“And you are completely wonderful.”
Julie’s heart missed a beat at his solemn expression, but he was an actor, as she’d just been forcefully reminded, and it would only hurt her more later if she started treating what were only casual pleasantries to him as if they were avowals of deep affection.
When she didn’t respond, Zack smiled and headed for the bedroom. Over his shoulder, he said, “Let’s put on jackets and go outside if that’s what you still want to do.”
She gaped at him in utter disbelief, followed him, and spread her arms out wide, looking down at her clothes and making him look too as she said, “In these clothes?! Are you crazy? These cashmere slacks must have cost . . . at least two hundred dollars!”
Recalling some of Rachel’s charge account bills, Zack gauged the price at more like six hundred dollars, but he didn’t say that. In fact, he was so intent on getting her to go outside, which he knew she’d very much wanted to do, that he put his hands on her shoulders, gave her a little shake, and said much more than he’d meant to tell her. “Julie, these clothes belong to a woman who has department stores full of beautiful clothes. She wouldn’t care in the least if you wore some of them—” Before he finished the sentence, he couldn’t believe he’d been foolish enough to reveal so much. Julie’s eyes were wide with shock, and he could see her mind working even before she said, “You mean you know the people who own this house? They’re letting you use it? Isn’t that a terrible risk for them to take, I mean knowingly harboring an escaped—”
“Stop it!” he ordered more roughly than he intended. “I didn’t mean anything of the sort!”
“But I’m only trying to understand—”
“Damn it, I don’t want you to understand.” Reminding himself of the injustice of taking his anger at himself out on her, he raked a hand through the side of his hair and said with only slightly more patience, “I’ll try to explain this as clearly and succinctly as I can, and then I want the subject dropped.” She gave him a look that made it plain she thought his attitude and his tone were unreasonable and objectionable, but she kept silent. Shoving her hands into her pants pockets, she leaned her shoulders against the bedroom wall, crossed her ankles, and watched him with unnerving absorption.
“When you go back home,” Zack began, “the police are going to question you about everything I said and did while we were together, so that they can try to figure out how much help I had escaping and where I’m going next. They’ll make you go over it and over it and over it until you’re exhausted and can’t think clearly any more. They’ll do it in the hope you’ll remember something you forgot that’s significant to them even if it wasn’t to you at the time. As long as you can tell them the truth, the whole truth—which is exactly what I’m going to advise you to do when you leave here—you won’t have anything to worry about. But if you try to protect me by hiding something from them or if you lie, you’ll eventually contradict yourself, and when you do, they’ll catch it and they’ll tear you apart. They’ll start thinking you were my accomplice from the very beginning, and they’ll treat you as if you were.
“I’m going to ask you to tell one small, uncomplicated lie that should help us both without tripping you up during questioning. Beyond that, I don’t want you to lie or conceal anything from the police. Tell them everything. At this point you don’t know one thing that could harm me or anyone involved with me. I intend to keep it that way,” he finished emphatically, “for my sake and for your own. Is that clear? You understand why I don’t want you to ask any more questions?” His brows snapped together when she asked a question instead of acquiescing, but when he heard it, he relaxed: “What lie are you going to ask me to tell?”
“I’m going to ask you to tell the police that you don’t know exactly where this house is. Tell them I blindfolded you after you nearly got away from me at that rest stop and that I made you lie down in the back seat for most of the rest of the trip, so that you couldn’t try to get away from me again. It’s believable and logical and they’ll buy it. It will also help to neutralize that damned truck driver’s version of what he saw; he is the only reason the police would ever suspect you of aiding and abetting my escape. I’d do anything in the world to avoid asking you to lie for me like this, but it’s the best way.”
“And if I refuse?”
His entire face instantly became hard, shuttered, and aloof. “That’s up to you, of course,” he said in a chillingly courteous voice. Until that moment, as she witnessed the change in him when he thought his trust in her was misplaced, Julie hadn’t fully realized how much he’d truly softened toward her since yesterday. His teasing nonchalance and tender lovemaking weren’t merely a convenient and pleasant way to while away their time together—at least some part of that was actually real. The discovery was so sweet that she almost missed what he was saying: “If you choose to tell the police where this house is, I would appreciate your remembering to also tell them that I did not have a key and intended to break into it if I couldn’t find one. If you don’t emphasize that, then the people who own this house, who are as innocent as you of collaborating in my original escape plans, will be subject to the same unjust suspicions that you’re being subjected to because of what the truck driver said.”
He wasn’t trying to protect himself at all, she realized. He was trying desperately to protect whoever owned the house. Which meant he knew them. They were, or had been, friends . . .
“Would you care to tell me which choice you intend to make?” he said in that same coolly detached voice that she hated. “Or would you prefer to think about it?”
When she was eleven years old, Julie had vowed never to lie again, and she’d not broken that vow in fifteen years. Now she looked at the man she loved and said softly, “I intend to tell them I was blindfolded. How could you think I’d decide anything else?”
Relief flowed through her as she watched the tension drain from his face, but instead of saying something sweet, he gave her a scathing glare and announced, “You have the distinction, Julie, of being the only woman alive who has ever managed to make me feel like an emotional yo-yo dancing on a damned string from the end of your finger.”
Julie bit down on her lower lip to stop her smile because it seemed wonderfully significant to be able to affect him in a way no other woman ever had. Even if he didn’t like the way she did it at all. “I’m . . . sorry,” she finished lamely and dishonestly.
“The hell you are,” he retorted, but the edge was gone from his voice and there was a tinge of reluctant amusement in it “You’re doing your damnedest not to laugh.”
Swallowing a giggle at his discomfiture, she lifted her forefinger and inspected it closely, turning it left to right. “It looks like a pretty ordinary finger to me,” she teased.
“There’s nothing ordinary about you, Miss Mathison,” he said with that same combination of irritated amusement. “God help whoever marries you because the poor bastard’s going to grow old and gray long before his time!”
His obvious and unconcerned conviction that she was going to end up with someone besides him—someone who he pitied, to boot—doused Julie’s spurt of happiness and jerked her back to earth. Vowing to keep things light from this moment on and never again to read more into his words and actions than there really was, she smiled, nodded, shoved away from the wall, and switched to jaunty tennis jargon: “I think that last point you scored gives you the game, set, and match. I concede this verbal victory to you along with all our others.”
Despite her casual attitude, Zack had the uneasy feeling he’d somehow hurt her feelings. A few moments later, he walked out of the bedroom and joined her at the hall closet where she was putting on the snowmobile suit she’d worn yesterday. “I’d forgotten about this outfit,” she explained. “It will protect what I’m wearing. I got the other one out of my closet for you,” she added, nodding toward the larger snowmobile suit hanging on the door.
Reaching for it and starting to pull it on, Z
ack decided their conversation in the bedroom still needed some clarification. “Look,” he said with quiet sincerity, “I don’t want to quarrel or spar with you, that’s the last thing in the world I want to do. And I most definitely do not want to discuss my future plans or present concerns with you. I’m trying my damnedest not to worry about them myself and to simply enjoy the surprise gift of having you here. Try to understand that these next few days, here in this house with you, are going to be the last “normal” days of my life. Not that I have the slightest idea of what normal really is,” he added bluntly. “But the point is, even though we both know all of this is a fantasy that’s going to come to an abrupt end, I’d still like to have it—an idyllic few days up here with you to remember and look back on. I don’t want to spoil it with thoughts of the future. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
Julie hid the sympathy and sorrow his words evoked behind a warm smile and nodded. “Am I allowed to know how long we’re going to be here together?”
“I—haven’t decided. No more than a week.”
She tried very hard not to think of how little time that was and resolved to do exactly as he asked, but she voiced the question that had been unnerving her since she left the bedroom: “Before we can drop the entire discussion about the police and everything, there’s something I have to ask you. I mean, clarify.”
Zack watched a gorgeous blush creep up her cheeks, and she hastily bent her head, concentrating fiercely on shoving her heavy hair into a blue knitted cap. “You said you wanted me to tell the police everything. You can’t honestly mean you expect me to tell them that we—you—I—”
“You’ve given me all the pronouns,” Zack teased, guessing exactly what she was getting at, “could you toss me a verb to go with them?”
She pulled on her gloves, plunked her hands on her slim hips, and gave him a look of comic disapproval. “You’re entirely too glib, Mr. Benedict.”
“I have to be to keep up with you.”
She shook her head in mock disgust and turned toward the back door at the end of the short hall. Regretting his timing, if not his reply, Zack caught up with her just as she stepped outdoors. The sky was a bright, blinding blue overhead, it was cold but not bitterly so, and the world outside looked like an arctic wonderland, with high snow drifts and low craters created by the wind. “I didn’t mean to treat your last question with indifference,” he explained, closing the door behind him, pulling on his gloves, and stepping carefully onto a wind-created path with a five-foot-high drift next to it. She turned and waited for him to walk the few paces to her and he lost his train of thought at the sunlit wonder of her face. With all her hair tucked severely under that cap and no makeup on except lipstick, she was a breathtaking marvel of clear porcelain skin and huge, jewel-bright sapphire eyes framed with dark lashes and graceful brows. “Of course I didn’t mean you should volunteer the information that we’ve been intimate; that’s no one’s business but our own. On the other hand,” Zack added, recovering his composure, “considering the fact that I was convicted of murder, they’re going to assume I wouldn’t hesitate to coerce or force you to have sex with me. Given the gutter mentality of most cops, when you deny I forced you, they’re going to ponder and pry and try to get you to reveal that maybe you wanted me to screw you, and so I did.”
“Don’t say it that way!” she said, looking like a prim, outraged virgin, which, Zack realized with an inner smile, she was.
“I’m saying it the way they’ll think of it,” he explained. “They’ll come at the subject from a dozen different, seemingly unrelated ways, like asking you to describe the house I used for a hideout, ostensibly so they can locate and identify it and search it for clues. Then they’ll ask about the bedrooms and then the decor of all the bedrooms. Who knows how they’ll get at you, but the minute you reveal too much knowledge—or too much feeling—about something that concerns me personally, they’ll assume the worst and pounce. When I brought you here, I never imagined they’d have such good reason to think you might have become an ally. And they wouldn’t have if that damned truck driver hadn’t—” He broke off and shook his head. “When you nearly got away at that rest stop, I didn’t think about anything beyond the immediate need to stop you. I didn’t think the truck driver got a good enough look at us to recognize us later. Anyway, the harm is done and there’s no point dwelling on what I can’t fix. When the cops ask you about that episode, just tell them exactly what happened. They’ll think you were heroic. And you were.” Putting his hands on her arms for emphasis, he said, “Listen closely to me and then I want to drop the subject once and for all: When the police are questioning you about our relationship here, if you do happen to slip in some way that reveals we were intimate, I want you to promise me something.”
“What?” Julie said, desperate now to end the discussion before their mood was beyond salvaging.
“I want you to promise me that you’ll tell them I raped you.”
She gaped at him, open-mouthed.
“I’ve already been convicted of murder,” he emphasized, “believe me, my reputation isn’t going to be besmirched one bit by the added charge of rape. But your reputation can be saved by it, and that’s all that matters. You understand, don’t you?” he said studying the extremely odd look she was giving him.
Her voice was soft and very, very sweet. “Yes, Zack,” she said with uncharacteristic meekness. “I understand. I understand that you are out of . . . your . . . mind!” Her hands hit him squarely on the shoulders, catching him by surprise and sending him flying backward, landing spread-eagle in a five-foot snowdrift.
“What the hell was that for!?” he demanded, as he struggled to get out of the deep hole he’d made in the drift.
“That,” she told him smiling her most angelic smile, her hands on her hips, her legs braced slightly apart, “was for daring to suggest that I would even consider telling anyone that you raped me!”
34
ZACK GOT TO HIS FEET and concentrated on brushing snow off his hair and jacket and legs, but he wasn’t immune to the sudden exhilaration that came from being outdoors beneath a bright blue sky, surrounded by a winter wonderland of snow-covered pine trees and in the company of a young woman who had suddenly turned playful. Grinning, he finished brushing himself off, then advanced on her slowly and purposefully. “That was extremely childish,” he chided.
She watched him, backing away, step for step. “Don’t try it,” she said, choking on a laugh, “I’m warning you—”
Zack lunged, she twisted suddenly, tangling her leg around the back of his knee, jerking hard and up, and the next thing he knew, he was toppling backward in slow motion again, flapping his arms like a wounded goose, trying to regain his balance. He landed flat on his back with an audible thud at her feet while her laughter pealed like bells through the pines.
“That,” Julie informed him, enjoying herself hugely, “was partial payment for smashing snow in my face at that rest stop.” She stood over him, waiting for him to get up, but he continued to lie there, his face strangely thoughtful, his eyes focused on the bright blue sky above her head. “Aren— aren’t you going to get up?” she chortled after a minute.
He turned his head toward her. “What’s the point?”
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” she said cautiously.
“My pride is in tatters, Julie.”
A sudden memory of all his tough-guy movies flashed through her mind, and she suddenly understood why he was embarrassed. She could tell he wasn’t faking it either by the way he was lying there and the strained tone in his voice. Evidently a double who looked like him had done all his fighting for him on film, she realized, overcome with contrition for adding to his burdens with such petty revenge. “That was stupid of me. Please get up.”
He squinted against the sun and said quietly, “Are you going to knock me down again?”
“No, I promise I won’t. You’re absolutely right, I was being childish.” She reached out
a hand to help him, bracing herself on the slim off chance that this was a trick and he was going to try to jerk her off her feet, but he took her assistance gratefully.
“I’m too old for this,” he complained, rubbing the back of his knee and brushing off snow.
“Look at that—” Julie said, anxious to make him forget his embarrassment, pointing to the snowman she’d started yesterday. Giving him a sunny smile, she explained, ‘The wind made a crater over there and the snow isn’t nearly as deep. How would you feel about helping me rebuild a snowman?”
“That’s fine,” he said and to her delighted shock, he reached for her hand and held it—two lovers walking through the snow, holding hands. “What was that you did to me back there?” he asked admiringly. “Was it some sort of karate move, or was it judo? I always mix up the two.”
“Judo,” she said uneasily.
“Why in hell didn’t you pull that on me at that rest stop instead of running?”
She gave him an embarrassed look. “My brother Ted gives self-defense classes, but I thought the idea was silly in a place like Keaton and I refused to go. So he taught that particular move to me at home a long time ago. When you were chasing me that day, I panicked and ran. I never even remembered I knew how to do that. Today, I planned to do it beforehand, which is why I was able to pull it off so easi—” she stopped in midword, trying desperately, if belatedly, to spare his pride.
They’d reached the snowman and he let go of her hand, looking down at her with an admiring smile. “Do you know any other fancy moves like that?”
Julie knew several more. “No, actually, I don’t.”
Still smiling down at her, he said very softly and very gently, “Then please permit me teach you another one—” He moved so swiftly that Julie let out a startled screech at the same time she left the ground, propelled backward into a pile of snow with exactly the right of amount of controlled momentum to land her, sitting up, legs sprawled straight out in front of her, unhurt.