believe she had a hidden device invisibly connected to Bett’s thigh that lit up lights when he touched his wife-but this week, she’d picked on Zach. Twice when he was fresh out of the shower, once when he’d been shaving and once when he had the stupid idea that he could corner Bett for a little kiss and tickle if they were safely behind a door
Elizabeth was remarkable. The farm season was finally winding down. Used to immediately claiming more time with Bett, Zach suddenly found his wife hovered over by a more zealous chaperone than a vestal virgin in early Rome would rate. The lady was rarely shakable. She never slept. Come in for a nice relaxing cup of coffee, and she was full of exhausting chatter. Turn on a football game, and the washing machine went manic. One thirty-second grab at Bett’s fanny, and those eyes were all over him. On occasion, Liz hesitantly suggested she might go to town by herself, and they all but pushed her out the door… It was a question of making hay while the sun shone.
In the meantime, if he’d had any idea how much turmoil one simple little dinner date with Aaron was going to cause this household in anxiety and preparation… Zach went down the stairs two at a time, headed for the kitchen and started haphazardly opening cupboards.
The thought of nutrition made him ill. Broccoli was a very healthy food. Broccoli and salmon loaf went well together; they’d had that combo twice this week. Zach searched the bottom cupboard until he found a can of spaghetti in the very back, one of a few cans Bett had stocked about two years before in case of a winter snow-in. Not that they’d ever use that kind of thing, she’d told him. Bett was crazy. He’d lived on the stuff in college. And the thought of pure starch delighted him.
He opened the can and was pouring the contents into a pan when the doorbell rang. Absently wiping his hands on a towel, he strode toward the front door and greeted Aaron, he hoped without showing in expression or action that he would have bribed him to take Liz out if the dear man hadn’t thought of the idea himself.
Aaron wasn’t really husband potential for Elizabeth or anyone else; he simply liked conversation and didn’t like to eat alone. An old bachelor at sixty, he was a gentle man, and provided the ideal means of getting Elizabeth’s feet wet, so to speak. Dressed in simple dark pants and a corduroy jacket, Aaron smiled easily as he stepped inside. Zach thought wryly that the poor man couldn’t possibly guess that his arrival had been prefaced by an entire week of agonizing over hairstyles and new shoes, deep depressions over the state of Elizabeth’s wardrobe, and searching out the town for matching purses for every outfit she
“Can I get you a drink?” Zach asked, hoping for his own sake that Aaron would accept.
“No, thanks, Zach. We’ll probably have a little wine at the restaurant. Season go okay for you and Bett?”
“Terrific. Been busy?”
Aaron’s schoolteacher background showed. He told Zach all about his arthritis, his grapes and the politics in the community, while Zach moved into the kitchen, stirring the spaghetti. Finally Bett popped in the door.
“Aaron! How are you?” she said vibrantly.
Zach caught a whiff of Bett’s perfume. The nights were turning cold; she’d slipped into that velour thing she liked to wear on autumn nights. The wine color gave her skin a fragile porcelain softness, especially in the V that led up her long throat. Her bare toes peeked out from the legs of the jumpsuit; obviously, Bett had dressed in a hurry. Far too much of a hurry-though the style of the outfit was loose and flowing, he could tell from the way she moved that she didn’t have a stitch on underneath it. Her hair was wisping all around her face, gold strands only half dried. The smell of her skin drew him, like some hypnotizing-
“…all right, Zach?”
He blinked, his spoon still dipped in the spaghetti. Belatedly, he noticed the frantic expression she was conveying with her eyes, the slight, desperate nudge of her head toward the doorway.
“I’ll keep Aaron company,” Bett prodded him frantically, and then smiled brilliantly for Aaron.
As he left the kitchen, Zach decided quite rationally that he was going to poke little pins into a voodoo doll of Elizabeth if there was even one more tiny problem concerning this evening with Aaron, particularly if she dragged Bett into it.
Elizabeth, as it happened, was standing at the top of the stairs in a blue-and-white polka-dotted dress, groomed, perfumed and wringing her hands. “Zach, Brittany is furious with me,” she said tearfully. “I’m not going. I just can’t go. Please say something to Aaron. I just can’t…”
Zach took the imaginary pins out of the imaginary doll with a sigh, put his arm around his mother-in-law and motioned to her to sit down next to him at the top of the stairs. “It’s just a dinner,” he said soothingly. “But for God’s sake, Liz, if you really don’t want to go, there’s no crisis. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. And if it’s going to cause you this much anxiety-”
“The last time I dated anyone-it was Chet, of course-my mother served milk and cookies when he came to the door. For heaven’s sake, I don’t know how to talk to a man anymore. Not
“Well, I have no intention of kicking you for being so stupid.” Absently, he realized that that was a most inappropriate thing to say. “Liz, if you want to go, go. If you don’t want to, that’s fine, too. It was supposed to be fun for you, that’s all, and if the evening is really going to get you this upset-”
“It would be terrible for Aaron if I backed out now, when he’s already here,” Elizabeth said nervously.
“He’ll live through it,” Zach assured her. And for all that Elizabeth was a total nuisance who was driving him clear out of his mind, he really didn’t want her upset. He was fond of her, felt protective toward her. Any idea of marrying her off was based on caring for her and wanting a good life for her; it had never been a purely selfish wish to get her off their hands. On honest days, he occasionally felt like offering sacrifices to the gods that Bett had inherited mostly her father’s genes, but that was neither here nor there.
“You think I should go,” Elizabeth said distractedly.
“Nope.” Zach stood up, his voice firm. “You just got a headache, whatever. I’ll take care of Aaron. All Bett and I want is for you to be happy, and for all this trauma-”
Zach’s jaw dropped slightly as she stood up and took the step ahead of him, a definite hint of girlish swagger to her hips.
“I’ve never stood up anyone in my life, and I’m not about to start now,” she declared, and turned with a small smile. “Thanks, Zach. I knew I could count on you not to push me.” She turned to descend the stairs.
Zach stared after her. Governments would crumble if they tried to use Elizabeth’s logic. And for one entire evening, he no longer had to try.
Bett shot him a grateful look when the two came through the doorway. She didn’t know what Zach had done or how, but her mother greeted Aaron all relaxed and smiling, taking his arm as he ushered her out of the house. Bett stared through the window at the porch light shedding a yellow glow on the couple as they walked toward Aaron’s car. “Would it be terrible for me to admit I’m perfectly exhausted?” she murmured idly, and turned slightly. “I don’t know what you just did, Zach, but I admit I was close to the end of my rope.” Her eyebrows rose just a little. Zach was going around the living room turning off lights. “What are you doing?”
“Lock the door, would you?”
“Pardon?”
“Lock the door.”
For the first time in the five years they’d lived there, Bett locked the door. “Are we expecting burglars?” she inquired interestedly.
“Is the car gone?”
Bett glanced back at the window. “Yup.”
“Want to switch out the yard light for now?”
She switched out the yard light. Night rushed in in an instant; it was equally black inside and out, a dusty black made of billions of tiny charcoal circles all in motion in front of her eyes. “I’ll bet there’s some point to this,” she suggested wryly.
Zach made some muffled answer from the kitchen, where the last hint of faint light suddenly winked off. Bett stood in the silence for an instant, feeling the craziest little chill crawl up her spine. She could see nothing, hear nothing.
In the darkness, a stranger suddenly reached for her, a man she couldn’t see but only feel. An inexplicable fear made her stiffen…but in that very same moment her senses registered somehow a very handsome man, even if she couldn’t see him in the blackness. He was tall and he smelled like lime and musk and somehow like an autumn
