Amanda was stunned to see James sitting on the bottom step of the stairway leading up to the second floor. He was wearing his usual three-piece tailor-made suit, a necessity for a corporate chief executive officer like himself, and his silver gray hair looked as dashing as ever. His tanned face showed signs of strain, however, and the once-over he gave Jordan was one of cordial contempt.
Amanda’s first instinct was to let go of Jordan’s hand, but he tightened his grip when she tried.
Meanwhile James had risen from his seat on the stairs. “We have to talk,” he said to Amanda.
She shook her head, grateful now for Jordan’s presence and his grasp on her hand. “There’s nothing to say.”
The man she had once loved arched an eyebrow. “Isn’t there? You could start by introducing me to the new man in your life.”
It was Jordan who spoke. “Jordan Richards,” he said evenly, without offering his hand.
James studied him with new interest flickering in his shrewd eyes. “Brockman,” he answered. “James Brockman.”
A glance at Jordan revealed that he recognized the name—anyone active in the business world would have—but he clearly wasn’t the least bit intimidated. He simply nodded an acknowledgment.
Amanda ran her tongue over her lips. “Let us pass, James,” she said. She’d never spoken so authoritatively to him before, but she took no pleasure in the achievement because she knew she wouldn’t have managed it if Jordan hadn’t been there.
James did not look at Amanda, but at Jordan. Some challenge passed between them, and the air was charged with static electricity for several moments. Then James stepped aside to lean against the banister, leaving barely enough room for Jordan and Amanda to walk by.
“Richards.”
Jordan stopped, still holding Amanda’s hand, and looked back at James over one shoulder in inquiry.
“I’ll call your office Monday morning. I’d be interested to know what we have in common—where investments are concerned, naturally.”
Amanda felt her face heat. Again she tried to pull away from Jordan; again he restrained her. “Naturally,” Jordan responded coldly, and then he continued up the stairway, bringing Amanda with him.
“I’m sorry,” she said the moment they were alone in her apartment. She was leaning against the closed door.
“Why?” Jordan asked, reaching out to unbutton her coat. He helped her out of it, then hung it on the brass tree. Amanda watched him with injury in her eyes as he removed his jacket and put it with her coat.
She had been leaning against the door again, and she thrust herself away. “Because of James, of course.”
“It wasn’t your fault he came here.”
She sighed and stopped in the tiny entryway, her back to Jordan, the fingers of one hand pressed to her right temple. She knew he was right, but she was slightly nauseous all the same. “That remark he made about what the two of you might have in common…”
Jordan reached out and took her shoulders in his hands, turning her gently to face him. “Your past is your own business, Amanda. I’m interested in the woman you are now, not the woman you were six months or six years ago.”
Amanda blinked, then bit her upper lip for a moment. “But he meant—”
He touched her lip with an index finger. “I know what he meant,” he said with hoarse gentleness. “When and if it happens for us, Amanda, you won’t be the first woman I’ve been with. I’m not going to condemn you because I’m not the first man.”
With that, the subject of that aspect of Amanda’s relationship with James was closed forever. In fact, it was almost as though the subject hadn’t been broached. “Would you like some coffee or something?” she asked, feeling better.
Jordan grinned. “Sure.”
When Amanda came out of the kitchenette minutes later, carrying two mugs of instant coffee, Jordan was studying the blue-and-white patchwork quilt hanging on the wall behind her couch. Gershwin seemed to have become an appendage to his right ankle.
“Did you make this?”
Amanda nodded proudly. “I designed it, too.”
Jordan looked impressed. “So there’s more to you than the mild-mannered assistant hotel manager who gets her Christmas shopping done early,” he teased.
She smiled. “A little, yes.” She extended one mug of coffee and he took it, lifting it to his lips. “I had a good time today, Jordan.”
When Amanda sat down on the couch, Jordan did, too. His nearness brought images from the movie they’d seen back to her mind. “So did I,” he answered, putting his coffee down on the rickety cocktail table.
Damn that guy with the ice cube, Amanda fretted to herself as Jordan put his hands on her shoulders again and slowly drew her close. It seemed to her that a small eternity passed before their lips touched, igniting the soft suspense Amanda felt into a flame of awareness.
The tip of his tongue encircled her lips, and when they parted at his silent bidding, he took immediate advantage. Somehow Amanda found herself lying down on the sofa instead of sitting up, and when Jordan finally pulled away from her mouth, she arched her neck. He kissed the pulse point at the base of her throat, then progressed to the one beneath her right ear. In the meantime, Amanda could feel her T-shirt being worked slowly up her rib cage.
When he unsnapped her bra and laid it aside, revealing her ripe breasts, Amanda closed her eyes and lifted her back slightly in a silent offering.
He encircled one taut nipple with feather-light kisses, and Amanda moaned softly when he captured the morsel between his lips and began to suckle. She entangled her hands in his hair and spread her legs, one foot high on the sofa back, the other on the floor, to accommodate him.
The eloquent pressure of his desire made Amanda ache to be taken, but she was too breathless to speak, too swept up in the gentle incursion to ask for conquering. When she felt the snap on her jeans give way, followed soon after by the zipper, she only lifted her hips so the jeans could be peeled away. They vanished, along with her panties and her sneakers, and Jordan began to caress her intimately with one hand while he enjoyed her other breast.
The ordinary light in the living room turned colors and made strange patterns in front of Amanda’s eyes as Jordan kissed his way down over her satiny, quivering belly to her thighs.
She whimpered when he burrowed into her deepest secret, gave a lusty cry when he plundered that secret with his mouth. Her hips shot upward, and Jordan cupped his hands beneath her bottom, holding her in his hands as he would sparkling water from a stream. “Jordan,” she gasped, turning her head from side to side in a fever of passion when he showed her absolutely no mercy.
He flung her over the savage brink, leaving her to convulse repeatedly at the top of an invisible geyser. When the last trace of response had been wrung from her, he lowered her gently back to the sofa.
She lay there watching him, the back of one hand resting against her mouth, her body covered in a fine mist of perspiration. Jordan was sitting up, one of her bare legs draped across his lap, his eyes gentle as he laid a hand on Amanda’s trembling belly as if to soothe it.
“I want you,” she said brazenly when she could speak.
Jordan smiled and traced the outline of her jaw with one finger, then the circumferences of both her nipples. “Not this time, Mandy,” he answered, his voice hardly more than a ragged whisper.
Amanda was both surprised and insulted. “What the hell do you mean, ‘not this time’? Were you just trying to prove—”
Jordan interrupted her tirade by bending to kiss her lips. “I wasn’t trying to prove anything. I just don’t want you hating my guts when you wake up tomorrow.”
Amanda’s body, so long untouched by a man, was primed for a loving it wasn’t going to receive. “You’re too late,” she spat, bolting to an upright position and righting her bra and T-shirt. “I already hate your guts!”
Jordan obligingly fetched her jeans and panties from the floor where he’d tossed them earlier. “
Probably, but you’ll forgive me when the time is right.”
She squirmed back into the rest of her clothes, then stood looking down at Jordan, one finger waggling. “No, I won’t!” she argued hotly.
He clasped her hips in his hands and brought her forward, then softly nipped the place he’d just pillaged so sweetly. Even through her jeans, Amanda felt a piercing response to the contact; a shock went through her, and she gave a soft cry of mingled protest and surrender.
Jordan drew back and gave her a swat on the bottom. “See? You’ll forgive me.”
Amanda would have whirled away then, but Jordan caught her by the hand and wrenched her onto his lap. When she would have risen, he restricted her by catching hold of her hands and imprisoning them behind her back.
With his free hand, he pushed her T-shirt up in front again, then boldly cupped a lace-covered breast that throbbed to be bared to him once more. “It’s going to be very good when we make love,” he said firmly, “but that isn’t going to happen yet.”
Amanda squirmed, infuriated and confused. “Then why don’t you let me go?” she breathed.
He chuckled. “Because I want to make damn sure you don’t forget that preview of how it’s going to be.”
“Of all the arrogance—”
Jordan pulled down one side of her bra, causing the breast to spring triumphantly to freedom. “I’ve got plenty of that,” he breathed against a peak that strained toward him.
Amanda moaned despite herself when he took her into his mouth again.
“Umm,” he murmured, blatant in his enjoyment.
Utter and complete surprise possessed Amanda when she realized she was being propelled to another release, with Jordan merely gripping her hands behind her and feasting on her breast. She didn’t want him to know, and yet her body was already betraying her with feverish jerks and twists.
She bit down hard on her lower lip and tried to keep herself still, but she couldn’t. She was moving at lightning speed toward a collision with a comet.
Jordan lifted his mouth from her breast just long enough to mutter, “So it’s like that, is it?” before driving her hard up against her own nature as a woman.
She surrendered in a burst of surprised gasps and sagged against Jordan, resting her head on his shoulder when it was finally over. “H-how did that happen?”
Still caressing her breast, Jordan spoke against her ear. “No idea,” he answered, “but it damned near made me change my mind about waiting.”
Amanda lay against his chest until she’d recovered the ability to stand and to breathe properly, then she rose from his lap, snapped her bra and pulled down her T-shirt. In a vain effort to regain her dignity, she squared her shoulders and plunged the splayed fingers of both hands through her hair. “You don’t find me attractive—that’s it, isn’t it?”
“That’s the most ridiculous question I’ve ever been asked,” Jordan answered, rising a little awkwardly—and painfully, it seemed to Amanda—from the sofa. “I wouldn’t have done the things I just did if I didn’t.”
“Then why don’t you want me?”
“Believe me, I do want you. Too badly to risk lousing things up so soon.”
Amanda wasn’t satisfied with that answer, so she turned on one heel and fled into the bathroom, where she splashed cold water on her face and brushed her love-tousled hair. When she came out, half fearing that Jordan would be gone, she found him standing at the window, gazing out at the city.
Calmer, she stood behind him, slipped her arms around his lean waist and kissed his nape. “Stay for supper?”
He turned in her embrace to smile down into her eyes. “That depends on what’s on the menu.”
Amanda was mildly affronted, remembering his rejection. “It isn’t me,” she stated with a small pout, “so you can relax.”
He laughed and gave her another playful swat on the bottom. “Take it from me, Mandy—I’m not relaxed.”
She grinned, glad to know he was suffering justly, and kissed his chin, which was already darkening with the shadow of a beard. “Nobody has called me ‘Mandy’ since first grade,” she said.
“Good.”
“Why is that good?” Amanda inquired, snuggling close.
“Because it saves me the trouble of thinking up some cutesy nickname like ‘babycakes’ or ‘buttercup.’”
She laughed. “I can’t imagine you calling me ‘buttercup’ with a straight face.”
“I don’t think I could,” he replied, bending his head to kiss her thoroughly. Amanda’s knees were weak when he finally drew back.
“You delight in tormenting me,” she protested.
His eyes twinkled. “What’s for supper?”
“Grilled cheese sandwiches, unless we go to the market,” Amanda answered.
“The market it is,” Jordan replied. Once again, in the entryway he helped Amanda into her coat.
“You have good manners for a rascal,” Amanda remarked quite seriously.
Jordan laughed. “Thank you—I think.”
They walked to a small store on the corner, where food was overpriced but fresh and plentiful. Amanda selected two steaks, vegetables for a salad and potatoes for baking.
“Does your fireplace work?” Jordan asked, lingering in front of a display of synthetic logs.
Amanda nodded, wondering if she could stand the romance of a crackling fire when Jordan was so determined not to make love to her. “Are you trying to drive me crazy, or what?” she countered, her eyes snapping with irritation.
He gave her one of his nuclear grins, then picked up two of the logs and carried them to the checkout counter, where he threw down a twenty-dollar bill. He would have paid for the food, too, except that Amanda wouldn’t let him.
She did permit him to carry everything back to the apartment, however, thinking it might drain off some of his excess energy.
When they were back in Amanda’s apartment, he moved the screen from in front of the fireplace as Gershwin meowed curiously at his elbow. After opening the damper, he laid one of the logs he’d bought in the grate. Amanda glanced at the label on the other log and saw it was meant to last a full three hours.
She grinned as she got her favorite skillet out of the drawer underneath the stove. Two logs totaled six hours. Maybe Jordan would change his mind about waiting before that much time slipped past.
Dusting his hands together, he came into the kitchenette, and Amanda could see the flicker of the fire reflected on the shiny front of her refrigerator door. Without being asked, he took the vegetables out of the bag and began washing them at the sink.
Amanda went to his side, handing him both the potatoes. “You’re pretty handy in a kitchen, fella,” she remarked in a teasing, sultry voice.
Jordan’s eyes danced when he looked at her, and his expression said he was pretty handy in a few other rooms, too. “Thanks.” He scrubbed the potatoes and handed them back to Amanda, who put a little swing in her hips as she walked away because she knew he was watching.
He laughed. “You need a spanking.”
Amanda poked the potatoes with a fork and set them in the tiny microwave oven her mother and stepfather had given her the Christmas before. “Very kinky, Mr. Richards.”
Jordan chuckled as he went back to chopping vegetables, and Amanda found the wooden salad bowl she’d bought in Hawaii and set it on the counter beside him.
They ate at the glass table in Amanda’s living room, the fire dancing on the hearth and casting its image on their wineglasses. Darkness had long since settled over the city, and Amanda wondered why she hadn’t noticed when the daylight fled.
“Tell me about your daughters,” she said when the meal was nearly over.
Jordan pushed his plate away and took a sip of his wine before replying. “They’re normal kids, I guess. They like to watch Sesame Street, have me read the funny papers to them, things like that.”
Amanda felt sad, but if someone had asked, she would have had to admit she wasn’t thinkin
g about Jordan’s children at all. She was remembering how it felt when her dad had gone away that long-ago Christmas Day, swearing never to come back. And he hadn’t. “Do you miss them?” she asked.
“Yes,” he admitted frankly. “But I know they’re better off with Karen and Paul.”
“Why?” Amanda dared to ask.
Jordan lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug. “I told you—my sister and her husband took them in when I was in the hospital. I’m more like an uncle to them than a father. They wouldn’t understand if I uprooted them now.”
Amanda wasn’t so sure, but she didn’t say that because she knew she’d already overstepped her bounds in some ways. If Jordan didn’t want to raise his own children, that was his business, but it made Amanda wonder what would happen if the two of them were ever married and had babies. If she died, would he just send the kids to live with someone else?
She refilled her wineglass and took a healthy sip.
There was a look of quiet understanding in Jordan’s eyes as he watched her. “What have I done now?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Amanda lied, setting her glass down and jumping up to begin clearing the table.
Jordan rose from his chair and elbowed her aside. “Go and sit by the fire. I’ll take care of this.”
Apparently giving orders had become a habit with Jordan over the course of his successful career. “I’ll help,” she insisted, following him into the kitchen with the salad bowl in her hands.
Jordan scraped and rinsed the plates, and Amanda put them, along with the silverware and glasses, into the dishwasher.
“Somebody trained you rather well,” she commented grudgingly.
He gave her a meltdown grin. “Thanks for noticing,” he said with a slight leer.
Amanda’s face turned pink. “I was talking about cooking and doing dishes!”
Jordan smiled at her discomfiture. “Oh,” he said, but he sounded patently unconvinced.
Amanda put what remained of the salad in a smaller bowl, covered that tightly with plastic wrap, then stuck it into the refrigerator. She longed to ask him what kind of wife Becky had been, but she didn’t dare. She knew he’d say she’d been wonderful, and Amanda wasn’t feeling grown-up enough to deal with that.
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