Perfect Read online

  Zack stopped with the glass halfway to his lips, belatedly realizing that she had been deliberately trying to pour wine down him as fast as he could drink it as well as watching him with a strange look throughout most of the meal. “Am I going to need it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  With a feeling of vague foreboding, he watched her shift positions so that her back was against the arm of the sofa and she was facing him. Her opening question seemed like a joking and innocuous one: “Zack, wouldn’t you say I’ve been a model hostage?”

  “Exemplary,” he agreed, smiling a little at her contagious humor and trying to match her mood.

  “Wouldn’t you also say I’ve been obedient, cooperative, pleasant, orderly and—and that I’ve even done more than my share of the cooking?”

  “Yes to all but the ‘obedient’ part.”

  She smiled at that. “And as an exemplary prisoner, don’t you agree that I’m entitled to certain . . . well . . . extra privileges.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Answers to some questions.”

  Julie watched his expression turn guarded. “Possibly. It depends on the questions.”

  A little unnerved by his unencouraging response, she nevertheless forged ahead: “You do intend to try to find out who really killed your wife, don’t you?”

  “Ask another question,” he said flatly.

  “Okay. Do you have any ideas about who the murderer really is?”

  “Try a different topic.”

  His unnecessary curtness grated on her, not only because loving him made her extremely sensitive to his attitudes, but because Julie honestly felt she was entitled to answers. Keeping her voice sincere and level, she said, “Please don’t brush me off like this.”

  “Then please pick another topic.”

  “Will you stop being flippant and listen to me? Try to understand—I was away on a foreign-exchange college program when your trial took place. I don’t even know exactly what happened, and I want to very much.”

  “You’ll find it all in your local library in old newspapers. Look it up when you get home.”

  Sarcasm was always guaranteed to rile Julie. “I don’t want to read the media’s version, damn it! I want to hear yours. I need to know what happened—from you.”

  “You’re out of luck.” He stood up, put his glass down, and held out his hand to her.

  Julie stood up, too, so that he didn’t dwarf her and automatically started to put her hand in his, thinking it was a conciliating gesture.

  “Let’s go to bed.”

  She snatched her hand back, hurt and insulted by the injustice of his attitude. “I will not. What I’m asking of you is very little compared to what you’ve demanded of me since we met and you know it!”

  “I am not going to go through a blow-by-blow description of that day again for you or for anybody else,” he snapped. “I did it a hundred times before the trial for cops and lawyers. It’s over. Closed.”

  “But I want to help. It’s been five years. Your viewpoint and memories may be different. I thought we could start by making out a list of everyone who was there the day it happened, and you could tell me about each of them. I’m completely unbiased, so I’ll have a fresh perspective. Maybe I can help you think of something you overlooked—”

  His scornful laugh cut her to the quick. “How could you possibly help me?”

  “I could try!”

  “You’re being ridiculous. I spent over $2 million on lawyers and investigators and nobody could turn up a logical suspect other than me.”

  “But—”

  “Drop it, Julie!”

  “I won’t drop it! I have a right to an explanation!”

  “You have no rights to anything,” Zack snapped. “And I don’t need or want your help.”

  Julie stiffened as if he’d hit her, but she managed to keep her fury and humiliation out of her voice. “I see.” And she did—she saw now that he had no use for her at all except her body. She wasn’t supposed to think; she wasn’t supposed to feel; she was just supposed to amuse him while he was bored and spread her legs for him whenever he was in the mood.

  Reaching out, he put his hands on her arms to draw her forward, “Let’s go to bed.”

  “Take your hands off of me!” Julie hissed, jerking away out of his reach. Shaking with fury and anguish at her own gullibility, she wrapped her arms around her stomach, backing around the sofa and coffee table until she had a free path to her own bedroom.

  “What the hell are you trying to pull?”

  “I’m not pulling anything, I’ve just realized what a heartless bastard you really are!” The freezing look on his face as he watched her moving away from him was nothing compared to her own fury. “You’re running away when you leave here, aren’t you! You have no intention of trying to find the real killer, do you?”

  “No!” he snapped.

  “You must be the biggest coward on earth!” Julie taunted, too furious to quail before the murderous look tightening his face. “Either that or else you killed her yourself!” She opened the door to her room, turned back, and added scathingly, “I’m leaving here in the morning, and if you intend to stop me, you’d better be prepared to use that gun!”

  He raked her with a contemptuous glance. “Stop you?” he jeered. “I’ll carry your bag out to the car!”

  Julie slammed the bedroom door on his last words. Fighting back tears, she heard him go into his room as she stepped out of her slacks and pulled on a T-shirt from a dresser drawer. Not until she’d turned off the lamp and gotten into bed, did she let herself lose control. Dragging the thick down comforter up to her chin, she rolled over onto her stomach, and buried her face in the pillow. She cried with shame and anger at her stupidity, her gullibility, and her humiliation. She cried until her tears were spent and she was exhausted, then she rolled onto her side, staring blindly out the window at the moonlit winter landscape.

  In his own bedroom, Zack pulled off his sweater, trying to calm down and forget the scene in the living room, but the effort was futile. Her words hammered in his mind, more agonizing each time he remembered the contemptuous look on her face when she called him a coward and a murderer. During his trial and imprisonment, he’d inured himself against feeling anything, but somehow she’d gotten under his guard. He hated her for that and himself for letting it happen.

  Flinging the sweater onto the bed, he stripped off his pants. It hit him then—the only plausible explanation for her ridiculously volatile reaction to what he’d said in the living room—and he stopped cold in the act of dropping his trousers on the bed.

  Julie thought she was in love with him. That’s why she thought she had “rights” where he was concerned.

  She probably thought he was in love with her. And that he needed her.

  “Son of a bitch!” he swore and flung the trousers onto the bed. He didn’t need Julie Mathison, and he sure as hell didn’t need the added guilt and responsibility for a naive small-town schoolteacher who didn’t know the difference between sexual desire and that nebulous emotion-called love. She’d be better off if she hated him. He’d be better off, too. Much better off. There was nothing between them except sex, which they both wanted and she was denying them out of some infantile urge to retaliate.

  With some half-formed notion of proving all that to her and himself, he stalked toward his bedroom door and pulled it open.

  Julie was dismally contemplating what to do tomorrow if he reneged on his remark about letting her go when the bedroom door abruptly opened and Zack strode in, naked. “What do you want?” she demanded.

  “That question,” he mocked, sweeping the comforter off of her, “is almost as asinine as your decision to sleep in this bed because I won’t come to heel.”

  Infuriated by his obvious intention to sleep with her, Julie flung herself to the opposite side of the bed and scrambled out of it, trying to bolt diagonally for the door. He caught her as she rounded the foot of the