Slightly Imperfect (12 page)

"Yeah. He was on our old boat, the
Ramona Dos
, when it burned last year." Where Zac was supposed to have been. "He had a stroke. We fished together before that."

She frowned, listening closely while keeping an eye on the water fracas.

"That's the reason for the old boat I bought. I wanted one as nearly like the
Ramona Dos
as possible." He thought of the ones he'd seen and could have afforded and felt good again about his final choice. "I'm planning on shrimping again."

"Why?" She took in the elegant surroundings, her conclusion evident. Her curiosity ran rampant, he knew, but she was polished.

"I want to. It's what I do. I want to take Papa with me."

And Marcus, maybe." She proved relentless, not bothering to hide her agenda. Or camouflage it.

"And Marcus. Anytime."

She smiled, satisfied. "What else do you do?"

"I'm going back to school, as soon as the summer session starts. I majored in philosophy, and I want to get my master's."

"To teach."

"Yeah. In the ghetto—Houston probably."

"Philosophy?" Her smile humored him.

He liked her arched brow. "Crazy, huh?"

"Not really." She moved onto her stomach, stretched her legs out behind her, never taking her eyes off the water. "Why don't you teach Marcus?"

"Philosophy?"

"Teach him everything you know."

He stretched out beside her, rolled onto his hip, propped his head in his palm. "Would you trust me to do that? You know nothing about me except what I've told you."

"I know you," she half whispered, her jade eyes appraising. "What you are is evident. I trust you. Teach him."

"And the twins?"

The furrow formed between her brows. "Of course, the twins."

* * *

Zac donned a pair of jeans and a clean tee shirt and made moves toward dinner as Victoria sat on a kitchen barstool watching. She and her brood had taken showers and reclaimed their Oyster House clothes. Victoria's head kept turning toward Josh and Lizbett entertaining the children with Samson the Siamese and Delilah the Doberman, just as Zac had promised. Zac could almost see her ears straining.

"What can I do to help?" she said, as if in afterthought.

He glanced up from filleting fish. "Let me guess." His eyes took in her clothing and moved to her perfectly manicured hands. "I'll bet your skills don't include mess duty."

She laughed. "I set a magnificent table." Slipping from the stool, she went to search the cabinets for the tools of her proclaimed trade. She said over her shoulder, "Don't go to too much trouble. They only eat Spaghetti Os and canned green beans."

Zac laughed at the familiarity of that scenario.

"Shall I set separate tables? Lizbett can eat with the children... and... Josh?"

"No way." He watched the rough house between Josh, Lizbett and her charges on the breakfast room floor. "I want to teach them how a real man graciously accepts defeat when he totally screws up dinner."

They ate gathered around the kitchen table, Alex and Ari elevated by phone books on either side of Victoria, Marcus between Lizbett and Zac. Josh completed the picture. Zac watched, satisfied. They were all hungry, and he had done a fair job. The children seemed to be eating heartily, after Josh's emergency run to the convenience store for canned green beans.

Victoria's thinness was easily understood. Between coaching the twins to eat and laying out etiquette instructions to them and Marcus, very little food passed her lips. Next time—if there was one—he'd be quicker on the seating arrangements and give her some assistance.

"You have a tennis court," she observed in the middle of the quiet calamity.

His gaze followed hers out the big window framing the pool and the lighted courts, assuring himself, once more, that he did.

"Do you play?" she asked.

"I used to play a lot. Do you?"

She nodded as she retrieved a green bean from the floor and placed it discreetly by her plate.

"We could play sometime but it wouldn't be fair," he said. When her brows arched, he explained, "You'd wear one of those skimpy dresses with the ruffled panties, and I'd get distracted and lose, and then I?d lose my temper, like men do, and ruin our friendship."

She laughed. Josh and Lizbett laughed, too, exchanging glances framed in yards of white around their big black eyes.

"That's sweet," Victoria murmured, negating his honesty. True to form she asked, "Do you think you could teach Marcus?"

"Probably." He smiled conspiratorially at Marcus.

"His father was an excellent—"

"I know." Zac considered pulling up a chair for Tomas Cordera's ghost. "I played him once for a membership at the hotel." Zac recalled a promotional campaign, launched when the old hotel tennis courts were refurbished. He had opted to try to win a match off Tomas Cordera, the reward being a free tennis membership. "We went into a tie breaker. Cordera wasn't into losing, though." He painted self-deprecation into his smile.

"Until he—" She checked herself, but a significant sadness prevailed. "If I had known, I would have come to watch."

"Not then, you wouldn't."

"Today I would." She met his eyes unwaveringly.

He wasn't sure of the meaning behind that. He tabled it for mulling over, when the house would be deathly quiet, when he would toss sleeplessly, in his bed, according to pattern.

When the twins fell asleep at the table, slumped in their chairs, Josh transported them to a living room sofa, then took Marcus to the study to watch one of Allie's old Disney movies. While Lizbett loaded the dishwasher, Zac maneuvered Victoria to the sofa across from Alex and Ari, and poured two glasses of hundred-year-old brandy.

"I don't drink when I'm responsible for the children."

"Treat yourself," he suggested from the opposite end of the sofa. "We'll take you home, or I'll bet Lizbett drives."

She smiled and took a sip. "You have a way of just taking over. No. A way of taking control."

"Sorry."

"I don't mind, or I'll say if I do."

She would. He'd witness her ability to speak up.

"Your taking control is nice, actually. Sometimes I—"

"Get tired."

"No. I sometimes have trouble making decisions."

From what she'd related, he'd have to agree, but didn't.

She tactfully swayed the subject. "This is such a beautiful home, Zac. How long have you lived here?"

"About six weeks."

Her surprise was evident.

"Before I left on the freighter I was living above Buck's Bar on Rocket Road." He decided to take the plunge. His hand swept the room. "I inherited all this."

"Really? I've never known anyone who inherited anything. From whom?"

"Carron Fitzpatrick." He held her gaze steadily, wondering if she'd change her mind about his tutelage. "We were lovers. She died."

"Oh, Zac." She put her brandy down with a stricken expression. "Carron?"

"You knew her?"

"Coby went to school with her—before boarding school. I remember him talking about her red hair and freckles and... all her assets." She smiled. "The boys teased her unmercifully."

"And then she grew up and died." He took a big drink, swirled the
Remy Extra Perfection
and took another drink, relishing the fire in his belly. "She had a congenital heart disease. She died within a week of Allie's accident." He watched Victoria putting dates together in her mind.

"Was that the reason for the freighter?"

"That was it." That and Maggie's banishment.

"I'm so sorry."

His grief was too close to the surface to risk thanking her. "Did
you
know Carron?"

"Later—in my party era. We seemed to migrate along the same routes. She was beautiful." She offered no more. "Zac, I'm really sorry."

He nodded, still hurting, but just a little less each day.

"Please tell me about your relationship. You were married to—"

"Maggie. I came in from fishing one day, and Carron was waiting on the dock. All else is history." He paused, giving her time to examine today's parallel.

She took up her brandy again, waiting for the details.

"She said she had seen my picture, and she wanted me." He shrugged, smiled, offering humility. "I never understood that completely."

"You didn't?" One perfect brow arched. "I do. It happened to me the first time I saw Tommy. I can't explain it. I didn't love him... at first, but my desire for him overpowered all reasoning. Maybe
that
was what Carron felt."

An accurate description of compulsion, wrong as it had been.

"How did you feel about her?"

"The same. Something in me went crazy, and I lost all reasoning." He had felt a little like that when he'd seen Marcus, but he'd managed to control it. Maybe he wouldn't have to now.

"See," she said softly. "It happens."

"My weakness destroyed my marriage, my relationship with my family and all semblance of morality as I'd known it. I'd never go that route again."

She nodded, his feelings mirrored in her eyes.

He felt obligated to tell her, "Carron and I would have never made it if she'd lived. She couldn't stay out of other men's beds."

She showed no surprise, assuring him he had been right in assuming she had known Carron better than she had originally revealed.

"Every time I didn't conform she'd find somebody—anybody—and sleep with him." For the first time since Carron's death, he felt a release, as though he'd been allowed to crawl from beneath a rock. His honesty with Victoria contained salvation. "How long could I take that?"

"Christian couldn't take it even once," she said quietly. "And when I discovered Tommy was married, it devastated me. We
are
a monogamous society beneath all the clamor."

"I'd like to think so." After polygamy hell.

A quiet fell on the room. They could hear the twin's gentle breathing from opposite ends of the other sofa. The faint, rhythmic sound of the dishwasher through the open kitchen door, the familiar background music of the movie from the study filtered through Zac's reverie. He gave himself up to a floating, euphoric sensation. No, the feeling was more complicated than satisfaction; it temptingly resembled peacefulness.

"We have a lot in common," Victoria said softly.

He wondered what her own thoughts had been in the past moments. For him, this had been a day of comparing scars. "Yeah. We danced. We paid the fiddler."

They were both acquainted with tragedy. It stood to reason the prevailing factor in their lives, now, was caution.

"So, Captain that's the story," Zac half shouted into the static-laden phone line. "I have a boat, but I may not be operating it on a profitable basis, and I didn't think you'd want to put your money into a hobby for the Abriendos." Zac paused, listened to the wires pop. "Are you hearing me?"

"Hell, yeah, I hear you boy. I'm just thinkin' about that windfall you told me about. Did it have anything to do with that lazy cat you was luggin' around?"

"Yeah. Indirectly." He thought of the night he had brought Carron the kitten she named Samson. She had been sick then, pale and flushed, beautiful in a pink terry robe, but he hadn't had a clue. "I think the thing to do is plan on the future, sir."

"Ruffin," he interjected. "Call me Ruffin."

"I'll be here in Ramona. Meanwhile, you can keep your money in the bank, drawing interest to apply to that fleet we'll buy when you retire. Texas should have legal gambling by then. We won't be able to catch enough shrimp to feed all the tourists."

"Don't say that, boy!"

Zac laughed, negating the constant threat of a barren Gulf. "Right."

"Is it a deal?"

"It's a deal," Ruffin said at last. "And thanks for callin' me 'stead of leavin' me hangin'. You'll be a prize partner when we get around to it."

"Thank
you
," Zac said, "for caring when I needed it."

"Hang tight, partner."

"Hang tight, Ruffin."

* * *

When Zac approached the Bay Shore gate late Monday afternoon, a security guard flagged him to hand him a powder blue envelope with his name on it.

"Thanks." He turned the envelope over in his hand, enjoying the scent. "Where'd this come from?"

"Valdez Hotel van dropped it off, sir."

"Thanks." He drove along the waterfront to the big yellow house, then sat in the driveway reading.

Zac,

Thank you for a nice evening and dinner. Marcus, Ari and Alex had a wonderful time. The fish was delicious. You were so kind to entertain us. Please call. I'd like to talk to you about Spanish lessons for Marcus.

Victoria

He tucked the note into his bible with the first one, wondering if he had failed to show her a wonderful time.

* * *

Zac and Maggie met face to face in the doorway to Gerald's outer office that afternoon. She toted an armload of blueprints, fabric and paint samples. Angel peered placidly from a backpack on her mother's back. Over Maggie's shoulder, he saw Jan, equally burdened, talking with Gerald's secretary.

"Hi, Maggie. Can I help with the juggling act?" He quickly extracted Angel from the pack, held her in his hungry arms.

Miraculously, Maggie balanced the remainder of gear. "Hello, Zac." Her eyes lowered to Delilah at his side. "I see you got your dog back."

His hand unconsciously stole to Delilah's sleek head. "A year was long enough for Jan and Luke to dog sit."

"Nice collar," Maggie murmured, diverting her dark, heavy-lashed gaze beyond his shoulder. "Are those real diamonds?"

He wasn't supposed to answer. "Could I take Angel for a while, maybe? Looks like you have a busy day. I could bring her home later."

Maggie's mouth tightened. "I'm taking her to day care from here. They're expecting her. I've paid in advance. The life of a single mother and her daughter." Silence hung in the noisy atmosphere. Apparently as uncomfortable as he, she glanced purposely toward Jan, calling, "Jan, I'll meet you in the car."

He kissed Angel and quickly stuffed her in the pack. Maggie swayed a little. Holding the door wide for her, he felt a pang of guilt, longing and relief rolled into one emotion.