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She watched his curiosity slip into disbelief. “Just like that? Just like we’re two people who met last year and fell in love? Just like we haven’t been wanting to get married since you were seventeen?”

“Just like that.”

His disbelief deepened. “But nothing’s changed, Pam. John is still there, still threatening.”

“We’ve changed,” she argued. “We’re older. Stronger. I’m tired of living my life by John’s rules.”

Cutter ran a hand over his eyes and left his arm on his forehead. Peering at her from beneath it, he said wearily, “I think we’ve been through this before.”

“And I’m as tired of it as you are. So let’s do something. Let’s get married.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because the time isn’t right.”

“That’s what you said before, but it’s as right as it’ll ever be. John won’t just grow old and fade away, and if you think he’ll mellow sometime soon, think again. He has this thing about you, Cutter. He’d as soon slash my throat as have me marry you.”

“That’s why the timing has to be right.”

“But I want to get married now.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you.”

“What else is new?”

Hearing the bitterness in his voice, she felt a sinking inside. She had known that he wouldn’t jump at the idea, since they’d discussed it before. Still she wished he would show a little enthusiasm.

“Why now?” he went on in her silence. “It’s not like we can spend any more time together. You have your career and I have mine. We’re both really busy. I’m hardly ever home. It won’t always be that way, but right now it is, and it’s no way to start a marriage.”

“I want,” she repeated, “to get married.”

He lowered his arm. “Tell me why, Pam. Why the rush?” She looked him in the eye and spoke through gritted teeth, easy enough to do with John’s face hovering in her mind. “Because I want control over my stock and my mother’s. I don’t want to wait another two years to turn twenty-five. I want that control now.”

Cutter came up on an elbow. “Has John done something else?”

“Not directly. Not new.” She took a breath and told him about John’s affair with Patricia. “Did you know?”

“How would I know? I was up in Maine.”

“Then there weren’t any rumors flying around?”

“None.” He hissed out an angry, “My God, the guy’s been in every bed around.”

“Not mine,” Pam snapped.

“But not for lack of wanting. You know that, don’t you?”

She knew it all too well, but her concern was with Patricia. “My mother’s nervous breakdown was John’s fault. He’s the reason she couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t act. He’s the reason she hasn’t been able to face life. He has to be stopped, Cutter. If I can get control of my stock and my mother’s, between us we’ll have more than he has. I want that control. So I want to get married.”

But Cutter shook his head. “If marriage were the answer, we’d have done it years ago. You think I didn’t want to? But nothing’s changed. Our marrying won’t stop John. You may get control of your own stock, but not Patricia’s. Do you honestly think John would give it up?”

“I’ll get a court order.”

“Based on what? You’re not a businesswoman, you’re an artist.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

He sat up to face her. “John’s a businessman. We may hate his guts, but we have to give him that. He’s a good businessman. He’s built the company, and it’s sound.”

“It was sound under my father.”

“But smaller. John’s made something different and larger. He’s done well by his stockholders. Given your lack of experience and his wealth of it, no court will shift control of the stock.”

“But I’m her daughter.”

“And he’s her stepson.”

“But look what he’s done to her!”

“The court won’t see that—unless you bring it out.”

She brought up her chin. “If need be, I will.”

“You will not, because it’ll hurt you and it’ll hurt Patricia. I’m telling you, Pam, you haven’t got a chance of getting those shares. So rushing into marriage is crazy.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you loved me.”

He rolled his eyes. “I do love you. That’s not the issue. The issue is whether we let John dictate what we do and when. I want to marry you, Pam. I’ve wanted it for years, and you know it. But the timing isn’t right now. I’m on my way, but I’m not there yet.”

“But you have so much!”

“Everything is relative. I’ve earned a lot and invested a lot. Little by little I’m picking up St. George stock, but I don’t have anywhere near enough to be a threat to John, and until I do, I won’t have the power to prevent him from carrying out his threats. You can be damn sure that if we get married, he’ll lash out at anything and everything. I can’t take that risk.”

“Risk? Is marrying me such a risk? If you love me,
really
love me, you’d do it.”

He took her arms, and for a minute she thought he would shake her. He looked that fierce. But he simply held on tightly. “I do love you, really love you. Years ago I told you that you were the only woman I’d ever consider marrying, and that hasn’t changed, but I won’t marry you now. Not yet.”

“Why not?”

He did shake her then, a short, sharp jostle of frustration. “Because I have pride, dammit! Marrying you may be the most important thing in my life, but I’ll do it on my terms. I’ll do it when I’ve come far enough to settle down. I’m not there yet, but I will be someday.”

“And if I won’t wait?” she was hurt enough to ask.

He looked at her for a minute, then dropped his hands and sat back. “If you won’t wait, then it’s your loss.”

“You pompous ass!” Scrambling off the bed, she reached for her clothes. “It’ll be your loss, too, only you’re too bullheaded to see it.”

“Where are you going?”

“Back to Boston. You need time to think about whether it’s me you want, or power.”

“It shouldn’t be either or.”

“Well, it is.”

“Don’t do that,” he warned in a low voice that made her hand falter on a button of her blouse.

“Do what?” She resumed the buttoning.

“Give ultimatums. Either I marry you now, or you’re leaving. That’s a John kind of move.”

She snagged her nylons, swore, felt her eyes water, and knew it had nothing to do with the snag. “No. It’s a human kind of move. I should have made it a while ago. If you loved me, you’d marry me. It’s as simple as that.”

“It’s not simple. Nothing’s ever been simple where you and I are concerned.”

She stood to stuff her blouse into her skirt. “Maybe there’s a message in that.”

Heedless of his nudity, Cutter rose from the bed and came around to confront her. “You’re sounding like a spoiled kid.”

“I’m twenty-three, old enough to get married and more than old enough to have kids.” Blazer in hand, she reached for her bag. “I would have had yours, Cutter. Ours. It would have been five years old now, only it never took a breath, because John had it killed.”

Cutter was dead silent for an awful moment. “What?”

“You didn’t know that?” she asked on her way to the door. Her voice shook. She began to tremble all over. “Hillary didn’t tell you?”

He came after her. “What are you talking about?”

She walked faster. “The abortion.”

“What abortion?”

“The one John had done while I was drugged.” At the front door, she whirled around. “He killed your child, Cutter. Only you never knew it existed, so you never loved it, so you don’t grieve like I do. You have your career. You have your money. You have your power.” She opened the door. “Well, good! Keep it all. I hope it makes you happy.”

Slamming the apartment door, she raced to the elevator. She was too hurt to cry, too angry to think of looking back to see if he would follow. On the street, she hailed a cab and went straight to the airport. She was back in Boston before midnight. Not that there was a great rush. As she saw it, the coach had turned into a pumpkin well before that.

For days she waited, hoping that Cutter would call to say how upset he was, how much he loved her, how badly he wanted to marry her. When no call came, she tried to call him, but all she reached was his answering service. Whether he was out of town or simply not taking her calls, she didn’t know. But she waited and waited, and he didn’t call her back.

Convinced that he blamed her for the abortion, she was grief-stricken. She was also angry—angry at Cutter for being so stubborn, angry at John for being so evil. She couldn’t do much about Cutter but ache. John was something else.

She wanted to be free of him. She needed control of the stock if she was ever to help her mother. With each day that passed, she felt more certain that she was the only one who could do that. There was no one besides Pam through whom Patricia could finally get back at John.

Marriage was the only answer. Pam was at the right age; many of her friends were getting married. And there was Brendan McGrath, who had asked her more than once, and was so kind.

So she married him. For the sake of herself and her mother, and even Cutter, she married Brendan. It was a quiet ceremony in the living room of his spacious home in Milton. A justice of the peace presided. The only witnesses were Brendan’s two grown sons.

Brendan was a banker, better than twice Pam’s age, older and even more respected in financial circles than John. His first marriage had been a happy one. His wife had been his best friend until the day she died, five years before. Pam had met him soon after that and found a friend in him, too. He was soft-spoken and low-keyed, interested in what she was doing, respectful of her achievements. He was a strong man, self-confident but not egotistical. At fifty, with his sons in homes of their own, he was looking for companionship over passion.

He was the perfect solution for Pam. He offered her his name, his home, and his affection, and asked little in return but that she be there for him on weekends. In some respects he was the father figure she had missed, and if it struck her as strange that a husband should be that, she reasoned that she could have done a whole lot worse. Brendan McGrath was a good man.

That was, perhaps, why the enormity of her mistake hit her so hard. Well before the honeymoon was over, she felt it the first time Brendan made gentle, almost shy love to her, when Cutter’s face was the one in her mind. He hadn’t loved her enough to marry her, but now he was farther from reach than ever, and it was her own fault. She’d been rash. In her rush to defy John, she hadn’t thought through her actions. She could blame John, but only to a point. She should have had more sense, more compassion.

Cutter would be furious—more out of pride than anything else, she was sure, and that hurt. Whatever love he still felt for her was sure to be dashed. That hurt. But she hurt, too, when she thought of Brendan. He was an innocent pawn in a game whose rules he barely knew. She had used him, and in that sense she wasn’t much better than John.

That thought and others kept her soft-spoken and submissive during the seven days that she and Brendan stayed on Key West. There were times when she was calm and content, times when she despaired, times when she actually started to tremble at the thought of what she had done. By the time they returned home, though, her own pride had kicked into play. She knew that she’d done Brendan a grave injustice. She knew that she would either wallow in guilt or rise to the occasion. She chose to do the latter. Regardless of how badly she missed Cutter, she vowed to make Brendan happy.

Chapter 24

S
O CONGRATULATIONS ARE IN ORDER
, huh?” Hillary asked.

Cutter bobbled the phone on his shoulder, steadied it, pressed two fingers to his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Tell me what you heard.”

“Playing coy?”

“Just tired.”

“Ahhh. You had a rough night.”

He glanced around the apartment. It was a mess, just as it had been for the past two months. Rough night? “You could say that.” Every damn night had been rough since he’d learned of Pam’s marriage. He hadn’t slept well, hadn’t eaten well, hadn’t been able to concentrate on how badly he’d botched things.

“What I heard,” Hillary began, “was that you’ve been tapped to be the rugged, denim-clad hero in a long-range ad campaign sponsored by the diamond industry. True?”

“Dramatically phrased, but close enough.”

“I’m a writer. If I can’t phrase things dramatically, what can I do? So tell me about it. Did you have a falling-out with Jondier?”

“No. But my contract is expiring, and I want a change.”

“You’ll have that. Fancy pants to denim. What about the work? Will it be any less grueling?”

“Yeah. Fewer days. More money.”

“Not bad.” She paused. “So why don’t you sound thrilled?”

He dragged his fingers down his face and dropped his hand to his lap. “I’m just tired.”

“And missing her.”

He felt a sharp pain. After a time, he said, “Yeah.”