Cupid’s Confederates

him tonight because she was exhausted to the point of being cranky and wanted nothing more than to wash her hair, soak in a tub and fall into bed.

Her hair wasn’t washed yet. She was still wearing gold cords and his old brown sweater, and she was kneeling on the kitchen counter, dragging dishes down from the top shelf and passing them into her mother’s waiting hands. Liz popped him her usual bright smile before Bett swiveled her soft eyes in his direction, tossing a “Hi, honey” to him before she impatiently finished a sentence to her mother. He made no reply. But then, Bett wasn’t expecting one.

Absently, he opened a cupboard, while tuning in on the newest crisis under discussion. Thanksgiving. Evidently, everything in the cupboard had to be washed before Thanksgiving whether it was to be used or not. The preholiday mania emanated from Liz; Bett was laughing, but her voice was strained.

Zach studied the cupboard’s contents. These days the top shelf by the refrigerator held a full supply of alcoholic beverages; they needed those to entertain. After a moment, he decided on neat whiskey, poured a couple shots in a glass, and wandered toward his study.

He closed the door, and a feeling halfway between relief and anger pulsed through him as he slouched down in the old antique office chair behind the desk. The room was peaceful and silent, filled with his books and farming magazines, the oak desk he loved, the burnt-orange carpet that blended in a soothing way with the dark wood paneling. Bett’s pewter collection, he noticed suddenly, had been relegated to the top shelf in here. Restlessly, he shoved a booted foot against the desk, swirled the amber liquid in his glass and after a moment or two, leaned back his head.

***

He was in much the same position some twenty minutes later.

“Zach?” Bett’s head peeked around the corner of the door, her eyes uncertainly seeking the still form of her husband behind the desk. Zach had come in from the meeting with a rare aura around him that spelled mood. Her pulse had been beating unevenly ever since, and the cool blue eyes staring back at her didn’t help any. “What’s wrong?” she said quietly.

“Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted a few minutes of peace and quiet.”

The words were innocuous enough. It was the slight edge to his tone. Testy, unwelcoming…hostile? Bett forced a smile. “Did your meeting go okay?”

“Fine. Your mother go to bed?”

“Yes.” Tight little balls were collecting in every muscle in her body. They had been threatening all day. “Tired?”

“Not really.”

He hadn’t shut her out like this in a long time. In the next life, Bett decided, she was going to marry a ranting shouter. Zach was unbearably calm in anger. His rare silences sent a tense rush of panic up and down her nerves, anxiety she just didn’t know how to allay. “Something is wrong,” she said hesitantly.

“You’ve been up three nights in a row,” he said flatly. “Just go get some sleep, Bett.”

“You’ll be up soon?”

“Sooner or later.”

She edged back out of the doorway. His tone of voice gave her very little choice. She glanced at the stairs, but found herself wandering toward the kitchen again, dragging her hand through her hair. After spending the past three hours with the silver polish, all her muscles were complaining. Bett felt irritable. Her mother hadn’t even thought of the project until after dinner. It wasn’t a totally unreasonable idea; they were feeding three extra mouths at Thanksgiving, and Elizabeth always panicked if everything wasn’t just so for a holiday. Which was fine. Only now Bett was too darn tired to wash her hair, and when she didn’t wash her hair every second day she felt irritable.

And she was about as sleepy as a young baby with colic. Who on earth cared about hair? Her stomach understood that Zach was angry; it was knotting up in fists. Actually, Zach was very rarely angry. Zach was the easygoing one, the patient half of the pair, the control-over-emotional-upheaval half. When he slipped out of character, it was amazing how fast the whole fabric of their lives unraveled. Absently, Bett gazed around the spotless kitchen, then wandered to the liquor cupboard. She poured herself something or other from a green bottle, took a sip and grimaced. Firewater, she thought dryly. The stuff did slide nicely down her throat, but it seemed to settle around all the knots in her stomach and not do anything about them. Nor did it miraculously make her sleepy.

There was another sip yet in the glass, which she carried back with her to the study door. Taking a breath, she pushed open the door again. With her chin just slightly uptilted, she very determinedly and in total silence curled unobtrusively in the far corner of the old leather couch behind Zach’s desk.

Zach said nothing at her second intrusion. His hair was layered from the wind, thick and brown and warm under the light behind him, but his face could have been carved in marble. He looked strikingly handsome when he was like that. An artist would have seen it: the compelling male, the ice of anger, the pride and control; it was bone and flesh and man and Zach, handsome in a way no other man could be. Only Bett didn’t need him quite that good- looking. “It’s been building all week, hasn’t it?” she said softly.

“There is no crime in wanting a few minutes alone.”

“You’re angry.”

He didn’t hesitate. “As hell.”

“At…me.”

“At you.”

She set down the glass, thinking of all the times they’d bickered. Zach was darn close to a bastard when he had a cold; she was impossible to live with about the third day into a snow-in. That was bickering. This was something else. If on rare occasions Zach had turned icy before, that was like the cube versus the berg this time. And she didn’t have the least idea what was wrong.

Zach picked up a pencil from the desk, weighing the thing in his hands, and then started idly flipping it over, eraser tip to lead, then lead tip to eraser. “It’s way past time you called it off,” he said flatly.

She waited. If that was supposed to mean something, she most definitely didn’t understand what.

“I’m the one who asked your mother here. She always did strike me as a little off the wall. In a nice way. Whatever. Maybe I didn’t really understand how nerve-racking she’d be day by day, but I thought I could handle it.” His eyes suddenly met hers, hard and flat. “And over time, I discovered that I can handle it. She drives me absolutely nuts, but I love her, too. And if I hadn’t given a damn about her, I would have found a way to deal with her. For your sake,” he said quietly. “Only, Bett, you’re undermining both of us, and I’m furious.”

She opened her mouth, but he didn’t give her a chance to say anything.

“You’re the one who’s always had trouble with her, Bett. I know you as wife and lover, not as daughter. That whole scene of daughter makes you unhappy, guilty, unsure-I don’t know what you want to call it. Sometime or other you had to work out those feelings. This seemed like a good time. She needed you, and you wanted to be there for her-fine. Because even if every chip was down, I was there to help. I thought we’d deal with it together.”

“I thought that’s what we’ve been doing,” Bett said softly. “I don’t understand, Zach. That’s exactly what’s been happening-we talked. If you don’t think I appreciate what you-”

“To hell with that.” Zach lurched out of his chair, tossed the pencil on the desk, jammed his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the bookcase in the shadows. “I walked into this house tonight and didn’t even recognize the place. It isn’t home. It isn’t my house. It isn’t the place you and I put together anymore. And while Liz may be the one who made the changes, she’s made them with your consent.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Bett said defensively. “You were the one who asked her here. She could hardly come and stay for any period of time without leaving her things around-”

“If we had a child,” Zach interrupted flatly, “I expect the house would be total chaos. Diapers and interrupted love scenes and bottles and crying and dinner at odd hours. I keep thinking about that. Of how I would be bothered by that. But the truth is, two bits, I wouldn’t be bothered by it at all.”

His head was certainly going faster than hers; she didn’t understand the connection. “I don’t know what