Chapter Forty-Two
"Knock–knock. May I come in?" Livia Cudahy asked from the open doorway of Zach's hospital room the next morning.
"Of course." Sitting up in bed, Zach motioned with alacrity for her to enter. "Come in and sit down if you have the time." He could tell, from her air of suppressed energy, that she had come by for the express purpose of telling him something, but he determined to let her tell him in her own good time.
The attorney came in and took a chair, and Zach pushed his half-finished breakfast tray away from his lap. She frowned at him. "Don't not finish your breakfast on my account, Zach. I'm sure you need it. Oh, and by the way—this is known as nagging, something you'll be experiencing soon, I hear. Congratulations on your upcoming marriage."
"Thank you, Livia," Zach smiled briefly. "Yes, Kendall and I plan to tie the knot as soon as I get out of here."
She blinked. "Well—one of you is a fast worker! And knowing both of you, I'm not going to lay odds on which one of you it is. I'll just play it safe and wish you both the best. You must be in a big hurry if you're going straight from your sick bed. How are you feeling?""
Ignoring the question, Zach said, "Thank you again. I meant to contact you to discuss another matter that arose two days ago, which other events"—he nodded vaguely around the hospital room—"have precluded bringing up."
Livia looked curious. "Oh? Care to give me a clue what that might be, Zach? I have a few minutes before the hospital board sends out a search party for me."
"Seems I'm Ethan's sole heir, since he didn't leave a will," Zach replied slowly. "The Cambias board has stepped forward to offer me Ethan's former position as CEO."
She gave a low, ladylike whistle. "Whoa. That's certainly something your lowly attorney needs to know. What did you tell them—or have you?"
"Nothing, Livia, until I can discuss it at length yet with Kendall. Regardless of my decision, however, as my attorney I'd like you to be in on it."
Livia nodded briskly. "Well, of course. I imagine the Cambias board is quite impatient for your answer, too, so keep me informed. And now before I take my leave I have a piece of news for you, Zach—good news, I hasten to add."
"Have you?" Zach asked noncommittally, waiting to hear the reason for Livia's visit.
"My, what a cool customer you are," Livia said smoothly. "All right, this is hot off the presses—I just got the word from their attorney as I was leaving my office a little while ago and haven't even had a chance to tell Kendall—but it concerns you equally, Zach. The Laverys are dropping the motion they filed for custody of Miranda."
Very little fazed Zach, but this piece of information nearly did the trick. He leaned forward intently, wanting to make sure he'd understood her correctly. "What did you say, Livia?"
Gesturing with her hands, Livia replied, "You heard me. Ryan and Greenlee have backed off their custody suit. That removes the only real obstacle to you and Kendall obtaining formal custody of Miranda. So just say the word and I'll start the ball rolling again."
"They dropped it just like that?"
"Apparently. This was the first I'd heard about it."
"Any idea why they backed off?" Zach persevered.
"No, not an inkling," Livia shrugged. "There wasn't time to go into reasons."
"It seems a rather abrupt thing for them to do, don't you think?"
"Zach, when you've been in this business as long as I have, nothing fazes you. I will try my best to get back to you later today on it. In the meantime perhaps you'll find out for yourself. Perhaps I should have waited until I had more details to break the news, but I honestly thought it would perk you up."
"Livia…I'm sure you agree that any unforeseen change to the status quo calls for some investigation," Zach said.
"Well, yes, normally—but let me explain something, Zach. Typically, we lawyers only lie to each other when we're trying to get or keep something for our clients—not when we're trying to give it away. At any rate, I must be going to my meeting. So do take care, and I will be in touch." Livia stood and touched him on the arm.
Zach looked up at her. "I appreciate your patience with me, Livia."
She laughed. "Oh, caution is a good thing, Zach—except when you're getting married, eh? Which reminds me, why don't I put in a call to Kendall, my other client, when I get back to the office. I'd like to hear somebody squeal with joy over this," the attorney added pointedly, with a question mark in her voice.
Placing his hand over her wrist on his arm, Zach said, "Don't do that, Livia. I'll tell Kendall."
Livia looked a little disappointed. "Zach, you k now you're really stealing all my fun this morning. Very well, if you insist. It's great news for the two of you to get married on. And if I don't see Kendall before she becomes Mrs. Slater, I'll count on you to give the bride an extra kiss from me." Leaning over him, she placed her lips to his cheek. "Here's one for you."
Once his lawyer was gone, Zach remained motionless, staring into space, absorbing what Livia had just told him and turning it over in his mind. On its surface, she had given him very good news indeed. Miranda had no doubt been in good hands with the Laverys, but in Zach's opinion, an opinion he'd been willing to marry Kendall in order to realize, she belonged in Kendall's hands.
Now, for whatever reason, Kendall no longer faced the uphill court battle against her sometimes closest friend in order to assert her right to her niece—the battle in which Kendall's often disreputable history might have annihilated her. For despite the way Livia had framed the announcement—and unbeknownst to her—the fight had always been Kendall's much more than Zach's. He'd considered himself only a support player, though he and Kendall were both girded for the battle. Now armistice had arrived without a single shot being fired.
Kendall's won, Zach thought, feeling a strange restlessness with the words' reverberation through him. Kendall victorious.
Livia Cudahy had noted his distinct lack of enthusiasm. Fortunately she'd interpreted it as caution. For how could Livia have suspected the truth—that with no real impediment to Kendall's custody of Miranda, the basis for Kendall's marriage to him had evaporated too? And in a way Zach didn't even attempt to deny to himself, any more than he could pretend otherwise to Livia, the Laverys' change of heart had thrown him for a complete loop. It meant he was no longer indispensable to Kendall. But somehow Kendall was indispensable to him. In all her capricious, beguiling, exasperating, loyal, tactless, compassionate, unique glory.
Love wasn't a word or even a concept whose admission came easily to Zach's lips; his very psyche instinctually eschewed using or acknowledging it, unless toward an object as harmless as Miranda. Kendall was anything but harmless, she was potentially dangerous. So vital, so unpredictably stimulating, so utterly, achingly, incandescently alive she could singe you simply by looking at you. If you crossed her, or someone she loved, she singed you like a blowtorch. But she could soothe your pain with the therapeutic warmth of her look, her voice, her touch…of her regret too.
Haltingly arising from the bed, Zach looked longingly at the morphine pump. He'd been disconnected from it before breakfast, and he missed it already. His backside ached abominably and if Kendall were here she'd tease him about his sore ass, because healing came in different forms. It could distract you from your pain long enough to make you feel fine. It could deflect the venom from your dwindling flank of demons back on their own scaly hides. Most of all it could shake your conviction that you no longer knew how to love. That made Kendall dangerous indeed.
I was no match for her, Zach thought.
Whatever word he called it by…her affect on him was the same as any woman's on the man deep in love with her. The reality struck him full in the face, raising bruises that would show if he ignored them. Agreeing to marry Kendall was quixotic but necessary. Falling in love was not part of the deal. But what was the old saying? No good deed went unpunished. So there you were…and there he was, at a significant crossroads, perhaps.
For the first time in a very long time, isolation did not feel to Zach like his natural condition. Kendall's vivid spirit had wheedled its way past his bodily and emotional armor, compelling his secreted soul to emerge and enjoy tasting freedom once more…it was that which was addicting, not the morphine.
Getting dressed was a trying process. Zach took it slow and easy. After all, as he had once advised Kendall…save your strength for the fight you can win, and this was a fight he intended to win. He was almost finished dressing, just sliding his feet into his suede slip-ons, when another visitor knocked at the door.
"Zach honey? Are you still in there, and are you decent?"
"Yes to the first question only, Myrtle," he called. "Come in."
Bustling in, Myrtle's face crumpled in feigned disappointment when she saw that Zach was fully clothed. "Now, Zach, where I come from, 'decent' means got your clothes on."
Zach laughed. "Sorry to disappoint. I took it by the other definition. Don't tell me an upstanding member of the community such as you meant it any other way."
Myrtle let out a roar of laughter. "Oh, Zach. The only thing upstanding about me is my hair and that's because of all the shellac they put on it at the Glamorama yesterday. But it is good to see you up and dressed. How was your night?"
"I survived," he replied briefly.
"Good. Then let's not beat around the bush, shall we? I took Kendall home with me and brought her back this morning. She's checking on Miranda now. Before she comes down here, I have something to ask and I expect a straight answer."
One of Zach's eyebrows arched. "That sounds ominous. Haven't I always been straight with you, Myrtle?"
"I thought you had, Zach. But…look, don't you take that tone with me," she scolded affectionately. "I wasn't born yesterday nor even the day before yesterday. Now, I'm as big a romantic fool as the next woman, but I'm not a pushover either. It was to me Kendall came when she found out Greenlee was trying to grab Miranda legally, remember. And you were there too. The very next day—you and Kendall ran off to get married."
"And your question?"
"Kendall's a wonderful girl, and I've always liked you, Zach. I'm all in favor of you two getting married and providing a good home for that precious child. If you can do that, I'll go along with it and not care why you're doing it. But…."
Knowing she was waiting for it, Zach repeated, "But?"
"But no matter what you tell the rest of the world," she finished, "I would like not to have the wool pulled over my eyes. I would like to know if it's on the up and up."
Zach was silent. At last he said, "You didn't ask Kendall this?"
Pinning him with an unusually stern gaze, Myrtle replied, "No. She was very quiet last night, very subdued. Not acting at all like a virgin on the verge, if you know what I mean, a girl on the eve of her wedding, and wipe that smirk off your face."
"Because she thinks—you'll pardon the expression, I'm sure—I'm not up to it so soon after my surgery." Zach's mind was racing a thousand miles a minute. He had ascribed Kendall's hesitation about marrying him today to that, but was there more to it? His condition certainly wasn't that dire to cause her distress.
"I hope that's all it is, Zach honey. But before you go running off with her, I want you to make darn sure you and Kendall are of like minds."
"We are of like minds about this, Myrtle." At least he'd thought they were, until a sudden recollection from the previous night came into his mind, of Kendall wanting to talk to him. Myrtle had left with her before she could, but was it possible Kendall had had the same news for him as Livia? Zach answered his own question: Not only possible but likely, given Kendall's proximity to Greenlee.
"I know you've heard this before but her grandmother was my dearest friend and I thought the world of her mother." Myrtle paused for one of her sniffles. "Kendall's as dear to me as my own and I want her marriage to be a happy one."
Zach chose his words with even more care than usual. "Kendall is dear to me as well, Myrtle. If I marry her, it's because I want to and for no other reason. I will do my best to make her—and Miranda, if she's included—happy."
"'If" you marry her, Zach?"
"Myrtle, I can't speak for Kendall. Should she have changed her mind then there will be no marriage. I can only tell you nothing would make me change mine."
"Kendall's a lucky girl, Zach Slater," Myrtle said resoundingly.
It wasn't always true that eavesdroppers never heard anything good of themselves, Kendall thought, listening outside by the cracked open door. At first she'd had to restrain herself from barging in and shaking Myrtle for being such a blabbermouth—but the longer Kendall listened, the less she wanted to commit violence, and the more bewildered she became.
She'd spent the previous evening wrestling with her conscience over whether to share with Zach the truth about Miranda's custody—or marry him in haste first, and probably repent in leisure afterward, when he learned she'd withheld such crucial information. Since she couldn't win either way, she'd decided it was best to be honest. Besides, she didn't think she could ever look Zach in the face again otherwise.
But now…. Is Zach saying he wants to marry me even if Miranda isn't in the picture? I couldn't be that lucky. He's just covering for us and humoring Myrtle because he still doesn't know the truth. He's got to be.
"If Kendall marries me I'll be the lucky one," Zach was saying. "Why is she taking so long? Maybe I should go up to Miranda's room and see if there's a problem."
His footsteps approached the door more quickly than Kendall would have expected, and when he yanked it back without warning she knew how a deer caught in the headlights felt. "Er…hello, Zach! Gee, what good timing, huh?" she gulped.
He stared down at her with one of his patented unreadable expressions. Kendall was afraid it meant he could see right through her, could detect from the guilt etched on her caught-in-the-act face that she'd been standing there listening to him and Myrtle discussing her. "I can't believe you're already dressed," she continued conversationally, making an effort. "How are you feeling?"
At the same time, from behind Zach, Myrtle said, "Why, there you are, Kendall. Come on in, honey. Zach was getting anxious about you."
Kendall turned to Myrtle. "I'm sorry I took so long, Myrtle, but they let me go in and see Miranda before they started getting her ready for her second chemo treatment today."
"How is Miranda?" Zach asked. "Give me an update."
"Oh, they said she's doing great!" Kendall said happily, momentarily forgetting her discomfiture. "Miranda's still on schedule for the transplant after they do the final chemo treatment tomorrow."
"Kendall, honey, that's such wonderful news. But I suspect this gentleman here is getting mighty sick and tired of looking at hospital walls. I seem to remember you and he had something else big planned for the day, so why don't I leave you two to get on with it." Gingerly giving Zach a hug goodbye, and stopping again to give Kendall a tighter one, Myrtle made for the door.
With a voice that didn't even seem to belong to her, Kendall asked Zach for a second time, "How are you feeling?"
He took a step closer to her. "I feel like getting married. How about you?"