Triumph came at the peak of a sweet frenzy that tore a rasping shout from Jordan’s throat and set Amanda’s spirit to spiraling within her. For a few dizzying moments she was sure it would escape and soar off into the cosmos, leaving her body behind forever. The feeling passed, like a fever, and when Jordan fell to her, she was there to receive him.
He kissed her bare shoulder between gasps for air, and finally whispered, “Don’t mind me. I’ll be fine in a year or two.”
Amanda’s breath had just returned, and she laughed, moving her hands over his back in a gesture meant both to soothe and to claim. But her eyes were solemn when Jordan lifted his head to study her face a few moments later.
“Do you think it will take a long time for us to get things ironed out, Jordan?”
He kissed her forehead. “Judging by what just happened here, I’d say no.”
“Good,” she answered.
He traced the outline of her mouth with the tip of one finger. “Will you give me a baby, Mandy?” he asked huskily.
Her heart warmed within her, and seemed to grow larger. “Probably sooner than you think,” she replied.
Jordan chuckled and drew her close to him, and they lay together for a long time, recovering. Remembering. Finally, he bent to kiss her once more before rising from her to reach for his clothes. He gave her a long look as she sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees, then sighed. “We’ve got a lot of talking to do,” he said. “Now that there’s some chance of concentrating, let’s go over to my place and get started.”
Amanda nodded and grabbed her jeans and panties. Because her things were scattered all over the rug, she wasn’t able to dress as fast as Jordan, and he was brazen enough to watch her put on every garment.
Fifteen minutes later they pulled into his garage. When a blaze was snapping in the living room fireplace, they sat side by side on the floor in front of it, cross-legged and sipping wine.
Amanda started the conversation with a blunt but necessary question. “Are you still in love with Becky?”
Jordan considered her words solemnly and for a long time. “Not in the way you mean,” he finally said, his eyes caressing Amanda he watched her reactions. “But I’ll always care about her. It’s just that I feel a different kind of love for her now. Sort of mellow and quiet and nostalgic.”
Amanda nodded, then let her head rest against his shoulder. “In a way, she lives on in Jessie and Lisa.”
Jordan sighed, watching the fire. He told her about the accident then, about feeling Becky’s arms tighten around his waist in fear just before impact, about the pain, about being in the hospital when her funeral was held. “I felt responsible for her death for a long time,” he said, “but I finally realized I was just using that as an excuse to go on mourning forever. Deep down inside, I knew it was really an accident.”
Amanda gave him a hug.
“Thanks, Mandy,” he said hoarsely.
She sat up straight to look at him. “For what?”
“For coming along when you did, and for being who you are. Until I met you, I didn’t think love was an option for me.”
The rain began to slacken in its seemingly incessant chatter on the roof and against the windows, and Amanda thought she saw a hint of sunshine glimmering at the edge of a distant cloud. She linked her arm through Jordan’s and laid her temple to his shoulder, content just to be close to him.
Jordan intertwined his fingers with Amanda’s, and his grip was strong and tight. With his other hand he tapped his wineglass against hers. “Here’s to taking chances,” he said softly.
The movers arrived on Monday, and so did the furniture Amanda had bought at the estate sale. She called in several plumbers for estimates on extra bathrooms, and that night she and Jordan and the girls sat around her kitchen table, eating chicken from a red-and-white striped bucket.
“I’m glad you didn’t go to heaven,” Jessie told Amanda, her dark eyes round and earnest.
“Me, too,” Lisa put in, nibbling on a drumstick.
Amanda’s gaze linked with Jordan’s. “I could have sworn I visited there once,” she said mysteriously.
Jordan gave her a look. “Dirty pool, lady,” he accused.
“Uh-uh, Daddy,” Jessie argued. “Amanda doesn’t even have a pool.”
“I stand corrected,” Jordan told his daughter, but his eyes were on Amanda.
Tossing a denuded chicken bone onto her plate, Amanda stood up and bent to give greasy, top-of-the-head kisses to both Jessie and Lisa. “Thanks for being glad I’m around, gang,” she told the girls in a conspiratorial whisper.
“You’re welcome,” Jessie replied.
Lisa was busy tilting the bucket to see if there was another drumstick inside.
Jordan watched Amanda with mischievous eyes as she dropped her plate into the trash and then leaned back against the sink with her arms folded.
“I suppose you people think I can’t cook,” she said.
No one offered a comment except for Gershwin, who came strolling into the kitchen with a cordial meow. The girls were delighted, and instantly abandoned what remained of their dinners to pet him.
When he realized he wasn’t going to get any chicken, the cat wandered out of the room again. Jessie and Lisa were right behind him.
“Come here,” Jordan said with just the hint of a grin.
“I’ve got no willpower at all where you’re concerned,” Amanda answered, allowing herself to be pulled onto his lap.
“Good. Will you marry me, Mandy?”
She tilted her head to one side. “Yes. But we agreed to wait, give things time—”
“We’ve had enough time. I love you, and that’s never going to change.”
Amanda kissed him. “If it’s never going to change, then it won’t matter if we wait.”
He let his forehead fall against her breasts, pretending to be forlorn. “Do you know what it’s going to do to me to go home tonight and leave you here?” he muttered.
She rested her chin on the top of his head. “You’ll survive,” she assured him. “I need a few months to get the business going, Jordan.”
He sighed heavily. “Okay,” he said with such a tone of martyrdom that Amanda laughed out loud.
Jordan repaid her by sliding a hand up under her shirt and cupping her breast.
Amanda squirmed and uttered a protest, but the steady strokes of his thumb across her nipple raised a fever in her. “We’ll just have to be—flexible,” she acquiesced with a sigh of supreme longing.
“We’re not going to have much time alone together,” Jordan warned, continuing his quiet campaign to drive her crazy. “Of course, if we were married, it would be perfectly natural for us to sleep together every night.” He’d lifted one side of Amanda’s bra so that her bare breast nestled in his hand.
“Jordan,” Amanda whispered. “Stop it.”
In the parlor, Amanda’s television set came on, and the theme song of the girls’ favorite sitcom filled the air. “A nuclear war wouldn’t distract them from that show,” Jordan said sleepily, lifting Amanda’s T-shirt and closing his lips brazenly around her nipple.
She knew she should twist away, but the truth was, the most she could manage was to turn on Jordan’s lap so that she could see the parlor doorway clearly. The position provided Jordan with better access to her breast, which he enjoyed without a hint of self-consciousness.
When he’d had enough, he righted her bra, pulled her shirt down and swatted her lightly on the bottom. “Well,” he said with an exaggerated yawn, “it’s a school night. I’d better take the girls home.”
Amanda was indignant. “Jordan Richards, you deliberately got me worked up….”
He grinned and lifted her off his lap. “Yep,” he confessed, rising from his chair and wandering idly in the direction of the parlor.
Flushed, Amanda flounced back and forth between the table and the trash can, disposing of the remains of dinner. After that, she wiped the table off in furious motions,
and when she carried the dish-cloth back to the sink, she realized Jordan was watching her with a twinkle in his eyes.
“In three days we could have a license,” he said.
In the parlor, Jessie and Lisa laughed at some event in their favorite program, and the sound lifted Amanda’s heart. The children would always be Becky and Jordan’s, but she loved them already, and she wanted to be a part of their lives almost as much as she wanted to be a part of their father’s.
She walked slowly over to the man she loved and put her arms around his waist. “Okay, Jordan, you win. I want to be with you and the kids too much to wait any longer. But you’ll have to be patient with me, because getting a new business off the ground takes a lot of time and energy.”
His eyes danced with delight as he lifted one hand for a solemn oath. “I’ll be patient if you will,” he said.
Amanda bit down on her lower lip, worried. “I don’t want to fail at this, Jordan.”
He kissed her forehead. “We’ll have to work at marriage, Mandy—just like everybody else does. But it’ll last, I promise you.”
“How can you be so sure?” she asked, watching his face for some sign of reservation or caution.
She saw only confidence and love. “The odds are in our favor,” he answered, “and I’m taking the rest on faith.”
It was September, and the maples and elms scattered between the evergreens across the road were turning to bright gold. They matched the lumbering yellow school bus that ground to a halt beside the sign that read Amanda’s Place.
The bus door opened and Jessie bounded down the steps and leaped to the ground, then turned to catch hold of Lisa’s hand and patiently help her down.
Amanda smiled and placed one hand on her distended stomach, watching as her stepdaughters raced toward the house, their school papers fluttering in the autumn breeze.
“I made a house!” Lisa shouted, breathless with excitement as she raced ahead of her sister to meet Amanda on the step.
Amanda bent to properly examine the drawing Lisa had done in the afternoon kindergarten session. A crude square with windows represented the house, and there were four stick figures in front. “Here’s me,” Lisa said with a sniffle, pointing a pudgy little finger at the smallest form in the picture, “and here’s Jessie and Daddy and you. I didn’t draw the baby ‘cause I don’t know what he looks like.”
Amanda kissed the child soundly on the forehead. “That’s such a good picture that I’m going to put it up in the shop so everybody who comes in can admire it.”
Lisa beamed at the prospect, sniffled again and toddled past Amanda and into the warm kitchen.
“How about you?” she asked Jessie, who had waited patiently on the bottom step for her turn. “Did you draw a picture, too?”
“I’m too big for that,” Jessie said importantly. “I wrote the whole alphabet.”
Putting an arm on the little girl’s back, Amanda gently steered her into the kitchen. “Let’s see,” she said.
Jessie proudly extended the paper. “I already know enough to be in second grade,” she said.
Amanda assessed the neatly printed letters marching smartly across Jessie’s paper. “This is certainly one of the nicest papers I’ve ever seen,” she said.
Jessie eyed her shrewdly. “Good enough to be in the shop like Lisa’s picture?”
“Absolutely,” Amanda replied. To prove her assertion, she strode through the big dining room, now completely furnished, and the large parlor, where Lisa was plunking on the piano, into the shop. Several of her quilts were displayed there, along with the work of many local craftspeople.
Her live-in manager, Millie Delano, was behind the cash register. It had been a slow day, but there were guests scheduled for the weekend, and the quilts and other items had sold extremely well over the summer. Amanda was making a go of her bed and breakfast, although it would be a long time before she got rich.
She held up both Lisa’s picture and Jessie’s printing for Millie’s inspection. The pleasant middle-aged woman smiled broadly as Amanda made places for the papers on the bulletin board behind the counter and pinned them into place.
Jessie, who sometimes worried that her fondness for Amanda made her disloyal to her mother, beamed with pride.
The girls were settled in the kitchen, drinking milk and eating bananas, when Jordan arrived from the city. “Is my family ready to go home?” he asked, poking his head around the door.
Jessie and Lisa, who were always delighted to see him, whether he’d been away five minutes, five hours or five days, flung themselves at him with shrieks of welcome. Amanda, her hands resting on her protruding stomach, stood back, watching. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she thought how lucky she was to have the three of them filling her life with love and confusion and laughter.
After gently freeing himself from his daughters, Jordan walked over to Amanda and laid his hands on either side of her face. With his thumbs he brushed away her tears. “Hi, pregnant lady,” he said. A quiet pride made Amanda’s heart swell. “Hi,” she replied with a soft smile.
He gave her a leisurely kiss, then steered her toward the door. Her coat was hanging on a wooden peg nearby, and he helped her into it before handing Jessie and Lisa their jackets.
Amanda was struck again by the depth of her love for him when, in his tailored suit, he dropped to one knee to help Lisa with a jammed zipper. She couldn’t have asked for a better father for her child than Jordan Richards.
When the hectic family project of preparing dinner was behind them, and Lisa and Jessie had had their baths, their stories and their good-night kisses, Jordan led Amanda into the living room. They sat on the sofa in front of a snapping fire, with their heads touching.
Jordan brought his hand to rest on Amanda’s stomach, and when the baby kicked, his eyes were as bright as the flames on the hearth. Amanda couldn’t help smiling.
He smoothed back a lock of her hair. “Tired?” he asked.
“Yes.” Amanda sighed. “How about you?”
“Beat,” Jordan replied. “Personally, I don’t see that we have any choice but to go straight to bed.”
Amanda laughed and thrust herself off the couch. “Last one there is a rotten egg!” she cried, waddling toward the stairs.
The “First Lady of the West,” #1 New York Times bestselling author
brings you to Parable, Montana—where love awaits
Sheriff Boone Taylor has his job, friends, a run-down but decent ranch, two faithful dogs and a good horse. He doesn’t want romance—the widowed Montanan has loved and lost enough for a lifetime. But when a city woman buys the spread next door, Boone’s peace and quiet are in serious jeopardy.
www.LindaLaelMiller.com
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The daughter of a town marshal, Linda Lael Miller is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of more than one hundred historical and contemporary novels, most of which reflect her love of the West. Raised in Northport, Washington, the self-confessed barn goddess now lives in Spokane, Washington. Linda recently hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list for the fifth and sixth times with the first two titles in her Big Sky series, Big Sky Country and Big Sky Mountain.
Linda has come a long way since leaving Washington to experience the world. “But growing up in that time and place has served me well,” she allows. “And I’m happy to be back home.” Dedicated to helping others, Linda personally finances her Linda Lael Miller Scholarships for Women, which she awards to tho
se seeking to improve their lot in life through education. More information about Linda and her novels is available at www.lindalaelmiller.com. She also loves to hear from readers by mail at P.O. Box 19461, Spokane, WA 99219.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-0941-4
Daring Moves
Copyright © 1990 by Linda Lael Miller
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