The Night Remembers Read Free Page A

Suzie obviously didn't know what to say to that. "Gee, I'm sorry, Daphne."
    "Oh, don't be." Daphne shook herself out of her reverie. "It was a long time ago."
    "Did you know he was going to be here tonight?"
    Daphne shook her head. "I'd heard that he was doing his residency in L.A." She shrugged and the shoulder of her dress slipped downward again. She didn't notice. "But that was, oh, five or six years ago, I guess. So I suppose I should have considered the fact that he'd probably be back in the Bay Area by now. He always said that he intended to establish his practice in San Francisco." She sighed softly. "Well, that's neither here nor there." She lifted her chin decisively. "I've got a fashion show to do."
    She moved away from the curtain and picked up the clipboard from the stool where Elaine had placed it when she went onstage. Walking briskly, she headed toward the clothes rack, her mind determinedly on the business at hand.
    "You have one more dress after that, right, Suzie?" she said over her shoulder.
    The model nodded. "Yes."
    "Okay, listen up, everybody." Daphne raised her voice slightly as she addressed the models who were bouncing around backstage, struggling in and out of clothes. "As soon as you've all shown your last dress, then it's everybody on stage for the finale, okay?"
    She turned to watch Suzie parade out onto the stage. The tall, lanky model seemed to float down the runway, long silver ribbons fluttering from her right shoulder as she moved.
    "And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes our fashion show for this evening," Elaine said as the final model slowly made her way back up the length of the runway. "What do you say we give a big round of applause to our lovely models?" she continued as they all began to file out for the finale, filling the runway with a dazzling kaleidoscope of fabric and color.
    "Let's get the designer of these fabulous clothes out here, too, shall we?" Elaine went on.
    Daphne had known the words were coming, they always did when Elaine did the commentary for a show, but she wished, just this once, that her assistant wasn't so eager to give credit where credit was due.
    "Our Daphne seems to be a little shy tonight," Elaine said, smiling at the audience as she deliberately ignored Daphne's hand signals. "Let's see if we can persuade her to come on out and take a bow." She turned toward the wing where Daphne was standing, adding her applause to that of the audience.
    Daphne fixed her assistant with a threatening glare and then, pasting a wide smile on her face, walked out onto the stage. Very deliberately, she forced herself not to look at the table where she knew Adam was sitting as she stepped up to the podium.
    "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen," she said, when the applause had died down. "I hope you enjoyed the fashion show this evening. I know we enjoyed putting it on for you." She paused, smiling warmly as the applause began again, and her eyes were irresistibly drawn to Adam's table.
    His golden head was tilted slightly to the right as he gazed up at her and there was the hint of a question in his pose. And then he raised his glass and smiled. It was that sweet, slow, utterly charming smile that she remembered far too well for her own good.
    Daphne felt her knees turn to mush and it was all she could do to finish her little speech and get off the stage without falling down.

 
     
     
    Chapter 2

     
    It was chaos backstage. Technicians went about the business of packing up their equipment, stoically dodging around the models who scurried back and forth in various stages of undress as they struggled to get out of their borrowed finery and into the gowns they would wear for the rest of the evening's festivities. There was a high-society charity dance being held in one of the hotel ballrooms to which they had all been invited.
    It was easy to tell the pros from the amateurs. The doctors' wives were all huddled behind a curtained-off partition as they changed, while the