A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

Animal

For the last hour, when Harry wasn't answering his questions, doubts about Zayn's guilt had continued to plague him. He remembered the furious way he'd spoken of the jury that sent him to prison. He remembered the terrible despair in his voice when he'd pleaded with Harry in the snow to kiss him in order to mislead the truck driver "Please! I didn't kill anyone, I swear it!"

At that moment, he'd planted a treacherous seed of doubt in Harry's mind about his guilt; now, seventeen hours later, that seed was taking root deep within him, nourished by his horror at the possibility that an innocent man had spent five long years in a penitentiary. Other things that were equally beyond his control were combining to make him feel helplessly drawn to him, things like the memory of his hungry kiss, the shudder that had run through his body when he'd finally yielded, the restraint Zayn had shown when he did yield. In fact, he had treated Harry with restraint and even courtesy during most of the time they'd been together.

For the dozenth time in the last hour, he decided a true murderer surely wouldn't bother to be gentle when he kissed a man nor would he treat him with the kindness and humor that Zayn had generally shown him.

His mind argued that he was being a fool to decide a jury was wrong; but tonight, whenever he looked at Zayn, every instinct he possessed shouted that he was innocent. And if he was, then Harry could hardly bear the thought of what he had been put through.

Zayn walked back into the living room, turned on the television set, and sat down across from him, stretching his long legs out and crossing them at the ankles. "We'll watch whatever you'd like after the news," he said, his attention already on the television's giant-size screen.

"Fine," Harry said, studying him surreptitiously across the width of the coffee table. There was indomitable pride chiseled into his handsome face, determination in the jut of his chin, arrogance in his jaw, intelligence and hard-bitten strength etched into every feature of his face. Long ago, he'd read dozens of articles about Zayn written by gushing reporters as well as reputable movie critics. Often, they tried to define him in terms of other megastars who'd preceded him. One critic Harry particularly remembered watching on television had tried to turn him into a human conglomerate by saying that Zayn Malik had the animal magnetism of a young Sean Connery, the talent of a Newman, the charisma of Costner, the raw machismo of a young Eastwood, the smooth sophistication of Warren Beatty, the versatility of Michael Douglas, and the rugged appeal of Harrison Ford.

Now, after spending almost two days with the man himself in very close quarters, Harry decided that none of the articles he'd read had actually described him nor had any movie camera ever really done him justice, and he vaguely understood why: In real life, there was an aloof strength, a powerful charisma about him that had nothing whatsoever to do with his tall, broad-shouldered physique or that famous mocking smile of his. There was something else ... a feeling Harry got whenever he looked at him that, discounting his imprisonment, Zayn Malik had already done and seen everything there was to do and see and that all those experiences were permanently locked away behind an un-breachable wall of polite urbanity, lazy charm, and piercing golden eyes. Beyond any woman's reach.

And therein lay his real appeal, Harry realized: the challenge. Despite everything he'd done to Harry in the last two days, Zayn Malik made him—and probably every other woman and man who'd known him or seen his movies—want to get past that barricade. To discover what was underneath, to soften it, to find the boy he must have been, to make the man he had become shout with laughter and grow tender with love.

Harry gave himself a stern mental shake. None of that mattered! All that mattered was whether he was guilty of murder or innocent. He stole another look at his profile and felt his heart turn over.