Chapter 24 #2
He returned to his own friends, but he kept glancing across the room.
Several times he caught her looking back; each time she averted her gaze.
He wasn’t sure whether she didn’t want him to know she was looking, or whether she simply found the meeting of their eyes too painful.
If it was the latter, he knew what she was feeling.
Just looking at her reminded him of all he should have had, but didn’t.
It heightened his determination in ways that might have frightened her if she’d known.
In October, when he saw her at a party at a private country club, on the outskirts of Atlanta, he held back.
She was with Brendan, and even he had to admit that they made a handsome pair.
Silver-haired and trim of build, Brendan was a pleasant-looking man who took an elegance from her.
In return, he gave her support in the form of a look, a touch, a smile.
Cutter suffered through those until Pam spotted him, when the suffering grew even more intense.
After a time, Brendan moved her on through the crowd.
Cutter moved in the opposite direction, but the suffering went on.
Needing a break, he wandered onto the veranda. She found him there. “Cutter?”
He looked down at his polished shoes.
She came close and softly repeated his name.
Eyes still low, he said, “Go back inside, Pam.”
“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.
Pam didn’t tell a soul. She wasn’t proud of what she’d done, but somehow the knowledge that she was betraying Brendan didn’t hold any weight when she was with Cutter.
The sight and the feel of him blotted out everything else.
Inevitably, when she returned home she felt remorse; just as inevitably, to compensate, she doted on Brendan.
She couldn’t keep from dreaming of Cutter, though, and when she began to fear that she might call out the wrong name in her sleep, she knew she had to do something.
She went to see Patricia. She was taking a chance, but Patricia was growing stronger, Bob said.
He kept urging her to draw her mother into her life, and to some extent she had.
She visited regularly, showed Patricia her jewelry, and talked about the business and her friends. She brought Brendan to visit.
The hospital represented security for Patricia, and since she could afford it, she stayed. But she had moved into the smallest, most private cottage, and had begun to take short outings with Bob. Although she hadn’t reached enough confidence to go out with Pam, she was conversing more.
That was what Pam needed. She didn’t expect absolution, but she had to talk, had to tell someone what she’d done, had to have someone say that she wasn’t as wicked as she felt at times.
It was a hot and humid July day. The tall elm in the yard behind the cottage offered shade, and a faint breeze stirred from time to time. Pam wheeled Patricia there and went back for two tall glasses of iced tea before sinking down on the creaking wooden swing.
She sipped her tea while she searched for the right way to broach the subject. Inadvertently, Patricia did it for her.
“You’re frowning,” she said softly. “Are you upset?”
“Upset?” It wasn’t that, exactly.
“Angry at me?”
“Oh, no! Not at all!” She took a breath. “It’s me.”
“Something with Brendan?”
“In a way.” She jumped in. “I’ve been seeing Cutter.”
Patricia accepted the statement as though it was perfectly logical. “You love Cutter.”
“But I’m married to Brendan. I’m supposed to love Brendan. I do love Brendan.”
A tiny frown crossed Patricia’s brow. “Then everything’s fine. Isn’t it?”
“Cutter is … Cutter and I … we fought it but …” She took a breath. “I slept with him.”
The tiny frown came again. “Before you married Brendan.”
Pam wanted to cry. Her mother thought her innocent and good, which was both incredibly wonderful and terribly unfair.
She was human, like everyone else. “I slept with Cutter last week. We keep running into each other. All over the country. All over the world. And each time, it’s like there’s a fire that just—” she motioned with her hands, “explodes. I thought maybe it was just something I had to do so that I could move on, but I still feel it, as strong as ever, and I can’t do a thing to stop it.
I need him.” She ran out of air, dragged in a new breath, and said, “Tell me there are reasons why things like that happen. Tell me there’s some justification for it. ”
Patricia bowed her head, and for an instant Pam wished she’d talked with Bob first. But she hadn’t wanted to tell him about her affair with Cutter. And anyway, he was the one who was always telling her to test Patricia’s limits.
Eyes down, Patricia said, “My situation was different. I didn’t love John. There was no justification for what I did.”
“Maybe not in terms of love.”
She shook her head. “No justification at all.”
“But you needed him.” It had taken Pam a long time and many discussions with Bob to accept that.
After a time, Patricia said a quiet, “Yes.”
“Was it the kind of thing where you didn’t think you’d be able to survive another day without him?”
“No. It was never that desperate.” She hesitated, then said even more quietly, “Not the physical part. The other was. He said what I needed to hear. He made me feel better.” She sipped her tea, careful to keep her eyes low. “It wasn’t that he forced me … physically. The attraction was there.”