Judith McNaught (62 page)

I love you, Julie. I loved you in Colorado. I love you here, where I am. I will always love you.

Everywhere. Always.

Julie would have read the letter again, but she couldn't focus through the torrent of tears racing from her

eyes, and the pages slid from her fingers. Covering her face with her hands, she turned against the wall and wept. She wept with joy and bittersweet longing and raging futility; she wept at the injustice that made him a fugitive and at her own stupidity for leaving him in Colorado.

In the living room, Meredith asked Matt a quiet question while reaching for the china coffeepot, but her

gaze strayed toward the dining room doorway, and her eyes riveted in alarm on the back of a weeping woman. "Matt, look!" she said quickly, already standing up and rushing forward ahead of him. "Julie

—"

she said softly when she reached the dining room.

Wincing at the heartbroken sobs wrenching from the other woman, she put her hands on Julie's shaking shoulders and whispered, "Can I do anything to help?"

"Yes!" Julie said brokenly. "You can read that letter and tell me how
anyone
could
ever
believe that man murdered anyone!"

Uncertainly, Meredith reached for the pages lying on the floor and glanced at her husband who'd stopped in the doorway. "Matt, why don't you pour us all some of the wine Julie offered us earlier."

It took Matt several minutes to find the wine, locate a corkscrew, and open a bottle. He was taking glasses out of a cupboard when he heard Meredith walk into the kitchen. He looked over his shoulder, intending to thank her again for coming here, but the stricken look on her face made him turn around, the glasses forgotten. "What's wrong?" he asked anxiously, searching her wan, beautiful features.

"His letter—" she whispered, her eyes glazed with tears. "God! Matt—you can't believe this letter!"

Irrationally angry with Zack for upsetting his wife, Matt slid his arm around her, pulling her close while he

took the letter from her hand and began to read with narrowed eyes. Slowly, his annoyance gave way to shock, then disbelief, and then to sorrow. He'd just finished reading the last line when Julie appeared in the doorway. Meredith heard her and hastily turned around to face her, taking the handkerchief Matt
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handed her, while Julie tried to smile and wipe away her own tears with her fingertips.

"This," Matt said, his voice heavy with regret and sympathy, "has turned out to be one hell of an evening.

I'm … sorry, Julie," he finished lamely, studying the strange look in her wet eyes. "I know Zack didn't mean to make you unhappy."

For one last time, Julie swiftly considered all she'd be leaving behind if she executed her hastily made scheme, but her decision had already been made in the dining room. Fighting to keep her voice steady, she said, "When Zack contacts you, will you kindly remind him that I was abandoned by my own mother and inform him that I will
not
bring a baby into this world and have it know I did the same thing to it."

With a teary smile, she added, "Please also tell him that, if he truly wants me to have his baby, which I would very
much
like to do, then all he has to do is let me join him in his exile."

That last sentence dropped like a bomb into the room, and in the silent aftershocks, Julie watched Matt

Farrell's expression go from amazement to admiration, but his words were carefully designed to dampen

her enthusiasm: "I have no idea when, or if, Zack will contact me again."

Julie laughed a little hysterically. "Oh, yes, he will—

and very soon!" she said with absolute certainty, knowing now that her own instincts about Zack had always been right and that if she'd only listened to them she'd probably have been able to talk him into letting her leave Colorado with him. "He'll contact you right away because he won't be able to bear not knowing what I said."

Matt realized she was probably right and stifled a grin. "Is there anything else you want me to tell him when he contacts me?"

Julie nodded emphatically. "Yes. Tell him he has a maximum of … four weeks to get me there before I take other action. And, tell him that…" She hesitated in embarrassment at the thought of telling Zack something like this through a third party, and then she decided it didn't matter, so long as Zack heard the

words. In an aching voice, she said, "Tell him that I am
dying
without him, too. And—and tell him that if he doesn't let me come to him, I will squander all his money on twenty-five thousand videotapes of Kevin Costner's new movie and then I will
drool
over that man for the rest of my life!"

"I think," Meredith said with a choked laugh, "that should make him agree at once." To Matt, she added,

"Can you remember all that verbatim, or should I make notes?"

Matt shot a startled glance at his wife, who now looked as determined to involve him in Zack's tangled

life as she'd been to keep him out of it two hours ago, then he turned and poured wine into the glasses.

"I

suppose this calls for some sort of toast," he announced, passing out the wine glasses.

"Unfortunately, I

find myself a little speechless right now."

"I'm not," Meredith said. Holding up her glass, she looked at Julie and said with a soft smile, "To every woman who loves as deeply as we do," then she lifted her face to her husband and added quietly,

"and to

the two men we love."

Julie watched him smile at her with tenderness and unembarrassed pride, and she fell in love with both of

them at that moment. They were like Zack and herself, she decided; they were love and

commitment and

unity. "Please say you'll stay for dinner. I'm not much of a cook, but we may never meet again, and I'm

dying to know more about … about everything."

They both nodded at once, and Matt said straight-faced, "Everything? Well, then, I guess I could start with a detailed analysis of the world financial markets. I have some fascinating insights into the probable

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causes of the declining world markets." He laughed at her appalled expression and said, "Or, I guess we could talk about Zack."

"What a great idea," his wife teased. "You can tell us both about your days as neighbors."

"Let me start dinner," Julie said, thinking madly of what to make that wouldn't take much of her time from the conversation.

"No," Meredith said, "let's send Joe for a pizza instead."

"Who's Joe?" Julie asked, already reaching for the telephone to order a pizza.

"Officially, he's our chauffeur. Unofficially, he's a member of the family."

A half hour later, the threesome was cozily ensconced in the living room and Matt was doing his best to

satisfy both women's curiosity with a carefully censored version of his bachelor days as Zack's neighbor,

when the doorbell rang.

Expecting to see a distinguished, lofty, uniformed chauffeur, Julie opened the door and found herself looking instead at a giant of a man with an ominously ugly face, a beguiling grin, and a pizza box atop

each of his outstretched hands. "Come in and join us," she said delightedly, taking one pizza and drawing

him inside. "You didn't need to stay out in the car in the first place."

"That's what I thought, too," Joe joked, but he glanced at Matt to see if he wanted him present.

When

Matt nodded, Joe stepped inside and took off his coat.

"Let's eat in here where there's more room," Julie called to them over her shoulder as she put plates on the dining room table.

"I'll get the wine," Meredith said, standing up.

Joe O'Hara sauntered into the dining room and shoved his hands into his pockets, studying the courageous young woman who'd spoken up in Zack's behalf on television. She looked more like a pretty

coed than a teacher, he thought, with her shiny dark hair tied at the nape with a bow and her soft skin aglow. She didn't look one bit like the overblown sexpots who'd hung onto Zack, and Joe liked that.

He

sent a questioning look at Matt, who was standing beside him, watching her with an affectionate half-smile. In answer to the unspoken question, his employer slowly nodded and Joe drew the obvious gratifying conclusion. "So," Joe said aloud, "you're Zack's lady."

She stopped in the act of putting napkins next to plates and raised eyes the color and softness of blue violets to his. "That," she told him, "is the
nicest
compliment I've ever gotten." To Julie's amazement, the

big man reddened around his collar. "Do you know Zack, too?" she asked to put him at ease and because she was eager to know everything she could.

"You bet I do," he said with a grin as he and the Farrells sat down. "I could tell you stories about him that no one knows, not even Matt."

"Tell me one," Julie said enthusiastically.

O'Hara helped himself to a slice of pizza, thought for a moment, and then said, "Okay, I've got one. One night, Matt had an unexpected guest and he sent me next door to Zack's house because we were out of
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Stoli—vodka," he explained. Julie nodded her understanding, and he took another bite of pizza before

continuing enthusiastically, "It was about midnight, and the lights were on in Zack's house, but no one answered the door. I could hear his voice though, and women's voices, coming from around in back, so I

walked around the house, and there was Zack, standing by his swimming pool, still wearing the tuxedo

he'd worn to some party he'd been at."

Julie perched her chin on her hand, fascinated.

"What was he doing?" she asked when O'Hara took another bite of pizza.

"Swearing," Joe said succinctly.

"Who was he swearing at?"

"The three naked women in his pool. They were fans of his who'd found out his address somehow and figured he'd join them for a little orgy once he saw them nude in his pool."

"O'Hara!" Matt warned.

"No, this story's okay, Matt, honest. Julie won't get jealous or anything. Will you?" he asked her uncertainly.

Laughing, Julie shook her head. Zack loved her, she knew that now. She had nothing whatsoever to be jealous about. "I won't be jealous."

"I knew you wouldn't," he said with a satisfied glance at his employers. "Anyway, Julie," he continued to

her, "Zack was boiling mad, and I'll tell you somethin' you may not know—underneath that cool, calm

surface of Zack's, that man has got a temper you would not believe! When the women wouldn't get out

of his pool like he ordered 'em to, he told me to catch them as he threw them out, and that's exactly what

he did. He waded into his pool with all his clothes on, and the next thing I knew some broad about twenty years old rolled out of the pool and landed at my feet, stark naked. Then Zack came wading out of his pool with a girl under each arm."

Julie tried not to look the least bit shocked by the story. "What did you do with them?"

"Just what Zack said to do. He was so damned mad, he wouldn't let 'em get dressed. We carted 'em, howling and protesting and begging for their clothes, down the driveway to where they'd left their car, then Zack stuffed his two in the back seat, while I unloaded mine into the front seat. Then he yanked open the front door, turned on the ignition key, and jerked the car into gear. "Drive it or crash it," he told them, "but get the f—ing hell out of here and don't ever come back!"

The women exchanged gratified looks, obviously in complete accord over Zack's upright morality.

"You never told me about that," Matt said with a puzzled frown.

"Hell, I tried to tell you, but the woman you were entertainin' that night was tryin' to get your clothes off,

so I left the Stoli on the bar and went to bed."

Julie delicately focused her laughing gaze on her pizza, Meredith propped her chin on her folded hands

and gazed at her husband with amused eyes, and Matt sent a chilling glance to his errant chauffeur, who

held up his hands and said defensively, "Meredith's smiling, Matt. She realizes you had no idea you were married to
her
at the time!"

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Julie choked on her wine.

"You may as well explain that remark," Matt said irritably after exchanging a glance with his wife,

"before

Julie decides Zack has entrusted his future to a complete imbecile."

"I thought everybody already knew the story—it was all over the newspapers and everything," Joe said, but when Julie looked blank, he said, "Y'see, Matt and Meredith had gotten married and divorced when Meredith was still eighteen, only no one knew it, not even me. Then, twelve years later, Meredith finds out they'd had a bogus divorce lawyer and they weren't actually divorced, so she invites him to lunch and

they talk for the first time in all those years, and she lays the news on him. Jesus, was Matt mad!

Meredith was already engaged to somebody else, and the three of them had to give a news conference and try to look friendly, and Matt tried to make it seem like a funny joke—"

"I
do
know the story," Julie uttered as everything suddenly snapped into place. "That's why you both seemed familiar when I first saw you tonight! I
saw
that news conference." She shifted her startled gaze to Matt Farrell and added, "I remember that you and Meredith's fiancé joked about the whole mess and seemed rather like friends. And then … just a few days later, you—you hit him! Didn't you? There was a

picture of the fight in the newspapers."

"We are all very good friends now, however," Matt said, grinning slightly at her thoughtful expression.

It was after eleven o'clock when the party reluctantly broke up. Julie excused herself to get something from her bedroom. By the time she returned with the green sweater and slacks she'd worn home from Colorado, Joe O'Hara had already gone outside to warm the car up, and Matt and Meredith were waiting near the door.

In accordance with his wife's whispered request to speak to Julie in private, Matt smiled at Julie, said good-bye, and added, "I'll wait in the car with Joe while you and Meredith say your farewells."