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Chapter 14

P
AM BARELY SLEPT THAT NIGHT
. Although she bolted her door, she didn’t trust that John wouldn’t find a way in. And even apart from that fear was the memory of what he’d done. No sooner did she doze off than the image of his hand on her flesh jolted her awake. She was alternately nauseated, shaky, and tearful. By the time she boarded the plane for Boston the next morning, she felt as though she’d been through the wringer. Back in the townhouse, she was pale and wan and had little to say about the trip.

After watching her silently suffer through a kitchen dinner she barely touched, Marcy finally spoke up. “What happened down there?”

Pam’s eyes shot to hers. “Down where?”

“In Palm Beach.”

Pam shrugged and looked away. “It was a disappointing trip. That’s all.”

But Marcy’s voice held quiet conviction. “It was more than that.” She was still for a long minute. “He touched you.”

Pam didn’t take the time to wonder how she knew. Her head came up again along with a quick denial. “He didn’t do anything.”

“But he tried.” Marcy was still for another long minute, then her voice rose in remorse. “I should’a known. I should’a warned you.”

“He didn’t do anything.”

“B’cause you fought him off.”

Pam shrank into herself.

For one who rarely did anything with great speed, Marcy was surprisingly fast into the chair beside her. “Talk about it, Pammy. You can’t keep it inside.”

“It’s ugly.”

“The good Lord knows I’ve seen ugly before. Jarvis taught me all I had to know about that.”

Pam’s eyes widened. “He hit you, but he didn’t—”

“He tried. More’n once. That was another reason your daddy wanted me out of there.”

“Oh, Marcy,” Pam whispered, feeling sick, “I didn’t know.”

“There was no need for you to know then. But you know now, so you know I know what you’re feeling.” She took her hand. “Tell me.”

Needing to confide in someone, Pam did. At the end, she said pleadingly, “Did I ask for it? I went out of my way to be nice because it felt so good to be a family. He was pleased, so I was pleased. Did I go too far? Did I lead him on?”

“No.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t lead him on!”

“He’s my brother. I’d never do something like that with my own brother. I’ve never done it with anyone.” But she wanted to. She wanted to do it with Cutter, and each time she was with him she felt the pull more. Now she couldn’t even tell him about John. He’d be livid. “What am I going to do, Marcy? I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I feel sick.”

Marcy stroked her hand. “When is he coming back?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t talk this morning. He just handed me my ticket and looked at me like I was dirt.”

“He’s trying to make you feel to blame for what happened, but you’re not, Pammy. He is. There’s something wrong with that man.”

His words kept crowding her mind. “He said I was like my mother. He said she came on to him, too. Did you ever see her do that?”

“I never saw anything,” Marcy said immediately.

“When I threatened to tell what he did, he said no one would believe me, and he’s right. I don’t have any proof. But I can’t stay here anymore, Marcy. I can’t live in the same house with him.” She had been agonizing over the problem for hours. “I’d move up to Timiny Cove and live there, but he’d never allow it.”

“You should be here with your friends at school.”

Pam wanted that. She had two more months to go in her junior year, then her whole senior year. It wasn’t the time to transfer. “I’ll have to board. The dean will let me do it if there’s space.” When Marcy looked stricken, she hurried on. “I don’t want to. I’ll miss you. If there were any other solution, I’d take it, but there isn’t one. John would never let me live in an apartment. I can’t just move in with a friend and her family without explanations, and I can’t make the explanations.”

“The school will ask.”

“I’ll say I want to try out dorm living before I go to college.”

“Will John fight you?”

Pam had asked herself that more than once, and each time she felt stymied. “I can’t prove what he did. He didn’t get far enough—”

“Thank the good Lord.”

“And it only happened once. If I make noise about it, he can say I’m mentally unbalanced.” She raised her chin a notch. “But if I make noise, he’ll feel it. People will wonder. It’ll embarrass all of us, but if John gives me trouble, so help me, I’ll do it. He makes a big thing of his image. If he wants to protect it, he’ll let me move into the dorm.”

John returned two days later. By then, Pam had spoken with the school, found a place in the dorm, and made arrangements to move in at the end of spring break, given John’s approval. He gave it, but not without a parting shot. “The same rules apply,” he sneered. “Honor roll, or else.”

For a brief minute, Pam considered countering with a threat of her own. She ached to call his bluff. But she couldn’t. Marcy’s well-being was at stake, as was the house in Timiny Cove. Tarnishing John’s image was nothing compared to the loss of either of those.

The days that followed were long and tense. John seemed to take pleasure being around her, eyeing her in his scornful way, knowing that his presence was a threat. She couldn’t move into the dorm until the Sunday night before classes resumed. Meanwhile, she was stuck at home.

She spent a good deal of time trying to persuade Marcy to look for another job. “Daddy hired you for me as much as for the house. If I won’t be here, what’s the point of your staying? You could be doing the same work for someone far more reasonable than John.”

“He pays me well, Pam. I couldn’t match that somewhere else.”

“Would it be so terrible to take less money?”

“I need it.”

“For your mother?”

Marcy nodded. “Things are real bad between her and Jarvis. I give her everything I can.”

Judging from what she saw, Pam believed that. Marcy lived simply. She bought few clothes, cut her own hair, and most often spent her days off babysitting for the three-year-old son of the housekeeper who worked around the corner. “I could help.”

Marcy shook her head. “You don’t have extra money.”

“I do too. I don’t need all I have.”

“I won’t take your money!”

“Then let me make some calls. Someone must need help—either my friends’ parents or one of my mother’s old friends. Maybe the pay wouldn’t be so bad.”

“But the freedom wouldn’t be the same. I get up to Timiny Cove one or two times a month to tend to the house. John pays me, but I get to go home, too, and he lets me use the car. He even helps out with the medical bills at my ma’s. I can’t afford to quit, Pammy.”

That was pretty much what John had told Pam, and it angered her. Cutter was right: John bought people; he gave them what they badly needed, then held the threat of withdrawal over their heads. She wanted only the best for Marcy, but the day when she could guarantee it herself was a long way off.

Everything good seemed a long way off. Pam brooded on that during the nighttime hours when she lay awake with her eyes on the bedroom door. She felt constrained and defenseless. If she were older, she’d be safe. She’d have money to use at her own discretion. She’d come and go at will. She’d be free of John.

If she were older, she’d have Cutter. She would be in a position to offer him a place in the company, and he’d do well. He was too smart not to. He could wear a tie and jacket as well as the next man.

She thought about that a lot. She pictured him dressed up, driving a sports car, pouring scotch into a glass in the waterfront apartment he might have if he was working in Boston. She pictured him approaching her, looking urbane and sexy—but the image was superimposed by one of him in his cabin in Timiny Cove, wearing nothing but jeans, his hair rumpled, his jaw shadowed. Urbanity couldn’t improve on his sex appeal, she decided. Thoughts of him just as she’d always known him made her feel restless and achy inside.

Still, she resisted going to Maine. Being with Cutter, wanting him badly but knowing that he wouldn’t even kiss her, was agony. So she stayed home during that first weekend after her return from Palm Beach, and kept busy getting ready to move into the dorm. By the second weekend, though, she had done everything there was to do, and she was on edge. She was tense from the minute John walked in the door to the minute he left, and she hadn’t once slept the night through.

So, early Saturday morning she left for Timiny Cove. Cutter was out when she reached his place. She pictured him buying food or browsing for books or getting a haircut. In a way, she was glad to be alone. She was dead tired.

Climbing into his bed, she pulled the sheets and blankets up to her neck and, wrapped in his scent, was asleep in minutes.

For a time, her sleep was deep and dreamless. Then, as had happened every night since Palm Beach, the nightmare of John’s assault brought her awake with a cry. It was a minute before she realized that she wasn’t in Boston, another before she realized that the man whose arms flanked her shaking body wasn’t John.

“Cutter,” she whispered. Sitting up, she threw her arms around his neck and held on tight. “God, I was dreaming awful things.”

He hugged her close, ran a soothing hand over her back. Slowly she stopped trembling, but still she clung to him. For the first time in days, she felt secure.

“It’s been so long,” he said, voicing her thoughts in a low, gritty tone. His arms tightened around her.

“Three weeks.”

“I missed you.”

“Me too.”

His mouth brushed her forehead, nudging her face away from his neck. “You were sleeping soundly. You look tired.”

She nodded and closed her eyes against his chin. Seconds later, she nestled closer. If she’d been able to dig her way inside him and curl up there, she would have.

“Pam? Are you okay?”

“Just hold me, Cutter. It feels so good when you do.”

She wasn’t sure if he heard the desperation in her whisper. She hadn’t deliberately put it there, but after the way John had touched her, Cutter’s embrace was healing. She needed that badly.

When he hugged her more tightly, she sighed in relief. For the longest time they sat there holding each other. It was all Pam wanted, a balm that was penetrating and pure. Then, slowly, she began to notice things like the fullness of his chest, and his warmth, and she wanted more. When he nudged her face again, she turned it up.

His mouth brushed her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks. She turned the tiniest bit to catch his kiss, but it was an elusive whisper. She looked up to find his eyes soft but troubled.

“I shouldn’t do this,” he said.

“I love you.”

“You’re too young.”

“I’ve loved you forever.”

“Not this . . .?way.” In the next breath, he lowered his head and kissed her.

Pam melted. Her eyes closed, her lips softened. She was his to mold, which he did with leisure from first one angle, then another. Finally drawing back, he put a finger to her lips and said in a thick voice, “I’m in trouble, I think.”

“Do it more,” she whispered and ran her hands through his hair.

“Pam—”

“More.” She pulled his head down. Everything inside her cried with the wanting. She loved him too much to let him go so soon. And she could tell he wanted her.

His kiss was harder, and she loved it. He taught her to move her lips the way he liked, taught her to open them wider, taught her to give him her tongue. She was trembling when he finally raised his head.

“I’ve never done that before,” she said in a broken whisper.

“Never?”

“Never. Was it good?”

He rolled his eyes and laughed. “Was it ever.” The laugh ended with a sharp gasp when she reached up and touched the tip of her tongue to the corner of his mouth.

In the next instant she was on her back on the bed, with Cutter on top of her. His hands were in her hair, holding her still, while his mouth took hers in a kiss that was raw with need.

Pam had never tasted a man’s hunger that way. If the force of it was frightening, the excitement of it was beyond belief. It made her ache the same way her daydreams had. Without conscious thought, she arched her body against his.

He swore and slipped to the side.

“What’s wrong. Cutter? What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing. Oh, baby . . .” His face was against the pillow, shoulders hunched and rigid. He moved his hips against the bedcovers. His voice was muffled. “You did everything so right that if I’m not inside you soon, I might just embarrass us both.”

His words stole her breath. Her eyes were large when he raised his head.

“Do you know how much I want you?” he asked in a tormented whisper. His face was flushed, his eyes hot, his features tight.

The thought made her soar. Looking at him then, she knew she was the luckiest woman on earth. She touched his cheek, the bridge of his nose, his eyebrow. Catching her hand, he brought it to his mouth and pressed it there hard for a heated minute. Then he carried it over his chest, past his waist to the distended front of his jeans.