Jennifer Crusie Bundle (12 page)

“Not a chance.” Lucy's voice was firm. “A rat, maybe, but not a seducer of blondes. The blonde must have seduced him. Bradley just wasn't that interested in sex.”

Zack flipped back a page in the yearbook. “Bradley is an idiot.”

“Of course, maybe it was just me.”

“It wasn't you.”

Lucy started at the warmth in his voice, but his attention was suddenly riveted to the yearbook. “I'll be damned,” he said. “I will be damned.”

“What?”

He shoved the book in front of her and pointed to a picture near the bottom of the page. The boy in the picture was good-looking in a sly way.

“I've seen that smile on kids before,” Lucy said. “I bet he was a cheat.”

“No kidding. Look at the name.” He pointed again and Lucy read the legend underneath.

Most Likely To Succeed
John Talbot Bradley

“T
hey went to high school together.” Zack's voice was thick with triumph. “Both of them named Bradley could be a coincidence. Both of them involved with banks could be a coincidence. You in the restaurant yesterday at the same time as the phone tip? Not likely, but could be a coincidence. But now this…” He took the book back from her and gazed in satisfaction at the picture. “This is not a coincidence.”

“No,” Lucy said. “It's not. I don't understand any of this, but it's not.”

Zack looked up from the book at the sadness in her voice. “Hey. This doesn't have anything to do with you.”

Lucy bit her lip. “I just feel stupid. I never saw any of this in him, and I was married to him for eight months. I feel so stupid.”

“You're not stupid.” Zack flipped the book closed and stood, holding out his hand. “Come on. Let's shove the rest of this stuff under the stairs and go up and call Tony. Then we can have dinner. What are you making, anyway?”

He grinned down at her, and she forgot Bradley for a minute and just basked in his nearness. Then she took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. “I'm not making dinner.” She dusted off the seat of her jeans. “You are.” She smiled up at him then, glad to have him so close. It was hard to stay depressed when he was so close.

“I don't know how to cook.” He sounded distracted as he stared down at her.

“What's wrong?”

Zack shook his head. “That's some smile you've got there when you let it go all the way. I hadn't seen it before. You should smile like that more often.” He turned her around and started her up the stairs, pushing her in front of him, and then stopped after the first step.

“What now?” Lucy looked back over her shoulder.

“Nice jeans,” he said, looking at her rear end. “Tight, though.”

Lucy felt herself go cold. She went up another step and turned around. “What did you say?”

He let his eyes drift up to meet hers. “I just hadn't thought of you as the tight-jeans type.”

“Neither did Bradley.” Lucy felt suddenly remote. “Is this a problem?”

Zack frowned at her. “What are you talking about? What problem? I'm leering at your rear end. Slap me if you want to, but don't look at me like that.”

“Oh.” Lucy blinked.

Zack's frown dissolved. “I get it. Bradley didn't like you in jeans.”

“Bradley liked me in suits. He hated jeans.”

“Bradley is an idiot. But then we already knew that. As far as I'm concerned, you should be wearing jeans all the time. Enough about you. I'm hungry. Move it.” He started up the stairs. “Now, as I was saying, I don't cook.”

“You do now.” Lucy turned back and speeded up to keep him off her heels, relief making her buoyant. “I'm teaching you.”

“Whatever happened to women who like to cook for men every day?” Zack asked as she opened the door to the kitchen at the top of the stairs.

“There were never any women who liked to cook for men every day. There were only women who cooked for survival and pretended to like it. And now there are men who cook for survival. Like you. Think of this as survivalist training. Very macho.”

“I don't think so,” Zack said, but he followed her through the door into the kitchen.

A
N HOUR LATER
, Z
ACK
was feeling pretty good.

“I'm really great at this,” he announced as they sat on the floor in front of the fireplace, their plates on their laps and their backs against the rose-flowered love seat.

“Zack, they're nachos.” Lucy protected hers from Einstein. “They're very good, but they're just nachos.”

“Yeah, but I made them. I think I have an instinct for this.”

“I'm just grateful you chose Mexican instead of French.” Lucy eyed the mound of food on her plate. “We'd be up to our hips in coq au vin.”

“We'll do that tomorrow night,” Zack said, and Lucy said, “No, we won't. Do you like chili?”

“Yeah, but that comes in a can. I want to chop something.” He grinned at her, and she felt her heart lurch sideways.

Oh, boy,
she thought, but all she said was, “You can make chili from scratch. And you get to chop the onions. You'll like it.”

“Great.” Zack scooped up another nacho with pride.

“Forget it,” he said to Maxwell who was doing his best impression of a starving dog. “It's all mine.”

Lucy laughed. “Anthony was right. You are like a little kid. Who's fed you up to now? Your mom?”

“Nope. Mostly, I eat out. Sometimes I open a can or nuke something, but not too often. Canned stuff tastes terrible, and the frozen stuff is worse.”

“And you're how old? This is just amazing.”

“Hey, I'm alive and healthy. I'm doing okay.” Zack scooped another nacho. “What were you discussing me with Tony for, anyway?”

“He said you have a concussion.” Lucy looked apologetic. “I feel awful about that.”

Zack met her eyes. “You still made me cook.”

“Well, I didn't feel that awful. Besides, you liked it.”

“It's the principle of the thing.” Zack ate another nacho. “What else did Tony tell you?”

Lucy blinked. “I don't remember.”

“Oh, yes, you do, Blinky. Come on. Give.”

“I thought he was very nice,” Lucy said primly, her chin in the air.

Zack shook his head. “You stay away from him. You're not his type.”

Lucy's chin dropped. “That's not what I meant. And what do you mean, I'm not his type?”

“He's into plastic Yuppies. You know, suits and running shoes and briefcases and car phones.” Zack shuddered at the thought and started on another nacho.

“And what's your type?” Lucy asked, and then mentally kicked herself. That's all she needed was for him to start thinking she was interested.

“I don't have a type,” Zack said. “I'm an equal-opportunity lover.”

“How very broad-minded of you,” Lucy said, and fed a nacho to Einstein on the sly.

“Speaking of types, how did you end up with Bradley?”

“Well, I had decided to get married because of the second law of thermonuclear dynamics.” Lucy kept her voice brisk to keep herself from getting emotional. “And about that time, he picked me up in the library at the university. I considered it a sign.”

“It wasn't.” Zack picked up another nacho, gazed at it proudly, and then ate it.

“I thought I was going to end up a crazy old lady living with my dog.”

“Dogs,” Zack corrected.

“I only had Einstein then. Maxwell and Heisenberg showed up after we moved in. Well, actually, I found Maxwell down on Fourteenth Street across from the Music Hall, but it was the same principle.” Lucy looked over at Zack. He was staring into the fire so she slipped Heisenberg a nacho. Maxwell noticed and quietly padded around the love seat to her side.

“So you got married to keep from being a crazy old lady?” Zack shook his head. “It would never have happened, but I guess I can see your point. What I still don't understand is, why Bradley?”

“He was there. It seemed right.” She shrugged and slipped Maxwell a nacho.

“It was wrong,” Zack said sternly, and then he looked from his empty plate to hers. “Do you want the rest of your nachos?”

Lucy passed her plate over, and the dogs followed silently to sit in front of Zack.

“Listen, I just fed you guys a whole bowl full of dog food, so I know you're not starving. Cut it out.” They sat and stared and he said, “Okay, one each.
One.
That's all.”

Lucy watched him feeding her dogs nachos and felt a wave of heat roll over her. She was one sick puppy. She'd been having hot flashes ever since she'd first seen him in the restaurant, and now he was turning her on by being nice to her dogs. She'd been divorced two days, and already she was lusting after a hyperkinetic dog feeder.

The phone rang, startling her, but Zack reached over and snagged the receiver off the piecrust table before she could get up and answer it.

“Hello?” He looked puzzled. “They hung up,” he said, doing the same. “Who would hang up if a man answered?”

“Well, not Tina,” Lucy said. “She'd give you the third degree. Not my parents, they wouldn't notice. Not my friends, they'd want all the dirt about you.”

“How about Bradley?”

“Bradley doesn't call here.”

“Ever?”

“I've only talked to him once since the blonde. He called the same day, but I was still pretty upset then, so I told him I never wanted to hear from him again. And he asked me to please not tell Tina he'd called, and I was so disgusted, I hung up. Oh, and there was one other time. I saw him at the lawyer's the day we signed the papers. He said hello. And he sent me the note. That's it.”

Zack frowned. “That's weird. What's wrong with him?”

“Nothing. He's happy with his blonde.”

“When I find Bradley,” Zack said, “I hope he resists arrest.”

“You can't arrest Bradley. You don't know that he's done anything wrong.” Lucy stood and picked up Zack's plate from the floor.

“Oh, yes, I do,” Zack said. “Even if he didn't shoot the blonde, he's a rat. And I, for one, am going to make sure he's sorry.” Then he popped the last of the nachos into his mouth, got up, and followed Lucy out to the kitchen.

Anthony came over to see the yearbook, and they searched the downstairs until eleven that night and found nothing except Bradley's note to Lucy, asking her to lunch.

“He doesn't sound too damn apologetic,” Zack said. “Listen to this. ‘Please meet me at the diner on Second Street, so that I can explain to you why you've acted hastily.' And you were going to meet him?” He narrowed his gaze at her. “You must still be hung up on him.”

“Of course not,” Lucy said. “I don't want him back. I just want to understand what happened. And anyway, that's just Bradley's way. He'd never admit that he was wrong. Just the fact that he wrote and asked me to meet him is amazing. Bradley never asked for anything in his life. He always assumed people would do what he wanted, and usually they did. He was very…authoritative.” Lucy took back the note and read it again. “Poor Bradley. He must have been really upset. He even wrote, ‘Please.”'

“I don't like Bradley,” Zack said.

“Actually, neither do I,” Lucy said.

“Good. Hold that thought,” Zack said.

W
HEN
A
NTHONY LEFT AND
Lucy went upstairs to take her shower, Zack enjoyed the fire, the dogs, and one last beer.
This is nice,
he thought, stretching his legs in front of the fire.
This is comfortable. This is…

He stopped in the middle of a sip of beer.

This was a lot like what Anthony had been talking about in the diner the other day.

He put the bottle down to consider. Anthony had offered him two impossibilities as protection for Lucy, knowing he'd reject them and volunteer.

He'd been set up.

“I'll kill him,” he said to the dogs, and Heisenberg flopped over on his back.

Well, it was no problem. He'd just call Anthony tomorrow and tell him to send over a replacement. Zack picked up his beer to drain it. Not Eliot, of course. He was too old and too slow.

And not Junior, either, because…

Zack stopped again, the bottle halfway to his mouth. There was nothing wrong with Junior. He was young and strong and quick, and he would do a terrific job of protecting Lucy.

Right here in her house.

In fact, Junior could be sitting right where Zack was by tomorrow night. All Zack had to do was call Anthony.

Hell.

He got up and stomped to the kitchen to throw his bottle in the recycling box, whistling to the dogs as he went, and two of them went trotting past him as he opened the back door.

Maxwell and Einstein. Zack looked around for Heisenberg, and then remembered. “Oh, for crying out loud, dead dog,” he said, and heard the thump as Heisenberg rolled over and the click of his toenails on the hardwood floor.

“Thank you for joining us,” Zack said and closed the door behind him.

W
HEN HE CLIMBED THE
stairs later, he met Lucy at the top, wrapped in a floor-length white terry-cloth robe big enough to cover a couch. Her hair was in loose, damp, greenish ringlets, and she looked vaguely like a cover on a science-fiction book he'd once read.

“I was going down to let the dogs out.” She stepped back from the top of the stairs.