by Lori Foster
He shook his head. Damn, she could make him nuts. “Go ahead.”
“I’m twenty-four years old, Josh.”
“So? I figured you to be somewhere around there. I’m twenty-seven.”
“I’ve never been intimate with a man. I’m still a…a virgin.”
His heart lurched. Before his sluggish brain could assimilate that confession and make sense of it, she continued.
“That’s not by choice. I tried a few times, but…”
Her voice turned cold, remote. It was as if she’d gone on automatic pilot, telling him things he’d insisted on hearing, but not allowing them to hurt her again.
Josh blindly reached for her hand. It didn’t matter whether or not she needed the touch, because he needed it.
“Sometimes stuff happens in our lives and it affects us. When I was younger I did some really horrible things.”
“Just a second here, okay?” He tried to keep his tone reassuring. “Are we talking physical reasons why you can’t, or emotional reasons?”
She laughed. “I’ve got all the same parts as any other woman, they just don’t work right. And the doctors call it mental, not emotional.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what they call it.”
She squeezed his fingers. “It’s all right. I’ve accepted my life.”
“Well good for you, but I’m not accepting it.” He’d be damned before he’d accept this as anything other than an emotional setback. “And you’re only giving me bits and pieces of stuff here. Amanda, I care about you.”
Her next words were choked. “I’m sorry. I wish you didn’t. I don’t want to hurt anyone ever again. Not for the rest of my life.” She dug in her purse for a tissue and blew her nose. After a shuddering breath that ripped out his heart, she said, “All I want to do now is try to make up for things in the only way I can.”
“The calendar?” he asked.
“Yes. And other projects, other ways to help those who’ve been hurt or killed. Some things, well, there’s no way to make up for them. They happen and you have to live with the consequences.”
It was a good thing, to Josh’s way of thinking, that her home wasn’t far from the park. Otherwise, he’d have pulled over on the side of the road. But he reached her driveway and rather than stop at the end as he was sure she’d prefer, he drove right up to the front walkway.
Then he sat there in stunned disbelief as his headlights landed on the front and side of her home. Would Amanda just keep knocking him off balance?
“Is this a schoolhouse?” he asked.
“It used to be, yes.”
The tiny rectangular building of aged red brick had two arched windows on each outer wall and an arched double front door of thick planked wood. The steep roof had slate shingles and a small chimney protruded off the backside. It looked like a fairy cottage, set in the middle of towering trees and scraggly lawn with dead ivy climbing up the brick here and there, waving out like a lady’s hair caught in the breeze.
Other than the driveway that ended at the side of the house where he could see her Beetle parked under a shelter, and a short path to the front door, there was no relief from those tall oaks and elms and evergreens. No neighbors, no traffic, no real lawn to speak of, no…nothing.
She’d isolated herself so thoroughly that Josh wanted to get out and howl at the moon.
He wanted to take her back to his place where it was noisy and busy with life.
He wanted to keep her.
Amanda opened her car door and stepped out. Josh followed, fearful that she’d skip away from him and he’d never get his answers. No way in hell could he sleep tonight with only half the story, and her hanging confession about virginity.
Looking at her over the hood of the Firebird, he said, “Ask me in.”
She tipped her head back and looked up at the treetops, swaying against a dark gray sky. “I suppose I might as well,” she said with little enthusiasm. “We can finish this, and you can sign the release and it’ll be done.”
So saying, she found her key in her purse and walked on a short cobblestone path to the front door. Josh listened to the hollow echoing of her high heels on the rounded stone.
Finish it? Ha! Not by a long shot.
Tonight, to his way of thinking, was just the beginning.
AMANDA WATCHED as Josh stepped into her quaint little eclectic home. She flipped on a wall switch, which lit a tiny side-table candle lamp. While he stood in the doorframe, she went on through the minuscule family room and into the kitchen to turn on the brighter fluorescent overhead lights. Whenever she needed light to work by, she used the two-seat kitchenette table. Even now, it was filled with photos and contracts for the calendar.
Her home was barely big enough for one, and with Josh inside, it was most definitely crowded. Especially when he closed the door. He looked around with a sense of wonder, then said the most unexpected thing.
“I thought you were rich.”
After all the emotional upheaval, Amanda burst out laughing. She peered at Josh, saw his look of chagrin, and laughed some more.
His expression changed and he stalked toward her. “I do love it when you laugh.” She stalled, realization of their situation sinking in, and he said, “I also thought you’d be immaculate.”
Shrugging, Amanda looked around at the clutter. “No time. I work a regular forty-hour week like most people, then put in another twenty hours or more a week on projects. My place is never really dirty, but yes, it’s usually messy.”
Dishes filled the small sink and an overloaded laundry hamper sat on the floor. Amanda shrugged again. She did what she could, when she could. If Josh didn’t like it, he shouldn’t have invited himself in.
“I wasn’t complaining,” he said. “It just surprised me. Will you show me the rest of your place?”
Amanda gathered herself. She’d explain things to him, but there was no reason for more hysterics, no reason for an excess of the pitiful, useless tears and dramatics fit for the stage.
What had happened to her was the least tragic thing that had occurred that awful night. She wouldn’t allow herself to pretend otherwise.
“There’s not much to show, only the four rooms. You’ve already seen two of them, the family room and kitchen.”
“No television,” he noted.
“It’s in my bedroom, along with a stereo, through here.” The house measured a mere fifty feet by thirty feet. The front double doors were centered on the overall width of the house, which put them into the far left of the family room. An open archway, draped with gauzy swag curtains in lieu of a door, showed her bedroom. The curtains weren’t adequate for privacy, but since she lived alone, it had never mattered.
Straight ahead of the family room was the kitchen. The two rooms seemed to meld together, with only the side of the refrigerator and the location of her tiny table to serve as a divider.
The kitchen was just large enough for a stacking washer and dryer, a parlor table, an apartment-size stove and her refrigerator. The cabinets were almost nonexistent, but open shelving and one pantry offered her all the storage space she needed.
At the back of the house, opposite the kitchen, was the minuscule bathroom that opened both into her bedroom and into the kitchen.
A bare toilet, a pedestal sink and a claw-foot tub filled the room with elegant simplicity. Other than the creamy ceramic tile in the bathroom, the whole house had original rich wood flooring.
Josh peeked into each room. Her bedroom had a full-size cherry bed and one nightstand that held an alarm clock, phone and lamp. A large ornate armoire held her clothes and a TV-VCR combination. Her modest stereo sat on the floor beside it.
One narrow dim closet was situated next to the door for the bathroom. It wasn’t deep enough to accommodate hangers, so she had installed shelves and stored her shoes and slacks and sweaters there.
The tall, wide windows and cathedral ceilings made the house look larger than it was. The absence of doors gave it a f
resh openness, while natural wood furniture and earth tone materials brought everything together.
“I like it,” Josh said, and she could see that he did. His eyes practically glowed when he stared at her old-fashioned bathtub. “How old is this place?”
“An engraved stone plaque, embedded above the front door, says it was erected in 1905. I had to do some work to it before I could live here. Some of the windowpanes were busted out and the roof leaked. The floors all had to be sanded and repaired.”
Hands on his hips, Josh looked around again and shook his head. “A schoolhouse.”
“A hunter had converted it into a cottage years ago. He’s the one who put in modern plumbing and electricity. When he passed away, his kids just sort of forgot about it for a long, long time. I’m glad they finally decided to sell because I love it.”
“Lots of charm,” Josh agreed. “You know, you need a school bell.”
“I have one. It’s in the back, next to the well.”
“A bona fide well?”
“Yes.” She smiled at his enthusiasm over that bit of whimsy. “It even works, though I can’t bring myself to drink anything out of it. I guess I’m too used to tap water.”
They still stood in her bedroom, and Amanda began to feel a little uncomfortable. “Should I make some coffee? Not that I think this will take long, but…” She headed out of the room, assuming Josh would follow.
Of course, he didn’t. “I’d rather talk.”
“Fine.” She clasped her hands together. “Let’s at least sit down.”
Josh nodded and followed her into the family room. She had only enough room for one bookshelf, a loveseat with end tables and lamps and a rocking chair. Josh tugged her down into the loveseat, and then kept hold of her hand.
“So you’re a virgin?” he asked in that bald, shocking way of his. “That’s not a crime, you know. Especially these days.”
Many times in her life, Amanda had forced herself to face her accusers, to face the truth while trying to apologize, to make amends even when she knew that to be impossible.
She could force herself to face Josh, and to tell him the whole story. “I told you it’s not a moral choice. I tried, several times, but I’m frigid.”
He lifted his free hand to stroke her hair, and ended up removing a piece of a twig. He smiled at it while saying, “You didn’t seem frigid to me. Just the opposite.”
Her reaction to Josh had surprised her, too, but she wouldn’t be fooled. Too many times she had thought herself whole—perhaps forgiven—only to be disappointed again.
Shaking her head, Amanda said, “I want what you want, that’s not the problem. But you saw what happened. I can only go so far and then I start remembering and then I…I just can’t.”
“What?” Josh cupped her chin and brought her face around to his. “What do you remember?”
“Josh…are you sure you want to hear this?” She felt she had to give him one last chance to leave without causing an unpleasant scene. It’d be easier for both of them. “You could just let it go,” she suggested, “just sign the release and leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere, so quit stalling. And quit acting like whatever you have to tell me will horrify me and send me racing out the door. That won’t happen, Amanda.”
He twisted further in his seat to hold her shoulders and give her a gentle shake. “When I said I cared about you, I meant it. I don’t go around saying that to every woman I want to have sex with.”
She laughed. He was so outrageously honest about his intentions.
Josh wasn’t amused. “When I said scars wouldn’t matter, I meant that, too. It doesn’t make any difference to me if the scars are on your body or in your heart. They’re still a part of you, and so I want to know. All of it.”
Well she’d tried. If it took the full truth to make him understand, then she’d give him the full truth. Amanda looked him in the eyes and said, “When I was seventeen, I killed a man.”
Josh froze, his expression arrested, disbelieving.
Better to get it all over with quickly, she thought. “I also wounded two others. They’re the ones who wear the awful scars, not me. God knows it would have been so much better, and certainly more just, if it had been me. But that’s not how it worked out.”
“Amanda…”
She shook her head. “There are so many people who will never forgive me, but that’s okay, because I won’t ever forgive myself.”
6
JOSH SHOCKED the breath right out of her when he yanked her into his arms. He felt so solid, so strong and brave and heroic. He was everything she could never be.
It seemed criminal for her to be with him, but Amanda couldn’t stop herself from knotting her hands in his T-shirt and clinging to him.
He sat back and again lifted her into his lap. In a voice gone hoarse with emotion, he said, “Tell me what happened.”
That he bothered to ask for details amazed Amanda. A few men had, men she’d tried and failed to be intimate with in college, and when she’d first moved here. But macabre fascination and selfish intent had motivated their queries, because they wanted to know why they were being rejected. Not one of them had asked out of genuine caring.
She felt Josh’s caring. She felt it in the way he held her, in the steady drone of his heartbeat against her cheek, in the way his large hands moved up and down her spine, offering her comfort. It settled over her like a warm blanket, almost tangible.
Tears pricked her eyes, but she staved them off. She’d cried enough, and besides, she didn’t deserve to sit around whining.
Amanda rubbed her cheek against him, breathing in his masculine scent. “You were right—I did come from money. Dad not only has his own company and more stock in other companies than I can remember, but he inherited a fortune from his family. My mother’s family isn’t quite as well off, but they’re definitely upper-crust. Whenever they weren’t around, there was a housekeeper or tutor or someone to keep tabs on me and my sister.”
“You said you were seventeen? That’s a little old to have a baby-sitter, isn’t it?”
“I thought so. But my parents were determined that my sister and I would never embarrass them. So many of their friends had kids who had gotten into trouble, unwanted pregnancies, drugs, bad grades. I don’t blame them for being extra cautious. Being influential puts you in the limelight, so we had be exemplary in every way.”
“Sounds rough.”
She started to lift her head, but he pressed her back down and kissed her temple. She subsided. “Don’t get me wrong, my parents loved me.”
“Loved you? As in past tense?”
She didn’t want to delve too deeply into the broken ties with her family. It hurt too much. “Things have been…strained since that awful night. I embarrassed them. I caused a huge scandal that still hasn’t died down, even though it happened seven years ago. We keep in touch, but I doubt we’ll ever be close again.”
“Tell me what happened.”
Deciding to just get it over with, she said, “One night I slipped out of my house to meet with my boyfriend. We were going to have sex in the woods behind my house. Can you believe that? A very risqué, exciting rendezvous. I felt totally wicked and very grown-up.” She lowered her head and laughed though she’d never remember that night with anything but horror. “Looking back, I realize how immature and ridiculous I was.”
“You were young,” Josh said without censure, “and most seventeen-year-olds are ready to start experimenting, to start pushing for independence. You sound pretty average to me.”
If she had ever been average, Amanda thought, she’d been changed that awful night. “He showed up at midnight. I crawled out my second-story bedroom window and shimmied down a tree, and away we went.” She absently plucked at a wrinkle in her skirt, not seeing anything, not wanting to see. “While I was gone, making out in the dirt on a borrowed blanket, our house caught on fire. An electrical short or something they eventually decided. Everyone go
t out of the house by the time the fire trucks arrived, only…”
The muscles in Josh’s arms bunched. He was a firefighter, so she knew he could easily picture the scenario. “Only when no one found you, they all thought you were still inside?”
“Yes.” She swallowed hard, but the lump of regret remained. “My parents were hysterical. My mother collapsed on the lawn with my sister, both of them screaming. My father tried to get back inside when he couldn’t find me. He punched two firefighters who tried to hold him back, but he finally gave up when three of them went inside instead.”
Remorse clawed through her, as fresh and painful as the day it had happened. “My bedroom was in the middle of the upstairs floor. While they were searching for me, going on my parents’ assurances that I had to be in there, the floor caved in. One man…” An invisible fist squeezed her throat, choking her. God, she hated reliving that awful night.
Josh waited, not saying a word, just stroking her.
“Even in the woods, I heard the sirens. They seemed to be right on top of us and I was afraid they’d wake my family and they’d know what I did, that I’d sneaked out. So I came home.”
Shuddering, rubbing at her eyes so she could see, Amanda said, “The fireman fell into the downstairs and got trapped. He was unconscious and the smoke was so thick, they almost couldn’t find him. By the time they got him out he was badly burned.”
She gave up trying to wipe away the tears and just dropped her hands into her lap. “He only lived three days. Three days of wavering in and out of consciousness, constantly in pain.”
Josh still didn’t say anything, but there was such a ringing in her head she wouldn’t have heard him anyway. She tried to breathe but couldn’t. She tried to relax, to be unemotional, but she couldn’t do that either. “The other two men are badly scarred, their arms, and their hands.”
Pushing herself away from Josh’s embrace, she rocked forward and covered her face, ashamed and embarrassed and sick at heart. “They hated me of course. Not that I blame them. And that man’s widow…”
She felt Josh touch her shoulder and she lurched to her feet, then paced to the window. She couldn’t talk anymore, but there wasn’t much else to say. She stared blindly out at the blackness of her yard, and the blackness of her life.