Authors: Isabella Ashe
Had he gone out? She was half disappointed, half relieved at the possibility that their discussion might be postponed. Her hands were trembling a little by the time she opened her bedroom door.
She smiled shakily when she saw him at her desk in the workshop, hunched over a sheet of paper. His dark, silky hair fell into his eyes and he chewed on his bottom lip as he concentrated on his writing.
Bryony stood quietly for a long moment, watching him, savoring the chance to look at him without his knowledge. Her heart swelled almost painfully with love and desire. Her fierce resolve of the afternoon, her decision to tell him that their affair had to end, faltered just a little.
"Zach?" she said.
He swung around to face her, and she knew immediately that something wasn't right. All the warmth of the morning had drained from his face. His eyes were empty and dull. When he saw her, his expression clouded and she saw the muscles in his jaw twitch with barely controlled anger.
Bryony was suddenly afraid. She took an instinctive step back toward the door. Her heart thudded against her ribs. But she clenched her fists and forced herself to face him.
"What?" she asked. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong," he said. "In fact, everything's gone exactly according to plan. Hasn't it, Bryony?"
"I don't understand," she said, shaking her head. She was becoming increasingly uneasy. "What's gone according to plan?" To her dismay, her voice broke on the last words. She felt ice spreading through her body, numbing her brain.
"Come in, come in," Zach said. "This is your own office, after all. Have a seat and I'll explain everything."
Despite her growing sense of alarm, Bryony obeyed.
Nearly sleepwalking,
shesat
down gingerly on the edge of the overstuffed velvet couch.
Her pulse fluttered in her neck. Every instinct urged caution. She was poised for flight, her eyes wide with unhappiness and wary anticipation.
Bryony stared at the man in front of her. He seemed like a stranger, not at all the person she'd fallen in love with. She could tell that he was barely holding himself in check. Until now, she had never before felt anything like fear in the presence of Zachary Callahan. Now she was suddenly aware of the powerful muscles moving behind the fabric of his shirt, the broad shoulders that strained at the seams. He sat in the chair at her desk, just a few feet away.
"Please, Zach --" she began, her mind whirling with dread and apprehension. She clasped her hands together, twisting her fingers nervously.
"By all means." His voice was carefully neutral. "Let's get this over with. Let's get everything out in the open. What a relief that will be, to make an end to all the games. To expose all the lies."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Bryony said.
"Come on, Bryony. Don't play me for a fool," Zach said, leaning forward so quickly that Bryony gasped. His face was just inches from her own. It took all of her willpower to keep from moving away. "When did you first start making your plans? Was it after you discovered who I was? Or before that, as soon as I walked into Heart's Desire?"
"Zach, I don't --"
He ignored her, his face grim and his voice nearly devoid of emotion. "Were you simply hoping to keep me from writing a scathing column, from ridiculing you and your idiotic love potion? Or did you hope for more, much more?"
He leapt to his feet, and this time Bryony did cry out. But he turned away from her and began pacing the carpet, his hands clenched behind his back. "At least I found out about your little game before it was too late."
He whirled, and Bryony shrank back, her eyes wide and filled with unshed tears. "You almost had me, I must admit. Very clever, playing the sweet, naive little country bumpkin. I nearly fell for it, too. You'll never know how close you were to winning everything your scheming heart desired."
Bryony's apprehension was beginning to shift into something else. She didn't know what Zach was talking about, but he was certainly accusing her of something. Worse, he wouldn't let her get a word in edgewise to defend herself. Anger gave her the strength to throw back her shoulders and cry out, "Stop it this instant! Just stop!"
To her surprise, it worked. Zach broke off from his monologue and stared at her accusingly. "So you admit it all," he said.
"Absolutely not," Bryony said. "You're talking nonsense, and I won't have it. Either tell me what this is about, and stop talking in circles, or I'm leaving this room until you come to your senses." Her insides were quaking, but she was proud of how sensible and calm she forced herself to sound.
There was a long, impossibly tense silence.
"Fine," Zach said at last, blinking at her. "Let me list a few items, and see if you recognize them. Number one -- cook for him. Check. Number two -- long walks on the beach. Check. Oh, and my personal favorite: Number eight -- if all else fails, seduce him. Well, you certainly did that. Any of that sound familiar?"
Slowly and dramatically, he pulled a crumpled piece of paper from the pocket of his jeans and laid the evidence in front of her.
Bryony stared at the paper and then up at Zach. Relief melted the block of ice in her stomach. She burst out laughing. "Is that all?" she asked. "You'd think this were about something serious."
Zach fixed her with a fierce gaze. "You think this is funny?"
She shook her head, still laughing. "Zach, listen. Kasey made that list for me as a joke. It's nothing but a joke, don't you understand?"
Anger and betrayal struggled with relief in Zach's eyes. "So you never plotted to make me fall in love? You never had a plan?" he asked.
The words that would make everything right hovered on Bryony's tongue. But before she could utter them, before she could reassure him, she remembered the night Zach had first come for dinner. That night, she'd fantasized about winning his heart and forcing him to admit he was wrong about her, while all the time keeping her own emotions untouched.
Zach saw her hesitation. His expression darkened again. The window of hope slammed shut. "Then it's true, it's all true," he said, fixing her with a look of disgust. "You did plot and scheme to make me fall in love."
"Well, even if I did, it didn't work, did it?" Bryony said. The moment the words were of her mouth, she regretted them. But it was too late to take them back.
Zach whitened as if she had slapped him. His jaw tightened and he looked away. "No," he said, a strange, bleak smile on his lips. "It didn't work. Not even close."
A sob gathered itself in Bryony's throat, but she forced it back. She wouldn't let Zach see how much he was hurting her. "Then what does it matter?" she said. "Believe whatever you like. It's all the same in the end."
He quieted, considering the words she hurled at him like stones. "You made your decision, then," he said.
Bryony nodded. She spread her fingers in her lap, studying her nails so she didn't have to meet his eyes. "I didn't see the point in dragging it out," she said. "It couldn't have lasted anyway. We're much too different."
"It's true," Zach said, waving the list. "This only confirms the inevitable."
"I didn't write that list," Bryony said, without real hope that he would believe her. "I told you, it was a joke between me and Kasey."
Her denials just made things worse. Zach stared at her with unconcealed contempt. He tossed the paper on the floor at her feet. "I thought you were different," he said. "You're no different from any other woman I've ever known -- selfish, cruel and calculating, just like Eve. I guess I'll never learn."
Bryony endured the rain of insults. She had lost her will to fight back. She could see that her denials made no difference anyway. "Think what you want," she said.
Her heart ached so badly she thought she would die. Suddenly she just wanted to be alone with her misery. She wanted to curl up in bed and cry herself to sleep. She glanced up at Zach, her face drawn and twisted by despair. "I'd like you to go," she whispered.
Despite himself, Zach softened at the sight of her pain. But he steeled himself and pressed on. He'd sworn to humiliate her as she'd humiliated him, and he couldn't leave until he accomplished his goal.
"I'll go in a minute," he said. He gathered up the papers on the desk and shoved them her way. "I want you to read this first."
Bryony took the papers and scanned them listlessly. Her mouth felt as dry and dusty as old parchment. Her eyes lit on several random phrases, and then her own name. The words were bitter and mocking. Her head swam as she struggled to understand.
"It's your column," she said at last.
"How do you like it?" he asked, his lips twisting cruelly. "What do you think of your little plan now? Looks like it backfired, doesn't it?"
Bryony shrugged. "I don't care," she said, handing the paper back. "Truly I don't." She meant every word. Being lambasted in Zach's column meant nothing to her now. It was simply a final insult on top of the accusations and the hatred raining down on her head every time he glanced her way.
She had loved him, and now it was ending with bewildering ugliness and pain. Now she could never cherish the memory of their time together. Zach's cruelty, his refusal to listen to her explanations, was ruining everything. Bad enough that it couldn't last, but she'd never thought it would end like this.
On top of all that, Zach's scornful and derisive column was less than nothing to her.
He seemed disappointed by her indifference. Hastily gathering the papers, he shoved them in his briefcase and clicked the case shut. "That's that, then," he said. "I'll grab my things from downstairs and get out of your life."
Bryony didn't trust herself to answer. Her breath burned in her raw, aching throat. Ice crept through her veins, numbing her body and freezing her emotions. She couldn't believe things were ending like this, not after what had happened over the past few days.
But it was real. Not only didn't Zach love her, but he now hated her, and there was nothing she could do about it. She stared fixedly ahead, her lips stiff and trembling.
"Don't you have anything to say for yourself?" Zach asked.
There was a silence. "Just go," she said.
"If that's the way you want it," Zach said, still hesitating.
Bryony lifted her head and they exchanged a long look. Zach was the first to avert his eyes. "Goodbye, Bryony," he said.
"Goodbye," she whispered.
He turned sharply on his heels and walked out of her life.
Bryony held herself still as a stone, barely breathing, until at
last
she heard the front door slam. She listened until he gunned his car motor and raced off with a sharp screech of tires on the gravel driveway.
Still the muscles of Bryony's face remained stiff and unyielding. She wrapped her arms around her own shoulders, as if for warmth, and waited. She waited a long time. When at last she knew that Zach was not coming back, she stood up slowly and walked back into her bedroom. She felt dazed and unsteady on her feet.
She took off her shoes with careful movements, as if she were balancing a fragile ceramic vase on her shoulders and feared dislodging it by accident. Peeling back her comforter, she slid between the cool sheets and buried her face in her pillow. She could still smell Zach's musky scent there on the fabric.
Only then, when she was safely burrowed under the covers, when Zach was really and truly gone, did she allow her iron
self control
to dissolve. Silent tears streamed down her face, soaking the pillowcase. Then the floodgates broke, and her grief came pouring out in huge, gulping sobs.
She beat the pillows frantically with her clenched fists. It was so unfair, so terribly unfair.
She raged at Zach for his suspicious, unreasonable, overcautious mind. He had no right to compare her to the other women he had known. They had betrayed him -- they had been untrustworthy -- but she had not. He'd made up his mind that she was sneaky and conniving and then refused to listen to reason. He was wrong not to listen to her explanations, terribly wrong.
Next she raged at herself. Why hadn't she tried harder to make things right? Remembering the half-hopeful expression on Zach's face, the deep need to believe she hadn't betrayed him, she knew she could have convinced him. If only she'd found the right words, instead of retreating into silence.
If only things had been different.
Bryony cried until her eyes burned and her throat was on fire. She sobbed until there were no more tears. She felt an acute sense of loss, as if Zach's leaving had severed a part of her own body. Knowing she would have ended the affair anyway should have made her feel better, but instead it deepened her misery.
Her anguish left her drained of energy and hope. When her sobs slowed and her breathing grew deeper, she let her swollen lids sink lower until they shut out the last rays of the setting sun. When sleep crept up and took her under his raven-dark wing, she willingly surrendered
Hours later, she woke disoriented and confused. The telephone next to her bed shrilled again. She groped to answer it, knocked the receiver off the hook, and fumbled for it on the floor. When at last she brought the phone to her ear, she barely managed a sleep-muddled hello.