poor woman credit. I gave her the worst deal any woman's ever had this side of hell, while she lies around half dead puking her brains out on chemo, and she's elegant enough not to admit she knows we're having an affair. Hats off to her. She's quite a lady.” Unlike Miss Daphne Belrose, he thought, but didn't say it.
“Why don't you go back to her then?” she asked, sitting on a black leather chair, and swinging one leg over the other, just enough for him to see what she had there. But he'd seen it before, and he was no longer bewitched. The spell had been broken.
“Alex is too smart to ever take me back,” he said quietly, in answer to Daphne's suggestion. “I don't blame her a bit. I think I at least owe it to her not to go near her.”
“Maybe you two deserve each other. Mr. and Mrs. Perfect. Mr. Honest. Mr. Pure, who had no idea how Simon was multiplying his business by millions. Just how naive are you, Sam? Or to be perfectly blunt, how stupid? Don't tell me you didn't know anything. I didn't help him set it up, but for God's sake, even I could figure out what was happening. Don't tell me you couldn't.”
“The incredible stupidity of it all is that I wasn't paying attention. I was so busy trying to get under your skirts that I never saw what was going on around me. You blinded me, my dear. I was a total fool, and I suppose I deserve what's happening.”
“Nothing's happening, Sam. It's all over. You're finished,” she said derisively, as though it amused her.
“I know I am. Thanks to Simon.”
“You won't get a job as a bank clerk when this is all over.”
“And you, Daphne? How do you feel about that? Will you be around to make my dinner when I get home from a pathetic little job somewhere, selling thumbtacks?” He was looking at her with total contempt, and spoke to her in a voice dripping with sarcasm. He knew just who she was now.
“I don't think so,” she said, uncrossing her legs again, showing him everything he had wanted. He had lost a lifetime for what she had between her legs, and it hardly seemed worth it. “The fun is over, Sam. It's time for me to move on. But it was fun, wasn't it?”
“Very much so,” he agreed, as she walked over to him slowly, and ran a hand inside his open shirt. She felt his nipples, and his chest, and his very firm stomach and he didn't move and then she tried to slide her hand slowly into his trousers, but he grabbed her hand before she got any further. It was the only thing they'd ever really had, raw sex, and a lot of it. But there was too high a price to pay for the pleasure.
“Will you miss me?” she asked, not pulling away from him, but on the contrary, moving closer. It was as though she wanted to prove something by casting a spell on him one more time, but he wouldn't let her.
“I'll miss you,” he said regretfully. “I'll miss the illusion.” He had traded real life for a fantasy, and he knew it. It was a bitter admission. And he had lost Alex in the process.
Daphne pressed her lips down hard on his, and held him with her hands until she could feel him throbbing and he kissed her with the last of his passion for her, and then pulled away and looked at her unhappily, realizing that he would never know if she had collaborated in his destruction or if it had all been done by her cousin. It was terrible not knowing.
“One last time,” she asked in a hoarse voice. She had grown to like him better than she meant to. She was not one to get involved, or stay that way forever. And with him it had been different. But even she knew, it was all over.
He shook his head in answer to her question. He left the apartment for a long, quiet walk then. He had a lot to think about. And he came back two and a half hours later. There was no sound when he came in. And when he looked around, she was gone. The apartment was as empty as his heart. She had taken everything he'd given her, and left him nothing, except memories and questions. That night on the eleven