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“There’s nothing between you, then?” Pat asked gently.
“That,” Adrian Devereaux said from the doorway, “is a matter of opinion.”
Pat stood up quickly, his eyes taking in the somber lines of her employer’s face. “I know I’m
here without permission. But I had to know,” he explained, waving the brown envelope aimlessly.
“There’s a simpler way,” Adrian said. He paused to light a cigarette and pocketed his lighter,
blowing out a thin cloud of smoke, eyeing Dana’s apprehensive expression. “Ask her,” he challenged
Pat, “if she’s ever slept with me.”
Dana’s face went white. Like plaster. Like sheetrock. Like a blank page.
Pat’s jaw clamped harshly, his eyes hurt and contemptuous on the woman’s face. “I don’t have to
ask her,” he growled. “It’s written all over her face! Dana, you little…!”
“Say it,” Devereaux dared him, his eyes slits of brown flame, “and I’ll break every bone in your
body.”
Pat’s flush of anger left him abruptly as he saw the confidence in that leonine face and realized
that Devereaux wasn’t making an idle threat.
He tossed the brown envelope on the sofa, and, without another word, turned and went out the
door.
Adrian picked up the envelope and took out the photograph, his eyes taking on a soft, dark
warmth as he studied the two figures in it.
“I think I’ll have it framed,” he said carelessly.
“It will remind you of me, won’t you hate that?” Her voice broke, trembling. “Damn you, I cared
about him!”
Something exploded in his face, in his eyes, in the hands that caught her shoulders and jerked her
to her feet.
“What the hell do you know about caring?” he demanded. “If I cut you, you’d bleed printer’s ink!
You wouldn’t know what to do with an honest emotion, you little zombie. My God, the only time I’ve
ever seen you feel outside of a nightmare was when your mother died. And that softening didn’t last
long. Two days later, you were cased in ice!”
“You don’t know what I feel or don’t feel,” she argued weakly, struggling to escape the
merciless grip he had on her shoulders.
“The hell I don’t,” he growled. His blazing eyes met hers, the contempt in them dark and
haunting. “You walked into my life in disguise, Meredith. You took everything there was to take and
walked away without even looking back. I hated you for that, little girl, did you know? Not an
apology, not a card, not a note or a phone call—nothing to tell me you cared one way or the other that
you’d ruined me!”
“But, I tried…!”
“Not very hard, did you?” he demanded, his voice painfully soft with fury. “Three years I
wondered if you could feel at all, and I saw that damned photo of you in that magazine, and I decided
that, by God, I was going to teach you a lesson. Look here, Miss Meredith,” he said, grabbing up the
photograph to hold it under her wide, frightened eyes. “Look at the woman in this photograph! Her
eyes soft and her mouth hungry, emotion in every line of her body. Not a trace of resemblance to the
blonde zombie in that magazine I saw. This woman feels!”
She bit her lip to stop its trembling. “And that makes you very happy, doesn’t it, because if I can
feel I can be hurt? Congratulations,” she whispered. “You’ve hurt me more than you’ll ever know,
and I hope you enjoy the triumph.”
His eyes darkened. “Dana…”
“Pat was special to me,” she continued, unable to stop now. “He understood me, because he was
like me—he knew what I meant when I talked about newspapers and reporting because it had been his
life, too. When did you ever really talk to me? When did you ever do anything except hurt me?!”
He was looking down at her with a furrowed brow, his lips parted as if he was about to speak
and couldn’t get the words out.
“You said the name Persephone suited me and you were right because it’s been hell living here
with you!” she cried brokenly.
His face became set, carved out of stone, ashen under its tan. He let her go with a jerk. “Pack
your bags and get out.” He said it calmly, without raising his voice, but the words cut like a whip.
Her life changed in that space of seconds, and she stood there gaping at him. She’d planned
things to do tomorrow, and now she wouldn’t be here to do them, and it was like having her roots torn
out from under her and tossed into a river.
“Now?” she whispered incredulously.
“Now. This minute. Get out, damn you!” he threw at her, his voice so harsh that she jumped.
Without another word, she turned and ran from the room. He was letting her go. Sending her
away. And she knew that this time, there’d be no coming back. This time it was forever. Tears were
washing her face when she reached her room.
Minutes later, she was packed. She called a cab, picked up her bag and purse and went
hesitantly down the stairs, her steps light, as if any minute she expected him to come out and attack
her.
“It’s all right,” Lillian said gently from the bottom of the steps. “He’s gone out.”
Dana’s lower lips trembled with hurt and indignation. “He…fired me,” she whispered.
“I heard,” Lillian said with a sigh. “So did the neighbors, I’ll wager—that last bit, anyway. Oh,
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