by Teresa Hill
"Zach, please..."
He didn't let go, but his voice changed, going deep and so familiar it hurt. "Why don't you just tell me what's wrong, Julie."
As if that were all she had to do—pour out her troubles to him, and he'd fix everything. He might be able to. Things that seemed impossible to her were no problem in his capable hands. But then the world just worked for Zach McRae, other than that odd little blip in the first five years of his life.
"Come on, Julie. It's me."
Maybe she should tell him. Just so he'd know she was okay. Because even after all this time, he probably still cared. He knew her better than almost anyone ever would, and he still cared.
Before she could open her guilty mouth, Steve showed up. "You two get lost?"
His arm came around her waist, possession and tension evident in just the touch of his hand. Julie stood sandwiched between them, her past on one side, her future on the other, both of them crowding her until she almost couldn't breathe. Steve's jaw was tight, his cheeks flushed. He glanced down pointedly at Zach's hand on her arm.
If they'd stood there one more minute like that, Steve could have grabbed her other arm and they could have played tug-of-war with her. The testosterone levels were soaring. She'd never seen Steve behave this way.
"I'm sorry," she stammered. "We were just... just—"
"Talking about old times," Zach said, as he let his hand fall to his side and stepped back, as if to cede that territory to Steve, ignoring all those not-so-subtle signs of a challenge. "Emma's pregnant again. She's my older sister. She and Rye are hoping for another boy this time to even things out. They already have two girls and a boy. Grace—my younger sister—studied art in Paris for several years. She loved it there, but now she's home."
"And your parents are well?" Julie asked.
"Couldn't be better."
"I'm glad. They were always so kind to me."
They arrived at the table to find Steve's father standing, pointedly waiting. Steve's mother was already seated. Steve held out a chair for Julie, one that put her squarely between the two men and staring at her future in-laws all through dinner. Wonderful. Barbara Land seemed overjoyed, possibly thinking tonight she'd find a reason to object to the engagement.
Here Julie had been thinking she was home free from the moment the ring had gone onto her finger. But she wondered now if there'd ever come a point where she felt safe and secure. That's all she'd ever wanted in her whole life. It meant everything to her. She felt so safe with Steve.
She slid into the chair, placed the crisp white napkin on her lap, and looked around the table from one set of inquisitive eyes to another. Her composure slipped another notch.
Another week was all she needed. She and Steve would formally announce their engagement then. Six weeks after that, they'd be married. Even if at some point in the future Steve found out everything, he wouldn't just walk away. Marriage vows meant something to him. Maybe he wouldn't care about her secrets at all. He claimed to love her, after all.
No, he claimed to love the person she was pretending to be.
"Ma'am?"
She looked up. The waiter was holding out a menu to her, probably had been for a while. Everyone at the table was staring at her. She took the menu, studying it intently, wondering what would be easiest on a stomach turning queasier with every passing moment.
She gave a little start when the busboy leaned over her shoulder to fill her delicate crystal water glass. When she dared to look up from her menu again, he was gone. It was just the five of them sitting around the table. Silence fell, an awkwardness settling firmly into place.
It was amazing. Zach had hardly said a thing, and yet they all seemed to know something was wrong. How did they know?
"So... you're still in Ohio, Mr. McRae?" Barbara Land asked.
"Yes," he said.
"And what brings you to Memphis?" Steve's father asked.
"A case," he said.
"Case?"
"I'm an attorney," he said.
Oh, no. Julie was afraid she knew the case.
She'd scanned the front-page headlines this morning as she'd hurried out the door. Even in a rush, she'd thought about Zach for a moment. Because she knew what he did. She'd stumbled across his name in the paper months ago, when he was defending a boy in Texas, trying to keep him off death row. Next thing Julie knew, he was on the television news. Zach McRae, right there in her living room, the first familiar thing she'd seen in ages. She'd drank in the sight of him and the sound of his voice, and then had gotten caught up in the passion in his words.
"You're defending that boy, aren't you?" she asked. "What's his name? Tim? Tom?"
"Tony Williams." Zach's gaze settled on her, once more seeming to see right inside of her.
She couldn't tell if he was surprised or pleased. Obviously, she'd been keeping up with him, might as well have taken out a billboard announcing that fact.
Oh, Julie. You 're a mess tonight.
"That boy who shot his father?" Steve asked.
"He's been charged with that," Zach said.
"Found standing over the body with blood on his hands, I heard," Steve's father said, sounding incredulous. "You're really defending him?"
"Yes," Zach said, managing with just one word to issue a challenge. "I'm with a foundation that specializes in death penalty cases involving juveniles. They often don't have the money for a defense of their own and end up with overworked public defenders. We step in whenever we can to help. Tony Williams deserves all that we can do for him."
"Why?" Steve asked.
"Let's see." Zach settled back in his chair, getting comfortable. "Because he was fourteen when it happened. Because he has only a marginal IQ. Because he's been abused in ways I doubt you could begin to understand. Because no one ever helped him, not in the entire time he was growing up, and now all society has to offer him is a jail cell and a lethal injection. Yes, I'm defending him. Someone should have shot his father long ago. Tony would have been much better off."
Steve's mother almost choked. She covered her mouth with her hand and coughed, Steve's father patting her on the back, politeness obviously beyond her at the moment.
"Well," she said a moment later, recovering her composure. "How very interesting. This is the sort of thing you do?"
"Yes," Zach said.
And did it very well, from what Julie had found out. Honestly, it was just too easy to find information about people these days. She had ever-so-innocently typed his name into her favorite internet search engine, and there came story after story, pictures often, of Zach McRae, the crusading lawyer, taking on higher-profile, hopeless cases, brutal ones, involving kids.
How did he do that day after day? What sort of toll must that take on a man?
"And you'd put that teenager back on the streets?" Steve asked. "Knowing he could do anything?"
"I don't hold out much hope of him going free, but I'd sure like to see him get the help he needs," Zach admitted. "I don't quite see what society has to gain by putting him to death."
"So, you're an opponent of the death penalty?" Steve's mother tried.
"No," Zach said. "I'm fine with it in certain cases. Say, a grown man who abuses his wife and innocent children."
Julie almost laughed, as horribly inappropriate as that would have been. She felt sorry for the Williams boy. Honestly, she did. There was nothing funny about his situation. It was just that the comment was so Zach. He knew exactly where he stood, what he believed in, and he'd never been shy of telling anyone. She'd always thought if they'd just put him in charge of the world, the whole place would run a lot more smoothly. It was one of the things that made him so attractive to her as a girl. She hadn't felt sure of anything.
Steve's mother was making that little choking sound again at Zach's comment. The things he'd likely seen over the years, the kind of chaos Julie had lived with, were obviously as foreign to Steve's mother as a man who spoke his mind as openly as Zach. Once more, she
felt like an outsider looking in on her fiancé and his family. One more time, the lost little girl inside her nagged, You don't belong here. You never will.
She turned to Zach, a pleading look in her eyes once again. "Is your mother still working in stained glass, Zach?"
"Yes," he said.
"Barbara's great-uncle did, too. He did the windows of their church here in town—"
"The one where we're going to be married," Steve interjected.
"Yes." If she got through this night, they just might. "They're absolutely beautiful, and Steve's parents have a few of his pieces at their home. I was... Well, I thought of your mother when I saw them. I hope her work is going well."
"Couldn't be better," he said. "And it looks like Grace is going to follow in her footsteps, working in glass."
"Oh." Julie smiled, a genuine smile, for the first time all night. "I can see her doing that. And your father? Zach's father does wonderful restoration work," she told Steve. "They used to live in the most fabulous old Victorian house."
"Still do," Zach said.
"Good." She was just starting to relax a bit when she realized what he'd just said. She probably wasn't supposed to have ever seen the house the McRaes still lived in, the one they allegedly moved into after leaving St. Louis, where she claimed she'd known them.
Julie scanned the faces around her, waiting for someone to pick up on that little inconsistency, but no one said a word.
The waiter came and rescued her, rambling on about the night's specials and getting into an extended discussion with Steve's father about the quality and vintage of the different champagnes offered, until he'd settled on just the right one.
"We're celebrating," Steve explained, taking Julie's hand and angling it so that the big diamond ring he'd put on her finger was practically under Zach's nose. "Tonight with my parents, and next Saturday they're throwing us an engagement party."
"Congratulations. I hope you'll be very happy together," Zach said, not taking his eyes off her.
I will be, she wanted to tell him. I'll be just fine.
She told herself to stop seeing disaster around every corner. Her life wasn't like that anymore. Then Steve's mother turned to Zach and said, "Yes, we're planning a lovely party. You simply must come."
Julie watched helplessly as Zach smiled and said he would love to if he was still in town and could find the time.
The endless dinner continued, Steve simmering angrily, Barbara Land looking like a woman who would not give up, now that she sensed she was onto something. Zach was as charming as Julie had always known he would be when he was all grown up. Julie picked at her dinner and mostly just stared at her glass of champagne, touching it to her lips when forced to for each toast, but nothing more. She wasn't sure, but she thought Zach was doing the same thing.
He finally excused himself, saying he had to be in court early. She and Steve said good-bye to his parents at the front of the restaurant, and then faced each other in the parking lot on the warm summer night.
"Well." Steve made a show of pulling out a cigarette and lighting it, drawing one long, hard pull of nicotine into his lungs, something he seldom allowed himself. " Who is he?"
"I told you. A neighbor. The older brother of a girl I used to play with."
"What else, Julie?"
"Between me and Zach? Nothing. There's never been anything between us except friendship, Steve, I promise."
"You were jumpy all night, right from the moment you spotted him."
"I was just so surprised. It was like stepping back into the past for a minute. I haven't done that in so long, and you know the memories aren't good ones."
"What else?" Steve asked again, unrelenting as he kept his distance while drawing in deeply on the cigarette.
Put it out, she wanted to say. Stop looking like you're so far away, and hold me. But he stayed there, uneasy and maybe still angry. It was unsettling. He was the most easygoing man she'd ever met. It was one of the things she loved about him the most. How even tempered he was, how capable, how solid, how reasonable.
She thought about just going to him, slipping her arms around him and hanging on to him, asking him to hang on to her. She tried not to do that too often, tried to hold the feelings at bay and not seem too needy.
It wasn't working now.
"Nothing. I'm just... there's just so much to do, still, for the wedding, and I want it to be perfect. Your mother wants it to be perfect."
She went to Steve, her head bent low and coming to rest against his chest. She grabbed the edges of his suit jacket, to hold on to what they had, and her breath caught until his arms reluctantly came around her.
Acquaintances of hers, upon meeting him, said he didn't seem very exciting, that he was a bit set in his ways. They'd done everything but come right out and call him dull, but Julie had never thought that. He was stable, something she'd craved her whole life, and it meant a lot more to her than that little zing of heat she'd felt when Zach touched her.
Then there were the friends who'd implied that she might be willing to overlook certain shortcomings of Steve's because of the money. He wasn't rich. Just comfortable. That's what Steve called it. Julie had so seldom been the least bit comfortable and never in the way he meant it. She hadn't gone after him because of his money, but at the same time, she knew they wouldn't ever have to worry about losing things, like their electrical service or even their home.
Steve's family had been in this town for nearly a hundred and fifty years. They had roots and staying power, the likes of which she'd never known. Steve hardly ever drank. He didn't have a temper. He didn't flirt with other women, didn't belittle her or discount her opinions or yell. He didn't lie. He didn't cheat. He didn't bet on ball games or cards. He didn't hit her.
He was the epitome of calm in a world she often thought was crazy. It had been the first thing that attracted her to him. They'd been in a meeting room full of screaming people, facing a major crisis at one of the stores the Lands owned, and Steve had been the picture of calm. He'd gotten everyone to settle down and solved the problem. They'd all gone on with what they needed to do, and she and Steve had gone on to dinner and then to dating for a full year and now to being engaged.
She meant to hang on to him for dear life.
"Sorry," he said, his arms finally tightening around her, his body relaxing against hers. "I just don't think I've ever seen you even appear to be interested in another man. You hung on to every word the man said."
Because she was scared of what was going to come out of his mouth.
"He's never been interested in me that way, Steve. He never would be."
"Why not? I happen to find you very interesting."
"You didn't know me when I was twelve." Thank goodness.
"I would have found you interesting at any age," he claimed, his lips finding hers. "Forget all this. Come home with me."
She closed her eyes and tried so hard to fall into that kiss, to let it take her away from here, make her forget every fear.
But the business card Zach had given her was practically screaming at her from inside her purse. She eased away from Steve, head down low.
"I'm sorry. I can't." She really didn't want to lie. She'd never set out to. It had just happened. "The wedding... all those decisions still to make."
Truly, she felt bombarded by it all lately.
"Just remember," he said, "I don't care about the details. I just want to marry you. The rest really doesn't matter, does it?"
"No, it doesn't."
"All right." He gave her a quick kiss, helped her into the car, and waited, watching as she drove away.
Once Julie was out of his sight, she pulled out the card Zach had given her. On the back, he'd scrawled out the name of his hotel and his room number.
She turned south, toward downtown, and his hotel.
Chapter 2
He was staying in one of those apartment-like complexes for people on extended trips, which she took as a bad sign.
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Murder trials took a while, didn't they?
Julie knocked on his door. A moment later, it swung open to reveal Zach, minus the tie and jacket, white dress shirt open at the collar revealing a long strip of tantalizing muscles and tanned skin.
Oh. She really didn't need to see him this way, as a very attractive man.
"Julie." He stepped back, gesturing for her to come inside.
There was a small living room with a tiny kitchenette. Through the open doorway in the corner she could see a slightly rumpled bed, pillows piled up against the headboard, a pile of papers strewn off to the side. There was another pile of papers, equally as big and messy, on the coffee table by the floral-print sofa.
"Sit down." He pointed to the sofa as he cleared away papers from the coffee table. "Sorry about the mess. It gets worse the closer I get to trial. I shouldn't have taken the time out for dinner tonight, but it's become a pretrial tradition. The last decent meal before insanity sets in."
Julie wished so badly that he hadn't been at dinner. She thought about all the little fibs she'd ever told him and wondered why she'd even tried with him. He'd always seen right through her.
"Zach?" She stood there, ready to beg, worrying it was a bigger mistake to have come here. "I don't know how to say this without sounding totally ungrateful for everything you and your family ever did for me." They'd been a refuge of calm in a chaotic childhood. "But this... My life, now, it's..."
"None of my business, huh?" Seeming perfectly at ease, he leaned back in his seat and smiled slowly.
She nodded, making herself meet his gaze.
"Okay." He shrugged. "If that's the way you want it."
"It... Well..." It was, wasn't it? Wasn't that the way it had to be?
"Julie, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You seemed nervous at the restaurant, I thought..."
"That I'd gotten myself into another mess, and you were going to come rescue me?"
"I would have," he said quietly.
All the breath went out of her at the understanding look in his eyes and the promise of the words.
She believed he would have, even after all these years, and to someone like her, who'd never really had the kind of family she could depend upon, it meant the world to her, knowing that.