Perfect (Second Opportunities 2)

Recalling some of Rachel's charge account bills, Zack gauged the price at more like six hundred dollars, but he didn't say that. In fact, he was so intent on getting her to go outside, which he knew she'd very much wanted to do, that he put his hands on her shoulders, gave her a little shake, and said much more than he'd meant to tell her. "Julie, these clothes belong to a woman who has department stores full of beautiful clothes. She wouldn't care in the least if you wore some of them—" Before he finished the sentence, he couldn't believe he'd been foolish enough to reveal so much. Julie's eyes were wide with shock, and he could see her mind working even before she said, "You mean you know the people who own this house? They're letting you use it? Isn't that a terrible risk for them to take, I mean knowingly harboring an escaped—"

"Stop it!" he ordered more roughly than he intended. "I didn't mean anything of the sort!"

"But I'm only trying to understand—"

"Damn it, I don't want you to understand." Reminding himself of the injustice of taking his anger at himself out on her, he raked a hand through the side of his hair and said with only slightly more patience, "I'll try to explain this as clearly and succinctly as I can, and then I want the subject dropped." She gave him a look that made it plain she thought his attitude and his tone were unreasonable and objectionable, but she kept silent. Shoving her hands into her pants pockets, she leaned her shoulders against the bedroom wall, crossed her ankles, and watched him with unnerving absorption.

"When you go back home," Zack began, "the police are going to question you about everything I said and did while we were together, so that they can try to figure out how much help I had escaping and where I'm going next. They'll make you go over it and over it and over it until you're exhausted and can't think clearly any more. They'll do it in the hope you'll remember something you forgot that's significant to them even if it wasn't to you at the time. As long as you can tell them the truth, the whole truth—which is exactly what I'm going to advise you to do when you leave here—you won't have anything to worry about. But if you try to protect me by hiding something from them or if you lie, you'll eventually contradict yourself, and when you do, they'll catch it and they'll tear you apart. They'll start thinking you were my accomplice from the very beginning, and they'll treat you as if you were.

"I'm going to ask you to tell one small, uncomplicated lie that should help us both without tripping you up during questioning. Beyond that, I don't want you to lie or conceal anything from the police. Tell them everything. At this point you don't know one thing that could harm me or anyone involved with me. I intend to keep it that way," he finished emphatically, "for my sake and for your own. Is that clear? You understand why I don't want you to ask any more questions?" His brows snapped together when she asked a question instead of acquiescing, but when he heard it, he relaxed: "What lie are you going to ask me to tell?"

"I'm going to ask you to tell the police that you don't know exactly where this house is. Tell them I blindfolded you after you nearly got away from me at that rest stop and that I made you lie down in the back seat for most of the rest of the trip, so that you couldn't try to get away from me again. It's believable and logical and they'll buy it. It will also help to neutralize that damned truck driver's version of what he saw; he is the only reason the police would ever suspect you of aiding and abetting my escape. I'd do anything in the world to avoid asking you to lie for me like this, but it's the best way."

"And if I refuse?"

His entire face instantly became hard, shuttered, and aloof. "That's up to you, of course," he said in a chillingly courteous voice. Until that moment, as she witnessed the change in him when he thought his trust in her was misplaced, Julie hadn't fully realized how much he'd truly softened toward her since yesterday. His teasing nonchalance and tender lovemaking weren't merely a convenient and pleasant way to while away their time together—at least some part of that was actually real. The discovery was so sweet that she almost missed what he was saying: "If you choose to tell the police where this house is, I would appreciate your remembering to also tell them that I did not have a key and intended to break into it if I couldn't find one. If you don't emphasize that, then the people who own this house, who are as innocent as you of collaborating in my original escape plans, will be subject to the same unjust suspicions that you're being subjected to because of what the truck driver said."

He wasn't trying to protect himself at all, she realized. He was trying desperately to protect whoever owned the house. Which meant he knew them. They were, or had been, friends…

"Would you care to tell me which choice you intend to make?" he said in that same coolly detached voice that she hated. "Or would you prefer to think about it?"

When she was eleven years old, Julie had vowed never to lie again, and she'd not broken that vow in fifteen years. Now she looked at the man she loved and said softly, "I intend to tell them I was blindfolded. How could you think I'd decide anything else?"

Relief flowed through her as she watched the tension drain from his face, but instead of saying something sweet, he gave her a scathing glare and announced, "You have the distinction, Julie, of being the only woman alive who has ever managed to make me feel like an emotional yo-yo dancing on a damned string from the end of your finger."

Julie bit down on her lower lip to stop her smile because it seemed wonderfully significant to be able to affect him in a way no other woman ever had. Even if he didn't like the way she did it at all. "I'm … sorry," she finished lamely and dishonestly.

"The hell you are," he retorted, but the edge was gone from his voice and there was a tinge of reluctant amusement in it. "You're doing your damnedest not to laugh."

Swallowing a giggle at his discomfiture, she lifted her forefinger and inspected it closely, turning it left to right. "It looks like a pretty ordinary finger to me," she teased.

"There's nothing ordinary about you, Miss Mathison," he said with that same combination of irritated amusement. "God help whoever marries you because the poor bastard's going to grow old and gray long before his time!"

His obvious and unconcerned conviction that she was going to end up with someone besides him—someone who he pitied, to boot—doused Julie's spurt of happiness and jerked her back to earth. Vowing to keep things light from this moment on and never again to read more into his words and actions than there really was, she smiled, nodded, shoved away from the wall, and switched to jaunty tennis jargon: "I think that last point you scored gives you the game, set, and match. I concede this verbal victory to you along with all our others."