Bed of Lies (13 page)

He frowned at her. "That's it? I got drunk and poured out my troubles to you and then we ended up in bed, and all you say is that it's all right?"

"What else is there to say?" she asked.

"I don't know."

"Yeah, I know. Because you don't do this."

"And you do?"

Her cheeks burned at that. It really wasn't any of his business what she'd done over the years or how badly she'd felt about any of it.

"I'm just saying that I know what this was. I understand. You needed someone, and I was there. It's awkward, and I'm sure we both regret it and find it a little embarrassing, but people have done worse things. We'll just put it behind us and go right on."

"Go right on?" he repeated.

"What else would we do? Beat ourselves up over it? You really don't need to do that, Zach. It was one night, and in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter all that much, does it?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Well, I do. I know what it was. Two people helping each other make it through the night. That's it. Now it's morning, and the thing is, problems never look quite so bad in the morning. You go put your life back together, and I'll go do the same to mine."

He frowned once again. "What about Steve?"

She winced. Zach might not believe her about this, but it was one thing she could not lie about. She found her other shoe, grabbed her purse and her keys. "I have to go."

He stopped her with a hand on her arm. "Julie, I'm sorry."

"It's all right," she said, his touch bringing back a million little memories of the night before, memories she certainly didn't need or want.

Then, unable to help herself, she turned to face him. Which was a mistake. She needed to forget him and this sad, lost look on his face, too. And all that bare skin and him all rumpled and uncertain. She'd never seen Zach uncertain, and it made her want to try to take care of him some more. But look where that innocent little impulse had gotten them both.

She rose up on her tiptoes and gave him a quick, soft kiss on the cheek. "Take care of yourself, okay?"

He nodded bleakly.

"And go home." Jesus, he had people who loved him, people who would take care of him. He didn't have to live like this.

"The trial isn't over." He looked defeated all over again. "We still have the sentencing phase to get through."

She didn't want to know that, to think of him still being here, to worry about him and want to see him. She wouldn't. She couldn't.

"But after that," she said, thinking he just had to go.

He frowned, still looking uncertain and so damned lost. "Houston. I heard yesterday. I have a case starting soon in Houston. They love killing people in Texas."

Which was the last thing he needed to do. Go rushing off to save someone else when he was feeling so bad himself. She was going to worry about him, even if he wasn't hers to worry about. He never would be. Just that little piece of him she'd had last night.

"I have to go," she said, and slipped out the door, refusing to look back and think of things she could never have.

* * *

After she left, Zach stood in the middle of the room, smelling the whiskey he'd hurled into the opposite wall at one point.

He'd kicked over the table, too. He remembered that.

He'd called Gwen.

Jesus, Gwen.

He sank down onto the sofa, leaning back against the cushion, head pounding. He absolutely could not believe he'd done this. He didn't go off on trips and get drunk, pick up strangers and take them to bed with him. He didn't fall apart. He didn't cheat. He didn't lie. He and Gwen were engaged, and that meant something to him. One thing it meant was that he didn't sleep with other women.

"Shit," he muttered.

He still wasn't quite sure how it had happened. He'd heard other guys say that exact thing after cheating on their significant other, and he'd thought,
Bullshit. You know exactly how it happened.

Yet here he sat, his feet on that spot on the floor where he'd had
her.

Julie Morrison.

It was even worse that it was a friend of his little sister. Of course, she wasn't little anymore. She was a beautiful woman with long, perfect legs and gorgeous hair. She'd looked amazing in that long, white gown at her engagement party, like something out of an old movie. He might well have ruined her engagement—and his own.

God, what was he going to say to Gwen?

Zach covered his face with his hands, rubbing at the ache in his head. He'd called her last night when things got bad, feeling lousier than he ever had in his life and trying to work up the courage to tell her just how bad it was. Lately, he just had no distance between him and his clients. Feelings seemed to be multiplying inside him, like a virus out of control. Last night, he just hadn't known what to do with them.

And either Gwen had been too distracted to listen, or he simply hadn't been able to admit to her how bad he felt, how much he needed... God, he didn't even know what he needed.

So he'd gone out to buy the bottle. How could he have let himself do that?

So he had drunk too much and ended up in bed with Julie. She'd been kind and close, and then it was like a neon sign started flashing on and off in his muddled brain that said,
Get inside her. Now.
That he wouldn't feel so horribly alone, so lost, if he could just be inside her.

So he did it. Didn't think at all beyond that.
Just make it through the night somehow.
And then... God, what a night.

He hadn't felt bad or sad or half-crazy, except for how much he'd wanted her, how insanely good it had felt to have her beneath him, beside him, on top of him. To be inside her.

It couldn't have been that good, could it?

Unbidden, images flashed through his mind. Her on the floor beneath him when he'd had his head buried between her legs and made her come so hard she screamed. The feeling of sinking into her tight, wet heat, her body clenching around his when she came again and again. The way she gave and gave and gave, anything he wanted from her, anything he needed, and that it was just so good, mind-blowingly good.

Had to be the craziness of the night, the fact that he should not under any circumstances have done that with her. Had to be. Zach didn't do crazy, out-of-control, forbidden sex.

She'd made it sound like she did. This morning, she hadn't seemed mad or sad or outraged or anything like that. Had men used her like this before? Or had she sometimes felt as bad as he had and found someone to help her through a night like the one that had just passed?

Fuck.
He wasn't sure if he wanted to know.

But he knew he absolutely had to do one thing, and it wasn't going to get any easier. Determined, he put all thoughts of Julie, all images of that night from his mind and picked up his phone.

Gwen answered, brisk and efficient as ever. She said she was in Cleveland. It was Saturday morning and nothing would happen with Tony's trial until Monday. So he'd fly up and talk to Gwen, and once she calmed down and figured out where she wanted to go from here... Hell, he'd figure out the rest then.

"I'll be there as soon as I can," he said. "I need to talk to you."

"All right. Is everything okay?"

"No."

* * *

Julie hurried inside, hoping she'd make it before anyone saw her with a man's dress shirt thrown over her torn blouse.

In her apartment, she dropped her purse and keys and stepped out of her shoes as she headed directly for the shower. She stripped off her clothes, not nearly as efficiently as Zach had because her hands were shaking. Actually, her whole body was shaking.

He hadn't hurt her. He'd just been... what word could possibly apply? Insistent? A little desperate? Needy? All of that, and she had tried to give him what comfort she could. That's all it had been. A bad night. You got through a bad night any way you could. Julie knew that all too well.

So why was every nerve ending in her body alive and tingling this morning? Why did it seem like she could still feel his hands, fast and a little rough, on her body, the weight of his perfect, sleek, taut body on top of hers, inside her, taking and taking, making her feel so many things she had no business feeling with him?

She made the water in the shower as hot as she could stand it, because she could still smell him and that distinctive, musky odor of sex clinging to her body. She needed to wash it all away, and if she could, wash all memory of the night from her mind.

Honestly, it was no big deal.

He had been a kind man in a very bad place last night, and if she'd needed him in that same, desperate way, he probably would have done the same for her. He'd have felt guilty about it, but if it had been what she really needed, he'd have done it.

He'd done so much for her over the years.

So this was nothing.

She owed him. Most people probably wouldn't think of paying off a debt like that with sex, but she understood. It didn't really matter. It was over. It was something that would not be repeated. She wouldn't see him again, and he wouldn't want to see her.

He'd most likely beat himself up over last night for a long time. But for her, it was just one more mistake in a long line of them. Although, she had gotten closer than ever before to having that life she'd always wanted, the safe one, the stable one, the sane one.

Julie scrubbed her skin raw and cried a bit, all the tears she intended to allow herself over this. Then she shut off the shower, toweled off and dressed in the first things she found. Jeans and a plain, white silk blouse. She tied her hair back, grabbed another pair of shoes and left.

No sense putting this off.

The town house she and Steve were to share after their marriage was only fifteen minutes away, and one might think she'd use the time wisely by trying to figure out what she was going to say. But her mind was a total and complete blank.

She climbed out of her car and rang the bell. This was not the morning to use the key she had.

Steve stiffened at the sight of her. "Sorry I didn't make it last night."

"It's all right. As it turns out, I wasn't there."

"You weren't?" He let her in, then closed the door, looking a little unsure of what to do next. "Julie, I know it's been two weeks. I just don't know what to say—"

"I can help you with that. I spent last night with Zach."

All the color drained from his face, his gaze narrowing on hers. "What?"

"The boy he was defending was found guilty yesterday, and Zach was upset. I was worried about him, and went to check on him, and I ended up spending the night."

"You had sex with him?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes," she admitted. Too late, she had doubts about just how easygoing Steve might be. If ever there were a time for a man to lose his temper and take it out on a woman, this was it.

He barely blinked, didn't seem to move a muscle until a bitter smile crossed his face. "I knew it. First minute I saw the guy, I knew it. There was something between the two of you."

"Well, you're wrong."

"Shit, Julie, you just told me you slept with the guy."

"Yes, but it wasn't like that."

"Oh?" Steve started to laugh. "What was it like?"

"I told you. He was upset. I was worried about him, and... It was just one of those things. One of those stupid, meaningless things."

"Meaningless? I'm afraid I don't see it as meaningless."

"I never thought you would," she agreed.

"But that's the way you see it? It doesn't mean anything to you?"

"No. I know it means something to you and me. I know it has to hurt you, and I'm sorry for that. I really didn't want to hurt you."

"Oh, well. There you go. You didn't mean to hurt me." He folded his arms across his chest and took a breath.

"I don't expect you to understand," she said.

"But you expect me to marry you?"

"No, I don't expect you to do that, either," she said. "And I'm sorry. I thought I was finally going to get something right. Be the kind of woman I'd always wanted to be. I thought that together we'd have everything I ever wanted."

"What did you want, Julie?" he asked.

"Something that would last."
God, would she ever have anything good that would last?.

"You never loved me?" he asked.

"I was so sure that I did, but I never quite believed you could love me. I'm really sorry, Steve." She pulled the engagement ring off her finger and handed it to him.

"So what are you going to do?"

"I don't think I can keep working for you now." One too many mistakes staring her in the face every day—she didn't need that. Neither did he. "I'll clear out my stuff. Everything's planned out for the next quarter. Maggie's up to speed on all of it. She's more than qualified to do the job. And I'd like to just go, if that's all right with you."

No horrible two weeks notice to work through.