“Stop arguing with me.” He tilted her head back with his thumbs on her chin. His lips came down on her trembling ones, his touch turning gentle. In his hold was all the fear of losing her. Nothing was as vulnerable as loving. Nothing felt as good as the feel of his wife close to him again.
“Zach.” She stayed enfolded, but her eyes lifted to his, that frantic wariness gone but her face grave and still haunted with anxiety. “It was my fault, you know. I let the meaning of the two of us…slip away. I didn’t see. So insensitive, Zach, but I honestly never believed that could happen. I never had to let my mother control-”
“Maybe,” he agreed quietly. “I knew you could handle her, Bett. And I knew if you finally did, you’d be happier.” His fingers brushed back her hair. “I also happen to love you, you know. I love your softness and your giving. And to expect you suddenly to turn hard as nails was stupid on my part. Stupid and wrong.”
“It wasn’t wrong.” She leaned her cheek into his palm. “I never meant to-”
“Are you still arguing?” His tone was half humorous, half genuinely exasperated. And all loving.
Her eyes searched his face. The love she saw there was a fierce thing, even while he was trying to coax her into a smile. “You had a right to be angry,” she said quietly. “And…hurt. I know I hurt you. I…”
“No,” he murmured. “I hurt you.” His hands slid around her back, his mouth dipping down to the curve of her shoulder. So damn stupid, to be angry she wasn’t tougher inside, tough and hardhearted. Tough and strong were not the same thing at all. Every year they’d been married, she’d grown in confidence; he’d swelled with love, watching her. He wanted her to grow-not toughen, just grow. But it was long past time for him to make love to the lady she was, to make very sure she understood that he loved her just as she was. His palms slid down, cupping her slim hips. His lips found a delectable spot in the curve of her shoulder.
She yielded like Eve, with a sigh that seemed to flow through her body. She wrapped her arms around him and just held on, still trembling, her face buried in his shoulder. And for once, the knock on the door didn’t make her stiffen suddenly into a statue. Zach pressed his lips firmly on hers, drawing back. “I’ll handle it,” he said quietly.
“No. I will.” Bett pulled away from him. Elizabeth was her mother. This was exactly the time to prove it. All day she’d been trying to show him that she had her priorities back in order. When she pulled open the door, her eyes were brilliant, fired with determination.
Elizabeth, on the other side of the doorway, looked delectably vulnerable in her pink ruffled robe. “I was hoping you were awake, Brittany. There’s something I’ve been trying to tell you all day-”
“Mom, I’m exhausted. So is Zach.”
“I never told you about Harold Baker. You know, the man who owns the bookstore in Silver Oaks? And it’s been bothering me that I haven’t told you. Brittany, we’ve been meeting for lunch. And…more than lunch. Actually-”
Bett didn’t hear a thing. “I promise, Mom, we’ll talk in the morning. For just as long as you want, but right now-”
“I’ve been seeing him. And he…asked me to marry him.”
“I absolutely love you to bits, Mom,” Bett said blindly. “I know you can’t sleep; I wish I could help you with that. I will help you; maybe we can get an appointment for you with a doctor tomorrow. But right now, you’re just going to have to forgive me-I’m exhausted. Okay?”
Elizabeth sighed. “Of course. I-good night, darling.”
Bett closed the door, and whirled back to Zach. His arms felt like coming home. Zach held her close, and with a crooked smile, felt her cuddling, surrendering form turn stiff as her mother’s words sank in. “No,” she murmured into his shoulder.
“Open the door, two bits.”
“No.”
“It’s all right,” he whispered into her hair. “This is different.”
“She had to have made that up.”
“Open the door.”
“All day. All day I have been trying to show you how very much more you matter to me than my mother. Or than turkeys and holidays. Or than other people. Every single thing that could possibly go wrong with this day went wrong-”
His lips brushed her forehead. “Open the door.”
Five minutes later, the three of them were having instant coffee in the kitchen. “Now, he isn’t particularly good-looking,” Elizabeth said nervously. “But he plays canasta. So do I. He stays up until all hours of the night, can’t sleep. And he talks, all the time. I just…every time I’ve been in town I’ve found myself going there. We have coffee in the back and he takes me out to lunch. And three of the dinners-I didn’t tell you, Brittany. You were all for my going out, but this was…different. I knew it was different. And I thought you would feel I was being disloyal to your father-”
“Mom, that isn’t so,” Bett rushed in compassionately. “But for heaven’s sake, you can’t have known him very long.”
“Well, these three months. We’re hardly planning on a shotgun wedding, but at our age, there isn’t much point in our waiting, either. The thing is-you two. Whether you’d object-”
Zach and Bett exchanged a fleeting glance. “We don’t object,” Zach said quietly. “As long as you’re happy.”
“He’s such a fool. He just won’t take care of himself if he doesn’t have a woman around,” Elizabeth said distractedly. “He likes being bossed, he tells me. Not that I’m the bossy type-”
Bett’s lips parted. Zach laid a repressive hand on her knee. “You certainly aren’t,” he agreed.
“I don’t want either of you to think I’ve done anything…immoral-”
Bett debated for a second and a half whether to advise her mother that, truthfully, she’d better kick around an immoral action or two before she made any permanent commitments. Zach’s hand anchored on her knee again. “We never thought that,” he assured his mother-in-law.
“I never would,” Elizabeth said.
“I’m sure of that.”
Zach had the sneaking suspicion that the lady had compromised her…morals. Bett had to get her genes from somewhere. Chet undoubtedly contributed the dominant portion, but someone had to have been on the receiving end.
“And I came here to help you,” Elizabeth said worriedly. “It’s not that I want to desert you now.”
“Mom, you wouldn’t be,” Bett said swiftly. Elizabeth didn’t appear to notice any frantically enthusiastic notes.
It was one in the morning before the three of them trudged back upstairs. Zach, once the bedroom door had closed, reached for Bett, hauled her up into his arms and laid her giggling form on their bed. Seconds later, he collapsed next to her.
“Some matchmaker you are,” he scolded. “She ended up having to do all the work herself.” His words came out in whispers, in breaths that fanned the tender skin of her throat. He turned her until her stomach was against the mattress, making it easy for him to unzip the back of her dress. It was a long zipper, ending at the base of her spine. And it was going to take him a very long time to get it down, if he was going to kiss her exposed skin lingeringly at inch intervals.
“You didn’t do any better than I did,” Bett whispered back, her voice muffled in the comforter.
“Do you even know Harold?”
“Are you joking? In the winter, I live in that bookstore. I’ve known him ever since we moved here.”
“So?”
“So, he’s perfect. So why didn’t you invite him to the house?”
Her favorite red dress was suddenly pulled over her head and landed on the floor beside the bed. She peered over the side of the mattress, staring at it. Zach was kissing her vertebrae, one by one. Given an ounce of encouragement, he wouldn’t last for a minute and a half. But then, given an ounce of weakness, she was afraid she wouldn’t last either. But how long could a person stare at one wrinkling red dress?