Bed of Lies (17 page)

She pulled out her cell phone and dialed the number he'd given her that first night in the restaurant, getting his voice mail.

"Zach, it's Julie."
Damn.
Her voice was shaky. She cleared her throat and tried to steady it, to not sound quite so needy. "You'll never guess where I am. Never in a million years. I'm home, and I saw Peter today, just for a minute." Okay, she couldn't hide it. She was needy as hell. "Peter can't stand me. He's in an emergency shelter, because they didn't have space in a foster home for him, and they're going to do an investigation into my background before they'll even let him live with me temporarily. If they let him live with me. And..."

And I'm scared again, Zach. I'm so scared.

Not that he needed her to tell him that. It would be painfully obvious from the message she'd left so far.

Julie tried to think of something to say to save herself from sounding so dismal and seeming so pathetic.

"Oh, and the social worker said she knows your fiancée's mother—" She got that much out before the voice-mail system cut her off.

Chapter 9

Zach got to Memphis late Saturday night. He spent Sunday feeling guilty about everything and reading over files, then went to visit his client and the public defender assigned to Tony's case.

Returning to his room Sunday night, he heard his cell phone ringing as soon as he powered it back on. He hadn't answered any calls since he'd left Gwen in Cleveland, but he couldn't ignore them forever. He dialed into his voice mail. Mother, father, sister, sister, mother. He listened to a few words of each one and then erased them.

Until he heard a sad, shaky voice say, "Zach, it's Julie…."

He played the message three times, and each time she sounded worse. The social worker was a friend of Gwen's mother? Life just got better and better. Peter was in an emergency shelter while the social worker picked Julie's life apart. She'd hate that. But at no point in her message did she ask for help. She wouldn't.

She hadn't asked anything of him, except for him to go away after he first spotted her in that restaurant in Memphis. And what had he done? Butted into her life, pissed off her fiancé, tried to play conscience for her. Then he'd just grabbed on to her like she was the only solid thing in the universe, drawing her down to the floor beneath him, tearing off her clothes, pushing inside her—

God, the images, the feelings simply would not leave him.

Zach got to his feet, needing to get out of that room. Just looking at that spot on the floor made him practically break out into a sweat. The bedroom wasn't any easier to handle.

He grabbed his cell phone and went outside, welcoming the slight chill to the breeze.

No use in going back to that night again. They couldn't change what they'd done, and to hear her talk about it, she believed she could put it completely out of her mind.

Really?
he wanted to ask.
Because much as I've tried, I sure as hell haven't managed to do that.

But this wasn't about sex. Not really. This was about a mess she was in that was at least partly his fault. So he called. That's what he told himself—that this was an obligation.

She had him lying to himself now.

The truth was, he just needed to hear her voice.

She answered, sounding sleepy and very, very vulnerable. None of that Julie-the-tough-girl evident tonight. He glanced at his watch, checking the time. It wasn't that late.

"Hi," he said softly.

"Hi."

She'd barely breathed into the phone, and already the sound of her voice was doing funny things to his insides. He felt a little kick of heat in his groin, especially when he wondered if she was in bed already. Which made him think of having her in his bed, where—if things worked out the way they should—she would never be again.

How was he supposed to handle that? That they'd never be there together again?

And what in the hell was he supposed to do with the way something seemed to ease inside his chest just at the sound of her voice? As if, with one or two little words from her, he could gauge her mood and know that she was okay. Tired, but not bad, all things considered.

Gwen came fleetingly to mind—what was he doing to him and Gwen?—but he pushed the thought aside just as quickly. He'd felt like shit for three days straight. If the sound of Julie's voice from hundreds of miles away could bring him some measure of comfort, surely he could have it for just a few moments?

Because an odd kind of need was floating around inside him that he didn't understand but had no intention of fighting. Not when he just wanted to talk, and she was safely far away.

"So you're really there, huh?"

"Yes, I'm here," she whispered.

He imagined her there to say it in person, say it softly, with so much understanding.
I'm here.

He decided he wanted to talk to Julie Morrison more than he wanted his next breath.

"I can't believe it," he said. "I had to call the number and hear you say it again before I believed you were there."

She laughed. He heard the faint creak of a chair. Good, no bed. As she sighed, he imagined her settling deeper into the corner of a big, comfy chair, her feet curled up underneath her, the phone tucked against her shoulder.
That's it,
he thought.
Get comfortable. Let me see what I can do for you tonight.

"Surprised you, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did. I know how hard that was for you, Julie. I'm proud of you for going and trying to help." Some people never, ever heard that, not at any time in their entire lives, and he
was
proud of her. She'd been running for so long.

"Imagine that. Zach McRae, proud of me."

He grinned. She was probably aiming for sarcasm—she often did—but the emotion in her voice ruined the effect.

"I am," he insisted.

"I thought you might be. Even though, to be perfectly honest—how's that coming from me?—I really didn't want to come here, Zach. You know that. Peter shamed me into it."

"Hey, it doesn't really matter why you're there. You went. That's what counts. You don't think people do the right things because they want to, do you? The right thing is usually the hardest thing of all."

"You do the right thing."

"Not always." The words came out too fast to take them back.

"Oh, yeah...
that.
So... you were engaged, too?" she asked softly. "You didn't tell me, Zach."

"Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to keep it from you. I guess I was so busy trying to tell you what to do with your own life that I didn't say much about mine," he said.
What a lame-ass excuse.
He could just hear himself telling Gwen, if she ever asked,
Did that woman you slept with know you were engaged? No, darling. It just never came up.

"I guess it's too late to ask you not to tell her?" Julie asked.

"Sorry. I flew to Cleveland Saturday morning to talk to her in person."

"She lives in Cleveland?"

"No. Cincinnati. Her father's a U.S. Senator, running for reelection, and she works on his campaign, so she moves around a lot lately."

"Oh. How did she take it?"

"I'm not sure. It's probably going to take a few days for it to sink in, and then... Honestly, I don't know what's going to happen, Julie."

Zach, the man with the plan. He had no clue what was coming.

"I'm sorry," she said again.

"And I told you, you don't have anything to apologize for."

It had been all him. If he was really up for some of that legendary honesty she credited him with, he'd admit that he wouldn't mind hanging on to her right now.

"What about you?" he asked, pulling the oldest argument tactic in the book. When floundering, change the subject. "What did you tell Steve to get away long enough to go to Baxter?"

"The truth."

"You didn't," he shot back.

"I did," she insisted. "Surprised you again, huh?"

"Yeah."

"I couldn't marry him. Not after... you know."

"You said it didn't mean anything," he reminded her, in dangerous territory he couldn't seem to avoid.

"Not to you and me. It's not like... you know."

Don't go down that road, Zach.
But he couldn't quite help himself. "No, I don't think I do know. Why don't you explain it to me?"

Maybe then he could explain it to Gwen. And to himself. Maybe he could forget

"I meant that it wasn't like there was anything between us. Not really. It was just—"

"Sex?" What did it mean when people said that? Sex, to him, wasn't one of those words you could put a "just" in front of. It was always something. Memorable. Forgettable. Mind-blowing. Awkward. Comforting. Nice. Really nice.

They hadn't had forgettable sex, which was a real problem, since he was supposed to forget about it. And it hadn't been awkward, although it should have been, there in that little slice of space on the floor between the table and the couch.

It had been wild and desperate.

He didn't think he'd done desperate since he'd lost his virginity back in high school, and he'd never done it quite like he and Julie had.

"Yes, just sex," Julie claimed. "A mistake."

"A bad night," he said, using her own term.

"Yes."

Not... outrageously, unbelievably good? Steamy hot, scorching hot, sizzling hot? Get-him-hard-in-seconds kind of hot? Make-him-want–to-beg-for-it-again hot? No matter how much it might ruin his carefully planned life and had already messed up hers?

"Why are we talking about this, Zach? There's nothing to say, is there?"

If there was, he sure didn't know what it was. "I'm just... I'm sorry about you and Steve."

Liar.
No way he was sorry she couldn't marry old Steve. He didn't want the man to ever touch her again, didn't want to think about any man doing to her the things that he had. And he had no right to feel that way.

"I know how much you wanted that," he said.

"It would have been a mistake. You knew that all along."

"It's not for me to say, Julie. You told me, and I didn't listen. I never do."

"You just never gave up on me. That's all."

She said it like it wasn't a bad thing, when he was starting to think it was, the way he always thought he could fix anything. He was facing up to the reality that he couldn't.

"Still, I'm sorry—"

"Come on, Zach. I was lying to the guy, and you know how well that's always worked for me."

"Hey, you didn't lie to the social worker, did you?" he said, remembering then that he was supposed to be helping her.

"No, but I was planning on asking you not to tell your fiancée about you and me. For Peter's sake. But that wouldn't have been fair, either. So... please tell me my social worker hasn't heard from your fiancée's mother that the engagement's off because you and I had sex. I don't think that would do my petition for custody any good. I can just see me trying to explain to Ms. Reed about a bad night that didn't mean anything."

"Gwen's not the type to run crying to her mother." She'd pull herself together and handle it. "I could be wrong, but I'll check and see what I can do."

"Could you?"

"Sure. I'll ask Gwen if we can keep this between the two of us for now. At least until we decide what to do."

"Zach, the hero," she said. "Charging in to save the day."

"No." Not anymore, he thought bitterly.

"Yes," she insisted, "you do. I... am so sorry about how this turned out. Do you really love her, Zach?"

What could he say? He knew he sure as hell shouldn't be so eager to talk to Julie and still be thinking of her in his bed when he was supposed to be in love with Gwen.

"I mean, I thought I loved Steve," she said. "And that he loved me. But how could he? I hid so much from him, so much more than where I was from or what my family was like."