Perfect (Second Opportunities 2)

The question shook him from his reverie, and he turned to the stove. "Something simple," he said, "I'm not much of a cook." With his body blocking her view of the preparations, she had little to occupy her, and so Julie idly watched the way his sweater stretched across his wide shoulders. He was amazingly muscular, as if he'd been working out in the prison gym. Prison. She'd read somewhere that many people who are sent to prison are actually innocent, and she found herself suddenly clinging to the comforting hope that Zachary Benedict might actually have been one of them. Without turning, he said, "Sit down on the sofa. I'll bring the food over there."

Julie nodded and got off the stool, noting that the second glass of wine was definitely affecting her, making her feel a little too relaxed. With Zack following her, carrying plates, she went over to the sofa and sat down at one of the linen place mats he'd laid on the coffee table in front of the fire. He put down two plates, one of which contained a juicy steak and baked potato.

In front of her, he plopped down a plate on which he had upended a can of tuna fish. That was all. No vegetable, no garnish, no nothing.

After having her mouth water for so long in anticipation of a thick, juicy sizzling steak, Julie's reaction to that cold, round mound of unadorned, unappetizing tuna fish was swift and unguarded. Her irate gaze snapped to his face, her mouth open in angry dismay.

"Isn't that what you wanted?" he asked innocently. "Or would you prefer a nice steak like the one I left in the kitchen?"

There was something about the boyish prank, something about his engaging grin and smiling eyes that caused an unexpected, uncontrollable, and, under the circumstances, bizarre reaction from Julie: She started to giggle. And then she started to laugh. Her shoulders were still shaking when he walked back to the sofa carrying another plate with a steak on it and put it in front of her.

"Like that a little better?"

"Well," she said, trying to sound severe despite the laughter still shimmering in her eyes, "I can forgive you for kidnapping and terrifying me, but it's a hanging offense to give me tuna while you eat steak." Julie would have been content to eat in peaceful silence, but as she cut the first bite of steak he noticed the bruise on her wrist and asked her how she'd gotten it. "That's a football injury," she explained.

"A what?"

"I was playing touch football last week and I got tackled."

"By some big halfback?"

"No, by a small boy and a big wheelchair."

"What?"

It was obvious that he craved conversation as much as he'd claimed, and Julie managed to give him an abbreviated version of the game while she ate. "It was my own fault," she finished, smiling at the memory. "I love basketball, but I've never understood football. It's a game that makes no sense."

"Why do you say that?"

She waved her fork dismissively. "Consider the players, for a start. You have a fullback and a halfback and a quarterback. But there's no three-quarters back. You have a tight end but no loose end." His burst of laughter collided with her last sentence as she finished, "It's definitely not my game, but it doesn't matter, because my kids love it. One of my boys is probably going to go to the Wheelchair Olympics."

Zack noted the softness that crept into her voice and the glow that lit her eyes as she spoke of "my boys," and he continued to smile at her, marveling at her capacity for compassion and her sheer sweetness. Unwilling to let her stop talking, he cast about for another subject and asked, "What were you doing in Amarillo the day we met?"

"I'd gone there to see the grandfather of one of my handicapped students. He's quite wealthy, and I hoped to convince him to donate money to an adult literacy program I'm involved in at school."

"Did you succeed?"

"Yes. His check is in my purse."

"What made you decide to become a teacher?" he said, strangely unwilling to let her stop talking. He'd chosen the right topic, Zack realized when she gave him a heart-stopping smile and warmed to her subject with gratifying immediacy. "I love children, and teaching is an old and respectable profession."

"Respectable?" he repeated, startled by the subtle quaintness of the notion. "I didn't think being 'respectable' was of much concern to anyone these days. Why is it so important to you?"

Julie evaded the all-too-perceptive comment with a lift of her shoulders. "I'm a minister's daughter, and Keaton is a small town."

"I see," he said, but he didn't completely see at all. "There are other professions that are just as respectable."

"Yes, but I wouldn't get to work with people like Johnny Everett and Debby Sue Cassidy."

Her face glowed at the mere mention of Johnny's name, and Zack was instantly curious about the male who seemed to mean more to her than her almost-fiancé. "Who is Johnny Everett?"

"He's one of my students—one of my favorite students, actually. He's paralyzed from the waist down. When I first started teaching at Keaton, he never spoke and he was such a discipline problem that Mr. Duncan wanted to send him away for special education with mentally handicapped kids. His mother swore he could talk, but no one ever heard him, and since she never let him out of the house to play with the other kids, no one could be sure she wasn't trying to make her son seem … more normal. In class, Johnny would do disruptive things, like knocking books onto the floor or blocking the doorway during recess—small things—but they were constant and so Mr. Duncan decided to send him off to a special school."

"Who is Mr. Duncan?"

She wrinkled her small nose with such distaste that Zack grinned. "He's our principal."

"You don't like him very well, I take it?"

"He's not a bad man, he's just too rigid. He would have been right at home a hundred years ago when a student who spoke out in class was disciplined with a hickory stick."

"And Johnny was terrified of him, is that it?"

She giggled merrily and shook her head. "Actually, it was just the opposite. Quite by accident, I discovered that Johnny hated being treated with kid gloves. He wanted to be disciplined."

"How did you discover that?"

"One night, after school, I was in Mr. Duncan's office being chewed out, as usual."

"You get into trouble with the principal?"

"Constantly," she averred, her smile bursting like sunshine. "Anyway, on that particular day, Johnny was waiting for his mother to pick him up, and he overheard what was happening. When I came out of the principal's office, there he was—grinning at me from his wheelchair like I was some sort of hero. Then he said, 'You gonna get a detention, Miss Mathison?'