A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

Kitten

"Harry, don't, darling. I can't stand much more of this," Zayn muttered several nights later, reluctantly pulling his arms from around his neck and sitting up on the sofa in his living room. After two days in the Rest Your Bones Motel, Zayn had realized Harry's parents were genuinely hurt that he wasn't staying with them, and he'd gratefully checked out of the motel and accepted their invitation. The accommodations were much better and the food was wonderful, but he was sleeping in Harry's old bedroom, surrounded with reminders of him. During the day, while he was at school, teaching his classes, Zayn worked at his house, going over scripts, talking to his staff in California, and discussing potential deals with producers on the telephone, and he was able to think about something besides his increasing sexual frustration. But when Harry came home, he took one look at him and desire inevitably led to foreplay, which invariably led to frustration, and it started all over again.

So fragile was his remaining hold on his self-control that, instead of staying home with him in the evenings, he'd begun preferring to spend them with Harry and his friends at the local dinner and entertainment spots. Two nights ago, he'd actually ended up necking with him in the back row of the local movie theater, where he knew things couldn't go too far, and the night before, he'd suggested they go bowling, where he knew things couldn't go anywhere at all.

Swearing under his breath, Zayn set Harry firmly away from him and got up from the sofa. "I should never have let your father talk me into this ridiculous notion of premarital celibacy. It's archaic, it's pointless, and it's juvenile! He did it to get even with me for kidnapping you. The man is clever and he's sadistic! The only time I felt right about this promise was in church on Sunday."

Harry bit back a helpless smile and said with an attempt at gravity, "Why do you suppose that happened?"

"I know why it happened! The hour in church was the only time in the past week I haven't had an erection."

This was not the first time Zayn had mentioned the bargain he'd made with his father, but he was so sensitive about it that Harry was almost afraid to tell him that he was not an isolated victim. He had a great deal of pride, and he was essentially a very private person. Because of that, he wasn't certain how Zayn would react to the discovery that every male in town who'd been married by his father knew exactly what was going on. He looked up as Zayn began to pace in front of him.

"I am thirty-two years old," he informed him bitterly. "I am a reasonably sophisticated man with an above-average IQ, and I not only feel like a sex-starved, randy eighteen-year-old, I'm behaving like one! I've taken so many cold showers, your mother must think I have a cleanliness obsession. I am becoming irritable."

Harry shoved his hair off his forehead, stood up, and looked at him with exasperated amusement. "I would never have noticed."

With an irritated sigh, he stacked the scripts he'd been reading on the table and said, "What do you think we should do tonight?"

"Have you considered the sedative benefits of reorganizing the kitchen cabinets?" he teased, his shoulders lurching. "That always worked for me. We could do it together."

Zayn opened his mouth to snap a retort, but the phone rang, so he jerked it up and took his frustration out on whoever was on the other end of the line. "What the hell do you want?"

Sally Morrison, his publicist in California said dryly, "Good evening, Zayn. So nice to talk to you. I'm calling to talk to Harry. He needs to tell me now whether you want the wedding invitations delivered by limousine tomorrow morning or by courier. I've already phoned the lucky fifty people who are going to receive a coveted invitation, so they'll have time to make arrangements to be in Texas bright and early Saturday morning. No one declined. Betty and I," she added referring to his secretary, "have arranged for limos to meet them at DFW and get them to Keaton, and I've reserved blocks of suites for them on Saturday night in the Dallas hotels that met your approval."