Perfect (Second Opportunities 2)

During all that time, the only disagreement Zack and Julie had took place the night of their engagement, and it was about Zack's adamant insistence on paying for the wedding. He'd finally settled it in private with Julie's father, who, thankfully, had absolutely no conception of the cost of a wedding gown from Bancroft & Company or jet fuel, which Zack was going to compensate Matt for, or much of anything else. Zack had "graciously relented" enough to let Reverend Mathison contribute $2,000 toward the cost of the wedding, then he volunteered—with equal graciousness and less honesty—to have his accountant in California handle the tedious business of paying all the bills and to refund Reverend Mathison any excess.

Now, as Zack looked at Julie who was making notes on her tablet, he thought of all the pressure she was under and how gracefully she coped with everything. In comparison, his own days had been wonderfully peaceful and filled with accomplishment. Free from the constant interruptions he'd have had in California, he'd been able to read scripts, which was his most pressing current task, and consider what he wanted to do as his first film project. The studio heads and producers and bankers he needed to meet with would all wait until he got back home. His dramatic escape from prison, his recapture, his subsequent release, and now his marriage to the young teacher who'd been his hostage had combined to make him into an even bigger "legend" than he'd been before he went to prison. He didn't need to read Variety to know he was now the hottest property in the film business. Beyond attending to his work, the only other problem he'd needed to handle personally in the last week had been the issue of Julie's public image. Originally, when the tapes of his arrest in Mexico City had been shown, Julie had been regarded by the world as a heroine who'd trapped a deranged mass murderer. A few weeks later, when Zack had been proved innocent and released from prison, those same tapes had made him into a heroic martyr to police brutality and Julie into a treacherous bitch who'd betrayed him. Rather than let her continue to suffer from the taint of that, Zack had quietly sent a copy of the tape he'd gotten from Richardson to a friend at CNN without first consulting with Julie. Within twenty-four hours of the first broadcast of it, the world had reacted to Julie's hysterical suffering just as Zack had done when he saw the tape.

Now, as he remembered all that had transpired in her life in the last week, Zack felt guilty and ashamed for his irascibility over what was, after all, only two weeks of enforced celibacy in the presence of a woman he desired more than he'd have imagined possible. Walking over to her, he took the tablet out of her hands, kissed her forehead, and said softly, "You are an amazing woman, sweetheart. Unfortunately, you're marrying an oversexed, bad-tempered jerk who happens to want you desperately."

She leaned forward and kissed him with enough ardor to make him groan and move her away again. "All you have to do," she reminded him, "is either break your word or tell my father his deal with you is off."

"I'm not going to break my damned word."

She chuckled and shook her head, picked up the tablet again, and pulled the pencil out of her shiny hair as if she'd already forgotten the kiss that still had his blood running hot. "I know. I'd be disappointed if you did."

"It might help," Zack said, irrationally irked by the same patience that he'd admired only moments before, "if I thought this sexless arrangement was driving you just half as crazy as it's driving me."

Julie tossed the tablet aside and stood up, and he realized for the first time that either she wasn't nearly as serene about the wedding plans and their enforced celibacy as he'd thought or else his own disposition was wearing her down. Or all three. "We're supposed to be on the baseball field tonight, remember?" she said testily. "This is a very special game between the little League team I've helped to coach all year and our rivals in Perseville. You agreed to umpire, and everybody's all excited about that. Let's not argue. Or if we're going to disagree, then save it for the game."

Zack did, and they did.

Three hours later, with two stunned Little League teams looking on and the bleachers filled with amazed parents, Zack Benedict reaped the unpleasant rewards of a week of unjust impatience he'd inflicted on his overstressed fiancée. Crouched behind home plate during the end of the seventh inning, with the bases loaded and the score tied, Zack watched from behind his obligatory umpire's mask as Julie's second star runner slid toward home base. "Out!" he called, throwing up his arm in the ritualistic symbol. As he'd already discovered during the past seven innings, Texans took their sons' Little League baseball games seriously, and not even a famous movie star who'd they'd all begun to like was immune from the indignant outrage aimed at any umpire who made an unpopular, if accurate, call. The crowd from Keaton booed and yelled their disapproval at him.

To Julie, who was seated on the coach's bench on the sidelines, Zack's call against her team was not only unpopular, it looked as wrong and unjust as his last two calls had seemed. This time she didn't merely grind her teeth, she shot off the bench and marched onto the field to confront him. "Are you crazy!" she burst out to Zack's amazed disbelief. "He was safe!"

"He was out!" Zack said.

She plunked her hands on her hips, oblivious to the shouts and laughter beginning to come from the crowd who was watching the argument, and said furiously, "You're taking out your ridiculous frustration with me on my team and I won't stand for it!"

Zack looked up at her from his crouching position, his own temper beginning to ignite at this unjust—and embarrassing—public assault on his judgment and sportsmanship. "He was out! Now, sit down on that bench where you belong," he said, pointing to it. Too late, he realized that the laughter that followed Julie as she angrily obeyed and marched back to the bench was going to scrape her strained temper to the breaking point.

Her third batter made two strikes, wound up, and stepped away from a pitch that missed being a bad one by a hair. "Strike three!" Zack called, and because it had been such a close call, even from his vantage point, he wasn't at all surprised when the crowd roared with outraged disapproval. He was, however, very surprised when Julie shot off the bench, shouting at her dejected team to stay on the field, and marched over to him like a bristling virago. "You need glasses!" she exploded, shaking with anger. "That was a ball, not a strike, and you know it!"

"He's out!"

"He is not! You're so busy trying to prove to everyone how unbiased you are that you're cheating my team!"