Amanda (27 page)

He sat up as well, catching her shoulders to hold her still. “All right, I’m sorry.”

Now
Amanda felt uncomfortable naked, and she didn’t like the feeling. Shifting her shoulders jerkily to escape his grip, she drew her knees up and hugged them to her breasts. “We both know you’re not, so skip it,” she said tensely. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

“It matters to me, even if it doesn’t to you,” he told her flatly. “I
am
sorry, Amanda. I don’t want my … suspicion to ruin what we have together.”

That didn’t really surprise her, and there was irony in her voice when she laughed. “What we have together? You mean the sex? God, you men will suppress every doubt and ignore every rational thought in your heads if it means getting laid.”

“Don’t lump me into a group.” He was smiling slightly, more amused than insulted. “I’m neither suppressing nor ignoring anything, and I certainly don’t expect you to sleep with me just to keep my mind off my questions; since Jesse’s already satisfied, my opinion hardly matters. Am I convinced you’re Amanda Daulton? No. But that, as you pointed out earlier, hardly matters either. I want
you
, whoever or whatever you are, and if you don’t believe that after the last hour or so, then there’s something wrong with one of us.”

Amanda didn’t say anything for a moment, wrestling
silently with the choice she knew she was making. She could gather up her clothing and leave with what dignity she could muster, refusing to have a sexual relationship with him in the face of his suspicion, or else she could accept his distrust as a thing apart from the explosive passion between them and not let it end what promised to be the affair of a lifetime.

“Amanda?”

She drew a breath. “I want your word on something.”

With a lawyer’s natural wariness, he said, “What?”

“I want you to promise me that when we’re together like this, whether or not I’m Amanda Daulton is a taboo subject. Off-limits. No sly little questions or subtle probes. No hints or digs designed to catch me off guard. No exceptions.”

He nodded promptly. “All right, you have my word—when we’re like this. But I can’t make the same promise for any other time.”

“I don’t expect you to.” She eyed him somewhat warily. “Well, this should be interesting.”

“On that, we definitely agree.” He leaned over and kissed her, his hands gently pushing her legs down so that he could begin fondling her breasts again.

Amanda didn’t know whether to be upset at herself or at him for being able to change the tension of anger into an entirely different tension so swiftly and completely. For the second time tonight, he had first enraged her and was now seducing her.

“you’re maddening,” she told him as he pushed her back to the ground.

“But you want me as much as I want you.” His lips trailed down her throat toward her breasts. “Don’t you?”

“Yes, damn you.” She gasped, her eyes closing because waves of pleasure were making her dizzy. The
feelings he evoked were so overwhelming and escalated so swiftly that they would have frightened her if he had given her a chance to think. But he didn’t. However satisfied their earlier joining had left him, it was clear his desire for her was every bit as potent as it had been the first time.

So was hers.

“I’m glad,” he muttered against her flesh. Then he made a little sound, and there was a thread of rueful humor in his hoarse voice when he added, “If this were one-sided, I think I’d kill myself.”

She slid her fingers into his thick hair, her eyes still closed as she absorbed the blissful sensations of his mouth at her breast. Huskily, she said, “Stop talking, Walker.”

He did.

The panties were hardly more than torn scraps of material. Amanda shook her head over them and then stuffed them into the pocket of her shorts. She pulled the shorts on, lifting her bottom off the ground without getting up. She shook out her blouse and shrugged into it, discovering two buttons gone.

“Are you going to be this rough on my clothes in the future?” she asked him.

Walker, who had climbed reluctantly to his feet and reclaimed his jeans, chuckled as he reached down for her hands and pulled her up. “Probably. Not intentionally, you understand, it’s just that they get in my way.”

“Mmm.” Amanda looked down at her blouse for a moment, then sighed and tied the tails in a loose knot beneath her breasts. She didn’t expect to meet anyone on the walk back to Glory, but if by chance someone else was wandering the night in search of coolness, at
least she’d be decently covered and the missing buttons wouldn’t be noticed.

“You could stay here,” Walker suggested.

She looked up at him, wondering if it would have been any easier to read his expression in the daylight. The fierce, intense lover of only minutes ago was back in his deceptive skin, calm and lazy once again.

“No,” she said, “I should get back. It’ll be dawn in a few hours.”

“And you have to be safely in your own bed when the sun comes up?”

Amanda hesitated only an instant before saying deliberately, “Of course. After all, it would certainly ruin my sweet-Amanda act to have it known I’d spent a night fornicating underneath an oak tree in your yard.”

“What makes you think I won’t spread the word?” he asked her with equal deliberation.

She wondered why she was so sure he wouldn’t. “Oh, I don’t know. Because you want more than one night?”

A reluctant laugh was forced out of him. “I suppose that’s as good an answer as any. You don’t have any illusions, do you, Amanda?”

“Not many.” She found and put on her shoes, then looked up at him again when he stepped closer. “In case you’re wondering, I hadn’t planned to be especially secretive about this. I just don’t think it would be a good idea to be blatant. I’m still a curiosity in these parts, definitely on probation while everyone makes up their mind about me, and I’d rather not give them even more to consider just now. Besides—as I remember, small towns tend to be unforgiving of certain … sins.”

“They are that,” he agreed after a slight hesitation. “So we let them wonder without providing proof?”

“I think so.”

“What about the family? Jesse?”

It was Amanda’s turn to hesitate. “Why don’t we play it by ear?”

He half nodded, then reached out and combed his fingers through her hair slowly several times. “You have grass in your hair.”

Amanda was reasonably sure she had grass in other places as well, and no one getting a good look at her would doubt she had spent the past couple of hours in sensual pursuits. Her lips felt hot and swollen, her clothing was decidedly wrinkled (not to mention the missing buttons), and she had the uneasy suspicion that his passion had left at least a couple of faint bruises on her neck. But she remained silent and still under what felt more like a caress than anything else.

“We were careless,” he murmured, his fingers moving slowly against her scalp.

Again, she would have chosen a stronger word.
Insane
sprang to mind. But she replied to him mildly and straightforwardly. “I’ve been on the pill the last few years for an irregular cycle. As for any other … dangers … you of all people should be sure I have a clean bill of health. As I remember, that first blood sample you demanded was weighed, measured, and analyzed about six ways from Sunday.”

Walker nodded slowly. The blood testing had been at his insistence, required as a first step in establishing proof of a claim to the Daulton estate, and it had swiftly discredited at least one woman more than a year before simply because she’d had the wrong blood type.

This woman, however, had the right one.

Walker said, “The sample was screened, just as a matter of course. Screened for known infectious diseases, none found. Screened for venereal diseases, none
found. Screened for HIV—results negative.” He paused, but when she said nothing, he added, “I had a routine physical a few months ago. You don’t have to worry.”

“I know.”

He looked at her curiously. “How can you?”

Amanda smiled. “If I know anything about you, Walker, it’s that you’re a careful man. A very careful man.”

He glanced aside at the flattened grass of their outdoor bed, tempted to disagree with her judgment. A careful man, he wanted to say, would hardly have mated lustfully under an oak tree with a woman for whom he felt uneasy suspicion at best and outright distrust at worst. And if he was unwise enough to do that, he wouldn’t make the situation worse by anticipating—with undiminished hunger—a repeat performance in the very near future.

Pushing that knowledge away, Walker bent his head and kissed her, making no effort to hide the hunger from her. It was useless anyway, because her response was instant and that was like throwing kerosene on a fire. He wanted to pull her down to the ground again and lose himself in her. His desire for her was so intense and compelling it was like something with a life all its own and only marginally under his control.

Her mouth was incredibly erotic, soft and warm and sweet. …

He couldn’t seem to let her go, to take his hands off her and watch her walk away from him.
Jesus, stop making a fool of yourself and let her go!
With an effort, he managed to raise his head and let go of her, but when he heard his voice, he wasn’t a bit surprised at the raspy sound of it.

“Have supper with me tomorrow. I mean today.”

Amanda hesitated, then nodded. “All right. Jesse’s going into Asheville before lunch, for a business meeting and then to get his treatment, and he won’t let me go with him.”

Walker heard something in her husky voice he couldn’t quite pin down, and it made him uneasy. “Then you’ll be at loose ends all day? Come into town and have lunch with me.”

“you’re going to work today?”

Understanding her surprise, he said, “I never get much sleep on summer nights, and it doesn’t seem to bother me much. I don’t have to be in court, but there’s paperwork to take care of. I’m free for lunch— how about it?”

Evasive, she murmured, “We’ll see. I have some shopping I need to do in town, but … Don’t worry; I’ll call before I show up at your office.”

He was positive she didn’t mean to show up for lunch, but he was wary of pressing her. “Good enough. As for supper, why don’t you meet me halfway down the path around seven?”

She was surprised. “The path? Have you got a burger joint stashed away in the woods?”

“No, but I have a wicker basket and my housekeeper and cook fixes a mean bowl of potato salad.”

A picnic. Amanda nodded her acceptance. “All right. Should I bring anything?”

“No, I’ll take care of it.”

“Okay.” She seemed a bit hesitant for an instant, then turned and started toward the path through the woods.

Walker knew he should say something else, though he wasn’t sure what. He was reasonably certain she’d throw something at him if he thanked her for the evening, and calling out a “good night” seemed oddly inappropriate.

Besides, he had a feeling that if he opened his mouth at all he’d end up babbling like an idiot, begging her not to leave him tonight. And that was a hell of a note.

That was really a hell of a note.

A
MANDA WAS UP UNUSUALLY EARLY
for breakfast on Friday morning. Truth to tell, she hadn’t slept much at all after returning to Glory; this new relationship with Walker struck her as being rather like walking a high wire without a net—in more ways than one. He was still suspicious and hardly trusted her, and yet the desire between them made clear thinking virtually impossible.

The combination of distrust and desire, she thought, was probably as explosive as any mixture could possibly be, virtually guaranteed to blow up in somebody’s face. And Amanda was very much afraid it would be in hers.

By the time the sun rose, she had been more than ready to leave her bed. She didn’t feel particularly tired, which surprised her a bit considering how active
her night had been, but chalked it up to having been rested from the peaceful days of the last week or so.

She discovered while dressing that her sensitive skin bore several faint marks of Walker’s ardor, which didn’t surprise her considering how easily she bruised. Luckily, the collar of her blouse hid two of the small, pale bruises and the blouse itself hid one more. But the one on her left wrist …

That had been before the lovemaking, she remembered. When he had caught up to her under the big oak tree, and she had wildly tried to scratch him.

Amanda shook her head a little as she looked at the faint violet marks of his fingers. Odd—she hadn’t been conscious of pain or even discomfort when he grabbed her wrist. But, then, she had been so mad she probably wouldn’t have felt the jab of a knife.

Her watch, which she normally wore on her left wrist anyway, hid most of the marks, and Amanda shrugged as she left her room. It would have to do. If anyone noticed, and drew their own conclusions about what they saw, well, so be it. The change in her relationship with Walker probably wouldn’t pass unnoticed for long anyway.

When it came to sex, there seemed to be precious few secrets at Glory.