Judith McNaught (85 page)

Mother, helping to convince Dad that it will be so much nicer if he waits there calmly instead of coming

over here, which was what he was determined to do when he couldn't reach you on the phone."

"Why is he so anxious to see us?" Julie asked.

Slouching against the wall, Ted shoved his hands in his pockets, lifted his brows, and looked at Zack.

"Can you guess why Julie's father might be a little, shall we say … determined … to have a word with you upon your unexpected arrival in town?"

Zack swallowed the rest of the water and filled the glass again. "I think I can guess."

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"Julie," Ted ordered with a chuckle, "go and comb your hair and try not to look so … ah … delightfully rumpled. I'll call Dad and tell him we'll be there shortly."

She turned on her heel and fled toward her room, calling over her shoulder that the phone was off the hook in the living room.

When Ted came back into the kitchen after making his phone call, Zack was in the bathroom, shaving.

He emerged a few minutes later wearing a fresh shirt, his hair combed, and walked into the kitchen.

Ted

paused in the act of searching through all the cabinets and said over his shoulder, "I don't suppose you

know where Julie put the vodka this time?"

"This time?" Zack said, shifting his thoughts from his forthcoming meeting with his future father-in-law.

"Julie has a peculiar little habit," Ted explained, bending down and looking under the sink, "When something is bothering her, she rearranges things …

puts them into order, you could say."

A tender smile quirked at Zack's mouth when he remembered seeing her do that in Colorado. "I know."

"Then you won't be surprised," Ted continued, opening the refrigerator in his fruitless search for the liquor, "to learn that since you were released from prison, she has rearranged every closet, drawer, and cabinet she has and repainted her garage. Twice.

Take a look at this refrigerator," he said pointing to the

shelves on the doors. "You will note that the bottles and jars are all arranged in descending order by size, tallest on the left. Now, on the next shelf, she has reversed that for artistic purposes, so that the tallest items are on the right. Last week, everything was arranged by color. It was something to see."

Torn between amusement at what he was hearing and regret for the heartache that had caused her to do it, Zack said, "I'll bet it was."

"That's nothing," Ted continued dryly. "Take a look at this," he said, and opening a cabinet, he pointed at the cans and boxes on the shelves. "She's filed her groceries in alphabetical order."

Zack choked on a laugh. "She's what?"

"Look for yourself."

Zack peered around the other man's shoulder. All the cans, bottles, and boxes were mixed together but standing at military attention in precise rows across the front. "Applesauce, asparagus, beets," he murmured in amused disbelief, "cauliflower, Cheerios, flour, Jello, beans…" He looked at Ted.

"She

misfiled the beans."

"No, I didn't," Julie said, walking into the kitchen and trying to look perfectly nonchalant when both men

turned to her in laughing amazement. "They're under
L."

"L?"Zack said, trying unsuccessfully to keep his face straight.

She dropped her embarrassed gaze to an invisible speck of lint she was flicking off her sweater.
"L—

for legumes," she informed him. Zack choked on his laughter and pulled her into his arms, burying his face

in her hair, basking in the joy of her. "Where's the vodka?" he whispered in her ear. "Ted wants it."

She tipped her head back, her eyes filled with laughter. "It's behind the legumes."

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"What the hell is it doing there?" Ted asked, shoving the cans of beans aside and seizing it.

His shoulders shaking with suppressed mirth, Zack managed to say blandly and correctly, "It's under
L

—for liquor. Naturally."

"Naturally," Julie confirmed with a giggle.

"Too bad there's no time to drink it," Ted said.

"I didn't want any," Zack replied.

"You'll be sorry."

Ted's squad car was waiting at the curb, and he held the back door open for them. Zack reluctantly slid into the back seat behind Julie, his expression turning tense.

"What's wrong?" she asked, so vibrantly attuned to his presence that she instantly sensed the slightest change in his voice or expression.

"This isn't my favorite mode of transportation, that's all."

Zack saw her eyes darken with sorrow, but she rallied almost instantly and deliberately made a joke he

knew was designed to lift his spirits. "Ted," she said, keeping her smiling eyes on Zack, "you should have brought Carl's Blazer. Zack thinks it's much more …

attractive."

It made both men laugh.

Fifteen minutes later, Zack wasn't laughing; he was seated across from Julie's father in his small study, getting his ass chewed out by Reverend Mathison, who was pacing angrily in front of him. Zack had expected the ass-chewing, he even accepted it as his due, but he had expected Julie's minister-father to be a small, meek man who would deliver a

monotone lecture on whatever commandments he felt Zack

had broken. He had
not
expected Jim Mathison to be a tall, robust man, capable of delivering a scathingly descriptive, eloquently worded tirade that would have put George C. Scott's monologue at the opening of
Patton
to shame.

"I cannot excuse or condone anything you did! Not one thing!" Jim Mathison finished at last, flinging himself into the worn leather chair behind his desk.

"If I were a violent man, I'd take a horsewhip to you.

I'm tempted to do it anyway! Because of you, my daughter was subjected to terror, to public censure, to

heartbreak! You seduced her in Colorado, I know damned well you did! Do you deny it?"

It was insane, but at that moment, Zack admired everything about the man; he was the sort of father Zack would have wanted—and wanted to be

someday—a deeply concerned parent with strong principles about what was acceptable and what was not—a man of integrity and honesty who expected the same behavior from those around him. He intended for Zack to feel ashamed. He was succeeding.

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"Do you deny you seduced my daughter?" he repeated angrily.

"No," Zack admitted.

"And then you sent her back here to confront the media and defend you to the world! Of all the cowardly, irresponsible—how can you face yourself or me or her, after that?"

"Actually, sending her back here was the only decent thing I did," Zack said, defending himself for the first time since the tongue-lashing had begun.

"Go on, I'm waiting to hear how you figure that."

"I knew Julie was in love with me. I refused to take her to South America and sent her back here instead for her sake, not mine."

"Your sense of decency was certainly short-lived, wasn't it! A few weeks later, you were scheming to have her join you."

He waited again, demanding an answer with his silence, and Zack reluctantly complied. "I thought she

was pregnant, and I didn't want her to have an abortion or endure the humiliation of unwed motherhood

in a small town."

Zack sensed a subtle reduction in the other man's hostility, but it wasn't evident in his next acid comment.

"If you'd exercised any decency, any restraint over your
lust
in Colorado, you wouldn't have had to worry about her being pregnant, would you?"

Torn between anger, embarrassment, and amusement at Mathison's scornful, biblical use of the term
lust,
Zack lifted his brows and looked at him.

"I'll thank you for the courtesy of an answer, young man."

"The answer is perfectly obvious."

"And now," he said angrily, leaning back in his chair.

"Now you come breezing back to town in your private plane to make her into a public spectacle again, and for what? So you can break her heart! I've heard and read and seen enough about you before you went to prison and after you got out to know what sort of life you lead in California, to know what sort of licentious, superficial, amoral life it has been—wild parties, naked women, drunkenness, dirty movies. How do you answer to that?"

"I have never made a dirty movie in my life," Zack replied, tacitly admitting to the other charges.

Jim Mathison almost smiled. "At least you aren't a liar. Are you aware that Paul Richardson is in love with her? He wants to marry her. He's asked for my blessing. He's a fine, decent man with principles. He wants a wife for life, not just until the next buxom blond movie star comes along and turns his head. He wants children. He's willing to make sacrifices for her—even to the extent of going to California to see you. He comes from a close, loving family like Julie does. They could have a wonderful life together.

Well, what do you say to that?"

In the midst of a blaze of jealousy, Zack suddenly realized that Jim Mathison was merely using Richardson as a means to force Zack to face his shortcomings as Julie's potential husband, and he was

also skillfully and deliberately maneuvering Zack into a position where he could either declare himself and

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lay his cards on the table or back off and go away.

Despite the personal discomfort Mathison had deliberately subjected him to, Zack's admiration for the man doubled and he leaned back in his chair.

"What I have to say is this," he began, responding to the list of Richardson's qualities in the order Mathison had given them: "Richardson may be a plaster saint, and he may be in love with her; but so am

I. Furthermore, Julie loves me. I am not interested in buxom blondes or redheads or any woman except Julie. Forever. I, too, want children, just as soon as Julie is willing. I will make whatever sacrifices for her

are necessary. I cannot change the way I lived my life before now, I can only change the way I live it from this point on. I cannot help the fact that my family was not close, I can only let her teach me how a

family is supposed to be. If I can't have your blessing, I'd at least like your reluctant acceptance."

Mathison crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze direct. "I haven't heard the word
marriage
from you."

Zack smiled. "I thought it was a foregone conclusion."

"In whose mind? Has Julie actually agreed to marry you, I mean since you've come back?"

"There hasn't been time to ask her."

His brows shot up. "Not even during the hour that her phone was off the hook tonight? Or were you too busy trying to convince her to start that family you say you want?"

Zack had the appalling feeling that he was going to blush like a schoolboy.

"It seems to me," Mathison continued curtly, "that you have a distorted view of what is proper and decent. In your world, couples have sex, then babies, and
then
when they get around to it, they get married. That is not an acceptable order of things in Julie's world or God's world or mine!"

Restraining the urge to squirm in his chair, Zack said shortly, "I intended to ask her to marry me tonight.

In fact I thought we could stop in Lake Tahoe on the way to California tomorrow and get married there."

Mathison lurched forward in his chair. "You what!

You two have known each other for seven days, you've already slept together, and now you intend for her to drop everything and go away with you and then get married in some sleazy civil ceremony. She has a job, a family, and other people to consider.

What do you think she is, some brainless pet you can snap a leash on and lead off to Disneyland?

Where's your sense of justice and priorities! I expected better of you after the speech you made me a

few minutes ago."

Zack walked straight into the trap. "I don't think I understand. What is it you expect me to do?"

Mathison sprung it. "I expect you to behave like a gentleman, to make a few sacrifices. In short, I would

expect Julie's future husband to spend time here getting to know her, to treat her with reverence and respect, as God intended for us to treat our women, and then to ask her to marry him. Assuming she agrees, you will be engaged for a suitable time, and then you will be married. The honeymoon," he finished implacably, "takes place after the wedding.

If you are willing to make all of these sacrifices, then,

and only then, would I be willing to give my blessing or perform the ceremony, which, by the way, I feel

certain is the only way Julie would feel truly and happily married. Am I making myself clear?"

Zack frowned. "Very."

Jim Mathison saw the frown and pounced. "If those few sacrifices of personal convenience and your
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physical satisfaction are already too much for you to make, then—"

"I didn't say they were too much," Zack interrupted, his thoughts hopelessly tangled up in the heretofore unconsidered realization that Julie would naturally want her father to perform the wedding ceremony.

"Fine, Zack," he said, using Zack's name for the first time. With a smile that was suddenly warm and even paternal, he said, "Then everything's settled."

Surfacing from his private thoughts, Zack caught the other man's pleased smile, realized he had been coerced into almost agreeing to something that was absolutely out of the question, and said shortly, "Not everything. I'm willing to stay in town as much as I can, but there is no reason for Julie and I to 'get to know each other' before I ask her to marry me, nor am I willing to wait for months for the wedding. I'll ask her to marry me right away. Once she agrees, as far as I'm concerned, we're engaged."

"You're engaged when you slide a ring on her finger.

Formality and tradition exist for a reason, young man. Like celibacy before the wedding, they give a special and lasting meaning to the event itself."

"Fine," Zack said a little testily.

Mathison smiled, "When do you want to be married?"