Chapter 7

 

Daphne was wide awake when the first pale fingers of sunlight started to pry their way around the edges of the blue brocade drapes of her hotel room. She lay on her back on the rumpled double bed closest to the window, one hand flung above her head, the other clutching a soggy tissue against the front of her ivory nightgown. She stared up at the ceiling, eyes dry now, thinking about the night before.

She was glad, she told herself fiercely, trying to believe it, glad that Adam had come to Sunny's party with another woman. It had kept her from making a complete fool of herself. Kept her from even attempting to start some damned, doomed, idiotic affair with him.

Which was a good thing, she thought, sniffling slightly, because she wouldn't have known how to start one, anyway, despite her intentions. What would she have said to him if he had come alone?

Elaine had suggested that she be straightforward and upfront. "Just tell him what you have in mind. Say 'Listen, Adam, I enjoyed the other night, let's do it again soon.' He'll take it from there," she'd promised.

But Daphne couldn't have said those words, or anything like them, in a million years. What she'd had in mind was something a bit more subtle. Invite him out for a birthday drink, maybe, and then let nature take its course. Yet, both of those alternatives sounded so... so calculating and Daphne was a woman who had always expressed her emotions more spontaneously.

Well, it was a moot point now. She might as well stop wasting her time thinking about what might had been and what might have been and deal with what was.

Besides, it wouldn't have worked, anyway. There was no way on earth that she was ever going to get over Adam, no way she was ever going to get him out of her system, no matter what Elaine or a hundred magazine articles said. To expose herself to more heartache by trying was foolish in the extreme.

She had lived the last eleven years of her life without him, she told herself firmly; she could live the rest of her life without him, too.

The thought brought a lump to her throat and fresh tears to her eyes. She blinked them back stubbornly, ordering them not to fall, and then sat up, switched on the bedside lamp and reached for the telephone. She was leaving San Francisco today—now—on the first available flight and to hell with I. Magnin and her other accounts. Elaine could fly out and handle them. She knew the business as well as Daphne did and it was high time Daphne started letting her assistant handle more things on her own. She had been meaning to do just that for months.

The phone rang just as Daphne put her hand on it and she jumped, starting back as if she had been burned. Who, she wondered, would be calling at this hour? It was barely past six o'clock. Not even Sunny, who would want to lecture her for leaving so soon after Adam had arrived, would be awake this early. She let it ring three times before finally picking it up.

"Hello?" she said, her husky voice made even huskier by the tears shed during a sleepless night spent remembering too many nights before.

"Daffy?" The voice on the other end was achingly familiar. "It's Adam. Did I wake you?"

"No. No, you didn't wake me," she said, startled to hear from him after spending all night thinking about the man. It was almost as if she had conjured him up. "I've been awake all—" She started to say all night. "For at least an hour," she amended. "Is there something I can do for you?" she said when he remained silent.

"Well, I thought... that is, we didn't get much of a chance to talk to each other last night. And I thought you might have time for breakfast before your business meeting." His voice was appealingly hesitant, like a little boy asking for something he wanted very much but wasn't sure he was going to get.

"Meeting?" Daphne said, forgetting for a moment that had been her excuse to leave the party last night. Comprehension dawned. "Oh, the meeting at I. Magnin. Yes, well, it's not for several hours yet." Actually, it wasn't until Monday. "But I—"

"Then you're free for breakfast," Adam said eagerly, not giving her a chance to refuse.

"Well, yes, but—"

Adam interrupted her again. "I'd really like to talk to you," he said, his voice low.

She knew she should refuse. Seeing him again was just asking for trouble. Besides, she had already decided that the best thing for her was to go back to New York without seeing him again. Hadn't she?

"Daffy?"

Oh, God, it wasn't fair that he could do this to her with just the sound of his voice. It just wasn't fair! "Where shall I meet you?" she said, as surprised as he was to hear the words coming out of her mouth.

"You stay where you are. I'll be right up."

"Up?" she squeaked. "You mean you're in the hotel?"

"At a house phone in the lobby."

"Fine, then you stay—" she began, intending to tell him that he should remain where he was and she'd come down. But it was too late. He had hung up on the word "fine".

Oh, my God, she thought again. Adam was on his way to her room! And she wasn't dressed, hadn't combed her hair, and her eyes... her eyes were all red from crying half the night.

She snatched her robe off the floor by the bed and slipped it on, tying the sash around her waist as she hurried toward the bathroom. Lord, what a mess, she thought, leaning forward to peer at herself in the mirror over the basin. She brushed her teeth first and then bent low over the sink, scooping handfuls of cold water over her face.

Better, she decided, peering into the mirror again, but not good enough. Her nose and the delicate skin around her eyes still looked suspiciously pink. She rummaged through her makeup case, found her powder and brush, and dusted it across her face with quick, nervous strokes. A bit of mascara was next and then just a dab of lip gloss...

There was a sharp rap on the door.

Daphne started, smearing lip gloss all across one cheek, and the lip brush fell to the tiled counter. "Just a minute," she called, hoping she sounded more in control than she felt, knowing she didn't.

She yanked a tissue from the dispenser in the bathroom wall and carefully wiped off the smeared gloss. With shaking fingers, she started to apply another coat.

There was another rap on the door.

"Damn." She threw the lip brush down in exasperation. Better he didn't think she had made an effort, anyway. "I'm coming!" she hollered, eyes on the mirror as she ran both hands through the wisps of unbrushed hair that clung to her forehead and temples, fluffing them up as best she could. "Oh, the hell with it," she muttered, seeing how little improvement it made. Waving a dismissive hand at her image, she left the bathroom.

The rumpled bed caught her eye as she headed for the door. The sheets were in a tangle and the bedspread was in a heap on the floor, mute evidence of her restless night. She flew across the room, snagged the bedspread off the floor and tossed it up over the pillows, trying to smooth it into some sort of respectable order.

Another rap sounded, louder and more impatient.

"I'm coming, I said!" Impatient as ever, she thought, as she reached for the door. She put her hand on the doorknob, took a deep steadying breath, arranged her lips in what she hoped was a casual smile, and opened it. "Adam," she began brightly and then stopped, not knowing what else to say.

He was dressed the way she had always liked best, casually, in a pair of faded jeans, a dark periwinkle-blue turtleneck that intensified the color of his eyes and enhanced the golden glow of his skin, and a battered leather jacket that she thought she recognized as the one he'd had when they were married. His smooth-shaven cheeks were slightly flushed from the morning cold, his blond hair slightly windblown by the ever-present breezes that whipped in off of the bay. Dressed this way, standing there with a white waxed-paper sack in one hand, he quite literally took her breath away.

Oh, Adam!

"May I come in?"

"Please do." Daphne inclined her head and stepped back to allow him entrance. "You'll have to forgive how it looks in here," she said nervously, stooping to pick up a satin teddy from the floor. She tossed it into the open suitcase on top of the unused bed.

"Still don't believe in housework, huh?" he teased, setting the paper sack down on the small round table in front of the draped window.

"Oh, I believe in it now," Daphne said. "I just don't do it any better."

"So I see." He plucked a pale yellow wisp of a bra off the table and handed it to her. "Wouldn't want to spill coffee on it," he said.

She snatched it out of his fingers and threw it on the bed behind her.

He opened the sack, releasing the fragrant steam from the coffee inside. "Do you still like raspberry danish?"

"You've got raspberry danish in there, too?"

"Too?" he inquired, prying the lid off a large Styrofoam cup.

"As well as coffee."

"Sure." He held the cup of coffee toward her, waiting until she took it. "Coffee's no good without something to dunk in it." He pried the lid off a second cup and took a sip before setting it aside. "Here. A raspberry danish for you." He handed it to her. "A cinnamon roll for me and—" he pulled out two more covered plastic cups "—orange juice for both of us. Well, come on, sit down." He motioned toward the chair on the other side of the table. "Eat before it gets cold."

"The danish isn't going to get any colder than it already is," Daphne pointed out, but she sat, anyway.

Adam shrugged out of his jacket, draping it across the back of the chair, and sat down, too. "So eat it before it gets warm then," he said, peeling the foil lids off the cups of orange juice. He slid one across the table and handed her a napkin. "Shall I open these?" he asked, nodding toward the drapes.

Daphne, her mouth full of raspberry danish, shook her head. "Too bright," she mumbled, thinking of her unmade-up face and finger-combed hair. She took a sip of her coffee to wash down the pastry. "So." She glanced at Adam from under her lashes. "You said you wanted to talk. What about?"

Adam shrugged uneasily, eyes downcast as he pretended interest in the cinnamon roll on the napkin in front of him. "About the other night," he said, and took a quick gulp of his coffee.

"Last night?" Her forehead wrinkled in a frown. "What about last night?"

"No, not last night." He looked up, capturing her gaze with his. "The night of Sunny's charity thing."

"Oh. That night." Daphne forced herself to hold his gaze. Nothing like coming right to the point, she thought. She forced herself to sound blithely unconcerned. "What about it?"

"I wanted to apologize." Each word sounded as if it were being yanked out of him with a pair of forceps.

Daphne took a quick sip of her coffee. "For what?" she asked, but she didn't really want to know. She didn't want to hear him say how sorry he was that he had made love to her. Not when it was the most beautiful thing that had happened to her in a long, long time.

"For leaving you so abruptly like that. I didn't... I mean, it wasn't—" He looked down again, tearing at his roll as he searched for a word. "It wasn't polite," he said finally, looking up to see how she was taking it.

She took it quite well. Not polite, she thought, wondering if that's all that was bothering him; a breach in the etiquette of brief sexual encounters. "Well, don't worry about it," she said lightly, as if to show him how little it mattered. "You had an emergency, so you're excused." She smiled across the rim of her cup; a false, brittle smile. "Feel better now?" she asked, taking a sip.

"No." The word was intense. Forceful. Bleak.

Daphne's eyebrows rose. "No?"

"I didn't want to leave you that night." He reached across the table and put his hand on her arm. His fingers seemed to burn right through the sleeve of her robe. "I wanted to stay and make love to you again. Slowly, all night long. Like we used to." His fingers tightened on her arm. "I still want to," he said quietly.

Daphne closed her eyes for a moment fighting the weakness that had invaded her body at his touch, fighting the temptation of his words. Fighting... What was it she had told herself? Oh, yes. It wouldn't work. She opened her eyes and eased her arm out from under his hand.

"You didn't call," she accused, surprising herself. It was the last thing she had intended to say.

Adam let her pull away. "I wanted to." He ran his hand through his hair. "But I thought it would be better—for both of us—if I didn't." He began tearing at the hapless cinnamon roll again, reducing it to crumbs. "We've got separate lives now," he went on, half speaking to himself. "Successful lives," he emphasized, "on separate coasts. And it's been eleven years. We've both gotten along fine—just fine—without each other for eleven goddamn years." He looked up, his eyes faintly accusing, as if it were all her fault. "I actually thought I was over you. Over wanting you," he amended. "But you're like a fever. Like a..." He shook his head, looking as confused as she felt, and ran his hand through his hair again. "You're like a drug to me, Daphne. And all I have to do is see you and I start to ache for you all over again." He took a deep breath and dropped his hand to the table. "Why the hell did you have to come back here?"

"Because I ache for you, too," she said simply.

She knew, even as she said it, that it was probably unwise to admit how she felt. But she knew it must have been hard for him to lay his feelings out in the open and, knowing that, she could be no less open about hers. She wasn't being precisely honest, perhaps, because her feelings went far deeper than just a physical ache, but her statement was honest as far as it went.

"You, too?" Adam's hand reached out again, tentatively touching hers where it lay on the table.

"Me, too." She lifted her hand, palm toward him, and let him lace his fingers with hers. "After that night I couldn't get you out of my mind. Couldn't forget how good it was. How good it's always been between us."

His fingers tightened. She squeezed back.

"I told myself it would be best if we didn't see each other again," she continued. "That it was just a temporary aberration, and it would go away if I ignored it. But then Sunny called and invited me to your birthday party and I thought…well, why not? We're both adults now, not two crazy kids. We could be friends. Lots of ex's are friends. Right?"

Adam nodded slowly, his expression wary.

Oh, hell! Who am I trying to kid, she thought, seeing it. Adam? Or myself?

She straightened and pulled her hand from his. "No, that's not true." She laced her fingers together on the table. "The truth is," she said, staring down at her hands, "that I quite cold-bloodedly decided to come to Sunny's party to start an affair with you."

"What?" Adam's blue eyes opened wide.

"An affair." She glanced at him from under the sweep of her lashes. "You know, two people meeting over a period of time for illicit sexual purposes?"

"Yes, I know what it is. What I don't know is why you'd want to have one."

"Well, I thought... that is." She lifted her head and met his eyes straight on. "I thought having an affair with you would be the way to get you out of my system. I mean, this intense... thing we seem to have for each other would have to fizzle out sooner or later and—"

"It hasn't fizzled in eleven years."

"No, but I think that's because of the way it ended. It was so abrupt and the... the..." She stumbled over the word, knowing love was the right one but not willing to go that far. "The passion never had a chance to die a natural death. We parted still wanting each other physically, even though the emotions were gone." On your part, anyway, she added silently. "And I thought, if we had an affair it might, uh, might—"

"Get me out of your system for good," he finished for her. His tone was tinged with hurt but Daphne didn't notice.

She nodded, completely forgetting that she had spent most of last night deciding that nothing was going to get Adam out of her system for good. "Yes." She smiled ruefully. "Do I sound totally crazy?"

"Maybe. But if you're crazy, then so am I."

"Huh?" Daphne said inelegantly. She had expected him to agree with her because it was a crazy idea. She knew that. So should he.

"I said 'But if you're crazy, then—"'

"No, that's not what I meant. I mean, I know what you said. What I meant was, what did you mean?"

He gave her that slow sleepy smile. The one that turned her insides to jelly. "Huh?" he said, teasing her.

She gave him a look and made as if to throw the rest of her uneaten raspberry danish at him.

"Okay, okay." He held up his hand, palm out, as if to ward off a blow. "What I meant was, well..." His smile turned rueful and he dropped his hand. "I agree."

Daphne lifted her brows inquiringly.

"I think we should have an affair," he elaborated.

Daphne considered that for a moment, trying to decide if his agreement made her happy or sad or something else entirely.

"Daphne?"

"What about Ginny?" she said.

"What's Ginny got to do with anything?"

Lord, how could he be so dumb? Did she really have to spell it out for him? Apparently, she did. "The other woman is not a role I'm particularly interested in playing. Not even for you. So…" She shrugged and asked the question she was burning to know the answer to. "Are you and Ginny a couple?"

"No, Ginny and I are not a couple," he said forcefully. "If we were, I wouldn't be here. And, in case you're wondering, we've never been a couple and there is no possibility of us ever becoming a couple. We're colleagues, nothing more."

She felt something inside of her flame into sudden joy. Ginny and I are not a couple. Had he ever said seven more beautiful words to her?

"So, what now?" she said, to keep herself from saying all the things she wanted to say.

"Well, now, I guess I get out of your hair so you can get ready for your appointment and then, well, we figure out the rest as we go."

Daphne blinked. "What appointment?"

"The one with I. Magnin."

"Oh, that appointment." She paused, considering. "There isn't one," she said, deciding to tell the truth. "Well, that is, there is one but it isn't until Monday."

"Not this morning?" Adam thought about that for a moment, his blue eyes holding hers. "You mean you lied?"

"I didn't lie. I just rearranged the facts a little." Her brows arched. "Don't you ever rearrange the facts, Adam?"

"Why did you feel it necessary to—" his lips turned up at her choice of words "—rearrange the facts?"

"Because you came to Sunny's party with Ginny and I thought you were a couple and—"

"We're not a couple—"

"—I needed a good excuse to leave, so—" she shrugged "—I lied. Want to make something of it?"

Instead of answering her, Adam stood and brushed his hands off against the seat of his jeans. Reaching across the remains of their uneaten breakfast, he lifted her out of her chair by the shoulders and eased her around the table, maneuvering her pliant body toward his. "I want you." He cradled her neck, his fingers on her nape, his thumbs lightly stroking her throat. "Now."

"Yes, Adam," she said, tilting her head back as he pressed his thumbs to the underside of her chin. Her eyes drifted closed.

He bent his head.

Daphne's stomach growled loudly, a low complaining rumble that seemed to go on for several seconds.

Adam halted his advance.

"Just ignore it," Daphne advised, reaching up to pull his head down to hers.

Their lips touched.

Daphne's stomach growled again.

Adam sighed and lowered his hands to her shoulders. "I refuse to make love to a woman who's stomach is growling at me," he said. "Let's go get you some real breakfast."

"But Adam," Daphne began, her voice rich with disappointment.

He stopped her words with a quick, hard kiss. "The next time we have sex," he said clearly, staring down into her eyes, "it's going to take a good long time. Not ten minutes like the other night. Hours," he promised gruffly and kissed her again, lighter this time. "I intend to savor every luscious inch of you and I don't want you fainting from hunger right in the middle of it. So..." He released her with a last quick kiss on the end of her nose and turned her toward the bathroom. "You go get dressed and I'll take you out for a real breakfast. Okay?"

"Okay," she said reluctantly, allowing herself to be propelled away from him. She paused by the open suitcase on the other bed to fish out some suitable clothes and then, tossing them over her arm, she disappeared into the bathroom.

She showered quickly, thanking current fashion for the fact that she had hair that could be washed and styled in less than fifteen minutes. Using a blow-dryer and her fingers, she fluffed the feathery golden-brown curls into order around her forehead and temples, teasing seemingly artless wisps to cling to the nape of her long elegant neck. Her makeup took as little time. A dab of sheer ivory foundation, a dusting of peachy blusher, was all her complexion needed to make it glow.

She had never looked better in her life, she thought, deftly applying the ivory and brown shadows that would make her eyes appear even larger than they already were. That's what love did for a woman. It made her sparkle as if she were lit from inside by a thousand candles.

Resolutely, like a child who refuses to think about the punishment that will come at the end of a forbidden act, Daphne pushed all thoughts of tomorrow firmly out of her mind. She was happy now. Deliriously, insanely, deliciously, giddily happy for the first time in years.

Okay, yes, it was true her business gave her a great deal of happiness—it was something she had always, and would always, want and need—but that happiness was completely different from the feeling that was coursing through her now.

And it was true that she had found a mild sort of happiness with Miles. More friends than lovers, they had drifted along in a sort of placid contentment, sailing through their life together as if it were a small sheltered lake, protected from even the mildest emotional storms. There had been no highs with Miles, no lows and, thus, no excitement.

Being with Adam, though, was like being out on the bay on an especially windy day. Exhilarating, challenging, exciting—and just the tiniest bit frightening.

No, she amended. No, it was more than a tiny bit frightening. It was terrifying. What if he set her adrift again before she was ready?

And he would, she told herself, staring wide-eyed at the woman in the mirror. That had to be faced up front. Because Adam would eventually get her "out of his system" and she would be left alone again, still loving him.

"So what else is new?" she said to her reflection.

She had fallen in love with Adam when she was seventeen years old, and had continued loving him, in absentia so to speak, even after he divorced her. She had survived the heartbreak then—and even gone on to make a success of her life—she would survive it when it happened again. As it surely would. But until then... Well, until then, she told herself, she would enjoy every minute of every day with him and not think about the future. They were going to have a glorious affair. Simply glorious.

She finished making up her face and dressed quickly, stepping into a pair of peach silk bikini panties and a matching camisole before wiggling into the same tight, brown leather pants she had worn to Sunny's party. She pulled a butterscotch-colored sweater over her head. It had a high cowl neck that nestled under her chin, long loose sleeves meant to be worn pushed up, and a hem that ended halfway down her thighs. She hitched it up a bit with a wide, woven-leather belt that buckled over her left hipbone.

Satisfied with her appearance, she opened the bathroom door to find Adam stretched out on the unmade bed, sneakered feet crossed at the ankles, arms folded under his head as he watched the Roadrunner make mincemeat out of Wily Coyote.

"Very highbrow stuff you're watching there," she commented, flicking a hand at the television screen. She began digging around in her suitcase for a pair of socks.

Adam grinned at her from the bed. "Hey, these are classics. Besides, there's nothing else on TV on Saturday mornings."

"Brain candy," she said dismissively. "Known to cause severe cavities in the cerebral cortex," Daphne sat down on the edge of the bed to pull on her socks.

"'Zat so?" he said, his gaze on the screen.

"Umm-hmm." Daphne stomped her feet into leather half boots that matched her sweater and stood up, walking across the room to the dresser. Rummaging through an open vanity case, she picked out a pair of shiny bronze metal discs set with gleaming tiger's eye. "And, according to Sunny, cartoons are also thought to encourage violence in children," she said, watching Adam in the mirror as she inserted the earrings into her pierced ears.

"It's okay," Adam assured her, laughing as Wily Coyote was launched into space on a keg of dynamite. "I'm not a child."

Daphne's eyebrows rose. "Says who?"

"Whom," Adam corrected, jackknifing up from the bed to turn off the television. His eyes ran up and down her slender form. "You look like a ragamuffin," he said, his eyes approving. "A very sexy, elegant little ragamuffin but—"

"I'll have you know, Dr. Forrest," she interrupted, pretending indignation, "that this is a highly expensive, original design."

"One of yours?"

Daphne shook her head. "No. I only do evening clothes." She picked up her bag, a rich brown suede hobo big enough to hold a week's worth of clothes, and slung it over her shoulder. "Well, I'm ready." She arched an eyebrow at him as she headed for the door. "Let's get breakfast out of the way, shall we?" Her grin was lascivious. "I'm starving."