Amanda

by Kay Hooper

  She glanced up at him with a curious expression, as if he had taken her by surprise, but merely nodded and said, “Thanks.”

  They went up the walkway that was bordered by low, neat shrubs and climbed the wide, shallow steps, passing between the two central columns to reach the portico. Several pieces of black wrought-iron furniture were placed here and there in the cool shade, breaking up the expanse of pale stone, and two planters on either side of the massive front door held neatly trimmed miniature trees.

  Walker didn’t ring the bell, but simply opened the right-hand side of the double doors and gestured for her to precede him. If she hesitated, it was only for an instant.

  As they stepped into the cool quiet of a spectacular entrance hall, he said somewhat dryly, “Jesse isn’t overly fond of antiques, so you won’t find many original furnishings in Glory. Some of the bedrooms still have theirs, but most of the house has been thoroughly modernized in most respects. Except for air conditioning.”

  She gazed at the curving staircase broken only by a graceful landing as it swept up to the second floor, looked down at the beautiful gold and cream tapestry rug spread out over the polished wood of the floor, then turned her attention to Walker. “Does the house stay so cool all summer?”

  “Not really,” he replied. “By mid-July, it tends to get pretty stuffy in here—especially upstairs. But Jesse prefers fresh air, no matter how hot and humid, and Jesse is very much in charge here at Glory.” He wondered if she heard a warning in his voice. He wondered if he meant to warn her.

  Before she could respond, their attention was caught by the sound of voices raised in argument. One of a set of double doors opposite the staircase was wrenched open, a harsh, furious voice shouted, “Sully!” and a big, dark-haired man in jeans and a dirty tee shirt erupted from the room. He slammed the door behind him with a vicious thrust, then caught sight of the visitors and froze.

  Even though they weren’t touching, Walker felt the woman beside him stiffen. He didn’t blame her. The fury emanating from Sullivan Lattimore, Jesse’s youngest grandson, was so strong it was visible, like heat shimmering off sun-baked pavement. And since he was a physically powerful man who looked like he wanted to destroy anything he could get his hands on at the moment, even Walker—who knew for a fact he could take Sully one on one—eyed him warily.

  For a long moment, Sully didn’t move. He was staring at her, his gaze fierce, and she seemed unable to look away.

  In the silence, Walker shifted his gaze between them, waiting to see what would happen. All they had in common, he thought, was black hair and gray eyes, both Daulton family traits. There the resemblance ended, though they were supposedly cousins. She was petite, only a few inches over five feet tall, and delicate, with small bones and finely textured fair skin; he was big, well over six feet tall, with the heavy bones and robust build of most of the Daultons. His skin was darkly tanned and his strong hands were calloused. Her exquisite features were still, composed, giving away nothing of her feelings; his handsome, surly face was so expressive it held all the subtlety of neon.

  Though his thinned lips writhed in a snarl, Sully didn’t speak. He merely stalked past them and out the front door, slamming it behind him.

  She didn’t turn when he passed them, but Walker saw her let out a little breath after Sully had gone. Then she looked up at him and said steadily, “Not a promising beginning.”

  Walker hesitated, then shrugged. “Don’t let Sully throw you. He likes to think he’s as mean as a junkyard dog, but it’s mostly bluff.”

  “Mostly?”

  Her wry tone made Walker smile. “Well, I wouldn’t advise making him mad for no good reason, but his temper usually takes the form of yelling and cussing rather than hitting or throwing things. He’ll probably spend an hour or so riding through the woods and pastures until he calms down, and be relatively civilized by suppertime.”

  “He doesn’t want me here.”

  “No, he probably doesn’t.” Walker hesitated, but decided not to comment on the subject further. She would find out soon enough—if it hadn’t already occurred to her—that the arrival of Amanda Daulton had put more than one nose out of joint in the family, and that it was likely only Jesse wanted her to be who she claimed to be.

  The door Sully had slammed opened again to reveal a tall, dark-haired woman who stepped briskly out into the entrance hall, shut the door quietly behind her, and stopped when she saw them. She might have been any age between forty-five and sixty-five; her mahogany-brown hair, worn short and stylish, had no more than a few threads of gray, but her face bore the deeply tanned, leathery appearance of someone who had spent a great deal of time out in the sun for many years. She was slim and trim, handsome rather than pretty, and her brown eyes were completely unreadable.

  Without a smile or a glance toward Amanda, she said, “Are you waiting for an invitation, Walker?”

  “No, Maggie,” he replied imperturbably, accustomed to the brusque manner of Glory’s longtime housekeeper. “Just pausing a moment to recover from Sully’s charge through here.” He was about to add an introduction when he realized that the only name he had for the silent woman at his side was one he didn’t believe to be the truth. Christ, was he supposed to preface every introduction by saying “She says she’s Amanda Daulton”?

  Taking the matter out of his hands, the housekeeper turned her attention to the younger woman, eyed her shrewdly, and spoke in the same brusque tone. “Just so you know, I don’t plan on playing guessing games about what you do or don’t remember. Twenty years is a long time no matter who you are. I’m Maggie Jarrell, and I run the house.”

  “I’m Amanda Daulton.” Her voice was very quiet, matter-of-fact rather than defiant.

  Maggie pursed her lips and nodded. “Okay. How do you take your iced tea?”

  “Sweet, with lemon.” The response was prompt and offered with a smile.

  Maggie nodded again, sent Walker a glance he couldn’t read to save his life, and headed toward the back of the house.

  “Walker.”

  He looked down, too conscious that it was the first time she’d used his given name. “What is it?”

  “I realize it must be difficult for a man trained in the precision of the law to accept something he doesn’t believe to be the truth,” she said evenly, without looking at him. “But just to make the situation easier on all of us, I would appreciate it if you could bring yourself to at least call me Amanda. You don’t have to worry. I won’t be stupid enough to think it implies any admission on your part. You think I’m a liar—fine. Even liars have names.” She looked up at him, gray eyes steady. “My name is Amanda.”

  Until then, Walker hadn’t realized that he had managed to avoid calling her anything at all, at least while he was with her. He hadn’t intended a deliberate slap in the face, but it seemed obvious she had—with reason—felt slighted.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it. He gestured toward the room both Sully and Maggie had left. “Shall we—Amanda?”

  Squaring her shoulders visibly, she nodded. They walked to the door, Walker knocked briefly, and when there was an impatient reply from inside, he opened both doors so that they could enter the room side by side. It was a half-conscious gesture on his part, impulsive, and he was glad he had done it when she glanced at him with the flicker of a grateful smile.

  The room they entered was very large and looked even more so with its high ceiling and oversize windows. The furnishings were comfortably modern without shouting about it, the colors were pale and soothing, and the floor was covered with a thick, plush wall-to-wall carpet. There were three people in the room: two men on their feet near the fireplace, and a woman seated on one of two long sofas at right angles to it.

  Walker didn’t hesitate this time. Taking her arm in a light grasp, he led her across the room to the taller and older of the two men, and said simply, “Here she is, Jesse.”

  Jesse Daulton could have been taken for a man fifteen years you
nger than his seventy-five. A couple of inches over six feet tall, powerful and big-boned, he appeared robustly healthy with few signs of age and none of frailty. His face was a romantic wreck, startlingly handsome features ruined by a lifetime of temper and indulgence, but he was still a very attractive man. His black hair was only now beginning to gray around his tanned face, and his eyes gleamed like lightly tarnished silver.

  “Amanda,” he said, and seemed unable to say anything else.

  His normal speaking voice was deep and usually harsh; Walker had never heard it quite so soft and unsteady as it was now. He watched the slim, pale hand she extended be gently engulfed in both of Jesse’s big, leathery hands, and he thought that if she had given the old man any sign of encouragement, he would have swept her off her feet in a bear hug.

  But she was reserved, polite, and watchful, and showed no desire for any gesture of affection. “I seem to remember that you wanted me to call you Jesse when I was a child,” she told him as she gently drew her hand free of his grasp. Her voice was quiet, her smile slow and curiously charming.

  Before Jesse could respond, the man on the other side of the fireplace did.

  “All of us call him Jesse, even Kate,” he told Amanda, and when she looked at him he offered her a smile that was only a little strained. “I’m Reece. Reece Lattimore. Welcome to Glory, cousin.”

  From that last statement, Walker drew two conclusions. One, that Jesse had made it plain to his family that he considered this Amanda the genuine article until proven otherwise and expected them to behave accordingly. And, two, that Reece was too smart to openly betray—as Sully would—the hurt, frustration, and bitterness he had to feel about the matter.

  Amanda took a step away from Jesse and offered her hand to Reece with that slow smile of hers. “Reece. I think … didn’t you offer to give me your horse one summer?”

  Jesse gave a bark of a laugh that was more than a little derisive. Color rose in Reece’s face, but he continued to smile as he shook hands with her. “Yeah, I think I did. Never was as horse-crazy as Sully, I’m afraid.”

  Unlike his younger brother, who was indisputably a Daulton physically and emotionally, Reece took after their father’s family. He was tall enough, nearly six feet, but lacked the heavy bones and imposing physical strength of the Daultons. He was fair and blue-eyed, not especially handsome but with pleasant features, and the laugh lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes indicated he was quicker to smile than to frown.

  He and Sully were too dissimilar to be close, but differing ambitions at least kept them from destructive conflict with each other. Most of the time.

  Walker touched Amanda’s arm to draw her attention, and spoke to the other woman in the room because he knew Jesse wouldn’t. “Kate? Come and meet Amanda.”

  Immediately, Catherine Daulton rose from the sofa and stepped forward. Youngest and only surviving child of Jesse and the wife he had buried just days after her birth, Kate was five foot eleven in her bare feet and built on noble lines, voluptuous without an ounce of excess flesh. She had the Daulton coloring, and at forty her smoothly tanned face was still astonishingly beautiful, with hardly a line to mar its perfection.

  In all honesty, Walker had never seen a woman more beautiful than Kate. Heads turned when she walked by, and mouths fell open in shock. He had even once seen a man literally hit by a car because he’d been staring mindlessly at Kate as he stepped off the curb. She could have made a fortune as a model, and might well have brought princes to their knees if only she had left Glory and ventured out into the world.

  But Kate had spent her life here, and though many men in the area had been—still were, in fact—eager to court her, none had been successful. In fact, she had never shown interest in marrying, and rarely dated. Her secrets hidden behind the tarnished-silver eyes she had inherited from Jesse, generally calm and self-possessed, she acted as Jesse’s hostess when necessary and filled her time with volunteer and charity work.

  Extending a hand to Amanda, she said politely, “How do you do? Welcome to Glory.”

  Amanda looked up at the older woman for an instant with no expression, then smiled as she shook hands. “Thank you, Kate.”

  Jesse, who had rarely taken his eyes off Amanda, urged her now to sit down, and took a place for himself beside her on the sofa facing the one where Kate had been sitting. His voice was still quieter than normal for him, and Walker had never seen Jesse’s face so softened.

  Kate had resumed her seat, silent once more, and Reece sat at the other end of her sofa. Walker took up a position at the fireplace, leaning a shoulder against the mantel. He was as comfortable in this house as he was in his own, and accepted by the family to the point of having long since abandoned any attempt to be businesslike except when he was going over legal documents with Jesse.

  Strictly speaking, his part in this little drama had been completed. He had conducted the preliminary interviews with the woman claiming to be Amanda Daulton, had obtained the most thorough background check possible, had sought and arranged the necessary blood tests, and had reported all information available to Jesse. He had relayed her suggestion that she spend some time at Glory, and had counselled the older man to wait until all possible evidence was in before meeting Amanda. Overruled on that point, he had delivered her to Glory, where she was to remain at least until the DNA test results were provided by a private laboratory sometime during the next few weeks.

  There was no reason for Walker to remain. No legal reason. And it wasn’t as if this were an off day for him; there was a stack of paperwork on his desk, a series of meetings he needed to schedule, and no doubt a dozen or more phone messages requiring his attention. Despite all that, he had no intention of leaving just yet. He told himself it was merely that he was absorbed in the drama and, naturally, concerned that his client’s interests be protected.

  He ignored the little voice in his head that insisted he remained because he didn’t want to desert Amanda. That was absurd, of course. He was far too skeptical of her claim to feel in any way protective of her.

  She glanced over at him as Jesse sat down beside her, and Walker could have sworn there was a flicker of relief in her eyes. But it was a fleeting thing; as soon as Jesse spoke, she turned her attention to him.

  “So—you grew up in the North?” What might have seemed an inane or awkward gambit was made less so by Jesse’s tone, which was as intent as his gaze. He was half turned toward her, and though his hands rested on his thighs, his upper body was just slightly inclined, so that he seemed to lean toward her.

  “In Boston,” she answered readily, but offered nothing more.

  Reece gave a little laugh. “You don’t sound it. In fact, you don’t have much of any kind of accent.”

  She looked at him, smiled slightly. “I’ll probably sound more Southern after I spend more time here.”

  “Deliberately?” Kate asked almost absentmindedly, as if she were only half aware of the conversation, but she was looking at the younger woman.

  “No, not really.” Amanda shrugged, unoffended. “But mother’s accent was pretty strong, and since I had that in my ear for so many years, I’ll probably take the path of least resistance once I hear it all around me.”

  There was an odd little silence, and then Kate spoke again in that same detached tone. “I don’t remember Christine having much of an accent.”

  “Don’t you?” If she was nonplussed, Amanda gave no sign of it. Instead, she shrugged again. “Maybe it just seemed stronger to me, living in the North.”

  “Natural,” Jesse decided with a nod. Having reclaimed Amanda’s attention, he held it. With a vengeance. “Walker tells us you don’t remember the night your mother took you away from us. Is that true?”

  Watching the two of them, Walker decided that Amanda would make a good witness and one he wouldn’t hesitate to put on the stand. She didn’t blurt out a response to Jesse’s abrupt question, and when she did answer after a deliberate pause, her gaze met his
steadily.

  “There’s a lot I don’t remember, including that night. Before then, the time I spent here seems almost … dreamlike. I remember just bits and pieces, flashes of scenes and conversations. I think I could find my way to the bedroom I had here, but I didn’t remember how to get to the house from town. I remember a litter of kittens in a barn loft, but I can’t recall the games I must have played with my cousins. I remember kneeling at a window to watch a storm … seeing a foal born … hearing my father laugh …” She tilted her head a little and her voice dropped to something just above a whisper. “But I don’t remember why we had to leave Glory.”

  Damn, she’s good. The voice in Walker’s head this time belonged to the cynical lawyer trained in suspicion. He glanced at Jesse’s face, unsurprised to find that the old man was visibly moved. Even Reece seemed affected, his ready sympathy stirred by Amanda’s wistfulness. Neither of them apparently realized that her “memories” were so vague they could easily have been created out of thin air and shrewdness.

  “Give it time,” Jesse urged, one hand reaching over to cover hers.

  “you’re bound to remember more now that you’re here,” Reece agreed.

  Only Kate appeared impervious to the younger woman’s appeal, her enigmatic gaze moving among the others as if she were watching some performance staged to entertain.

  Walker slid his hands into his pockets, forcing himself to remain silent. Christ, she was winning them over already, the men at least. That hesitant, pensive voice … He was torn between the professional urge to remind Jesse yet again that nothing had been proven and the increasingly personal urge to find some way of penetrating Amanda’s smooth and deceptive mask of self-control to find what lay underneath. She was hiding plenty, he was sure. He could feel it. Every time she opened her mouth, all his instincts tingled a warning for him to beware of what she said.