He'd seen it all before. The man who married the love of his life, only to become a slave to her. His father, for example. He'd had dreams of stardom, of making it big as a musician. He gave all that up when he married Zack's mother. Sure, he'd loved her and would have followed her to the end of the world, at first, but it also meant giving up the music and his dreams. The growing family couldn't live on love and songs. His father got a job, then another, as the family grew.
But it wasn't enough. A dreamer and unqualified for real work that paid enough, he needed to supplement his income with the proceeds of the occasional burglary to support a wife and brood of hungry children. That was the beginning of the end. He went from city to city dodging the law, dragging his family with him. Zack's parents' great love ended in bitter divorce because of the financial and legal pressures.
His father's creativity, sapped by the time he was forty, went undiscovered until after his death. Too late.
So much for dreams. So much for love.
Zack would not make the same mistake.
No, he couldn't let Annie know what she did to him or he'd be trapped. In his experience, women latched on when they knew he was interested, hoping to drag him to the altar. He supposed he was a good catch on paper, but so far, he'd managed to extricate himself from any delicate situations with his bachelorhood in tact.
So far.
But Annie was different to those other women. Already he wanted her. If she knew, she'd use her entire arsenal to get him—and her weaponry was more powerful than any other woman's because she wasn't aware of her allure.
Yep, she was so perfect, she was downright dangerous.
***
Zack took her home and later that night he took Annie to a bar where shmoozers shmoozed and gossip columnists listened in. Following in his wake, she peered into the darkness and the motionless haze of smoke which lent the place an aura of gothic moodiness. It was probably exactly the atmosphere the trendy LA bar was trying to achieve.
"What do you want to drink?" Zack asked, easing himself onto a barstool.
She shrugged. "Whatever you're having."
He ordered two beers.
"Can I have mine in a glass, please?" she said to the barman.
"No," countered Zack. "You'll drink from the bottle." He grabbed his around the neck and swallowed half in one gulp. She did the same but with considerably less success. She finished with a splutter, spitting some of the beer across the polished surface of the bar.
"Keep trying," he said. "Do you like it?"
"Not bad." She shrugged one shoulder. "But I've had beer plenty of times before."
He nodded but said nothing.
Damn, he knew she was lying. Not a good sign.
She glanced around at the other patrons, trying to appear as if she did this sort of thing all the time. Several scantily-clad starlets sat in prominent spots in the middle of the room and a few sophisticated drinkers hunkered down in dark corners doing deals or whatever it was they did in bars.
"You come here a lot?" she asked Zack.
He shrugged. "More or less."
"That's not an answer."
"Nosy, aren't you?"
"Just curious. I don't know much about you, but I'm sure Bob's told you about me. That gives you an unfair advantage."
"That's the way I like it."
Okay, try a new tactic. "Yesterday you said you've lived in lots of different places. Why? Was your father in the army or something?"
Zack took another long gulp of his beer but he never took his eyes off her. Even when he put the bottle down he studied her for a long time. It was unnerving. She'd never felt so vulnerable in her life. It didn't help that he was the man of her dreams either.
"Okay, if I answer your question, you have to answer one of mine."
She hesitated only momentarily before nodding. She had nothing to hide after all.
"My parents were poor," he said matter-of-factly. "Dirt poor. Dad had two jobs but Mom kept having children. An itinerant laborer can only earn so much. He couldn't support everyone and Mom couldn't work because someone had to look after us. So he moonlighted as a thief."
"Oh my God. I had no idea. Did he get caught?"
"We moved before the law caught up with him, then my parents divorced and he died in his early forties. Shortly after, I headed to LA. The story gets boring from there."
She doubted that. "Oh," was all she said. Wow, was her life so...normal. Next to him, she was dull, despite her father's decadent lifestyle. A lifestyle he'd tried to share with her. A lifestyle she'd tried to avoid. Annie's heart went out to the kid Zack had been. But studying him now, all good looks and confidence and wealth, he hadn't grown up any worse for his experiences.
"So tell me how you made all your money?" she asked, settling into the conversation. She was surprised at how much he'd opened up already—who knows what she could get him to tell her.
Zack was just as surprised at how much he'd said to Annie. He wasn't the sort to tell people about his childhood, especially not to someone he barely knew. Maybe it was because she was still a relative stranger. He didn't expect to see her again after the end of the week when Dug-E flew in and hired her to be his agent. Yeah, that must be why—it was safer to tell a stranger than a friend.
Besides, if she knew where he came from, maybe she'd be less likely to want to get involved with him. Good girls don't date bad boys. They might use them to make the good boys jealous or to temporarily escape their image, but beyond that, women like Annie had nothing to do with guys like him. Just as well. It would make it easier to resist her if she didn't want him. As it was, resisting her was going to take all the self-control he had.
"Okay," he said in answer to her question. "I've got Bob to thank for that. When I moved here, I was following in my father's footsteps."
"Working two jobs?"
"Stealing. Cars to be precise. One day, I was attempting to break into a nice convertible. Bob's. But you know what an old softie he is. Instead of turning me in, he organized a job for me. Retail. A men's wear shop. I was seventeen and it was just what I needed. Of course, Bob threatened to turn me in if I didn't stick it out."
"You got rich working at a men's wear shop?"
"No, I got rich when I learned what Bob did for a living. My new boss, a friend of his, told me. You see," he leaned towards her, "my father had written some songs before he met my mother. It had been his dream to have them recorded, but life got in the way. I had my older sister send me Dad's old demo tapes, and I got Bob to listen to them. He liked them and represented the family, getting a deal with Sonic Records. A very lucrative deal. The songs became popular and all six of us took our share. I used mine to buy the shop where I worked and turned it into a department store. The rest, as they say, is history."