The Night Remembers Read Free

build that had first attracted her to him. He had just been coming out of the entrance of Harding Park, near the university, clad in battered running shoes, pair of faded blue shorts, with the sweaty gleam of hard physical exertion gilding his well-toned body.
    She remembered vividly how the muscles of his arms and shoulders rippled in the late afternoon sunlight. His legs were long and lean—like a runner's should be—with powerful, well-developed thigh and calf muscles that seemed to move effortlessly as he jogged out of the park. Fine, downy, blond hair glinted over his legs and forearms and the wide expanse of his chest, giving him an all over golden glow. He was as beautiful as a young Greek god and Daphne had been so enthralled by the sheer male beauty of him that she forgot to pay attention to what she was doing and ran into him with her bicycle.
    Lord, but he had been angry. For the first few minutes, anyway. She had, after all, knocked him down and left tread marks across the toe of his right running shoe. It had taken half a dozen apologetic smiles and the promise of a date before he was willing to forgive her.
    Daphne sighed and moved back behind the curtain. Where had all the time gone? It seemed like only yesterday that Adam had been an intensely dedicated, nose-to-the-grindstone young med student and she had been his unlikely girlfriend—an impulsive, emotional young woman who protested on behalf of what she considered the unfortunates in the world and dreamed of becoming a fashion designer.
    Adam will be thirty-seven in a couple of weeks, she thought, recalling his birthday without effort. I turned thirty-one this year. And in just two months it would be eleven years since their divorce.
    "Daphne, what happened out there?" Suzie had changed into her second outfit, a slim one-shouldered column of sleek satin that almost matched her platinum hair, and was waiting for her cue to go on again. She put her hand on Daphne's arm. "Are you all right? You look like you've seen a ghost."
    Daphne smiled a little wryly and patted the hand on her sleeve. "I guess I have, sort of." She nodded toward the audience. "See that blond hunk of yours out there?"
    Suzie peeked around the curtain. "Uh-huh. He's sitting at the first table." She licked her lips. "Yummy."
    "He's my ex-husband."
    The model's head snapped around. "Your ex-husband? Really?" She looked out toward the audience again, amazement in her wide blue eyes. "The hunk is your ex-husband?"
    "What's the matter? Don't you think I could be married to a man like that?" Daphne said, her voice only half teasing. She had gotten that kind of reaction before. People had found it hard to believe that a serious, dedicated medical student like Adam Forrest could be married to the emotional, impulsive girl she had been at that time in her life.
    "I didn't mean it like that. It's just that, well—" Suzie shrugged her fashionably thin shoulders "—I didn't know you'd ever been married to anyone besides Miles." Her look became frankly curious. "You must have been awfully young that first time around."
    "I was eighteen when we got married," Daphne said softly, thinking suddenly of the way they had eloped.
    It had been her idea, their elopement. She had talked herself blue in the face, trying to convince him that it was the best thing to do. But Adam wanted to do the sensible thing. He wanted to wait until they could afford to get married, until he was out of med school and into his internship, at least, before taking on the responsibility of a wife. But Daphne didn't want to wait. She couldn't. And, in the end, neither could he.
    Maybe it would have been better if they had waited, she thought. Maybe they would still be married now if she had allowed Adam to do the sensible thing. Who knows? But it was too late now. It had been too late eleven years ago.
    "I was twenty when he filed for divorce," she added softly, almost to herself. There was a wealth of sadness in the words.
    "Oh."