Amanda

by Kay Hooper

  “God, you’re stubborn,” he muttered, kissing her fiercely. “I’ve been waiting for days.”

  She felt his fingers tangle in her hair, and nearly purred. “You could have come to me.”

  “No. You had to come to me. It was your call.” He kissed her again, then framed her face in his hands and looked at her with eyes that weren’t flat anymore, eyes that were alive. “Katie, I’m sorry I told you about Jesse like that. You needed to know—but not like that.”

  “Maybe that’s exactly how I needed to hear it.” She glided a finger across his bottom lip, fascinated by the texture. Something so soft on such a hard man; it was remarkable. It was enthralling. “What you said was so —so naked I couldn’t pretend anymore. I had to face it. I didn’t have Jesse. I never had him.”

  “you’re fine without Jesse,” Ben assured her huskily. “Perfect without him.”

  She kissed him suddenly. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I never really believed you wanted money.”

  “I only want you,” he said. “God help me. Just my luck to fall for a woman more maddening than a Chinese puzzle. I must be out of my mind.”

  “I’m too old for you,” she whispered.

  “Shut up. Idiot. I love you.”

  Kate didn’t know what she would have said to that astonishing revelation if he’d given her a chance to say anything. But he didn’t. She was swept up into arms strong enough to carry even a big woman with effortless ease, and a moment later she found herself on a reasonably comfortable grassy bed in a patch of sunlight near the pool.

  Even though it was not a particularly private spot (riders tended to use this trail once or twice a day) and they would have little warning if anyone approached, it wasn’t enough for either of them to simply remove what was necessary in order to have each other. It wasn’t something they said aloud, it was something both of them knew.

  For the first time, their hunger was tempered by humor and a kind of playfulness that was new to them. And they took their time, as if they had all they’d ever need. Every kiss and touch was lingering, intense with desire and yet lazy, sweet. Stubborn buttons and zippers roused chuckles, and the awkward removal of close-fitting riding boots provoked outright laughter.

  When they finally lay naked together in the morning sunlight, humor and playfulness alike fled. As it always did between them, desire exploded, too powerful to control. In this, they knew each other very, very well. There was no hesitation, no questioning, no awkwardness. There was only passion that spiraled higher and higher until it carried them far beyond themselves.

  “We’ll get burned,” Kate said idly.

  “Neither of us ever burns,” Ben replied. He swept one hand down over her hip and rubbed her upper thigh gently. It lay across his thigh and she cuddled close to his side. “But we might end up embarrassed,” he added dryly. “there’s a training run scheduled for this trail sometime this morning.”

  She lifted her head and looked down at him. “Oh, lovely.”

  He smiled when she made no effort to move, but then said, “I forgot again.”

  He meant he’d forgotten to put on a condom, she knew. Kate was grave. “Did you forget before? In the garden? I wondered.”

  Ben hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I let myself forget because you were always so adamant about it. Maybe I wanted it to be different with us, at least that one time.”

  She touched his face. “Maybe that’s why I forgot, too.”

  “Still—it was careless of us.”

  “I know. But I’m on the pill, so we don’t have to worry about that. And we’re both healthy.”

  His arm tightened around her reassuringly. “Perfectly healthy. Do you want kids, Katie?”

  She was a little startled by the abrupt question, but answered seriously. “I don’t know. It’s … it’s a little late for me anyway. I’m forty, Ben.”

  “Idiot,” he said, as he’d said before. “Women have babies in their fifties these days. What does it matter as long as you’re ready to be a parent?”

  “I don’t know if I am.”

  He smiled and pulled her head down so that he could kiss her briefly. “I don’t know if I am either. But it’s something to think about.”

  Cautiously, she said, “Are we … going in that direction?”

  “it’s something to think about,” he repeated. She was silent for a moment, just looking at him, then said uncertainly, “This is going to take some getting used to.”

  Ben was amused. “Having a serious lover?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t worry—I’ll give you time to get used to it. I won’t insist we sleep in your bed tonight, or that you invite me to supper tomorrow night.” He brushed a strand of glossy black hair away from her face and turned very serious. “it’s your call, just like coming to me had to be your call. This is your home, Katie, your family. If you want to start slow, fine. We’ll ride back together. We’ll groom the horses together and talk, and not pretend we’re virtual strangers if anyone is watching. And tomorrow, if you feel like it, We’ll ride out together. Maybe We’ll take a picnic lunch. Maybe, by the weekend, We’ll even go out to a movie.”

  “Are you really going to be that patient?” she asked.

  “Well, for a while.” Ben smiled at her. “As long as we know—you and I—that we’re together, I can wait for everyone else to realize it.”

  Kate leaned down to kiss him lingeringly. She was smiling a little, more content than she could remember ever being and yet still uneasy. He was so close, leaving her no defenses at all, and that was a frightening thing.

  He’d said he loved her. “Ben—”

  “Don’t panic on me, now.”

  “No. No, I won’t. But I have to say—I don’t know how I feel, not really. About you.”

  “That’s all right. I know.”

  “You do? You know how I feel about you?”

  “Yes.”

  Kate eyed him, suddenly wary. “Well?”

  “You love me.”

  She began to feel annoyed. “Is that so?”

  “Of course.” Ben’s smile widened. “I’ve been calling you Katie and you haven’t objected once. If that isn’t love, it’s something damned close.”

  After a moment, Kate felt herself smiling.

  Casually, Ben said, “And now I think We’d better get dressed. Because from the faint vibrations I can feel in the ground, I’d say we’re about to have company.”

  “Oh, lovely …”

  They were—almost—dressed by the time four riders trotted their horses briskly past the waterfall. The riders didn’t pause, merely holding up hands in quick greeting as they passed, and if they saw Ben putting on his boot, it seemed plain from their detached expressions that they thought he’d merely removed it to shake out a pebble or some such thing. And if any of them noticed a sprig or two of grass in Kate’s tumbled hair, that was apparently not worth commenting on either.

  “Tactful souls,” Ben noted, wrestling with his boot. “God, I think I’m blushing,” Kate said in wonder. He grinned at her.

  A few minutes later, Ben and Kate were riding back down the trail toward the stables. The trail was just wide enough for them to ride abreast, and they talked companionably about nothing in particular—also a new thing for them. It wasn’t until they had nearly reached the valley that Ben asked a sober question.

  “How’re things between you and Amanda?”

  “Neutral. I think.” She sighed. “You know about what happened at the party?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Ben looked at her thoughtfully. “Are the two things connected?”

  “In a way. She was so sick. She could have died. All those hours when we weren’t sure she was going to make it, all I could think was how unfair I’d been to her. I mean … it isn’t her fault that Jesse … well, that he treats me the way he does. He did that before she got here, after all. Her being here didn’t change that. And I couldn’t keep blaming her for it.”
/>   “So you made peace?”

  “I tried. We’ll see.”

  “She was amenable?”

  Kate nodded. “I think so. Wary—but that’s hardly surprising.”

  After a moment of silence Ben said slowly, “Katie, do you believe she’s the real Amanda Daulton?”

  Kate didn’t answer immediately, but when she did, her voice was certain. “Yes. I do.”

  “Why so sure?” he asked curiously.

  Why, indeed. Kate hesitated, unaccustomed to even considering revealing things about herself and her family to outsiders. But then she realized that Ben was no outsider. Not now. Not anymore. She looked at him, met the warmth and shrewd understanding in his eyes, and felt as if a weight she had carried for a long, long time slipped easily from her shoulders.

  While their horses walked slowly, following the fence line across the valley floor toward the stables, she told Ben why she was so sure Amanda had come home.

  During the days after the party, Amanda could hardly help but feel uneasy. Despite her confident words to Helen, she knew it was possible that someone at Glory had tried to get rid of her, and even though Jesse’s announced change of mind about the will might have put that person’s plans on hold, it did not necessarily guarantee Amanda’s safety.

  As Helen had so shrewdly pointed out, as long as Jesse was alive, it was at least possible that he would change his mind yet again and designate Amanda as his principal heir. And it was also possible that someone in the house might not want to take the chance of waiting around and letting that happen.

  For the first week after the party, Amanda felt almost paralyzed by the possibility. In her more panicky moments, she was tempted to leave, but each time she reminded herself of what was at stake. Once Jesse was gone, she was convinced that everything at Glory would change and that her chances of finding out what had happened twenty years ago would drop off sharply.

  No, she had to stay. And that meant she had no choice except to be extremely cautious. Judging by the possibly poisoned pie, it seemed clear that an accident rather than wanton murder had been planned—if anything had been planned, of course—and that argued the unlikelihood of an open attack against her. She couldn’t believe that anyone was desperate enough to risk that, not yet anyway.

  So all she had to be wary of, she convinced herself, was some sort of accident.

  But as the days passed even Amanda’s uneasiness, with her for so long, began to fade. Life at Glory went on normally, and as far as she could tell, nobody betrayed the slightest desire to do away with her. Maggie was pleasant and seemed once more neutral about Amanda; Kate, thawed, was actually friendly; Reece was so obviously relieved about Jesse’s change of mind about the will that he beamed at everyone; and even Sully seemed in a better mood.

  Walker had resumed his habit of dining at Glory virtually every evening. He said nothing except the most casual and meaningless things to Amanda, but he watched her. He watched her a great deal.

  He made no reference to the night of the party; he might never have held her while she was violently sick or touched her face with gentleness, and he certainly seemed far removed from the man who had carried her in his arms. The closest he came to mentioning the party was when he said, with no particular expression in his voice, that he had asked Helen about an injury to the arm changing handedness.

  “And what did she say?” Amanda asked. They had paused in the doorway of the dining room, the last to enter on this particular evening, and both kept their voices low.

  “She said it was possible.”

  “Disappointed, Walker?” Amanda drawled.

  His jaw tensed, and something hot stirred in his green eyes. “One of these times,” he said, “I’ll ask a question you won’t have a ready answer for.”

  Amanda had felt Jesse’s gaze on them, but she paused a moment longer there in the doorway to smile easily up at Walker. “I wouldn’t bet on it,” she advised him sweetly, and went to her place at the table.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Not a thing, Jesse. Not a thing.”

  After that, Walker had kept his comments fairly neutral. But he watched her. He did watch her.

  Jesse, of course, was very much himself. Once he’d recovered from the fright of nearly losing her, he had tried at least twice to persuade her to change her mind about inheriting Glory.

  “it’s your birthright, Amanda!”

  “My only birthright is my name; everything else I have to earn. And I haven’t done a single, solitary thing to earn any part of Glory.”

  “But—”

  “Checkmate.”

  Jesse stared down at the board on which they were playing his favorite game, and scowled. “I didn’t teach you that move.”

  “Yes, you did,” she murmured, and smiled at him.

  He had given in then, with a short laugh, but he hadn’t abandoned his intention of persuading her. The only good thing about it, Amanda thought, was that Jesse never brought up the subject except when they were alone together. It was entirely in character for him that he disliked an audience when he was uncertain of winning an argument.

  So the others were, she hoped, unaware that Jesse was still bent on leaving most of his estate to her. Although, if they knew the old man at all, nobody in the house could possibly believe the fight was over.

  But things were peaceful in the meantime, and Amanda gradually began to wonder if she had frightened herself for no good reason. Deliberately poisoned? Probably not. Probably, she had just experienced an unusually severe reaction to baneberries accidentally baked into a blueberry pie.

  Probably.

  June, which had come in with a lamb’s softness, toughened considerably by midmonth. It got hot. It got very hot. Thunder rumbled almost every afternoon and evening, and though the mostly dry storms muttered angrily in the mountains and laced the night sky with iridescent patterns of vivid lightning, none of the violence touched Glory.

  Only the heat.

  Amanda had been here for slightly more than three weeks when the serious heat came, and it quickly reminded her that though Glory sprawled in the mountains and foothills, this was still very much the South. A South in which the long days were very hot and very intense, and peculiarly still. A South in which nighttime temperatures hovered around eighty and there was hardly a hint of a breeze.

  The house, though comparatively cool in the mornings, warmed rapidly throughout the day, and by nightfall the upstairs particularly was uncomfortably stuffy.

  Amanda adapted fairly well to the heat and lack of air conditioning at Glory, but she found it difficult to sleep and woke often through the muggy nights. She sometimes left the French doors of her private balcony standing open, preferring the occasional mosquito (they weren’t numerous, due to the hard work of gardeners and maintenance people) to the stuffiness of a closed room.

  She didn’t sleep, of course, with those doors left open—aside from her uncertainty whether enemies might be about, years of city living had left her too wary for such open trust—but at least the miserable wakefulness was a bit more bearable. And there were a few nights when she pulled on shorts and a tee shirt and slipped outside, walking on the lawn or in the garden until she felt able to sleep.

  The dogs were never happy with her leaving the house, she quickly discovered. They had been exiled outside her bedroom door once again in order to do their guarding jobs, and tended to begin whining immediately if they heard (and they always did) Amanda venturing toward her balcony—so she got in the habit of frequently letting them in and taking them outside with her rather than risk their disturbing anyone else. She felt better having them with her, anyway, and knew the brief strolls outside wouldn’t interfere with the dogs’ guarding.

  The strolls didn’t do much to curb her growing restlessness, however.

  It was a sweltering Thursday night—Friday morning, actually, since it was after midnight—when Amanda finally gave in to the urge she’d been conscious of and fighting against
for days.

  In the darkness of her bedroom, she peeled her nightgown off and quickly dressed in a thin blouse and shorts, and slid her feet into canvas shoes.

  “Quiet,” she told the dogs, who had begun whimpering outside her door. “Tonight, you stay. Hear me? Stay.”

  The whimpering became silence.

  Reasonably sure they had adjusted to her occasional solitary strolls, Amanda went out onto her balcony, leaving the doors open behind her, and then down to the lawn.

  Without hesitation, she started toward the path that led to King High.

  I’LL PROBABLY STEP ON A SNAKE.

  The thought, though slightly unnerving, wasn’t enough to stop Amanda. She went on, following the path that led through the woods toward the west.

  It was a narrow path, an obvious footpath rather than a trail horses used. It meandered, going left around one tree and right around another, past azalea bushes no longer in bloom and honeysuckle thickets that smelled sweet. One bend in the path nearly wrapped itself around a huge granite boulder before straightening out to climb a rocky slope.

  Just a restful evening stroll to cool off.

  It was certainly cooler in the woods, but … Amanda paused at the top of the slope to catch her breath, resentfully considering country-bred people who apparently thought any walk of less than ten miles should be effortless. No wonder Walker was in such good shape; this little stroll could condition a marathon runner.

  She reached up to lift her hair off her neck and sighed.

  Why am I doing this? it’s ridiculous.

  It was ridiculous, she told herself as she went on. If she wanted to see King High, why didn’t she walk over when there was daylight by which to see? And if she wanted to see … anything else, well, same point.

  “Amanda, you’re an idiot,” she remarked to a wild rosebush climbing a maple tree.

  Yes, she was.

  A bend in the path brought her suddenly to a languid stream, over which had been built a narrow bridge. She walked to the middle and stood for a moment looking down at the water. Here in the woods, little moonlight could penetrate, and so the water was a dark mass moving sluggishly.