by Teresa Hill
"That's it?" she asked finally. "You're going to let me off that easy?"
"You want me to give you a hard time, I will," he said with a grin. "I'd probably say something about it being a mistake to lie to a man you're going to marry, but I doubt you need me to tell you that."
"No, I don't." She'd told herself that very thing time and time again. "And I told him, Zach. I did. I told him there were things that happened back home—"
"In St. Louis? Did you ever live in St. Louis?"
"No," she admitted. "But does it really matter where I was?"
"It seems to. To you."
She let that go. Honestly, it wasn't important. She'd just felt safer, thinking if anyone ever went looking, they'd go there and not find anything. Because she'd never been there.
"Anyway," she went on. "I told Steve I hadn't had the greatest childhood, that there were things I wasn't dying to talk to him about, and he's okay with that. He said I didn't have to tell him anything I didn't want to."
"Okay," Zach said.
But with his tone, he managed to say he didn't think it was.
"Everything is different for me here," she said. "I'm different."
"Are you happy, Julie?"
"Yes," she insisted.
Zach put his feet up on the coffee table, like he was settling in for a nice long chat. His shirt gaped open even farther, showing more skin, tanned and delineated by the muscles beneath. "Talk to anybody back home lately?"
"No." And she liked it that way. Honestly, she did.
Something seemed so nice about being in a brand-new place and starting over completely. She could be anyone she wanted to be. So she was surprised to sit here with him and realize how nice it was to be with someone so familiar. A million memories flooded back, tiny little things she'd done and people she'd known that he would know, too. It might be nice to sit here and catch up, but it seemed dangerous, too. Like opening a door she might not be able to close again.
And she liked having that door closed.
"Your mother and stepfather are still there," Zach said. "Your little brother, too."
"Half brother." He'd be thirteen now, and she barely knew him.
She had to turn away for a moment. She remembered a time... a you-and-me-against-the-world kind of time, when Peter had been so little and the house had been loud and crazy. When things had scared him, and he'd come running to her.
But that was a long time ago. Her stepfather had seen what was happening and hadn't liked it. She'd never known exactly what he'd said or done to change things between her and Peter, but they had changed. Not that it mattered now. The damage had been done a long time ago.
"Zach, there's nothing back there for me anymore."
"Okay."
He waited, patient as always, as if he thought she might change her mind. She wouldn't.
"Look, it was good to see you again," she said. Unsettlingly good. She knew she couldn't afford to linger.
"You, too. You look great," he said, and it was probably her imagination, had to be, that he stared at her legs for a minute as he said it.
She grabbed her purse, dug for her keys, then remembered one more thing. "About the engagement party... You don't really want to go, do you, Zach?"
"What if your parents were in some kind of trouble, Julie? What if Peter was? Would you want to know then?"
"No," she insisted, that little voice inside saying, Go now, while you still can.
They were a mess no one could fix. She'd be damned if, now that she'd built a new life for herself, she'd be drawn back into theirs. If that made her selfish in Zach's eyes... It did. She could see that. Family was so important to him.
But then, she'd disappointed Zach McRae so many times before. She'd disappointed herself, too, but she could live with that. The distance from her family kept her safe—and halfway sane.
"I really have to go," she said.
He nodded once again, still watching her in that quiet, unsettling way of his. She would not let him make her feel bad, and she wouldn't defend herself to him.
She wasn't going to let herself admit she probably wouldn't see him again. Judging from her unsettling reaction to him, it was certainly for the best.
"I'm sorry, Zach," she said at the door.
He stood leaning casually against it. "I hope this works for you, Julie. I hope it makes you happy."
But she knew he didn't think it would. He thought it would all backfire in her face, and everything she was trying so hard to hide would come out.
* * *
She hurried home, kicked off her shoes and took down her hair, working out the soreness at the back of her neck and head that came from piling it up the way Steve liked it. It was such a small thing, putting her hair up.
Checking her voice mail, she saw that he'd called, wondering where she was. Julie sat down on the chair in the corner. She was tired. It was hard to believe sometimes how tired she could be, and she wasn't even twenty-six years old yet.
Her phone rang. She jumped at the sound, then grabbed the receiver in the dark. "Hello."
"Julie?" Steve said. "What's wrong? You sound upset."
"I'm all right," she said, thinking lie, lie, lie. She could say she'd been in the shower. How easy was that? And then, she just couldn't do it anymore. "No, Steve, I'm not. I went to see Zach."
"What? Why?" Steve asked, his voice sounding the way it had earlier that night, when she'd thought they were going to play tug-of-war with her. It was so bizarre. He wasn't the jealous, possessive type.
"To ask him not to come to our engagement party." That was part of it. "I saw the way the two of you were together. You were tense and uncomfortable—"
"You said there was nothing between the two of you," Steve reminded her.
"There isn't. Steve, he probably still thinks of me as a little kid."
"You don't look like a little kid anymore, Julie. You're a beautiful woman, and no man who looks at you can miss that."
"Well... so what? Even if he did look at me and think I was attractive, he'd probably find that as odd as..."
"As what?" Steve asked. "You finding him attractive?"
"That's not what I said at all."
"You don't think the man's good-looking?" he asked incredulously.
"He looks the way I always expected him to all grown up, I suppose." A picture of him, tonight, flashed through her mind, with an unwanted kick of heat following. "What does that have to do with anything? He's just a man I used to know."
"Who had you nervous as hell from the minute you laid eyes on him, and then, when you're supposedly too tired to come home with me, you go rushing off to his... Where did you see him, Julie? Did you go to his hotel?"
"Yes. I was there for five minutes. He has a suite. I sat on the sofa, and he sat on a chair. I said it was nice to see him again, then asked him not to come to our party."
"Why?" Steve asked.
"I didn't think you'd enjoy having him there." Certainly true, but not the whole truth. "And your mother's dying to get him into a corner and grill him about me. You know that, don't you?"
"I hate the idea of you leaving me to rush off to see him." Steve sighed. "Did you know you were going to him when you left the restaurant, Julie? Did you stand outside the restaurant on a night when we're celebrating our engagement and lie to me? Then go off to another man's hotel room?"
"It wasn't like that, Steve. He never touched me. I don't see any reason why I'd ever see him again. I told him that I was happy for once, and that my life was none of his business."
"Then why are you so afraid?"
"Because I don't want anything to mess this up. You're the best thing I've ever had in my life. I can hardly believe this is real sometimes. That you love me and you want to marry me."
The truth poured out of her, and she felt so odd in the aftermath. Like she'd been stripped raw.
"And what did he say? When you told him to stay the hell away?"
"That he hopes you and I are
happy together. Steve—"
"You can tell when there's something between two people. It's like that with you and him. I felt it."
"We've known each other for a lot of years, but I used to play with his sister. You have a younger sister. How often did you think of your sister's little friends? The year I turned thirteen, he went off to college. He dated cheerleaders and sorority girls. I used to see him on holidays and maybe in the summers. That's it."
"Julie, if you're not sure. If you have any doubts..."
"You're the one I want," she said.
"Then stay the hell away from him," Steve said.
He hung up on her.
She didn't think he'd ever done that. He'd never been jealous, either. She'd never given him any reason to be. There was sex and a bunch of messy emotions that often accompanied it, and then there was the important stuff of life. Safety. Kindness. Strength.
She'd just stay away from Zach.
How hard could it be?
* * *
Zach poured himself another cup of coffee, regardless of the hour, and reached for the phone. His sister answered on the second ring, her voice soft and a little sleepy.
"Wake up, Gracie, it's me," he said.
"Zach, don't you ever sleep?" she groaned.
"Sure, when I'm not in trial."
"Are you ever not in trial these days? Mom said you practically went straight from Texas to... I can't remember now. Where are you?"
"Memphis, I think. Barbecue. Elvis. The river.
"What are you doing there? You were supposed to be home, at least for a little while."
"Something came up," he said.
"Something always comes up lately, Zach."
"No, something really came up. Brian Welch's wife got creamed by a Suburban on her way to pick up the kids from school."
"Oh, my God. Is she all right?"
"She will be. It's just going to take a while. But there was no way Brian could have stayed in Memphis for a couple of weeks for this trial."
"Okay, I'll give you that. But you're not the only lawyer at the agency."
"But I'm the best," he said. "I like this kid, okay?"
"It's always a kid. There's always one more, and they're always in some kind of terrible trouble—"
"They're going to fry him, Grace, if I don't help him."
"Wait, they're still using the electric chair?"
"No," he admitted. "Lethal injection. But dead is dead."
"You need to come home, Zach."
"I'll come home after this trial."
"That's what you said before you went to Texas."
"And I needed to be in Texas."
"Yeah, you liked that kid, too. The thing is, Zach, you can't save them all."
Leave it to Grace to cut through it all, just that easily. This was what happened to sisters when they grew up. They gave a guy six kinds of hell, and they were better than anybody at it, because they knew him so well. He had one older, one younger, and he adored them both.
They were closer than most siblings, due to the way they'd grown up, and the last few months hadn't been easy, but they were tough. They had each other and the best parents any kids could have. Every advantage in the world that mattered.
Life still sucked sometimes.
But not as much as it had for Tony Williams.
"I'll come home when this is over," he said.
"Promise?"
He hesitated. He'd said it automatically—that he'd go home.
"I'll try," he said. Shit, when his heart started racing just at the thought of it? Who was lying now? To distract her and himself, he asked, "How's everybody?"
"Not happy that you went straight into another trial," she said.
So he'd catch hell from his older sister, his mother, and maybe his father. Suddenly everyone seemed to think they knew what was good for him, when he'd always been perfectly capable of taking care of himself.
Perfectly happy. Perfectly in control.
That was him.
But he'd somehow lost that side of himself, and he couldn't get it back.
"Come home, Zach," Grace said. "If you don't miss us, I'd think you'd at least come see Gwen. I don't know how she puts up with you."
"I do see her." Every now and then. "In fact, I might ask her to fly down for a quick weekend."
He could talk through his trial strategy with her—she was as smart as she was gorgeous, and a lawyer, too. Then they could make up for lost time from the Texas trial, and the time they'd likely lose to this one and her father's re-election campaign. He was in the U.S. Senate, and Gwen, as always, would have a big role in the upcoming campaign.
One of these days, they were going to find time to get married.
Maybe they could find a way to stay in the same city most of the time. That would be nice. Especially when he walked into a restaurant and found himself blown away by a pair of legs in a snug little skirt on another woman.
Which reminded him... "You'll never guess who I saw tonight."
"I doubt I could," she said. "I don't know anyone in Memphis."
"Yeah, you do. Neighbor, friend," he said. "Your age. Practically disappeared off the face of the earth eight years ago?"
There was a pause, then, "Julie Morrison? You ran into Julie Morrison?"
"Uh-huh."
She wasn't little Julie Morrison anymore.
She was a woman with long legs and trim curves. It had been disconcerting for a moment—the reality of little Julie Morrison all grown up. But hell, a man couldn't help noticing a pretty woman, could he? He wasn't blind.
"Where?" his sister asked.
"I walked into a restaurant to have dinner and there she was."
He hadn't known who she was at first. She was all legs and what he'd bet was long brown hair that hung maybe halfway down her back. He'd always been a sucker for long legs and hair. She'd had the hair piled on top of her head in a way that showed off the sweet curve of her neck. She'd worn a short, loose silk jacket that concealed just about everything on her upper body, but the skirt showed promise. Just snug enough to show off the shape of those trim hips, short enough to allow just a bit of very shapely thighs to peek out.
Zach had fiddled with his tie and tried to look away, and then the woman had turned around and somehow turned into little Julie Morrison.
Julie, who'd panicked at the sight of him, the little liar.
"So what's she doing?" Grace asked.
"Having dinner with her uptight fiancé and his parents. All three of them stuffy as could be."
"Julie with a stuffy guy?"
"I know. Last thing I expected, believe me. She swears he's just what she needs. I don't believe it for a minute."
"How is she?"
"Lost, worried, swearing everything's okay."
Same old Julie. She'd probably told him a thousand times that she was okay, and he'd yet to believe her once.
"You got all this out of her at dinner with her fiancé?"
He'd gotten that just by looking at her and figuring out the snow job she'd given her fiancé about her past.
As a kid she'd alternately made him so mad he could have spit or scared him half to death. At times he'd really hurt for her, she kept things so tightly locked up inside. He'd wanted things to be so much better for her, and he was afraid they were about to get worse. He hated that for her.
"It's a long story, Grace, and I really do have a ton to do. But I remembered Mom saying something about Julie's parents being in trouble?"
"Yeah, something about a problem at the bank where Julie's mother works," Grace said. "I don't know any specifics, but I could try to find out. Did you get Julie's phone number?"
"No, but I know where she works. If you find out anything about her parents, I'll track her down."
She had to stop running one day. He'd given her a hard time about it, and here he was, doing the same damned thing. Not fair of him at all, and he tried hard to be a fair man, an honest one.
He'd
have to stop, too, one day, and go home. Face down his own demons.
But not just yet.
Right now, a kid in Memphis needed him. And once that was over, he wasn't sure what he'd do.
He'd never run from trouble before in his life.
Chapter 3
Julie sat at the antique dressing table in a guest room at Steve's parents' home trying to fasten the antique pearl and diamond earrings Steve's mother had loaned her for the evening. They were seventy-five years old, originally his great-grandmother's, a match to the delicate pearl necklace with the diamond clasp now draped around her neck. The most elegant and expensive jewelry she'd ever worn, the pieces looked like just the thing Steve Land's future wife would wear.
She stared at her image in the mirror, the smoky white dress that draped softly from shoulder to shoulder, dipping just low enough to show a hint of her breasts, and left her arms bare. Tight at the bodice and the waist, the skirt flared and swirled around her feet as she walked and looked like something a forties movie star would wear. Although she felt like a complete impostor in it, she'd bought it anyway, because it, too, seemed like something Steve Land's future wife would wear.
He knocked on the door, then walked in. "Ready?"
She nodded.
She had been uneasy all week, worried he'd call the whole thing off, despite how it would look to cancel at this late date. Of course, he could always break the engagement later. Even once they were married, she now realized, she might well still not ever truly feel safe. Marriages ended all the time. She just wanted one place in the world where she could feel safe. She'd thought that place would be with him.
"Steve, I just want to be a good wife to you," she said finally. "I want to make you happy."
"No more surprises?" His hands closed over hers at the words.
"No more surprises," she promised.
* * *
It went well.
She smiled and nodded as she walked through the crowd on Steve's arm. He introduced her to everyone, a hint of what sounded like pride in his voice. With a champagne toast, Steve's parents made the formal announcement, which surprised no one but was a nice touch. She gave Steve a quick kiss, then touched her champagne to her lips. She never did any more than that. Some fears never went away.
