A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

The Talk

Fifteen minutes later, Zayn wasn't laughing; he was seated across from Harry's father in his small study, getting his ass chewed out by Reverend Mathison, who was pacing angrily in front of him. Zayn had expected the ass-chewing, he even accepted it as his due, but he had expected Harry's minister-father to be a small, meek man who would deliver a monotone lecture on whatever commandments he felt Zayn had broken. He had not expected Jim Mathison to be a tall, robust man, capable of delivering a scathingly descriptive, eloquently worded tirade that would have put George C. Scott's monologue at the opening of Patton to shame.

"I cannot excuse or condone anything you did! Not one thing!" Jim Mathison finished at last, flinging himself into the worn leather chair behind his desk. "If I were a violent man, I'd take a horsewhip to you. I'm tempted to do it anyway! Because of you, my son was subjected to terror, to public censure, to heartbreak! You seduced him in Colorado, I know damned well you did! Do you deny it?"

It was insane, but at that moment, Zayn admired everything about the man; he was the sort of father Zayn would have wanted—and wanted to be someday—a deeply concerned parent with strong principles about what was acceptable and what was not—a man of integrity and honesty who expected the same behavior from those around him. He intended for Zayn to feel ashamed. He was succeeding.

"Do you deny you seduced my son?" he repeated angrily.

"No," Zayn admitted.

"And then you sent him back here to confront the media and defend you to the world! Of all the cowardly, irresponsible—how can you face yourself or me or him, after that?"

"Actually, sending him back here was the only decent thing I did," Zayn said, defending himself for the first time since the tongue-lashing had begun.

"Go on, I'm waiting to hear how you figure that."

"I knew Harry was in love with me. I refused to take him to South America and sent him back here instead for his sake, not mine."

"Your sense of decency was certainly short-lived, wasn't it! A few weeks later, you were scheming to have him join you."

He waited again, demanding an answer with his silence, and Zayn reluctantly complied. "I thought he was pregnant, and I didn't want him to have an abortion or endure the humiliation of unwed motherhood in a small town."

Zayn sensed a subtle reduction in the other man's hostility, but it wasn't evident in his next acid comment. "If you'd exercised any decency, any restraint over your lust in Colorado, you wouldn't have had to worry about him being pregnant, would you?"

Torn between anger, embarrassment, and amusement at Mathison's scornful, biblical use of the term lust, Zayn lifted his brows and looked at him.

"I'll thank you for the courtesy of an answer, young man."

"The answer is perfectly obvious."

"And now," he said angrily, leaning back in his chair. "Now you come breezing back to town in your private plane to make him into a public spectacle again, and for what? So you can break his heart! I've heard and read and seen enough about you before you went to prison and after you got out to know what sort of life you lead in California, to know what sort of licentious, superficial, amoral life it has been—wild parties, naked women, drunkenness, dirty movies. How do you answer to that?"

"I have never made a dirty movie in my life," Zayn replied, tacitly admitting to the other charges.

Jim Mathison almost smiled. "At least you aren't a liar. Are you aware that Louis Tomlinson is in love with him? He wants to marry him. He's asked for my blessing. He's a fine, decent man with principles. He wants a Harry for life, not just until the next buxom blond movie star comes along and turns his head. He wants children. He's willing to make sacrifices for him,—even to the extent of going to California to see you. He comes from a close, loving family like Harry does. They could have a wonderful life together. Well, what do you say to that?"