“And how sick is that?”
“You’re right,” Zada said. “It was a sick thing to do. But we were at a sick place in our relationship, Rick. It was the first time I’d seen you in six months. All I could think about was hurting you, the way you hurt me when you walked out.”
Rick ran a hand through his hair, the way he always did when he was deep in thought. He looked up at her and said, “You want to hear something else sick? I really couldn’t blame you if you were seeing someone else. You didn’t have many fond memories of the time you spent with me.”
“Don’t say that,” Zada told him.
She sat down on the sofa beside him.
Zada said, “Don’t you realize how much I love you? I knew I had to have you the minute I saw you.”
Rick leaned over and kissed her.
“Same here,” he said. “We just didn’t know what to do when we got each other, did we?”
Zada leaned over and kissed him.
“No,” Zada said, “we didn’t know what to do with each other before. But I think we’re both finally beginning to figure that out.”
Rick looked straight at her. “Anything else you want to confess?”
You just had to ask.
Zada knew exactly how Rick felt about lying.
She’d always made excuses for the lies she told—telling herself little white lies were just a fact of life. But if she and Rick were really going to start a new life together, she need to stop making excuses and tell Rick the truth.
About everything.
Zada took a deep breath and said, “I lied about us agreeing that the bedrooms were off limits.”
Rick said, “I knew it! I knew I didn’t remember you saying the bedrooms were off limits.”
“And …” Zada said, but she didn’t finish.
Rick said, “Why do I get the impression this is going to be a big confession?”
Tell him!
Zada said, “That first Saturday you moved home? Tish gave Joe the monitor for a reason while you guys were playing poker that night. Tish knew Joe wouldn’t be able to resist listening in on our conversation. We were counting on Joe to manipulate you and Charlie into going along with him. And, of course, he did.”
Rick stared at her, absorbing the information.
“Are you angry that we tricked you?”
“Are you angry that we listened?”
“No,” Zada said.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Rick said, “we got what we deserved.”
Zada said, “Just one question. What did Joe do to make you and Charlie go along with him? That’s so unlike both of you.”
“I’m embarrassed to tell you,” Rick said. “Joe called us both wimps. We couldn’t let him get away with that.”
Zada laughed.
“My turn to ask a question,” Rick said. “Are you saying everything about your Zorro fantasy was a lie?”
“No,” Zada said. “Just the twist at the end about me being the master and you being the slave. I knew it would make you angry. And I knew if I didn’t find a way to get you to back off, I’d never survive another kiss like the one you gave me before we left for Tish and Joe’s that night.”
“So?” Rick said, raising an eyebrow. “You really have fantasized about me in that Zorro costume?”
“Oh, yeah,” Zada said. “Talk about hot! You looked hot!”
Rick looked pleased.
Until the telephone rang.
Rick frowned and said, “You answer it this time.”
Zada walked across the room, Rick right behind her.
She picked up the phone from the kitchen counter.
When she said, “Hello?” Rick hit speaker phone.
“Are you alone?” a muffled voice said.
Rick grabbed the phone away from her.
“Who is this?” he demanded.
The speaker phone hissed the dial tone back at him.
Rick handed the phone back to Zada.
The look on his face said he wanted to believe her.
Still, Zada panicked.
Who would be doing this?
She punched *69, hoping to find out. No such luck. The caller had blocked the number.
“I tried *69 already,” Rick said. “People who dial wrong numbers do it accidentally, Zada. They don’t make it a point to block caller ID before they make a call.”
“Meaning what?” Zada asked, irritated at his tone.
“You tell me,” Rick said.
He walked out of the kitchen and down the hallway.
Lord, give me patience.
Now!
By the time Zada made it upstairs and walked into the bedroom, Rick was already climbing into bed.
“You’re going to bed now?” Zada couldn’t believe it. “It’s only six o’clock.”
Rick turned his back to her and said, “In case you’ve forgotten, I happen to feel like crap.”
“I don’t feel so good right now, myself,” Zada said. “You basically just called me a liar.”
Rick rolled over and sat up. “What do you want me to say, Zada?”
“I know that look, Rick,” Zada said. “It’s your I’m-pissed-and-I’m-not-talking-about-it look. In the past, I would have stomped back downstairs and let you stay up here and sulk. I’m done with that. I love you, and I’m going to fight for our survival. I’m not interested in being the sole survivor anymore.”
Rick stared at her for a long time.
He finally held his hand out. “Come here.”
Zada walked over and sat down on the bed beside him.
“In the past,” he said, “I wouldn’t have admitted that I’m a stupid jerk for being jealous, but I am. I’m sorry, Zada. The thought of you dating someone else turns me inside out.”
Zada leaned over and kissed him.
“There is no guy, Rick. I can’t explain the phone calls. But there is no guy.”
“I believe you,” he said.
He pulled her to him for another kiss.
He’d said the right words.
But the hurt in his eyes told a different story.
Zada didn’t get up with Rick at 0500 hours on their second Monday morning of their trial reconciliation. When the alarm went off, Rick told her to stay in bed.
“It’s raining,” he’d said. “I’m skipping my run and going straight to the center.”
Ten minutes later, he was dressed and ready to leave.
“I’ll see you tonight,” she heard him say.
Zada sat up.
Too late; Rick was already gone.
She flopped back on the bed, listening to the sounds.
The rain hitting against the window.
The garage door opening.
The Hummer backing out.
The garage door closing.
The Hummer driving away.
Simon’s toenails clicking down the hallway.
“No run for you this morning, huh, buddy?” Zada said when Simon jumped up on the bed and licked her face.
No good-bye kiss for me, either.
Nor had there been any lovemaking the night before.
She reminded herself that Rick had been hungover. And that he had at least put his arm around her, pulling her close, when she’d finally come up to bed several hours later.
Still, those hang-up phone calls had been there.
Lying between them.
Eating away at his trust in her.
Driving her crazy wondering who would do such a thing.
It was still raining when Zada got up at seven. Still raining as she watched the hands of the clock tick, tick, tick off the time until she could have coffee with Jen and Tish, and ask her best friends what they made of the situation. By the time nine o’clock finally rolled around, Zada had worked herself into a full blown snit.
She was angry at the caller.
Angry that Rick doubted her.
And mad as hell that life just couldn’t stand for her to be happy!
Zada stomped up on Tish’s porch at 9:15 AM, propped her umbrella against the porch railing, and stormed into Tish’s kitchen with a frown on her face.
Tish was the only one there.
“And today’s flavor is?” Tish asked like some game-show host waiting for a winning answer.
“Dark Roast Diva,” Zada said through clenched teeth.
Tish raised an eyebrow. “How appropriate for your obviously shitty mood.”
Zada told her everything at once, even her confession
about tricking the guys. By the time Jen and her daughter showed up fifteen minutes later, Zada was pacing back and forth in Tish’s kitchen like a woman possessed.
Jen took one look at her and sent Sonya to find the twins. She looked over at Tish. “What’s wrong with Zada?”
“All stressed out,” Tish said, “no one to choke.”
“Oh, no,” Jen said. “She and Rick are fighting again?”
Zada frowned at both of them. “Would you please stop talking about me like I’m not in the room!”
She told Jen everything she’d already told Tish.
Jen sat down at the table, shaking her head in disbelief. “But who would do such a thing?”
Tish had an I-can-think-of-someone look on her face.
“Who?” Jen demanded.
Tish said, “I hate to accuse anyone, but you both saw how Alicia reacted over us standing her up Saturday night. She was literally seething behind that fake smile of hers. She practically left divots in my lawn when she stomped back across the yard to her house.”
Jen said, “Oh, Tish. Do you really think Alicia would stoop to making hang-up phone calls?”
“Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind,” Zada said. “Alicia made a play for Rick the morning he moved back home, didn’t she?”
Tish said, “And you did say you couldn’t tell if the caller’s voice was a man’s voice or a woman’s.”
Jen said, “I’m only playing devil’s advocate here, Zada, but maybe you should ask Rick if there’s anyone he needs to tell you about. You were separated for six months. Someone might be upset that Rick went back to his wife.”
“Believe me,” Zada said, “that’s crossed my mind, too.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense, Jen,” Tish said. “If some woman was calling Rick, she would have talked to him instead of hanging up on him.”
“Not if her motive was to cause problems for him,” Jen argued. “So he and his wife would break up again.”
Zada stopped pacing and dropped down onto a chair at the table. Head in her hands, she said, “Why did I have to make that stupid remark about dating some guy! That’s really the problem. If I’d never made that comment, Rick would have chalked those phone calls off as some weirdo and would have already forgotten about them.”
“You can always call the phone company and get a private number,” Jen said.
“I almost told Rick that last night,” Zada said. “But asking for a private number only makes me look more guilty.”
“Then maybe you should confront Alicia,” Tish said. “Ask her point-blank if she’s the one who made the phone calls.”
“That could backfire,” Jen pointed out. “If it is Alicia, and Zada tells her she’s causing problems, that would give her even more incentive to continue making the calls.”
Tish said, “Well, I still think we should keep a close watch on Alicia over the next few days. Maybe we should invite her over for coffee tomorrow morning. See how she reacts having to sit across the table from Zada and look her in the eye.”
Zada said, “Let’s wait and see what kind of mood Rick’s in tonight. Maybe I’m blowing this whole thing out of proportion.”
“Zada’s right,” Jen said. “Rick has all day today to think things over. I’m sure he’ll realize Zada wouldn’t lie to him about something so important.”
Tish said, “It still doesn’t hurt to keep an eye on Alicia.”
Tish left the kitchen, heading for her dining room—the room with the window that faced Alicia’s house.
Jen walked up behind Tish.
Zada walked up behind Jen.
“This is silly,” Jen said. “What are we going to do? Stand here all day waiting to get a glimpse of Alicia with the phone in her hand?”
No one answered.
But neither did anyone move from the window.
For the first time in weeks, Alicia had no interest whatsoever in watching from her bedroom window as her neighbors made their way across the street for morning coffee at Tish’s house. She also had no interest in taking her brother’s annoying just-checking-on-poor, depressed-you phone call—she let her voice mail do that for her.
By ten o’clock Alicia was dressed fit to kill and feeling better than she’d felt in months. Even the rain that would have terribly depressed her only days earlier, didn’t dampen her spirits.
Alicia walked into her garage. She got into her Mercedes, and drove out of Woodberry Park, never looking back.
And what a pity, on this particular morning.
Had Alicia looked back, even briefly, she might have found it quite amusing that the same neighbors she usually watched from her bedroom window were now spying on her.
Zada was mumbling obscenities to her computer that Monday afternoon, trying unsuccessfully to save the first chapter of her new book Quack, Quack, Recycle That onto a backup disc. She jumped when the telephone rang.
Zada grabbed the portable phone sitting on her desk and breathed a sigh of relief when she looked at the caller ID. She answered saying, “I just discovered a new oxymoron compliments of Bill Gates. ‘Microsoft Works.’”
“Forget Bill Gates,” Tish said. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” Zada said. “Why?”
“Then what’s Rick doing home at three in the afternoon?”
“Rick isn’t home.”
“Yes, he is! He just stopped at the mailbox. He’s driving up your driveway now.”
Zada hung up without answering.
She ran to the half-bath in the hallway. Jerking the scrunchie from around her ponytail, she tried to shake her hair out in some kind of shape.
Dammit!
She’d planned to be showered and dressed when Rick got home later that evening. Wearing something less obvious than a thong, but better than the wrinkled shorts and the T-shirt she had on at the moment.
The thought did cross her mind, however, that maybe it was a blessing she did look so ratty. One look at her disheveled appearance was sure to convince Rick he had nothing to worry about. No man in his right mind would give her a second look.
Zada heard the kitchen door open and another thought froze her right where she stood. What if Rick had come home so early to tell her he wanted out—that it really wasn’t going to work between them after all?
“Zada?” she heard Rick call.
Zada took a deep breath and left the bathroom.
Ready or not, it was time to find out.
He was standing beside Simon.
He held out a collar and said, “I brought Simon a present. This is one of the new collars I had made for the training session. They look great, don’t they?”
He bent down and removed Simon’s old collar and placed the new collar around Simon’s neck. The collar was bright yellow and SDS was stamped in black letters all the way around it.
And yes, it was a nice collar.
But is Rick freaking kidding me?
Here I am,waiting for my whole world to crumble.
And he’s talking about a present he brought home for Simon!
But Zada forced herself to say, “Yes. The collar really looks great.”
He walked in her direction.
Zada couldn’t interpret the look on his face.
Only that it was serious.
“I brought you a present, too,” he said.
Rick reached out and took her hand.
Zada gasped when he slipped a ring on her finger.
“We neve
r got around to the ring part,” he said. “We got married on a whim. And then after we were married, you kept insisting you didn’t like rings. But we both knew why you were stalling. We were having so many problems, you didn’t think we were going to make it.”
Zada looked up at him, tears in her eyes.
“I hope this ring shows you how much I love you, Zada. And how sorry I am for being such an ass last night. Can you forgive me?”
Zada kept staring at the diamond on her finger.
If the size of the diamond determined how much Rick loved her—he loved her a lot!
Tears were streaming down her face now.
“Angel,” he said, pulling her to him. “Don’t cry.”
“Women always cry,” Zada sobbed against his shoulder. “Tears are all tied up in our emotions. We cry when we’re happy. We cry when we’re sad. Sometimes we cry just because we need to cry.”
Rick bent down and kissed the tears away.
“These are happy tears, I hope,” he said.
“I can’t even tell you how happy,” Zada told him.
She held out her hand and looked at her finger again.
“This is the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen.”
“I really am sorry about last night,” Rick said.
Zada reached up and put her fingers to his lips.
“Forgotten,” she told him.
“I agree,” Rick said. “But I want you to call the phone company tomorrow and request a private number.”
“I’m so glad you said that,” Zada told him. “I wanted to suggest it last night, but I was afraid I’d sound guilty.”
“I’m not suggesting we get a private number because I think you’re guilty, Zada,” Rick said. “I just refuse to let the joker making the phone calls get his kicks at our expense.”
He pulled her to him and hugged her close.
She was tempted to tell Rick she and the girls suspected Alicia, but decided against it. They had weathered this storm together. She wasn’t about to tip the lifeboat now.
“I didn’t expect you home so early,” Zada said. “Can I get you anything?”
Rick moved his eyebrows up and down.
“How about another lap dance?”
Zada was still laughing as he carried her out of the kitchen, down the hallway, and straight up the staircase.
Chapter 16
Without the threat of another phone call hanging over their heads, Zada and Rick settled into a routine of total peace and harmony. Compromise was becoming a simple fact of life for them.
Your Bed or Mine? Page 19
