Slightly Imperfect (39 page)

* * *

Zac looked around the dimly lighted dining room of Galveston's staid Hotel Galvez. His gaze took in the century-old grandeur of wall molding, rich wood paneling and balustrades, the opulent chandelier in the center of the room.

He brought his gaze back to Victoria's face, a face flawless with carefully concocted Aura. Her hair gleamed in a simple arrangement, pulled back, brushed to the crown of her head, sleek, tight, exposing every feature in flickering candlelight. She was so beautiful that to look at her almost qualified as abuse.

"Is this the way rich people say goodbye, Victoria?" His tone mocked the hallowed quiet. "They end love affairs in some hushed, sacred place where they wouldn't dare raise their voices. Or cry?"

She nodded, smiling softly.

He wondered if her smile pained her as much as him. Her bearing had returned to the regal quality of when they first met. An era before he was privy to what such bearing could hide. "Nice. This way no one can get hurt."

Her silence allowed him time to assure himself he had tried after the miscarriage, after that stormy, surreal night he sometimes questioned the reality of.

He had taken her, her children, and Angel for a Sunday on the
Irish
, bringing along one of Sylvania's daughters for Angel, Josh to assist him with navigating, and Lizbett to relieve Victoria of her entourage. He had envisioned family bliss. Victoria hardly acknowledged Angel's presence, although he saw her watching his daughter from time to time. He couldn't identify the look—longing, he thought, or maybe resignation. She never held Angel, and he struggled to split his time impartially between their respective children.

The outing provided a glimpse of the future.

Victoria spent most of the cruise in a lounge pulled aft, far out of reach, staring into the blue Gulf, sleeping, or crying. Zac arranged naps for all the children, and waited in his stateroom. She didn't come to him, let him hold her, love her, take it all away.

Coby was there when they docked at twilight. This time Zac allowed Coby to take her.

A couple of nights later, he took her into Houston for dinner at Anthony's. She drank an inordinate amount of Pierrer-Jouet and then phased into Jordan Cabernet when dinner arrived. She barely touched the duck she had exclaimed about when the pompous waiter presented the menus.

"If you aren't going to eat, you should go easy on the wine,
novia
," he suggested.

He watched her make a half effort to eat, then pulling words from nowhere, and for no reason he could determine, she said, "My mother had a
pitiful
relationship with Pierce. I always thought her death was a planned accident."

He thought of how he'd woken with Carron in his arms, her face pressed into the pillow. He understood suspicions like the one Victoria voiced. "Tell me why you thought so."

She shook her head, eyes glistening, but beyond that she seemed numb again. Subject closed.

He waited for her to talk about their own pending marriage, or ask that his grandmother's ring be restored to her finger. He waited for anything resembling a conversation. She drank and stared beyond his shoulder.

"Victoria, we need to talk about—"

"Will you excuse me?" Her eyes ran furtively around the room, finally locating her target. She went to the ladies room and stayed until he sent someone to check on her.

A week later, he reserved a room in the staid Warwick Hotel, knowing she loved historic settings, thinking the clandestine quality of the hotel might appeal to her, stimulate her.

Once inside their room, he held her, then undressed her. She gave no protest or assistance. She lay watching him undress.

"You're cold,
novia
," he whispered when he took her in his arms.

She nodded against his shoulder, her arms finally going around him. He kissed her, moving his lips on hers, sucking, tugging, probing the silky caverns of her mouth. She warmed eventually, her breath quickening, her body complying.

They made love, neither of them to each other.

Driving back to the bay area in the early morning hours, he saw her cheeks glisten red and wet in the silent reflection of a traffic light.

"Tell me what's wrong," he urged, his own chest aching. "Don't shut me out. I told you I'd take care of you. But you have to let me."

She shook her head and whispered, "I love you. That's all I can say."

Zac had attributed her distant behavior to depression, to losing the baby. He wasn't as confident of depression, however, after that night at the Warwick—and not at all when she became unresponsive to his phone calls again.

Then Maggie had come to him in the middle of the night.

Her minute shadow had edged across the moonlight filtering through the window at the foot of Angel's crib. She moved next to him, her teeming heat jolting him as he stood looking at their daughter.

"I was awake," she whispered, looking up at him. "I felt you here."

A meaning he couldn't miss suffused her features, sending her intimate smile straight to his groin. An abrupt, sexual stirring quaked through him. His reaction easily invaded the foreboding that had settled on him since Victoria's reappearance and her perfectly subtle, reinstated rejection.

When he lifted Maggie, pulled her up and onto him, her legs circled his waist, arms going round his neck, and he buried his face against her searing breasts. She parted her thin robe and guided his mouth to her familiar flesh.

"Angel," she whispered, bringing him back to place and time.

He carried her from the room to his bed. She was an appendage of his body, a fragment of his soul. She fit those niches known only to her, recesses left empty through two women since her. Her firm little buttocks filled his palms and his head with a familiar rush; her petite legs half enveloped his hips. She was tiny, but powerful. Delicious. Starved and needy, he devoured her, taking his fill. She ran her hand down his body, found his second reasoning, the one which had calculatingly betrayed them both in the past. Forgiveness abounded in her touch, her own hunger, and absolution flourished in the way her warm, wet haven received him, enveloped and welcomed him.

"
Querida
—"

She covered his mouth quickly with hers, saving him, swallowing any words conceived from thoughts he couldn't sort, before they could be born.

She moved on him passionately, purposefully, never taking her mouth away until eventually she gasped into him, freeing him to fill her with the hot, wet residue of his own need. His greed. Then he lay spent, trembling, satiated, until she unraveled from him and slipped away into the night.

He had stopped trying with Victoria then, left her to her own struggle, and waited. Her phone call asking to see him had come weeks later, just this morning.

He looked across at Victoria now and tried to smile. "Well, this is not a complete shock. I guess eventually I would have stopped calling altogether." He guessed he had, actually.

"Asking you to come here is closure, Zac. I'm painfully wiser now. I never had closure with Tommy, and I affected a lot of lives trying to go back and attain it."

And still trying. "I like all my edges shaved clean, too."

"I've hurt you, I know. I'm sorry."

He managed a shrug. "You have, but I've been broken before. I healed stronger. I'll be even stronger next time. Something good in everything."

She grimaced.

Tonight hurt all right. But not nearly as much as he had let himself believe it would. Instead he felt a kind of sad relief, a reluctant reprieve, even though he was still willing to fight her demons for her. "Take care of yourself, Victoria. I'll survive."

"I'm not sure
I
will," she murmured softly, to herself, he thought, as much as to him. She looked away, hugging her body. Then she straightened consciously. Shoulders squared, chin lifted, she placed her hands back in her lap. "Cutting through scar tissue is the most painful surgery," she half whispered.

He shrugged again, but his shoulders were oppressive. "I'm no longer sure it would have been perfect with us. I only know we could have made a go of it. But everything comes down to where we started in Portofino with your
rancid
story of Tommy. History always replays. You've chosen your heritage again. This time over me." He supposed Christian had never lectured her on the Bible theory of
whether thou goest
. "Actually, I was repeated history, too."

Her reply smacked of rehearsal. "I owe it to the twins to give them a political heritage. They'll be set for life."

He felt his face twist at the omission of Marcus.

She reacted. "I know you hate that, but there are things I have to think about as a mother." Her eyes chilled to the shade of a Texas norther for a moment, then evolved back to jade. "I wanted you, Zac. You loved me in a way—"

Her soft cries echoed in his head. He saw her raise her arms above her head, felt her surrender to him that first time.

"You're good... and gentle, Zac. You've shown me nothing but kindness and concern for my well being—and my children's."

"That was love. It's not complicated, and it wasn't manipulation." Something she was apparently used to. "I loved you, and I'm in love with your children. All of them." It was his turn to look away, not really wanting her to see the ache his eyes surely mirrored. If his pain gave her satisfaction, he wanted to deny her. If it hurt her, too, he wanted to spare her. "I'm not quite sure what to do about the way I love your children. There's not a lot of closure for them and me in this little meeting."

He waited for her to tell him he didn't have to give them up. He willed her to say they could still be friends, he could see the children. All of them. The wait availed nothing.

Instead, she said, "People don't always show their love the way you do. It's been my life pursuit to make those people into someone like you."

Pierce Chandler's confident face flashed in his mind. He understood the confidence now. "You had me. You didn't need
those
people."

"Yes. I do need them. I won't clutter your life with standing on the sidelines watching me pursue those—pursue Pierce. As you said, I had my chance with Tommy to break the chain. I let the chance go by, but I'm conditioned now. There would have been a lifetime, for you and me, of my vacillating. I care too much for you."

And she was no longer carrying his brown baby.

"Our children—if we had—if I could have—" She had seemed to read his thoughts. She bit into her lip, frowned, her throat moving. She waited.

He waited.

Finally she said, "There
is
a difference in us. No matter how we pretended it didn't matter, our children would have had to straddle a fence all their lives."

He laughed softly. "Funny you'd say that. I thought of marriage more as bridging a gap."

Her smile didn't materialize. "That's like you. Positive."

"Yeah. That's like me, all right." Unrealistic.

"I'm going away for a while—to New York, with Coby."

"What the hell for?" His voice escalated.

She glanced around. "It's best." She spoke quietly, attempting to restore the hushed tone, he supposed. "I'll take some design classes and be closer to the fashion industry. I can make contacts for the boutiques. I'll only be a Concorde flight from Andrea's and my European shops."

"And Coby? Where does he fit into this?"

"He's going to take some political science and speech classes at the university. By the time we come back Pierce will be gearing up—" She let it fall. She was either unwilling or unable to consider details beyond that.

"How much does being with Coby have to do with all this?"

Coby had won. The bottom line. And he'd never thrown a punch. Zac took time to recall his false bravado the first day he'd met Coby, Coby's cool acquiescence. He could afford it. He had known Victoria much better than Zac ever could have hoped to.

"Nothing. He's just there for me. He's always been—"

"Ready to pick up the pieces."

"Yes."

"I hope that's all he's ready for."

"God." She shuddered visibly. "So do I."

Zac felt a little nauseated.

"I want to leave Marcus with you."

"Thanks. But I'm giving him up. Kind of like smoking."

"You don't understand. I want you to have him—to adopt him. I won't come back for him."

"You could do that?" He tried very hard not to think of it, not to visualize, not to feel what Marcus would feel. He tried not to let the disclosure color his opinion of her.

"Yes. I'm adept at giving people up. I can do it for—"

"Yes."

She looked startled. "Yes?"

"Yes, Victoria. I want Marcus."

"Don't you want to hear the rest of it?" Her voice pitched a little in a husky, hushed timbre. He thought he detected a trace of controlled hysteria. "Don't you want to know why?"

"I don't care why."

She appeared stricken, ill.

Re relented. "That's not true. I care deeply. I'll spend the rest of my life trying to make
him
not care. But, yes. I want to adopt him. It's not complicated."

"I've thought about this. Agonized over it. Please don't think I don't love him. If I didn't—I do. So much. But I can see, just from these few months we've been back, Pierce is never going to stop punishing me for loving Tommy or for wanting Marcus. The most severe punishment of all is for Pierce to deny Marcus and put the twins first. Maybe someday Marcus will understand. Maybe you could tell him, make him believe—"

"I doubt it. I don't understand, either."

"Yes you do, Zac. Just tell me you'll try."

He thought of seeing Marcus that first time in Portofino. Maybe that was really all his union with Victoria had ever been about. He thought how he had felt... known somehow there was the chance she offered now. God had taken him on a painful, circuitous route before granting him, once again, a desire of his heart. He couldn't promise her he would try to explain to Marcus, for he had no sound basis to even begin.