Perfect (Second Opportunities 2)

Julie Mathison seemed to be both a godsend and a disastrous kink in his plans. Rather than curse fate for saddling him with her and the deadly threat to his freedom that she represented, he decided to give fate an opportunity to work out this problem and to try to help them both relax. Reaching behind him for the thermos of coffee, he thought back to her last remarks and came up with what seemed like a good conversational opening. In a carefully offhand, nonthreatening tone, he inquired sociably, "What's wrong with my jeans?"

She gaped at him in blank confusion. "What?"

"You said something about my 'damned jeans' being the only reason you offered me a ride," he explained, filling the top of the thermos with coffee. "What's wrong with my jeans?"

Julie swallowed an hysterical surge of angry laughter. She was concerned about her life, and he was concerned about making a fashion statement!

"What," he repeated determinedly, "did you mean?"

She was on the verge of an angry retort when two things occurred to her at once—that it was insane to deliberately antagonize an armed man and that if she could make him relax his guard by indulging in small talk with him, her chances to either escape or get out of this alive would be vastly improved. Trying to inject a polite, neutral tone into her voice, she drew a long breath and said without taking her eyes from the road, "I noticed your jeans were new."

"What did that have to do with your deciding to offer me a ride?"

Bitterness at her own gullibility filled Julie's voice. "Since you didn't have a car and you implied you didn't have a job, I assumed you must be having a hard time financially. Then you said you were hoping to get a new job, and I noticed the crease in your jeans…" Her voice trailed off when she realized with a disgusted jolt that instead of the nearly destitute man she'd thought him to be he was actually a megamillionaire movie star.

"Go on," he prodded, his voice tinged with puzzlement.

"I leapt to the obvious conclusion, for heaven's sake! I figured you'd bought new jeans so you could make a good impression on your employer, and I imagined how important that must have been to you while you were buying them in the store and how much hope you must have been feeling when you bought them, and I-I couldn't bear the thought that your hope was going to be trashed if I didn't offer you a ride. So even though I've never picked up a hitchhiker in my life, I couldn't stand to see you miss having your chance."

Zack was not only stunned, he was unwillingly touched. Kindness like hers, a kindness that also required some kind of personal risk or sacrifice, had been absent from his existence for all the years he'd spent in prison. And even before that, he realized. Shoving the unsettling thought aside, he said, "You envisioned all that from a crease in a pair of jeans? You've got one hell of an imagination," he added with a sardonic shake of his head.

"I'm obviously a bad judge of character, too," Julie said bitterly. From the corner of her eye, she saw his left arm swing toward her and she jumped, muffling a scream before she realized he was only holding out a cup of coffee from the thermos. In a quiet tone that almost seemed to carry an apology for adding to her fright, he said, "I thought this might help."

"I'm not in the slightest danger of falling asleep at the wheel, thanks to you."

"Drink some anyway," Zack ordered, determined to ease her terror even while he knew his presence was the source of it. "It will—" he hesitated, feeling at a loss for words, and added, "It will make things seem more normal."

Julie turned her head and gaped at him, her expression making it eloquently clear she found his "concern" for her not only completely revolting, but insane. She was on the verge of telling him that, but she remembered the gun in his pocket, so she took the coffee in a shaking hand and turned away from him, sipping it and staring at the road ahead.

Beside her, Zack watched the telltale trembling of the coffee cup as she raised it to her lips, and he felt a ridiculous urge to apologize for terrifying her like this. She had a lovely profile he thought, studying her face in the light of the dashboard, with a small nose and stubborn chin and high cheekbones. She also had magnificent eyes, he decided, thinking of the way they'd shot sparks at him a few minutes ago. Spectacular eyes. He felt a sharp stab of guilty shame for using and frightening this innocent girl who'd been trying to be a good Samaritan—and because he had every intention of continuing to use her, he felt like the animal everybody believed he was. To silence his conscience, he resolved to make things as easy on her as he possibly could, which led him to decide to engage her in further conversation.

He'd noticed she wore no wedding ring, which meant she wasn't married. He tried to remember what people—civilized people on the "outside"—talked about for idle conversation, and he finally said, "Do you like teaching?"

She turned again, her incredible eyes wide with suppressed antagonism. "Do you expect me," she uttered in disbelief, "to engage in polite small talk with you?"

"Yes!" he snapped, irrationally angry at her reluctance to let him make amends. "I do. Start talking!"

"I love teaching," Julie shot back shakily, hating how easily he could intimidate her. "How far do you intend for me to drive you?" she demanded as they passed a sign that said the Oklahoma border was twenty miles away.

"Oklahoma," Zack said, half-truthfully.

Chapter 19

"We're in Oklahoma," Julie pointed out the instant they drove past the sign announcing they were there.

He shot her a look of grim amusement. "I see that."

"Well? Where do you want to get out?"

"Keep driving."

"Keep driving?" she cried in nervous fury. "Now look, you miserable— I'm not driving you all the way to Colorado!"

Zack had his answer, she knew where he was going.

"I won't do it!" Julie warned shakily, unaware that she had just sealed her fate. "I can't."

With an inner sigh at the battle she was bound to wage, he said, "Yes, Ms. Mathison, you can. And you will."

His unflappable calm was the last straw. "Go to hell!" Julie cried, swinging the steering wheel hard to the right before he could stop her and sending the vehicle careening onto the shoulder as she slammed on the brakes and brought it to a lurching stop. "Take the car!" she pleaded. "Take it and leave me here. I won't tell anyone I've seen you or where you're going. I swear I won't tell anyone."