Slightly Imperfect (33 page)

"Hey, Zac. She's still at the ranch."

He listened for a clue, detected none. He heard a diving board spring, water splashing, laughter. Nice, leisurely, mid-afternoon scene, but then Coby was born to it. Zac couldn't seem to buy the lifestyle no matter how much money Carron had left.

"Were you there? At the ranch with her?"

He laughed quietly, derisively. "We haven't healed that much. Not enough for her to take me to Rosharron."

"When's she coming back?"

"Today. Or tomorrow. I just talked to her."

Zac exercised self-control, didn't demand the number. Yet.

"Maybe she'll call you," Coby offered.

"Maybe you'll tell me what the hell is going on."

Silence ensued. Zac could feel Coby's consideration, hear ice rattle in a glass, a metal pool lounge dragging on a concrete surface. He tried to imagine "pool side" at Chandler House, growing up there, being welcome there. Anglo heaven.

"I can't do that, Zac," Coby said at last. "Look. For what it's worth, Tori is subject to impulse."

Not the Victoria Zac knew.

"If she feels she's losing her grip, she'll adjust. She has a tendency to over-adjust at times."

It made no sense, but the spirit in which the diatribe was delivered seemed gentle, sincere.

"And does this over-adjustment involve you?"

"Not this time."

He wished Coby had said yes. That would lessen the ambiguity. Anything in Victoria's life beyond her
cousin-brother-twin
and Tomas Cordera was a gray area for Zac, and Tommy had been dealt with when Coby killed him.

* * *

"This feels a lot like getting the shaft, Josh."

"No way, Mr. Zac."

"There's preponderant evidence toward the same." He tried to smile, testing Josh's grammar repertoire, striving for humor.

Josh grinned sympathetically. "Miz Victoria's so sweet. It must be something besides the shaft." He had volunteered to stay home that evening with Zac, rather than stalking Galveston's Seawall Boulevard in the red Mercedes. "She loves you. Lizbett finds notes all over the place where she writes your name and hers, and then hers with Abriendo on the end of it." His grin turned encouraging. "Just like high school."

Yeah, it felt like high school. No, it was worse. When he was eighteen, if a girl even hinted rejection he would have retaliated with the first new girl he saw. But he would be thirty- four in a few days. He didn't have time for all those randy reactions. He wanted a wife. A family. His and Victoria's.

* * *

Car lights flashed across the study window around midnight, as Zac drew floor plans by the drafting light in the otherwise darkened room. He switched off the lamp and peered through the wooden blinds. Lizbett got out of Victoria's old Rolls Royce convertible, crossed the drive and the back lawn to the pool house. Josh came out, closed the door, embraced her and led her to the pool edge where they sat talking, dangling their feet in the water.

Zac marveled at Josh's restraint considering his own raw craving for the woman who should have driven that car, who should be in his arms, in his bed—or at least ringing his phone.

He crossed to the desk and dialed.

"Hello. This is Victoria Chandler. Thank you for calling. Please leave your message. I'll return the call."

She was there, on the other end of that line, listening. He could feel her, a frightened, wounded animal again. The one he had encountered in Portofino. He strived for his
pre- marriage-plans
voice. One that wouldn't scare or pressure her, throw her back into limbo.

"Hi, Victoria. I'm glad you're back. I've missed you. I have business with Gerald tomorrow morning, but I'll be over after that. I'll take Marcus fishing in the afternoon."

He gave her time but she didn't pick up the phone.

"Goodnight. I love you,
novia
."

Rain began falling in the middle of the night, a typical South Texas storm that continued through mid-morning. Gerald, returning from an inspection of Louisiana casinos, was stranded on flooded streets leading out of the airport. Zac tried calling from Gerald's office to tell Victoria he was running late.

"Hi, Lizbett. Let me speak to Victoria."

"She's asleep Mr. Zac. I'll tell her you called."

"It's eleven in the morning."

"Yes, sir. She's not feeling good."

Neither was he. "What's wrong with her?"

"I don't know, Mr. Zac. She's been poorly for a few days."

"She was well enough to cover half of Texas."

Pointed silence.

"Okay. If she wakes up before I get there—"
What
? "Are the children there? Let me talk to them."

He had a pressing need to make contact, assure himself he hadn't imagined them all. He had lain awake into the night wrestling with the strange turn in their relationship. Before this deviation in routine, he hadn't missed a day talking to Victoria, or seeing her, since she had gone to New York and left Marcus with him. Months ago.

His physical craving, when he weighed the lurid possibilities indicated by this estrangement, stunned him. He had gone more than a year between Carron's death and making love to Victoria. That hunger hadn't touched on his present ravaging need. This craving bore a name, a face, and that face was slipping into a deep, dark hole marked obscurity.

He talked with Marcus, told him they might not be fishing because of the rain. Marcus, it seemed, was unaware of the plan. Zac hung up after a one-sided conversation with the twins, no longer able to ignore the turmoil in the infallible recesses of his mind. He prayed he was losing his prophetic edge just this once, but God never deceived him. No choice remained but to identify the problem and begin to solve it.

* * *

While Zac waited in the Fischer's Landing office, Maggie and Angel stopped in to see Gerald. Zac lunged at Angel, swallowed her in his embrace, buried his face in the folds of her sweet, sweaty, baby neck. He entertained the urge to do the same with Maggie, draw the old, longed-for comfort from her, a selfish need he no long had the luxury of considering.

"Is something wrong, Zac?" Maggie knew him well.

Smiling, he shook his head, swung Angel in the air, then kissed her.

"Where's Marcus?" She knew him very well. "I haven't seen him with you lately." She cocked her raven head, stared straight up into his eyes.

He swallowed and kept quiet.

"We have to go," she said softly. "Angel, tell Poppie you're sorry."

"For what?"

Maggie's smile was tender. "For whatever hurts you, Poppie. We're both sorry."

Angel couldn't say a word. Not yet. She could only adore him with those obsidian orbs that spoke nonjudgmental volumes.

* * *

He endured the meeting with Gerald, finding no diplomatic way to turn down lunch when Gerald insisted they go to Luke's restaurant up Rocket Road in Clearlake.

"Let's keep the money in the family," Gerald urged, smiling.

Luke spotted Zac's disquiet the moment he entered
Los Amigos
. "What is it, bud?" he urged in his big-brother tone, his smile conciliatory. "Another Sun editorial gone sour?"

Zac glanced toward the men's' room where Gerald had gone. "Worse, Luke. Much worse."

"What? Tell me. I'll fix it."

Zac guessed the urge to make things right was a family trait, but he couldn't tell Luke what was bothering him. He only knew for sure it was worse than any media attack on Fischer's Landing. But it was interesting Luke had brought up Pierce. A dim light flickered in the part of Zac's intellect reserved for dark speculation.

* * *

When he let himself into the suite quietly, Lizbett met him in the foyer, her face mirroring his anxiety. "Where is she? Is she awake?"

"Hi, Mr. Zac. Yes, sir. She's in her room."

He thought of going up the stairs to see the children, decided against it. "Lizbett, I'll treat you to a college education if you'll take the children to the pool."

The sun had come out, bright, sweltering.

She grinned, the sympathy in her eyes humbling.

"Take that tent thing Victoria bought so the twins can have their nap down there. Stay a long time."

She nodded. "Marcus, too, Mr. Zac?" >

"Especially Marcus."

The bedroom door was closed but not locked, adhering to Victoria's policy of never locking the children out. Zac recalled locked doors from his own childhood, wondering once more about the doors that could have impacted her enough to create her rule. After they married the unlocked-door policy would be subject to adjustment, whatever it would bear.

When he appeared in her bathroom door, she sat at the vanity, engaged in the familiar ritual of braiding her hair. Their glances reflected in the mirror briefly before she broke the visual connection, her fingers never missing a step in their intricate dance. She seemed to work with purpose. She wasn't glad to see him—yet her cool gaze betrayed a glimmer of longing. He had to trust that yearning to pave the road back from this mysterious estrangement.

He waited for some offering, anything to explain the ten days of absence, trying to remember this was the woman who wore his ring, wanted to marry him. She wanted to have his babies, make a better world with him. Finally he ventured, "Lizbett says you're sick."

She faced away, but the mirror revealed the sudden defiance in her eyes. "I'm fine. I don't know why she told you that." She loosened a plaited section of hair that had failed scrutiny, began braiding again.

"Maybe she felt sorry for me. Maybe she was embarrassed for the way you're treating me." He leaned against the doorframe, braced with one hand on the opposite side, pacing himself. "Maybe she lied to keep from hurting my feelings."

"It disturbs me to think Lizbett is cunning enough to lie." She was colorless beyond her usual pallor, the blush of her cheeks obviously contrived. Lizbett was right about Victoria's physical state.

Zac's patience ebbed. "What have I done, Victoria? All you have to do is tell me, and I'll make it right."

She finished the braid, squeezed it with her fingers to preserve it, meeting his eyes in even reflection. "Nothing, Zac. Don't ever think it was you."

Was.
That sounded scary enough to dislodge him from the doorframe—which scared her. She cringed slightly. He stepped forward, pulled her hands away from her hair, plunged his fingers into the complex pattern of the French braid and yanked it loose. He hurt her, he guessed. He wanted to, a little.

"Don't." She pulled out of his reach.

She wouldn't meet his eyes. When she stood, he gathered her rigidity into him, shocked by the lean, frail state her loose clothing had disguised. The word gaunt echoed in his mind.

"Jesus." He pressed his palms into her ribcage. "What's wrong with you?"

She pushed back, holding him at bay with her eyes. "I can't see you anymore, Zac."

He almost laughed, except it was so pathetic. Ten days denial summed into one feeble declaration.

"What the hell is this, Victoria? Finishing school?"

Her head tilted up. He watched her suck up strength.

"Can't see me? Is that anything like can't marry me? Can't live with me?" He thought of the wing being added to the house on Bay Shore, the pleasant background noise of hammering and sawing everyday now. "Can't wear my name and have my babies?"

"The twins can't see you either." She plunged the rejection to the bottom line, making him wonder if she'd heard anything he said. "I would—I'd like you to continue as Marcus's mentor, however."

"Really? Is that what I am? His mentor? Where's this script filed, Victoria? It needs editing."

When she tried to brush past him, he jerked her around. Too roughly. Her head snapped; she threw one hand up in front of her face.

Stunned by her reaction, he prayed for control. "Jesus," he breathed. "Do you think I'd hit you? The way I love you, do you think I
could
? Who has
ever
hit you?"

She shook her head, her teeth raking color into her lip.

"Who?"

Her eyes defied him. "Tommy, even though he loved me more than his own life. I gave him reason to hit me. You have reason now."

"Never as long as I live. Get used to it, Victoria. Tell me what's wrong. Tell me where it hurts." He knew she hurt. Of the hoard of emotions crowding the room, pain prevailed. For each of them. "I'll fix it, I swear. But you have to tell me the truth." He could fix it, even if it was as simple as drawing her down to that rug, loving it away. No matter how superficial or temporary, that solution would break her resolve.

"It's all wrong. Everything. We rushed into—"

"You said you wished it had happened in Portofino. Where did that theory go?" He didn't know this Victoria. "Where's the woman who pronounced all my plans perfect, ten nights ago at the Fischer's Landing bash?"

This time he let her pass, followed her into the bedroom, standing close by as she wrapped her body with folded arms. She leaned her forehead against the cool glass framing the sweltering summer afternoon.

"We're so different," she said softly, without conviction.

"Yeah. But we were the same ten nights ago when you told me you loved me sensually and spiritually.
I
haven't changed."

She looked at him. Emotion skidded across the green plane of her eyes, laying her soul bare for probing. The look left him lacking again, unable to penetrate the mystery of the sudden shift in what she professed. "We want different things."

"Name one."

"Gambling."

He seized on it. "I don't give a flying frig about gambling. I don't care if I ever see one casino in Galveston County. I believe in Gerald Fitzpatrick—not gambling. He's an honorable man who thinks gambling will provide jobs and tourism and raise the standard of living. Not for you maybe, but for the people who could use a few frills."

The open, half-filled bags on the bed caught his eye. He had been too intent on his mission earlier to notice or be alarmed. "Are you packing or unpacking?"

"Packing."

"Where the hell are you going?"