Perfect, page 67
part #2 of Second Opportunities Series
“Limousines,” Zack said.
“Limousines,” Julie repeated into the phone.
When she hung up, Zack looked at her and all of his impatience turned to admiration. Despite the incredible pressure Julie was under, getting ready for their wedding at the end of the week, she never lost her cool. Rachel had spent months of time on their wedding and a quarter million dollars of Zack’s money to create a three-ring media circus that required the efforts of two publicists and an army of servants, consultants, and assistants to pull off, and Rachel had been used to dealing with the pressures of public life. Even so, by the day of the wedding, Rachel had been behaving like a frantic virago for weeks and popping tranquilizers like M&Ms.
Julie had spent a week on their wedding with only the help of Katherine and the long-distance aid of Zack’s competent California staff. At the same time, she had continued with her regular job and arranged to sublease her house, and she had neither lost her temper nor slighted Zack. Because the entire citizenry of Keaton had gone so far out of their way to make Zack feel comfortable and welcome and because Julie was so much a part of their town, the decision had been made to limit the guests at the afternoon wedding ceremony to family and close friends, but to invite all of the Mathisons’ vast circle of friends and acquaintances to the evening reception, which was scheduled to take place in the park. The decision to invite 650 people instead of having a small, intimate reception had been made at Zack’s urging. In the days that he had been here, he’d enjoyed more honest companionship with decent, down-to-earth people than he’d ever known in his entire life. Despite his complaints, he’d thoroughly enjoyed the simple things they’d done together while he was here. He’d liked dancing with her in a restaurant where friends of theirs joined them without ever intruding; he’d loved going to the movie in town with her, eating stale popcorn, necking in the back row, and then walking her home, holding her hand in the balmy night air. Last night, he’d played pool at the senior Cahills’ house with Ted and his friends, while Julie, Katherine, and the other wives brought in food and cheered their men on, and then he’d watched in amazement as Julie took on the winner— and beat him.
Somehow she’d managed to do all that as well as make arrangements with a dozen local women to handle the catering for the reception, hire musicians, go over the music selections, order flowers from the local florist, and arrange for white canopies to be sent down from Dallas to be used in the park by the caterers. Zack, who’d listened to the arrangements periodically, had the amused hope that this second wedding reception of his would make up for the decorum and beauty it was probably going to lack with warmth and a festive atmosphere. If not, it had all the earmarks of becoming a ludicrously corny disaster. In which case, he devoutly hoped it would rain.
The only thing that had given Julie momentary pause was the question of a wedding gown and gowns for Katherine, Sara, and Meredith, who she’d decided should be her only three attendants. Meredith had volunteered the solution to that problem when Julie called to invite her to be in their wedding: She’d had pictures of all the wedding gowns and attendants gowns available from Bancroft & Company’s exclusive bridal salon sent down by overnight mail for Julie to peruse. Julie had settled on three possibilities, which were picked up the next day in Chicago by the Farrells’ pilot and flown to Keaton. Rachel had deliberated for weeks over the selection of a wedding gown; Julie, Katherine, and Sara deliberated for two hours, made their selection, and brought their gowns to the Eldridge twins to be altered to fit Meredith, who was back in Chicago with Matt, was being fitted for hers there.
During all that time, the only disagreement Zack and Julie had took place the night of their engagement, and it was about Zack’s adamant insistence on paying for the wedding. He’d finally settled it in private with Julie’s father, who, thankfully, had absolutely no conception of the cost of a wedding gown from Bancroft & Company or jet fuel, which Zack was going to compensate Matt for, or much of anything else. Zack had “graciously relented” enough to let Reverend Mathison contribute $2,000 toward the cost of the wedding, then he volunteered—with equal graciousness and less honesty—to have his accountant in California handle the tedious business of paying all the bills and to refund Reverend Mathison any excess.
Now, as Zack looked at Julie who was making notes on her tablet, he thought of all the pressure she was under and how gracefully she coped with everything. In comparison, his own days had been wonderfully peaceful and filled with accomplishment. Free from the constant interruptions he’d have had in California, he’d been able to read scripts, which was his most pressing current task, and consider what he wanted to do as his first film project. The studio heads and producers and bankers he needed to meet with would all wait until he got back home. His dramatic escape from prison, his recapture, his subsequent release, and now his marriage to the young teacher who’d been his hostage had combined to make him into an even bigger “legend” than he’d been before he went to prison. He didn’t need to read Variety to know he was now the hottest property in the film business. Beyond attending to his work, the only other problem he’d needed to handle personally in the last week had been the issue of Julie’s public image. Originally, when the tapes of his arrest in Mexico City had been shown, Julie had been regarded by the world as a heroine who’d trapped a deranged mass murderer. A few weeks later, when Zack had been proved innocent and released from prison, those same tapes had made him into a heroic martyr to police brutality and Julie into a treacherous bitch who’d betrayed him. Rather than let her continue to suffer from the taint of that, Zack had quietly sent a copy of the tape he’d gotten from Richardson to a friend at CNN without first consulting with Julie. Within twenty-four hours of the first broadcast of it, the world had reacted to Julie’s hysterical suffering just as Zack had done when he saw the tape.
Now, as he remembered all that had transpired in her life in the last week, Zack felt guilty and ashamed for his irascibility over what was, after all, only two weeks of enforced celibacy in the presence of a woman he desired more than he’d have imagined possible. Walking over to her, he took the tablet out of her hands, kissed her forehead, and said softly, “You are an amazing woman, sweetheart. Unfortunately, you’re marrying an oversexed, badtempered jerk who happens to want you desperately.”
She leaned forward and kissed him with enough ardor to make him groan and move her away again. “All you have to do,” she reminded him, “is either break your word or tell my father his deal with you is off.”
“I’m not going to break my damned word.”
She chuckled and shook her head, picked up the tablet again, and pulled the pencil out of her shiny hair as if she’d already forgotten the kiss that still had his blood running hot. “I know. I’d be disappointed if you did.”
“It might help,” Zack said, irrationally irked by the same patience that he’d admired only moments before, “if I thought this sexless arrangement was driving you just half as crazy as it’s driving me.”
Julie tossed the tablet aside and stood up, and he realized for the first time that either she wasn’t nearly as serene about the wedding plans and their enforced celibacy as he’d thought or else his own disposition was wearing her down. Or all three. “We’re supposed to be on the baseball field tonight, remember?” she said testily. “This is a very special game between the Little League team I’ve helped to coach all year and our rivals in Perseville. You agreed to umpire, and everybody’s all excited about that. Let’s not argue. Or if we’re going to disagree, then save it for the game.”
Zack did, and they did.
Three hours later, with two stunned Little League teams looking on and the bleachers filled with amazed parents, Zack Benedict reaped the unpleasant rewards of a week of unjust impatience he’d inflicted on his overstressed fiancée.
Crouched behind home plate during the end of the seventh inning, with the bases loaded and the score tied, Zack watched from behind his obligatory umpire’s mask as Julie’s second star runner slid toward home base. “Out!” he called, throwing up his arm in the ritualistic symbol. As he’d already discovered during the past seven innings, Texans took their sons’ Little League baseball games seriously, and not even a famous movie star who’d they’d all begun to like was immune from the indignant outrage aimed at any umpire who made an unpopular, if accurate, call. The crowd from Keaton booed and yelled their disapproval at him.
To Julie, who was seated on the coach’s bench on the sidelines, Zack’s call against her team was not only unpopular, it looked as wrong and unjust as his last two calls had seemed. This time she didn’t merely grind her teeth, she shot off the bench and marched onto the field to confront him. “Are you crazy!” she burst out to Zack’s amazed disbelief. “He was safe!”
“He was out!” Zack said.
She plunked her hands on her hips, oblivious to the shouts and laughter beginning to come from the crowd who was watching the argument, and said furiously, “You’re taking out your ridiculous frustration with me on my team and I won’t stand for it!”
Zack looked up at her from his crouching position, his own temper beginning to ignite at this unjust—and embarrassing—public assault on his judgment and sportsmanship. “He was out! Now, sit down on that bench where you belong,” he said, pointing to it. Too late, he realized that the laughter that followed Julie as she angrily obeyed and marched back to the bench was going to scrape her strained temper to the breaking point.
Her third batter made two strikes, wound up, and stepped away from a pitch that missed being a bad one by a hair. “Strike three!” Zack called, and because it had been such a close call, even from his vantage point, he wasn’t at all surprised when the crowd roared with outraged disapproval. He was, however, very surprised when Julie shot off the bench, shouting at her dejected team to stay on the field, and marched over to him like a bristling virago. “You need glasses!” she exploded, shaking with anger. “That was a ball, not a strike, and you know it!”
“He’s out!”
“He is not! You’re so busy trying to prove to everyone how unbiased you are that you’re cheating my team!”
“He’s out and you’re going to be out, too, if you keep this up.”
“You wouldn’t dare throw me out of this game!”
Zack slowly stood up. “You are making a scene,” he bit out. “Sit down!”
“That wasn’t a scene!” she flung back and to his disbelief, she kicked dirt on home plate so he’d have to brush it off and then on his shoes. “This is a scene!” she said furiously.
“You’re out of the game!” Zack blasted back, throwing his arm up in the unmistakable gesture of an umpire ejecting a coach, and the balmy night exploded with boos and cheers and roars and applause as Julie marched off the field. “Play ball!” Zack yelled, gesturing the other team off the field, and returning to his crouch behind home plate. From the corner of his eye, he watched the stiff set of Julie’s shoulders, the gentle sway of her hips, and the breeze tumbling her hair around her shoulders as she walked over to the bench and grabbed her sweater. He was going to regret his action, Zack realized. She was going to make sure he did.
Young Willie Jenkins was of a similar opinion. As Willie walked off the field past Zack, he warned in his gravelly carrying voice, “You’re in deep shit, Zack.”
Julie’s team lost 4 to 3. When the losers and the losers’ parents gathered at a local restaurant for the meal and drinks that Zack had understood were a ritual after every game, Julie was there waiting for them. She had words of consolation and approval for all her boys and nothing whatsoever to say to Zack when he tried to hand her something to drink. The other adults seemed willing to forget that his call had cost their team the game, and several of them offered to buy him a beer, but Julie deliberately turned her back to him and continued talking to Katherine and Sara Mathison and some other friends of hers.
Left with no choice except to either try in public to soothe her ruffled feathers, which he sure as hell wasn’t going to do, or else retreat to the bar where he saw Ted, Carl, John Grayson, and Mayor Addelson having pizza after the game, Zack decided on the latter. Ted saw him heading toward them and turned fully around, leaning his elbows on the bar behind him. “That was a bad move you made during the game, Zack,” he said with a grin.
“Very bad,” Carl agreed.
“Really bad,” Mayor Addelson seconded, chuckling and tossing a handful of peanuts into his mouth.
“It was a good call,” Zack said flatly.
“Might’ve been a good call,” Addelson said, “but it was a bad move.”
“The hell with it,” Zack said, angrier than he would have believed possible because she was still ignoring him. “If she can’t take the heat, she shouldn’t get near the fire!”
For some reason, that simple, trite platitude caused all four men to guffaw with laughter.
Zack ignored them, his anger building steadily at the sudden realization of the absurd, undignified, unjust situation she’d stuck him in. He was thirty-five years old, he was worth over $ 100 million, and except for five years in prison, he’d spent his life eating in the finest restaurants, staying in the best hotels, and fraternizing with brilliant, talented, famous people like himself. Instead of that, he was now relegated to eating pizza while standing up in a crass restaurant in the thriving metropolis of Snake Navel, Texas, while being ignored by someone who should feel honored that he wanted to marry her! He had a good mind to march her out of the restaurant, lay down the law to her, and then take her straight to bed like any adult male deserved to be able to do with the woman he intended to marry. That wasn’t a bargain he’d made with her father, it was malicious, petty revenge on the part of some Bible-thumping, arrogant, manipulative asshole . . .
Zack shoved away from the bar.
Mayor Addelson’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder, and he said in a paternal voice, “Take some advice from a man who’s already been where you are: Don’t do it.”
“What?” Zack snapped.
Ted leaned around the mayor and grinned at Zack. “Have yourself something cold to drink, eat a hamburger, then go home and take another cold shower and sit tight for another week. Someday, you’ll look back on this and laugh.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“We’re talking about what is generally known around town as the Mathison Method of Premarital Misery,” Ted said mildly. “It is my father’s well-intentioned way of restoring the element of suspense and anticipation to the wedding night in an age where he feels couples are deprived of the magic because they grab it prematurely.”
Zack’s jaw tightened with fury in the mistaken belief that Julie’s father had actually gone around town, telling everyone about the ridiculous bargain he’d foisted on Zack in retaliation for kidnapping his daughter. “What did you say?” he demanded.
John Grayson heard his question and leaned around Ted. “He’s going deaf already.” With an attempt at lewd levity, he added, “You know what they say that comes from doing?”
Ted took a swallow of his drink. “No, you go blind, not deaf, from doing that.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“We’re talking about you, my friend,” Ted said. “It is not Julie who can’t take the ‘heat,’ it’s you. Just like it was us. Half the men in this town got talked into the same bargain you made, and most of us—the ones who stuck with it—ended up picking roaring fights over nothing with our wives-to-be.”
The fury and frustration Zack had been feeling evaporated in a flash of stunned disbelief mixed with mindless hilarity at the absurdity of what he was hearing.
“Tell him, Mayor,” Ted invited.
“It’s hell. I’ve got ten years on you, son, and I couldn’t believe how bad I wanted something partly because I agreed not to have it. It takes its toll on the women, too, only I am of the opinion their discomfort is lessened by their suppressed enjoyment of seeing the male of the species reduced to a state of desperate need of them. That last part about women,” he added with a grin, “isn’t my theory, it was a generalization that came from a professor of sociology I had during my second year at A&M. Where did you go to college, by the way? You’ve got the look of a Yankee, but the accent’s a little off.”
Still torn between annoyance and disbelief over the Mathison Method, Zack hesitated, knowing Addelson was trying to diffuse the situation, then he looked at Julie’s pretty profile and considered the amusing fact that his sexual frustration was known by, and understood by, most of the other males in the restaurant, and he capitulated with an irritated sigh. “USC.”
“What was your major?”
“Finance and film.”
“Dual major?”
Zack nodded, his eyes on Julie, still unwilling to make a second public attempt to soothe her unjust anger at him.
At the far end of the bar, Ed Sandell hooked his scuffed boot over the rung of his stool and wiped the back of his sunburned neck with his handkerchief, then he looked at the other two ranch hands with him. “My sister, Holly, met Benedict at church on Sunday,” he said, nodding toward Zack, who was standing at the juke box. “She said he’s nice.”
“He’s a pansy,” Jake Barton said, shoving his hat back on his head. “All those Hollywood types are.”
“No way,” Martin Laughlin disagreed. “I mean, the guy spent five years in the pen doing hard time.”
“Big deal. He’s still a pansy. Look at those jeans he’s wearin’. Right off some de-sign-er rack.”
“C’mon, Jake,” Laughlin argued. “He not only spent five years in prison, but he had enough guts to escape.”
“He got caught, too. He’s a pansy,” Jake said flatly.
Ed Sandell signaled to the waitress and said idly, “He umpired the game with Perseville tonight. Julie Mathison hassled him over a call he made, and he threw her out of the game.”
Jake Barton looked up. “No shit?”
“Nope.”
“Limousines,” Julie repeated into the phone.
When she hung up, Zack looked at her and all of his impatience turned to admiration. Despite the incredible pressure Julie was under, getting ready for their wedding at the end of the week, she never lost her cool. Rachel had spent months of time on their wedding and a quarter million dollars of Zack’s money to create a three-ring media circus that required the efforts of two publicists and an army of servants, consultants, and assistants to pull off, and Rachel had been used to dealing with the pressures of public life. Even so, by the day of the wedding, Rachel had been behaving like a frantic virago for weeks and popping tranquilizers like M&Ms.
Julie had spent a week on their wedding with only the help of Katherine and the long-distance aid of Zack’s competent California staff. At the same time, she had continued with her regular job and arranged to sublease her house, and she had neither lost her temper nor slighted Zack. Because the entire citizenry of Keaton had gone so far out of their way to make Zack feel comfortable and welcome and because Julie was so much a part of their town, the decision had been made to limit the guests at the afternoon wedding ceremony to family and close friends, but to invite all of the Mathisons’ vast circle of friends and acquaintances to the evening reception, which was scheduled to take place in the park. The decision to invite 650 people instead of having a small, intimate reception had been made at Zack’s urging. In the days that he had been here, he’d enjoyed more honest companionship with decent, down-to-earth people than he’d ever known in his entire life. Despite his complaints, he’d thoroughly enjoyed the simple things they’d done together while he was here. He’d liked dancing with her in a restaurant where friends of theirs joined them without ever intruding; he’d loved going to the movie in town with her, eating stale popcorn, necking in the back row, and then walking her home, holding her hand in the balmy night air. Last night, he’d played pool at the senior Cahills’ house with Ted and his friends, while Julie, Katherine, and the other wives brought in food and cheered their men on, and then he’d watched in amazement as Julie took on the winner— and beat him.
Somehow she’d managed to do all that as well as make arrangements with a dozen local women to handle the catering for the reception, hire musicians, go over the music selections, order flowers from the local florist, and arrange for white canopies to be sent down from Dallas to be used in the park by the caterers. Zack, who’d listened to the arrangements periodically, had the amused hope that this second wedding reception of his would make up for the decorum and beauty it was probably going to lack with warmth and a festive atmosphere. If not, it had all the earmarks of becoming a ludicrously corny disaster. In which case, he devoutly hoped it would rain.
The only thing that had given Julie momentary pause was the question of a wedding gown and gowns for Katherine, Sara, and Meredith, who she’d decided should be her only three attendants. Meredith had volunteered the solution to that problem when Julie called to invite her to be in their wedding: She’d had pictures of all the wedding gowns and attendants gowns available from Bancroft & Company’s exclusive bridal salon sent down by overnight mail for Julie to peruse. Julie had settled on three possibilities, which were picked up the next day in Chicago by the Farrells’ pilot and flown to Keaton. Rachel had deliberated for weeks over the selection of a wedding gown; Julie, Katherine, and Sara deliberated for two hours, made their selection, and brought their gowns to the Eldridge twins to be altered to fit Meredith, who was back in Chicago with Matt, was being fitted for hers there.
During all that time, the only disagreement Zack and Julie had took place the night of their engagement, and it was about Zack’s adamant insistence on paying for the wedding. He’d finally settled it in private with Julie’s father, who, thankfully, had absolutely no conception of the cost of a wedding gown from Bancroft & Company or jet fuel, which Zack was going to compensate Matt for, or much of anything else. Zack had “graciously relented” enough to let Reverend Mathison contribute $2,000 toward the cost of the wedding, then he volunteered—with equal graciousness and less honesty—to have his accountant in California handle the tedious business of paying all the bills and to refund Reverend Mathison any excess.
Now, as Zack looked at Julie who was making notes on her tablet, he thought of all the pressure she was under and how gracefully she coped with everything. In comparison, his own days had been wonderfully peaceful and filled with accomplishment. Free from the constant interruptions he’d have had in California, he’d been able to read scripts, which was his most pressing current task, and consider what he wanted to do as his first film project. The studio heads and producers and bankers he needed to meet with would all wait until he got back home. His dramatic escape from prison, his recapture, his subsequent release, and now his marriage to the young teacher who’d been his hostage had combined to make him into an even bigger “legend” than he’d been before he went to prison. He didn’t need to read Variety to know he was now the hottest property in the film business. Beyond attending to his work, the only other problem he’d needed to handle personally in the last week had been the issue of Julie’s public image. Originally, when the tapes of his arrest in Mexico City had been shown, Julie had been regarded by the world as a heroine who’d trapped a deranged mass murderer. A few weeks later, when Zack had been proved innocent and released from prison, those same tapes had made him into a heroic martyr to police brutality and Julie into a treacherous bitch who’d betrayed him. Rather than let her continue to suffer from the taint of that, Zack had quietly sent a copy of the tape he’d gotten from Richardson to a friend at CNN without first consulting with Julie. Within twenty-four hours of the first broadcast of it, the world had reacted to Julie’s hysterical suffering just as Zack had done when he saw the tape.
Now, as he remembered all that had transpired in her life in the last week, Zack felt guilty and ashamed for his irascibility over what was, after all, only two weeks of enforced celibacy in the presence of a woman he desired more than he’d have imagined possible. Walking over to her, he took the tablet out of her hands, kissed her forehead, and said softly, “You are an amazing woman, sweetheart. Unfortunately, you’re marrying an oversexed, badtempered jerk who happens to want you desperately.”
She leaned forward and kissed him with enough ardor to make him groan and move her away again. “All you have to do,” she reminded him, “is either break your word or tell my father his deal with you is off.”
“I’m not going to break my damned word.”
She chuckled and shook her head, picked up the tablet again, and pulled the pencil out of her shiny hair as if she’d already forgotten the kiss that still had his blood running hot. “I know. I’d be disappointed if you did.”
“It might help,” Zack said, irrationally irked by the same patience that he’d admired only moments before, “if I thought this sexless arrangement was driving you just half as crazy as it’s driving me.”
Julie tossed the tablet aside and stood up, and he realized for the first time that either she wasn’t nearly as serene about the wedding plans and their enforced celibacy as he’d thought or else his own disposition was wearing her down. Or all three. “We’re supposed to be on the baseball field tonight, remember?” she said testily. “This is a very special game between the Little League team I’ve helped to coach all year and our rivals in Perseville. You agreed to umpire, and everybody’s all excited about that. Let’s not argue. Or if we’re going to disagree, then save it for the game.”
Zack did, and they did.
Three hours later, with two stunned Little League teams looking on and the bleachers filled with amazed parents, Zack Benedict reaped the unpleasant rewards of a week of unjust impatience he’d inflicted on his overstressed fiancée.
Crouched behind home plate during the end of the seventh inning, with the bases loaded and the score tied, Zack watched from behind his obligatory umpire’s mask as Julie’s second star runner slid toward home base. “Out!” he called, throwing up his arm in the ritualistic symbol. As he’d already discovered during the past seven innings, Texans took their sons’ Little League baseball games seriously, and not even a famous movie star who’d they’d all begun to like was immune from the indignant outrage aimed at any umpire who made an unpopular, if accurate, call. The crowd from Keaton booed and yelled their disapproval at him.
To Julie, who was seated on the coach’s bench on the sidelines, Zack’s call against her team was not only unpopular, it looked as wrong and unjust as his last two calls had seemed. This time she didn’t merely grind her teeth, she shot off the bench and marched onto the field to confront him. “Are you crazy!” she burst out to Zack’s amazed disbelief. “He was safe!”
“He was out!” Zack said.
She plunked her hands on her hips, oblivious to the shouts and laughter beginning to come from the crowd who was watching the argument, and said furiously, “You’re taking out your ridiculous frustration with me on my team and I won’t stand for it!”
Zack looked up at her from his crouching position, his own temper beginning to ignite at this unjust—and embarrassing—public assault on his judgment and sportsmanship. “He was out! Now, sit down on that bench where you belong,” he said, pointing to it. Too late, he realized that the laughter that followed Julie as she angrily obeyed and marched back to the bench was going to scrape her strained temper to the breaking point.
Her third batter made two strikes, wound up, and stepped away from a pitch that missed being a bad one by a hair. “Strike three!” Zack called, and because it had been such a close call, even from his vantage point, he wasn’t at all surprised when the crowd roared with outraged disapproval. He was, however, very surprised when Julie shot off the bench, shouting at her dejected team to stay on the field, and marched over to him like a bristling virago. “You need glasses!” she exploded, shaking with anger. “That was a ball, not a strike, and you know it!”
“He’s out!”
“He is not! You’re so busy trying to prove to everyone how unbiased you are that you’re cheating my team!”
“He’s out and you’re going to be out, too, if you keep this up.”
“You wouldn’t dare throw me out of this game!”
Zack slowly stood up. “You are making a scene,” he bit out. “Sit down!”
“That wasn’t a scene!” she flung back and to his disbelief, she kicked dirt on home plate so he’d have to brush it off and then on his shoes. “This is a scene!” she said furiously.
“You’re out of the game!” Zack blasted back, throwing his arm up in the unmistakable gesture of an umpire ejecting a coach, and the balmy night exploded with boos and cheers and roars and applause as Julie marched off the field. “Play ball!” Zack yelled, gesturing the other team off the field, and returning to his crouch behind home plate. From the corner of his eye, he watched the stiff set of Julie’s shoulders, the gentle sway of her hips, and the breeze tumbling her hair around her shoulders as she walked over to the bench and grabbed her sweater. He was going to regret his action, Zack realized. She was going to make sure he did.
Young Willie Jenkins was of a similar opinion. As Willie walked off the field past Zack, he warned in his gravelly carrying voice, “You’re in deep shit, Zack.”
Julie’s team lost 4 to 3. When the losers and the losers’ parents gathered at a local restaurant for the meal and drinks that Zack had understood were a ritual after every game, Julie was there waiting for them. She had words of consolation and approval for all her boys and nothing whatsoever to say to Zack when he tried to hand her something to drink. The other adults seemed willing to forget that his call had cost their team the game, and several of them offered to buy him a beer, but Julie deliberately turned her back to him and continued talking to Katherine and Sara Mathison and some other friends of hers.
Left with no choice except to either try in public to soothe her ruffled feathers, which he sure as hell wasn’t going to do, or else retreat to the bar where he saw Ted, Carl, John Grayson, and Mayor Addelson having pizza after the game, Zack decided on the latter. Ted saw him heading toward them and turned fully around, leaning his elbows on the bar behind him. “That was a bad move you made during the game, Zack,” he said with a grin.
“Very bad,” Carl agreed.
“Really bad,” Mayor Addelson seconded, chuckling and tossing a handful of peanuts into his mouth.
“It was a good call,” Zack said flatly.
“Might’ve been a good call,” Addelson said, “but it was a bad move.”
“The hell with it,” Zack said, angrier than he would have believed possible because she was still ignoring him. “If she can’t take the heat, she shouldn’t get near the fire!”
For some reason, that simple, trite platitude caused all four men to guffaw with laughter.
Zack ignored them, his anger building steadily at the sudden realization of the absurd, undignified, unjust situation she’d stuck him in. He was thirty-five years old, he was worth over $ 100 million, and except for five years in prison, he’d spent his life eating in the finest restaurants, staying in the best hotels, and fraternizing with brilliant, talented, famous people like himself. Instead of that, he was now relegated to eating pizza while standing up in a crass restaurant in the thriving metropolis of Snake Navel, Texas, while being ignored by someone who should feel honored that he wanted to marry her! He had a good mind to march her out of the restaurant, lay down the law to her, and then take her straight to bed like any adult male deserved to be able to do with the woman he intended to marry. That wasn’t a bargain he’d made with her father, it was malicious, petty revenge on the part of some Bible-thumping, arrogant, manipulative asshole . . .
Zack shoved away from the bar.
Mayor Addelson’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder, and he said in a paternal voice, “Take some advice from a man who’s already been where you are: Don’t do it.”
“What?” Zack snapped.
Ted leaned around the mayor and grinned at Zack. “Have yourself something cold to drink, eat a hamburger, then go home and take another cold shower and sit tight for another week. Someday, you’ll look back on this and laugh.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“We’re talking about what is generally known around town as the Mathison Method of Premarital Misery,” Ted said mildly. “It is my father’s well-intentioned way of restoring the element of suspense and anticipation to the wedding night in an age where he feels couples are deprived of the magic because they grab it prematurely.”
Zack’s jaw tightened with fury in the mistaken belief that Julie’s father had actually gone around town, telling everyone about the ridiculous bargain he’d foisted on Zack in retaliation for kidnapping his daughter. “What did you say?” he demanded.
John Grayson heard his question and leaned around Ted. “He’s going deaf already.” With an attempt at lewd levity, he added, “You know what they say that comes from doing?”
Ted took a swallow of his drink. “No, you go blind, not deaf, from doing that.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“We’re talking about you, my friend,” Ted said. “It is not Julie who can’t take the ‘heat,’ it’s you. Just like it was us. Half the men in this town got talked into the same bargain you made, and most of us—the ones who stuck with it—ended up picking roaring fights over nothing with our wives-to-be.”
The fury and frustration Zack had been feeling evaporated in a flash of stunned disbelief mixed with mindless hilarity at the absurdity of what he was hearing.
“Tell him, Mayor,” Ted invited.
“It’s hell. I’ve got ten years on you, son, and I couldn’t believe how bad I wanted something partly because I agreed not to have it. It takes its toll on the women, too, only I am of the opinion their discomfort is lessened by their suppressed enjoyment of seeing the male of the species reduced to a state of desperate need of them. That last part about women,” he added with a grin, “isn’t my theory, it was a generalization that came from a professor of sociology I had during my second year at A&M. Where did you go to college, by the way? You’ve got the look of a Yankee, but the accent’s a little off.”
Still torn between annoyance and disbelief over the Mathison Method, Zack hesitated, knowing Addelson was trying to diffuse the situation, then he looked at Julie’s pretty profile and considered the amusing fact that his sexual frustration was known by, and understood by, most of the other males in the restaurant, and he capitulated with an irritated sigh. “USC.”
“What was your major?”
“Finance and film.”
“Dual major?”
Zack nodded, his eyes on Julie, still unwilling to make a second public attempt to soothe her unjust anger at him.
At the far end of the bar, Ed Sandell hooked his scuffed boot over the rung of his stool and wiped the back of his sunburned neck with his handkerchief, then he looked at the other two ranch hands with him. “My sister, Holly, met Benedict at church on Sunday,” he said, nodding toward Zack, who was standing at the juke box. “She said he’s nice.”
“He’s a pansy,” Jake Barton said, shoving his hat back on his head. “All those Hollywood types are.”
“No way,” Martin Laughlin disagreed. “I mean, the guy spent five years in the pen doing hard time.”
“Big deal. He’s still a pansy. Look at those jeans he’s wearin’. Right off some de-sign-er rack.”
“C’mon, Jake,” Laughlin argued. “He not only spent five years in prison, but he had enough guts to escape.”
“He got caught, too. He’s a pansy,” Jake said flatly.
Ed Sandell signaled to the waitress and said idly, “He umpired the game with Perseville tonight. Julie Mathison hassled him over a call he made, and he threw her out of the game.”
Jake Barton looked up. “No shit?”
“Nope.”
