The Edge of Heaven (51 page)

The waiter came and rescued her, rambling on about the night's specials and getting into an extended discussion with Steve's father about the quality and vintage of the different champagnes offered, until he'd settled on just the right one.

"We're celebrating," Steve explained, taking Julie's hand and angling it so that the big diamond ring he'd put on her finger was practically under Zach's nose. "Tonight with my parents, and next Saturday they're throwing us an engagement party."

"Congratulations. I hope you'll be very happy together," Zach said, not taking his eyes off her.

I will be,
she wanted to tell him.
I'll be just fine.

She told herself to stop seeing disaster around every corner. Her life wasn't like that anymore. Then Steve's mother turned to Zach and said, "Yes, we're planning a lovely party. You simply must come."

Julie watched helplessly as Zach smiled and said he would love to if he was still in town and could find the time.

The endless dinner continued, Steve simmering angrily, Barbara Land looking like a woman who would not give up, now that she sensed she was onto something. Zach was as charming as Julie had always known he would be when he was all grown up. Julie picked at her dinner and mostly just stared at her glass of champagne, touching it to her lips when forced to for each toast, but nothing more. She wasn't sure, but she thought Zach was doing the same thing.

He finally excused himself, saying he had to be in court early. She and Steve said good-bye to his parents at the front of the restaurant, and then faced each other in the parking lot on the warm summer night.

"Well." Steve made a show of pulling out a cigarette and lighting it, drawing one long, hard pull of nicotine into his lungs, something he seldom allowed himself. " Who is he?"

"I told you. A neighbor. The older brother of a girl I used to play with."

"What else, Julie?"

"Between me and Zach? Nothing. There's never been anything between us except friendship, Steve, I promise."

"You were jumpy all night, right from the moment you spotted him."

"I was just so surprised. It was like stepping back into the past for a minute. I haven't done that in so long, and you know the memories aren't good ones."

"What else?" Steve asked again, unrelenting as he kept his distance while drawing in deeply on the cigarette.

Put it out,
she wanted to say.
Stop looking like you're so far away, and hold me.
But he stayed there, uneasy and maybe still angry. It was unsettling. He was the most easygoing man she'd ever met. It was one of the things she loved about him the most. How even tempered he was, how capable, how solid, how reasonable.

She thought about just going to him, slipping her arms around him and hanging on to him, asking him to hang on to her. She tried not to do that too often, tried to hold the feelings at bay and not seem too needy.

It wasn't working now.

"Nothing. I'm just... there's just so much to do, still, for the wedding, and I want it to be perfect. Your mother wants it to be perfect."

She went to Steve, her head bent low and coming to rest against his chest. She grabbed the edges of his suit jacket, to hold on to what they had, and her breath caught until his arms reluctantly came around her.

Acquaintances of hers, upon meeting him, said he didn't seem very exciting, that he was a bit set in his ways. They'd done everything but come right out and call him dull, but Julie had never thought that. He was stable, something she'd craved her whole life, and it meant a lot more to her than that little zing of heat she'd felt when Zach touched her.

Then there were the friends who'd implied that she might be willing to overlook certain shortcomings of Steve's because of the money. He wasn't rich. Just comfortable. That's what Steve called it. Julie had so seldom been the least bit comfortable and never in the way he meant it. She hadn't gone after him because of his money, but at the same time, she knew they wouldn't ever have to worry about losing things, like their electrical service or even their home.

Steve's family had been in this town for nearly a hundred and fifty years. They had roots and staying power, the likes of which she'd never known. Steve hardly ever drank. He didn't have a temper. He didn't flirt with other women, didn't belittle her or discount her opinions or yell. He didn't lie. He didn't cheat. He didn't bet on ball games or cards. He didn't hit her.

He was the epitome of calm in a world she often thought was crazy. It had been the first thing that attracted her to him. They'd been in a meeting room full of screaming people, facing a major crisis at one of the stores the Lands owned, and Steve had been the picture of calm. He'd gotten everyone to settle down and solved the problem. They'd all gone on with what they needed to do, and she and Steve had gone on to dinner and then to dating for a full year and now to being engaged.

She meant to hang on to him for dear life.

"Sorry," he said, his arms finally tightening around her, his body relaxing against hers. "I just don't think I've ever seen you even appear to be interested in another man. You hung on to every word the man said."

Because she was scared of what was going to come out of his mouth.

"He's never been interested in me that way, Steve. He never would be."

"Why not? I happen to find you very interesting."

"You didn't know me when I was twelve." Thank goodness.

"I would have found you interesting at any age," he claimed, his lips finding hers. "Forget all this. Come home with me."

She closed her eyes and tried so hard to fall into that kiss, to let it take her away from here, make her forget every fear.

But the business card Zach had given her was practically screaming at her from inside her purse. She eased away from Steve, head down low.

"I'm sorry. I can't." She really didn't want to lie. She'd never set out to. It had just happened. "The wedding... all those decisions still to make."

Truly, she felt bombarded by it all lately.

"Just remember," he said, "I don't care about the details. I just want to marry you. The rest really doesn't matter, does it?"

"No, it doesn't."

"All right." He gave her a quick kiss, helped her into the car, and waited, watching as she drove away.

Once Julie was out of his sight, she pulled out the card Zach had given her. On the back, he'd scrawled out the name of his hotel and his room number.

She turned south, toward downtown, and his hotel.

Chapter 2

He was staying in one of those apartment-like complexes for people on extended trips, which she took as a bad sign.

Murder trials took a while, didn't they?

Julie knocked on his door. A moment later, it swung open to reveal Zach, minus the tie and jacket, white dress shirt open at the collar revealing a long strip of tantalizing muscles and tanned skin.

Oh.
She really didn't need to see him this way, as a very attractive man.

"Julie." He stepped back, gesturing for her to come inside.

There was a small living room with a tiny kitchenette. Through the open doorway in the corner she could see a slightly rumpled bed, pillows piled up against the headboard, a pile of papers strewn off to the side. There was another pile of papers, equally as big and messy, on the coffee table by the floral-print sofa.

"Sit down." He pointed to the sofa as he cleared away papers from the coffee table. "Sorry about the mess. It gets worse the closer I get to trial. I shouldn't have taken the time out for dinner tonight, but it's become a pretrial tradition. The last decent meal before insanity sets in."

Julie wished so badly that he hadn't been at dinner. She thought about all the little fibs she'd ever told him and wondered why she'd even tried with him. He'd always seen right through her.

"Zach?" She stood there, ready to beg, worrying it was a bigger mistake to have come here. "I don't know how to say this without sounding totally ungrateful for everything you and your family ever did for me." They'd been a refuge of calm in a chaotic childhood. "But this... My life, now, it's..."

"None of my business, huh?" Seeming perfectly at ease, he leaned back in his seat and smiled slowly.

She nodded, making herself meet his gaze.

"Okay." He shrugged. "If that's the way you want it."

"It... Well..." It was, wasn't it? Wasn't that the way it had to be?

"Julie, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. You seemed nervous at the restaurant, I thought..."

"That I'd gotten myself into another mess, and you were going to come rescue me?"

"I would have," he said quietly.

All the breath went out of her at the understanding look in his eyes and the promise of the words.

She believed he would have, even after all these years, and to someone like her, who'd never really had the kind of family she could depend upon, it meant the world to her, knowing that.

And she was kicking him out of her life at practically the first sight of him in years? It sounded crazy when she thought about it like that. It wasn't like she had a lot of people in her corner.

Julie sat down, her legs trembling, her hands, too.

Zach leaned back in his chair, looking perfectly comfortable, waiting for whatever she'd say next.

It was an old trick of his. He sat and stared at people, and they confessed everything. She used to squirm and look at the floor and tell herself to just get up and walk away. But she didn't. She'd found herself telling him the hardest things, the things she'd most wanted to hide.

"That's it?" she asked finally. "You're going to let me off that easy?"

"You want me to give you a hard time, I will," he said with a grin. "I'd probably say something about it being a mistake to lie to a man you're going to marry, but I doubt you need me to tell you that."

"No, I don't." She'd told herself that very thing time and time again. "And I told him, Zach. I did. I told him there were things that happened back home—"

"In St. Louis? Did you ever live in St. Louis?"

"No," she admitted. "But does it really matter where I was?"

"It seems to. To you."

She let that go. Honestly, it wasn't important. She'd just felt safer, thinking if anyone ever went looking, they'd go there and not find anything. Because she'd never been there.

"Anyway," she went on. "I told Steve I hadn't had the greatest childhood, that there were things I wasn't dying to talk to him about, and he's okay with that. He said I didn't have to tell him anything I didn't want to."

"Okay," Zach said.

But with his tone, he managed to say he didn't think it was.

"Everything is different for me here," she tried. "I'm different."

"Are you happy, Julie?"

"Yes," she insisted.

"Talk to anybody back home lately?" Zach put his feet up on the coffee table, like he was settling in for a nice long chat. His shirt gaped open even farther, showing even more skin, tanned and delineated by the muscles beneath.

"No." And she liked it that way. Honestly, she did.

There was something so nice about being in a brand-new place and starting over completely. She could be anyone she wanted to be. So she was surprised to sit here with him and realize how nice it was to be with someone so familiar. It seemed there were a million memories stuffed into her head that came flooding back, tiny little things she'd done and people she'd known that he would know, too. It might be nice to sit here and catch up, but it seemed dangerous, too. Like opening a door she might not be able to close again.

And she liked having that door closed.

"Your mother and stepfather are still there," Zach offered. "Your little brother, too."

"Half brother." He'd be thirteen now, and she barely knew him.

She had to turn away for a moment. There'd been a time... a you-and-me-against-the-world kind of time, when Peter had been so little and the house had been loud and crazy. When things had scared him, and he'd come running to her.