LOVING THE HEAD MAN (26 page)

       Bree smiled, removed her veggies from the burner. 

       “She’s so smothering like that.”

       “She just seems to be very concerned about you.”

       “And Dad isn’t?” Zack snapped, to Bree’s surprise.  She looked at him.

       She looked at him, puzzled by his sudden snappishness.  “I wasn’t implying--”

       “My dad loves me just as much as my mother does.  If not more so!  What are you trying to say?”

       “I wasn’t trying to say anything.  I was just suggesting that your mother’s concerned about you,
that’s
all I said and that’s all I was trying to say.”

         Zack settled back down.  And although he attempted to smile off his out-of-nowhere aggression, Bree could still see the chill behind that smile.  “Yeah, I tend to start and stop a lot, and that’s probably why she’s so smothering.  This dental hygienist thing is my fourth major, if you can believe it, and Oxnard is my fourth college.  I started school when I was eighteen. 
Normal time to start college, right?
  Only now I’m twenty and still floundering.  I’m really a loser in the long run, I’m telling you, a big fat zero.  And I guess Mom knows it.”

       That boy has issues, Bree thought, looking at him.  But she also knew not to so much as give even encouragement.  He’d snapped her head off once.  She wasn’t giving him a second chance. 

       “You went to college?” he asked her when it was clear she wasn’t going to respond to his attention-grabbing ‘loser’ line. 

       “Yes.  I haven’t too long ago graduated law school, in fact.”

       Zack was amazed. 
“Law school?
 
You
?”
  Then he attempted to hide his disgust with yet another one of his winning smiles.  “But you look my age!”

       “I’m twenty-five, almost twenty-six.  So I’ve got a few years on you.”

      
“A very few,” Zack noted.
  “And Dad has tons on both of us.”

       Bree frowned.  “Your father isn’t even forty yet.  You make him sound ancient.”

       “He’s just about forty, and he is ancient. 
Compared to us.”

       Bree didn’t care to be lumped into any category with this kid, but she held her tongue.  And within seconds, she and Zack could hear the apartment door unlock.  And although she was relieved to know that Robert was home and coming to her rescue, Zack seemed suddenly nervous. 

       “Brianna!” Robert yelled.

       “We’re in here!” Bree yelled back with a smile.  “He’s going to be so surprised,” she said to Zack.

       “We?” they could hear Robert say as he headed for the kitchen.  When he entered, and saw his son, he stopped in his tracks. 

       Zack, to Bree’s surprise, jumped from the stool and ran into his father’s arms.  Robert staggered back by the impact of his son’s embrace.  For some reason Bree didn’t picture Zack Colgate as the thrilled-to-see-his-parent type.  To her, he was more of the spoiled, rich,
my family blows
kind of kid.

       Robert had to release himself from his son’s tight embrace.  Not that it was difficult.  Zack was now and had always been very small of frame.  When Robert saw tears in his bright, blue eyes, however, his heart melted.  “It’s going to be all right, Zackary, you hear me?”

       “What that girl said,” Zack asked, “what she’s saying all over TV, it’s not true,
Dad,
is it?”

       Robert rubbed his son’s small shoulders.  “No, son, it’s not true.”

       “You wouldn’t sexually harass anybody.”

       “No, I wouldn’t.”

       “Mom says any man’s capable of anything if the right woman comes along, but I told him not you.  You’ve got all the women you could ever want.  You don’t have to beg anybody for sex.”

       Robert glanced at Bree when Zack mentioned all of his supposed women, but Bree pretended to be reading the newspaper on the island counter. 
Although she heard every word.

       “How’s your mother?” Robert asked as he moved away from Zack and headed toward Bree.

       “She’s great,” Zack said, already feeling that emptiness he always felt whenever he was not near his father. 

       “Hello babe,” Robert said to Bree and kissed her on the lips. 

       Zack’s jaw tightened when Robert kissed her.  “She’s gorgeous as ever,” Zack said.  “The queen of Malibu, they call her.  She’s still a very sought-after supermodel, you know, despite her age.”

       Supermodel, Bree thought.  Robert’s ex is a
supermodel
?

       Robert smiled.  “You make her sound as if she’s ready for Medicare, Zackary.”

       “Well,” Zack said with a smile of his own as he moved back to his seat at the center island, “you know what I mean.”

       “When was the last time you phoned her?” Robert asked, one hand on the small of Bree’s back, the other hand resting on the countertop.  Bree also noticed that he was leaned against her too, as if his overworked body needed the added support. 

       “Let me see,” Zack was thinking, “the last time I contacted her?”

       “She phoned me the other night,” Robert said, “and mentioned that you haven’t been in touch with her the way she’d like.”

       She phoned Robert the other night?  Bree had assumed Robert had no relationship with his ex whatsoever, that she was old news from way back.  Or at least that was the way he presented it to her.

       “But that’s why I don’t bother,” Zack said.  “She’s always hovering, always phoning you and complaining about me.  You ought to tell her to mind her own business, Dad.”

       “You are her business, watch your mouth.”

       “But you should tell her to stop calling you so much--”

       “She’ll call me as often as she cares to, boy, who do you think you’re talking about?  That’s your mother you’re talking about.”

       Bree didn’t mean to show her jealousy, but she failed.  Zack caught it and smiled.  “You’re right,” he said to his father.  “I forget how much she means to you, too.  But she can be so . . . overbearing sometimes.”

       Robert realized quickly what Zack was up to.  He still had foolish notions about Robert and his mother getting back together after all these years.  He decided to squash all of that.  “How’s school?” he asked as Bree went to check on her food.

       “It’s okay,” Zack said.  “This one professor is giving me fits, but I’m used to it.”

       Robert tossed some nuts from a tray on the countertop.  “What kind of fits?” he asked his son.

       “He keeps saying my heart isn’t in it, my heart isn’t in it.  Like what does that have to do with anything?  And he just hates me,
that’s
all. 
Treats me like I’m a loser.”

       Robert considered his son.  He loved him with every breath in his body, but he was a handful.  “School’s still in session, isn’t it?”

      
“Yeah, so?”

       “So shouldn’t you be there? 
Especially if this professor already has you in his crosshairs.”

       “Yeah, and like some horny female suppose to run around the country calling my dad a pervert and a rapist and I’m just supposed to sit in dental hygiene class and ignore it all?”

       Bree removed the mitts she wore to check on her baked chicken and walked back over to the countertop, next to Robert.  He continued to stare at his son, and she could tell he was worried.  As if he needed something else to be worried about. 

       She snuggled against him, looking up into his eyes.  “Would you like something to drink?” she asked him.

       He smiled, touched the tip of her nose.  “That would be brilliant, sweetheart,
thank
you.”

      
“Wine or champagne?”

       “How about both?” he said and Bree laughed.  Then walked over to the wet bar.

       Zack stared at her as she left, and Robert caught a glimpse of unhappiness in his
sons
bright eyes. 

       “I see you’ve met Brianna,” he said to his son, to gauge his reaction to her.

       Zack nodded.  “We’ve met.”  Then he smiled.  “I thought she was your maid.”

       Robert looked at his son.  “Why would you think such a thing as that?”

       “I had on an apron,” Bree said from the wet bar, to make certain that no argument ensued over her.

       Zack, however, grinned.  “She looks like a maid, that’s why I thought it,” he said. “I mean she’s black, she had on an apron.”

       “And black and apron translates into maid to you?”

       Zack continued to grin.  “Sure,” he said, “at least that’s how I see it.”

       “You sound like a fool,” Robert said so flatly that it wiped Zack’s smile off of his face.  “I hope you see that, too.”

       Bree returned with a glass of champagne and handed it to Robert, trying her best to suppress a smile. 

       “I didn’t mean anything by it,” Zack said.  “I was just joking around.”

       “It was a bad joke,” Robert said. 
“And one that you will not repeat in this house.
  Understand?”

       Zack stared at his father, his expression equal parts anger and hurt. 
“Yes, sir.”

       “This is Brianna Hudson.  You can call her Brianna, or you can call her Bree.  But you will not call her anything derogatory.  She is my lady, my woman, my old lady, whatever is the euphemism of the day, and she will be respected with the same level of respect you accord me.  Do you understand that?”

       Zack was accustomed to his father’s firmness, but never just for joking about one of his females, something Zack did with every female of his father’s he’d ever met.  But for him to get all bent out of shape over this Brianna Hudson, this black chick, was not just new to Zack, but weird as all get out.