She gaped at him, laughing helplessly at her ignominious flight through the air, then she got to her feet. “You are really awful,” she chided, pretending to concentrate on brushing the snow off while she tried to think how to get even. She turned away from him for a second, then she turned back and gave him an innocent smile as she walked toward him.
“Had enough?” he countered, grinning, his hands loosely at his sides.
“Yep, you win. I give up.”
This time, however, Zack saw the sparkle in those bewitching blue eyes. “Liar,” he laughed when she began slowly circling him, looking for a place to aim her body. He turned with her, both of them laughing now—Zack determined not to give her an opening when she charged, Julie knowing exactly how she intended to force him to give her one.
“Time out,” she laughed, stopping and pretending to fiddle with the zipper she’d pulled down herself a minute ago. “No wonder I’m freezing. This zipper keeps sliding down.”
“Here,” Zack said with swift courtesy, exactly as Julie had hoped. “Let me try.” He pulled off his right glove and looked down at the zipper. The moment his fingers touched the tab, Julie twisted sharply, aimed her shoulder at his chest with all her might and plowed at him like a football halfback. He moved aside, and Julie’s shoulder rammed thin air with so much might that she went plowing right past him, head down. Propelled by her own force, she charged straight into the snow bank behind him, burying her head in it all the way up to her shoulders.
Trying to breathe, laugh, and dig the snow off her face at the same time, she backed out of the snow bank, turned around, and leaned against it, while his laughing voice remarked, “I’ve never seen anyone turn their own head into a snow drill before. Interesting demonstration. Do you think we could sell the idea to a manufacturer?”
That did it. With a shriek of laughter, Julie slid down, collapsing at his feet, convulsed with laughter. Trying to catch her breath, she looked up at his grinning face. He was looming over her, his hands on his hips, a picture of vastly amused male superiority. “When you’re ready to get down to serious snowman business,” he smugly informed her with his chin thrust in the air as he walked off, “you—”
Julie stuck out her foot. He tripped, twisted, and went down like a felled tree. Howling with laughter, she rolled hastily aside, scrambled to her feet, and backed out of his reach. “Pride cometh before a fall—” she reminded him, giggling, backing further away as he got up.
He was smiling, but there was a dangerous gleam in his eyes as he slowly, purposefully advanced on her. “That does it!” he said softly. “That does it.”
“Don’t—don’t do anything you’ll regret—” she chortled helplessly, holding her hand out as if to fend him off as she backed away faster. He increased his pace dramatically. “Now, Zack—” she laughed shakily. “Don’t you dare!” she cried, whirling to bolt for the woods as he lunged. He brought her down with a tackle around her waist before she took the first step, shoving her into the snow beneath his body, then rolling her over onto her back, straddling her at the waist. Grinning at her futile struggles, he pinned her wrists above her head with one hand. “Brat,” he said cheerfully and softly, while Julie laughed harder and squirmed and struggled to catch her breath. “Give up?”
“Yes, yes, yes!” she managed brokenly.
“Say ‘Uncle’.”
“Uncle!” she chortled. “Uncle!”
“Now close your eyes and give me a kiss.”
Her shoulders shaking with mirth, she closed her eyes and deliberately gave him a childish pucker. Cold, wet snow kissed her back—a face full of it. He smashed it all over her cheeks while she sputtered and laughed harder, then he got up. “Now,” he said, grinning like a satisfied sultan as he held a hand out to help her up, “you’re sure you’ve had enough?”
“Enough,” Julie laughed, belatedly noticing how boyishly happy and relaxed he looked after what had been nothing more meaningful than frolicking in the snow. The last traces of tension were gone from his handsome face, and she felt a mixture of tenderness and amazement that something as ordinary as a snow fight evidently gave him so much pleasure. Of course, it didn’t snow in Los Angeles, so maybe this was new to him. Either way, she realized one thing: He’d been exactly right when he said to concentrate only on enjoying the present and creating memories for the future. It was clearly what he needed.
Zack stepped through the deep snow holding her arm for support, his mind on the project ahead of him. “I assume we can get down to serious snowman business,” he announced, standing in front of the formless lump of snow that had been her original snowman and studying it with his hands on his waist and his back to her, “now that you understand the supreme folly of provoking someone so much larger, stronger, and wiser than yourself. Since I’ve finally gotten your proper respect, I have some very specific ideas about this proj—”
A huge snowball hit him disrespectfully on the back of his head.
* * *
High on a secluded Colorado mountaintop, laughter rang out often during a long winter afternoon, startling the squirrels who watched from the trees while two humans shattered the peace, cavorting like children in the snow, chasing each other around trees, flinging a barrage of snowballs, and then got down to the business of completing a snowman that, when finished, resembled no other snowman in the annals of recorded history.
35
SEATED TOGETHER ON THE SOFA, with their legs stretched out, their feet propped side by side on the coffee table and a cream knitted afghan stretched over them, Julie gazed out the glass wall across the room. She was deliciously exhausted from their day outdoors, a hearty meal, and Zack’s thorough lovemaking on the sofa. Even now, when the lovemaking was long over and he was lost in thought, gazing into the fireplace, she noticed he kept his arm around her, holding her close to his side, her head on his shoulder, as if he very much enjoyed having her close and touching her. She liked that, but at the moment her mind was on his “snowman” just beyond the glass wall. With the living room lights dimmed to a mellow glow and the fire in the fireplace reduced to orange cinders, she could just make out the looming, shadowy form of it. He was incredibly creative and imaginative, she thought with a smile, which shouldn’t have been surprising, given his film career. But even so, a snowman ought to look like a snowman, not a leering mutant dinosaur.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, his lips brushing a soft kiss on the top of her hair.
She tipped her chin up to see his face and grinned. “Your snowman. Didn’t anyone ever tell you a snowman is supposed to be jolly?”
“That,” he corrected, looking proud and boyish as he studied it through the window, “is a snow monster.”
“It looks like something Stephen King would dream up. What kind of depraved childhood did you have, anyway?” she teased.
“Depraved,” Zack confirmed, smiling and tightening his arm around her. He could not seem to get enough of her, in bed or out of it, and that was an unprecedented experience for him. She fit the curve of his arm as if she were made for him; in bed, she was a temptress, an angel, and a courtesan. She could drive him to unparalleled heights of passion with a sound, a look, a touch. Out of bed, she was funny, fascinating, stubborn, witty, and intelligent. She could anger him with a word and then disarm him with a smile. She was artlessly sophisticated, devoid of pretension, and filled with so much life and love that she mesmerized him at times, like when she talked about her students. He had kidnapped her, and in return, she had saved his life. He was supposed to be the wily, hardened convict, and yet she had been clever enough and brave enough to escape right out from under his nose. Then she had turned around and willingly surrendered her virginity to him with a poignant sweetness that made him ache whenever he thought about it. He was humbled in the face of her courage, gentleness, and generosity.
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, b
oth 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.
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 dosed, 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 bade 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?”
“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.
“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 decid
ed, 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.”