Danielle Steel - Lightning

“No, I haven't.”

“Most Americans have, or at least that's the impression they give me.”

“Was your divorce very traumatic?” It was an oddly personal conversation between two strangers, but he was enjoying it. There was something totally open and abandoned about her.

“Not at all. It was a great relief. He was a complete bastard. For the life of me, I can't imagine how we stayed married for so long, seven years. It was quite dreadful, I assure you.”

“Who did he run off with?” He liked being somewhat forward with her. It was fun playing the game of discovering things about her.

“A barmaid, naturally. Quite a pretty one though. He's already left her. And he's living in Paris with some girl who says she's an artist. He's quite mad, but fortunately he takes good care of Andrew, our son, so I don't need to panic.” She seemed anything but panicked, she seemed completely in control of any situation. And more than one of the Englishmen were eyeing her with interest. She looked as though she could have had anyone she wanted.

“Were you in love with him?” Sam asked her, feeling brazen.

“Probably. For a while anyway. At twenty-one, it's awfully difficult to tell the difference between love and good sex. I'm not sure I ever figured out which one it was.” She smiled cheekily at him, and as he looked at her, he wished suddenly that he were young enough to have her. She was terrific. But then he thought of Alex. And it was as though Daphne saw that.

“And what about you? Are you in love with your wife? I hear she's very pretty.” She was, for forty-two, for any age. But she was not quite as outrageous or even as striking as Daphne and he knew it.

“Yes, I love her,” he answered firmly, as Daphne watched him intently.

“That's not what I asked you, is it? I asked if you were in love with her. There's a difference,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“Is there? We've been married for more than seventeen years. That's a long time, you get very attached to someone by then. I love her very much,” he said, as though trying to convince himself, but he still hadn't answered Daphne's question.

“Are you telling me you don't know if you're still in love with her? Were you ever?” she persisted, playing cat and mouse with him, but he didn't mind it.

“Of course I was.” He sounded shocked at the question, and Simon was amused by the intense look on their faces from across the table. They were huddled together, as though solving all of life's greatest problems.

“Then when did it change? When did you stop loving her?” Daphne accused, sounding like a lawyer, and Sam wagged a finger at her.

“I never said that. That's a terrible thing to say.” Especially now. But all he could think about as he looked at her was Daphne.

“I didn't say it. You did. You said you were in love with her, but you don't seem to be able to tell me if you are now,” she said, looking incredibly sexy as she persisted.

“Sometimes marriage is like that. There are dead spots in the water sometimes, when you kind of run dry and get stale, and none of the right things seem to happen.”

“Is this one of those times?” she asked, her voice a velvet purr that tore at his insides.

“Maybe. It's hard to say.”

“For any particular reason? Did anything happen?”

“That's a long story,” he said almost sadly.

“Have you had affairs?” she asked bluntly, and this time he laughed at her.

“Has anyone ever told you that you're outrageous?” And beautiful …and sensual …and have skin like velvet….

“Completely.” She smiled dazzlingly at him. “Actually, I pride myself on it.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn't,” he tried to chide her unsuccessfully.

“At my age, I can do almost anything I want. I'm not quite old enough to be held seriously accountable, and old enough to know what I'm doing. I hate really young girls, don't you?” She leapt from one subject to another, as she flipped her long black hair over her bare shoulders, and she was incredibly alluring. In some ways, she was so much like Alex, and in others she was very different. She was much bolder, more outrageous, yet she had that razor-sharp mind, and the same long, lanky body. But she was much more overtly sexual than Alex had ever been, and Sam was embarrassed to admit that he liked it, but he hoped that no one knew it. She made him constantly want to tease her back, to play with her, to play a game that neither of them could lose. But he also knew full well that he was not free to play it. She knew that too. But it didn't seem to stop her from playing.

“What about you?” he teased her in answer to her question about young girls. “Do you like young men, or old ones?”

“I like all men,” she said naughtily, “but I prefer men your age,” she said smoothly.

“Shame on you,” he scolded softly, “that was pretty obvious.”

“I'm always obvious, Sam. I hate wasting time.”

“Me too. I'm married.”

“Is that a problem?” Her eyes bore straight into his, and he knew he had to be fair here.

“I think so. I don't do this.”

“That's too bad. It could be amusing.”

“I want more in life than ‘amusing.' That's a dangerous sport. I haven't played it in years. That's a game for a single man. The lucky devils.” He laughed right into her eyes, wishing for just an instant that he were younger and free again. She made him feel good, even if just for a minute. It was like eating cream puffs.

“I like you,” she said honestly. She liked the way he played fair and square and she thought his wife was a lucky woman.

“I like you too, Daphne. You're a terrific girl. You almost make me wish I were single.”

“Will you come to the discotheque with us after dinner?”

“I probably shouldn't. But I might.” He smiled at her, thinking about how much he'd have liked to dance with her, but how dangerous it might be, particularly right now, with Alex in the state she was in, and the tension between them.

But after they left the restaurant, the limousine was just standing there, and Daphne took his hand and pulled him in with the others, and he didn't have the heart to resist her. They went all the way downtown, to a place in SoHo he'd never heard of, and there was a wonderful blues band wailing away, and it seemed inevitable that they wound up in each other's arms, dancing in the dark nightclub, as he felt her body pressed against his, and he had to force himself repeatedly to think of Alex.

“I should go,” he said finally. It was very late, and there was a growing feeling of duplicity to what they were doing. There was no fooling himself now. He was married and she wasn't. No matter how attractive she was, he couldn't do this.

“Are you angry at me?” she asked softly, as he paid for their drinks, and he prepared to leave her with Simon.

“Of course not. Why should I be?” He was surprised by her question.

“I've made a shocking play for you tonight. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable.” She was apologizing for her behavior.

“You didn't. You flattered me. I'm twenty years older than you are, and believe me, if I could, I'd be after you in a flash, but I can't.”

“You flatter me,” she said demurely, looking at him with eyes that tore his heart out.

“No, but I'd like to.” And then he volunteered something he hadn't meant to. “My wife is very sick.” He looked away as he said it, trying not to think of everything that had happened in the last two days, or the words that had passed between them. “It made things a little difficult. I'm not sure what's going to happen.”

“Very sick?” She didn't want to say the word “cancer,” but he understood what she was asking.