrily memorizing her beloved form.

The shrill ring of the telephone right beside them made them both jump, and she reached out a shaky hand to answer it.

Zack watched her as she lifted it to her ear, and he smiled to himself at the way she self-consciously lowered her eyes when he began to take off his jacket.

"Yes, it's true, Mrs. Addelson," she said, "he's really here." She listened a minute and then said, "I don't know. I'll ask him." Covering the phone with her hand she gave him a helpless look and said, "Mayor and

Mrs. Addelson would like to know if you—we—are free to have dinner with them tonight."

Zack stripped off his tie and began unbuttoning his shirt and slowly, emphatically shook his head no, watching a gorgeous blush climb her cheeks as she caught his unmistakable meaning.

"I'm afraid we can't. No, I'm not certain what his immediate plans are or his future plans either. Yes, I'll

ask him and let you know."

Julie hung up the phone, then hastily picked it up, shoved the receiver under a sofa pillow,

straightened,

and nervously rubbed her palms against her thighs.

Dozens of questions raced through her mind as she stood there looking at him, doubts and uncertainties and hopes, but over it all was a feeling of joyous unreality that he was actually standing there, in her living room, his eyes gentle, amused, sexy. "I can't believe you're here," she whispered aloud. "A few hours ago, everything seemed so—"

"Empty?" he provided in the deep, compelling voice she'd longed to hear again. "And meaningless?" he added, walking toward her.

She nodded. "And hopeless. Zack, I—I have so much to explain if you'll let me. But I—" Her voice broke as he pulled her into his arms and she touched his face, her fingers trembling. "Oh, God, I've missed you so much!"

Zack answered her with his mouth, parting her lips with his; pulled the scarf out of her hair, and shoved his fingers into the luxuriant mass, and she crushed herself against him, answering his passion with the same wild, exquisitely provocative ardor that had haunted his dreams in South America and awakened him in a sweat in prison. He dragged his mouth from hers. "Show me your house," he said in a thickened voice he hardly recognized. He really meant, show me your bedroom.

She nodded, knowing exactly what he meant, and she led him straight where he wanted to go, but when

he stepped through the doorway and saw the white wicker furniture, the lush green potted trees, and the froth of white ruffles on the bedspread, canopy, and dressing table, the room was so identical to his
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imaginings that he stopped short. As if she understood the direction of his thoughts, she said hesitantly,

"How did I do?"

"It looks exactly as I imagined it when—"

Julie watched the tension on his face and ended his unfinished sentence for him, her voice somber:

"When you were lying in bed on your boat, you mean, imagining me here in this room because I asked

you to do that on the phone. When," she continued with brutal honesty, "you still believed I was going to

be there with you … when you never believed I would trick you into coming for me and betray you to

the FBI and get you beaten and sent back to prison."

He looked at her, a grim smile touching his mouth and eyes. "When all that was true."

She sank down onto the bed, her face turned up to his, eyes honest and searching. "Could we lie here for a little while and talk first?"

Zack hesitated. On the one hand, he longed to put the past behind them and spend the present making love with her on that frilly, virginal white canopied bed, which seemed absurdly exciting when she was sitting on it. On the other hand, she was clearly upset and they couldn't very well begin again until the past was dealt with. "For a little while," he agreed.

She propped up a pile of pillows against the headboard for both of them and he stretched his arm out,

curving it around her shoulders as soon as she moved next to him. When she cuddled close, her hand

resting atop his chest, he remembered the mornings they'd spent in bed in Colorado, sitting exactly like this, and he smiled. "I forgot how perfectly you fit me."

"You're thinking about the mornings in Colorado, aren't you?"

It was a statement, not a question, and he tipped his head down and smiled. "I also forgot how perceptive you are."

"Not perceptive, really. I was thinking about the same thing." She smiled, and then made a hesitant attempt to open the dangerous discussion of their most recent past. "I don't know where to begin," she said, "And I'm … I'm almost
afraid
to begin. I don't even know what finally brought you back here today."

Zack's brows drew together in surprise. "What brought me back here today was Richardson. Didn't you

know he was going to come to see me?" When she gaped at him in shocked silence, he added, "He appeared at my house in California this morning, all decked out in his Brooks Brothers suit, Armani tie, and genuine, authentic FBI badge."

"Paul came to see you?" she said, stunned. "Paul Richardson? You can't mean my Paul."

Zack stiffened. "Evidently, I do mean 'your Paul.'" It hit Zack then that although he'd told her he loved her, she had said only that she'd missed him. In a carefully expressionless voice, he added,

"Somewhere I

got the idea that you would want me to come here for more reasons than just to make peace with you.

Now that I think about it, that was purely a conclusion I drew from what I saw on those videotapes. I

think," he said tightly, making a move to withdraw his arm, "this discussion might be better held in the living room. Or maybe tomorrow, in the lobby of my hotel, wherever that is."

"Zack," she said shakily, tightening her hand on his arm, "don't you dare leave this bed! If you ever shut
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me out again without giving me a chance to explain, I'll never forgive you. Paul is my friend. He was here for me when I was desperately unhappy and lonely."

His head fell back against the pillow and he wrapped his arms tightly around her, his voice heavy with irony and relief. "What is it about you that demolishes my mind. In Colorado, you made me feel like an

emotional yo-yo, and it's happening again."

Reverting to their original topic, he said, "I came here today because Richardson barged into my house

this morning, flashing his badge and slapping a large envelope on my desk containing two videotapes and a letter." His lingering jealousy over Richardson's friendship with Julie and his own guilt made him continue in a sarcastic tone, "In between expressing doubts about my legitimacy and trying to get into a fistfight with me, he also managed to tell me that, contrary to what Hadley wanted me to believe in Mexico City, you had
not
come up with the idea of joining me there as a way to entrap me. He also explained that it was a visit to Margaret Stanhope combined with Austin's death that finally drove you to

turn me in."

"What was in the videotapes and the letter?"

"One videotape was the news conference you gave when you got back from Colorado. The letter was the one you wrote to your parents when you were planning to join me. The other videotape was from the

FBI files—it was of both of us in the airport in Mexico City, showing everything that happened."