“You’re getting upset.”
“As well I should!I saw his back!I saw what you did!It was horrible!”
“So it turned you off?That’s good, at least.”
“It didn’t turn me off.I kissed every one of those scars, but they didn’t go away.So I’ll kiss every one of them the next time I see him, and each time after that.You’re an animal, John.”
He would have gone at her again if it hadn’t been for the knife.But she was holding it like she meant business.“Put it down.”
“No way.”
“Put it down, Pam.”
“When you leave.”
“You don’t … need … a knife.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.Give me the slightest excuse, and I’ll scar you like you scarred Cutter.”She upped the angle of the knife.“Only I’ll go for the face.”
He half-believed she’d do it.“Look who’s the animal,” he said, but he wasn’t about to take chances.He didn’t want to be cut.Whether she scarred him or not, there would be talk, possibly even a scandal, and he’d come too far to chance that.So he took a step back.
That didn’t mean he accepted defeat.“You can’t have him, y’know.”
“Why not?What would be so terrible?I’ve been asking myself that for a good long while.Cutter is a ‘someone’ now.He has money.He has friends.What would be so terrible if he and I were together?”
“He’s nothing but a miner.”
“He’s sophisticated, and he’s successful.”
“He’ll be back at the bottom of the heap someday.”
“He will not.”
“He’s a flash in the pan.He won’t last.”
“That’s what you’re praying.You were so jealous that Daddy took to him—”
“I wasn’t jealous—”
“But that was years ago.You can’t still be harboring a grudge.”
“There’s no grudge.”
“There’s pure hatred.It’s irrational.Sick.You’re a successful man, John.Why is Cutter such a threat to you?”
John had had as much as he could take.When it came to Cutter—maybe even when it came to Pam—his feelings were irrational.He didn’t have to make excuses or discuss them with anyone.
“Cutter Reid,” he stated with force, “will never be part of this family.”He came forward again, angry enough to dare it.“And if you so much as scratch my skin with that knife, you’ll regret it.”
She sighed.“More threats?They’re getting tiresome.”
“Then I haven’t used the right ones.Try this one on for size.You scratch me with that knife—you carry on with Cutter Reid so the press gets wind of it—so that anyone gets wind of it and it comes back to me—and I’ll destroy your mother.”
“That’s a joke.She’s been paralyzed from the waist down, confined in a mental hospital for ten years, and you’re going to destroy her?What more could you do?”
“Plenty.”
“Like what?”