“You ordered me to relax, you didn’t ask.”
Her prim reprimand brought a reluctant smile to his lips. “Now I am asking.”
Thrown completely off balance by what sounded like gentleness in his voice, Julie took a sip of her wine, stalling for time, steadying her confused senses, while he stood only two feet away, towering over her, his broad shoulders blocking out her view of anything but him. It hit her suddenly that he’d evidently showered, shaved, and changed clothes while she slept . . . and that, in a pair of charcoal trousers and a black sweater, Zachary Benedict was far more handsome than he’d ever looked on screen. He lifted his hand and braced it against the wall beside her shoulder, and when he spoke again, his deep voice had that same strange, compellingly gentle quality. “On the way here, you asked me if I was innocent of the crime I was sent to prison for, and I gave you a flippant answer the first time and a grudging answer the next. Now I’m going to tell you the truth simply and voluntarily . . .”
Julie tore her gaze from his and stared into the ruby wine in her glass, suddenly afraid that in her state of weak weariness, she might actually believe the lie she sensed he was about to tell her.
“Look at me, Julie.”
With a mixture of dread and helpless anticipation, she lifted her eyes and met his steady amber gaze.
“I didn’t kill or plot to kill my wife or anyone else. I was sent to prison for a crime I didn’t commit. I’d like you to at least believe there’s a possibility I’m telling you the truth.”
Noncommittally, she stared into his eyes, but in her mind she suddenly saw the scene at the rickety bridge: Instead of insisting she drive across the bridge with him, he had let her get out of the car and then he had given her blankets to keep warm in case the bridge collapsed, in case he drowned when the car plunged into that deep, icy creek. She remembered the harsh desperation in his voice when he kissed her in the snow, pleading with her to go along with the ploy, so the truck driver wouldn’t be hurt. He’d had a gun in his pocket, but he’d not attempted to use it. And then she remembered his kiss—that urgent, hard kiss that had gentled suddenly and then become soft and insistent and sensual. Since dawn that morning, she’d been forcibly trying to forget the memory of that kiss, but now it came back—vibrant and alive and dangerously exciting. Those recollections combined seductively with the rich timbre of his deep voice as he added, “This is the first normal night I’ve had in over five years. If the authorities are close behind on my trail, it will be my last one. I’d like to enjoy it if you’ll cooperate.”
Julie was suddenly inclined to cooperate: For one thing, despite her nap, she was mentally exhausted and not up to sparring with him; she was also starving and heartily sick of being afraid. But the memory of that kiss had nothing to do with her capitulation. Nothing whatsoever! she told herself. Nor did it have anything to do with the sudden, impossible conviction she had that he was telling her the truth!
“I’m innocent of that crime,” he repeated more forcefully, his gaze never leaving hers.
The words hit her with a jolt, yet still she resisted, trying not to let her foolish emotions overrule her intellect.
“If you can’t actually believe that,” he said with a harsh sigh, “could you at least pretend you believe it and cooperate with me tonight?”
Stifling the urge to nod, Julie said cautiously, “What sort of ‘cooperation’ do you have in mind?”
“Conversation,” he said. “Lighthearted conversation with an intelligent woman is a forgotten pleasure to me. So is decent food, a fireplace, moonlight in the windows, good music, doors instead of bars, and the sight of a pretty woman.” A definite note of cajolery lightened his voice as he added, “I’ll do all the cooking if you’ll agree to a truce.”
Julie hesitated, stunned by his reference to her as a pretty woman, then she decided he’d meant nothing by it except a little empty flattery. A night without tension and fear was being offered to her and her battered nerves cried out for relief. What harm was there in what he asked. Particularly if he were truly innocent. “You’ll do all the cooking?” she bargained.
He nodded, a lazy grin sweeping over his rugged face as he realized she was about to agree, and the unexpected glamour of that white smile did treacherous things to her heart rate. “Okay,” she agreed, smiling a little despite her desire to remain at least partially aloof, “but only if you’ll do the cleaning up as well as the cooking.”
He chuckled at that. “You drive a hard bargain, but I accept. Sit down while I finish dinner.”
Julie obeyed and sat down on one of the stools at the counter that divided the kitchen from the living room.
“Tell me about yourself,” he said, taking a baked potato out of the oven.
She took another swallow of the wine for courage. “What do you want to know?”
“General things, for a start,” Zack said casually. “You said you aren’t married. Are you divorced?”
She shook her head. “I’ve never been married.”
“Engaged?”
“Greg and I are talking about it.”
“What is there to discuss?”
Julie choked on her wine. Stifling an embarrassed laugh, she said, “I don’t actually think that question falls in the category of general information.”
“Probably not,” he agreed with a grin. “So, what’s holding up the engagement?”
To her disgust, Julie felt herself blush beneath his amused gaze, but she answered with admirable calm. “We want to be certain we’re completely compatible—that our goals and philosophies match.”
“Sounds like to me you’re stalling. Do you live with this Greg?”
“Absolutely not,” Julie said in a censorious voice, and he lifted his brows as if he found her quaintly amusing.
“Any roommates?”
“I live alone.”
“No husband and no roommates,” he said, as he poured more wine in her glass. “So no one is looking for you now, wondering where you are?”
“I’m sure a lot of people are.”
“Who, for instance?”
“My parents, for a start. By now they’re undoubtedly frantic and calling people to see if anyone’s heard from me. The first person they’ll call is my brother, Ted. Carl will be looking for me, too. It’s his car I’m driving, and by now my brothers are organizing a manhunt, believe me.”
“Is Ted the brother who’s a builder?”
“No,” Julie stated with amused satisfaction. “He’s the brother who’s a Keaton sheriff.”
His reaction was gratifyingly sharp. “He’s a sheriff!” As if to wash away the unpleasant information, he took a long swallow of his wine and said with heavy irony, “And I suppose your father is a judge?”
“No. He’s a minister.”
“My God!”
“You got it. That’s his employer. God.”
“Of all the women in Texas,” he said with a grim shake of his head, “I managed to kidnap the sister of a sheriff and the daughter of a minister. The media will have a field day when they get ahold of who you are.”
The brief feeling of power Julie felt at seeing him alarmed was even headier than the wine she was drinking. Nodding happily, she promised, “Loyal lawmen everywhere will be hunting you down with dogs and guns, and Godfearing Americans will be praying they find you right away.”
Turning slightly aside, he poured the last of the bottle of wine into his glass and tossed it down. “Great.”
The mood of conviviality had been such a relief that Julie soon regretted its loss, and she searched for something to say that might restore it. “What are we having for dinner?” she said finally.
The question shook him from his reverie, and he turned to the stove. “Something simple,” he said, “I’m not much of a cook.” With his body blocking her view of the preparations, she had little to occupy her, and so Julie idly watched the way his sweater stretched across his wide shoulders. He was amazingly muscular, as if he’d been wo
rking out in the prison gym. Prison. She’d read somewhere that many people who are sent to prison are actually innocent, and she found herself suddenly clinging to the comforting hope that Zachary Benedict might actually have been one of them. Without turning, he said, “Sit down on the sofa. I’ll bring the food over there.”
Julie nodded and got off the stool, noting that the second glass of wine was definitely affecting her, making her feel a little too relaxed. With Zack following her, carrying plates, she went over to the sofa and sat down at one of the linen place mats he’d laid on the coffee table in front of the fire. He put down two plates, one of which contained a juicy steak and baked potato.
In front of her, he plopped down a plate on which he had upended a can of tuna fish. That was all. No vegetable, no garnish, no nothing.
After having her mouth water for so long in anticipation of a thick, juicy sizzling steak, Julie’s reaction to that cold, round mound of unadorned, unappetizing tuna fish was swift and unguarded. Her irate gaze snapped to his face, her mouth open in angry dismay.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” he asked innocently. “Or would you prefer a nice steak like the one I left in the kitchen?”
There was something about the boyish prank, something about his engaging grin and smiling eyes that caused an unexpected, uncontrollable, and, under the circumstances, bizarre reaction from Julie: She started to giggle. And then she started to laugh. Her shoulders were still shaking when he walked back to the sofa carrying another plate with a steak on it and put it in front of her.
“Like that a little better?”
“Well,” she said, trying to sound severe despite the laughter still shimmering in her eyes, “I can forgive you for kidnapping and terrifying me, but it’s a hanging offense to give me tuna while you eat steak.” Julie would have been content to eat in peaceful silence, but as she cut the first bite of steak he noticed the bruise on her wrist and asked her how she’d gotten it. “That’s a football injury,” she explained.
“A what?”
“I was playing touch football last week and I got tackled.”
“By some big halfback?”
“No, by a small boy and a big wheelchair.”
“What?”
It was obvious that he craved conversation as much as he’d claimed, and Julie managed to give him an abbreviated version of the game while she ate. “It was my own fault,” she finished, smiling at the memory. “I love basketball, but I’ve never understood football. It’s a game that makes no sense.”
“Why do you say that?”
She waved her fork dismissively. “Consider the players, for a start. You have a fullback and a halfback and a quarterback. But there’s no three-quarters back. You have a tight end but no loose end.” His burst of laughter collided with her last sentence as she finished, “It’s definitely not my game, but it doesn’t matter, because my kids love it. One of my boys is probably going to go to the Wheelchair Olympics.”
Zack noted the softness that crept into her voice and the glow that lit her eyes as she spoke of “my boys,” and he continued to smile at her, marveling at her capacity for compassion and her sheer sweetness. Unwilling to let her stop talking, he cast about for another subject and asked, “What were you doing in Amarillo the day we met?”
“I’d gone there to see the grandfather of one of my handicapped students. He’s quite wealthy, and I hoped to convince him to donate money to an adult literacy program I’m involved in at school.”
“Did you succeed?”
“Yes. His check is in my purse.”
“What made you decide to become a teacher?” he said, strangely unwilling to let her stop talking. He’d chosen the right topic, Zack realized when she gave him a heart-stopping smile and warmed to her subject with gratifying immediacy. “I love children, and teaching is an old and respectable profession.”
“Respectable?” he repeated, startled by the subtle quaintness of the notion. “I didn’t think being ‘respectable’ was of much concern to anyone these days. Why is it so important to you?”
Julie evaded the all-too-perceptive comment with a lift of her shoulders. “I’m a minister’s daughter, and Keaton is a small town.”
“I see,” he said, but he didn’t completely see at all. “There are other professions that are just as respectable.”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t get to work with people like Johnny Everett and Debby Sue Cassidy.”
Her face glowed at the mere mention of Johnny’s name, and Zack was instantly curious about the male who seemed to mean more to her than her almost-fiancé. “Who is Johnny Everett?”
“He’s one of my students—one of my favorite students, actually. He’s paralyzed from the waist down. When I first started teaching at Keaton, he never spoke and he was such a discipline problem that Mr. Duncan wanted to send him away for special education with mentally handicapped kids. His mother swore he could talk, but no one ever heard him, and since she never let him out of the house to play with the other kids, no one could be sure she wasn’t trying to make her son seem . . . more normal. In class, Johnny would do disruptive things, like knocking books onto the floor or blocking the doorway during recess—small things—but they were constant and so Mr. Duncan decided to send him off to a special school.”
“Who is Mr. Duncan?”
She wrinkled her small nose with such distaste that Zack grinned. “He’s our principal.”
“You don’t like him very well, I take it?”
“He’s not a bad man, he’s just too rigid. He would have been right at home a hundred years ago when a student who spoke out in class was disciplined with a hickory stick.”
“And Johnny was terrified of him, is that it?”
She giggled merrily and shook her head. “Actually, it was just the opposite. Quite by accident, I discovered that Johnny hated being treated with kid gloves. He wanted to be disciplined.”
“How did you discover that?”
“One night, after school, I was in Mr. Duncan’s office being chewed out, as usual.”
“You get into trouble with the principal?”
“Constantly,” she averred, her smile bursting like sunshine. “Anyway, on that particular day, Johnny was waiting for his mother to pick him up, and he overheard what was happening. When I came out of the principal’s office, there he was—grinning at me from his wheelchair like I was some sort of hero. Then he said, ‘You gonna get a detention, Miss Mathison?’
“I was so startled to hear him talk that I nearly dropped the armload of books I was carrying. But when I assured him I wasn’t going to get a detention, he looked disappointed in me. He said he guessed girls never got detention, just boys. Normal boys. That’s when I knew!” When he looked baffled, Julie hastened to explain, “You see, he’d been so sheltered by his mother that he’d been dreaming of going to school like ordinary children, but the thing was, neither the other students nor the teachers were treating him as if he was ordinary.”
“What did you do?”
She leaned back against the sofa, her leg curled beneath her and said, “I did the only kind and decent thing I could do: I waited and watched him all the next day, and the moment he tossed a pencil at the little girl in front of him, I pounced on him like it was a federal crime. I told him he’d deserved a detention for weeks, and from now on he was getting one just like everyone else. Then I gave him not one, but two days’ detention!”
Laying her head against the back of the sofa, she slanted him a soft smile and said, “Then I hung around school to watch him and make sure I was right about what he was up to. He looked happy enough, sitting in the detention room with all the other little rabble rousers, but I couldn’t be sure. That night, his mother called me on the phone and tore into me for what I’d done. She said I’d made him ill and that I was heartless and vicious. I tried to explain, but she hung up on me. She was frantic. He wasn’t at school the next day.”
When she fell silent, Zack prodded gently, “What did
you do?”
“After school, I went over to his house to see him and talk to his mother. I did something else on a hunch; I took another student with me—Willie Jenkins. Willie is a totally macho kid, the class cutup, and the hero of the third grade. He’s good at everything, from football to baseball to cursing —at everything except,” she clarified with a sideways grin, “singing. When Willie talks, he sounds exactly like a bullfrog, and when he sings, he makes this loud, croaking noise that makes everybody start to laugh. Anyway, on a hunch, I took Willie with me, and when I got to Johnny’s house, he was in the backyard in a wheelchair. Willie had brought along his football—I think he sleeps with it—and he stayed outside. As I went into the house, Willie was trying to get Johnny to catch the football and he wouldn’t even try. He looked at his mother and then he just sat there. I spent a half hour talking to Mrs. Everett. I told her I honestly thought we were ruining Johnny’s chances to be happy by treating him as if he were too delicate to do anything but sit in a wheelchair. I’d finished talking and still hadn’t convinced her, when all of a sudden, there were shouts and a crash from outside and we both ran out into the backyard. There was Willie,” Julie said, her eyes shining at the memory, “flat on his backside in a heap of overturned trash cans, clutching the football with a grin on his face a mile wide. It seems that Johnny couldn’t catch the football very well but—according to Willie—Johnny has a right arm as good as John Elway’s! Johnny was beaming and Willie told him that he wanted Johnny on his team, but they’d need to practice, so Johnny could learn to catch as well as pass.”
When she fell silent, Zack asked softly, “And do they practice?”
She nodded, her expressive features glowing with delight. “They practice football, along with the rest of Willie’s team, every day. Then they go to Johnny’s house where Johnny coaches Willie with his schoolwork. It turned out that although Johnny didn’t participate in school, he was absorbing everything like a sponge. He’s extremely bright and now that he has things to strive for, he never quits trying. I’ve never seen so much courage—so much determination.” A little embarrassed by her emotional enthusiasm, Julie lapsed into silence again, and concentrated on her meal.