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  They trooped into the dining room and took their places at the table. “I’m sorry, we didn’t have any beer, Zach,” her mother said. “We don’t usually have alcohol in the house.”

  “If I’d known, I could have brought my own.”

  “Yes, well…” Her smile wavered. “Dear, why don’t you pass the potatoes first?”

  Dinner was a farce of stilted conversation, awkward silences and sullen looks. The charming, polite man Jen had known was replaced by a rude, ill-mannered imposter. He put his elbows on the table, muttered one-word answers to any question directed at him and slouched in his chair as if he were an angry adolescent. Jen didn’t know whether to burst into tears or dump a glass of ice water over his head. This wasn’t the Zach she knew, but it was exactly the Zach her father had expected.

  Her father’s mood grew darker as the evening progressed. When they all left the table and went into the living room for coffee and dessert, he pulled Jen aside. “What can you possibly see in an ill-mannered lout like that? Name one thing.”

  She shook her head. “He’s not like this around me,” she said. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him tonight.”

  She sat next to Zach in the living room and tried to take his hand. He shifted away from her and refused to meet her eyes. He reminded her of a little boy who knows he’s done wrong but is too stubborn to admit it.

  “So, uh, Zach. How does one decide to become a tattoo artist?” Her mother spoke with forced cheerfulness.

  He crossed one booted heel over his knee and directed his gaze at the floor. “I met a guy in a bar who offered to teach me. I thought it would be a good way to pick up chicks.”

  Jen frowned at him. What had happened to the story about the mentor who’d trained him, who’d given him an outlet for his art? Why was he deliberately lying to make himself look worse?

  “My daughter is not some ‘chick.’” Her father leaned forward in his chair, his voice brittle. “I expect you—or any man she chooses to spend time with—to treat her with respect.”

  Jen felt Zach tense, as if he were a man bracing himself for a blow. Then he looked up and met her father’s angry gaze. “Yeah, well, people like me—who aren’t respectable—don’t know much about the subject.”

  Her father stood, fists clenched at his sides. “I think it’s time for you to leave.” Jen shivered at the coldness in his voice.

  Without a word, Zach rose and stalked past him to the door. Jen started to follow, but her father grabbed her arm. “Let him go.”

  She watched as Zach jerked open the door and left without a look back. His shoulders were hunched, his head down. His words had been defiant but his posture was anything but. She wrenched away from her father. “I have to talk to him. Something’s wrong.”

  He was already straddling his bike when she ran to him. “Zach, wait!” she cried, grabbing hold of his arm.

  “Let me go.” He tried to pull away, but she held fast. If he tried to leave now, he’d have to drag her with him.

  “I won’t let you leave until you talk to me,” she said, raising her voice above the throb of the engine.

  “We don’t have anything to talk about.” He rolled the bike back, but she stayed with him.

  She reached over and turned the key in the ignition. The engine coughed and sputtered. Zach cursed and glared at her. “There’s no point in talking,” he said.

  “You deliberately set out to ruin this evening. Why?”

  “I gave them exactly what they wanted.” He nodded toward the house. Though the windows were empty, she was sure her mother and father were watching from somewhere. She only hoped her father wouldn’t come rushing out to rescue her before she and Zach had cleared the air between them.

  “You gave them a lie,” she said. “I wanted them to meet Zach, not some caricature of a badass biker guy.”

  His eyes met hers. The bleakness she saw there sent a chill through her. “I am a badass biker guy. The rebel you wanted to help you rebel.”

  “But that’s not you!” She leaned closer, her face next to his. She could have counted every eyelash and every whisker of the stubble along his jawline. At this intimate distance, she dared him to lie to her. To lie to himself. “That’s just an image you’ve built up. A disguise you put on to keep people at a distance. But it didn’t work with me. I saw through the costume. I saw the real Zach.”

  “Then you should have run when you had the chance.” He reached up and gently unwrapped her fingers from around his arm. She let him go this time, then stepped back from the bike.

  “Go home, Zach. But remember—I didn’t run. And I’m not going to.”

  “No, but you’re leaving. In the end, it’s the same.” He started the bike again and guided it in a wide turn before roaring away.

  She stared after him, hugging herself and choking back the lump in her throat. She was going away. But that didn’t mean what they’d had until now didn’t matter. Zach had changed her, in ways she wasn’t quite sure of. She’d wanted to think she’d changed him, too.

  She was still standing there a few minutes later when her father joined her. “I take it you didn’t plan for the evening to turn out the way it did,” he said.

  She shook her head, afraid she might break down sobbing if she tried to talk.

  He awkwardly patted her shoulder. “Maybe it’s better this way. When you go to Chicago, you can really start fresh. Maybe there’ll be someone in the dance company you’ll like.” He frowned. “They have straight men dancers, don’t they?”

  She almost smiled then. Leave it to her father to worry about her future love life. “They have straight men in the company,” she said. “Not just dancers, but singers and musicians.” She stared down the road, wondering where Zach was headed. Then the impact of her father’s words hit her. She turned to him. “Does this mean you’re going to stop fighting me about my going to Chicago?”

  “You’ve convinced me you’re going to go, whether I agree or not.” He put his arm around her and pulled her close. “After your mother and I left your apartment last week, I couldn’t stop thinking about you there, in your own place. Not seeing you every day here at home has made me realize how much you’ve grown up. You’re really your own person now. One I want to continue to have a relationship with.”

  “Oh, Daddy, I’m going to Chicago, not the moon. And if I make the touring company, we’ll be making regular stops in Austin, not to mention all the visits I’ll make home.”

  “And we’ll come to Chicago to see you, too.” He hugged her again. “Come on, we’d better go inside. I think your mother’s packed some leftovers for you to take home.”

  She groaned. “I can’t eat all that food.”

  “Humor her. You should have a lot of practice at that by now.” He smiled. “I don’t think I realized how many concessions you made for us until you stopped making them.”

  “I won’t stop altogether. Just when I have to.”

  He sighed and shook his head. “This parenting thing doesn’t get any easier, you know. It’s hard to know the right thing to do sometimes.”

  “You’ve done pretty well, I think.” She kissed his cheek. “Come on. You can help me carry the leftovers to the car. I’ll even let you check my oil if it’ll make you feel useful.”

  “Don’t push your luck, little girl.” He swatted her bottom. “Better let me check the tires, too.”

  She smiled as she walked through the living room on her way to the kitchen. It felt good to be on close terms with her father again. If only she could find a way to mend the sudden rift between her and Zach. Knowing he didn’t hate her would make it a little easier to leave him. At least, she hoped so.

  JEN TOLD HERSELF SHE’D give Zach a few days to calm down before she tried to talk to him again. But the prospect of spending a Sunday alone in her apartment, replaying the previous evening’s events in her head like a bad movie, made her want to crawl into bed and stay there. So when Shelly called and asked her to go shopping for b
ridesmaids’ dresses and other wedding accessories, she rushed to agree. Maybe a day spent planning the culmination of Shelly’s long-term relationship would give her some perspective on her own whirlwind fling.

  “It’s a good thing the mall’s open on Sunday,” Shelly said as she and Jen pulled into the Highland Mall parking lot shortly after eleven. “I’ve got so much to do and not much time to do it in.”

  Jen laughed. “You’ve been dating the guy for five years. You can take more than two weeks to plan the wedding.”

  “I don’t want to wait another second before I’m Mrs. Aaron Prior.” She pulled open the door and led the way into the mall. “Besides, I wanted to have the ceremony before you leave for Chicago. It wouldn’t be the same if you weren’t here to be my maid of honor.”

  Jen felt a twinge of sadness at the words. As much as she’d waited and hoped for the chance to land a position like the one in Chicago, it still didn’t seem real that she was going away and leaving behind her parents, and friends like Shelly.

  And Zach. But she wasn’t going to think about him today, she reminded herself.

  “Isn’t it great how everything worked out?” Shelly paused outside the Jessica McClintock store and studied a mannequin dressed in a sea foam-green formal. “To think just two weeks ago I was worried sick that Aaron was having an affair, when the whole time he was planning to marry me.”

  “It is great.” Jen wrinkled her nose at the mannequin. “The dress is fabulous, but the color—uh-uh. I’d stay away from pastels if I were you.”

  “You’re right.” Shelly led the way into the store. “A darker color would be good. Dark green maybe. Or plum?” She shifted through a rack of dresses. “What kills me is how I was so sure Aaron was up to something. I thought it was something bad, but it turned out to be something really good.”

  “I guess things aren’t always what they seem on the surface.” Jen held up a steel-gray sheath. “This is gorgeous, though I don’t know how you’d feel about it for a wedding.”

  Shelly reached out to stroke the gray satin. “You know, it just might work. We could do silver ribbon and have all white flowers.” She pulled out a PDA and began making notes. “I’ll definitely add this one to my list of possibilities. My mom will probably argue that it’s not traditional, but I really like it.” She closed the cover of the PDA and replaced it in her purse. “Now help me find gifts for the other bridesmaids.”

  “How many bridesmaids do you have?” Jen followed her back out into the mall.

  “Just two. My sister, Kate, and my roommate from college, Jacqui. I’m thinking maybe earrings for their gifts. Something that looks expensive but isn’t.”

  They headed for one of the large department stores anchoring the mall. “I need to find a pillow for the ring bearer, a guest book and pen and champagne glasses for Aaron and I to make our toasts.”

  “I should try to pick up a few things for my trip, too.” Jen thought of the supply list on her desk at the apartment. Somehow, she hadn’t gotten around to buying anything on it yet.

  Shelly consulted her PDA again as she walked. “My mother wants me to look for a dress for her. Oh, and I need a new suitcase for the honeymoon.”

  “Where are you going?” Jen turned to look at the Frederick’s window, remembering the day she’d been here with Theresa. Had Theresa worn the white eyelet dress yet? She’d have to remember to ask her.

  Too late, she realized Shelly was talking to her. “I’m sorry, I must have drifted off. What did you say?”

  “I said we’re going to Aruba for our honeymoon.”

  “That sounds fabulous. Very romantic.”

  Shelly stuffed the device back into her purse and patted Jen’s arm. “I don’t blame you for spacing out. All I’ve talked about for the last half hour is me, me, me.” She smiled. “So what’s new with Jen these days? When do you leave for Chicago? And has your dad warmed up to the idea at all?”

  “At first he said I could go if I stayed with a police detective he knows up there. But the other night he said I could go on my own, though he was going to worry about me.”

  “What changed his mind?” They entered the department store and took the escalator up to the second floor. “Him seeing that you could live on your own and not do anything stupid?”

  “That probably had something to do with it.” Though she’d been pleased her father had finally admitted she was an adult, capable of making her own decisions, later on she’d questioned the timing of this declaration. “But I also think he might be trying to get me away from Zach,” she said.

  Shelly studied a display case of jewelry. “Yeah, I guess most dads would like to get their daughters away from a guy like Zach.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jen glared at her friend. Just because Shelly was going to live happily ever after—with a lawyer, of all people—didn’t mean she had to put down Zach. “Zach is a wonderful guy.”

  Shelly moved farther down the display case. “To you, sure. To your dad, he’s a leather-wearing, motorcycle-riding, long-haired tattoo artist. Not the future husband most men picture for their daughters.”

  “We were just talking about how things aren’t always what they seem. Neither are people.”

  “Well, when you picked a guy for a fling, you picked a good one. Now your dad can’t wait to get you out of town. So everything worked out.”

  “I guess.”

  Shelly turned to look at her. “Oh, no.”

  “What?”

  Shelly put her hand on Jen’s shoulder and studied her face. “You’ve really fallen for him, haven’t you? This isn’t just a fling anymore.”

  “Of course it is.” She stepped back. “Zach’s made it clear he doesn’t intend to get serious. He’s told me more than once I’m not his type.”

  “But he kept seeing you, didn’t he?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, but I think he liked the idea of sex with no strings attached. What guy wouldn’t? He knew I was leaving, so there was no danger.”

  “A guy would think that. But there’s always danger when your heart gets involved along with your hormones. Women aren’t the only ones susceptible to that kind of thing, you know.”

  Jen flipped her hair back over her shoulder. “Tell that to Zach. He certainly seems immune.”

  “There we are, back to things seeming one way—but maybe they aren’t necessarily so. I think he’s going to a lot of trouble to push you away. Maybe the damage is already done.”

  “What damage?”

  “To his heart, silly. Don’t you know underneath all that tough-guy stuff, a man in love is a marshmallow? You got to Zach and now he can’t handle it.”

  “I don’t know.” She moved to a display of fishnet stockings and pretended to study them. “Maybe it’s better to end it this way. The internship starts in a little over a month. I have to clear out of the place I have here and get up there and find a place.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to be such a good girl anymore.”

  She looked up at her friend, surprised. “What are you talking about?”

  “Taking the easy way out. Smoothing things over. Isn’t that what you’ve always done?”

  “Hey, I thought we were here to plan a wedding, not analyze my love life.”

  “You analyzed mine and look what it got me.” She held up her hand and admired the diamond solitaire on the third finger of her left hand. “Just think about what I said. You don’t want to go off to Chicago with unfinished business left behind. If you’re going to start fresh, you need to have it out with Zach.”

  “Right. Just walk into the shop and demand to know how he’s really feeling.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if Zach even knows what he feels.”

  “He knows, even if he won’t admit it. And why not confront him in the shop? It’s where this whole thing started, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know….”

  Shelly patted her shoulder. “Think about it. Now come on. I’ve got a long list
here. And as a bride-to-be, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do to reach full prima donna mode by the wedding. Any time spent focusing on something other than myself probably counts points against me.”

  Jen laughed and followed her friend back toward the escalator. “Points?”

  “Sure. My sister was the bitch bride from hell. My parents spent a fortune trying to keep her happy. I’ve got miles to go to catch up to her in both self-centeredness and dollars spent.” She grinned over her shoulder at Jen. “I don’t expect to surpass her, but family pride calls for at least making an effort. Just another wedding tradition, you know.”

  14

  ZACH DRIFTED THROUGH THE next week under a gray cloud. He showed up for work every day and went through the motions, then rode his bike for hours each night. He cruised by Jen’s apartment, but didn’t go in, and stayed away from the phone, refusing to give in to the urge to call her. They’d said what they had to say to each other. There was no point in trying to say more. The thing to do was to hunker down and get through this, the way he’d gotten through other disappointments in his life.

  “Zach, wake up over there.”

  He looked up from his sketchpad and found Theresa frowning at him over the shoulder of a burly biker named Gordo. “I asked you to bring me that hand mirror,” she said.

  He picked up the mirror and took it to her. “What’s with you, man?” Gordo asked. “Out late last night?”

  “Don’t mind him.” Theresa laid the mirror aside and picked up the tattoo machine. “He’s been like this for days. He’s either hunched over his sketchbook or staring out the window.”

  Zach glared at her, but as usual, she ignored him.

  “Is it woman trouble?” Gordo asked.

  Zach turned his scowl on the man in the tattoo chair. “What makes you think that?”

  “Oh, man, I been there, done that, got the T-shirt. When my old lady left me last year I thought I’d go crazy. I did all kinds of stuff I said I’d never be caught dead doing.” He looked from side to side and lowered his voice. “Don’t tell anybody this, but I even cleaned house.”