Chapter 8

 

"You're sure you don't mind?" Adam asked again as he pulled the dark green BMW into his designated parking place in the lot at Children's Hospital. "You could take the car to my place and wait for me there if you'd rather. I can always grab a taxi."

"No, I don't mind, Adam," she told him for the fourth time. "Honest. Besides, how long could it to take to check on one patient? Fifteen minutes?"

"At least thirty," Adam said truthfully. "Maybe more, depending."

"Depending on what?"

"On how she's feeling, mainly. How much pain she's in. If she's restive or fretful or needs a little extra cheering up." He lifted his shoulders in a small shrug as he reached to set the parking brake. "Whether or not her mother's there and wants to talk to me. Any number of things." He turned toward her, a look of concern on his face. "Are you sure you don't mind waiting?"

"I'm sure," she said firmly. As long as he smiled at her like that she wouldn't mind anything. "After the way we've been running around all day, it'll be a pleasure to sit down with a cup of coffee for a few minutes."

"You say that because you haven't tasted hospital coffee."

"It can't be any worse than the stuff I make myself. And, besides, if I have a bad reaction, I'm in a hospital, right?"

"Right," he agreed, opening his door. Then, before Daphne could do it herself, he came around to the passenger door and was reaching down a hand to help her out.

He let it go of her hand as they entered the hospital and took her elbow instead, guiding her to the nurses' station. The nurse on duty, a fiftyish bright-eyed brunette, looked up at the sound of their footsteps, a wide smile replacing the professionally polite expression on her face as she saw who was approaching.

"Dr. Forrest," she said, standing practically at attention as he came up to the counter that separated the nurses' station from the rest of the wide hall.

"Hello, Peg." Adam returned her smile warmly. "How's it going?"

"Fine. Been quiet as a tomb for the last hour."

"Ah, so they're letting you catch up on your reading." He glanced at Daphne. "Peg is addicted to detective thrillers. The gorier, the better." He looked back at the plump, dark-haired nurse, affection in his blue eyes. "What is it tonight? Clive Cussler?" He leaned over the counter to read the title of the paperback that was lying facedown on the desk. "Micky Spillane?"

"Travis McGee." She flashed him an impish grin. "I'll lend it to you when I'm finished."

"Thanks, but I don't think my nerves can take it." He shuddered theatrically, hunching his shoulders. "All that blood."

Daphne's eyes widened with surprise. She had never known Adam to make even the smallest joke in connection with his work, no matter how harmless. He had always treated it with the utmost seriousness. Unlike other med students, he had never been one to indulge in bedpan humor or make ghoulish jokes about cadavers. Apparently, he had changed. Oh, not that he would ever make those sorts of jokes. Medicine was too close to a holy calling to him for that, but he had obviously mellowed enough to tease about it.

"Tell me another funny story," Peg snorted. She flapped her hand at Adam in a dismissive gesture and then reached down and pushed the book aside. "I know you didn't just drop by to discuss my great taste in literature. So..." She ran a quick eye down the list on her desk. "The little Jenkins girl?"

Adam nodded. "Any problems?"

"Not a one, doctor. I gave her the medication you ordered about—" she glanced at her watch "—exactly twenty-two minutes ago and she seems to be resting comfortably." Quickly, Peg shuffled through the free-standing file on her desk and handed him a manila folder attached to a metal clipboard. The name, Jenkins, Tiffany, was typed on the label.

Adam flipped it open and began scanning the topmost page. "Was she fussy today? Complaining of pain? Anything?"

Peg shook her head. "She's been her same quiet little self. Either sleeping or just lying in her bed, staring up at the butterfly mural on the ceiling with those big brown eyes of hers. Breaks my heart to see a child so accepting of pain," she commented idly. "I'd almost rather hear them hollering."

"I know what you mean." Adam nodded, acknowledging her observations while he continued to peruse the file. "Tiffany has had more than her share of pain in the past few months." He sighed and another kind of pain, a sadness at his own inability to ease his patient's suffering, flickered across his face. "Unfortunately, there's a lot more to come before she's better."

He closed the file with a snap and handed it back across the counter. "Everything looks fine in here," he said briskly, "but I'll just go have a quick look at her, anyway." He started to turn away from the counter. "Oh, get Mrs.—" he slanted a quick look at Daphne "—Granger a cup of coffee, would you, please? And find her a place to sit where she won't be in anyone's way." Then he was gone, striding down the hall before either of the women could answer him.

The nurse sighed, her crossed arms all but hugging the folder to her chest. "Dr. Forrest is so dedicated," she said, with just exactly the inflection another woman might have used to say "so handsome."

"Yes, I know," Daphne murmured dryly, amused.

"Well." Peg fit the folder into its correct slot in the file and looked up at Daphne. Her smile was brisk and friendly. Her eyes were curious. "How do you like your coffee?"

"Black. But I'll get it." Daphne motioned down the hall with one hand. "I saw a machine when we came in."

"Oh, no, you don't want that. It'll dissolve your tonsils." She swung open a wooden gate at the end of the counter. "Come on around here and sit down. I'll pour you a cup of my special brew."

"You're sure I won't be in the way here?"

"Not at all." She stepped behind a chest-high partition, talking over her shoulder as she poured the coffee. "Things are a little slow this time of night. Dinner's over, visiting hours haven't really gotten started yet." She handed Daphne a cup of steaming coffee and then perched on the edge of her desk, blowing across the surface of her own cup. "Gets pretty quiet."

Daphne murmured her thanks for the coffee and took a cautious sip. Hot and strong, it burned the tip of her tongue. "What's the matter with the little Jenkins girl?" she asked, more for something to say than anything else.

Hospitals, with their starchy white-clad nurses, medicinal smells, and the pain and sickness that seemed to lurk behind every door had always made her uncomfortable. She had never been in one as a patient and only seldom as a visitor, so the atmosphere was alien and vaguely anxiety-producing. She really would rather have taken Adam's suggestion and gone to his place to wait. But she had wanted to show him, indirectly at least, that she had changed at least as much as he had. And it was only going to be for a few minutes.

"She was badly burned when she pulled an electric skillet full of hot oil down on top of her," Peg said. The statement effectively reclaimed Daphne's wandering attention.

"Oh my Go, that's awful."

"Pretty gruesome," Peg agreed. She took a sip of her coffee. "Luckily, though, it was only her legs. With physical therapy and Dr. Forrest's fine work, they should be almost as good as new in a few years."

"Adam—Dr. Forrest," Daphne corrected herself, "is doing plastic surgery on her legs?"

Peg gave her a rather censuring look. "Plastic surgery isn't only face-lifts and boob jobs," she informed Daphne somewhat sternly. "Dr. Forrest is doing a series of skin grafts on the Jenkins girl."

"Skin grafts?"

"Yes. Basically it involves taking thin strips of skin," she explained, "and applying them to the healed-over burn areas on the child's legs. Dr. Forrest did the first one yesterday afternoon."

"First one?" Daphne prompted, fascinated in spite of herself by this glimpse into Adam's world. "She'll have to have more than one operation, then?"

"Oh, yes. Several, in fact. With burns that extensive it can't all be corrected at once."

"Poor little thing."

"Peg—Oh, excuse me, I didn't know you were busy."

"That's all right, Beth." Peg put her cup down and turned to the young Asian nurse who had come rushing up to the counter in her soundless rubber-soled shoes. "What is it?"

"Dr. Forrest wants the Chapel file. That spoiled society bit—" She glanced at Daphne and caught herself. "Mrs. Chapel claims we're ignoring her. And she wants 'the kind Dr. Forrest to check her chart' and make sure we're doing everything we should be doing." She rolled her eyes. "What she really wants is to get Dr. Forrest into her room. Preferably alone."

"Don't we all?" Peg laughed good-naturedly and handed her the file. "Anything else?"

"Well, he hasn't asked for it yet but you'd better give me the Tibbs file, too." She took the folders and tucked them securely under her arm. "Thanks, Peg," she said, dashing off down the hall.

"Looks as if he's going to be a while," Daphne commented, staring into her cup.

"He usually is." Peg picked up her coffee again. "I don't think I've ever seen Dr. Forrest get in and out of here in less than an hour and a half, even when he's only got a couple of patients to see. He always takes the time to talk a bit if they want to. Tries to cheer them. Especially the little ones."

She started to say something more but another doctor came up to the desk, requesting a patient's file, and Peg turned to find it for her. Then a teenage candy striper, her face obscured behind a vase of bright yellow marigolds, stopped to ask directions to a patient's room. Close on her heels came a young black nurse with a chart in her hands and a question in her eyes. Peg moved down to the end of the counter to confer quietly with her.

Daphne began to fidget. She had never been good at just sitting—or waiting. And having to do both, especially in a hospital, made her as antsy as a five-year-old. She wished, for a moment, that she had thought to stuff a sketch pad into her hobo bag. At least it would give her something to do while she waited.

She smiled to herself then, staring into her coffee cup as she thought of the sketches she had done this morning on the back of a paper place mat at the restaurant where Adam had taken her for breakfast.

Early as it was, they had easily found a coveted window table overlooking the Sausalito boat harbor. The sun was still struggling to break up the morning fog, spindly fingers of buttery light sparkling on the placid blue-gray water of the bay and glinting off the touches of brass on the bobbing pleasure craft. Sea gulls circled and dove, screeching stridently as they called to each other. A pelican sat patiently atop an exposed piling, waiting for handouts. But Daphne and Adam saw none of it. They had eyes only for each other.

"But where do you get your ideas?" Adam had wanted to know. He sat with his chin cupped in his hand, his elbow on the table and his eyes nowhere but on her as he waited for her answer.

"Heavens, I don't know. Nowhere. Everywhere." Daphne laughed softly, bemused by the intense expression on his face. He had never seemed to be interested—really interested—in her career before. She couldn't quite believe he was now. "They just... come to me, I guess."

He gave her that slow, sweet smile. "Like visions out of a dream, huh?"

"Sort of," she agreed, unconsciously echoing his posture. Elbow on the table, chin in hand, she smiled back at him. They stared at each other for a few endless seconds.

"And then what happens?" he asked.

"What happens when?"

"After these ideas just 'come to you'?"

"Then I try to get them down on paper, hopefully in my sketchbook." She continued to smile into his eyes. "But I've been known to use whatever's handy."

He pushed his plate out of the way then, the half-eaten eggs Benedict cooling as he ignored it, and flipped over the heavy paper place mat. "Show me."

"What? Right now? But I don't have any ideas right now," Daphne protested.

"Show me something you've already designed then," he urged. "I'd really like to see how a dress like you wore the other night comes into being." The blue of his eyes blazed a little brighter as they both recalled what had happened to that dress. "That was one of your designs, wasn't it?"

"Well, yes," Daphne said hesitantly, still afraid of boring him. "But..."

"Please?" he urged, looking anything but bored.

Daphne smiled and reached into her own bag to rummage for a pen. In a moment she had pushed her own breakfast away and was sketching a few of the garments from her new line of lingerie on the elongated bodies that she had learned to draw in fashion school, explaining the fabrics and colors she planned to use as she did so. Adam had seemed fascinated.

"Excuse me." A soft voice broke into her thoughts and Daphne looked up from the contemplation of her coffee cup, startled. A young woman in her mid-twenties was standing at the nurse's station. "Are you..." she began, seeing that she had Daphne's attention. "Oh, no," she said before she had even finished her question. "I can see you're not. I'm sorry. I thought for a minute that you were a nurse."

Daphne smiled and shook her head but before she could reply, Peg had already taken the situation in hand. "Mrs. Jenkins," she said, turning from the nurse she had been talking with to greet the young woman. "What good timing. Dr. Forrest has just finished going over Tiffany's chart. I'm sure he'll want to talk to you about her progress as soon as he's finished with his other patients."

"How is she?" the young woman asked anxiously.

"She's doing just fine," Peg said, reaching across the counter to pat Mrs. Jenkins's hand. "Why don't you go on to her room," she suggested. "I'll let Dr. Forrest know where you are as soon as he's free. Oh, wait a minute." Peg's voice stopped her as she turned in the direction of her daughter's hospital room. "Here he comes now."

Adam approached the nurses' station from the opposite direction, hurrying his steps a little as he caught sight of the young woman standing in front of the counter. He had pulled a white lab coat on over his sweater and jeans and a stethoscope hung loosely around his neck. Two metal-backed folders rested in the crook of one arm. He looked, Daphne thought, peering over the counter from her seat at one end, every inch the caring, concerned physician.

"Mrs. Jenkins," he greeted the obviously worried young mother with a brief touch on her shoulder. "I've already seen Tiffany and she's doing fine. Exactly as we expected," he told her, answering her unspoken question in a calm, assured manner. "And seeing you will make her even better."

"I have to work Saturdays," Mrs. Jenkins said apologetically, head down as if she feared his last statement had been a jab at her absence. "But my mother was here nearly all day. I—"

Adam smiled encouragingly and patted her shoulder again. "I doubt Tiffany even knew the difference," he reassured her quickly. "She slept most of the day. In fact, she had a sedative a little while ago," he warned. "So don't be alarmed if she seems a little listless to you. That's perfectly normal. Now, I still have a few things to do here." A subtle movement of his shoulder indicated the folders he carried. "But I'll stop by Tiffany's room again before I leave, to answer any questions you may have after you see her. Okay?"

"Yes, fine. Thank you, Dr. Forrest." The woman turned away and hurried down the hall to her daughter's room.

Adam dropped the folders on the counter, his eyes catching Daphne's. There was a wry twist to his lips. "I'm sorry about this," he said, dragging a hand through his hair. "But it seems like I'm going to be here a while longer than I thought."

"There's nothing to be sorry about," Daphne interjected quickly. She stood up, placing her half-empty coffee cup on the desk behind her, and came up to the counter. Peg backed away, unobtrusively busying herself at a file cabinet. "But I do think I'll take your suggestion now. About waiting for you at your place," Daphne added when he lifted an inquiring eyebrow.

"Great." Relief was evident in his tone. "That's what I came up here to talk to you about before I got sidetracked by Mrs. Jenkins." He pushed his lab coat aside as he spoke, and dug into his front pocket for his car keys. "Here." He dangled the keys over the counter, deftly capturing her hand as she reached for them to draw her down the length of the counter. "You take these and I'll grab a taxi when I'm ready to leave."

"But—"

"My place is easy to find," he said, silencing her protests before she could suggest she should be the one to take a taxi. "And you'll need the keys to get in, anyway." He walked her down the hall as he spoke, toward the double glass doors that led out into the parking lot. "There's a list of takeout places that deliver next to the telephone in the kitchen. Call one of them and have them deliver whatever you feel like eating at, say, eight—" he glanced at his watch "—no, better make that nine just to be on the safe side. Okay?"

Daphne tilted her head sideways and looked up at him from under her lashes. "You promise I won't end up eating alone?" The look in her eyes invited a reassuring kiss.

Adam ran the backs of two fingers down her cheek in a brief caress instead. "I promise," he said softly. Then he reached around and pulled open the door. "Go," he ordered, pushing her out. "Before I forget I have a job to do here and decide to go with you."

Daphne went, her knees still trembling from the tenderness of his gesture.

* * *

His house was easy to find. Easy, that is, if you were a native San Franciscan which, fortunately, Daphne was. A modest-sized bungalow tucked into the maze of streets in the Russian Hill district, Adam's house had a slightly 1920s' look to it, as if it might have been built by some movie mogul as a hideaway for his lady love. The inside, however, was warm and modern and very definitely had been completely remodeled.

The stuccoed walls were a warm cream, the floors were shining hardwood, the overstuffed furniture was mostly varying shades of soft brown, from pale toast to roast coffee. Touches of burnished copper and bright orange accented the room: a ginger-jar lamp, a tall Chinese vase by the door, an Oriental rug that stretched between the sofa and the fireplace.

Either Adam had become a lot more interested in decorating over the years or he had hired a decorator, Daphne thought with a smile. And, although the room accurately reflected his warmth and quiet personality, she felt sure it was the latter. Adam would never have thought to pick a color scheme that would complement his golden good looks to such advantage.

She crossed the room, tossing her bag into a corner of the sofa as she passed it, and struck a match to the fire that had already been laid in the fireplace. It blazed to life immediately, little flickers of flame dancing up around the dry eucalyptus logs, releasing their clean fresh fragrance and casting a warm glow over the room. Daphne watched it for a few minutes, delighting in the unique fragrance of the wood and the warmth of the fire on her outstretched hands.

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her dinner had to be ordered before she could eat. Breakfast, she remembered suddenly, had only been half eaten this morning. And lunch, delicious as it was, had been sketchy: little paper cups of shrimp cocktail and individual-serving size packets of oyster crackers, eaten as they strolled along Fisherman's Wharf, with a shared banana split from the ice-cream parlor in Ghirardelli Square as dessert.

Smiling to herself, she pulled the metal fire screen closed and turned, following her nose to the kitchen and the list of takeout places that Adam had promised would be by the telephone.

A decorator had been at work in here, too, she thought, eyeing the russet squares of Mexican tile on the floor, the cream walls, the bittersweet orange counters and gleaming appliances. It looked like something from House Beautiful, not a thing out of place, not a single water spot marring the perfection of the double stainless steel sink.

The list was where Adam said it would be, pinned to a small corkboard next to a wall phone that was the exact shade of the cream-colored walls. Daphne pushed the bulky sleeves of her sweater up and ran the tip of her index finger down the neatly typed list. Mexican, Chinese, Greek, Italian; the selection was extensive. He must have every takeout place in San Francisco listed here, she thought wryly, wondering if he ever cooked for himself.

She called one of the Chinese restaurants on the list and then looked around for anything that might resemble a coffee maker. It was attached to the underside of one of the cupboards, a modern space-age gadget that ground the beans, brewed the coffee and kept it warm, all in less than twelve square inches of space. Now if she could only find the coffee.

Not in any of the cupboards, not in the refrigerator. The only things in there were a quart of milk, a half-eaten wheel of cheese neatly wrapped in cellophane, two apples and three one-pound bags of peanut M&Ms. She finally found a sack of gourmet coffee beans in the freezer. She started the coffee maker, guessing at the amount of beans to use, and left the kitchen to poke around the rest of the house.

The dining room echoed the color scheme of the living room, with a gleaming mahogany table surrounded by four matching chairs upholstered in cream-colored leather. The guest bedroom was done in safe, nonsexist shades of bleached bone and tan, its furnishings neither masculine nor feminine in feeling. Adam's bedroom, however, was done in rich masculine shades of brown: mostly camel and milk chocolate with discreet touches of burnished copper and antique gold in the striped bedspread and the hardware on the traditionally styled teak furniture. The attached bathroom was all milk chocolate tile and cream-colored towels. And all of it—every room—was as neat and tidy and impersonal as the gleaming kitchen.

Adam had always been neat. Obsessively so, Daphne had accused more than once when they were in the midst of some argument or other. But this place went beyond neat, it looked almost as sterile as an operating room.

She wandered out of the bedroom and across the hall to the only room she hadn't yet seen, switching on the light as she entered. Ah, here's where Adam lives, she thought with satisfaction. She hadn't realized until she saw it that what she had been looking for in the midst of this decorator's dream of a house was some sign of the man she had once been married to. She found it in Adam's den.

Oh, it had been decorated by a professional, too. The dramatic burnt umber walls and cream-colored woodwork attested to that fact. But the floor-to-ceiling bookcases were full of Adam's tattered medical books, the rolltop desk under the window held several framed family photographs, and the leather sofa sagged at one end as if that spot was where Adam habitually sat when he was reading. The long low table in front of the sofa held a brass bowl full of Adam's favorite peanut M&Ms, an untidy stack of medical journals that had spilled over onto the floor, and a large book, left lying open as if Adam might have just been reading it.

Daphne moved forward, drawn by something vaguely familiar about the book on the coffee table. Only it wasn't a book, it was a photograph album. Hers and Adam's, put together when they had still been together. Until this moment she had forgotten all about it.

She sat down on the sofa, pulled her boots and socks off and curled into Adam's spot as if it were still warm from the heat of his body. She lifted the album onto her lap and began to turn the pages on what had been their life together.

There was Adam, shortly after they had first started dating, smiling at her with the wind in his golden hair and the Bay at his back. And there they were sitting cross-legged on a blanket in Golden Gate Park with a picnic basket to one side and a half-empty bottle of cheap apple wine between them, both of them grinning like idiots at whoever was taking the picture.

And another shot of them together, heads tilted toward each other as they posed. She was looking straight into the camera, mugging for the photographer, but Adam was gazing at her, a laughing, loving expression on his face as he watched her clown.

She ran her fingertip over his beloved face, her expression wistful, wondering when it was, exactly, that he'd stopped looking at her like that.

She turned the page and came face-to-face with their wedding photographs. There was one large one, a big eight by ten that had been part of the package deal at the Vegas wedding chapel they had gone to. It showed them standing under an arch of white plastic flowers, a sky-blue wall at their backs.

Adam wore his only suit, a $49.99 special, purchased on sale. His tie was a three-inch-wide paisley and his hair covered his ears, but he still looked like every girl's dream of an ardent young groom. Daphne wore a simple white cotton peasant dress of her own design and making. It had a wide flounce that swooped across the bodice, baring her shoulders, a narrow yellow sash and a scalloped hem that reached to her ankles. Her long golden-brown hair hung to her waist, crowned by a wreath of daisies and baby's breath that Adam had blushingly presented to her before they left the motel.

They looked young and scared and very much in love, standing there, clutching each other's hands as they stared solemnly into the camera.

The other wedding pictures were snapshots, taken mostly by Sunny or Brian, who had come with them so they wouldn't have to have strangers act as witnesses. There was Daphne and Sunny, bride and bride's attendant. And Adam and Brian, groom and best man. And Sunny and Brian, clowning as he pretended to drag an unwilling substitute bride to the altar. And then Daphne and Adam again, "kissing the bride" a second time in front of the garish wedding chapel for the benefit of a photographer who had been blubbering into her handkerchief the first time.

They had been so much in love. So much.

When had love ceased to be enough?

Daphne sniffled a bit, wiping at her damp eyes as the bittersweet memories assailed her. She continued turning the pages.

Maybe this is where it started, she thought, coming to stop on the page that held a faded newspaper clipping. "Radical feminist assaults cameraman," the caption read under a grainy photograph of a long-haired, jean-clad Daphne allegedly trying to knock a cameraman unconscious with her homemade placard. As someone had said at Sunny's party, Adam had been mad enough to bust a gut.

"What the hell did you think you were doing, marching down Market Street with a bunch of harebrained man-haters?" Adam had raged, steam practically coming from his ears as he paced their small apartment. "Just what were you trying to prove?"

"Feminists do not hate men," she had pointed out, struggling to hide her tears. Tears that were a result of both Adam's anger and the unsettling experience of being arrested. "At least, not in general," she had added ominously. "And we were trying to prove that women have rights, too."

"By trying to brain a cameraman? Dammit, Daffy, you're my wife! Why can't you act like it?"

"Act like what? Your mother?" she shot back. His mother was a loving, tradition-bound woman who thought wives had been put on this earth to cater to their husbands and sons. Too enraged to think before she spoke, Daphne forgot that Adam couldn't really be blamed for having absorbed some of her old-fashioned ideas. She forgot, too, that he was trying to overcome them. "Cooking and cleaning and bowing down before the great doctor-to-be? With no opinions of my own. Is that the kind of wife you want? A little robot woman?"

"Dammit, Daffy, you know that's not what I meant. I was afraid you'd be hurt. You could have been hurt, you know. Besides, what's wrong with being like my mother?"

The argument, Daphne remembered, had finally ended up like all their other arguments, in bed, with ardent exclamations of love and regret and forgiveness—and no real solution.

The click of the front door brought her head up her gaze seeking the brass clock on the opposite wall. Eight-thirty. Adam was home earlier than he had planned, she thought, feeling a surge of joy shoot through her. Daphne uncurled her legs and leaned forward to place the album back on the coffee table. A voice froze her in the act of rising from the sofa.

"Adam?" The light feminine voice lifted in inquiry. "Where are you?"

Daphne melted back into the corner of the sofa. Some woman obviously had a key to Adam's house. A picture of the dark-haired nurse, Ginny, flashed into her mind. Would Adam give his house key to a woman who was only a friend? A woman who was, as he had said, not part of a "couple"?

"Adam, it's me." There was a light knock on the half-closed door to the den and Adam's sister stepped into the room. "I just stopped by to pick up that textbook on organic chemistry for my..." Her voice trailed off as she caught sight of Daphne. Her blue eyes widened. "You," she breathed, incredulous. "What are you doing here?"

Startled, Daphne told her the literal truth. "Waiting for Adam."

Marcia advanced into the middle of the room, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. "How did you get in?"

Daphne's eyebrows rose. She knew Marcia didn't like her and she thought she knew why, but that was no reason for her to speak as if she suspected Daphne of breaking and entering. "With a key."

"You mean Adam gave you a key?" Marcia said the words as if she could hardly believe them.

"Obviously."

Marcia glared at her. "I don't believe it," she stated emphatically.

"No?" Daphne shrugged, fighting the quick rise of animosity she felt toward Adam's sister. "Well, then, I guess you'll just have to wait until Adam comes home and ask him, won't you?" She glanced up at the clock again. "He should be coming in anytime now," she offered. "We're supposed to eat at nine."

Marcia sank down into the straight-backed chair in front of the rolltop desk. "But his car's in the driveway."

"Yes, I know. I drove it back from the hospital. Adam's going to take a taxi." Daphne stood. "I made some coffee when I came in. Would you like a cup?"

Marcia didn't seem to have heard her. "I can't believe he'd actually see you again. You!" she said scathingly, as if Daphne were some lower form of life. Her eyes pinned Daphne to where she stood, something very close to hate in their blue depths.

"Why not?" Daphne asked, hardly able to comprehend how such an emotion could be directed at her by someone she barely knew.

"Because you divorced him."

"Adam divorced me," Daphne said, her voice gone quite cold.

"After you deserted him."

Anger—and pain—flashed in Daphne's eyes for a moment. "You've got your facts slightly wrong," she informed Marcia coolly. "Desertion had noth—"

"You left him to go to New York," Marcia interrupted. "To be a fashion designer." She injected the last two words with as much scorn as possible. "And you didn't come back."

Because I wasn't wanted back, Daphne thought, but said nothing in her own defense. Let Marcia think what she liked. It seemed she would anyway, no matter what Daphne said. "I'm going into the kitchen for that cup of coffee." She paused in the doorway. "You're welcome to join me." She left the room without a backward glance.

The smell of fresh, too strong coffee permeated the small spotless kitchen. Daphne found a glazed earthenware mug in one of the cupboards and poured herself a full cup. Her hands shook.

Why would Marcia have such a warped view of what had happened? True, she had only been thirteen at the time of the divorce, and girls of that age tended to be overly emotional, especially in regards to a beloved older brother. But still, the only way she could have gotten everything so backward was if someone had told it to her that way. And that someone could have only been Adam. But why would Adam have made her out to be the heavy when he was the one who had filed for divorce?

A sharp rat-a-tat-tat interrupted her thoughts and Daphne jumped. She set the cup of unwanted coffee on the counter and hurried toward the front door. It opened before she got there and Adam, one arm cradling a sack of steaming food, hurried in out of the foggy night air.

"Great timing, huh?" he said, grinning as he pushed the door shut with his shoulder. "I intercepted the delivery boy at the door." He sniffed appreciatively. "Hmm, Chinese. My favorite." He entered the kitchen, dropping the sack on the counter, and turned to take Daphne into his arms. She avoided his embrace. His face clouded instantly, the happy grin gone. "Daffy, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," she lied, motioning toward the hall with one hand. "Marcia's here."

"So?" He reached for her again. "I'll say hello to her in a minute." He lifted her chin with a forefinger. "Right now I want to say hello to you." He smiled down into her eyes. "Hello, Daffy," he said softly, placing a gentle kiss on her lips.

Daphne couldn't help it, she kissed him back. For a moment, seconds only, they were lost in the first sweet, tender touch of mouth on mouth. Then Adam's arms tightened, lifting her, and Daphne arched up to meet him.

"Hello, Adam," Marcia said from behind them, her voice disapproving.

Adam lifted his head, and self-consciously his arms dropped from around Daphne. Apparently, being caught with his arms around his ex-wife made him uncomfortable, she thought.

"Marcia. I didn't know you intended to come by tonight."

"Obviously." The words dripped sarcasm. She leaned against the doorjamb, arms folded across her chest. "What's she doing here?" She indicated Daphne with a contemptuous toss of her blond head.

Adam frowned a warning. "Daffy's my guest."

"Why?"

"I don't think I care for the tone of your voice, young lady."

"Oh, for crying out loud. Don't go all big brother on me, Adam," Marcia snapped.

"Then don't act like a spoiled brat."

"I'm sorry, Adam." She moved into the kitchen, completely ignoring Daphne, and put her hand on Adam's arm, her blue eyes wide as she gazed intently up into his face. "I'm worried about you."

"There's nothing for you to worry about," he said gently.

"There is, too. And you know it." She flashed a venomous look at Daphne. "She almost ruined your life once," Marcia said passionately. "And she'll do it again if you let her."

Adam's big hand came down on Marcia's, silencing her as he pressed it to his forearm. "You haven't got the faintest idea what you're talking about, Marcia," he said quietly. "You were only thirteen when Daffy and I got divorced. Hardly old enough to understand everything that was going on." He snorted. "Hell, I barely understood it myself."

"But, Adam—"

"No buts." Adam stopped her with a shake of his head. "I don't want to hear any more about it."

"But I'm worried about you."

"I know." He patted her hand and put her away from him. "But I'm a big boy now, quite capable of handling my own affairs."

"Is that why she's here?" Marcia spat, her eyes raking over Daphne's slender form as she pressed back against a counter for support. "For some tacky little affair?"

"That's enough." Adam's voice cracked through the room like a whip, all gentleness gone. "Not one more word," he said when she opened her mouth. "Not another word. In fact, I'd appreciate it if you'd go on home before you say anything else you're going to regret."

Marcia stood where she was, looking stubborn.

"Now, Marcia."

With one last venomous look at Daphne, jaw clenched against the words Adam had forbidden her to say, Marcia fled. The door banged behind her, shaking some of the paintings on the living room wall.

The silence was deafening.