“Lie still, Pam,” he warned.
But she had no cause to listen.There was nothing he could threaten her with that would be worse than rape.That realization brought her a burst of strength.“Get your hands off me!”she screamed.When he covered her mouth, she bit his hand, then took advantage of his surprise by bringing her knee up against him.Her aim was off; the angle wasn’t right and she didn’t have enough room to put force into the blow, but she startled him enough to buy a minute.That was all she needed.Scrambling out from under him, she scurried to the edge of the bed, fell to her knees on the floor, then staggered to her feet.A split second later, she was in the bathroom with the door locked.
It seemed an agonized forever before she caught her breath.Then, wrapping her hands over her head, she slid down the length of the door, huddled in a ball, and began to cry.Nausea, revulsion, fear, horror—she suffered them all.Soft, tortured sobs shook her.At some point, feeling chilled to the bone, she swaddled herself in a bath sheet, but that did little to help.She had no idea what to do.
“Pam?”His voice came to her after a time, low and somber.
She didn’t answer.
“You can’t stay in there all night, Pam.”
For lack of a viable alternative, that was just what she planned to do.
“You’ll have to come out sometime.”
The thought of looking him in the eye after what he’d seen and done sent a new wave of nausea through her.
“I’ll call the concierge if I have to.”He knocked hard on the door.“Are you all right?”
“I feel sick.”
“That’s the wine.Open the door.I’ll give you an ice cube to suck.”
“It’s not the wine,” she murmured, but for a minute she wasn’t sure.What had happened was horrendous enough to have been unreal.She would have given anything to believe she’d been hallucinating.
The hallucination, though, was all that had come before—the attentiveness, the compliments, the seemingly genuine interest—and in that, John had been at his cruelest.He had led her to think that they might be a family, when all along he had other things in mind.
He was sick.She had to get away from him.But sitting in a locked bathroom wasn’t going to do it.
Leaning heavily against the sink, she rinsed her face with cold water.Then she tied the hotel’s thick terrycloth robe around her, picked up the shoeshine machine, and opened the bathroom door.
John was sprawled in the bedroom chair looking dark and disheveled.His head was low, but he was staring at her.Holding the makeshift weapon at the ready, she flipped on the nearest light.
“I want to go home.”
“We have reservations to stay for two more days.”
She gave a rigid shake of her head.“Tomorrow.I want to be on the first flight out.”
“It’s not necessary.”
“I think it is.”
“I won’t touch you.”
“I can’t trust you.”
His eyes drilled her.“It was the wine, Pam.We both had too much.”
“I had too much.You planned it that way.”
“No.I was enjoying myself.I had more than I should have, and then when I saw you lying like that on the bed—”
“Don’t,” she interrupted, cringing.“Don’t say it.It’s sick.”
At the last word, his jaw clenched.“There could be an argument made,” he said slowly, “as to which one of us is sick.You’ve been leading me on ever since I mentioned this trip.You’ve been playing up to me—”
“I have not!”