Perfect (Second Opportunities 2)

"Don't you find that a little odd given the circumstances that brought you here?"

Julie leaned forward and picked up a magazine that was lying half off the table and laid it fanlike atop the other two, then she moved the crystal bowl of silk flowers two inches to the left, to the precise center of the table. "Everything has seemed pretty odd for three days," she hedged cautiously. "I can't begin to guess what would be normal behavior in these circumstances." Standing up, she began straightening the throw pillows she'd disarranged during her nap. She was bending down to pick one up from the carpet when he said in a laughter-tinged voice, "That's a habit you have, isn't it—straightening things out when you feel uneasy?"

"I wouldn't say that. I'm just a very tidy person." She stood up and looked at him, and her composure slipped a notch toward laughter. His brows were raised in mocking challenge and his eyes were gleaming with amused fascination. "All right," she said with a helpless laugh, "I admit it. It is a nervous habit." As she finished putting the pillow where it belonged, she added with a rueful smile, "Once, when I was nervous about failing an exam in college, I reorganized everything in the attic, then I alphabetized all my brothers' stereo records and my mother's recipes."

His eyes laughed at her story, but his voice was puzzled and solemn. "Am I doing something that makes you nervous?"

Julie gaped at him in stunned laughter, then she said with a lame attempt at severity, "You've been doing things that make me extremely nervous for three solid days!"

Despite her censorious tone, the way she was looking at him filled Zack with poignant tenderness: There was no trace of fear or suspicion or revulsion or hatred anywhere on her lovely, expressive face, and it seemed like a lifetime since anyone had looked at him like this. His own lawyers hadn't really believed he was innocent. Julie did. He'd have known it just by looking at her, but the memory of her words at the stream, the way her voice had broken when she said them, made it a thousand times more meaningful:

"Remember when you said you wanted someone to believe that you're innocent? I didn't completely believe you then, but I do now. I swear it! I know you didn't kill anyone."

She could have left him to die at the stream, or if that was unthinkable to a minister's daughter, she could have gotten him back here, then taken the car and called the police from the nearest phone. But she hadn't. Because she really believed he was innocent. Zack wanted to pull her into his arms and tell her how much that meant to him; he wanted to bask in the warmth of her smile and hear her infectious peal of laughter again. Most of all, he wanted to feel her mouth on his, to kiss her and caress her until they were both wild, and then to thank her for the gift of her trust with his body. Because that was the only thing he had to give her.

He knew she sensed a change in their relationship and for some incomprehensible reason, it was making her more nervous than she'd been when he was holding a gun on her. He knew that just as surely as he knew they were going to make love tonight and that she wanted to almost as much as he did.

Julie waited for him to say something or to laugh at her last jibe, and when he didn't, she stepped back and gestured toward the kitchen. "Are you hungry?" she asked for the second time.

He nodded slowly, and her hand stilled at the husky intimacy she thought she heard in his voice. "Starved."

Julie told herself very firmly that he had not deliberately chosen that particular word because it had been used during their quarrel last night in a sexual context. Trying to look innocent of all such thoughts, she said very politely, "What would you like?"

"What are you offering?" he countered, playing verbal chess with her with such ease that Julie wasn't at all certain if all the double meanings to their exchange existed only in her fevered imagination.

"I was offering food, of course."

"Of course," he solemnly agreed, but his eyes were glinting with amusement.

"Stew, to be specific."

"It's important to be specific."

Julie elected to make a strategic retreat from the strangely charged conversation and began backing away toward the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. "I'll put out the dinner things and serve the stew over there."

"Let's eat here by the fire instead," he said, his voice like a soft caress. "It's cozier."

Cozier… Julie's mouth went dry. In the kitchen, she worked with outward efficiency, but her hands were trembling so hard she could hardly ladle the thick stew into bowls. From the corner of her eye, she saw him walk over to the stereo and flip through the stacks of CDs, loading them into the revolving tray; a moment later, Barbra Streisand's lilting voice filled the room. Of all the CDs in the cabinet that ranged from Elton John to jazz, he'd picked Streisand.

Cozier.

The word swirled around in her brain; she reached for two napkins, put them on the tray, and then, with her back to the living room, Julie braced her palms on the counter top and drew a long, steadying breath. Cozier. By his definition, she knew perfectly well that meant "more conducive to intimacy." "Romantic." She knew it, just as clearly as she knew that the situation between them had altered irreversibly from the moment she chose to stay here with him rather than leaving him at the creek or bringing him here and calling the police. He knew it, too. She could see the evidence. There was a new softness in his eyes when he looked at her and a smiling tenderness in his voice, and they were both utterly shattering to her self-control. Julie straightened and shook her head at her foolish, futile attempt to deceive herself. There was nothing left of her self-control, no more arguments that mattered, nowhere she could go to hide from the truth.

The truth was that she wanted him. And he wanted her. They both knew it.

She put silverware on the tray, slanted another glance at him over her shoulder, and hastily looked away. He was sitting on the sofa, his arms spread out across the back of it, his foot propped casually atop the opposite knee, and he was watching her—relaxed, indulgent, and sexy. He wasn't going to rush her, and he wasn't a bit nervous either, but then he'd undoubtedly made love thousands of times with hundreds of women—all of whom were much prettier and unquestionably more experienced than she was.

Julie stilled a compulsive urge to start reorganizing the kitchen drawers.

Zack watched her return to the sofa and, bending down, place the tray on the table, her movements graceful and uncertain, like a frightened gazelle. Firelight gleamed on her heavy chestnut hair as it spilled forward over her shoulders from a single side part; it glowed on her soft skin as she arranged the place mats and bowls. Her long, sooty lashes cast fan-shaped shadows on her smooth cheeks, and he noticed for the first time that she had beautiful hands, the fingers slender, nails long and tapered. He had a sudden poignant memory of those hands clasping his face to her at the stream as she rocked him in her arms and pleaded with him to get up. At the time, it had seemed like a dream in which he had merely been an uninvolved spectator, but later, after he staggered into bed, his recollections were clearer. He remembered her hands smoothing blankets over him, the frantic worry in her lovely voice… As he looked at her now, he marveled anew at the strange aura of innocence about her, then he suppressed a puzzled smile at the realization that, for some reason, Julie was assiduously avoiding his eyes. For the last three days she had opposed, defied, and challenged him; today, she had outwitted him and then saved his life. And yet, for all her dauntless courage and her spunk, she was amazingly shy, now that the hostilities between them were over. "I'll get some wine," he said, and before she could decline he got up and returned with a bottle and two stemmed glasses.