The Night Remembers (28 page)

"I love you," she echoed, as she tangled her fingers in his tousled hair. She pulled his head closer, demanding more.

Their mouths touched again and clung. Lips and tongues tasting, testing, cherishing. Both of them physically affirming the words they had just said aloud.

"Way 'ta go, Gorgeous!" Elaine's voice, brimming with laughter, urged them on.

Adam raised his head a fraction and looked around. Four beaming female faces, and one very puzzled male one, were watching them with avid interest. Adam blushed, the color rising swiftly from the open throat of his sportshirt to his hairline.

Spontaneously, the women burst into applause. Mr. Chan, not wanting to do the incorrect thing, joined them.

Daphne grinned happily and executed a sketchy little bow.

She was practically jerked off her feet as Adam's big hand closed around her wrist. "Elaine, you're in charge," he said, dragging Daphne toward the door.

"But Mr. Chan..." Daphne sputtered, but she wasn't really objecting.

"I'll take care of him." Elaine slipped her arm through Mr. Chan's. "We'll get along just fine, won't we?" she said, patting his hand.

Mr. Chan smiled tentatively and bowed.

"You go with Gorgeous," Elaine ordered, nodding approvingly as Adam continued to drag her business partner across the room.

Having no choice—and wanting none—Daphne went.

* * *

"And you'd really thought I
'd left you for good?"

"Really." Adam finished lathering up his hands and reached beneath the water for her foot. Holding her heel in one hand, he began to massage the floral-scented soap over her arch and between her toes. "What else was I supposed to think?" he asked. "I come home to an empty house. Three hungry cats, begging to be fed. No Daphne. No note." He ran his hand up over the swell of her calf and back down again. "No nothing."

"I already explained to you about that."

"Yes," he said. He put her left foot down and picked up the other one. "I intend to have a little heart-to-heart with my baby sister when we get back."

"Don't be too hard on her, Adam," Daphne advised, feeling magnanimous and forgiving with Adam sitting at the other end of her bathtub, doing deliciously sensuous things to her feet. "She was only trying to save you from yourself." She grinned wickedly and wiggled her toes under the water. "And me."

Adam grinned back. That slow, sleepy, utterly sexy grin that turned her bones to mush. If she wasn't already half lying down she would have melted. As it was, she sank another few inches into the mountain of perfumed bubbles.

"I don't want to be saved from you, Daffy," he said softly, sincerely. "I never did."

"Never?"

"Never," Adam said solemnly.

"Not even the first time around?"

"Not even then."

"Then why—Oh, that feels wonderful." She sighed and fell silent a moment, enjoying the feel of his strong, gentle hands caressing her foot, and almost forgetting her question. "Why did you file for divorce?" she finally asked. It was an old issue, an old hurt, better off forgotten, but she needed to know the answer. And, despite the lightness of her tone, the old hurt showed through.

Adam stopped caressing her foot, placing the sole against his bare, hairy chest. "I don't know exactly," he said, trying to answer honestly. "I was angry. And—" he groped for a word "—hurt, I guess."

"Hurt? What had I done to hurt you?"

"You left me," he stated simply. "To follow your career."

Daphne pulled herself upright and her foot slid down his stomach into the water. "But it was only going to be for a couple of months. I was coming back. I told you I was coming back."

"I know but..." He shrugged and ran his index finger up and down her shin. He looked for all the world like a small boy admitting to something that embarrassed him beyond words. "I couldn't have left you, Daffy. Not for any length of time at all. Not for any reason. And it hurt like hell to think that you could leave me."

"Oh, Adam." Daphne leaned forward, her movement causing little ripples of water and bubbles to lap against his chest as she reached out to touch him. "Why didn't you say something? Why didn't you tell me how you felt instead of getting all macho and
ordering
me not to go? We could have worked something out."

He shrugged again, still not looking at her. "Pride, I guess. If you didn't want to stay, I wasn't going to beg you to."

"But you filed for divorce. If you felt the way you say, why—" her hand slithered up his wet arm and she touched his cheek, urging him to look at her "—why did you file for divorce if you loved me?" she said, truly puzzled. "I don't understand."

"Looking back, I don't really understand it, either," Adam admitted. He pressed her palm to his cheek with his hand, but his eyes were still shuttered against her, focused on the froth of iridescent bubbles that floated on the surface of the water. "But at the time, well, it seemed to make perfect sense. I was young and angry and stupid. And so crazy in love with you that I wasn't thinking straight. I had some half-baked idea that filing for divorce would bring you back to me. That if you really loved me, you'd come back and fight it." His eyes lifted to hers briefly and then dropped, but not quickly enough to hide the old hurts that still haunted him. "When you didn't, I thought, well... that you'd decided you didn't love me after all. That your career was more important than I was."

"Oh, no, Adam. No. How could you think that? I loved you then like I love you now." She moved forward until she was kneeling between his thighs and took his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her. Water sloshed over the edge of the tub but neither of them noticed it. "I loved you passionately. With all my heart and soul. When you filed for divorce I thought you didn't love
me."

"Not love you? Daffy, that's crazy."

"It's not crazy." She reared back and slapped the water with her hand, sending bubbles flying. "What else was I supposed to think? You didn't want to marry me in the first place and—"

"You were so young," Adam said, defending himself. "I didn't want to push you into something you'd regret later."

"Push me!" Daphne sank back on her heels, incredulity written all over her face. Her breasts swayed with the movement, tiny bubbles clinging to their rounded slopes, drops of water glistening on their tips. "I practically had to blackmail you into marriage. How could you think you were pushing me?"

"Because I wanted it..." He licked his lips, his eyes suddenly caught by her swaying breasts. "Wanted you so much that I
couldn't
think. I just felt. And what I was feeling was driving me crazy." He looked up, catching her eyes, and grinned slowly. "Just like it's driving me crazy now."

But Daphne wasn't paying any attention. "But that doesn't make any sense," she said indignantly. "You didn't want to marry me because you loved me. You divorced me because you loved me. You...
Adam!"

Adam had reached out, cupping his warm wet hands under her breasts. He slid his palms to her sides, his thumbs resting under the lower curve of her breasts, his fingers curling toward her back.

"Adam, I'm trying to talk to you," she said, putting her hands on his shoulders. Her elbows were stiff, holding him off.

He shook his head. "No more talking."

"But we're not finished discussing this," Daphne insisted.

"Yes, we are. It's yesterday's news. Over. And what matters now is
now
—and the rest of our lives."

"But I need to ask you one more question."

"All right." His thumbs feathered up the undersides of her breasts and flickered across her nipples. "Ask. I'm listening."

"You are not. You're—" She gasped as his thumbs brushed her nipples again. "I can't talk when you do that. I can't even
think
when you do that."

His hands tightened, pulling her to him as he slid down into the water. Bubbles teased at his chin. "Good," he murmured, satisfaction evident in his deep tones.

Daphne let herself be pulled forward until she was lying on top of Adam, her breasts resting high on his chest, her bare bottom poking out of the bubbles like twin moons. But she wouldn't let him kiss her. Not yet.

"I still have one question," she insisted, holding him off.

"Now?" He ran his hand along the curve of her spine, smoothing it all the way down to the swell of her exposed buttocks.

"Yes." Daphne's voice faltered only slightly. "Now."

"But—"

"No." She put a finger on his lips, silencing the rest of his protest. "No 'buts,' Adam. That's how we got into trouble the last time. We made love instead of talking things out." Her chin tilted stubbornly. "I'm not going to let that happen to us again."

Adam's hand stilled on her back. "You're right," he said, resigned. "Ask your question."

Suddenly, Daphne didn't know quite where to start. "Well, I... that is..." Surprising herself, Daphne blushed. She looked down, her eyes following the path of her finger as it curved down his neck and out across his shoulder.

"Daphne?" Adam said, his curiosity more than a little piqued now.

"I... Oh, never mind." She shrugged, suddenly feeling silly to have made such an issue of what was, after all, really nothing. "It isn't important, anyway."

"No, I won't 'never mind,'" he insisted. "If you've still got a question about us, it's important. Ask it."

"Well, it's just that you've been so... Oh, damn! This isn't going to come out right, especially after what just went on in my bedroom."

What had gone on in that bedroom was loving so abandoned, so uncontrolled, so intensely emotional that Daphne wondered how she could ever have thought that Adam was holding anything back. Assured of her love, he had given everything to her—his body, his thoughts, his very soul. And she, freed by his lack of constraint, had given him all of her.

"Come on," Adam prompted, a soft sexy smile curving his lips as he remembered their loving. "What have I been?"

Daphne's blush deepened. "You've been so, well, so standoffish with me these past six weeks. So distant."

She felt, rather than heard, the rumble of his laughter beneath her breasts. "Standoffish? Are you kidding?" Adam chuckled. "You call
this
standoffish? When I've practically ravished you every time we got within two feet of each other?" He grinned wickedly. "Not to mention what just went on in your bedroom."

Daphne gave him a look. "That isn't what I mean and you know it."

"Then what did you mean?"

"Well, you've been so cool. So damn
tolerant.
Now stop laughing." She reared back slightly, coming up out of the water, and punched his shoulder. "I'm serious."

Adam arranged his face into properly serious lines.

Daphne settled back against his chest, squishing bubbles between them. "What I mean is," she began again, toying with the damp hair at his temple. "Well, why didn't you get mad when I appeared on the evening news in Sunny's protest march? And why didn't you get upset when I left junk all over your nice clean house. And—"

Adam put a finger on her lips. "I think I get the picture," he said, smiling when Daphne closed her teeth around its tip and bit lightly. "I didn't get upset for the same reason, I suspect, that you didn't get upset when I had to stay late at the hospital, or when I was called back after we'd already settled in for the night. Compromise," he stated succinctly. "Neither one of us wanted to make the other angry. And, I think, we were trying to show each other just how much we'd changed. At least, I was."

"Hmm," Daphne said, digesting this. It was amazingly close to her own line of reasoning. "But you were so angry when you came down to the police station to bail me out. You were furious, in fact. What happened to the compromise then?"

"That wasn't anger, Daffy. Well, not all of it, anyway. It was fear. Stark terror. You weren't home when I got back from the hospital."

"But I left a note that time," she reminded him.

He gave her a wry look. "Telling me you'd gone out with Sunny 'for a little while.' I thought you'd gone stomping out in a huff because I'd had to cancel our picnic."

"But I wasn't in a huff at all. I understood why you had to rush off to the hospital. Really."

"I know. I know. But, well, it
felt
like you gone off in huff. And then your 'little while' stretched into a couple of hours and I began to get angry. Then it turned into all day and I started to worry, too." He sighed, remembering. "When Brian called to tell me you and Sunny had been arrested that was the last straw." He placed his hands around her throat. "I was just about ready to wring your oh-so-lovely neck."

"So," Daphne crowed. "You
were
mad."

"Furious," he admitted easily, his thumbs stroking the sides of her throat. "And terrified that I'd blow up and we'd end up arguing." He shuddered and his hands drifted to her shoulders. "And you know what happened the last time we argued."

"Same thing as always. We ended up in bed, making up."