by JoAnn Ross
"I love you." He ran his hand impotently across her hunched shoulders.
"—you certainly didn't do it all by yourself. You know what they say, it takes two—"
"I love you."
"—to tango. And to tell you the truth, I wanted it every bit as much as you did."
His words, stated so calmly and matter-of-factly, finally sank in. Hope was a hummingbird—no, Alex considered, a giant golden eagle—flapping its wings inside her heart. "Are you saying—"
"What I should have told you a long time ago. I love you, Alexandra Lyons."
She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him deep and hard. "I love you too, Zachary Deveraux."
"I know."
"Was I that obvious?"
"Not really. In fact, you've been driving me crazy trying to figure out exactly how you felt. Until earlier, when you finally let down your guard."
She'd hoped that, caught up in his own explosive orgasm, he hadn't heard her cry out her heart's most closely guarded secret. But whether loving Zach was wise or prudent, or even particularly moral, given his marital status, love him she did. She'd grown weary of hiding her feelings every time they were together.
"I'm still sorry I was kind of rough. And fast," he tacked on reluctantly.
"Actually," she said with a sassy grin, "I rather liked that part." It had been incredibly exciting. But it had also been more than that. It had been, in its own remarkable way, an epiphany.
As she sat in the back seat of Zach's car, watching the rain stream down the fogged-up windshield, Alex realized that what she'd experienced with Debord had been purely sexual.
It, too, had been exciting. But somehow, she'd always remained detached, as if watching herself perform for his pleasure. Even at the moment of orgasm, there had been no real emotional connection; instead, Alex had always been aware of her reaction through Debord's eyes.
But making love to Zach had been so very, very different. It had taught her that sometimes love didn't have to be soft and gentle. It could be hard and even a little frightening. And though she knew it was wrong, the blazing lovemaking she and Zach had just shared had left her wanting more.
Zach was stroking her shoulders and making a futile but endearing attempt to finger-comb her tangled hair. "We need to talk."
She opened her mouth to argue, to assure him it wasn't necessary, then decided there'd already been enough lies and evasions between them. "Yes."
After they returned to the front seat, Zach placed a call to a worried Eleanor from the car phone, assuring her that Alex was safe and sound, but that it was going to take a while for the tow truck to arrive.
That much was the truth. What he didn't tell his employer and friend was that he had no intention of waiting around for the truck. Not when he had more important things to do.
"I don't know about you, but I'm starved," he said after he'd hung up. "I'll admit to having things backward, but I think I owe you dinner."
His smile was that warm, uncensored one she hadn't seen since his mother's wedding. "I'm not exactly dressed to go out." She plucked at her damp sweatshirt and wrinkled damp jeans.
"That wouldn't matter at one of the little hole-in-the-wall seafood places on the pier," he pointed out.
She wasn't eager to have such a long-overdue private conversation in a public setting. Nor was she quite prepared to share Zach with anyone. Not yet.
"We could get takeout," she suggested. "And talk in the car."
"Brilliant." He leaned across the space between their leather seats and kissed her, a brief, feathery meeting of lips that sent warmth shimmering through her. "Takeout it is."
Which was how they came to be parked in a deserted lot overlooking the crashing surf, sharing french fries, Big Macs, cherry turnovers and a bottle of Dom Pérignon Zach had picked up at the liquor store next to McDonald's.
"I always promised myself that the first time we made love, we'd have champagne." He popped the cork with a flair that told Alex he did it often, then poured the sparkling golden wine into two paper cups. "And music." The car radio was tuned to a local jazz-and-blues station. "Unfortunately the liquor store didn't have any candles."
She took a sip of the champagne, enjoying the way the bubbles danced on her tongue. "This is perfect," she said, meaning it.
"Are you always this easy to please?"
"I'm a cheap date," she said on a laugh. "A Big Mac and I'm all yours."
He smiled and refilled her cup. "Next time I think we can do better."
Next time. Alex's yearning heart leapt upon the words, holding them close like a talisman.
They sat there for a long, comfortable time, sipping champagne and watching the waves roll unceasingly onto the shore. The sky was a misty gray curtain; in the distance came the lonely sound of a foghorn, a counterpoint to the voice of Billie Holiday singing of love and heartbreak.
"How long?" she murmured.
"Have I loved you?"
Alex nodded.
"I don't know," he answered honestly. "It snuck up on me over time. I was attracted to you that first night, but to be perfectly honest, I think that might've been my hormones talking."
"Thank God for talkative hormones," she murmured, grateful he hadn't turned down her invitation for that drink.
"Ain't that the truth." He took a sip of champagne and looked thoughtfully out to sea. "I knew I was getting into trouble at my mother's wedding. Because, if it had been just lust, I probably would've done something about it—either that night, or after we got back to L.A., instead of letting you walk out of my life."
"You wanted to keep from hurting me."
"That was the plan. Unfortunately I think all I succeeded in doing was delaying the inevitable."
"Lucky for us, fate threw us back together again."
"I didn't mean what I said earlier." Zach ran the back of his hand down the side of her face in a slow, warming sweep. "About fate and my lousy karma."
"I know…. I think I've loved you from that first night," Alex admitted.
"Why didn't you tell me before now?"
"Did you really not know how I felt?" At times she'd thought it had been so obvious that everyone in the Lord's offices must have seen it.
Zach shrugged. For the second time in a few hours, he was feeling uncomfortably like a teenager again. She loves me. She loves me not. It had been years—aeons—since any woman possessed the power to make him feel so insecure.
"I thought, sometimes, you did. But whenever we'd start to get close, you'd back away."
"You were married."
"I still am," he felt obliged to say.
"I know." She sighed. "But somehow, as horrible as this sounds, back there in the mountains it just didn't matter anymore." Besides, she mused in an effort to justify her behavior, it wasn't as if Zach had a real marriage.
"No," he agreed. "It didn't."
His flat tone worried her. "I hope I didn't complicate things."
He heard the uncharacteristic insecurity in her soft voice and hurried to reassure her. "Things were already complicated before we met." Her hair had dried into a riotous halo of red-gold waves around her lovely, too-somber face. Zach tugged on the bright ends. "You are the best thing that's ever happened to me."
He kissed her again. For a long, glorious, heart-swelling time. "It's not going to be easy," he warned after they could breathe again.
She laughed at that. "It couldn't be any harder than it's been all these months, trying to keep my feelings from showing."
"That's just it." He took her hand and kissed her fingertips, one at a time, with an exquisitely sweet tenderness. "I wasn't exaggerating when I told you that things were complicated," he began slowly, reluctantly.
It wasn't easy admitting he'd made a major mistake in getting involved with an emotionally unstable woman who only wanted to parade him around on a leash in front of her society friends. But after the unintentional pain he'd caused Alex, Zach felt he owed her the truth.
"M
iranda's beautiful. And sexy," Alex murmured. "Any man would be attracted to her."
"For a kid who came out of bayou Catholic schools, the kind of uninhibited sex Miranda offered was a definite turn-on," he admitted grimly. "But I guess some of those youthful catechism lessons took, after all. Because it didn't take long to realize that sex without emotional commitment isn't fun at all. It's depressing. And lonely."
"I learned the same lesson," Alex murmured, thinking back on that last, sad night with Debord. "The hard way." She was surprised and relieved to realize the memory no longer hurt. "So, why did you marry Miranda?"
"Because despite my success, I couldn't quite stop thinking of myself as the nearly indigent son of a Louisiana bayou sugarcane farmer. Miranda was beautiful, but more importantly, she was filthy rich. And she had status. And social standing."
"And that was important to you?" Alex was surprised.
He shrugged and wished again for a cigarette. "I thought it was. At the time."
Unable to believe he'd been so shallow, Zach dragged his hand through his hair. "The ugly truth was," he muttered in a voice thick with self-revulsion, "Miranda went on one of her infamous shopping sprees at a time when, as much as I hate to admit it, I'd definitely been for sale."
Alex placed a palm against his cheek and felt the muscle jerk. "You shouldn't be so hard on yourself," she said quietly. "We all have dreams. The problem is that sometimes, when we finally get to where we've always thought we wanted to be, it's an entirely different place from what we'd imagined."
Like her dream of working with Debord, she knew. "Everyone makes mistakes, Zach."
"Yeah, but some mistakes take longer to sort out."
He wasn't exaggerating. Alex listened with a sinking heart to Zach's explanation of the outstanding stock, of the raider who was threatening a takeover, of Miranda's threat to sell her own inherited stock if necessary, to keep Zach away from Alex.
"I knew she suspected we were having an affair," Alex said. "But since there wasn't anything concrete for her to be jealous about…"
"She thinks we've slept together. Which is pretty much the truth now." Once again Zach found himself wishing he'd done things right.
"There'll be other times," Alex assured him, reading the face, the mind, of this man she loved.
"A lifetime," he agreed. He kissed her again, wondering how he could have ever been so lucky to have this dazzling, intelligent, sweet person love him.
"But I'd never be able to live with myself if we achieved our happiness at Eleanor's expense," Alex murmured.
"You care about her that much?"
"I love her," Alex said simply. "I told you how, when I was little, we moved around a lot."
"I remember you mentioning that." He wondered what Alex would say if she knew he had a thick dossier listing all her addresses from shortly before her third birthday through till today. It was those first two years he'd never been able to uncover; those same missing years that had Eleanor convinced Alex was Anna.
"Whenever I made a friend at school, I'd have to leave her behind. After a while, it was safer not to make any friends."
"I can't imagine you not having friends." Especially boyfriends, Zach thought, shocked at the renewed jolt of jealousy that shot through him at the thought of her swaying in some boy's arms at the spring prom. Or even worse, making out in the back seat of some souped up Chevy after a high-school football game.
"Oh, I always got along with people, but it was easier not to let myself get really close to anyone. My brother, David, was my best friend. And then he died.
"Since then, I've only been close to Sophie. And, of course, you. And Eleanor. I know it sounds strange, but from the first, I've felt a bond with her. Almost like family."
She looked up at Zach, unaware of his reaction to her words. "Do you suppose, because I lost my mother and Eleanor lost her granddaughter, we just naturally gravitated toward one another? To fill some shared emotional need?"
"Makes sense to me," he agreed carefully, even as he wondered what he was going to do about this latest complication. For months he'd been trying to convince himself that his only barrier to a life with Alex was his marriage to Miranda.
But now he was forced to wonder how she would react when she discovered his subterfuge. Would she still love him after learning he'd hired private investigators to delve into every aspect of her life—including her affair with that sicko French designer? Would she still want to build a life with him when she realized he'd been lying to her all these months she'd been working for Lord's?
He hadn't really told her an untruth, but as Sister Mary Joseph, his fourth-grade teacher had always said, a lie of omission was just as much a sin as an out-and-out lie. Zach had the uneasy feeling that when the truth was revealed, Alex would probably agree with the rigid, ruler-wielding nun, who'd spent nine long months terrorizing the ten-year-old boys in her class.
"Well, there's only one thing to do," Alex said, oblivious to Zach's troubled thoughts.
"What's that?" Zach willingly pushed the nagging worries away. There would be, he knew, a price to pay for what he'd done. He just wasn't prepared to face it today.
He wanted, he needed, more time. Time to extricate himself from his marriage, time to save Lord's for Eleanor. Time to figure out whether Alex truly was Anna, and how that would affect their future together.
"As hard as it's going to be, we'll have to keep our feelings secret a bit longer," Alex decided aloud. "Until you can ensure that no one can take Lord's away from Eleanor."
"You think I can do that?"
"You're my knight in shining armor, remember?" Alex said, smiling up at him in a way that made him feel even guiltier for all these months of lies. "You can do anything."
As he drew her back into his arms, Zach hoped that she was right.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Although he longed to take Alex to the nearest hotel where he could make love to her properly all night long, they both knew that wish would have to be postponed.
"We've the rest of our lives," she reminded him as they headed back to the estate.
And although he murmured an agreement, Zach found himself wishing, not for the first time certainly, that life wasn't so damn complicated.
Not surprisingly, their return was met with a great deal of fanfare. Eleanor, pooh-poohing Alex's concerns about the car, was vastly relieved she'd returned safe and sound. Clara, spooky as always, hinted at the possibility of some unseen forces.
"Poltergeist," she declared knowingly. "Or some restless spirit who wants Alexandra out of Santa Barbara."
Although she was no spirit, Miranda fit the description perfectly. She was furious.
"I warned you," she spat out between clenched teeth once she and Zach were alone in their upstairs bedroom. "I told you what would happen if you slept with that little slut again."
"Although I've always admired your acting skills, Miranda, someone needs to write you a third act," Zach countered. "This dialogue sounds vaguely familiar." He stripped off his sweater, went into the adjoining bathroom and shut the door.
"It's too late for a shower, you two-timing son of a bitch!" Miranda yelled at him when she heard him turn on the water. "Because I already smelled your little whore's perfume on you."
Miranda's temper, which had always been formidable, seemed to be getting worse. And, Zach considered grimly, as the room began to fill with steam, all her hostility was directed toward Alex.
Uneasy about his wife's increasing instability, Zach wanted to avoid doing or saying anything that might give Miranda an excuse to harm Alex.
Knowing he couldn't hide from his wife indefinitely, Zach exited the stall, dried himself, then wrapped a towel around his middle and returned to the bedroom to face Miranda's wrath.
"I've got a suggestion," he said as he took a pair of cotton briefs from the top drawer of the antique mahogany chest.
Miranda eyed him suspiciously. "Why do I think I'm going to hate this?"
> "Actually, it's a business proposal."
"Really?" she asked with a show of disinterest. But Zach saw the familiar flash of avarice in her eyes and experienced the hope this might not be as difficult as he'd thought. "What type of business proposal?"
"This marriage has been a farce from the beginning. You're not happy. I'm not happy. So, why don't we just cut our losses? Before we end up hurting one another even more?"
She lighted a cigarette, sat down on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs. Zach remembered when even a glimpse of those smooth, white thighs could make him hard. But that was another time. And sometimes, it seemed, another world.
"The problem is, Zachary, dear, you misunderstand the situation."
"Why don't you explain it to me, then?" he suggested mildly.
"The simple truth is I'm not unhappy. On the contrary, darling, I like being married."
"How can you say that? We hardly see each other. And whenever we are together, all we do is fight."
"There's something that you don't seem to understand," she said patiently, as if speaking to a very slow kindergartner.
Once again Zach realized how superior to him she considered herself. His humble background, which had proved such a source of fascination when they'd first met, was routinely thrown back in his face as proof of his lower status.
"I'm trying to understand," he said.
"The truth, as unpalatable as it may be, is that I am no longer a young woman. And in my world, divorced women of a certain age are often pitied.
"Which is why having a husband—" she exhaled a stream of blue smoke and looked him up and down as if he were livestock she was considering purchasing "—even an absent one, gives a woman much needed cachet."
"You had two husbands before me," he pointed out. "You'll get married again."
"Perhaps." She stood up, ground out her cigarette in a crystal ashtray and walked across the room to the bureau. "But I'll be the one to decide when and if we get a divorce."
"I could just file. God knows I've got grounds."
"So do I. Don't forget, Zachary, when it comes to adultery, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Neither of us has remained faithful to our vows."
