"This time?" Zack said, shifting his thoughts from his forthcoming meeting with his future father-in-law.

"Julie has a peculiar little habit," Ted explained, bending down and looking under the sink, "When something is bothering her, she rearranges things … puts them into order, you could say."

A tender smile quirked at Zack's mouth when he remembered seeing her do that in Colorado. "I know."

"Then you won't be surprised," Ted continued, opening the refrigerator in his fruitless search for the liquor, "to learn that since you were released from prison, she has rearranged every closet, drawer, and cabinet she has and repainted her garage. Twice. Take a look at this refrigerator," he said pointing to the shelves on the doors. "You will note that the bottles and jars are all arranged in descending order by size, tallest on the left. Now, on the next shelf, she has reversed that for artistic purposes, so that the tallest items are on the right. Last week, everything was arranged by color. It was something to see."

Torn between amusement at what he was hearing and regret for the heartache that had caused her to do it, Zack said, "I'll bet it was."

"That's nothing," Ted continued dryly. "Take a look at this," he said, and opening a cabinet, he pointed at the cans and boxes on the shelves. "She's filed her groceries in alphabetical order."

Zack choked on a laugh. "She's what?"

"Look for yourself."

Zack peered around the other man's shoulder. All the cans, bottles, and boxes were mixed together but standing at military attention in precise rows across the front. "Applesauce, asparagus, beets," he murmured in amused disbelief, "cauliflower, Cheerios, flour, Jello, beans…" He looked at Ted. "She misfiled the beans."

"No, I didn't," Julie said, walking into the kitchen and trying to look perfectly nonchalant when both men turned to her in laughing amazement. "They're under L."

"L?" Zack said, trying unsuccessfully to keep his face straight.

She dropped her embarrassed gaze to an invisible speck of lint she was flicking off her sweater. "L—for legumes," she informed him. Zack choked on his laughter and pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her hair, basking in the joy of her. "Where's the vodka?" he whispered in her ear. "Ted wants it."

She tipped her head back, her eyes filled with laughter. "It's behind the legumes."

"What the hell is it doing there?" Ted asked, shoving the cans of beans aside and seizing it.

His shoulders shaking with suppressed mirth, Zack managed to say blandly and correctly, "It's under L—for liquor. Naturally."

"Naturally," Julie confirmed with a giggle.

"Too bad there's no time to drink it," Ted said.

"I didn't want any," Zack replied.

"You'll be sorry."

Ted's squad car was waiting at the curb, and he held the back door open for them. Zack reluctantly slid into the back seat behind Julie, his expression turning tense.

"What's wrong?" she asked, so vibrantly attuned to his presence that she instantly sensed the slightest change in his voice or expression.

"This isn't my favorite mode of transportation, that's all."

Zack saw her eyes darken with sorrow, but she rallied almost instantly and deliberately made a joke he knew was designed to lift his spirits. "Ted," she said, keeping her smiling eyes on Zack, "you should have brought Carl's Blazer. Zack thinks it's much more … attractive."

It made both men laugh.

Chapter 80

Fifteen minutes later, Zack wasn't laughing; he was seated across from Julie's father in his small study, getting his ass chewed out by Reverend Mathison, who was pacing angrily in front of him. Zack had expected the ass-chewing, he even accepted it as his due, but he had expected Julie's minister-father to be a small, meek man who would deliver a monotone lecture on whatever commandments he felt Zack had broken. He had not expected Jim Mathison to be a tall, robust man, capable of delivering a scathingly descriptive, eloquently worded tirade that would have put George C. Scott's monologue at the opening of Patton to shame.

"I cannot excuse or condone anything you did! Not one thing!" Jim Mathison finished at last, flinging himself into the worn leather chair behind his desk. "If I were a violent man, I'd take a horsewhip to you. I'm tempted to do it anyway! Because of you, my daughter was subjected to terror, to public censure, to heartbreak! You seduced her in Colorado, I know damned well you did! Do you deny it?"

It was insane, but at that moment, Zack admired everything about the man; he was the sort of father Zack would have wanted—and wanted to be someday—a deeply concerned parent with strong principles about what was acceptable and what was not—a man of integrity and honesty who expected the same behavior from those around him. He intended for Zack to feel ashamed. He was succeeding.

"Do you deny you seduced my daughter?" he repeated angrily.

"No," Zack admitted.

"And then you sent her back here to confront the media and defend you to the world! Of all the cowardly, irresponsible—how can you face yourself or me or her, after that?"

"Actually, sending her back here was the only decent thing I did," Zack said, defending himself for the first time since the tongue-lashing had begun.

"Go on, I'm waiting to hear how you figure that."

"I knew Julie was in love with me. I refused to take her to South America and sent her back here instead for her sake, not mine."

"Your sense of decency was certainly short-lived, wasn't it! A few weeks later, you were scheming to have her join you."

He waited again, demanding an answer with his silence, and Zack reluctantly complied. "I thought she was pregnant, and I didn't want her to have an abortion or endure the humiliation of unwed motherhood in a small town."

Zack sensed a subtle reduction in the other man's hostility, but it wasn't evident in his next acid comment. "If you'd exercised any decency, any restraint over your lust in Colorado, you wouldn't have had to worry about her being pregnant, would you?"

Torn between anger, embarrassment, and amusement at Mathison's scornful, biblical use of the term lust, Zack lifted his brows and looked at him.

"I'll thank you for the courtesy of an answer, young man."

"The answer is perfectly obvious."

"And now," he said angrily, leaning back in his chair. "Now you come breezing back to town in your private plane to make her into a public spectacle again, and for what? So you can break her heart! I've heard and read and seen enough about you before you went to prison and after you got out to know what sort of life you lead in California, to know what sort of licentious, superficial, amoral life it has been—wild parties, naked women, drunkenness, dirty movies. How do you answer to that?"