“Daddy would have wanted that.”
“No!”
Pam wanted to argue more, wanted to extend the argument to her own situation, but instinct told her she’d said enough.So she lapsed into silence, sat back again, and rocked on the swing, alternately sipping her tea and rubbing the glass.The sound of Patricia’s voice took her by surprise.
“What you feel for Cutter,” she began tentatively, “does it make you warm and light-headed?”
“Very.”
Her eyes grew distant.“Does it stay with you … like a layer under your skin?”
“Always.”
Her fingers curled around the arm of her wheelchair.“When you’re with him … like that … does it make you forget other things that may be all wrong?”
“Oh, yes.”
Patricia sighed.
Pam waited for her to speak.Finally, hesitantly, she asked, “Is that what you felt with John?”
Looking straight at her, Patricia shook her head.“No.
It’s what I felt with your father.”
For a minute Pam could only stare.Then she came offthe swing and gave Patricia a hug.It wasn’t that she had condoned what she was doing or even given her direction.But by equating her feelings for Eugene with Pam’s for Cutter, she had taken some of the sting from the act of betrayal.Pam’s love for Cutter did the rest.
She didn’t see him often, and then only when she was away from Boston and Brendan.Usually they just talked, smiled, held hands.They fought making love, fought it with everything they had, but there were times when the need was simply too great.Such was the case in Paris the following November when, with a single goal in mind, Pam half-walked, half-ran down the Rue Jean-Coujon.
Hoping not to be noticed, she had the collar of her fur raised to overlap the sable turban that covered her hair.She would have worn something more bland if she’d had time to change, but time was of the essence.From the moment she’d spotted Cutter in the opening-night crowd of the Jeu de Paume, she’d thought of nothing but getting closer, and from the moment he’d approached, taken her hand in his and kissed first one cheek, then the other with Gallic grace, his whispered words had rung in her ears.
The San Regis, room twenty-one, twelve-thirty.Be there.
There was never any question but that she would.It had been too long since she’d seen him, too long since she’d lain in his arms and known what it was to be well and truly loved.
At that thought, she quickened her step.When she reached the small hotel, she trotted up the stone steps and slipped through the door.Breezing across the plant-filled lobby with little more than a breathy bonsoir to the clerkbehind the desk, she ran lightly up the stairs, down the hall, and around a turn to the door with a 21 marked in small swirls of brass.
She knocked softly.Within seconds the door opened a crack, then widened, and Cutter drew her inside.In the very next instant, he pressed her back to the door, cupped her chin with a single large hand, and covered her mouth with his.
There was nothing gentle about his kiss.It had the feel of hunger and the taste of need.It was Cutter at his most fierce, his most hungry, and it excited her almost beyond bearing.Closing her fingers around fistfuls of his hair, she returned his kiss until the sheer need for air tore them apart.
Dislodging her turban, he put his forehead to hers.“You’re late,” he accused in a voice that was deep and ragged.His lower body pinned her to the door while he worked at the buttons of her coat.
“I had trouble getting a taxi,” she gasped, trying to catch her breath and open his shirt at the same time.“Then the damned thing got stuck in a jam.Then it kept stalling.Then the driver dropped me at the wrong end of the street.”
Cutter had already dispensed with his tuxedo jacket, and his bow tie dangled crookedly from his starched collar.With the impatient release of three diamond studs, Pam spread the shirt wide and put her mouth to his chest.Her lips moved lightly over the fine hair there.Closing her eyes, she inhaled the familiar scent of his skin.
The fur fell from her shoulders to the floor and had barely settled in a heap before Cutter lowered the zipperof her shimmering black sheath.He slipped a hand inside, curved his fingers over her bottom, and pulled her hips against his.
But the satisfaction of that was brief, when the real thing was so near.With a nudge, he sent the sheath whispering to the floor.Pam reached for his pants, but the feel of his hands molding her breasts through the silk of her teddy distracted her.She had to grasp his shoulders for support.
He took over.He unfastened his pants, undid his zipper, pushed the elegant material over his thighs and calves until the satin stripe was an undulating ribbon on the floor by her dress.
Pam touched him then.He was magnificently aroused and grew even more so in the few seconds that he allowed her caress.But patience deserted him.His hand went between her legs, found the snaps of her teddy, and pulled, baring her for his touch and, with a light boost and a bold thrust, his penetration.
Almost of one voice, they moaned, then laughed at the shared agony of the sound.“God, I’ve missed you,” he muttered into her hair.
She loved hearing the words, loved the ardor behind them, loved the pressure of him inside her.“I know.”
