Golden Vows (15 page)

Clenching his hands in the pockets of his jacket, Dane faced the wind, feeling it toss his hair in the same way Amanda had tossed his emotions. He had come so close to reaching her—no, damn it! He
had
reached her. For a few minutes she had actually talked to him. She had wanted to tell him how she felt. And then he had said….

What had he said to send her retreating behind that mask of composure? He’d meant only to reassure her, to let her know that his concern for her well-being went deeper than his desire to have a child. She surely couldn’t believe he would want her to go through that nightmare
again. Hell, he didn’t know what she believed anymore. Maybe she still blamed him.

The thought brought a wave of guilt and he clamped onto his self-control. He would not let her do that to him again. It hadn’t been his fault. It hadn’t been anyone’s fault. Amanda hadn’t meant to say those things to him that night. She hadn’t even realized what she was saying.

Shifting his rigid stance, he stiffened his resistance to the increasingly chill wind and balanced himself against the movements of the boat. It hadn’t been words spoken that separated them—then or now. It was the unspoken feelings, the comfort of shared emotion that she had denied them both. How had he ever allowed her to drift so far from him?

If only....

The hollow wish resounded with emptiness and flooded his mind with memories. If only he’d been more understanding of Amanda’s longing to have a child. But he’d grown impatient with the endless frustration, the systematic lovemaking and her desperate yearning. When, at last, she became pregnant, he had breathed a sigh of relief that their life could get back to normal.

The relief had been short-lived though. Amanda had been uncomfortable and moody during the months of the pregnancy and he’d taken the easy way out. Work had proved a convenient ally, and he’d told himself that she was happier when he wasn’t underfoot.

If only the Reichmann account hadn’t come along then....

With a helpless frown, Dane let the memory and the accompanying guilt return. He shouldn’t have left Amanda, no matter how important the international hotel chain was to his career. She had said she’d be fine, the baby wasn’t due for several weeks. She had told him to go and he had gone.

The call had come only days after he’d
arrived in Europe and he knew he’d never forget the nauseating fear that had engulfed him. Amanda needed him and he had juggled airline schedules to reach her as quickly as possible.

But she hadn’t needed him at all. He’d expected tears, hysterics, the same desperate worry that consumed him, anything except the calm, composed woman he found. She had been a stranger, someone he knew and yet had never seen before. She made no response to his attempts at comfort; she didn’t seem to even realize he was there.

He had waited, knowing that time would help her cope with all that had happened. The days and nights became an endless wait, punctuated by fear. He hated the waiting and he hated the intricate wires and tubes that connected cold, impersonal machines to his infant son. He hated the look on Amanda’s face as she stared through the nursery window, and most of all, he hated his own helplessness.

Then it was over and he’d realized the pain of waiting had been only the beginning.

Lightning streaked through the overcast sky and Dane focused on the momentary escape from the past. But, relentlessly, his mind continued to replay scenes from that late October day and eventually he stopped resisting.

He’d insisted that she go home that day. Meg had offered her assistance and her own opinion that Amanda simply had to rest before she collapsed in exhaustion. If he’d known how quickly, how unexpectedly, a tiny life could end, he wouldn’t have forced her to leave. But he hadn’t known, and he hadn’t known how much he would need Amanda in those final moments.

He’d never realized how much he depended on her quiet strength until then, and he’d never had any idea that being
a man could be so inadequate. He had talked to the doctor, made arrangements, even thanked the nurses for their care and concern and he’d done it all as if he were quite sane. But his desperate thoughts had been of Amanda, of his need to hold her and to be held by her. As he’d left the hospital, a part of him stayed behind and a part of him raced ahead.

He had no memory of driving home. The only thing that bound him to reality were the tears that splattered down onto his jacket.

As he’d unlocked the door he remembered being grateful that at least Amanda had been able to rest for a while. She’d been awake, though, when he walked through the doorway—her midnight eyes had seemed enormously wide and her hair was tousled in long, dusky strands. Her slenderness and the ivory pallor of her skin gave an ethereal quality to her loveliness ... a loveliness that even in his distress had wrapped itself in tranquilizing threads around his heart.

He was home. At last there was only himself and Amanda. No prying eyes to see that he wasn’t the strong, capable man he pretended to be. Society’s rules didn’t apply here. He was home where he could close the door on the world and search for a grain of sense in the senseless reality of this nightmare, this heart-shattering loss. Amanda would hold him and cry with him. She would understand that just for a while he had to be a man who was weak with grief and devastated by his own helplessness.

Home. Amanda
.

Inseparably entwined, but as he’d faced her in those first moments of agonizingly silent questions and answers, he’d thought he didn’t have the strength to cross the room and find the warm comfort waiting for him in her arms.

In the next instant Dane had known how selfish his
thoughts were. Amanda needed his comfort more deeply than he needed hers. She had faced so much alone and somewhere, somehow, he would find the strength to help her as he’d been unable to help their son.

“Amanda.” Her name dropped from his troubled thoughts because there didn’t seem to be anything else to say. How should he tell her? What could he say? Was there any way to put the finality of death into words that consoled even as they stung?

“No.”

Her whisper of pain shot through him like a knife, swiftly and keenly slicing into its target. He had thought his heart was too full to feel anything more, until the anguish in her eyes flooded him with compassion.

He had watched her pale, noticed the limp sagging of her body, and realized she was about to faint. But before he could think clearly enough to move toward her, something changed in her expression and he halted the movement unborn. A veil of denial fell misty and gossamer over her face to shield her from the reality.

“You shouldn’t have left him,” she had said evenly. “He’ll be alone.”

Bewildered sympathy welled inside him and he groped for something to say. His hand rose in a gesture of understanding. “Don’t, Amanda. It’s over. He’s gone.”

“No. I shouldn’t have left him. You made me leave him, Dane. If you hadn’t—”

“Don’t!” The unfairness of her words and the confusing coolness of her voice jerked an angry response to the surface. He mastered it immediately, reminding himself that she was upset and her mind wasn’t clear. He pleaded with her to understand. “Oh, God, Amanda, please, don’t.”

She had stared at him with the vacant expression of a lost child and then she had turned her head from side to side, her gaze seeking something beyond his comprehension. “I can’t find them. Hospitals have rules and I have to have my shoes. Help me find them. I’ve got to hurry.”

Fear wedged against the knot of emotion in his throat. What was she thinking of? Shoes? Hospital rules? Was it possible she hadn’t understood? “You don’t need shoes,” he said as if he were soothing a child. He took a step toward her, but was stopped by a feeling of inadequacy. “You’re not going to the hospital.”

Her eyes had darkened in surprise. “But I have to, Dane. My baby. He needs me. He—”

“He died, Amanda.” The truth rasped from his throat in a nauseating wave. “Our baby died.” Dane wished he could pull the words back inside himself. He’d been too blunt. This wasn’t the way he’d wanted to tell her. He was supposed to be holding her; he was supposed to be close to her, absorbing her sorrow and assuaging his own. His body obeyed the internal longing and he moved to her side. He lifted a hand to touch her cheek, but she shrank from him, bringing a whole new aspect to his pain.

“I have to see him.” Amanda’s voice shook with determination as she lifted her chin in challenge. “Can’t you understand, Dane? I have to see him.”

Dane had felt suddenly as if he’d stumbled into the wrong house. This wasn’t Amanda, his wife, his lover, his friend. Amanda would never speak to him in such a coldly hostile tone. What did she want of him? He had done everything he knew to ease the situation, to make it possible for her to avoid the awful details of death. Again he
lifted a hand toward her, but when he saw the withdrawal in her eyes he dropped it back to his side.

“It’s too late,” he told her in a voice both tired and defeated. “I’ve made the arrangements, Amanda. You can’t go to the hospital. There’s no point.” He watched her assimilate the words and hoped for a sign that she understood, that she wanted the comfort he longed so to give.

“It’s your fault, Dane.”

He stiffened in horror at the thought, at the idea that she could ever think such a thing. It couldn’t be true, could it? Had he failed to do something that he should have done? Had he done something to bring this tragedy into their lives? No, of course, he knew it wasn’t true. Amanda was caught in the backlash of physical exhaustion and uncontrollable grief. Logically, he understood that, but still he felt the burden of guilt pressing into him.

Her voice went on, cataloging his sins, multiplying his own regrets. “You were supposed to be here when he was born, Dane, but you weren’t. And you were supposed to stay at the hospital with him; you promised me you wouldn’t leave him there alone. You never really wanted him in the first place, did you? I’ll bet you’re glad he….”

He could stand it no longer. He had grabbed her shoulders and shook her until the black sheen of her hair whirled before his eyes.

Abruptly, Dane snapped off the memory and began to pace the deck once again. Why did he remember each and every word she’d said? Why hadn’t time dimmed the scene in his mind? He rubbed the back of his neck and vowed that he wouldn’t think further. He wouldn’t remember her final words of betrayal. Everything else he could forgive. Everything except....

He could still see the cloud of raven hair as it had settled into disorder around her shoulders and face. And would he ever be able to forget the limp stillness of her body in his grasp or the remorse he’d felt at his own lack of control?

She had raised her head to look at him with nameless agony and he had wanted to soothe her, but he didn’t know how to begin. For a long time she’d just stared at him, and yet, he’d known she wasn’t really seeing him at all. She was focusing on some inner tragedy that shut him from her thoughts.

And then she had whispered the haunting betrayal of his love for her. “It should have been me. I should have died too.”

Nothing in life had prepared him for such a moment. He had just lost his son, a tiny, minute part of himself that had left a gaping hole in the pattern of all he believed in. And now Amanda wanted to leave him too. He needed her, loved her with such quiet intensity that the thought of a world without her was inconceivable. And she wanted to die too. It was a betrayal of his trust in her, in his belief that she loved him ... for better, for worse.

He’d let his hands slide uselessly from her shoulders, then he’d walked to the fireplace and braced himself against its solid strength. But it, too, felt cold and lifeless to his touch.

Dane couldn’t remember how long he’d stood there, but he knew he’d finally realized that Amanda had left the room. Like a sleepwalker he’d followed her path, going without conscious direction to the guest bedroom. As he pushed open the door and saw her curled on the mattress, asleep, he’d known only that he wanted to take her in his arms and to feel her arms around him, protecting him
from any further hurt. But he did no more than look at her before he closed the door and made his way to his own bedroom—the one Amanda had once shared. He’d sprawled across the bed and stared at the ceiling, aching with an uneasy knowledge that this was the beginning of long nights to be lived through—alone.

* * * *

The wind caught the waters of the bay and slapped them playfully against the side of the boat. Dam shifted his balance with the movement and speared unsteady fingers through his hair. Solitude murmured around him with the coming night and, in the hazy twilight of memory, he could almost believe he heard the old gods of mythology laughing at his attempt to defy fate.

His gaze swung to the boat’s cabin. There were no old gods, he thought bitterly, and there was no laughter in the wind. There was only Amanda. She was within the sound of his voice and still she couldn’t hear him. He had tried to win her trust, to show her that a divorce was a mistake and he’d begun to believe that he was succeeding—until today. But at the first hint of raw emotion, she’d neatly bundled her feelings away and left him on the outside, alone.

The sailboat again swayed with the rhythm of the water and he moved automatically to check the anchor lines. The boat was secure, ready to weather the storm if it should intrude on the inlet where they were anchored. Dane let his gaze stray back to the door that led below-decks. Frustrated desires burned and flared into anger. He’d been on the outside for too long, and today would be the end of it. One way or another, Amanda was going to face him.

His deck shoes thudded hollowly on the shallow steps
and, once inside the cabin, it took a moment before his eyes focused on the dim outline of Amanda curled on the berth, asleep.

It was too reminiscent of that other night, of the first time she’d shut him out so completely and his heart pounded erratically at the sight.
Damn her!
She wasn’t going to sleep as if nothing had happened between them. He wouldn’t allow her to escape so easily this time.