Pam spent several minutes looking out over the massive backyard. Not very much about it had changed since the last time she'd run across the grass barefoot toward the stables, looking for Moira. In the distance, the converted barn still stood, and she knew that there were horses inside, waiting for someone to ride them. A gated training area was next to the stables, and she recalled many times when she was allowed to lead a horse inside the circle and ride until she grew sore between her thighs, while Moira stood at the gate watching and waiting patiently.
She was waiting patiently for Pam's answer, when she decided to offer one a little while later. Pam shrugged listlessly and met her eyes. “I don't know why I left, Moira. I just knew I had to get away from here. I felt like there was nothing here for me anymore. Not that there ever was,” she chuckled. “Me and Paris were just floating along, living in the home with all the other unwanted children and waiting to grow up. What would I have done if I'd stayed? Married some man I didn't love? Gotten a job at the dry cleaners? What?”
“Was the home so bad? Did they mistreat you there?”
“Not that I can recall. If anything, they let us run wild,” Pam replied. “I was never there when I was supposed to be, but you probably know that already since I was here often enough. It was really just a holding place for us until we were old enough to get out on our own. Not exactly the kind of childhood a kid would choose for themselves.”
The back door opened and Janice poked her head out. Seeing that they were done eating, she came across the porch to collect their plates and refill their glasses. She glanced at Pam and smiled. “You're prettier than on television.”
“Janice!” Moira was scandalized.
“I just meant that you're pretty without all the makeup and stuff. Not that you don't look pretty with it on, don't get me wrong, but . . .” she floundered visibly.
“Thanks,” Pam said, letting her off the hook. “I think. I was telling Moira that I wanted to send your girls an autograph before I go. If you have something I can write on, I'llâ”
Moira cut her off with a wave of her hand. “I have an idea, Janice. Get my camera, too. We'll take a few pictures to go along with the autographs.”
“Oh God, not the camera again.” Growing up, Moira had always snapped pictures of her and Paris. It was from her that they had received photos of themselves as children and then as teenagers. Otherwise, they might not have had any visual proof of those times in their lives, since no one else had thought to do it. There were group photos with the other kids in the home and the requisite school pictures, but the candid shots of the two of them clowning around had come courtesy of Moira.
“Of course, the camera,” Moira said, shooing Janice off to fetch it. “You've been away for eighteen years. This is a momentous occasion.”
“I should've come back sooner,” Pam decided and Moira's head whipped around on her neck in surprise. “I didn't realize how much I've missed you until I saw you again and all that beautiful hair was white. I didn't get to see it change.”
“You didn't miss much, believe me. I woke up one morning and this is what I saw. I cried for a week over it. I won't even tell you how long I cried after you left me.”
“Moira, please don't do this,” Pam pleaded. “I told myself I wasn't going to cry.”
“Okay, I won't do it,” Moira said. She rounded the table and pulled a nearby chair close to Pam's. “But I did miss you, you know. You did good and made me proud, though. Both you and Paris did. Come on, scoot closer for the picture. This one's mine.”
Later, as Pam was preparing to leave, Moira studied her profile intently, committing it to memory. Pam looked up from zipping her purse and caught her staring. She looked away and cleared her throat, swallowing tears.
“You have that faraway look in your eyes again,” she said. “When are you leaving?”
“You could always tell when I was up to something, Moira. Am I that obvious?”
“You forget, I've known you since before you were old enough to climb out of the window and make your way here, Pamela. When?”
“You knew about the window?”
“The window was the stuff of legends. I don't think they ever figured out how you rigged it so the lock would never catch.”
“I have a tour starting around the middle of next month, so I need to leave Mercy sometime around the first. I've been here long enough as it is.”
“It took you a month to get around to coming to see me.” Moira reached for Pam's hands. “Please don't let it take another eighteen years before I see you again. Come see me before you go?”
Pam swallowed and nodded. “All right, I will. I promise.” She was surprised when Moira tugged on her hands and brought her forward to press a kiss to her lips.
Â
Miles looked up from the reports he was scanning when his assistant poked her head in his office and told him he had a call holding on line three. He asked her to please close the door on her way out and snatched up the receiver the minute she was gone. He had been expecting this call.
“Miles Dixon,” he said into the phone. He listened for a moment and then filled his office with the sound of his disgusted groan. “Did you relay the message to Mr. Woodberry?” A few more seconds of listening. “Well, did you tell him that I needed to speak with him immediately?”
Nate's publicist wasn't sounding very sympathetic to Miles's plight, which only angered him more. The man's high pitched nasal voice grated on Miles's nerves, especially since he wasn't hearing what he had hoped to be hearing. Nate was still in Iraq, caught up in a story he was trying to finish, the man said. He expected to be done by the end of next month at the latest, and he would be in touch with Miles following his return to the States.
No
, there was no number where Nate could be reached.
No
, Nate wasn't interested in taking Miles's contact information. And
no
, Nate hadn't made any significant comment upon learning of Paris Greene's death. Miles was no further along than when he had first tried contacting the man. With a strangled sigh, he bid the publicist a terse goodbye and slammed the receiver into the cradle.
He was planning to return to Mercy later in the week and when he did, he decided to take a more aggressive tack with Pam. His time in Mercy was coming to an end, and there were still a few questions that needed to be addressed. He'd get the answers he sought if he had to choke them out of Pam.
Dear Diary,
Â
Me and Nate are convinced that something is going on between Pam and Chad. Nate says he can tell by the way they look at each other that something is up. Plus, they are always fighting, like they like each other, but don't want to admit it. Sometimes it really gets on my nerves. Because of them we got put out of Miss Merlene's front room again yesterday.
Me, I can tell by the way Pam acts that she likes Chad. I catch her watching him sometimes and the look in her eyes scares me. We haven't talked about boys yet, and I don't know if I'm ready to.
Chad is cute, though.
Paris
Chad passed by Nikki, sitting in the family room watching television and reading at the same time, and did a double take. A quick glance at the kitchen clock told him it was after two in the morning, and he wondered what she was still doing up. His thoughts were leaning toward pouring himself a stiff drink and enjoying it in peace out on the back porch. He hadn't counted on having a witness to his edginess, and he didn't really want one.
“What are you still doing up?” he asked Nikki as he splashed a healthy amount of Cognac in a glass. She looked up from the book she was engrossed in and smiled at him. He caught his breath and added another splash. The curve of her lips was all Pam.
“I started reading Mom's diary and I guess I got caught up,” Nikki said. A few seconds later she giggled and snapped the book closed. She came to her feet and crossed the room to enter the kitchen. She leaned a hip against the counter and watched him fix himself a glass of ice water to go with his drink. “I didn't know you had a crush on Aunt Pam way back in the day.”
He completely missed the teasing in her voice, and his was a little sharper than it needed to be. “What?”
“I said,” Nikki drawled. “I didn't knowâ”
“I heard what you said. Who told you that?” He was slicing a lemon now and hoping his hands were steady.
“Mom wrote about it in her diary. She said that her and Uncle Nate suspected something was going on between you and Aunt Pam. I think it's kind of sweet.”
“Her and Uncle Nate, huh?” Chad dropped a lemon wedge in his water and took a box of sandwich bags from a nearby cabinet. “So you decided to read the diary?” He wasn't quite clear on how he felt about that yet.
“I was just flipping through it. It's mostly about all the running around her and Aunt Pam did when they were kids.” She took the wrapped lemon from him and carried it over to the refrigerator. “They were pretty footloose and fancy free.”
“A lot of it was your aunt. Paris was usually the one going along for the ride and preaching a sermon the whole time.”
“I can see Mom doing that. So . . . is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“What mom wrote about you and Aunt Pam?”
“It's too late at night to be subjected to the third degree, Nikki. She had to be thirteen or fourteen at the most when she wrote that, so I'd take it with a grain of salt, okay? You remember how you used to fantasize at that age.” He picked up his drinks and turned toward the back door. “I'm going out to the porch for a while, and you should go on up to bed. It's late.”
“That was pretty smooth, Dad,” Nikki told him, smiling.
“What was?”
“The way you answered my question without really answering it. But I guess I'll let you off the hook this time.” She moved closer and offered her lips for a good night kiss. Chad leaned down and pecked quickly. “You coming in soon?”
“In a while. Hit the lights on your way up.”
He escaped to the darkness of the back porch a few seconds later and took a seat at the wrought iron table. Behind him, the kitchen light went off and he sighed with relief. Not that he didn't enjoy his daughter's company, but he was less than fit to be around right now. Hell, Nikki would probably be shell-shocked if she knew where his mind was wandering anyway. Nothing about his thoughts was innocent or pure.
Chad was horny and wanting Pam so badly he'd been driven to fixing himself a drink to calm his nerves. His yearning for her had started the day he realized she was in Mercy, and it had only gotten worse since then. Suddenly, he was remembering all the time they'd spent together, the ways they'd made love, the techniques they had discovered together and perfected with each other. After the first time, when their coupling was strictly an accident, both he and Pam were curious and comfortable enough with each other to seek answers to their questions. Over time, they had found and mastered sensuality in its purest form, been so damn good together that it gave him a headache just thinking about it.
He closed his eyes and pressed stiff fingers to his eyelids as an image of their bodies naked and slick with sweat flashed through his mind without his consent. He chased the image away with a mouthful of cognac and gritted his teeth as it snaked down his throat. He saw like it was just yesterday the first time he'd brought Pam to orgasm. And then again for the first time with his lips and tongue. Thought about how she'd run her fingers all over his body and make him desperate to have her and then torture him with those sultry lips of hers. For a long time after she'd left, he was unable to think of anything else.
Life had eventually crept in, though, and he'd tried to push Pam to the back of his mind. But the intensity of what they'd shared was always with him. Once he'd believed she was the woman he would marry and have a family with, but she had proved him wrong, yet again. He ended up marrying the twin he liked and respected, but had never loved in a romantic way. Life had a funny way of kicking you in the ass when you least expected it.
Chad rolled his head around on his neck and rotated stiff shoulders to release some of his pent-up tension. In fifteen years, he'd slept with his wife a handful of times and then only in the very beginning, when he was still convinced he'd done the right thing by marrying Paris and had told himself that they could make a happy life together. Pam was always there though, hovering between them and he had imagined her eyes on him every time he went near Paris, until eventually he'd had no choice but to admit the truth to himself. Pam was the one he wanted. It would've been criminal to go on misleading Paris and worse, using her body to satisfy his physical needs when he couldn't even look her in the face while he was doing it, couldn't even sustain an erection long enough to give either of them any real pleasure.