Chapter 2

 

It was chaos backstage. Technicians went about the business of packing up their equipment, stoically dodging around the models who scurried back and forth in various stages of undress as they struggled to get out of their borrowed finery and into the gowns they would wear for the rest of the evening's festivities. There was a high-society charity dance being held in one of the hotel ballrooms to which they had all been invited.

It was easy to tell the pros from the amateurs. The doctors' wives were all huddled behind a curtained-off partition as they changed, while the professional models, used to displaying their bodies before the eyes of both man and camera, changed anywhere there was room. They created privacy simply by turning their backs.

"Hey, Daphne." Elaine hurried up to her employer, her voice several octaves higher than usual in her excitement. Her glossy brown bob swirled around her face as she moved, revealing glimpses of the large baroque pearls that adorned her ears. "Suzie just told me the most amazing thing."

"I'll just bet she did," Daphne said dryly as she continued to match the dresses, which had been hung haphazardly on the metal clothes rack, against the list attached to her ever-present clipboard.

"Well," Elaine prodded, hazel eyes wide with curiosity. "Is it true?"

"Is what true?" Daphne didn't look up. Maybe if I ignore her, she thought, she'll go away.

"Is that gorgeous blond hunk really your ex-husband?"

"Modesty forbids me to comment on the 'gorgeous' part," said a warm, masculine voice from behind them. "But I am her ex-husband." Daphne didn't turn around but she knew he was smiling. She could hear it in his voice. "That is, if this elegant lady is the same Daphne who used to wear bell-bottom jeans and homemade tie-dye T-shirts."

"Tie-dye T-shirts? Daphne?" Elaine's eyes got even wider, her head bobbing back and forth as she tried to look at both Daphne and the "gorgeous hunk" at the same time. "You've got to be kidding."

"He isn't." Daphne spoke up before Adam could reply. "Believe it or not, those T-shirts were among my very first efforts at design." She put her clipboard down on a nearby metal chair and turned around to face the man who had once been her husband. "Hello, Adam."

"Hello, Daffy," he said, calling her by that ridiculous nickname that no one else had ever dared use. "It's been a long time."

"Yes," she agreed, because she could think of nothing else to say. It had been a long time.

And, yet, Daphne felt as if it hadn't been any time at all. He was having the same effect on her he'd always had. Just the sight of him, close up like this, was doing strange things to her heartbeat. But what else had she expected? She had never, not once in the past eleven years, ever stopped loving him. Not even when she was married to Miles.

They stood there, silently staring at each other, seemingly oblivious to the models and stagehands swarming around them. They didn't even seem to be aware of Elaine, standing wide-eyed with ill-concealed curiosity by Daphne's elbow.

"So," he said softly, reaching out to gently grasp her shoulders. The neckline of her dress had fallen to one side, as it had been designed to do, and his hand made direct contact with her warm flesh. Daphne could feel the separate imprint of each long finger curving around the delicate bones of her shoulder.

Such gentle hands, she thought, her mind instantly going back to all the times he had touched her, just so. He had always had gentle hands, big as a linebacker's, but infinitely gentle. Infinitely skillful. Indisputably the hands of a surgeon.

"Let me look at you." He held her away from him as his gaze ran over her assessingly from the top of her elegantly tousled head to the toes of her bare strappy evening shoes, and back up again. "You cut your hair."

Whatever she had expected him to say, it hadn't been that. Cutting her previously waist-length hair had been the least of the changes she had made.

"Yes," she said again. Her hand fluttered to the back of her neck, fingering the soft, clinging tendrils and then, before she stopped to think about it, she reached up and touched the thick lock of blond hair that fell over his forehead. "So did you," she said, smoothing it back with a proprietary, almost wifely gesture.

She didn't seem to hear his swift intake of breath at her gentle, careless caress.

Wonderingly, she touched the tiny crow's feet at the corner of his left eye. Her fingers whispered over one of the twin creases that ran from nose to mouth in either lean cheek. His lips were thinner, harder than they had been in his youth, she thought as she continued taking inventory. They had lost that look of vulnerability and sweet sensuality. He had the mouth of a virile, passionate man now; he looked experienced and knowing.

An infinitely more interesting face, Daphne thought again, marveling at the healthy, golden glow of his skin. He looked as much like a Greek god as he ever had, only more so. He reminded her of a mature and rugged Apollo, all big and golden and glowing with health.

Suddenly, Daphne became aware of what she was doing. Her hand dropped abruptly to her side, and almost without conscious thought she slipped into the character that she had so deftly learned to play.

"I'm forgetting my manners," she said, drawing her composure around her like a shawl. She took a small step backward and his hands dropped from her shoulders. Daphne adjusted the neckline of her dress, covering the place where his fingers had been.

"Adam, this is my assistant, Elaine Prescott." She turned toward Elaine who still stood, gaping, at her elbow. "Elaine, this 'gorgeous hunk'—" her eyebrows arched slightly when Elaine actually had the grace to blush "—is Dr. Adam Forrest."

"Dr. Forrest." Elaine bobbed her head in greeting, holding out a slim hand as she looked up at him through her lashes.

"Call me Adam, please." He smiled at her, and her blush deepened.

"Adam," she echoed, bobbing her head again as he released her hand.

Daphne blinked, amazed. Was this blushing schoolgirl the same Elaine who whistled at construction workers?

"Will we see you at the charity dance tonight?" Adam said to the younger woman.

"Not if she doesn't get busy now, you won't." Daphne broke into the conversation when Elaine just continued to stand there staring. "I want these dresses covered before we leave," she continued. "And all the jewelry collected and put into the hotel safe. Elaine?" She waved her hand in front of her assistant's face. "Earth to Elaine. Come in, please."

Elaine's eyes refocused. "What? Oh, the dresses. Sure. I'll do it right now." She smiled up at Adam one more time before she turned to go, and her usual brand of sassy brashness seemed to come back to her. "Save me a dance, okay, Gorgeous?" she quipped, bouncing away.

Adam laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. "Is she always like that?"

"Oh, no." Daphne's voice and expression were deadpan. "She's just shy because she doesn't know you yet. Wait until she gets warmed up."

"No thanks. I think I'll pass." He sighed, raking one hand through the lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead. "A kid like that makes me feel about a hundred years old."

"Well, you have gotten older," Daphne agreed.

Adam's eyes narrowed slightly, trying to decide whether she was teasing or not.

"I mean that as a compliment," she added. "Experience looks good on you."

"On you, too." He smiled and his bright blue gaze ran over her again, briefly, but with more masculine appraisal than the last time. "You're even more beautiful than I remembered."

A faint smile curved Daphne's lips. Compliments from the closemouthed Adam, she thought, and delivered with such confidence, too. Experience had apparently given him more than just an interesting face. He had never called her beautiful before, except in bed. Words had always been hard for Adam.

"Why, Adam," she said lightly, teasingly, a slight smile still hovering on her lips. "I didn't know you noticed such things."

He grinned in acknowledgment of her gentle barb and made a slight movement with his hand, as if he wanted to touch her again. Apparently he thought better of it because, instead of touching her, he stuffed his hands into the pants pockets of his tuxedo.

The movement pushed his jacket back, exposing the pristine elegance of his white dress shirt with its fine pin-tuck pleating and dashing wing-tip collar. His bow tie nestled like a black satin butterfly at the base of his strong golden throat, and the cummerbund around his lean waist emphasized the truly awesome broadness of his chest above it and the narrowness of the hips below.

He had always been tall and handsome, but when, she wondered, had he gotten so elegant? So devastatingly sophisticated?

"Are you coming to this charity dance?" he said, trying for casualness.

"I haven't decided yet." Daphne's husky voice was equally casual, belying the sudden quivering of her stomach. He looked like an ad for some swanky men's cologne, she thought, staring at him with a slightly bemused expression on her face. He'd hate to have her tell him that. Or, rather, the Adam she'd known would hate it. Receiving compliments had always been as hard for Adam as giving them. He used to blush like a schoolboy when she called him her Greek god.

Would he still blush, she wondered.

"What's to decide?" Adam's voice broke into her thoughts. "Your assistant there—" he glanced in Elaine's direction "—is packing all this up for you, isn't she?"

Daphne nodded. "But I should be here to oversee things."

Adam shook his head. "No excuses." He smiled that sleepy, inviting smile of his. "We could have a dance for old time's sake. It'll be fun."

"Well..." Daphne hesitated. It would be more than just fun, it would be... what? Exciting? Thrilling?

Try dangerous, she thought, dangerous and foolish. He still had the power to stir her deepest emotions. Just standing here with him had more than proved that to her. Dancing with him would be fatal. Still, she thought, why not? What could it hurt? She wasn't married anymore... but was he?

Her eyes flickered to his left hand. There was no ring but that didn't prove anything. Neither of them had worn a ring when they'd been married, partly because of her blossoming women's lib philosophy and partly because they couldn't afford it.

"Won't your wife object to all these free dances you're passing out?" she said, before she could stop herself.

Adam's eyes captured hers. "I'm not married." There was a brief pause as he tried to read the expression in her big golden-brown eyes. "Are you?" he asked, very carefully.

Daphne shook her head slowly. "Not anymore." She glanced downward. "I was, but Miles—" She moved her shoulders uneasily and the neckline of her dress slid down again. "My husband died three years ago."

"I should say I'm sorry, shouldn't I?" Adam reached out and lifted her chin, bringing her eyes up to his again. Daphne felt his touch sizzle down to her toes. "But I'd be lying."

"Lying?" Daphne echoed.

"I make it a rule never to have sex with married women," he explained softly. "And I've suddenly discovered that I want, very much, to have sex with you."

"Oh." The single word came out as a breathless, throaty whisper. This new, older, more experienced Adam was certainly full of surprises, she thought. The Adam she had known all those years ago would never have said anything like that, especially not in a room full of people.

"Oh, indeed," he said, his gentle smile mocking both of them. His hand moved from her chin to feather lightly down the slim column of her long, elegant neck. It settled on her bare shoulder again. Daphne shivered and the quivery feeling in her stomach spread lower. "Well?"

"Well?" she murmured.

"Am I going to get to have sex with you, Daphne?" His voice was a husky whisper.

Where had he learned all this? she wondered a bit frantically. His new technique was devastating. Straight to the point and utterly, utterly devastating.

"But I thought..." She made a vague, fluttering gesture with one hand. "The charity dance, aren't you supposed to be there?"

In her suddenly flustered state it didn't even occur to her that he didn't mean—couldn't possibly mean—that he wanted to have sex with her now, right this instant.

Adam shrugged and Daphne's eyes followed the movement, mesmerized by the way the fine black material of his tuxedo jacket strained against his broad shoulders. "There are over three-hundred people in the ballroom." He caressed her shoulder lightly, his thumb massaging the tender hollow of her throat. "They'd never miss me."

"Don't you have a date or—" she lifted the shoulder that he wasn't touching "—or something?"

Adam shook his head. "I came with a group of people," he told her. "The fashion show was merely a duty appearance for charity." He smiled slightly. "Actually, Sunny threatened to picket my office if I didn't come. Now, any more excuses?" His voice was gently teasing.

"I have to supervise things here. No, really," she added when he started to interrupt. "There's a fortune in jewelry that has to go in the hotel safe." She paused, her eyes meeting his for the barest instant. "Insurance won't cover it if I keep it in my room."

Adam's hand stilled on her shoulder and a tiny spark seemed to flare in the depth of his eyes, making them an even brighter, deeper blue. Daphne recognized that look instantly. Desire. The same feeling was racing madly through her own body.

"You're staying at the hotel?" The words seemed to rasp out of his throat.

"Yes," she said, low. "I always stay here when I'm in town, which is every few months or so. More often, lately. I seem to pick up more and more clients, buyers, in this area every season." She knew she was babbling, but she couldn't seem to stop. "Business is getting so good, I've been seriously thinking of opening up a West Coast office. It would—"

"Daffy." His fingers tightened on her shoulder, silencing her. "When I said I wanted to have sex with you, I didn't mean that I was going to throw you down and ravish you the minute we're alone, you know."

Her eyes grew wide. "You didn't?" she said softly, wondering if she sounded as disappointed as she felt.

Adam uttered a strangled sound, halfway between a chuckle and a groan. "No, I didn't." His free hand came up to grasp her other shoulder gently. "Although, believe me, I'd like to," he said ruefully. "But I also like to think that I've developed more finesse than that. Besides, I'm not so thickheaded that I can't see the idea scares you."

"Oh, no. It—" Daphne began and then stopped abruptly, lowering her head to hide the sudden flush of emotion that heated her cheeks. She had given too much away already.

"All right, it doesn't exactly scare you," he amended. "But it makes you a little nervous, right?"

Daphne nodded.

"Well, it makes me a little nervous, too. Hell, it makes me a lot nervous. It's been quite a shock seeing you again like this without—" he paused as if searching for a word "—without any warning. I had no idea that tonight's fashion guru and my ex-wife were one and the same. Sunny made sure of that. And I certainly didn't expect to still feel—" He broke off abruptly and his hands dropped from her shoulders. He shoved them back into his pockets and half turned away from her, his eyes following a crack in the floor. "I didn't realize that you'd have such a strong effect on me." He looked up at her then, a sheepish, almost embarrassed expression on his face. "But I'm as hot for you right now as I was that first time you ran over me with your bicycle," he admitted, his eyes blazing into hers. He was blushing under his tan.

"Adam," she said softly, incredulously. She didn't know what else to say. It was how she felt, too, but she'd had the advantage, however slight, of knowing that's the way she would feel if she ever saw him again. She had always known it. It had obviously come as quite a surprise to him.

"Daphne." He mimicked her shocked tone, a self-mocking light in his eyes as he stared back at her. Then he shrugged and his chest lifted in a deep sigh. "Maybe we should just forget I said anything," he said, looking away from her again. The blush had receded, leaving his face smooth and golden and, she thought, a bit strained. "It was a bad idea, anyway. It's probably better to let sleeping dogs lie." He ran his hand through his hair and turned as if to leave.

"I was sort of looking forward to it," Daphne murmured, her husky voice tinged with disappointment.

Adam paused. "So was I," he said softly, "but—"

Daphne could see the struggle on his face, could see him warring with himself over what he should do and what he wanted to do. The struggle took less than ten seconds.

"All right," he said with the air of a man casting caution and good sense to the wind. "Let's start with a dance. And then we'll go somewhere quiet for a drink. Talk about old times and catch up with each other's lives. How does that sound to you?"

Daphne nodded her approval. "Sounds fine."

"All right, then. Why don't you do whatever it is you have to do and I'll meet you in the main lobby in, say—" he glanced at his watch "—thirty minutes?"

Unconsciously, Daphne followed the direction of his gaze, but it wasn't the watch that caught her attention. It was the fine blond hairs sprinkled across his wrist and over the back of his hand that held her eyes. They glinted like gold against his tanned skin.

The hair on his chest was like that, she remembered suddenly, fine and golden and as soft as silk against the palm of her hand... or against her breasts.

"Is that enough time?"

"What?" Daphne looked up, her eyes soft and slightly unfocused. "Oh, the time," she murmured inanely, hoping he hadn't added mind reading to his list of new talents. "Yes, that's plenty of time." It wasn't, of course—an hour would be more like it—but Daphne was hardly aware of what she was saying.

"Thirty minutes, then." Adam hesitated for the barest instant, indecision on his face, and then he cupped Daphne's cheek in his palm and bent his head, touching his lips lightly to hers.

Taken by surprise, Daphne responded as naturally as if there hadn't been eleven years between this kiss and the last one they had shared. Her head tilted back, her eyes closed, her lips parted on a little sigh, and what Adam had intended as a brief, experimental meeting of lips turned into something more.

He took fire immediately, goaded by Daphne's half sigh and her instinctive acquiescence. His hand moved from her cheek to the nape of her neck, sliding around the curve of her long elegant throat, causing her crystal earring to bounce gently against the back of his hand. He molded his palm to the base of her skull, splaying his fingers through her golden-brown hair, and tilted her head to one side, angling his own so that he could take full possession of her willing mouth.

They stood like that for a few endless seconds, connected only by the heat of their clinging mouths and his hand at the back of her head. Their bodies seemed to sway toward each other without actually touching, like a pair of cobras weaving in unison to the sound of the magician's flute.

It was Adam who broke the kiss. He lifted his head slightly, tearing his mouth from hers with difficulty, and pulled back to look down into her face. His eyes had the heavy-lidded, sleepy expression that Daphne recognized immediately as a sign of his desire. Her own eyes, she knew, had probably lightened to gold as they always did when she was aroused.

"Don't keep me waiting, Daffy," Adam said then, almost pleadingly. His lips still hovered a mere sigh away from hers. His breathing was rapid. His cheeks were flushed.

Daphne blinked as if coming out of a trance. "Waiting?" she said breathlessly.

"In the lobby." He brushed his lips softly across hers once... twice... a third time…as his hand cradled the back of her head. "I'll be waiting for you in the main lobby, near the entrance to the ballroom," he whispered against her mouth. Then, reluctantly, he straightened away from her and his gaze drifted past her shoulder for just a second.

Behind Daphne, standing with their collective mouths hanging open, were five or six models and Elaine Prescott. Elaine winked.

The slight, passion-induced flush on Adam's clean shaven cheeks deepened and spread over his entire face, turning it a fiery red. His hand dropped from the back of Daphne's neck. "Thirty minutes," he said tersely, and then he turned on his heel and strode, stiff-backed, toward the exit.

"My, oh, my." Elaine's whisper rose, sotto voce, into the small, sudden silence that Adam had left behind him. "Doesn't he just make your heart go pitty-pat?" she said to no one in particular.

Daphne turned around to face the group of grinning women standing behind her. "Don't you ladies have anything better to do?" she snapped, unaware that the soft look on her face made her words less forceful than she had intended. Still, they were quite forceful enough to make the models who didn't know her well begin to shuffle away. "Like getting yourselves ready for that charity shindig?"

"I am ready," Elaine started to defend herself. "All I have to do is freshen my—"

"Good." With an abrupt movement, Daphne turned and snatched up her clipboard from the chair where she placed it. She thrust it into Elaine's hands, pointedly ignoring the two models who hadn't slunk off with the others. "Then you have plenty of time to see that everything is in order before you go to the dance."

"But, Daphne." Surprised by her employer's highly unusual behavior, Elaine couldn't even form a proper protest.

Usually, it was Daphne who saw to all the details at the end of the show, making sure that all the clothes and shoes and accessories that had been used were accounted for. And usually, it was Daphne who saw to it that each model, especially the volunteers, had been personally complimented and thanked for her part in the fashion show. Usually, Daphne was the last one to leave. But not tonight.

"Make sure the jewelry is put in the hotel safe," she instructed Elaine. "And get an itemized receipt for it from the hotel manager," she added over her shoulder as she headed for the exit.

"But Daphne," Elaine said again, too late. Daphne was already gone. Elaine looked at the two models who still stood near her, shrugging her shoulders when Kali raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Ex-husband," Suzie said succinctly, as if that explained everything.