by Arlene James
With a shake of his head, he reminded himself that he had humiliated her by his rejection, however unintentional, and then left her to deal with the aftermath on her own, even knowing that she was in danger from an obsessive suitor. She had made her feelings clear on this notion of marriage. He couldn’t blame her. She’d just found a freedom of sorts from her sister’s egotistical tyranny, and now, through sheer necessity, was married to the man who had forced the issue by his actions, endangering her in the process. No, she would be insane to welcome him now. With a sigh of resignation, he realized that he was living a homily. He had made his bed, and now he had to sleep in it. Alone.
Jillian dozed fitfully, her mind whirling with the events of the past. some she had all but forgotten. For a brief moment, she was a little girl playing on the deck with her parents sipping cold drinks beside her, sunning themselves on chaise lounges and murmuring to each another about the upcoming week. Her third-grade teacher handed her a blue ribbon she’d won on a watercolor painting. She posed for pictures at a birthday party, happy and tired.
Other memories came. Camille, at twelve, informed her haughtily that her beloved mother was a home breaker. Her father explained that he had been unhappily married to Gerry when he’d fallen in love with her own mother, who wept silent tears at the telling. Jillian half remembered, half dreamed Gerry declaring that her parents should pay for what they had done to her. She dreamed reluctantly of the policeman who had come to her friend Memdith’s house to inform her that her parents were lost at sea in the Gulf of Mexico. They would not be returning from their weekend jaunt. She heard Meredith’s mother telling her that she could stay with them just as long as she needed to, and she remembered feeling sick and knowing that it wasn’t so. Meri had three sisters and two brothers residing in their comfortable middle-class home.
Camille came for her, and Jillian remembered her relief and gratitude. She hadn’t believed it would happen. Gerry, stiff-lipped and disapproving, stood aside as Geny’s current husband and Jillian wagged her packed baggage into the house. She remembered that same man, less than a year later, shouting at Geny that her bitterness ruined everything around her as he stormed from the house. She remembered, too, that Gerry had blamed Jillian’s father even for that, though he was dead and gone. Worst of all, she remembered Camille’s silent agreement.
Other slights came to her, criticisms on everything from her attitude to her clothing, disparaging remarks about her looks and her interests, mockings of her friends. She remembered good things, too: she and Camille laughing together over something silly; Camille whispering that they were sisters and would always be together; infrequent compliments on the smallest things, some supper dish, the whiteness of a freshly laundered pair of socks, a comment on a report card. She remembered celebrating Camille’s achievements, Gerry’s third wedding and the relief of having her move out of the house. In those relatively peaceful years following, Jillian had tagged along to important parties, double-dated as a stand-in for one of Camille’s friends who had canceled at the last minute, had her first boyfriend, a shy chemistry geek whose idea of a date was eating lunch together in the school cafeteria.
Jillian mourned the slow death of Gerry’s late husband, who had given Gerry a measure of happiness that had controlled her resentment, and felt the sting of casual breakups and promised calls that never came, unrequited crushes and shameful longings. But she relished other memories, the enthusiastic encouragement of certain teachers, making new friends in college, developing new interests, honing her talent. She remembered moving to the new house Camille bought in North Dallas, Gerry joining them again, the wavering hope that they could fashion a true family of sorts.
In the nether world of semiconsciousness, Jillian relived the surge of triumph and achievement that came with insight into her own creativity, laughter with her friends, the dawning certainty of Denise’s quirky friendship, the fun of Worly’s infamous jam sessions. She felt herself narrowing and expanding at the same time, trying to fit the ever more confining mold fashioned for her by Camille, breaking free of that cocoon of neediness when away from her. Then the real nightmares came.
Visions of her parents tossing lifelessly in a rough, black sea broke her heart. Gerry, on a drunken rampage after her second divorce, scared and embarrassed her. Camille screamed at her that she couldn’t do anything right and threw a blue dress with a scorch mark on it in her face. And Janzen. Smiles and winks were followed by rages and pleading apologies. Jillian covered her ears to block out screaming matches between him and Camille. She shrugged away unwanted touches, listened uneasily to offensive teasing, pretended to misinterpret loaded looks and guiltily ignored Gerry’s innuendos. She suffered Camille’s accusing looks and disparaging denials, and then she awoke, startled, to the darkness of her own bedroom and Janzen’s alcohol-heated breath and fumbling hands. Locked doorknobs rattled, Janzen’s slurred voice pleading, promising. Camille screamed and wailed while Gerry accused and guilt swamped her. The telephone rang endlessly. Tires screeched and metal crunched. Camille hissed for her to keep quiet. Shattering glass showered her face. A dark, menacing presence knocked her to the floor. Pain blinded her, and in the same moment she was alone in her room in the dark. No, not alone. Someone else was there. She screamed. Zach! Where was Zach?
Suddenly she was in his arms, safe and trembling, as he murmured words of comfort and apology. Gradually she realized that daylight had chased back the shadows of night. The pounding of her heart slowed and then sped up again as she became aware of where she was and why. This was not her bedroom but Zach’s, and it was the morning after her wedding.
“I’m sorry,” Zach was saying. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I just came in to get some clean clothes.”
Her sham wedding. A wedding night spent alone. Lies and desperate schemes. Friendly people easily fooled. A husband who didn’t love her. Nowhere else to go. Temporary, a temporary life to which she must not become accustomed. Jillian eased out of his embrace and settled back onto the pillow, a hand going to her head where the ache of exhaustion and unhappiness thudded dully. “I was dreaming.”
“Nothing pleasant, apparently.”
She sighed, figuring it was better not to answer. “What time is it?”
“Early. I was just about to go out for coffee and some breakfast. I’ll bring something for you.”
“Oh, no, that’s not necessary. I’ll find something here.”
“I meant that I was going to bring something back for the both of us to have together.”
She smiled at that, then reminded herself that it was foolish to do so. Zach was always thoughtful with everyone. It meant nothing, really. She pushed up on one elbow. “You don’t have to do that. I’ll fix something. I know just where the coffeepot is.”
He pushed her back down with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Nothing doing. You can play housewife later if you’ve a mind to. Right now I think you could use a little more sleep.”
She was tired. She hadn’t exactly rested last night, and she couldn’t help wondering if it had been the same for him. “How about you?” she asked casually. “Did you sleep well?”
“Like a baby.” He smiled and got up off the side of the bed, pulling down the hem of his T-shirt, which had been bunched up around his chest. She guessed that he’d been pulling it on when she’d startled awake and tried to fix her thoughts on that rather than her shameful disappointment that he had not shared the difficulties of the long night with her.
“I won’t be long,” he said, grabbing a pair of socks from a box on top of the dresser. “If you’re asleep when I get back, I’ll stash your food in the oven. Okay?”
“Fine.”
He started for the door, then turned back and snagged a key identical to the one in her purse off the dresser, then held it up with a smile to show her that he’d remembered it this time. She rolled onto her side as he left the room, and stared unseeingly at the jumble of items crammed into the corner below the window. The
tears caught her unaware, flooding her eyes and spilling onto her cheeks with a wrenching sob. She turned her face into the pillow and wept for what was not and would never be.
Zach let himself out of the apartment and moved listlessly down the hallway toward the elevator. He had begun to wonder if the night would ever end, when the first rays of the sun finally lightened the world to a dull gray. Only then had he actually slept, sheer relief aiding exhaustion to overpower his beleaguered mind, but that slumber had been brief and unsatisfactory, yielding only an hour or so later to the hungry rumblings of his belly and the renewed plague of his thoughts. He had to get out of the apartment, away from the woman sleeping alone in his bed, his reluctant wife. He’d showered and shaved, moving quietly but quickly, only to find that the steam had done nothing to smooth the wrinkles in his shirt. That was when he’d decided to slip into the bedroom and find something more presentable.
At first she’d seemed to be sleeping peacefully. He’d foolishly stopped to watch her. As before, she lay on her side, one hand tucked beneath her cheek. Her long, pale eyelashes were as fine as cobwebbing, her mouth a perfect pink bow, her chin a delicate point. Even with her caramel hair sticking out at odd angles, she was beautiful, and he marveled that he hadn’t seen it sooner, hadn’t recognized the delicacy and utter uniqueness of her behind that dowdy uniform and ugly glasses when she had greeted him from behind the deli counter. But what use were regrets of that fashion? He couldn’t go back now to smile at her, to flirt a little and then a little more. It was too late to engineer friendly chats and even friendlier, longer, talks, to hint interest and finally to ask for a proper date. Too late for what had never been.
It was when he had turned away to find and pull on a T-shirt that she had cried out, a hoarse, startled sound that had told him immediately of her fear and shock. Reflexively, he’d turned and caught her up, wanting nothing more than to protect her from the very fear he’d unintentionally instigated, and she had clung to him as naturally as before—before he’d rejected her, abandoned her. Before he’d married her. But then she’d pulled away, whereas before she’d ultimately offered herself, not just her body but her whole self, and he’d known it even then. God, what a fool he was, what a coward, to have turned down all that she had offered. Not that he now believed he should have made love to her that night. On the contrary, he knew without any doubt that the one noble thing he’d done, the one thing he’d gotten right. was not taking her virginity that night. What he should have taken, however, was everything else she’d offered, her heart, her love, her unique and bewitching self. Had he done so, he wouldn’t have spent his wedding night alone and tortured. He would be with her now, loving her with his body and his soul, pleasantly exhausted from the sheer joy of it, instead of stumbling tired from a long night of recrimination and regret.
Zachary Keller, smarter than the system, braver than the cops with their badges and backup, defender of women and the abused, hero to the persecuted. Blithering idiot. Clumsy fool. A necessary but unwanted husband who was realizing too late that he was hopelessly in love with his wife.
Chapter Nine
They spent the day moving around the furniture they’d moved in the day before until both were satisfied. Lunch consisted of cold sandwiches and iced tea. Jillian built the sandwiches, using her vast experience, and Zach made the tea with instant powder and so much sugar Jillian had to “cut” hers with lemon juice. As the day wore on, the unacknowledged tension between them eased, so that they began to gently tease each other. The teasing brought such relief that they began to clown around. By late afternoon Jillian was as weaned from laughter as physical exertion. Zach seemed to be dragging, too. When he suggested that it was time to call a halt for the day, Jillian didn’t argue. Collapsing into opposite corners of the sofa, their feet and lower legs entangling, they groaned as one, heads falling back, arms flung out, and settled in to let exhausted muscles rest.
“Do you know,” Jillian said after a moment, “we haven’t completely unpacked a single box yet?”
Zach moaned and sat up a little straighter, disentangling their feet by crossing one ankle over the other knee and shifting slightly to one side. “Maybe it would be easier to just drop it all down the garbage chute.”
Jillian felt the sharp sting of guilt Sitting up straight and leaning forward earnestly, she said, “I’m sorry, Zach. I’m so very sorry.”
“For what?” he asked, sounding genuinely puzzled.
“For upsetting your whole life with my personal problems. I never meant for any of this to happen, you know. That first day when I came into your office, I was genuinely worried that Janzen was going to hurt my sister, but I messed up everything by not telling you the truth about their breakup. And now look at you.”
“Yeah, just look at me,” he said dryly, turning glances all around him. “I’m finally out of that dark hole and into the nifty apartment that I promised myself when I first moved in here.”
“If that’s really how you feel, then why didn’t you make the move earlier?”
He shrugged. “You know how it is. You get into a rut, work all the time, let your private life go to hell. You figure no one’s ever going to see this rat hole but you, so why go to all the trouble to box everything up and move?”
She threw her arms out in a deprecating gesture. “And now you’re just thrilled, I suppose.”
He leaned forward, forearms balanced on his knees. “Listen, I chose this building for its security after my last place was ransacked by a jealous husband who thought I was hiding his wife. I’d helped her move to a shelter to get away from him, but he thought all wives were supposed to do double duty as punching bags and just couldn’t figure that a few black eyes and broken ribs would drive her off, so it had to be another man luring her away.”
“Sounds like Camille,” Jillian commented wryly.
Both of Zach’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re exactly right. Anyway, I realized it wasn’t likely to be the only time some bad guy came looking for me, so I did a little research and came up with this place. They had one apartment available at the time—aside from the penthouse, that is. The place was so bleak my brother started calling it the bolt hole, and I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be calling it home at first, but then, like I said, you get used to things and you figure it’s not worth bothering about.”
“And then you have your hand forced...” Jillian reflected leadingly.
He sat back, shaking his head. “You like being the whipping boy, don’t you?”
Before she could answer that, his cell phone rang. He snatched it off his belt, pulled out the antenna and answered. “Keller.” After a moment he sighed and said, “Okay. Call Withers and tell him I’m on my way.” He shut off the phone and clipped it onto his belt again. Standing, he said to Jillian, “I’ve got to go. One of my subcontractors, Kent, is having car trouble, and it’s time for a shift change. Normally, it wouldn’t be a problem, but apparently the guy I have to take over for has a hot date waiting for him. I shouldn’t be longer than a few hours.”
“Is it Janzen?” she asked worriedly.
“No. It’s another case. Gabler and Padgett are on Eibersen. Don’t worry. We’ve got him covered. He can’t get to you here.”
“I’m not worried about me,” she told him.
Zach reached out a hand to smooth her hair, smiling softly. “Surely you aren’t worried about me.”
Her throat suddenly constricted. Clearing it nervously, she said, “Your work is dangerous. You told me so yourself.”
He nodded. “Which is why I take every precaution. This isn’t a case of violence, however. This is a guy trying to skip out on paying his child support by claiming he’s injured and can’t work. So far we’ve filmed him and his ‘bad back’ washing and waxing his truck, trimming his trees and mowing his yard. Now we’re just trying to make sure he doesn’t skip town before the case comes to a hearing.”
“I see.”
“Good. I’ve really got to go now.
I’ll call if I’m going to be late. Why don’t you order in pizza or something for dinner?”
She wrinkled her nose, thinking that she’d had her fill of pizza for a long while during her stay with Denise and Worly. “Chinese, maybe.”
He nodded, and she got up and followed him to the door. “I’ll leave some money at the desk,” he was saying. “You won’t even have to go down. One of the security guards will bring it up.”
“Great,” she answered, trying to sound enthusiastic and failing miserably.
He stopped in the doorway to reassure her once more. “I’ll be back before you know it. Save me some cashew shrimp.”
“Right. Cashew shrimp.”
Smiling, he bent forward slightly, and for just a moment she thought he was going to kiss her goodbye. Instinctively, she turned up her mouth, only to feel his lips against her forehead. She closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see her disappointment and an instant later heard him move away. Shutting the door, she leaned her back against it and tried to regain her equilibrium. It struck her then that the only thing worse than spending the day alone with Zach was spending the evening alone without him.
Zach backed the truck into its space and killed the engine. He was tired and hot but felt an unaccustomed enthusiasm at the same time. It really was different, coming home to a bright, spacious apartment instead of a dark, cave-like cubby hole. He hopped out of the truck and strode through the parking garage to the lobby, stepping into mercifully cool air. The guard at the desk looked up from his monitor and waved.
“Hello, Mr. Keller. Still hot out there?”
“You know it.”
“Worse summer since ’80, they’re saying.”
“I believe ’em.”
He moved behind the desk and headed toward the elevators. “My wife send out for dinner?”