The Night Remembers (9 page)

There was a tiny millisecond of silence and nervous glances were exchanged as everyone reassured themselves they were not her intended target. A few wry, long-suffering smiles were traded. A few shoulders lifted in a "who knows?" sort of shrug. And then heads bent back over worktables, or lengths of fabric draped on long elegant bodies, and the hum of voices resumed as if nothing had happened. Except that Daphne realized she had nearly been shouting—again.

With a sigh, she propped both elbows on the drawing board and dropped her forehead into her cupped hands. "Damn," she swore softly.

She seemed to have been doing a lot of shouting in the past week. The volatile temper she had learned to control so well, losing it only when it would do her some good, seemed to be going off every twenty minutes. And it took embarrassingly little to light the fuse: models who were three minutes late for a fitting; the delivery boy from the deli downstairs bringing her tuna salad on white instead of whole wheat; Federal Express stopping by for a pickup five minutes later than they said they would; someone asking a simple question; the telephone. Especially the telephone. She kept hoping—and dreading—it was Adam.

It was all
his
fault, damn him, she thought savagely. Good manners, if nothing else, should have prompted him to call by now. It wasn't as if she was expecting declarations of love, or even an invitation to dinner the next time she was in town, but he could at least have called to make sure she had got back to New York all right. That would have been the gentlemanly thing to do. And even if he didn't want to talk to her, he could have written a polite little note saying that he had enjoyed seeing her again, couldn't he? He could have sent her flowers. Something. Anything. This deafening silence from the West Coast was making her feel like a one-night stand.

You didn't interrupt anything important.

A man could hardly get any clearer than that.

Oh, well, chalk one up to experience, she told herself. Blame it on human nature and the law of averages. Because, according to all the current experts, having a fling with one's ex-husband was almost boringly predictable. For some probably deep-seated masochistic reason, women seemed to do it all the time.

"Damn," she said again, more forcefully this time.

"Daphne?" Elaine's voice was hesitant. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? I should have handled the Dragon Lady myself. I—"

"It's not your fault," Daphne said from behind her hands. "I shouldn't have yelled at you."

Elaine reached out, putting a tentative hand on Daphne's shoulder. "Hey, are you all right?"

Daphne sighed and lifted her head. "I'm fine," she said, a smile of apology on her lips. She reached up and patted the hand on her shoulder. "Just fine, really," she added, and then grimaced. "Except for the fact that I've been acting like a raging bitch, that is. I'm really sorry." She gave Elaine's hand a light, affectionate squeeze before she released it. "Forgive me?" she said, reaching for the violet drawing pencil as she spoke.

"Oh, don't worry about it. I understand completely." Elaine shook her head, setting the glossy brown hair to bobbing around her chin.
"Men."

Daphne smiled, amused in spite of herself. Elaine thought men, individually or as a group, were the root of every woman's problems. "What makes you think it's a man? Haven't you ever heard of premenstrual tension? The rising incidence of stress among working women?"

"Oh, come on, Daphne. Be serious. You've never succumbed to premenstrual tension in your life. At least," she amended, "not since I've known you. And you love this business, stress and all. Besides—"

"Maybe I'm just hungry," Daphne suggested. "You know how cranky I get when I'm hungry."

Elaine shook her head, dismissing that argument. "Besides," she said again, hooking a sheaf of hair behind her ear with the tip of one finger. "I'm not blind, you know. I saw that big juicy kiss he planted on you backstage."

"He?" Daphne tried, knowing it wouldn't work.

Elaine gave her a disgusted look.

"Okay, so my ex-husband kissed me. Big deal. One little kiss. A simple greeting between old—" she paused briefly, twisting the violet pencil between her fingers as she sifted through her mind for an appropriate word; there wasn't one—friends," she decided. "But, contrary to what you're obviously thinking, that kiss has nothing to do with my bad temper lately. That probably
is
just due to premenstrual tension. I do occasionally suffer from it, you know. Just like a normal woman."

"Uh-huh," Elaine grunted inelegantly. "Maybe. Except I also saw you leave the ballroom together." She paused significantly. "The
second
time."

"So?" Daphne's eyes narrowed in a not-so-subtle hint to drop the subject.

Elaine paid no heed. "So it didn't take a genius to see what the two of you were up to. It was as obvious as the nose on your face that—"

Daphne interrupted her before she could say another word. "What do you think of this new design?" she said very casually, gesturing toward the drawing on her worktable.

"Great." Elaine didn't even glance down at the sketches and, oblivious to the hint that had become a full-fledged warning, she plunged recklessly ahead. "Personally, I think it's always a mistake to—"

Daphne interrupted her again. "Elaine, dear," she said patiently, pleasantly, her husky voice as quietly deadly as a knife blade. "You like your job, don't you?"

Elaine, finally recognizing the tone, not to mention the look in her employer's eyes, merely nodded.

"Well, then, what do you think of this new design?" She tapped twice on the drawing with the tip of one mocha-colored fingernail.

"It's, uh, great," Elaine said, and then looked down at the drawing for the first time.

Sketched in violet were two views, front and back, of an utterly simple, scandalously sexy little camisole and tap pants set. The camisole had tiny spaghetti straps holding up a low V-neck. The matching tap pants were bias cut with a lettuce-edge hem that gave them a fluttery, feminine look without detracting from the simple lines.

"Hey, it really
is
great," Elaine said again after ten seconds careful study. She slanted a quick look at her employer. "When did you decide to branch out into lingerie?"

Daphne shrugged. "A couple of days ago, I guess. All those evening clothes were beginning to look the same to me so I started doodling around with a few new ideas and came up with this. You know how it goes." She lifted the top drawing, laying it aside to reveal other sketches of her proposed line of lingerie. There were sexy little teddies cut high on the leg, utterly simple silk chemises with a bit of delicate embroidery on the bodice, slinky bias cut nightgowns with softly draped fronts and thigh-high side slits, short man-tailored nightshirts and figure-flattering wrap-front robes. They were all done in her
own signature style; completely feminine and totally sexy without relying on the excessive use of ruffles and lace.

"I thought I'd do everything in two color families," she told Elaine, her voice tinged with the excitement she always felt about new designs. "Violet, lilac and a pale silvery gray for the cool colors. Bronze, peach and a creamy ivory for the warm spectrum. All solids so that they can be mixed and matched within their color families. And everything in silk or silk blends. I definitely want to use a silk jacquard for some of the camisole and pant sets. Maybe some of the chemises, too. And, I think, a really rich panne velvet in the two darkest colors for the robes since it'll be for the fall season." She looked up at Elaine. "What do you think?
"

"I think you've been doing more than just doodling around with a few new ideas. These are really great, Daphne." Elaine picked up a couple of sketches to study them more closely. "They'll give a whole new meaning to the name Night Lights, won't they?"

Daphne grinned. "That's the idea."

"A whole new line, then, huh?" Elaine said, beginning to get excited about the possibilities.

"Maybe." Daphne had learned to be a tiny bit more cautious over the years. "We'll see how this first collection goes over before we make any long-range plans for expansion."

"Oh, it'll be wonderful," Elaine stated emphatically. "Elegant, feminine, sexy. The collection has Daphne Granger written all over it."

"Yes, but will it sell?"

"How can you ask that? I can hardly wait to have one of everything in the violet and lilac myself."

"Maybe so," Daphne teased, "but you're not exactly a paying cust—"

"Mrs. Granger, you have a call on line one," Elaine's eighteen-year-old assistant interrupted diffidently.

Daphne's head snapped up at the words, a half panicked, half inquiring look skittering over her face.

"It's Mrs. McCorkle," the girl added.

The panic receded instantly, replaced by righteous indignation.
Ah-ha,
Daphne thought, practically pouncing on the phone in her eagerness to express the feelings that had been bottled up for the past week. And who better to express them to than the very person—the rat—who was responsible for the emotional turmoil she found herself in.

"Sunny, you traitor," Daphne said without preamble. "I ought to strangle you. If you were here right now I
would
strangle you. That was the lowest—"

"It's nice to hear from you, too," Sunny said cheerfully.

"—sneakiest trick you've ever pulled," Daphne accused. "You're responsible for this... this mess. You engineered the whole thing. I know you did."

"Engineered what mess?"

"Don't give me that Miss Innocence routine. I know you, remember? You
knew
Adam was at Children's Hospital. You
knew
he was going to be at that charity benefit. You engineered it so he'd be there. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Oh, is
that
what this is all about?" Sunny's voice was innocence itself. Daphne could practically see her waving one hand in an airily dismissive gesture, her nails gleaming blood red—or whatever the color of the week was—as she did so. "I didn't think you were interested in what Adam was doing these days." She paused for just a beat. "Or are you?" she inquired silkily.

"No, I'm not," Daphne lied. "But I would have at least liked to have been warned that he was going to be there, you know."

"Why? I mean, if you don't care about him, what difference does it make?"

"Well, it was a bit of a shock, that's all." Daphne glanced sideways, realizing that Elaine was still standing next to her worktable, eyes wide as she blatantly listened to every word. She lowered her voice and turned more toward the wall. "I didn't expect to see him and it, uh, threw me off balance. A little," she amended quickly.

"In a pig's eye," Elaine mumbled from behind her.

Daphne hunched her shoulder, pointedly ignoring her assistant's commentary.

"Well, gee-whiz," Sunny was saying. "If I'd had any idea that just
seeing
him again was going to upset you this much I would have said something."

"I am not upset."

"You two seemed to be getting along just fine when I saw you standing in the doorway to the ballroom. Quite chummy, actually. I remember telling Brian how friendly you two looked and—Hey," she interrupted herself, "where did you guys disappear to anyway?"

"We went to the cocktail lounge for a drink." Daphne cast a quick look over her shoulder to see if Elaine was still standing by the drawing board. She was. "Don't you have anything better to do?" Daphne said irritably. "No, not you, Sunny. I was talking to Elaine." She pinned her assistant with a look. "Well?"

"Okay, okay. I'm going." Elaine moved a few feet away, one of Daphne's sketches still clasped in her hands. She lifted it to the light as if to examine it. "I'm gone."

Daphne turned back toward the wall.

"And, well, Brian and I wondered where you'd got to." Sunny was rattling on in her usual cheerful manner unaware, or unconcerned, that Daphne hadn't been listening to her. "Brian was right, as usual. He said you'd probably gone off by yourselves to catch up on old times."

"We didn't go off by ourselves," Daphne said, when Sunny finally paused for breath. "We went to the cocktail lounge."

"Whatever," Sunny agreed absently. "So, listen—as Brian is always reminding me, this is long distance—the reason I called is to invite you to a party next week. Now before you say no, Daphne," she hurried on before Daphne could say anything, "remember you did tell me you'd be back in town then because of the meeting with what's-her-name over at I. Magnin. And as long as you're going to be here anyway I thought, well, hell, why not come to our party? It'll be a real hoot! All the old gang's coming. Kathy and John Martinelli. Remember them? Still married and still fighting like cats and dogs," Sunny informed her gleefully. "Pippa Eaton, too. Only I
think it's Pippa Gerard now. Or is it Germain? She's married so many times that I can't keep track. And Gail Scott. And Carl Ferguson. Remember him? The one with the—"

"And Adam, too, I suppose?" Daphne interrupted.

"Well, of course, Adam, too. It's his party."

"I thought it was your party."