The Night Remembers (13 page)

"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.