Judith McNaught (36 page)

of, then she muffled a nervous laugh as she understood that he'd used the wrong name

intentionally. "You

mean
Willie,"
she corrected. "And I really am alone, at least for the moment."

"Thank God! Where are you, honey?"

Julie's mouth opened, but no sound came out. For the first time since she'd come to live with the Mathisons, she was going to lie to them, and despite the importance of her reason, she still dreaded it and felt ashamed. "I'm not certain exactly," she evaded with a telltale awkwardness they had to have heard.

"It's—it's cold here, though," she provided lamely.

"What state are you in? Or are you in Canada?"

"I—I can't say."

"Benedict's there, isn't he!" Ted said, and the anger he was suppressing came bursting through. "That's why you can't say where you are. Put the bastard on the phone right now, Julie!"

"I can't! Listen to me, everyone, I can't stay on the phone, but I want you to believe me when I tell you that I'm not being mistreated in any way. Ted," she said, trying somehow to communicate with the one person who would understand the law and,

hopefully, that judicial mistakes could happen, "he didn't kill

anyone, I know he didn't. The jury made a mistake, and so you can't—
we
can't—blame him for trying to escape."

"A mistake!" Ted exploded. "Julie, don't fall for that crap! He's a convicted murderer and he is a
kidnapper!"

"No! He didn't intend to kidnap me. All he wanted was a car, you see, to get him away from Amarillo, and he'd fixed a flat tire on the Blazer, so naturally I offered him a ride. He would have let me go, but he couldn't because I saw his map—"

"What map did you see, Julie? A map of what? Of where?"

"I have to go now," she said miserably.

"Julie!" Reverend Mathison's voice interrupted,

"when are you coming back?"

"As soon as he'll let me, no—as soon as I can. I—I have to go. Promise me you won't tell anyone about this call."

"We promise, and we love you, Julie," Reverend Mathison said with touching, unconditional trust.

"The

whole town is praying for your safety."

"Dad," she said, because she couldn't stop herself,

"could you ask them to pray for his safety, too?"

"Have you lost your mind!" Ted burst out. "The man's a convicted—" Julie didn't hear the rest of what he

said. She was already putting the receiver back in its cradle and blinking back tears of sorrow. By asking
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them to pray for her captor, she had inadvertently forced her family to assume that she was either Zachary Benedict's dupe or his accomplice. Either one was a betrayal of everything they stood for and believed in, a betrayal of everything they'd believed of her, too. Shaking off the depression settling over her, Julie reminded herself that Zachary Benedict was innocent and
that
was what really mattered right now. Helping an innocent man to stay out of prison was not immoral or illegal, and it was
not
a betrayal of her family's trust.

Getting up, she added wood to both fireplaces, put the phone back in the closet, then went into the kitchen and spent the next hour cleaning it up and then making homemade stew to warm her patient when

he awoke. She was cutting up potatoes when she realized that if he knew she'd made a phone call, she'd

have a difficult, if not impossible, time convincing him that her family and her former sister-in-law were

trustworthy and wouldn't tell the authorities she'd called. Since he already had enough to worry about, she decided not to tell him.

Finished, she wandered into the living room and sat down on the sofa, the radio still on in the kitchen so that she could hear if there was more news that would interest Zack.

It was funny, in an awful ironic sort of way, she thought with a rueful smile as she stretched out on the

sofa, staring up at the ceiling, all the years she'd spent behaving like Mary Poppins and never, ever straying from the straight and narrow path, only to come to this.

In high school, she'd had lots of friends who were boys, but she never let them become more than friends, and they'd seemed willing to accept that.

They picked her up for football games, offered her rides

to school, and included her in their raucous, laughing groups. In her senior year, Rob Kiefer, the school's undisputed "hunk," had thrown her into a quandary of longing and frustration by asking her to the prom.

Julie'd had a secret crush on Rob for years, but she refused his coveted invitation anyway, because everyone said that Rob Kiefer could get a girl's underwear off quicker than Mary Kostler could undress

the mannequins in the window at Kostler's Dress Shop.

Julie didn't believe Rob would try anything with her because they were friends. She was also Reverend Mathison's daughter, which gave her a certain

"immunity" from unwanted passes, but she couldn't go to

the prom with Rob. Even though she was dying to say yes and even though he promised solemnly that he'd behave on prom night, she knew the whole school, and eventually the whole town, would assume

that Reverend Mathison's daughter had become another on the long list of Rob's sexual conquests.

Instead, Julie went to the prom with nice Bill Swensen, whose father was the school's bandleader, and

Rob escorted Denise Potter, one of the cheerleaders.

That night, she'd watched in sublime misery as Rob, who was crowned king of the prom, leaned over and kissed his queen, Denise Potter.

Denise got pregnant that night. When the couple got married three months later and rented a dingy one-room apartment instead of going off to college as they'd planned, the entire town of Keaton knew why. Some of Keaton's citizens pitied Denise, but most of them acted as if she'd invited it on herself by going near Rob Kiefer.

Julie felt irrationally responsible for the entire nightmare. The experience also caused her to reinforce her

resolve to avoid trouble and scandal at all costs. In college, she steadfastly refused dates with Steve Baxter, even though she had a crush on him, because the handsome football player was a notorious flirt with a reputation for scoring in the bedroom even more often than he did on the football field. Steve, for

reasons she never understood, spent almost two years pursuing her, appearing alone at social functions if

he knew she was going to be there, staying at her side, and doing his sincere and charming best to convince her that she really was special to him. They laughed together, they talked for hours, but only in groups, because Julie adamantly refused to start dating him.

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Now, as Julie compared her staid past to her chaotic present and uncertain future, she didn't know whether to laugh or cry: In all these years, she hadn't stepped out of line once because she didn't want her family and the people in Keaton to think badly of her. Now that she was about to stray from the

"straight and narrow path," however, she wasn't going to settle for some minor infraction of moral and

social rules that would stir up a little gossip in Keaton. No indeed, not her, Julie thought wryly.

What she

was going to do was violate not only moral precepts, but probably the laws of the United States of America, and while she was doing that, the entire news media would be providing gossip about it for the

entire world—just as they were already doing!

The moment of humor vanished and Julie looked somberly at her hands. From the time she went to live

with the Mathisons, she'd chosen to make certain

"sacrifices," up to and including her decision to become

a teacher, rather than pursuing another career that would have paid much more. And yet, each sacrifice invariably brought her such rich rewards that she always felt as if she received much more than she gave.

Now, she had the distinct feeling that fate was calling in her debts for a lifetime of unearned rewards.

Zachary Benedict was as innocent of cold-blooded murder as she was, and she couldn't shake the feeling

that she was expected to do something about it.

Rolling over onto her side, she tucked her arm beneath the throw pillows, watching the flames leaping in

the grate. Until the real murderer was discovered, no one in the world, including her parents, was going to condone anything she did from now on. Of course, once her family realized that Zack was innocent,

they'd approve completely of everything she'd done and might yet have to do. Well, probably not everything, Julie thought. They wouldn't approve of her falling in love with him so quickly, if what she felt

for him was actually love, and they definitely wouldn't approve of her sleeping with him. With a mixture of

quiet acceptance and nervous anticipation, Julie realized that loving him was actually out of her hands;

sleeping with him was virtually a foregone conclusion unless he'd drastically changed his wishes since last

night. Although, she rather hoped he'd give her a few days to know him better.

Beyond that, all she could do was try to guard her heart from needless pain and to refrain from doing or saying anything that would make her even more vulnerable to being hurt by him than she already was.

She wasn't an utter fool, after all. Long before Zachary Benedict had gone to prison, he'd lived in an elite

world of luxury populated by glamorous,

sophisticated people with notoriously loose morals and no code

of personal conduct or ethics. She'd read enough about him in magazines before he went to prison to know that the man she was with in this secluded mountain retreat had once possessed fabulous homes and villas of his own, where he gave lavish parties attended not only by famous movie stars, but by international business tycoons, European royalty, and even the president of the United States He was
not
a comfortable, genial assistant pastor of a small town church.

Compared to him, Julie knew she was as naive and unsophisticated as the proverbial newborn babe.

It was after 10P.M.when she woke up with a confused start, a sofa pillow clutched to her chest. A slight

movement off to her left caught her attention, and Julie quickly turned her head at the same time an amused male voice remarked, "A nurse who abandons her patient and falls asleep while on duty does not

get paid her full rate."

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Julie's "patient" was standing with his shoulder propped casually against the fireplace mantel and his arms

crossed over his chest, watching her with a lazy smile. With his hair still damp from a shower and a cream

chamois shirt that was open at the throat and tucked into fawn-colored trousers, he looked incredibly handsome, completely recovered … and very amused about something.

Trying to ignore the treacherous leap her heart gave at the sight of that enthralling, intimate smile, Julie hastily sat up. "Your friend—Dominic Sandini—he didn't die," she told him, wanting to put his mind at ease about that immediately. "They think he's going to be all right."

"I heard that."

"You did?" Julie said cautiously. It occurred to her that he might have heard it on the radio while he was dressing. If not—if he remembered her telling him that—then it was mortifyingly possible he might remember the other things she'd said in those unguarded minutes when she thought he was beyond hearing. She waited, hoping he'd refer to the radio, but he continued watching her with that smile tugging

at his lips, and Julie felt her entire body grow warm with embarrassment. "How do you feel?" she asked, hastily standing up.

"Better now. When I woke up, I felt like a potato being baked in its own skin."

"What? Oh, you mean the bedroom got too hot?"

He nodded. "I kept dreaming I'd died and gone to hell. When I opened my eyes, I saw the fire leaping around me, and I was pretty sure of it."

"I'm sorry," Julie said, anxiously searching his face for any sign of lingering ill effects from his exposure to

the elements.

"Don't be sorry. I realized very quickly that I couldn't really be in hell."

His light-hearted mood was so infectious and so utterly disarming that she reached up to lay the back of

her hand against his forehead to test his body temperature without realizing what she was doing.

"How

did you know you weren't in hell?"

"Because," he said quietly, "part of the time, an angel was hovering over me."

"You were obviously hallucinating," she joked.

"Was I?"

This time, there was no mistaking the husky timbre in his voice, and she pulled her hand away from his head, but she couldn't quite free her gaze from his.

"Definitely."

From the corner of her eye, Julie suddenly noticed that a porcelain duck was turned the wrong way on the mantle beside his shoulder, and she reached out to straighten it, then she rearranged the two smaller ducks beside that one.

"Julie," he said in a deep, velvety voice that had a dangerous effect on her heart rate, "look at me."

When

she turned to look at him, he said with quiet gravity,

"Thank you for saving my life."

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Mesmerized by his tone and the expression in his eyes, she had to clear her throat to stop her voice from

shaking. "Thank you for trying to save mine."

Something stirred in the fathomless depths of his eyes, something hot and inviting, and Julie's pulse tripled

even though he didn't attempt to touch her. Trying to switch the mood to one of safe practicality, she said, "Are you hungry?"

"Why didn't you leave?" he persisted.

His tone warned her that he wouldn't allow a change of subject until he'd gotten answers, and she sank down onto the sofa, but she looked at the centerpiece on the table because she couldn't quite meet his searching gaze. "I couldn't leave you out there to die, not when you'd risked your life thinking I'd drowned." She noticed that two of the white silk magnolias in the centerpiece were bent at awkward angles and she obeyed the automatic impulse to lean forward and fix them.