Slightly Imperfect (18 page)

"Congratulations."

"Do you like to dance?" She wasn't being completely honest. She had seen him dancing with all the women in his family at
Cinco de Mayo
, his expertise and enjoyment evident.

"Yeah, I do."

"Would you like to go sometime? I love to dance. Coby and I used to win all the contests on the beach." She tried pushing the memory into the recess of her mind. "I haven't danced in a long time. We have a wonderful discoth que in the hotel."

"Or maybe I could still get a flight to New York tonight. But wear heels. Tall ones so we'll fit together."

She laughed. "Then you would—like to go? Sometime."

"Yeah, Victoria. I really would."

* * *

She called on Friday.

"We'll be in tomorrow afternoon."

He couldn't say, "good!" She would misinterpret that.

"Pierce has invited the twins and me to dinner."

He waited for more. Nothing came. "And you're going without Marcus?" None of Zac's business. And yet it was. His investment had stockpiled.

"Just this once. It's a kind of reconciliation. Or an endeavor anyway. Could Marcus have dinner with you, just once more? I know it's an imposition."

An imposition? At this stage in the game?

"I'll send the limo for him before bedtime, in case—if you have something planned." "Fine. But that's pretty anti-climactic." He could feel her apprehension. "When am I going to see—?"

"The twins?" She was quick.

"And the twin's mother." He was focused.

"Come to brunch Sunday. We'll have something sent up and then we'll all go swimming, or do anything you like. Ari and Alex have missed you."

"I have another idea." He waited, but she didn't ask. "I'll take all of you and Josh and Lizbett to brunch at the Wentletrap. I hear that's the place to be seen."

He had taken Maggie and Allie there once, on Mother's Day. He made reservations two months in advance and saved that long to go. He wore a tie. Maggie dressed up, wore heels. Allie was in Osh Kosh b'Gosh. They had been seated by the kitchen door anyway.

He wanted to try his luck again. With Victoria.

"Zac, you have no idea what you?d be taking on."

He thought about it. "Yeah, I do, Victoria. Do you?"

"I don't want you—Me? What?"

"People will stare. You know that, don't you?" She should, from her relationship with Tomas. "If you agree to go, you
should
expect it."

Silence, then finally, "I remember. I don't care anymore."

He began to breathe evenly again.

"I want you to know I would have, once," she half whispered. "I don't anymore. Having Marcus has changed everything. I'd love to go anywhere with you, Zac. If you're sure that's what you want—compared to the serenity of the suite."

"I'm sure."

It was exactly what he wanted.

Gringo
power never failed to amaze Zac. He?d had the fore thought to make the brunch reservation in Victoria's name, and sure enough, they were given a table front and center. In this case it afforded the entire Wentletrap clientele a better vantage point from which to stare.

He worn his boots and sharply creased Levis with a Polo dress shirt and one of the silk Armani jackets Carron had bought him. He wasn't far enough into conformity to wear a tie.

Josh had looked as good as only a seventeen-year-old, black jock could. Zac was proud of him. Victoria and her crew, including Lizbett, could have stepped out of a Neiman Marcus catalog. For Zac, it ended far too soon.

"Brunch was lovely, Zac. Thank you," Victoria said when the two of them were alone in the Toyota. "I've always loved the Wentletrap. It has so much history. The twins didn't behave too badly. Did they?"

"I'd give them a two on the rating scale, considering that's what they are. Two." When she smiled, he added, "They'll learn with exposure. I liked the whole show."

"Did you go to mass?" She broke the silence as they sat through a red light on Rocket Road.

He looked over at her, nodding.

"I thought you'd take Marcus."

"I thought you'd want time with him, and you'd take him."

She smiled, mysteriously.

"We'll all go next Sunday," he said. "Together."

"The twins and I aren't Catholic."

Amusing that she'd assumed Marcus was. The notion pertained to Cordera's ghost, he supposed. He shrugged. "We'll go to your church then."

"My church was Christian's old church. The one he was fired from." She looked out the window, closing him out. "I can't really see going there again. I've stopped going at all."

"Are you going to raise Alex and Ari as heathens?"

"I don't know." She addressed the window softly.

He recoiled a bit but determined not to push his own spiritual beliefs on her. For now, anyway. She'd probably had enough religious influence in her marriage. The big challenge lay in living beliefs, not lauding them.

They turned into Fischer's Landing. Wanting to show her the project, he had talked her into leaving the children with Lizbett, half convincing her she needed a break.

"What do you know about architecture?" she inquired as he shoved the SUV's gear into park.

"A little more than I did a few weeks ago. I have a class in blueprints, and one in architectural periods." He shut the motor off, faced toward her in the seat. "Gerald doesn't seem to care about my lack of knowledge. He believes in giving people room to develop."

Her mouth tightened with Gerald's name. Lots of work to be done there.

"Let's look at the model. It's air conditioned."

He hadn't given her time to change her brunch-clothes, a silk-looking suit, the same color of the blue rugs in the suite. Some kind of mesh, beret-type hat, pale as her hair, completely hid its gloss. Very dark, tortoise-shell glasses, little round ones, covered only her eyes, leaving her flawless brows exposed. She looked untouchable.

He unlocked the door and listened to her exclaim pleasantly over an apartment that would fit inside her living room. Her graciousness brought to mind all he'd read about Chandler House, the restored mansion on Broadmore, her home until her marriage.

"It's exquisite, Zac."

He would pass the compliment on to Maggie and Jan. "Would you like to see upstairs? The loft and two bedrooms?" He motioned her ahead of him.

Climbing the stairs brought firm delineation to her calves. The word magnificent came to mind. A few stray strands of hair peeked from under the little mesh hat.
Perfect
. The word resounded in his head.

He showed her the loft with the small workstation alcove, a small bedroom, glanced into the bath with her, and ended up at the water-view bay window in the master.

"You can see the hotel," she mused.

He stood directly behind her, close enough to touch, but shoved his fingertips in his back Levis pockets. "Are you having a bad hair day, Victoria?"

She barely glanced over her shoulder, smiling in profile before catching the peak of the little hat, removing it with a gentle jerk. She shook her head a little. Her hair bounced and swayed like tresses in a TV commercial, the one that made him want to go right out and buy the touted product. The sun rendered her hair even paler than usual, like sparkly sand on Galveston Beach.

"Nice." He felt it all the way to his groin. "Can you pick out the
Ramona Tres
in the marina?"

The
Irish Lady
loomed in the distance, unmentioned. She leaned in that direction. He leaned with her. His eyes settled on the curve of her jaw, the fine, pale down on her cheek, the long slender slant of her throat into the neck of the suit. The smell of her perfume settled around him. The scent of
her
permeated his being. He looked away, concentrating on the docks.

"Third shrimper from the end," he murmured.

She nodded, straightened, and backed directly into his progressing erection. He stepped back. Too late. She whirled with an intake of breath. Her eyes—darkening from jade to sudden moss—flared. Encased in the tight Levis, the intrusion had given her a jolt.

He hated himself for laughing, but he did, helplessly. "I'm sorry," he said lamely.

Her cheeks glowed red. She could have been twenty-three again, the virgin she had disclosed, but then he realized she reflected shock rather than embarrassment.

"I'm in love with you, Victoria."

Her eyes shifted, voluntarily, to his lower middle. She jerked her head and her gaze up so determinedly that he resisted laughing again.

"That—" She struggled to keep her eyes straight ahead. "—doesn't mean you're in love with me."

He could recall a similar situation when he had slow danced with a girl, finally, instead of practicing with Luke. He moved his hand momentarily to his crotch. "
This
is a little addendum to the story. Trust me. I'm in love with you."

She shook her head.

He nodded and reached for her, looking at her from under his lashes in a way no woman had ever been able to resist. Victoria Chandler Michaels—Chandler again—resisted. The phone calls from New York, all of them, played through his mind in a kaleidoscope review. "This can't come as a surprise to you, novia."

She wrapped her breasts with folded arms, trembling in the sun-warmed room. "I was hoping—I wanted to be wrong."

His brows lifted.

"I don't want to lose your friendship, Zac."

"No chance. Trust me."

She met his gaze, a little defiant, a little sad. "I thought it was Marcus that you... were interested in."

"It is," he said quickly. "It's Marcus. The twins. The whole package. But it's you, Victoria. Everything you are. I'm in love with you.
Yo te amo
." She would understand that phrase. He tapped his senses, attempting to categorize the emotions filing over her face, but he kept coming up with no more than disillusionment.

Her eyes shifted past his shoulder, to the door, apprehension rising in their depths. She seemed to be listening for voices, hoping for a reprieve.

He tried to imagine anyone ever forcing himself on her. "It's all right. I'd never do anything you didn't want."

Her brow creased. "It isn't that I don't want—"

Then he
wasn't
crazy.

"Could we... go, please?"

He stood aside, letting her pass. He didn't watch her calves going down the stairs, the way he had, ascending. He looked at the dejected rounding of her shoulders and tried not to give in to disappointment.

In the truck he watched the Sunday beach traffic on Rocket, hoping his voice was normal. "Where would you like to go?"

She started to speak.

"Come to my house for a while," he intercepted, looking at his watch. "The children are napping, by now. Probably Lizbett and Josh, too. You wouldn't want to interrupt."

She was supposed to laugh.

"No." She watched the traffic, too. "I need to go back. I'm expecting a call from Coby's doctors. We're scheduling the hearing for this week, concerning Coby's release."

He distinctly heard fatalism surface in her tone as he pulled into the line of cars.

She turned her head away, so extremely that the veins in her neck were visible. When she raised her hand to her face, he heard the tiniest, telltale sniff, and a grimy hand stirred things around his chest, tightened around his windpipe.

"Why are you so upset?" he urged quietly. "Are you angry?"

"I'm not angry. It's just that now we'll—you'll want to sleep with me. If I say no everything will change."

Not that much would change. He thought maybe he had loved her since Italy. "No. It won't,
novia
."

"It will change for Marcus." She wouldn't look at him.

For an instant he wondered if for her that was really the soul meaning of their association, if she could be that focused. Then he remembered the phone calls in the middle of the night, the look in her eyes when they had reunited, just that morning. If he could make sure nothing changed with Marcus, with the twins, too, it might go a long way toward his credibility.

Waving the valet off when they pulled beneath the porte-cochere at the hotel, Zac swung to one side of the drive and faced toward her in the seat. He smiled encouragingly, as he waited for the speech he had felt her framing,

"Zac, you're beautiful—in every way."

That had a familiar ring, but it still didn't beget miracles.

"You're kind and gentle." Apparently she had recovered from backing into his salaciousness. "You're financially stable. Educated and worldly."

"Compared to most Mexicans. And I'm unusually tall, don't forget." He kept smiling.

She grimaced. "Any woman would want you. You can have anyone." She seemed to run out of accolades.

He waited for the disclaimer.

Silence.

"I like perfect, Victoria. You're perfect. You and your entourage. I want
you
, not just anyone.
Yo te quiero
. I want you." He reached out, stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers; her hand went to the door handle, ready to pull.

The valet watched anxiously for a cue.

"I'll see you tomorrow night," Zac said.

Her brows lifted.

"Marcus's Spanish lesson. Yours, too."

She pulled the handle. The young Mexican jerked the door open.

"Victoria?"

She turned back to him.

"If we never have sex I'll still love you. You just won't know how much. Think about that. Will you?"

"There's a lot you don't know. Contingencies."

"Then tell me."

"I've been trying. You don't hear what I say."

She got out and walked regally up the ancient hotel steps.

* * *

Coby's doctor seemed kind and sincere when they faced each other over a table in the same restaurant where she and Coby had had dinner three weeks before.

"When did this attraction first come into play, Victoria?"

She strove for honesty. "I first became aware when we were fourteen."

"Tell me about it." He settled back to listen. "What were the circumstances?"

She easily propelled herself back in time. "Coby was preparing to go back to boarding school... "