Free Judith McNaught by Perfect

slacks and a shirt knotted at the midriff. Devoid of sexy clothes and extravagant makeup, she was far more appealing and infinitely lovelier to him. As he'd already discovered, she was also intelligent, sensual, and witty. "Then what?" he asked.
    "Then I'd like to quit. I'm thirty. Like you, I want a real life, a meaningful life with something more to think about than my figure and whether or not I'm getting a wrinkle. There's more to life than this glossy,
    superficial fantasyland we inhabit and perpetrate on the rest of the world."
    An unprecedented statement like that from an actress made Rachel an unexpected breath of fresh air to him. Moreover, since she was planning to stop working, it seemed as if he'd actually met a woman who
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    was interested in him, not in what he could do for her career. He was thinking of that when Rachel leaned

    over his kitchen table and softly said, "How do my dreams compare with yours?"
    She was making him an offer, Zack realized, and doing it with quiet courage and no games. He studied
    her in silence for a moment and then made no attempt to hide the emphatic importance he was placing on
    his next question. "Do you have children in your dreams, Rachel?"
    Sweetly and without hesitation, she said, "Your children?"
    "My children."
    "Can we start now?"
    Zack burst out laughing at her unexpected reply, then she plopped onto his lap and his laughter faded, replaced by stirrings of tenderness and a vibrant hope, emotions he thought had died when he was eighteen. His hands slid under her shirt, and tenderness merged with passion.
    They were married in the graceful gazebo on the lawn of Zack's Carmel estate four months later, while a

    thousand invited guests, including several governors and senators, looked on. Also present, although uninvited, were dozens of helicopters that hovered overhead, their blades creating cyclones on the lawn that whipped up women's gowns and dislodged toupees, while the reporters who occupied the choppers
    aimed cameras at the festivities below. Zack's best man was his neighbor in Carmel, industrialist Matthew
    Farrell, who came up with a solution to the invasion of the press: Glowering at the helicopters hovering frantically overhead, he said, "They ought to repeal the damned First Amendment."
    Zack grinned. It was his wedding day, and he was in a rare mood of utter conviviality and quiet optimism, already envisioning cozy evenings with children on his lap and the sort of family life he'd never
    known. Rachel had wanted this big wedding, and he had wanted to give it to her, although he'd have preferred flying to Tahoe with just a couple of friends. "I could always send someone to the house for
    some rifles," he joked.
    "Good idea. We'll use the gazebo for a bunker and shoot the bastards down."
    The two men laughed, then they fell into a companionable silence. They'd met three years ago when a
    group of Zack's fans climbed the security fence around his house and set off the security systems at both
    residences as they fled. That night, Zack and Matt had discovered they shared several things in common,
    including a liking for rare Scotch, a tendency toward ruthless bluntness, an intolerance of pretension, and, later, a similar philosophy toward financial investments. As a result, they were not only friends, they were
    also partners in several business ventures.

    * * *
    When Nightmare was released, it didn't receive an Oscar or even a nomination, but it made a healthy profit, received excellent reviews, and completely revived Emily's and Rachel's faltering careers.
    Emily's
    gratitude was boundless and so was her father's.
    Rachel, however, abruptly discovered she was not at all
    ready to give up her career, nor was she ready to have the baby Zack had wanted so badly. The career she'd claimed she didn't want was, in fact, an obsession that consumed her. She could not bear to miss
    an "important" party or ignore an opportunity for publicity no matter how minor, and she