Amanda

by Kay Hooper

  “A lawyer’s literal mind—didn’t you accuse me of that at some point? What I meant was that, even though other people look rumpled and wilted by the heat, you always look as though you just stepped out of a cool shower and put on fresh clothes.”

  Accepting a glass of iced tea from him, Amanda said lightly, “For anyone contemplating a life in the South, a necessary trait, I’d say.”

  “Are you? Contemplating a life here, I mean? You told Jesse you didn’t want Glory.”

  “I don’t. Glory is magnificent, but …”

  “But?”

  She shook her head, then smiled. “It overwhelms. Especially me. I don’t think I was ever meant to end up there. The Daultons who live at Glory should always be big and tanned and bursting with life and temper. That isn’t me. It’s a beautiful place, but it’ll never be home. Not to me.”

  Walker looked at her for a moment, then continued removing covered dishes from the basket. “But you like the South?”

  “Very much—despite the heat of summer. But I haven’t really thought much about the future.” Unwilling to linger on that subject, she said, “What’s for supper? I’m starving.”

  “Good,” Walker said. “Because there’s enough here for an army. …”

  There was still plenty of daylight left when they finished eating and packed away the remains, though rain clouds had begun to hide the setting sun. It was very peaceful there in the little gazebo, and they leaned back on the pillows and talked casually, sipping iced tea and occasionally falling silent to listen to the birds and crickets.

  “Didn’t you say Reece almost married once?” she asked idly.

  “Yeah.”

  “But not Sully?”

  “I think somebody’s going to have to get him pregnant first.”

  Amanda smiled, but then said in a musing tone “I was engaged for a year during college.”

  On the point of asking her what had happened to end it, Walker was suddenly jolted by the realization that it was possible nothing had. She could, even now, be married. That hadn’t been one of the questions he’d asked during the formal interviews in his office, since it was hardly germane to the question of her identity, and it hadn’t occurred to him to ask since.

  Christ, what if she was married? What if a husband waited patiently up North somewhere for her to contact him and report she’d been accepted by the Daultons? Walker was surprised and unsettled when he felt a rush of primitive emotions coil inside him so tightly it was actually difficult to breathe.

  For the first time since this afternoon, something other than the lies he was sure she had told twisted his emotions into knots.

  There can’t be another man. Not husband, not lover—no other man. He couldn’t believe she could have given herself to him so freely if there had been another man in her life. She couldn’t have. Not even she could have.

  “What happened?” He heard his voice, and knew it was too rough, too intense, even before she glanced at him in surprise.

  “Nothing dramatic.” She gave a little laugh. “Not even anything specific, really. It just … didn’t feel right to me. There was no big fight when I told him. In fact, I think he expected it.” She shrugged and smiled.

  Walker looked at her for a moment, then took her glass away and set it aside. He caught her shoulders and eased her back down against the pillows, following until he was raised on an elbow beside her.

  “Was it something I said?” she murmured.

  You said you grew up as Amanda Grant, and I don’t think that’s true. Why did you lie about it, Amanda? For God’s sake, why?

  Her eyes were growing sleepy with a sensual look he found utterly absorbing and so wildly arousing it made everything else, even lies, seem unimportant. What did it matter? What did anything matter except that he wanted her until he couldn’t think straight? He knew her innocent question was more teasing than serious. But he answered anyway.

  “If I remember correctly,” he said, unfastening the bottom button of her blouse, “you said my name, very polite and guarded. Mr. McLellan. With a little nod.”

  “You mean … the day I came to your office,” she remembered, watching him undo the next button.

  “Yes. It was the first time I saw you. It was also when I began wanting you.” He unfastened another button and slipped his fingers inside the white blouse to touch the warm, silky skin of her stomach. He felt her quiver, muscles and nerve endings reacting to his touch, and that instant response affected him with the suddenness and power of a punch to the gut. Heat rushed through him, and every muscle in his body seemed to contract in a spasm of raw need.

  Jesus, how could she affect him like this?

  Her eyes grew sleepier, the smoky gray darkening to slate as they met his, and her voice was throaty. “Way back then? You waited an awfully long time to do anything about it. Even for a careful man.”

  “Christ, tell me about it.” He heard the raspy sound of his own voice, and didn’t give a damn that he was letting her see how wildly she affected him. Letting her? As if he had a choice. He finished unbuttoning her blouse, and opened it. She was wearing a bra, a delicate wisp of flesh-colored silk and lace that lovingly cupped her full, firm breasts and just barely covered her nipples. Under his enthralled, unblinking gaze, her breasts rose and fell in a quickening cadence and her nipples began to tighten, the tips thrusting against the material hiding them from him.

  Breathless now, she said, “Walker, it’s still broad daylight. Anyone could stroll along the path—”

  “Nobody ever comes out here except me. Don’t stop me, Amanda. I have to see you.” He bent his head until his lips just grazed the upper curve of one breast. “The moon wasn’t bright enough last night to let me see you the way I need to.” His tongue probed the valley between her breasts, then glided along the bra’s lacy edge toward a straining peak.

  “You planned this,” she accused him unsteadily.

  “Guilty.” He raised his head suddenly and looked at her while his hand slid up her stomach until his fingers touched the front clasp of the bra. He toyed with the clasp, acutely aware of her heart racing underneath his knuckles. “Do you want me to stop?”

  Without so much as a glance toward the path, she shook her head mutely.

  It began to rain about the time they lay naked together, and the steady rhythm of water dropping on the roof of the gazebo shut them off from the rest of the world as if by a curtain of sound. Cooled by the rain, the breeze wafted over them gently.

  A part of Walker, the reserved man trained in logic and reason, wanted to demand that she tell him the truth about who she really was and why she had come to Glory, wanted to take advantage of the vulnerability of nakedness and blind passion to get his answers.

  But he was blind, too.

  The man of reason was overwhelmed by another man, a man of the senses and emotions, a man who desired with such primitive fury that all he cared about was the possession of his mate. And that man didn’t give a damn about the truth.

  He found the other marks of last night’s passion on her pale flesh, but to his rough apology she replied only that he hadn’t hurt her and then pulled his head down to end the discussion. And her response to his touch was so fervent, so immediate and guileless, that it was impossible for him to hold back in any way.

  She fit him so perfectly it was as if they had been designed for each other.

  He cupped her breasts, lifted them, closed his mouth over the hard tips. He could feel her heart beating, the rhythm of it as wild as his own, and her quick breathing matched his. He trailed his lips over her silky skin, pausing at the tiny birthmark shaped like an inverted heart that was placed high on her rib cage, and again just above her navel, where she was especially sensitive.

  The little sound she made touched him like a caress, and her mouth was achingly sweet beneath his, and when their bodies joined—just the simple act of joining—it was so deeply satisfying that Walker went utterly still, conscious of the most incredible
sense of rightness.

  Amanda seemed to feel it, too; her gaze locked with his, gray eyes as mysteriously compelling as a mountain fog, and she whispered his name as if in answer to some question asked of her.

  Then the power of sheer desire swept over him, over them both, demanding a more primitive satisfaction, and he was aware of nothing except the imperative necessity of finding a release of the spiraling, maddening tension inside him. He began moving, thrusting deeply, frantically, urged on by her throaty moans and the sensual undulations of her body.

  Until she cried out wildly in elation, and the inner spasms of her pleasure pushed him over the edge and into a shattering, unbelievably powerful culmination.

  “Stay with me tonight,” he said.

  “I can’t,” she answered after a moment.

  Twilight had come, and the rain was ending, taking its time about going. And they had been lying together, in silence, for a long time.

  Walker, a rational man, was conscious of the need to be careful, to not disturb the undefinable but undeniably powerful thing that had happened between them, and so he kept his voice low and matter-of-fact.

  “Why not?”

  She lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him gravely. “Unless You’ve told him, Jesse doesn’t know about us yet. I’d rather he didn’t find out by me not showing up for breakfast tomorrow morning.”

  “Somebody’s bound to tell him,” Walker said.

  “I know. But I’d rather it was me.”

  He nodded finally, accepting.

  “it’s getting late.” Amanda sat up with obvious reluctance, and reached for her clothing.

  Walker followed suit, but said seriously, “Tell Jesse soon, will you?”

  “I will.”

  After they were dressed, Walker said he intended to walk her back to Glory, and they set out together. The thirsty ground had soaked up the rain greedily, leaving only damp earth rather than mud, so they had no trouble on the path, and since the rain had dropped the temperature considerably, the stroll back was cool and pleasant.

  The path ended in front of and to one side of the house at the edge of the yard, and when they reached that point they had a clear view of the garage. Jesse’s Cadillac was home.

  “I’ll come in with you,” Walker said.

  She looked up at him, a little amused. “Why? To explain why my blouse is missing a button?”

  He was momentarily distracted. “Is it? Did I do that again?”

  “It is, and you did.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “And I can handle Jesse alone, thank you very much.”

  “Amanda—”

  “Good night, Walker.”

  He watched her crossing the damp grass of the yard toward the house, and it took a surprising effort of will to keep from either calling her back or else going after her. He didn’t know if it was because something remarkable had taken place between them in the gazebo or simply because odd things were happening at Glory and that made him apprehensive, but for whatever reason, he didn’t like the idea of her going into that house without him.

  Not a bit.

  “Amanda?”

  She went into his study to find Jesse working at his desk, despite the late hour and his extremely long and no doubt exhausting day. “Can’t this wait until tomorrow?” she asked, gesturing to the paperwork he was engaged in. “it’s after nine, Jesse.”

  “I know what time it is.” He was looking at her, unusually grim. “I got home over an hour ago. Where have you been?”

  “With Walker,” Amanda replied without hesitation, certain that someone had already told him—since outrage was written all over his face—about Walker’s very public display of passion this morning.

  For a moment, Jesse didn’t say anything at all. He just stared at Amanda, perhaps waiting for her to blink or stutter nervously or cower in guilty dismay. If so, he waited in vain. Amanda merely stood there, relaxed, meeting his gaze with a little smile.

  Finally, Jesse said, “Am I to understand that you and Walker are …”

  “The phrase,” Amanda supplied helpfully, “is ‘consenting adults.’ And we are.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “Not long.”

  “And I suppose you don’t give two hoots about my opinion?”

  Amanda shook her head. “I care very much about your opinion, Jesse. But I’m a grown woman, and when it comes to my sex life, I make my own decisions.”

  More irritable than outraged now, Jesse said, “you’ll only threaten to leave again if I protest, won’t you?”

  Her smile widened. “It is a handy bit of leverage, I admit. But I don’t know why you’d protest anyway. You trust Walker to handle all your legal affairs, and he’s as welcome in this house as one of the family—so why not trust him with your granddaughter?”

  “Are you going to marry him?”

  “Jesse, I have trouble making up my mind what to wear every morning; big decisions generally take me a long time. Getting involved with Walker just sort of happened, and I’m not really thinking very much about it.”

  After a long moment, Jesse almost visibly turned from an affronted grandfather to a pathetic one. “I’d like to see you settled before I go,” he said.

  Unimpressed by that piteous declaration, Amanda put her hands on the desk and leaned toward him. “If,” she said, “you say one word to Walker about him marrying me, or even hint at the subject, I will leave. So fast it’ll make your head spin. Stay out of it, Jesse.”

  Frustrated, the old man snapped, “Hussy!”

  She straightened again and smiled. “I’m a Daulton, remember? We manage our own affairs.”

  After scowling a moment longer, Jesse finally barked out a laugh. “All right, all right, I’ll keep my nose out of it. What’s this I hear about the dogs missing?”

  Amanda wasn’t surprised that he mentioned the dogs before Victor’s death. Jesse’s priorities, though peculiar, were at least consistent; his personal property was generally uppermost in his mind.

  “Haven’t seen a sign of them all day,” she replied, sitting down in one of the chairs in front of the desk. “Maggie, Kate, and I looked, but couldn’t find them. We tried the whistles, walked all over—nothing. Do you think someone could have stolen them?”

  “Not likely. And they wouldn’t have taken food from anyone, or eaten anything they found, so poison’s out.”

  Amanda hadn’t considered that lethal possibility, and it made her acutely unhappy to contemplate it now. “Then where could they be?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll organize a more thorough search in the morning. For tonight—and just in case it was some lowlife’s bright idea to get rid of the dogs to make the house vulnerable to a break-in—I’ve asked J.T. to send a couple of his boys over to keep an eye on the place.”

  Amanda nodded. She couldn’t help feeling that theft had not been the point if the dogs had indeed been deliberately removed, but the only other reason that came to her mind was so unnerving she hadn’t let herself think about it until now.

  After the seemingly accidental poisoning at the party, she had believed that anyone who might have tried to poison her must have been dissuaded after Jesse announced he wouldn’t, after all, change his will. But what if that someone had been unwilling to gamble on the chances of the old man again changing his mind? What if that someone had only waited a bit to avoid the suspicious circumstance of another misfortune striking Amanda so soon after the party?

  Most everyone had remarked on the fact that the dogs seldom left her side, and no one could doubt that they would have protected her from any threat. So— the first step in arranging another “accident” to befall Amanda would have been to get the dogs out of the way.

  “Amanda?”

  She blinked and looked across the desk at Jesse. “Oh—sorry. I must be more tired than I thought. What did you say?”

  “I asked if you got the chance to talk to Victor before he was killed.”

&nbs
p; Amanda blinked again. “Talk to him?”

  A bit impatient, Jesse said, “After he’d gone on the buying trip, Maggie mentioned that you’d wanted to talk to him about the way things had been twenty years ago, since he was here then. I just wondered if you got the chance.”

  “No. No, I never did.” She hesitated, but then asked as casually as possible, “Did Maggie tell anyone else I wanted to talk to Victor?”

  Jesse had returned his attention to one of the papers spread out on his blotter, and replied abstractedly. “What? Oh, we were all there, honey. It was in the front parlor one night, after you’d excused yourself early.”

  Staring at his intent face, Amanda wondered for the first time if it was possible that the threat she posed to someone who wanted Glory might not be nearly as dangerous as the threat she posed to someone who wanted whatever had happened twenty years ago to remain locked in the past.

  But what was it? What had happened?

  And who could be threatened, now, by exposure? Reece and Sully had been boys, so it seemed unlikely they had been involved. Not impossible, Amanda supposed, but surely unlikely. Kate had been barely twenty—and what could a young woman have been involved in that required deaths twenty years later to keep the secret hidden?

  Jesse? Maggie? Both were old enough; they’d been adults twenty years ago. But could Jesse possibly want to harm the granddaughter he so obviously—and genuinely, Amanda believed—adored? And could there possibly be such violence in Maggie’s brisk and practical nature?

  Or was it someone not a part of Glory at all, someone whose connection to the still-unknown events of that last night was so elusive Amanda had not yet discovered it? And might never now, since Victor had been killed.

  Dammit, what happened that night?

  “It was terrible about Victor,” she heard herself say.

  “He was careless, Amanda,” Jesse responded in a hard tone. “No excuse for that.”

  She looked into those dynamic tarnished-silver eyes and felt an uneasy little chill. On the other hand … maybe Jesse was ruthless enough to destroy what he loved in order to protect something he valued more. But what? To a dying man, what could be so important?