The Night Remembers (3 page)

"I was eighteen when we got married," Daphne said softly, thinking suddenly of the way they had eloped.

It had been her idea, their elopement. She had talked herself blue in the face, trying to convince him that it was the best thing to do. But Adam wanted to do the sensible thing. He wanted to wait until they could afford to get married, until he was out of med school and into his internship, at least, before taking on the responsibility of a wife. But Daphne didn't want to wait. She couldn't. And, in the end, neither could he.

Maybe it would have been better if they had waited, she thought. Maybe they would still be married now if she had allowed Adam to do the sensible thing. Who knows? But it was too late now. It had been too late eleven years ago.

"I was twenty when he filed for divorce," she added softly, almost to herself. There was a wealth of sadness in the words.

"Oh." Suzie obviously didn't know what to say to that. "Gee, I'm sorry, Daphne."

"Oh, don't be." Daphne shook herself out of her reverie. "It was a long time ago."

"Did you know he was going to be here tonight?"

Daphne shook her head. "I'd heard that he was doing his residency in L.A." She shrugged and the shoulder of her dress slipped downward again. She didn't notice. "But that was, oh, five or six years ago, I guess. So I suppose I should have considered the fact that he'd probably be back in the Bay Area by now. He always said that he intended to establish his practice in San Francisco." She sighed softly. "Well, that's neither here nor there." She lifted her chin decisively. "I've got a fashion show to do."

She moved away from the curtain and picked up the clipboard from the stool where Elaine had placed it when she went onstage. Walking briskly, she headed toward the clothes rack, her mind determinedly on the business at hand.

"You have one more dress after that, right, Suzie?" she said over her shoulder.

The model nodded. "Yes."

"Okay, listen up, everybody." Daphne raised her voice slightly as she addressed the models who were bouncing around backstage, struggling in and out of clothes. "As soon as you've all shown your last dress, then it's everybody on stage for the finale, okay?"

She turned to watch Suzie parade out onto the stage. The tall, lanky model seemed to float down the runway, long silver ribbons fluttering from her right shoulder as she moved.

"And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes our fashion show for this evening," Elaine said as the final model slowly made her way back up the length of the runway. "What do you say we give a big round of applause to our lovely models?" she continued as they all began to file out for the finale, filling the runway with a dazzling kaleidoscope of fabric and color.

"Let's get the designer of these fabulous clothes out here, too, shall we?" Elaine went on.

Daphne had known the words were coming, they always did when Elaine did the commentary for a show, but she wished, just this once, that her assistant wasn't so eager to give credit where credit was due.

"Our Daphne seems to be a little shy tonight," Elaine said, smiling at the audience as she deliberately ignored Daphne's hand signals. "Let's see if we can persuade her to come on out and take a bow." She turned toward the wing where Daphne was standing, adding her applause to that of the audience.

Daphne fixed her assistant with a threatening glare and then, pasting a wide smile on her face, walked out onto the stage. Very deliberately, she forced herself not to look at the table where she knew Adam was sitting as she stepped up to the podium.

"Thank you, ladies and gentlemen," she said, when the applause had died down. "I hope you enjoyed the fashion show this evening. I know we enjoyed putting it on for you." She paused, smiling warmly as the applause began again, and her eyes were irresistibly drawn to Adam's table.

His golden head was tilted slightly to the right as he gazed up at her and there was the hint of a question in his pose. And then he raised his glass and smiled. It was that sweet, slow, utterly charming smile that she remembered far too well for her own good.

Daphne felt her knees turn to mush and it was all she could do to finish her little speech and get off the stage without falling down.

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."