Judith McNaught (44 page)

He was nine years older and a thousand times harder than she, and yet something about her softened him and made him
like
being soft, both of which were new experiences for him. Before he went to prison, he'd been accused by women of being everything from distant and unapproachable to cold and

ruthless. Several women had told him he was like a machine, and one of them had carried the analogy to a definition: She said he turned on for sex and then turned off for everything else except his work.

During

one of their frequent arguments, Rachel had told him he could charm a snake and he was just as cold as one.

On the other hand, he'd never known a woman in his adult life, including Rachel, whose primary interest wasn't in her own career and what he could do for it.

When you added that to all the other phonies and sycophants he'd had to endure from the time he arrived in Hollywood, it wasn't particularly surprising that

he'd become cynical, disillusioned, and callous. No, Zack thought, that wasn't true. The truth was he'd already been that way before he got to Los Angeles

—callous and cold enough to be able to turn his back on his old life, his family, and even his own name when he was only eighteen. Enough to banish it all

from his mind and never, ever look back or discuss it with anyone—not the studio publicity office who complained at having to "invent" a whole background for him when he made his first film, not his lovers,

and not his wife. His former name, his family, and his past were dead facts that he'd buried permanently and irrevocably seventeen years ago.

"Zack?"

The simple sound of her voice saying his name had a magical effect on him; his name sounded special, different, "Hmm?"

"Do you realize I don't know very much about you, even though we're … er, we've been…" Julie stopped, not certain if it was assuming too much to use the word
lovers.

Zack heard the embarrassed uncertainty in her voice and smiled because he assumed she was probably searching for some prim and proper—ergo, wholly inappropriate—word to use to describe the unbridled passion they'd shared or else a word to use for what they were to each other, now that they'd shared it.

He smiled into her hair and said, "Which would you prefer, one word or a phrase?"

"Don't be so smug. I happen to be qualified to teach sex education all the way up to the junior high school level."

"Then what's the problem?" Zack chuckled.

172

Her answer banished his laughter, stopped his breath, and melted him completely. "Somehow," she said,

studiously studying her hands in her lap, "the clinical term
sexual intercourse
seems all wrong to describe something that is so … so sweet when we do it. And so deep. And so profound."

Zack leaned his head against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes, steadying himself, wondering why she had this insane effect on him. A moment later, he managed to say in a seminormal voice, "How does the term
lovers
sound?"

"Lovers," she agreed, nodding her head several times. "What I was trying to explain is that even though

we've been lovers, I don't really know anything about you."

"What would you like to know?"

"Well, for a start, is Zachary Benedict your real name, or did you change it when you started making movies?"

"My first name was Zachary. Benedict was my middle name, not my last, until I had it legally changed

when I was eighteen."

"Really?" She turned her head, her soft cheek rubbing against his arm as she looked up at him.

Even with

his eyes closed, he could feel her watching him, see her curious smile, and while he waited for the inevitable question he knew was coming next, he remembered other things…

"I would never have turned you down, Zack."

"How dare you suggest I would even consider telling anyone you raped me!"

"'Sexual intercourse' seems all wrong to describe something that is so…
so sweet when we do it. And
so deep. And so profound."

Her voice intruded on the memories: "What was your last name before you changed it to Benedict?"

It was exactly the question he'd expected, the one he'd never answered for anyone. "Stanhope."

"What a beautiful name! Why did you change it?"

Julie saw the tension in his jaw, and when he opened his eyes, she was stunned by the harsh expression in them.

"It's a long story," he said shortly.

"Oh," she said, and decided that it was an unpleasant enough story that it was best left completely alone for the time being. Instead, she said the first thing that came to mind to distract him: "I already know a lot

of things about your youth, because my older brothers were avid fans of yours back then."

Zack looked down at her, well aware that she'd set aside her natural curiosity about his "long story," and it warmed the chill that had come over him when he'd said the name Stanhope. "They were, were they?"

he teased.

Julie nodded, pleased and relieved that her change of topic had worked so quickly. "Because they were, I already know you grew up on your own, traveling around with rodeos and roping steers, living on ranches and breaking horses—did I just say something funny?"

173

"At the risk of ruining all your illusions, princess,"

Zack said, chuckling, "those stories were all products

of the studio publicity department's overactive imagination. The truth is that I would rather spend two

days on a Greyhound bus than two hours on the back of a horse. And if there is anything in this world that I dislike more than horses, it's cows. Steers, I mean."

"Cows!" she sputtered, and her infectious laughter rang out like music, lightening his heart as she shifted

on the sofa to face him, pulling her knees up against her chest. Wrapping her arms around them, she studied him in fascinated absorption.

"What about you?" he teased, reaching for his brandy glass on the table, trying to distract her from asking the next inevitable question. "Is Mathison the name you were born with or did you change it?"

"I wasn't born with a name."

Zack stopped in the act of swallowing his drink.

"What?"

"I was actually found in a cardboard box on top of a trash can in an alley, wrapped in a towel. The janitor who found me took me inside to his wife until I was warm enough to be taken outdoors again to

the hospital. He felt I should be named after his wife who'd looked after me that day, and so they called me Julie."

"My God," Zack said, trying not to look as horrified as he felt.

"I was lucky! It could have been much, much worse."

Zack was so appalled, he missed the laughter in her entrancing eyes. "How?"

"His wife's name could have been Mathilda. Or Gertrude. Or Wilhimena. I used to have nightmares about being named Wilhimena."

He felt it happening again, that peculiar sharp tug on his heart, the funny ache in his chest when she smiled like that. "The story has a happy ending at any rate," he said, trying to reassure himself, which seemed ridiculous at this late date, even to him.

"You were adopted by the Mathisons, right?" When she

nodded, he concluded, "And they got themselves a beautiful baby girl to love."

"Not quite."

"What?" he said again, feeling stupid and dazed.

"What the Mathisons actually got was an eleven-year-old girl who'd already tried to embark on a life of

crime on the Chicago streets—aided and abetted by some boys a little older than me who showed me certain … ah … tricks. Actually," she added gaily, "I probably would have had quite an illustrious career." She held up her hand and wiggled her long fingers at him, explaining, "I had very quick fingers.

Sticky ones."

"You stole?"

"Yes, and I got busted when I was eleven."

"For stealing?" Zack uttered in disbelief.

174

"Certainly not," she said, looking stung. "I was much too quick to get caught. I got hauled in on a bum rap."

Zack gaped at her. Just hearing her use the street cant made him feel like shaking his head to clear it.

And yet, the finely honed imagination that had made him a successful director was already at work, visualizing her as she'd probably been as a little girl: small and thin, he decided, from poor nourishment

…

a gamin face dominated by those huge Dondi eyes of hers … small, stubborn chin … dark hair, short and shaggy from inattention … feisty.

Ready to square off and take on the hard, cruel world…

Ready to take on an ex-convict…

Ready to change her mind and stay with him in defiance of everything she had become, because she believed in him now…

Caught between laughter, tenderness, and

amazement, he sent her an apologetic look. "My imagination

just ran away with me."

"I'll bet it did," she said with a whimsical, knowing smile.

"What were you doing when you got busted?"

She gave him a long, amused look. "Some older boys were very kindly demonstrating a technique to me

that would have been extremely useful in dealing with you. Except when I tried it on the Blazer yesterday,

I couldn't remember exactly what went where."

"Excuse me?" Zack said blankly.

"I tried to hot-wire the Blazer yesterday."

Zack's shout of laughter rebounded off the ceiling and before Julie could react, he wrapped his arms around her, hauled her next to him, and buried his laughing face in her hair. "God help me," he whispered.

"No one but I could manage to kidnap a minister's daughter who also knows how to hot-wire a car."

"I'm sure I could have done it yesterday if I hadn't had to stop every couple minutes and appear in front of your window," she informed him, and he laughed harder.

"Good Lord!" she burst out, dumbstruck. "I should have tried to pick your pocket instead!" His second shout of laughter nearly drowned out her next sentence. "I'd have done it in a second, if I'd guessed the

keys were in your pocket." Inordinately pleased that she could make him laugh like this, Julie leaned her head against his chest, but as soon as he stopped laughing she said, "Now it's your turn. Where did you

really grow up if it wasn't on ranches, and things?"

Zack slowly lifted his face from her fragrant hair and tipped her chin up. "Ridgemont, Pennsylvania."

"And?" Julie prompted, confused by her odd impression that he felt a special significance in answering

that question.

"And," he said, looking into her puzzled eyes, "the Stanhopes own a large manufacturing company there
175

that has been the economic backbone of Ridgemont and several surrounding communities for nearly a century."

She shook her head in disgust. "You were rich! All those stories about you growing up on your own, no family, living on the rodeo circuit—that's completely dishonest. My brothers believed that stuff!"

"I apologize for misleading your brothers," he said, chuckling at her indignant look. "The truth is, I didn't

know what the publicity department had invented about me until I read it in the magazines myself, and then it was too late to raise hell—not that it would have done me any good in those days, anyway. At any

rate, I did leave Ridgemont before I was nineteen, and I was on my own after that."

Julie wanted to ask why he'd left home, but she stuck to basics for the moment. "Do you have brothers and sisters?"

"I had two brothers and a sister."

"What do you mean 'had'?"

"I mean a lot of things, I suppose," he said with a sigh, leaning his head back against the sofa again, feeling her shift and return to their former position with their legs stretched out on the table.

"If you would rather not talk about this for some reason," she said, sensitive to his changing mood,

"there's no need to do it."

Zack knew he was going to tell her all of it, but he didn't want to examine the myriad feelings that were compelling him to do it. He'd never felt the need or desire to answer these same questions from Rachel.

But then he'd never trusted her or anyone else with anything that might bring him pain. Perhaps because Julie had already given him so much, he felt he owed her answers. He tightened his arm around her and

she moved closer, her face partially on his chest.

"I've never talked about any of this with anyone before,

although God knows I've been asked about it thousands of times. It isn't that long or interesting a story,

but if I sound strange, it's because it's very unpleasant for me and because I feel a little odd discussing it

for the first time in seventeen years."

Julie kept silent, stunned and flattered that he was going to tell her.

"My parents died in a car wreck when I was ten," he began, "and my two brothers, my sister, and I were raised by our grandparents—when we weren't away at boarding schools, that is. We were all a year apart in age; Justin was oldest, I was next, then Elizabeth, then Alex. Justin was—" Zack paused, trying to think of the right words and couldn't. "He was a great sailor, and unlike most older brothers, he was always willing to let me tag along with him wherever he went. He was—kind. Gentle. He committed

suicide when he was eighteen."

Julie couldn't stop her horrified intake of breath.

"My God, but why?"

Zack's chest lifted beneath her cheek as he drew in his breath and slowly expelled it. "He was gay. No one knew it. Except me. He told me less than an hour before he blew his brains out."

When he fell silent, Julie said, "Couldn't he have talked to someone—gotten some support from his family?"

Zack gave a short, grim laugh. "My grandmother was a Harrison and came from a long line of rigidly
176

upright people with impossibly high standards for themselves and everyone else. They'd have regarded Justin as a pervert, a freak, and turned their backs on him publicly if he didn't recant at once. The Stanhopes, on the other hand, have always been the complete opposite—reckless, irresponsible, charming, fun-loving, and weak. But their most outstanding trait, one that has bred truest throughout the