Amelia (17 page)

Now here was Sam. She’d met him, taken him to bed, and now he said he loved her. There seemed to be a pattern even if the personality types were different.

The waiter brought the check and Sam quickly gathered it up, placed his credit card in the holder, and handed it back to him.

“Ready to go home?” he asked.

It was simple enough. It didn’t mean anything, but it sent her entire body into a panic.

She’d had sex with the man—many times. She could kill him with her thumb pressed in just the right spot. Yet he had told her he loved her and that had her entire body shaking nearly uncontrollably now.

“Are you feeling okay? You’re as white as a sheet,” he said, his eyes wide as he looked at her.

“I am? Oh. You know, maybe I’d better go back to the hotel.”

“Are you kidding me?” His voice rose. “What’s going on?”

Amelia tried to catch her breath, but it wouldn’t fill her lungs. “I just…”

The waiter returned with Sam’s credit card. “C’mon. Let’s get you some fresh air.”

He pulled out her chair and took her hand. “Your hands are clammy.”

There wasn’t much to say. They walked outside and the air was thick and hot. It was nine-thirty at night and she broke out in a sweat.

Sam looked at her. “I’m taking you home and getting you…”

“Take me to Vivian’s.”

His mouth opened and then he snapped his teeth together. “What’s going on?” He moved in closer to her. “You’re not pregnant too are you?”

“No!” She wanted to smack him for saying that. “I just…it’s just…let’s go.”

Sam opened the door for her and then climbed in the other side. The air whirred into the cab after he started the engine. Amelia was glad that it got cold fast. For a moment she was sure she would pass out.

Sam drove away from the restaurant. At the stoplight he looked at her. “You really want to go to Vivian’s?”

She swallowed hard. “Yes. For tonight. I just…I just need to.”

His fingers gripped the wheel and he turned in the opposite direction of his house and headed to Vivian’s.

Chapter Nineteen

Penelope opened the door the moment they pulled into the drive. She stood there as Sam turned off the truck.

“Amelia, what’s going on?” he asked as he turned toward her.

“I need a night. I just need some time.”

Sam ran his hand down her hair. “Does this have anything to do with what I said to you tonight?”

“No. Yes. I mean…” She dropped her shoulders and let out a breath. “I’ve never been flustered over a man before.”

“Flustered?”

“Yes. It’s always been cut and dry. I either like him or I don’t trust him. I train them or I hurt them. I can go to bed with them and wake up and go on with my life. Adam said he loved me. He didn’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“Look at my situation. I don’t think he was capable of love. Not like you are.”

Sam’s hand ran over her shoulder and down her arm. “I don’t understand.”

“Then don’t. I don’t understand either. I just can’t go home with you right now. I’m going to go in there and stay.” She looked at the door where both Penelope and Vivian now stood. “I’m not mad. I’m actually not upset. I’m confused.”

Sam let out a breath. “Okay. Can I see you tomorrow? Lunch? You can come by or I can drop by the house.”

“I promise. We’ll figure it out later.” She moved across the console and kissed him softly. She needed to relay in that one kiss that she cared deeply for him.

When she pulled back and looked at him she felt she’d made her point.

She opened her door, stepped out, and then reached for her bag.

“I’ll walk you to the…”

“No. I’m okay, Sam. Go home.”

She shut the door and walked to the house. It wasn’t until she was inside that she heard his tires on the gravel out front and knew he had driven away.

Penelope stood with her hand still on the door knob. “You’re freaking us out. Why did you come here?”

Amelia set her bag down. “I’m sorry. I know it’s late and the kids…”

“Have been in bed for nearly two hours,” Vivian said. “You look like you could use a glass of wine.”

Amelia nodded. “I’d like that.”

She followed Vivian into the kitchen and watched as she pulled out three glasses, just as she had the first time Amelia had been there. She filled two with wine and the other with ice water.

Amelia took the glass when it was offered to her and sipped. Both Penelope and Vivian watched her from over the rims of their glasses.

When Amelia set her glass on the counter the other two lowered theirs.

“Something spooked you. What is it?” Vivian asked. “Did Sam do something? Say something?”

“Yes.” She ran her hands over the legs of her pants. “He said he loved me.”

Vivian shook her head and set her glass down. “You told us he was going to. What’s your problem?”

“I’m scared. Adam told me he loved me too. I took that for face value and ran off and married him.”

“You don’t think Adam loved you?” Penelope said in a small voice.

“How can I?” Amelia asked. “I don’t think he could love. Look what he did to us.”

Penelope nodded and licked her lips. “Yes, but you feel love. I mean I had boys tell me they loved me all the time. But you knew they were using you. Trying to just have sex with you. But Adam, he was different.”

“How so?”

Penelope shrugged. “When he said it to me we were walking, holding hands. We’d only been seeing each other a week or so, but he hadn’t even tried anything with me. He stopped, gazed into my eyes, and said he loved me. It did wild things to my insides. Much like having sex with him later did. But I believe in that moment he did love me. Even if he lied to me.”

Vivian and Amelia exchanged glances.

On a sigh, Vivian lifted her glass and took another sip of her wine. “I was seventeen. I met him at a party. He’d just turned eighteen. He asked me out and I thought nothing more of it than it would piss my parents off.” She laughed. “We drove into Oklahoma City and went bowling with some friends. He kissed me goodnight that night and I thought I was Cinderella.”

Vivian took a long drink and sat her glass down. “We went out a few more times, with friends, and then one night we separated from everyone and parked out by the lake. It was the first time anyone had ever touched me. It was amazing. We made love in the back of his pickup truck, under the stars on blankets he’d brought with him.

“I was very aware that he could get in a lot of trouble for what we’d done. I never even told my friends because I knew I loved him. I didn’t want anything to happen to him. One night he reached up and cupped my cheeks in his hands and looked at me in a way he’d never looked at me before. He said he loved me and I knew—I just knew—he’d be the one. I mean, I’d already given him my virginity and taken his in return. There was nothing else to lose. I believed it.”

Her lips twitched. “I believed it until after I moved back here. We’d been stationed in Germany for a year. I got homesick, came back to Parson’s Gulch, he was deployed after that. When he came back it was different. I love you didn’t sound the same or feel the same.” She cleared her throat. “I guess I know why now.”

Vivian drank down her wine until it was gone. She poured another glass. “Let’s go sit in the living room. I think it’ll be more comfortable.”

They moved to the other room. Vivian and Penelope each tucked themselves into separate ends of the couch and Amelia sat in the oversized chair adjacent.

“What about you,” Penelope said. “When did he tell you he loved you?”

Amelia couldn’t believe the three of them were having this conversation and it was very civil.

“I met him at a training. It was a Wednesday. I remember that. We slept together by Thursday. He came back the following week and we eloped two weeks after that.”

Vivian closed her eyes and shook her head. “It makes me ill.”

“I had no idea there was anything going on that I didn’t know about. I just thought it was an adventure,” Amelia said softly.

“When did he say he loved you?” Penelope asked.

“The night we got married.”

The air in the room had grown thick. It was as if they all realized love was an afterthought for Adam where Amelia was concerned.

“And yet yours was the legal marriage and you are his beneficiary,” Vivian said behind her wine glass through gritted teeth.

“I should have punched him harder,” Amelia said and Penelope snorted out a laugh then quickly drank from her glass. But it had started. Vivian laughed. Then Amelia laughed. Soon the tears rolled and the laugher grew louder until Ava walked out of her bedroom, eyes sleepy.

She walked over to Vivian and rested her head on her lap.

“I’m sorry honey. We were loud.”

“It’s okay. I like when you laugh.”

Amelia felt the tightening in her chest. It was no surprise that Vivian didn’t laugh often. Why would she? She’d been married to a man she’d known she loved since she was seventeen, but the years had eaten away at that. Now she had two little girls, a house that needed major upkeep, and no husband. Weave with that a lot of lies over the years and Amelia was surprised the woman could even function.

She thought about what she’d told Sam in the hotel room. She could make the girls strong. She could make Penelope and Vivian strong. What she didn’t know is she could do that by experiencing everything with them. They were all hurting. They were all in the same boat, but they’d gotten there in different ways.

Just because Adam hadn’t loved her like he’d loved the others didn’t mean that Sam didn’t.

There was a lightness in her belly now. A warmth. When Sam said he loved her she did believe it.

Vivian walked Ava back to bed and rejoined them a few minutes later. She sat back down and looked at Amelia. “You look deep in thought there,” she said.

“I love Sam.” The words had come softly, but quickly. There had been no thought about them. But it was there—love. The truth was on her tongue and in her heart.

Vivian laughed again, picked up her glass, and raised it in toast. “Good.”

Amelia looked at both of them smiling at her. But she was, herself, too stunned to smile. “I do. I just realized
that’s
what I’ve been feeling.”

“Why are you here then?”

“Because I didn’t know what to do with that.” She placed her hand on her chest because her heart was racing so fast. “I love him.”

“Do you need a ride over to his place?” Vivian asked.

“No. I think I’ll wait,” Amelia said sipping from her glass.

She’d wait until the moment was exactly right to tell him how she felt. Spontaneity hadn’t worked for her in the past. Overthinking never did her much good either. There had to be some middle ground and when she found it she’d tell Sam what she’d learned about herself. But for tonight she’d sip wine with her new friends and sleep on Vivian’s couch.

Chapter Twenty

The sun was bright as it flooded through the windows in Vivian’s living room. Amelia covered her eyes with her arm and then heard the small giggles.

She turned to see Ava and Emma sitting in the chair across from her, both bundled in the same blanket, watching her.

“What are you girls doing?” she asked. Her voice full of sleep and gruff.

“You snore.” Ava said innocently, which warranted a jab from her sister. “She does. And she talks.”

Even Amelia had to laugh at that. She sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

“I snore and talk, huh? Did I say something funny?”

The girls exchanged looks. Emma looked perplexed as she obviously thought about what Amelia had said.

The look had Amelia sitting up and looking at her. “Honey, what did I say?”

“You were mad. You were mad at someone about a baby.” She looked at her sister. “You kept saying Adam. Like our daddy’s name.”

Amelia felt the blood drain from her head and it was only made worse when she heard a gasp from behind her.

“Girls, you go get your breakfast. Go.” Vivian’s voice was loud and demanding.

The girls scrambled off the chair and ran to the kitchen.

Amelia rested her face in her hands. “Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“Yeah, oh, God.” Vivian plopped down next to her on the couch. “Crap.”

“I didn’t mean…I wouldn’t have…oh, God!”

They sat there for a moment in silence.

“I have to tell them,” Vivian finally said. “They deserve the truth.”

“Vivian, I’m so sorry. I didn’t…”

Vivian turned to her with her eyes fixed and hard. “You’re not the kind of woman who is sorry for anything, so shut up. Obviously it’s on your conscience.”

“Of course it is. Especially now that I know what you went through when Ava was born. I can’t help but feel responsible.”

“Unless you knew what I was going through while you were sleeping with my husband then you’re not at fault.” Her voice rose in tone and volume, but she tightened her eyes and rolled her shoulders as if to reel herself back in. “It’s not your fault.”

“What are you two doing?” Penelope stood in the doorway. “The girls are in here whispering. You’re out here yelling.”

Vivian shook her head and looked at Amelia. “You see what he did, don’t you? He married us another wife—a mother.”

Amelia laughed but Penelope stomped her foot on the ground. “What’s going on?” The tears were already there and Vivian only shook her head before she stood and went to her. She took her by the arms and led her to the couch.

“Sit.”

“I don’t want to sit. I want to know…”

“Sit.”

Penelope sat down where Vivian had sat and Vivian paced.

“They’re my girls. I’ll tell them.” She ran her hands through her dark hair. “I’ll tell them. You go get ready for work,” she said to Penelope. “And you, get up and get a shower,” she said to Amelia.

Amelia stood and took Penelope’s hand to help her to her feet. “C’mon. Mom is mad. We’d better go to our rooms.”

“What’s going on?”

Amelia let out a long breath as Vivian went back to the kitchen. “She’s going to tell them about their dad and us.” She went against all personal space protocols and laid her hand on Penelope’s stomach. “And about the baby.”