Slightly Imperfect (40 page)

"I'll have Tommy's attorney draw up papers. He handled the original adoption. I want you to have his power of attorney. I have it now for the hotel and all his... holdings." She closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips into her temples for a moment, whispering, "Rosharron," her voice wavering. "Oh, God. Rosharron." The almost silent prayer lay on the charged air, got lost in the polite revelry of the strangers around them.

"Excess garbage. Huh, Victoria?"

"It's Marcus's heritage. It goes with him."

"I'll be his heritage. You can't control that once you give him up."

"Please take the hotel and the ranch—Rosharron."

He shrugged. "Sounds like monopoly."

"No. Only the end of an era in my life."

"But the beginning of a new one," he reminded her. "What about Christian? Will you marry him again?"

"I don't know... I should. For Ariana and Alexander. I could explain to them, through the years, why he's never there, the way my mother explained to Coby and me when Pierce never—"

"Yeah. Your mother did a great job on the two of you."

Her sad smile made him slightly sorry for his abuse.

"I love you, Zac. This moment. I love you."

When she reached out, covering his hand with hers, his eyes riveted on the contrast. Bronze and alabaster. Once more, he fully understood her rejection.

"Do you believe me?" she urged.

"You love me. You just don't love me enough."

At last the tears he needed to quench his horrific thirst for vengeance, to drown his loathsome longing, brimmed her lashes. First one, and then a river rushed down her cheeks, dripped off her chin, splashed on her silk-shrouded breasts. He had waited and hoped for her tears, but he could wait a lifetime before she would raise her hand to brush them away and draw attention from the other diners.

"Do you love me, Zac?"

He looked at her in silence, already healing.

"I need to hear you say you do."

"Why?"

"I thought you knew. I want everyone to love me. That's what my life is all about." He raised her hand, pressed his face into her palm, closed his eyes for a moment. Her skin was cold, damp, and she trembled. He released her hand. She drew it back, but didn't wipe the tears.

"I love who I thought you were, Victoria, but not the way I did before I walked through that door tonight." He pushed back and stood looking down at her. "And, yeah, I'll take all the trappings. Have
Tommy's attorney
call me when the adoption papers are ready to sign. Have him hurry. I'm eager to get Marcus, since that's really all this was ever about."

He couldn't miss her relief.

"Good bye, Victoria. Have a nice life."

* * *

Maggie came to his bed that night, waking him from a tormented half sleep, slipping off her robe, aligning her body with his, seeking his mouth. He couldn't reach through disillusionment to make love to her. He kissed her in apology, stroked her in appeasement, and then found he could love her, that he wanted to.

He found he was free.

* * *

"Happy birthday, Angel."

Zac leaned toward her stroller and offered her a bite of his yogurt cone, a quiet celebration of his daughter's momentous first birthday.

He and Maggie ate yogurt, watching Angel tug at her newly pierced ears and a tiny pair of perfectly matched diamond studs. Zac's birthday present.

"It really hurt her, Poppie." Maggie said softly.

"It's the sacrifice all Mexican girl-babies have to make, Magatita. We're late on Angel's torture." He smiled and embraced Maggie's shoulders consolingly. "How old were you?"

"I was born with mine in place. Gold though. Not diamonds."

"You're next,
querida
. Your birthday is coming."

She smiled tolerantly.

"Big vulgar ones for you. Canary yellow, maybe."

They watched Angel snub, still shocked by the affront of the doctor's piercing gun. At last she nodded off in her stroller. Then they watched their peers pushing baby strollers.

"I never slept with Ian," Maggie said suddenly.

Something close to joy caught in his throat. What had she seen in the passing crowd to prompt the declaration?

"I might have, though. Eventually. You took care of that."

"His demise hinged on more than that, Maggie. Reasons that went beyond you. But I'm glad. I didn't like him."

"Who would you like?"

He smiled, caught.

"I've only slept with one man since you left me."

"Since you left me. Who?"

She smiled, crunched into her cone, smearing the tip of her nose. "My secret. But I know you'd approve."

* * *

"Do you believe in fate, Papa?"

Alejandro sat in his wheelchair, bending from the waist, a new accomplishment. He raked through the catch on the floor of the boat with a special long-handled rake Zac had devised.

"I believe in God, Zaccheus."

"Do you believe in premonition?"

"I believe in prophecy."

"I'm adopting Marcus. He's mine. Or will be, in a few days."

"God willing," Alejandro reminded him.

"How about you? Are you willing?"

"Yes. He makes you happy. I have seen it."

"And you, Papa?"

He smiled. "He makes me happy, too,
mi hijo
."

"I knew it, Papa. I knew the minute I saw him he'd be mine someday."

"You almost took the wrong route to make sure of that, to help God out a little, Zaccheus. Am I right?"

"I don't know. I haven't had time to gain a perspective. I think maybe God used Victoria and me in each other's lives. I loved her, Papa. And her children."

He would have loved their child as much.

"You love everyone, Zaccheus."

"Yeah. I guess I do. I want my wife back, now, Papa. I want my daughter."

"Do you believe in prayer,
niño
?"

Zac laughed softly. "Sure, I do."

"Then pray, Zaccheus. If we both pray maybe it will happen before another
gringa
changes your mind."

"Maybe we should start praying now, Papa. Before we get back to the dock. Just in case."

Alejandro threw back his head in hearty laughter. His mirth told Zac the healing taking place within went far beyond any Zac could ever have imagined.

Zac welcomed a sudden realization. Sometimes when life attains the state of slightly imperfect, it's more than some people are blessed enough to even hope for.

Zac and Maggie, up early before the crew arrived, wandered through the new construction at Bay Shore. Work had evolved to the interior now, just in time for the autumn rains already making their initial raid on this early morning in October.

"This is looking great,
querida
. You're doing a super job."

"Thanks. I hope I'm earning Angel's and my keep." She offered a flirtatious smile as she cocked her dark head, hair swinging around her shoulders—black, not amber-streaked like Angel's. "Here's the nursery paper." She held her soft, cotton robe together as she reached for a roll of wall covering. "Tell me what you think?" Seeming to have a memory flash, she held the paper roll against her chest momentarily. "You
do
still want a nursery? I've kept to the letter on the original plans."

"I definitely want a nursery." He matched his smile to her earlier one, flirtatious and softly conspiratorial. "Let's see." As he unrolled the paper, his smile widened. His heart leaped. Mexican babies in
sombreros
and
mantillas
. "How'd you ever find this?" And what did it mean?

"I designed it and had it printed." She peered around his arm at the colorful paper. "Working on a project where money is no object is fun, even if a little hard to get used to."

"We put in our lean years didn't we?" He put his arm across her shoulder. She stiffened, an about-face from the night before when she had come to his bed, eager for him. "You were the best partner a man could ask for. You made so much out of so little."

Her mouth moved, never quite working into a smile.

"Do you remember it being hard, Magatita? Somehow I don't."

"That's not how I remember it either."

"Remember when we both got the mumps at the same time?"

She smiled, his own recall running across the screen of her dark eyes.

"How could that be?" he mused. "That we both missed them when we were kids? You weren't so pretty that week, but you were great. You took care of us."

He couldn't bring himself to mention Allie, the fact they'd all three been puffed and swollen. When she eased from his half-embrace he wished he hadn't brought it up, but wished more that they could talk about Allie.

She wandered to the far side of the room, inspecting a real or conjured flaw in the clean white woodwork, her body framed in a sheet of melting diamonds on the window glass. Zac settled against the new dry wall, raising one knee, flattening the sole of his bare foot against the wall, hands in his robe pockets. He waited until she looked at him again.

"Could we talk about last night?" He stared hard, seeking her reaction.

She seemed not to move a muscle, her expression unaltered.

"And the rest of our lives maybe?"

Her quiet voice rode the crest of the pounding rain and howling wind, making him strain to hear. "Last night was not the rest of our lives." She appeared serene against the choppy bay, visible beyond her shoulder.

"It could be. You named it, Magatita, when you talked about the wallpaper. We can fill this wing with babies—"

"Easy for you to say, Zaccheus." She clutched her stomach, smiling playfully.

"I can give you a fantasy life. You and Angel—and all those babies. I'd like the chance to do that."

"You probably can't. I've learned kisses aren't contracts, and presents aren't promises." She leaned against the window frame, casting her eyes down for a moment before lifting them to his again. "There are no perfect fantasy lives. The one we had came as close as we ever deserved to be."

"And I screwed it. Literally."

"I don't ever want to hurt like that again."

"I'll never hurt you again, Maggie."

"That's like promising you I would never do whatever I did that caused you to want Carron."

"You didn't!" He dislodged himself and crossed to her. He didn't touch her. "God! You didn't, Maggie. It was me."

"As I said, I never want to hurt that way again." She reached to touch his face, drew her fingertips along his cheek, across his lips. "But it's what men do. Especially men who look like you." She smiled softly, tenderly as she took her hand away. "But most men enjoy adultery more than you did, Zac." Their eyes locked. "I think I hear Angel."

She slipped away toward a cry neither of them had heard.

Watching her go, Zac thought of the illogical pattern, one controlled by Maggie, that had developed in the time she and Angel had been at Bay Shore.

He had treated them as the honored guests they were in his, heretofore, cavernous home. He asked Sylvania to prepare Maggie's favorite foods, the ones he remembered, and asked Delia, Sylvania's single, adult daughter, to care for Angel and remain in attendance when Maggie returned to the house each evening. He made a point of being there, as well, available to take her out to dinner, should that be her desire. He brought her flowers and gifts, courted and fell in love with her all over again. He never stopped praying for their union, lying awake, fraught with anticipation and curiosity.

She had come into his bed repeatedly in the weeks past, always unannounced. She sometimes appeared on consecutive nights and then leveled abstinence on them for nights on end, leaving him to wonder if she had found pleasure with him, or if he'd once again lost favor with her. Each night, after that first coupling, he fell asleep and thrashed relentlessly until she appeared and soothed his fitful sleep, or until her abstinence became evident with the dawn.

He found lying there in the darkness, anticipating their nocturnal couplings, as sensually stimulating an experience as he had ever had. By day, he was like a dog on point, constantly alert for any preliminary movement or hint, never able to pick up the scent of what lay ahead.

Each morning her demeanor ran from diffident to indifferent. Their eyes clashed and pulled apart, leaving him mystified and caught in the enigma, for she never allowed him to express his feelings verbally in those sweet and frantic liaisons, or to question hers. She simply slipped away, taking her satiation with her, leaving him to deal with his own aftermath of emotion.

Maggie was a woman on a mission. He soon realized she had chosen him for the Mexican father of the baby she desired, an incisive plan on her part, for he was enslaved by Angel. The new baby wouldn't make a ripple in the Utopian state into which they had evolved. Beyond that, he remained mystified.

The night before, however, had run its own course.

She had allowed him to whisper, "I love you, Maggie," and then lain languid in his arms until she fell asleep, easing out of his reluctant release only when dawn invaded their haven.

He considered last night a turning point, but his attempt to capitalize this morning had been rebuffed, tenderly and artfully.

* * *

On a Saturday morning, he went into her bathroom and sat on the closed commode, watching her bathe Angel.

She glanced at him through damp disheveled hair. "Will you be free this evening?"

"I can be," he assured her quickly. "I'm taking Papa out to fish, but I'll be in early. Did you want to do something special?"

She smiled apologetically. "I have a date. Could you watch Angel for me, or should I ask Delia to come?"

"A date?" He tried swallowing his disappointment and confusion, but it hung and hurt like hell.

"I'm sure Delia can come."

"No. I'll be here."

* * *

"Jesus, Maggie! What kind of date is this?" He hadn't seen her in the new red dress until now, and it hadn't looked that way in the catalog. "Are you wearing that?"

"Is it too long?"

"Definitely not too long." He took a drink of Corona, dished another spoonful of peas onto Angel's chair tray. "Too red, maybe. Too short, maybe. A little tight."