“Why?”
“This is dangerous.”
“John’s not here.”
“John isn’t the danger.”
She was silent for a minute, but she didn’t leave.Her voice was cautious.“I just wanted to say hello.It’s been a long time.”
“Eight months.”
“Plus one week.”
A fractured sound slipped from the back of his throat.He did raise his head then, and what he saw was enough to make him wish he hadn’t.Pam’s eyes were large, a little frightened, a little desperate.Her skin was smooth and glowing, her lips moist.With her hair draped gracefully behind an ear, her satin dress draped as gracefully around her body, and stunning pieces of tourmaline-spangled gold gracing her ears and her neck, she looked exquisite.
For the longest time he just stood there drinking her in.Finally, in a rusty voice he said, “Married life must be agreeing with you.You’re more beautiful than ever.”
“So are you.”
“And successful.”
“You too.The diamond campaign is impressive.”She was staring up at him with that same half-frightened, half-desperate look.“I miss you,” she whispered.
Something tightened around his heart.“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
“But it hurts to hear.And it doesn’t help to know.”
“It helps me to air it.You were my best friend, Cutter, and I hurt you.If I were to do it again—”
He put two fingers to her lips and shook his head.“Don’t say it,” he whispered.
Her heart was in her eyes, reaching out with the same longing he’d seen there before, but she heeded his warning this time.Rather than speak, she formed her lips into a kiss against his fingers, then backed away, turned, and hurried from the veranda.
Cutter left the party soon after, but out of sight wasn’t out of mind.He thought about what Pam had said and the way she’d said it, and while he cursed her in one breath, in the next he acknowledged that she’d been more honest than he.He missed her, too, missed her with a soul-deep ache.He should have told her.
Not that it would have made any difference.She was still a married woman.
Somehow, though, when he saw her the following June at a movie premiere in L.A., he had trouble remembering that.Brendan wasn’t there.She was with friends.Cutter was with a date, but that didn’t stop him from staring at her.
“A friend?”his date asked.
“Uh-huh.”He tore his eyes away, but they drifted back after a minute.Pam had seen him by then.She looked stricken.He actually felt guilty at being caught with another woman until he realized the absurdity of that.But the feeling lingered, and when he saw her leave her friends and head for the restroom, he followed.He was waiting, leaning against a nearby wall, out of the line of traffic, when she came out.She didn’t pretend that his presence was coincidental.Albeit hesitantly, she came close.
Neither of them spoke.They just looked at each other.When he couldn’t bear going without any longer, he raised a hand to her cheek, but it hovered, finally stealing to a more private spot at the back of her neck under her hair.She made a small sound.Seconds later, he felt her hand slip into the one that hung by his side.
Taking a shaky breath, he threw common sense to the winds and whispered, “Meet me later?”
She wanted to.He could see it in her eyes, could feel it in the tightening of her hand.But she resisted.“You were right.It’s dangerous.”
“Just to talk.”
The look she gave him denied that that was possible.Despite everything that had happened, they were too drawn to each other, too much in love.After staring at him for another minute with a longing that tore him to bits, she wrenched her hand away and left.
The movie was lost on him, as were the charms of his date.Long after he dropped her at her home, he paced his hotel room.He might have called Pam if he’d known where she was staying.It was lucky he didn’t.What he had in mind wasn’t right.She was married.But he wanted her with a fever that hadn’t diminished in two and a half years, and she’d shown him that the fever was shared.
He saw her two months later, at an art show in New York, then three months after that at a gala benefit in Dallas.Both times he exerted the utmost control, but the control steadily eroded until finally, the following March, when he and Pam were attending the same jewelers’ conference in New Orleans, the needs that had been gathering for three years broke loose.