Judith McNaught (56 page)

admitted how we really felt about each other, then maybe I could have talked him into taking me with him

and, later, searching for the real killer. In the end,"

Julie concluded quietly, "I'd have
hated
myself for not

telling him again that I loved him, for never trying to change the way our story ended. Knowing that Zack didn't love me even a little is hard, and it hurts, but the other way would have hurt much more and for much, much longer."

Katherine stared at her, dumbstruck. "Julie, you amaze me. You're right about everything you just said,

but if I were in your place, it would take me years to be as objective as you are now. I mean, consider what the man did—he kidnapped you, seduced you after you saved his life, took your virginity, then when you told him you loved him, he gave you a cavalier, flippant answer and sent you home to face the

FBI and the world media on your own, Of all the heartless, rude—"

"Please don't go into all that," Julie said with a half-laugh as she held up her hand, "or I'll get angry all over again and forget how 'objective' I am. Besides,"

she added, "he didn't seduce me."

"From the story you just told, it's obvious to me he seduced you with twenty-four-karat charm."

Julie shifted her gaze to the empty fireplace and shook her head, "I wanted to be seduced. I wanted him

so
much."

After a moment, Katherine said, "If he had told you that he loved you, would you truly have turned your back on your family and your job and everything you believe in and gone into hiding with him if he'd asked you to do that?"

In answer, Julie lifted her gaze to Katherine's. "Yes."

"But you'd become an accessory, or whatever it is they call someone who joins in with a criminal."

"I don't think a wife can be prosecuted for standing by her husband."

"My God!" Katherine gasped, "you're completely serious! You'd have
married
him!"

"You of all people shouldn't find that so difficult to believe," Julie said pointedly.

"What do you mean?"

Julie watched her with a sad, knowing smile. "You know what I mean, Katherine. Now it's your turn to
227

confess."

"About what?"

"About Ted," Julie clarified. "You've been telling me for a year that you want to make Ted listen to you because you have things you need to make him understand. Yet tonight, you meekly accepted every nasty, unjust remark he made to you without a word of argument. Why?"

Katherine shifted uneasily beneath Julie's steady gaze, then she reached nervously for the teapot on the

tray in front of her and poured tepid tea into her cup.

When she lifted the teacup to her lips, there was a slight tremor in her hand and Julie saw it. "I accepted the way he treated me because it's no more than I

deserve after the way I behaved while we were married."

"That's not the way you felt three years ago, when you filed for divorce," Julie reminded her. "You told me then that you were divorcing him because he was selfish, heartless, demanding, overbearing, and a whole lot of other things."

"Three years ago," Katherine stated sadly, "I was a spoiled brat married to a man whose only real crime was that he expected me to be a wife, not an unreasonable child. Everyone in Keaton, except you, knew

that I was a ridiculous excuse for a real wife. You were too loyal to your best friend to see what was before your eyes, and I didn't have the maturity or courage to face the truth. Ted knew the truth, but he was too gallant to destroy your friendship and faith in me by telling you what I was really like as a wife.

In

fact, one of the few things we ever agreed on was that you shouldn't know we were having problems."

"Katherine," Julie interrupted softly, "you're still in love with him, aren't you?"

Katherine's whole body tensed at the words, then she looked down at the huge pear-shaped diamond sparkling on her left hand and twisted it in her fingers, keeping her gaze averted. With a choked laugh,

she said, "A week ago, before your disappearance forced Ted to start talking to me, I would have answered no to that question."

"How would you answer it now?"

Katherine drew a long breath and looked up at her.

"As you so eloquently phrased it about Zachary Benedict tonight," she said, "I would sleep with your brother for the rest of my life—if he'd only ask me to again."

"If you feel that way," Julie asked quietly, her gaze searching Katherine's face, "how can you justify the fact that you're still wearing another man's engagement ring?"

"Actually, the ring is now on loan to me."

"What?"

"I broke our engagement yesterday, but Spencer asked me not to make it official for a few weeks. He thinks I'm simply overreacting to old, sentimental memories that came back when I saw Ted again."

228

Restraining the urge to cheer at the news of the broken engagement, Julie smiled and said, "How do you

intend to get Ted back?" Her smile faded a little as she added, "It's not going to be easy. He's changed since the divorce, he's still devoted to his family, but he rarely laughs, and he's become distant … as if there's a wall around him and he won't let anyone past it, not even Carl or me. The only thing he really seems to care about now is passing his bar exams and opening up his own practice." She paused trying to think of a kind way to phrase it and then opted for the simple truth: "He doesn't like you, Katherine.

Sometimes, it's almost as if he actually hates you."

"Did you notice that, too?" Katherine tried to joke, but her voice shook a little. Sobering, she said, "He has good reason to hate me."

"I don't believe that. Sometimes two wonderful people simply can't make a go of being married, and it's

no one's fault. It happens all the time."

"Don't whitewash me when I'm finally getting up the courage to tell you the ugly truth," she said shakily.

"The truth is that the divorce was entirely my fault. I loved Ted when I married him, but I was so spoiled and so immature that I couldn't understand that loving someone means you make some sacrifices for him.

It sounds bizarre, but I actually thought I was entitled to bind Ted to me with matrimony and then to

spend the next couple of years being independent and carefree—until
I
was ready to settle down with him. To give you an example," she persevered, her voice ringing with self-disgust, "one month after our wedding, I realized that all my friends were going back to college for the fall semester, and I wasn't.

Suddenly, I felt martyred because I was only twenty, and I was already tied down and missing out on college life. Ted had saved enough money by working as a deputy sheriff to go to school and pay my

tuition, and he came up with the perfect suggestion: We could schedule our classes on the same days and drive to Dallas together. But that wasn't good enough for me. You see, I wanted to go back East and live in my sorority house like a coed, then spend summers and holidays with my husband."

Julie struggled to keep her face from betraying her surprise at such a hopelessly unfair marital arrangement, but Katherine was so busy condemning herself that she wouldn't have noticed anything.

"Ted pointed out the obvious impracticality of such a marriage and added that even if he were willing to live like that, he couldn't possibly afford to send me to Brookline. So I went running home to Daddy to ask for the money, even though Ted had made it plain to me that if I married him, he would never take a

penny of Daddy's money. Daddy, of course, told Ted that he would be happy to pay for all my expenses at Brookline, but Ted refused, which made me furious. I retaliated from that day forward by refusing to

lift a finger at home. I didn't cook another meal for him or do his laundry. So he did the cooking and grocery shopping, and he took our laundry over to Kealing's Cleaners, all of which made everybody in town start talking about what a lousy wife I was.

Despite that," Katherine said, "he never gave up hope

that I'd grow up soon and behave like a woman instead of a brat. He felt guilty, you see," Katherine added, looking directly at Julie, "for marrying me when I was so young and hadn't had a chance to really

live. Anyway, the only wifely duty I performed during the rest of our first year of marriage was lovemaking, which," she added with a soft smile,

"was definitely not an awful chore with your brother."

Katherine fell silent for so long that Julie wasn't certain she intended to go on, then she drew a shaky breath and continued, "After a while, Daddy, who knew how miserable I was because I was forever complaining to him, hit upon the idea that if I had a fabulous house to live in, I'd be a happier wife. I was childish enough to love the idea of playing hostess in a wonderful house of my own with a swimming pool and tennis court, but Daddy was worried that Ted was really inflexible about not accepting any financial

support from him. I, on the other hand, foolishly believed that if we presented Ted with a fait accompli,

he'd have no choice except to go along with it. So Daddy bought the land over on Wilson's Ridge, and he and I met secretly with an architect and had the plans drawn up for my house. I loved every inch of
229

that house, I planned every detail, every closet, every cabinet," Katherine said, looking up at Julie. "I even started cooking meals for Ted and doing our laundry, and he thought I'd decided to be a wife after all. He was so pleased because I was happy, even though he didn't understand the reason. He thought my parents were building the house on Wilson's Ridge for themselves because they wanted a smaller place, because that's what I let him believe. In fact, that's what everyone in Keaton believed."

This time, Julie was unable to hide her shock, because there was a huge house on Wilson's Ridge, and it

was gorgeous—complete with swimming pool and tennis court. "That's right," Katherine said, watching her face. "The house that Dr. and Mrs. Delorik live in was supposed to be my house."

"What happened?" Julie asked because she didn't know what else to say.

"What happened was that when the house was almost finished, Daddy and I took Ted up there, and Daddy handed Ted the key." With a slight shudder, Katherine said, "As you can imagine, Ted was furious. He was furious at the secrecy, the deceit, and my having gone back on my word before we were

married that I'd live on whatever income he could provide. He told my father politely to find someone who could afford to live there and keep the place up, and he left us standing in the house."

Since that would have happened only months before their divorce was filed, Julie naturally assumed that Ted's refusal to accept the house caused the final death blow to their marriage. "And that led to more fights that ended up breaking up your marriage,"

Julie concluded.

"No. That led to my banishing Ted from our bed, but it was already too late."

"What do you mean?"

Katherine bit her lip and looked down. Her voice shook a little as she said, "A few days later—just before Ted and I split up—I took a bad fall off one of my father's horses, remember?"

"Of course I do," Julie said. "You broke your arm."

"I also broke up my marriage that day along with my husband's heart." She drew a long breath, lifted her gaze to Julie's, and there was a sheen of tears in her eyes. "I was pregnant, Julie. I found out after Ted refused the key to the house on Wilson's Ridge. I was two months' pregnant and I was furious because Ted had refused the house, which had a lovely nursery, but I was even angrier because
he
was getting

something he wanted badly—a baby. I went riding the next day, even though Ted specifically told me not

to, and I didn't take that horse for a gentle canter. I was racing him along the creek and jumping him over

hedges when he threw me."

When she couldn't seem to go on, Julie finished softly for her, "And you lost the baby."

Katherine nodded. "Ted was not only heartbroken, he was … infuriated. He thought I deliberately tried to miscarry, which isn't surprising considering the way I acted when I found out I was pregnant. And the

funny thing is," she said, her voice filled with tears she was trying to blink away, "that was the only rotten

thing in our marriage that I wasn't actually guilty of doing, at least not intentionally. I always rode like a fury when something was bothering me, and I always felt better afterward. The day I took Thunder out, I

didn't believe for a moment I was risking a miscarriage. I'd been jumping him over those same obstacles

for years and hadn't ever had the slightest problem with him. The only difference that day was that, unknown to me, the vet had been treating him for a sprain and it wasn't healed yet. You see," she added shakily, "Thunder would have jumped off a mountain for me, and he never gave a sign that his foreleg

was bothering him until he actually took the last hedge and went down on his knees. I ended up partially

230

pinned beneath him. My father and I both tried to explain all that to Ted, but he didn't believe us, and given our deceit about the house, who could expect him to? Besides, what sensible woman who was worthy of the title wife would have taken such a risk with her husband's baby?" Her voice filled with shame and tears as she finished, "I didn't decide to divorce Ted, Julie. When I came home from the hospital, he'd already packed his bags. But," she added with a teary smile, "he was gallant to the very end, even when he was heartbroken, furious, and completely disillusioned: He let
me
divorce
him.

And

he never told anyone about the baby he still believes I deliberately lost. I grew up the day I saw his suitcases in the hall and realized what I was losing, but it was too late then. You know the rest of the story—I went back East to college and got my degree, then I went to work in Dallas at the museum."

Julie got up, walked quickly across the hall, and returned with a handful of tissues from the powder room.