“Seems reasonable.”
“Is that what your father did?”
“No.”
“You mean, you got away with asking for something and leaving it over?”
“I mean,” he said, trying for a light tone, “I’d get sent to my room.”
“How little parents know, right? Send a kid to his room. Sounds good—but he probably has a computer in that room, and maybe whatever you call those video game thingies, and all kinds of toys and books…”
“My room was four walls, a bed, a chair and a bureau.”
“Oh.”
“And the reason for being sent there was to wait for him to finish eating. Then he’d come in and mete out the appropriate punishment.”
“Oh.”
The “oh” was softer this time. Zach told himself to stop while he was still ahead. You didn’t get very far entertaining a woman by telling her the sad stories of your life.
“What was the appropriate punishment?”
He looked up. She was watching him with such tenderness that he felt his throat constrict.
“Depended,” he said, still trying for a light tone. “On what you’d said you wanted and hadn’t eaten. Hot dogs, hamburgers, cake, pie… He had a system. So many whacks for one, so many for the other.”
“He beat you?”
Jaimie’s voice was hot with disbelief. Dammit, why was he telling her this? Nobody knew anything about his childhood. Why should they?
“Zacharias. Did he—”
“Yeah. And I don’t know why in hell I told you about it.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“I bet. Nothing like a sob story on a Saturday night.”
“Zacharias.”
Zach pushed back his chair. “Honey, look, I have some business calls to make…”
Jaimie grabbed his hand. “I’ve been lucky, you know? A pretty easy life. Sisters. Brothers. I know it isn’t that way for everyone.”
“I’m not complaining. Life is what it is.”
“I know you’re not complaining.” She stood up, moved close to him and brought his hand to her cheek. “You’re a good man, Zacharias. I’m not sure you know that, but you are.”
A good man.
He wasn’t. He had done things he could never talk about. They’d been the right things at the time, at least, he’d believed they were, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d done them.
And now, with her, he was the worst kind of liar.
A good man?
The only good thing about him was this woman. She had come into his life by accident and she wouldn’t be in it for long, but while she was, he would protect her. Take care of her…
“There’s that look again.”
“What look?”
“The one that says you’re a thousand miles away.”
Zach smiled, cupped his hand around the back of her neck, drew her to him and kissed her.
“I’m going to make those calls. Then we’ll do something really exciting with the rest of the evening.”
“For instance?”
“We’ll go out. Dancing. Clubbing. Your pick it.”
“How about digging up an old movie on TV and ordering up popcorn?”
“What a woman! Clint Eastwood? Robert de Niro?”
“Reese Witherspoon. Meg Ryan. “
Zach sighed. “Nobody’s perfect.”
Jaimie made a fist, punched him in the arm. He laughed, they kissed…and then Zach took his phone from his pocket, went into the bedroom, shut the door partway, and got to work.
* * * *
It was Saturday night and it was late. Talk about double whammies.
Yes, but Zach had what people called connections, and it was time to use them.
He made half a dozen calls; those calls led to half a dozen more. In between placing the calls and having them returned, he watched a movie that turned out to be newer than old, without Meg Ryan or Reese Witherspoon and with, instead, a bunch of actresses whose names he’d never heard before. They were, Jaimie said, from TV.
He rarely watched TV, which explained it.
A chick flick, after all. But to his surprise, it wasn’t.
It was funny and clever, and if his head hadn’t been in two places at once, he might actually have enjoyed it, but his head was in two places at once, and that meant that he was, too.
By the time the movie ended, he’d damn near worn a path in the Oriental carpet that led from the sitting room to the bedroom.
The good news was that he had a plan in place.
The bad was that he didn’t know where Young was, and what that really meant was that he didn’t know what Young was up to.
The only certainty about the man was that at this point, he was legally untouchable.
He’d moved from befriending Jaimie to dating her. When that had gone south, he’d turned into her unwanted suitor, sending gifts and, turning up everywhere she went. Approaching her, saying ugly things to her…none of it was really sufficient for harassment charges or a restraining order.
One lawyer pal pointed out an awful truth that Zach already knew. Even if she got a restraining order, it was always possible that the harassment could lead to worse things.
“Plain English,” his friend said, “women have been killed for trying to keep the creeps away. I’m sure you know that.”
Zach did.
Plus, the man had a clean history. No prior charges of anything, not even a traffic ticket.
A hundred times that night Zach silently cursed himself for having inadvertently destroyed the proof of Young’s trespass, though, after a while, he wondered if even that would have sealed the man’s fate.
And Young’s connections trumped Zach’s. His family was political royalty. “Un-fucking-touchables,” a cop pal said.
In the end, Zach got three of his best men, all guys he’d worked with at The Agency, on a conference call. He told them what they needed to know, faxed them a photo of Young he’d snapped when he’d first checked him out, and said he wanted them in place within the next six hours.
“To tail the woman,” one guy said.
“To tail Young,” Zach replied. “I want you calling the locals the moment you see him trying an entry. Make sure you grab the tools he uses, make sure the locals find them in his possession or at the site, provide them if you have to. I want pictures. Sound. I want every move he makes in living-color 3D. Do we understand each other?”
His men were smart enough not to point out that those things were mostly illegal and virtually impossible. Instead, they waited a decent interval before the one who’d known him longest spoke.
“And the woman?”
Zach took a deep breath.
“Don’t worry about the woman,” he said. “She’s mine.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jaimie was dreaming.
She was running through an enormous building. Everything was gray. Walls. Floors. Ceiling. There were no windows. No doors. She was alone, but she wasn’t. Someone was coming after her. Someone. She could sense his presence.
She ran faster.
Her pursuer was gaining on her.
A wall loomed ahead of her. She couldn’t run any further.
Whimpers rose in her throat.
“No,” she said.
She swung around, fists raised, and saw Steven. He was laughing as he closed the distance between them.
“No,” she said again, “no…”
“Jaimie.”
“No!”
She struck out blindly. A big hand caught hers.
“Jaimie. Honey. It’s me. Zach. Zacharias. Baby, you’re dreaming.”
Her eyes flew open. Her lover, her beautiful, magical lover was leaning over her. She was safe in his arms, in their bed.
She sobbed his name. He gathered her close, soothed her with gentle caresses, butterfly kisses, whispers of assurance. Gradually, her breathing slowed. She burrowed into him, and he ran the pads of his thumbs under her eye
s, wiping away hot tears.
“OK?” he said softly.
She nodded. Gave a watery laugh.
“I had a bad dream.”
Young, Zach thought, fighting back a rush of fury.
“Yeah. I figured that.” It was the understatement of the century.
“Too much chocolate cake.”
They’d finished the cake in the middle of the night, she sitting on his lap, the two of them taking alternate mouthfuls from her fork.
“There is no such thing as too much chocolate cake.”
“Not for you, maybe, but women know these things.” She forced a smile, a teasing tone. “Chocolate cake equals chocolate calories.”
“It does, huh?”
She nodded. “And those are the worst kind. They go straight to your hips.”
Zach flashed a sexy grin.
“I’m all that’s allowed to go straight to your hips, Ms. Wilde, and don’t you forget it.”
The smile came more easily this time. “Don’t let me forget it, Mr. Castelianos.”
She relaxed against him. “What time is it?”
“Time to get up.”
“It’s Sunday. I always sleep in on Sunday.”
“Not today.” Zach gave her a quick kiss and rolled away.
“Don’t tell me. You’re into going out and getting the paper.”
“The hotel delivers it to the door.”
“Then, why are we getting up at —She rose on her elbows, checked the clock and flung herself back against the pillows. “At six a.m.! What’s going on?”
Zach was already pulling on his jeans.
“We have a plane to catch.”
That brought her upright. “A what?”
“A plane, honey. Long aluminum tube. Big wings. Flies you from point A to point B.”
“It’s six in the morning. Trust me, Castelianos. I am not to be trifled with at six on a Sunday morning.” Her gaze went to the windows. “At six on a gray, wet Sunday morning.”
“I have not yet trifled with you,” Zach said meaningfully. “If I had, we’d both know it. And the fact that it’s gray and wet is all the more reason for us not to miss our flight.”
He was serious. Jaimie sat up and stared at him.
“Are we going somewhere?”
“Yup.”
“Zacharias…”
He’d come to know that tone. And he loved it. He leaned down, took her mouth in a sweet early-morning kiss.
“It’s going to snow in a couple of hours. We miss our plane, we’ll probably get stuck at Dulles for the rest of the winter.”
“It isn’t winter yet,” she said reasonably.
“It will be soon. And when it is, we’ll be in the Bahamas.”
Had he lost his mind? Jaimie thought it. Then she said it.
“Zacharias Castelianos. Have you lost your mind?”
“I hate winter.”
“So?”
“So I want to see you in a bikini.”
“You’ve seen me naked,” she said, and blushed, which was, at this point, patently ridiculous, but she blushed anyway.
“You, a bikini, a pink sand beach, golden sun and bright blue water…and did I mention, no winter?”
“Zacharias. Talk to me. I don’t understand a single thing you’re saying.”
“I rented a villa in the Bahamas.”
Jaimie blinked. “What?”
Zach zipped his jeans, pulled on a white T-shirt and sat down on the bed beside her.
“I want us to be alone,” he said softly, while he stroked a tangle of blond hair back from her cheek. “You and me. Nobody else. I want us to learn about each other. Be together. No distractions. Nothing but us.”
Could your heart swell?
“But—”
“But what?”
“Well, my job.”
“This can’t be a terribly busy season for a Realtor.”
He was right. It wasn’t. In fact, Bengs had made it clear that anyone who wanted to take time off was free to do so. It wasn’t an especially generous gesture, considering that his Realtors worked on commission, but it did mean she could go with Zacharias to the Bahamas.
Of course you can, Jaimie.
No, James. You cannot. Fly away with a man you hardly know?
You know him, Jaimie. You’ve made love with him more times than you can count.
James. Knowing him in the biblical sense is not the same as knowing him.
Zacharias cupped her face in his hands.
“Jaimie. Say yes.”
His voice was husky. His eyes were dark. She could smell the faint scent of man and musk and sex that surrounded them.
There was only one logical response, and she gave it.
She said yes.
***
He said he’d rented a villa.
What he hadn’t said was that it was a sprawling, magnificent house on a private cay, ten acres of lush green jungle and, yes, pink sand beaches, alone in a turquoise blue sea.
There was a staff. A cook, a housekeeper, a groundskeeper. Jaimie and Zacharias saw them once, when they arrived on the island by boat, and never again. There were always delicious meals in the fridge, the rooms—all open to the sea and sun—were spotless, and the grounds were manicured, but the staff seemed to understand their need for privacy and came and went as if under a cloak of invisibility.
The villa had four bedrooms.
They tried them all. Selected one and made it their own. It was where they took long, luxurious afternoon naps, where they spent the long, wonderful nights in each other’s arms. It was where Jaimie hung all her new clothes after Zach pointed out that she had to let him buy her new things because the jeans, sweaters and jacket she’d brought with her weren’t really suitable for sunny, hot days and moonlit, warm nights.
They went to Nassau, on New Providence island, where the elegant boutiques on Bay Street rivaled those of Milan and Paris and New York.
Zach bought everything Jaimie so much as touched until she figured that out and stopped touching.
After that, he bought her everything she looked at.
“I want to,” he kept saying, and she ended up with bikinis and long cotton sundresses and shorts and T-shirts and scarves and sandals. She told him that the boat he’d sailed them in would surely sink under the weight of so many packages and boxes and bags.
The boat, of course, would never have done anything so plebian.
It was a brand new J/88 and before setting sail, she had let him tell her all about sailing; she even let him show her how to cast off and she’d listened patiently to him explain that the ropes on a boat were properly called lines, but once they were at sea, the wind shifted and before he could say anything, she trimmed the jib.
“You know sailboats,” he said.
Jaimie admitted that she did. “I learned to sail the summer I was ten.”
“In Texas?”
The stark disbelief in those words made her laugh. She shoved back her wind-tossed hair and told him that she and her sisters had spent a month at a camp in Maine that summer while their father was there on some kind of presidential staff assignment, and then she looked at him and frowned.
“When did I tell you I was from Texas?”
Zach felt the world stand still. She hadn’t; they’d never talked about where either of them had grown up. He knew she’d been born and raised in Texas because he knew two of her brothers, but she didn’t know that.
This was his opening. It was the right time to confess everything. It would be hard; she would be upset. She’d push him away, and his job was to protect her.
He went for sounding like a guy who’d either forgotten a conversation or made a good guess.
“I don’t remember,” he said, “Or maybe you gave things away with that accent.”
For a tiny fraction of time, he could almost see the logical part of her brain turning over his answer, examining it from every direction.
Then she fluttered her lashes
like a perfect southern belle.
“You are wrong, suh. I do not have an accent of any kahnd whatsoevah.”
He laughed, and she laughed, and the part of his brain that was sly and reptilian warned that he couldn’t expect to pull this off forever. Sooner or later, his men would catch Young in the act, and she could press charges.
When that happened, he would have no choice but to confess everything.
Then what?
Protecting her was one thing, but it wasn’t the real reason he was afraid for her to know the facts.
If there was one thing hot days and warm nights alone with Jaimie had done, it was to make him admit that she mattered to him.
He wanted more of this, whatever this was.
And he wasn’t sure he could ever walk away from it.
* * * *
They were happy at the villa.
There was time to relax, lie in the sun, and sleep late. Life took on a lazy rhythm.
They sailed. They swam. They slow-danced on the beach to music from the villa’s sound system.
And they talked.
Zach had been to lots of places around the world. So had Jaimie. They’d been to some of the same places, maybe even at the same time.
“If you were in stationed in Spain your first overseas tour,” Jaimie said as they strolled along the shore while the sun dipped toward the sea, “you were, what, eighteen?”
“Uh huh.”
“So, let me see, I was twelve. And my father was in Spain and we flew there that summer.” She looked up at him and smiled. “Just think! We might have met.”
Zach curved his arm more tightly around her waist.
“Good thing we didn’t,” he said, returning that smile. “You’d have been jail bait.”
She laughed. “And you wouldn’t have been interested.”
“Well, no. I was too busy discovering that European women thought it was cool to go topless on the beach.” He grinned. “It was one hell of a revelation.”
“We crossed paths without knowing it.”
“The daughters of generals don’t cross path with grunts, babe. They hardly breathe the same air.”
Jaimie stopped, bent down and picked up a small pink seashell. As far as Zach could tell, it looked like the zillion other shells she’d picked up over the last ten days, but he already knew better than to mention that.
Jaimie: Fire and Ice (The Wilde Sisters) Page 19