All or Nothing (26 page)

Jen pulled her hands from his with impatience. “You don't understand. I don't want to do any of this,” she said, her words low and hot. “I don't want to lie to my family. I don't want to pretend.”

“But it'll be fun...”

“Only to you.” Jen turned and stepped away from him. She had to get out of there before he persuaded her to do something she'd regret.

“Wait a minute. You were the one who was laughing about your family in your grandmother's kitchen.”

“No!” Jen shook her head. “I was laughing at
you
.”

Zach sobered instantly. “At
me
?”

“At your shock that anyone could be so weird. My family is unconventional in some ways, but we care about each other, and we don't deliberately hurt or embarrass each other.” Jen felt herself lecturing but she didn't care. “If that's the difference between having money and not, I'll go with not having any, thanks just the same.”

“So, it's about money. That's really why you're saying no.”

“No. It's about principle,” Jen said firmly. “It's about values. It's about trust.”

“Why wouldn't you trust me?”

“Why
would
I trust you?”

Zach smiled. “Because I'm charming and funny and a better man than Steve.”

“A different man than Steve, maybe,” Jen insisted despite the untimely skip of her heart. “Whether you're better or not is anyone's guess.”

Zach's eyes narrowed. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Is it better to ditch someone a month before the wedding or at the altar?” Jen held up her hands. “Seems like hair-splitting to me.”

“I didn't know he did that to you.”

“You didn't ask.”

“But it's not the same, Jen. You can ditch me, if you'd rather. I'm good with it.”

“That's not all of it.”

“Then tell me.”

Jen hesitated. She glanced around his apartment and knew she could end this for once and for all. She could make a comment that would cut to his heart, but she didn't want to hurt his feelings.

But then, it was his feelings or hers.

“Go ahead,” Zach urged. “Dish it out. I can take it. I had my Wheaties this morning.”

“Why would any woman marry you?” Jen asked abruptly, putting one hand on her hip as she gestured to the apartment with the other one. She took a deep breath and plunged on, despite the shock in Zach's eyes. “You live like a kid. You eat like a kid. You think like a kid, focused on fun and nothing else. You survive on your daddy's money and it seems that the only motivation you ever had was to tick him off. You have no plan, no job, no ambition and no dream. You're neither old enough nor young enough to get away with that crap. No one with a speck of sense would even pretend to be marrying you.”

There, it was said.

And she felt badly, but she would not take it back. Jen knew she should have marched out the door right then and there, but she couldn't do it. Not yet. She had to wait for his response.

Did she want him to be devastated?

Or to bounce back, unaffected?

She didn't have time to decide before Zach—as usual—found another option altogether and, one more time, surprised the heck out of her.

* * *

Zach hid his thoughts, making a point of patting the dog while he decided upon his comeback. Okay, it was an unexpected assault but not an unjustified one.

It was clear that Jen expected him to be shattered by her truth-telling, but the real truth was that he'd been thinking much the same thing, on some level, for a while. It was kind of reassuring to have it said out loud, maybe a bit less scary that way than when it had just been rattling around in his brain.

But this seriously struck him as a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Zach considered her, trying to gauge her fragility. She stood with her hands on her hips, eyes flashing, as invincible as he'd ever seen her. She was the Amazon queen. Maybe that was why she was turning him down: she would prefer to choose her own love slave and drag him off by the hair, rather than just go with a volunteer.

Zach decided to say what he thought. “And I'm supposed to be wounded by this observation, coming as it is from a woman who lives with her mother and waits tables for a living.” He spoke lightly but Jen caught her breath. “I don't see a lot of evidence of your plan, ambition or dream, Jen, and even you admit that your job is a crummy one.”

To his surprise, she didn't give back as good as she'd gotten. Not this time. He'd found the Achilles heel of his Amazon, if mythology could get that mixed.

Jen's eyes filled with tears, which she blinked away furiously. She didn't want him to see them, he could understand that, because she liked to be seen at her strongest. All the same, he knew he had hit a nerve.

He felt like apologizing, except she'd hit harder than he had.

“I'm sorry,” he began but Jen interrupted him, one hand held up between them.

“Fair enough,” she said, her voice husky and her pose defensive. “I guess now you can see why this just isn't going to work.” She hauled open the door and headed for the elevator, without looking back.

Zach watched her, wishing he knew how to fix this. Roxie whimpered and Zach had to hold her collar to keep her from following Jen.

“I'll see you around, then,” he called, his characteristic optimism taking a dive when he noted how savagely Jen pressed the elevator button.

Jen gave him a dark look, but he could see that she was going to cry. He might have gone after her, but he already knew that she'd prefer him to not see her tears.

“You'd better not,” she said tightly. “Or I'll call the cops.”

Zach didn't think of a brilliant comeback before the elevator came. For once, it arrived quickly. Jen didn't look at him when she got into it, just focused on the control panel as if it was the most fascinating thing she'd ever seen. The doors closed almost immediately, leaving him with the conviction that he'd never see her again.

It wasn't a good feeling.

Roxie whimpered again and nudged his hand.

“Yup,” he told the dog. “She's gone. After a particularly smooth move on my part.” Zach closed the door to his apartment. Roxie went to the window, apparently wanting to catch a glimpse of Jen as she departed. Zach knew the dog watched for him this way, because he'd seen her from the street below.

He stood at the door and looked around. His apartment felt vast and empty. The sound of Roxie's nails echoed as he'd never noticed before.

“You were a big help,” he said, his heart not really in his complaint. “Couldn't you have begged for a belly rub or done something cute? Women go for that kind of thing.”

Roxie ignored him, her attention caught by something below. Zach found himself standing beside her, watching a dark-haired woman turn up her collar against the swirl of snow as she walked away from his building with long, decisive steps. This time her hands were bunched in her pockets, fists driven deep by anger.

Or sorrow.

It was as if she couldn't put distance between them quickly enough. She wiped at her face with one hand and Zach felt like a bigger loser than he ever had before.

Which was saying something.

When Jen disappeared into the T station—presumably to disappear forever—Zach returned to the kitchen, snagged the bottle of champagne and settled in to finish it himself. It would only go flat, otherwise. He had to admit that his brilliant plan hadn't exactly come together.

There were quotes from famous people on the matter of champagne printed on the label. Zach paused after he filled his glass to read the one from Winston Churchill.

In victory I deserve it; in defeat I need it.

Zach could drink to that.

* * *

Jen was fuming.

A waitress who lives with her mother.

Zach's charge had power because it was true. What was her dream? What was she doing to accomplish it? And who was she to call him on his chips when her own life didn't look so hot?

She raged home from the bus stop, ignored her mother's query about Zach's health and took the stairs two at a time to her room. She heard Cin make some comment about a lovers' spat and resisted the urge to kill her sister instead of Zach. She chucked her coat on the bed, fired up the computer and logged into web site of the college she had attended.

It took an hour of going back and forth through the calendar, of reading the rules for admission and readmission, and a ping to an admin that got a quick reply, to tell Jen what she needed to know.

She could reactivate her student number, by crossing the admissions department's palm with silver.

Big surprise. Money fixed everything.

The thing was that she could finish her degree by the end of summer term, if she went full time in the winter and again in spring and summer term. She'd graduate with her bachelor's in business administration.

In less than a year, she could have her degree. She could have a real job and make real money to pay off her very real debt.

It was a big step from committing to the construction of a piece of knitted fruit or even a pair of socks. Eight months of intense study from here to graduation. The thought nearly stopped Jen's heart. The possibility of doing it part-time was unthinkable. Could she envision herself surviving even eight whole months?

Could she afford to do it?

Could she afford to
not
do it?

Jen pushed back from her desk and looked at the screen. All it took was money and time. She was suddenly very jealous of Zach Coxwell but she wasn't going to think about that.

She was going to appreciate what she had. Or at least, she would begin to appreciate what she had more than she had been appreciating it for the last couple of years.

Natalie was right: Jen was alive and it was time to start living again. It was time to make a commitment to something bigger than another small knitting project and another shift waiting tables. She would have liked to have given her mother credit for the change, but Jen was honest enough with herself to admit that it had been a certain infuriatingly confident man who had finally pushed her to make something of herself.

Too bad Zach would never know.

Impulsively, she returned to the part of the web site that would let her reactivate her student number and did so. Jen was going to do this and no one was going to change her mind. She paid the fee by credit card and waited for the confirmation with her heart pounding.

How would she pay for this? Jen stifled the voice of doubt that had gotten far too much airtime lately. Once upon a time, she had gotten on a plane to England with no firm plan other than to see the world. Once she had walked into a taverna in Italy and asked for a job in her mediocre Italian. Once she had taken chances, been bold, faced risk.

This was nothing. Jen registered for a full roster of classes for the winter without any further hesitation. The balance due posted to her account nearly made her lungs seize.

This was the right thing to do, she reminded herself. She logged out, then went downstairs to negotiate a loan from her mother.

She might be living here, paying it back in increments, for twenty years, but Jen didn't care. She had a purpose. She had a dream. And she was going after it.

It must just have been human nature that made her want to call Zach and tell him so.

Or maybe do something truly mature, like say ‘nyahhhhh' into the phone and hang up on him. That would impress him. Guys went for that behavior all the time.

When they were six.

Which, she reminded herself, didn't exactly put Zach out of the picture.

Did six-year-olds kiss like he did? Jen didn't want to know.

J
en had hit a nerve. It wasn't strictly true that Zach didn't have a dream or a goal, but it was true that he hadn't visibly done much about pursuing his objective. He had never even named it, for fear of his father's decimation of it.

Zach wondered whether his father would have risen from the grave to destroy the notion of his son becoming an ‘artsy-fartsy liberal'. If sheer willpower was the only credential necessary to haunt someone from the great beyond, Zach figured he could count on his father showing anytime now.

There hadn't been room for Zach's dreams in his father's universe: Robert Coxwell's children were supposed to want what Robert Coxwell had decided would be best. The only possible choice was to become younger versions of Robert Coxwell: to get good enough grades to go to law school, to graduate with honors and ace the bar exam, to practice criminal law, and thus amass fame and fortune. Especially the fortune bit.

But Zach had never been that wild for money.

Even so, the fate of Zach and his two older brothers had been decided when they had made their first yells and the particular shape their genital equipment had been noted.

Zach had hated law school. He had hated it so much that it had been impossible for him to put up and shut up, as he expected his brother Matt had done, to just get through it and do something else afterward.

He sat on the floor and liked that photo from Venice more with every passing minute. He could remember now how he'd spent hours as a kid with
National Geographic
magazines, not reading the articles but looking at the pictures. He'd ‘borrowed' money from his mother's purse to buy every issue.

Come to think of it, they must be stored at Grey Gables somewhere. It was such a big house that nothing ever got dumped or given away: it just got nudged aside. The attic was an amazing place and had been another haunt of his as a child.

Maybe he should get the magazines back. Matt, who had bought out his siblings' shares in the house after Robert's death and moved in with his family, wouldn't care. If anything, Matt would probably be glad to be rid of them. Zach could put them in a bookcase, right over there.