Zach would have a new car. It would be flashy and expensive, since cost would be no object for a Trust Fund Boy (or Inheritance Boy, whichever way it fell out). The car would have leather seats and flashy gadgets and in a year, he'd be driving something completely different. This was the kind of man who needed to turn heads and look good.
Jen decided Zach's car would have to be a silver sports car, European, like something James Bond would drive. A convertible, even though that would be impractical in New England. That impracticality, in fact, would be part of his style.
To Jen's astonishment, Zach stopped beside a red Neon that had seen better days and pulled out his keys.
“This is your car?” Jen asked, expecting him to say that it was a loaner because his sleek machine was in the shop.
He glanced up in confusion. “Yes. Why?”
“No reason.”
Jen got into the car when he opened the passenger door for her. Zach's Neon wasn't brand new, although she noted with approval that it was clean and empty.
He took care of it, as if he wanted it to last.
“Sorry,” he said as he got in and noticed her quick glance into the back seat. “I didn't get the back seat vacuumed out since Roxie was last riding along. Sometimes, it seems as if there isn't much point in vacuumingâshe's always shedding ahead of me.”
Jen glanced back again and saw the layer of long black and white hairs on the upholstery.
“She sheds a lot?”
“She's in the
Guinness Book of World Records
. I think she sheds more than she weighs.” He started the car and eased out into traffic. Jen said nothing. “That was a joke.”
“I know.”
“What's the matter?”
“Nothing. I'm still surprised. I thought you'd have a fancy car.”
He gave her an incredulous look. “So you're going to dump me as a fake date because of my car? I don't think even cellophane is that shallow, Jen.”
Jen straightened, knowing that this was the perfect opening. “That's not why, but I am going to dump you. Mission accomplished and all that.”
“What about the wedding?”
“Cancelled.”
“The trip to Tiffany in New York to pick rings?”
“Cancelled.”
“Rats. I was looking forward to that.”
“Don't be ridiculous. You just made that up to drive my mother crazy with the idea of ostentatious spending.”
Zach smiled a little bit. “And it worked, right?”
Jen watched him, not trusting that smile. “Well, yes. That was the point.”
He cast her a bright glance. “You admit then that I kept to Cin's plan and made it work?”
Jen didn't see any way around it. “Yes, but it's over now...”
Zach shook his head, effectively silencing her. “It's only just started.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you owe me. Like we agreed in your grandmother's kitchen.” He shook his head when Jen would have argued. “I kept to the plan. I made your mother dislike me. Your grandmother, in fact, has approved of me, which was your original story. Now I get to name my terms and I get to ask you out, too.”
“Wait a minute, this isn't fair.” Jen wasn't afraid of what he'd say. He was enjoying this too much for it to be anything truly awful. Maybe meeting his family was a terrible prospect, to his thinking.
Mostly, she was curious. She argued because he expected her to.
“Of course, it's fair,” he replied. “You got what you wanted and now I get what I want.” He waggled his eyebrows at her, as if to remind her that he could have asked for a lot, and Jen fought a smile.
“Okay, then take me to meet your family now and I'll do the same thing.”
Zach shook his head and Jen's heart sank. “Nope. That won't work,
honey
.”
“Why not?”
He cast her a smile. “You could never make them hate you.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“You're totally a straight arrow, Jen. They'll be crazy for you. They'll decide that you're good for me. In fact, they'll start inviting people to the wedding.”
“No.”
“Yes. They won't believe that I'm capable of doing anything so responsible as organizing a guest list, and they'll be worried that if you have too much to do yourself you might have second thoughts, so they'll take over.” He sighed. “Somehow they'll work out that it was my fault that you left college, even though we didn't know each other yet. It will become clear that your impulses are superior to mine and so you should be encouraged to stick around and be a good influence on me.”
“They don't really give you that little credit, do they?”
“Of course they do. I'm the official black sheep.” He shrugged as if indifferent but Jen wasn't convinced. “I wonder sometimes what they'd talk about if I didn't show up or fail to show up or generally make trouble at reasonable intervals.”
“That's nuts. We'll just talk to them about it and get everything sorted out...”
Zach laughed. “Oh, you really should meet my family. They're so different from yours.”
“What do you mean?”
“No one talks about anythingâwell, not about anything important. Stuff is just resolved. Opinions are formed, then set in concrete. Sometimes they're dictated from above, like Moses getting the Ten Commandments, already carved in stone. There is no expression of alternate viewpoints because there are no alternate viewpoints that count. There is only one right answer Chez Coxwell and so there's nothing to talk about.”
Jen watched the road, unable to imagine a family dynamic like that. “How do you all get along?”
“Mostly, we don't. We're really good at avoiding each other.”
Jen saw that Zach was trying to make light of the way his family worked, but she suspected it bothered him more than he would have liked her to believe. “So, you're alone. It's like you don't have family at all.”
“Be serious: I have Roxie.”
Jen looked out the window, feeling a bit sorry for Zach, feeling a little bit more appreciative of her own family than she had in a while. They might be a lot of trouble, and they might be weird, but there was a bedrock of love underneath it all.
Zach touched her arm with his fingertip, just a fleeting gesture that drew her back to the moment and made her keenly aware of his presence beside her. “How do you all get along? It seems that somebody has an opinion against everything.”
“Well, they do. We used to joke that all perspectives were represented â”
“âand defended â”
“âin my mother's kitchen.”
“So, doesn't that mean that all of you are wrong, all of the time, according to someone's point of view?”
“Probably,” Jen admitted, then frowned as she tried to explain. “But it's not malicious. It's more a case of making information available.” Because they cared about each other and wanted to help. It seemed rude to add that, when Zach's family didn't sound as if they cared much about each other at all. Jen's sucker heart twisted, even though she tried to stop it.
“Not of changing people?”
“No. My grandmother is never going to get rid of her dishwasher, for example, even though it's wasteful of energy. We all know that. My mother argued with her when she decided she wanted one, and she did pick a smaller and more fuel-efficient model than the one she'd looked at initially.”
“So, you compromise or not, and then when the decision is made, you move on to the next issue?”
“Pretty much. It's done then.”
“So, why did Gerry comment on the dishwasher?”
“He's new.” Jen grimaced. “And hopefully he's temporary. I'm not sure anything makes him happy and it's hard to believe that he'll make my mother happy in the long term.”
Zach laughed. “Maybe your mother has her own version of Cin's scheme.”
Jen blinked. She hadn't thought of that.
“So, I'm thinking we should take this right to the wall,” Zach continued, his manner cheerful. “Let's get the ring, book the church, ask the groomsmen and bridesmaids, order the flowers, buy the dress, then break it off right at the altar.” He cast her a mischievous glance. “Give everyone some major entertainment, and lots to talk about.”
Jen felt the color drain from her face. “You wouldn't!”
“Sure, I would. It would live up to everyone's expectations. My family would be convinced that you were too good for me, and that you were smart to dump me.” He grimaced. “They'd probably invite you to their parties afterward instead of me.”
Jen was horrified. “They wouldn't!”
“Don't bet on it,” Zach said. “Your family would think that you'd made a narrow escape from conventionality. It would keep them off your back for years.”
Jen noted that he didn't talk about the impact on his own life. Did he like living alone and unimpeded by family ties? She couldn't imagine anything more lonely, but then she couldn't imagine a family like the one he'd told her about. “I don't think so...”
Jen's doubts were perfectly countered by Zach's confidence. “Of course. It would work like a charm, Jen. Just think about it. How devastating would it be to be dumped at the altar? We could split up right in the church, right in front of everybody. You could throw your bouquet at me and storm out of there. Very theatrical. It would be quite the show.”
“Make quite the picture.”
“It would. You could blame me.”
“You could blame me, then.”
“Nope, wouldn't be what a gentleman would do. I'd just brood.” He drew his brows together, presumably doing an impression of himself brooding, and Jen laughed despite herself.
“You can't brood.”
“I could if you broke my heart,” he said lightly, hurrying on before Jen could think much about that. “Think about it: both families would assume we were so emotionally scarred that we could both remain single forever.”
“If we wanted,” Jen felt obliged to add.
“If we wanted. If we changed our minds, they'd be ecstatic.”
It made a scary kind of sense. Jen stared out the window, shocked and yet excited in a strange way. She could imagine her mother's faceâand Cin's too. It was so wrong, yet she was tempted.
“You're naughty,” she accused.
Zach grinned. “It's a gift.”
“It would cost a fortune,” Jen said, ever practical.
“Lucky then that I have access to one, isn't it?” Zach said with a grin. “Even luckier that I don't particularly need to access it for anything else.”
“That sounds like it isn't all yours.”
“It's not,” he said lightly. “My brothers and sister and I actually did agree on one thing, and it was even my idea. If you don't think there were long odds against that, think again.”
“What kind of thing?”
Jen watched him as he drove, uncertain he'd answer her. “I was executor of my father's estate. He left everything to be divided between his four kids.”
“That sounds fair.”
“Except that my mother was the one who came from money.”
“Didn't she have money of her own?”
“She'd given him a power of attorney years ago, and he used it.”
Jen was so horrified that she couldn't say anything.
Zach frowned. “So, it seemed to me that my mother had good reason to contest the will and that a court would have good reason to agree with her and lawyers would get richer. So I suggested to my siblings that we jointly agree to cede our inherited stake until my mother passes away, whenever that might be.” He spared her a smile. “I mean, after all, we're not exactly minors anymore.”
“And they agreed.”
He nodded.
She admired him for coming up with a solution more just than the one his father had put in his will. “So your mother has all the money.”
“Pretty much. Other than allowances paid in the past and stuff like that. But she said that we could touch her for loans when necessary. So, it's accessible, like I said.”
“You could spend it on better things.”
“I'm thinking this is a pretty good cause. I would love to never be fixed up again. Wouldn't you say it was worth it?”
Jen watched him, knowing that he really would do this. “You're crazy.” They stopped at a traffic light and he scooped up his camera.
“It's been said before, Jen. You need new material.”
When she opened her mouth to protest, he snapped a shot. “Perfect,” he said with satisfaction. “The moment of proposal, frozen on celluloid forever. The astonished bride-to-be. I'm going to start a scrapbook: the book of Jen.”
“You wouldn't,” Jen argued, suspecting that she was wrong.
“I would. I am.” He put the car into gear as the light turned green. “So, what day's good for you for the trip to New York?”
“I'm not going to New York to pick out a ring.”
“Okay, I'll pick one for you. Big rock, little one, colored or clear? Like any shape better than others, or should we just go with the big Tiffany solitaire? Name your preference and tell me your size.”
“You can't do this...”
“I can do it and so can you. It'll be fun.”
“I can't deceive people like this.”
“Ah Jen, I've got so much to teach you. It could take a lifetime. Maybe we really should get married.”
Jen's heart made a weird leap in her chest then belly flopped. “You don't mean that.”
Zach didn't answer. He drove and expounded and to Jen's surprise, he was both a good and a careful driver. Not reckless at all.
He confounded every expectation she had of him. She needed to stop having expectations of Zach, and just make observations.
“You see, the point is that you've already started to deceive them,” he said. “If you give it up now, they'll figure it out. They'll know that today was just a scam. They might even figure out that Cin put you up to it. There's no victory there.”