Married in Seattle (10 page)

The next two days flew past. They took long walks on the shore, collecting shells. They rented mopeds and raced along the beach. They launched kites into the sky and delighted in their colorful dipping and soaring. The day before they were scheduled to return to Seattle, Zach declared that he intended to cook dinner. With that announcement, he informed her he had to go into town to buy the necessary groceries. After the first night, he’d given Harry a week off, and Janine had been fixing simple meals for them.

“What are you serving?” she wanted to know when he pulled into the parking lot of the town’s only grocery store. “Tell me so I can buy an appropriate wine.”

“Wine,” he muttered under his breath. “I don’t normally serve wine with this dish.”

She followed him in, but when he discovered her trailing down the aisle after him, he gripped her by the shoulders and directed her back outside. “I am an artist, and I insist upon working alone.”

Janine had a difficult time not laughing outright.

“In order to make this dinner as perfect as possible, I must concentrate completely on the selection of ingredients. You, my dear wife,” he said, pressing his index finger to the tip of her nose, “are too much of a distraction. A lovely one, but nevertheless a distraction.”

Janine smiled, her heart singing. Zach wasn’t free with his compliments, and she found herself prizing each one.

While Zach was busy in the grocery store, Janine wandered around town. She bought a lifelike ceramic sea gull, which she promptly named Chester, and a bag of saltwater taffy. Then on impulse, she purchased a bottle of sun lotion in case they decided to lie outside, tempting a tan.

When she returned to the car, Zach was already there, waiting for her. She was licking a double-decker chocolate ice-cream cone and feeling incredibly happy.

“Did the master chef find everything he needed?” she asked. Two brown paper bags were sitting on the floor and she restrained herself from peeking inside.

“Our meal tonight will be one you’ll long remember, I promise you.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Holding out her ice-cream cone, she asked. “Do you want a taste?”

“Please.” He rejected the offer of the cone itself and instead bent forward and lowered his mouth to hers. As she gazed into his dark heavy-lidded eyes her heartbeat accelerated and she was filled with a sudden intense longing. Janine wasn’t sure what was happening between them, but it felt, quite simply, right.

Although the kiss was fleeting, a shiver of awareness
twisted its way through her. Neither of them spoke or moved. He’d meant the kiss to be gentle and teasing, but it had quickly assumed another purpose. For a breathless second, the smile faded from his eyes. He continued to hold her, his breathing rapid.

After nearly two full days alone together, Janine found it amusing that when he finally chose to kiss her, he’d do it in a crowded parking lot.

“I don’t remember chocolate being quite that rich,” he murmured. He strove for a casual tone, but Janine wasn’t fooled. He was as affected by their kiss as she was, and struggling just as hard to disguise it.

They were uncharacteristically quiet on the short drive back to the house. Until the kiss, they’d spent companionable days together, enjoying each other’s company. Then, in the space of no more than a few seconds, all that had changed.

“Am I banished from the kitchen?” Janine asked once they were inside the house, forcing an airy note into her voice.

“Not entirely,” Zach surprised her by saying. “I’ll need you later to wash the dishes.”

Janine laughed and pulled her suntan lotion out of her bag. While Zach puttered around inside, she put on her swimsuit, then dragged the lounge chair into the sun to soak up the last of the afternoon’s rays.

Zach soon joined her, carrying a tall glass of iced tea. “You look like you could use this.”

“Thanks. If I’d known how handy you were in the kitchen, I’d have let you take over long before now.”

He set the glass down beside her and headed back to the kitchen. “You’d be amazed by the list of my talents,” he threw over his shoulder.

Kissing was certainly one of them, she thought. The sample he’d given her earlier had created a sharp need for more. If she was a sophisticated, experienced kind of woman, she wouldn’t have any problem finding her way back into his arms. It would all appear so effortless and casual. He’d kiss her, and she’d kiss him, and then…They’d truly be husband and wife.

Lying on her back with her eyes closed, Janine imagined how wonderful it would be if Zach were to take her in his arms and make love to her….

She awoke from her doze with a start. She hurried inside to change, and as soon as she was ready, Zach announced that dinner was about to be served. He’d set the patio table so they could eat on the deck.

“Do you need any help?” she asked, trying to peek inside the kitchen.

“None. Sit down before everything cools.” He pointed to the chair and waited until she was comfortable.

“I only have a spoon,” she said, after unfolding the napkin on her lap. He must have made a mistake.

“A spoon is all you need,” he shouted to her from the kitchen.

Playfully she asked, “You went to all this trouble for soup?”

“Wait and see. I’ll be there in a minute.”

He sounded so serious, Janine had to smile. She was
running through a list of words to praise his efforts—“deliciously unique,” “refreshingly different”—when Zach walked onto the deck, carrying a tin can with a pair of tongs.

“Good grief, what’s that?” she asked in dismay.

“Dinner,” he said. “The only real cooking I ever did was while I belonged to the Boy Scouts.”

As though he was presenting lobster bisque, he set the steaming can in front of her. Janine leaned forward, almost afraid to examine its contents.

“Barbecued beans. With sliced hot dogs,” he said proudly.

“And to think I doubted you.”

Her reservations vanished, however, the moment she tasted his specialty. The beans were actually quite appetizing. He surprised her, too, by bringing out dessert, a concoction consisting of graham crackers covered with melted chocolate and marshmallows. He’d warmed them in the oven and served them on a cookie sheet.

Janine ate four of what Zach called “s’mores.” He explained that once they’d been tasted, everyone asked for “some more.”

“I don’t know how you’ve managed to stay single all these years,” she teased, forgetting for the moment that they were married. “If the news about your talent in the kitchen got out, women would be knocking at your door.”

Zach chuckled, looking extraordinarily pleased with himself.

An unexpected thought entered Janine’s mind, filling her with curiosity. She was astonished that she’d never asked Zach about other women in his life. It would be naive
to assume there hadn’t been any. She’d had her relationship with Brian; surely there were women in Zach’s past.

She waited until later that night when they were sipping wine and listening to classical music in front of the fireplace. Zach seemed relaxed, sitting with one knee raised and the other leg stretched out. Janine lay on her stomach, staring into the fire.

“Have you ever been in love?” She was trying for a casual tone.

Zach didn’t answer her right away. “Would you be jealous if I said I had?”

“No.” She sounded more confident than she felt.

“I didn’t think so. What about you?”

She took her time answering, too. She’d thought she was in love with Brian. It wasn’t until later, after the pain of Brian’s rejection had eased, that she realized she’d been in love with the
idea
of being in love.

“No,” she said, completely honest in her response. What she felt for Zach, whom she was only beginning to know, was already a thousand times stronger than what she’d ever felt for any other man. She didn’t know how to explain it, so she avoided the issue by reminding him, “I asked you first.”

“I’m a married man. Naturally I’m in love.”

“You’re fond of me, remember?”

“I thought you detested that word.”

“I do. Now stop tiptoeing around the subject. Have you ever
really
been in love—I mean head over heels in love? You don’t need to go into any details—a simple yes or no will suffice.”

“A desperate-passion kind of love?”

“Yes,” she told him impatiently. “Don’t make fun of me and please don’t give me a list of all the women you’ve been
fond
of.”

He grew so quiet and so intense that her smile began to fade. She pulled herself into a sitting position and looped her arms around her bent knees.

Zach stared at her. As she watched the harsh pain move into his eyes, Janine felt her chest tighten.

“Yes,” he answered in a hoarse whisper. “I’ve been in love.”

“H
er name was Marie.”

“Marie,” Janine repeated the name as though she’d never heard it before.

“We met in Europe when I was on assignment with the armed forces. She spoke five languages fluently and helped me learn my way around two of them in the time we worked together.”

“She was in the military with you?”

“I was army, she worked for the secret service. We were thrown together for a top-secret project that was only supposed to last a few days and instead dragged on for weeks.”

“This was when you fell in love with her?” The ache inside her chest wouldn’t go away. Her heart felt weighed down with the pain.

“We both were aware that the assignment was a dangerous one, and our working closely together was essential.”
He paused, sighing deeply. “To make a long story short, I fell in love with her. But she didn’t love me.”

“Then what?”

“I wanted her to leave the secret service and marry me. She wasn’t interested. If you insist on knowing the details, I’ll give them to you.”

“No.”

Zach took a sip of his wine. “I left the army soon after that. I didn’t have the heart for it anymore. Unlike Marie—her work, with all its risks, was her whole life. She was the bravest and most dedicated woman I’ve ever known. Although it was painful at the time, she was right to turn down my proposal. Marriage and a family would have bored her within a year. It
was
painful, don’t misunderstand me. I loved her more than I thought possible.”

They both were silent for a moment, then Janine asked, “What did you do once you left the army?”

“Over the years, I’d managed to put aside some money, make a few investments. Once I was on my own, I decided to go into business for myself. I read everything I could get my hands on about the business-supply field and modeled the way I dealt with my clients and accounts after your grandfather’s enterprise. Within five years, I was his major competitor. We met at a conference last year, and decided that instead of competing with each other, we’d join forces. And as they say, the rest is history.”

“Was she pretty?” Even as she asked the question, Janine knew it was ridiculous. What difference would it make if his Marie was a former Miss America or had a face
like a gorilla? None. Zach had loved Marie. Loved her as he’d probably never love again. Loved her more than he’d thought possible. By comparison, what he felt for her, Janine, was indeed only fondness.

“She was blond and, yes, she was beautiful.”

Janine made a feeble attempt at a smile. “Somehow I knew that.”

Zach shook himself lightly as if dragging himself back to the present and away from the powerful lure of the past. “You don’t need to worry. It was a long time ago.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Janine muttered. She got to her feet and collected their wineglasses. “I’m a little tired. If you don’t mind, I’ll go to bed now.”

Zach was still staring into the fire and Janine doubted he’d even heard her. She didn’t need a crystal ball to know he was thinking of the beautiful Marie.

No more than ten minutes after she’d turned off her bedroom light, Janine heard Zach move down the hallway to his room. For a moment she thought he’d hesitated in front of her door, but Janine convinced herself that was just wishful thinking.

From the second Zach had told her about the one great love of his life, Janine had felt as if a lump were building inside her. A huge lump of disillusionment that seemed to be located somewhere between her heart and her stomach. With every breath she took, it grew larger. But why should she care about Marie? Zach had never confessed to any deep feeling for
her.
He hadn’t cheated Janine out of anything that was her right.

An hour later, she lay on her side, wide awake, her hands pressed to her stomach. She didn’t mind that Zach had loved another woman so deeply, but what did hurt was that he could never love her with the same intensity. Marrying her, he’d claimed, made practical and financial sense. He was
fond
of her.

Like a romantic idiot, Janine had been frolicking through their short marriage, confident that they’d soon be in love with each other and live happily ever after with their two-point-five children in their perfect little home with the white picket fence.

Zach had loved Marie, who’d dedicated herself to her country.

The most patriotic thing Janine had ever done was cast her vote at election time. She didn’t think she should include the two occasions she’d made coffee at Red Cross meetings.

Marie was a linguist. After two years of high-school French, Janine wasn’t bad at conjugating verbs, but got hopelessly lost in real conversations.

“I had to ask,” she groaned to herself. She was almost certain that Zach would never have mentioned Marie if she hadn’t forced the subject. How blissful her ignorance had been. How comfortable.

She could never be the great love of his life and would always remain in the background. Far in the background…

When Janine heard Zach moving around the house a few hours later, she rolled over and glanced at the clock, assuming it was the middle of the night. Then she noticed it was midmorning; they’d planned to be on the road before
now. Tossing aside the blankets, she stumbled out of bed and reached blindly for her robe. But she wasn’t paying attention. She collided with the wall and gave a shout of pain. She cupped her hand over her nose and closed her eyes. Tears rolled slowly down her cheeks.

“Janine.” Zach pounded on the door. “Are you all right?”

“No,” she cried, still holding her nose. She looked in the mirror and lowered her hand. Just as she’d suspected, her nose was bleeding.

“Can I come in?” Zach asked next.

“No…go away.” She hurried to the adjoining bathroom, tilting back her head and clamping both hands over her nose.

“You sound funny. I’m coming in.”

“No,” she hollered again. “Go away.” She groped for a washcloth. The tears rained down now, more from humiliation than pain.

“I’m coming in,” Zach shouted, his voice distinctly irritated.

Before Janine could protest, the bedroom door flew open and Zach stalked inside. He stopped in the bathroom doorway. “What happened?”

Pressing the cold cloth over the lower half of her face with one hand, Janine gestured violently with the other, demanding that he leave.

“Let me look at that,” he said, obviously determined to deal with her bloody nose, as well as her anger. He pushed gently against her shoulders, lowering her onto the edge of the tub, and carefully removed the cloth.

“What did you do? Meet up with a prizefighter?”

“Don’t you dare make fun of me!” The tears ran down her cheeks again and plummeted on her silk collar.

It took only a minute or so to control the bleeding. Zach seemed to know exactly what to do. Janine no longer had any desire to fight, and she allowed him to do what he wanted.

Zach wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Do you want me to kiss it and make it better?”

Without waiting for an answer, Zach brought his mouth to hers. Janine felt herself go completely and utterly still. Her heart started to explode and before she realized what she was doing, she’d linked her arms around his neck and was clinging to him helplessly. Zach kissed her forehead and her eyes. His thumbs brushed the remaining tears from her cheeks. Then he nuzzled her neck. Trembling, she immersed herself in his tenderness. No matter what had happened in the past, Zach was hers for this minute, this day.

He lifted Janine to her feet and seemed to be leading her toward the bed. She might have been tempted to let him if she hadn’t learned about his love for Marie. Knowing she’d always place a remote second in his affections was a crippling blow to her pride—and her heart. It would take time and effort to accept that she could never be the woman who evoked an all-consuming passion in him.

With that thought in mind, she pushed him away, needing to put some distance between them before it was too late.

Accepting Janine’s decision, Zach dropped his arms and moved to lean against the doorjamb, as if he needed its support to remain upright.

Janine couldn’t look at him, couldn’t speak. She began fumbling with her clothes.

“I’ll give you a few minutes to dress while I begin loading the car,” Zach said a moment later, sounding oddly unlike himself.

Janine nodded miserably. There was nothing she could say. Nothing she could do. He’d wanted to make love to her, and she’d turned him away.

While he packed the car, Janine dressed. She met him fifteen minutes later, her suitcase in hand. She was determined to act cool toward him. But not too cool. Friendly, she decided, but not excessively so.

“I’m ready,” she announced, with her most cheerful smile.

Zach locked the house, and they were on their way. Pretending there was nothing out of the ordinary, Janine chatted amicably during the drive home. If Zach noticed anything amiss, he didn’t comment. For his part, he seemed as hesitant as she was to talk about what had happened. They seemed to be of one mind about the morning’s incident. The whole thing was best forgotten.

Only once did Zach refer to it. He asked her if her nose was causing her any pain, but she quickly assured him she was fine. She flashed a smile bright enough to blind him and immediately changed the subject.

The Seattle sky was gray and drizzling rain when they pulled into the parking garage at the downtown condominium owned by Zach. Silently, she helped him unload the car. They were both unusually quiet as they rode the elevator to the tenth floor.

Zach paused outside his door and eyed her skeptically. “Am I obliged to haul you over the threshold again, or is once enough?”

“Once is enough.”

“Good.” He grinned and unlocked the door, then pushed it open for her to precede him. Curious, she quickened her pace as she walked inside. The living room was a warm mixture of leather and wood, and its wide window offered a breathtaking view of the Seattle skyline.

“It’s lovely.”

He nodded, seeming pleased at her reaction. “If you prefer, we can move. I suppose now that we’re married, we should think about purchasing a house.”

“Why?” she inquired innocently.

“I’m hoping we’ll have children someday. Whenever you’re ready, that is. There’s no pressure, Janine.”

“I…know that.” She looked past him at the panoramic view, and wrapped her arms around herself, her heart speeding up at his words.

Walking to his desk, Zach listened to his voice mail messages; apparently there were a lot.

While he did that, Janine wandered from room to room, eager to see her new home. In the hallway, she noted that Zach had diplomatically left her luggage on the carpet between the two bedrooms. His was in the master. In his own way, he was telling her that where she slept would be her decision. If she wished to become his wife in the fullest sense, all she had to do was place her suitcase in the master bedroom. Nothing more needed to be said.

It didn’t take Janine long to decide. She pulled her suitcase toward the guest room. When she looked up, Zach was standing in the hall, studying her, his expression aggrieved.

“Unless you need me for anything, I’m going to the office,” he said gruffly.

“See you tonight.”

His gaze moved past her and rested briefly on the bed in the guest room. He cocked one eyebrow questioningly, as though to give her the opportunity to reconsider. “Are you sure you’d rather sleep in here?” he asked.

“I’m sure.”

Zach raked his fingers through his hair. “I was afraid of that.”

A minute later, he was gone.

Zach didn’t come home for dinner that night. Janine had been in the bathroom when the phone rang; Zach had left her a message saying he’d be late. So she ate by herself in front of the television, feeling abandoned and unloved. She was just putting the dishes in the dishwasher when he came home.

“Sorry I’m late.”

“That’s okay,” she lied, never having felt more alone.

Zach glanced through the mail on his desk, although Janine was sure he’d looked at it earlier. “You got the message I wouldn’t be home for dinner?”

“Yes. Did you want anything to eat? I could fix you something.”

“I ate earlier. Thanks, anyway.”

They watched an hour’s worth of television and then decided to go to bed.

Janine changed into her pajamas—the same no-nonsense type she’d been wearing all week, since she couldn’t bring herself to wear the baby-dolls Pam had given her—and had just finished washing her face. She was coming out of the bathroom, her toothbrush between her teeth, when she nearly collided with Zach in the hallway. She’d forgotten her slippers and was going to her bedroom to retrieve them. They’d already said their good-nights, and Janine hadn’t expected to see him again until morning. She wasn’t prepared for this encounter, and the air between them crackled with tension.

She had to force herself not to throw her toothbrush aside. Not to tell him that she longed for him to love her with the same passion he’d felt for Marie.

His hands reached out to steady her, and when she didn’t immediately move away, he ran the tips of his fingers down her thick brown hair, edging her bangs to the side of her face so he could gaze into her eyes.

Janine lowered her head. “Esh-coo me,” she managed, but it was difficult to speak with a toothbrush poking out of her mouth.

“Pardon?”

Janine hurried back to the bathroom and rinsed out her mouth. Turning, she braced her hands on the sink. “I said excuse me for bumping into you.”

“Will you be comfortable in the guest room?”

“Yes, I’ll be fine.”

He held a blanket in his arms. “I thought you might need this.”

“Thanks,” she said as smoothly as possible, coming out of the bathroom to take the blanket from him. She wanted to be swept off her feet. She wanted love. She wanted passion.

He was offering a warm blanket.

“I…phoned Gramps,” she said, looking for a way to delay their parting and cursing herself for her weakness.

“I intended to call him myself, but got sidetracked.”

“He sounded good. Dr. Coleman and a couple of his other friends were at the house and the four of them were playing pinochle.”