Golden Vows (8 page)

“Amanda, I....” The desire to understand glistened in her eyes as Martha searched for something to say. The shrill tone of the telephone jarred the silence once and then again before Martha rose to answer. With her hand on the receiver she turned to Amanda. “This will be Dane,” she said evenly. “He calls every night to check on me.”

The phone rang again and Martha lifted it to her ear. “Hello? ... Yes, Dane.... Yes, fine. We’re all fine. Have you eaten? ... Well, you should be glad you weren’t here to see what Mr. MacGregor tried to pass off as dinner. I could hardly swallow a bite….”

Amanda concealed her acute interest in eavesdropping by turning her head and pretending to study a speck of dust on the coffee table. She knew her every movement was watched and evaluated by Martha, but it didn’t really matter. The rapid flutter of her pulse and the stirring of excitement within her could be hidden from view, but Amanda knew and recognized their import.

Dane was near. She could feel his presence, knew the husky resonance of his voice was only an insignificant distance from her ear. In her imagination she crossed the room and took the phone from Martha’s hand.
Dane? This is Amanda,
she would say as if he wouldn’t know.
How are you? Are you at the office or at home?

No, she shouldn’t mention home. That was too intimate ... too much “theirs.”

I’ve redecorated the cottage. You should come to see it.

But he wouldn’t.

Do you go out much? Do you ever see any of our old friends?

She couldn’t just casually toss that into the conversation.

Have you been sailing, Dane? It’s beautiful weather for sailing, isn’t it?

No, too impersonal.

Dane? You’ve been in my thoughts all evening. I miss you.

No. No, she couldn’t say something so revealing ... so personal ... so inadequate.

Amanda licked dry lips at the realization that there was nothing to say after she said hello. More than anything, at the moment, she wanted to hear his voice. But then what? Awkward silence? Or, worse, a forced effort to keep the tone of the conversation friendly?

With grudging acceptance she picked up the threads of Martha’s chatter, knowing that eavesdropping was as close as Dane would be to her tonight.

“You know better than that, Dane Cameron Maxwell.” Martha punctuated the words with a scolding click of her tongue. “I do not exaggerate and I never lie. She’s too thin and I know she’s not sleeping well.”

Amanda froze to attention as she realized they were talking about her. Tilting her chin at an indignant angle, she turned to give Martha a warning glare which was, of course, totally ineffective.

“It doesn’t matter how I know,” Martha stated crossly to the telephone receiver. “If you saw her, you’d see for yourself—” The pause stretched unbearably and Amanda alternated between feeling irritated at being the object of discussion and feeling oddly pleased that Dane would even ask about her. “Why don’t you ask her?” Martha said. “She’s right here.”

Like the last leaf of autumn, Amanda hung suspended, waiting, hoping for the chance to hear his voice once more. She composed her eagerness into a questioning frown and looked helplessly at Martha.

Dane’s answer appeared first as disappointment in Martha’s green eyes and then as cool disapproval in her voice.

“You must do what you think best, I suppose. But you might at least listen to my advice once in a while. It couldn’t do any harm to talk to her. All right, all right, I’ll mind my own business, but you’re making a big mistake.”

Amanda’s eagerness vanished beneath a wave of distressingly unsatisfying rationale. Dane didn’t want to speak to her. He didn’t need to hear her voice. He probably didn’t miss her at all. And that was good, she told herself firmly. She didn’t want him to feel responsible for her or to cling to the past. It was better not to talk with him, of course. He’d realized that right away, even if she hadn’t. But she couldn’t remain in the room while he and Martha sparred over her well-being.

Amanda rose and walked sedately toward the door, although she wanted to run from the room. She even managed a half-smile when Martha motioned for her to stop.

With a shake of her head Amanda mouthed a “see you later” and lifted her hand in good-bye. She heard Martha’s gruff, “Now, see what you’ve done? She’s left.”

Amanda pulled the front door closed behind her and stepped into the twilight.

It was soothing, this indigo evening. Quiet and restful and nice. She could bathe in its stillness, absorb the night sounds, and cover the noisy clutter inside her. By the time she reached home she could be as calm and composed as she had tried to convince Martha she was. She could be ready for a deep, tranquil sleep.

Could.

An elusive word with an indefinite meaning. Of course, she could do all those things if only she hadn’t gone to Martha’s for dinner. She could if only she hadn’t let the memories take hold. She could if only she had never met Dane.

Her heart recoiled from the thought. How could she even think such a thing?

Not ever knowing Dane? Never experiencing the sweet ecstasy of seeing his smile and knowing it was only for her? Never knowing the challenge of his mind or the charm of his laughter or the magic of his lovemaking?

No, she didn’t,
couldn’t
wish they had never met. She couldn’t begrudge herself the experience of loving someone so completely. Their marriage had been good, once, and she knew she would live through it all again if given the opportunity.

Amanda slowed her steps. That wasn’t true either. She would gladly live through the good times, but under no circumstances would she repeat the last few months. She was never going to hurt like that again. Never.

With the force of a hundred regrets the memories returned. But this time Amanda found no comfort, no pleasure in remembering. Bit by bit the uprooting of her life with Dane came into focus. The first time he’d gone on a weekend business trip and had forgotten to call her. The first time he’d spoken affectionately of a friend whose name she didn’t recognize. The first time he’d locked himself in the study and then gone on to bed without even saying goodnight.

Courtesies thoughtlessly neglected, little hurts that went unspoken and unresolved. A gradual undermining of the love that bound them together in understanding. And she had ignored the signs of trouble, pretended that the only problem they faced was conceiving a child.

Amanda tried to stop the memory. She tried to concentrate on the rustling sounds of approaching night, on the full moon just coming into its own as the sunlight faded across the horizon. But she heard the plaintive song of the whippoorwill and she remembered....

She had always wanted children and hadn’t considered that wanting didn’t necessarily fulfill the desires of the heart. Dane had said he wanted children, too, but he thought they should wait. “We’ve been married only two years,” he had reasoned with her. “You’ve just begun your career. Let’s wait a little longer.”

But she had known he didn’t really mean it; he just didn’t understand how a baby would enrich their marriage. She had known, though, and she hadn’t hesitated to cajole him into agreement. It hadn’t taken long to convince him or to convince herself that he was as happy with the decision as she.

Amanda kicked blindly at a tuft of grass in her path. Oh, she had thought she knew all the answers then. Everything was just the way she wanted, all was right with her world. She and Dane shared something special, something out of the ordinary, and a baby would be a culmination of that, a fulfillment of their love for each other.

In her mind it had all been so simple, but it hadn’t been simple at all.

Like the changing seasons she had changed, and with each barren month came impatience and frustration and a deepening of the insatiable yearning within her. Dane had been understanding at first. He had comforted her, reassured her, sympathized with her during the endless medical tests. He had teased her out of melancholy and made her hope again. He had bribed her laughter with gifts and extra attention. But after a while she couldn’t be reassured or teased or bribed and he gradually stopped trying.

It had been fatally easy to misinterpret those early signs of resentment. She had told herself that because he was a man he couldn’t really identify with her desperate longing to bear his child. How could he truly understand that a baby, their baby, would be worth all the waiting and the frustrating disappointment they were facing? She had been foolishly, naively confident that everything would be all right again ... just as soon as she became pregnant.

The cottage came into view as a welcome interruption to the memories. Amanda opened the door but didn’t go inside. Instead, she lingered on the porch, consciously placing her fingers on the railing where she had last seen Dane rest his hand.

She had wished many times that she could go back and erase the mistakes she’d made. If she had only realized then that they needed to talk about their feelings openly and honestly. But the prospect of never being able to give him a child frightened her, made her feel less of a woman, and she couldn’t admit that ... not even to him. So she pretended there was nothing wrong, that the widening gap between them wasn’t really there.

A heavy sigh wafted from her throat into the night air as Amanda leaned against the railing. Now she realized how blind she had been. Too obsessed with her desire for motherhood to realize that she was losing Dane.

It was hard to admit that she had been wrong about his feelings from the beginning, but Amanda knew that must have been the case. Dane hadn’t really wanted the baby. Oh, she had no doubts that he would have been a loving, responsible father. But he hadn’t really wanted or needed the role of parent. And in the end he had gotten his wish.

Somehow that realization hurt more now than it had at the time, but in light of everything that had happened, she couldn’t put any other interpretation on it. Dane had resented her longing to become pregnant; he had resented the pregnancy and he had left her to face alone the miracle of birth and the devastation of....

Amanda straightened abruptly. Enough. Her dreams were too often full of that nightmarish pain. She would not consciously remember it now. She had made a promise to put the past into perspective and get on with living. And she would do it, one day, one moment at a time.

Today was the only reality. She could manage to enjoy today; she could even make plans for tomorrow, but she wouldn’t look too far ahead. Forever was an evanescent promise of starry-eyed lovers. It no longer held any meaning for her.

As a breeze drifted across the water to toss the midnight darkness of her hair, Amanda turned toward the door of the house.

Home, she reminded her heart.

This was the home she had redecorated as a new beginning. Dane was doing fine without her and the feeling of loss would leave her someday. It was only natural that she would experience some loneliness, that she would miss him.

A normal part of breaking away, she thought as she left the memories outside the door. Natural and normal and ... empty.

Chapter Five

Dane stepped from the sunlight into the shelter of the building’s overhang. He paused there, the indecision tightening across his chest.

Amanda was near. He knew it logically, rationally, of course, because he had come here to find her, but he also knew it in the tense awareness that seemed to bind his every nerve ending. In a few minutes he would see her, look into the blue morning of her eyes and say....

God in heaven, what would he say? I miss you? I love you? Come home to me? He could say those things with perfect honesty, but if he did, he would risk an outright rejection. Slow and casual, he had to remember that. He hadn’t spent the last hellish weeks of waiting only to blow his chances on an impulse.

It was going to take time to gain a foothold in Amanda’s life and even longer to reach past her cool facade to the woman he loved. And he had nothing but time to lose.

Dane pushed aside the edges of his suit jacket and thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. It had been a little over two months since he’d driven away from the cottage, feeling that he wanted to physically smash someone or something, but leaving Amanda to the solitude she wanted. He had meant to give her three full months to think, and he had meant to keep himself too occupied to miss her.

A scornful breath pulled at the tautness in his throat. He hadn’t been capable of doing either. Here he was, a good three weeks ahead of his self-imposed limitation, as eager and nervous as a boy in the throes of puppy love.

But this malady was far more serious. If he’d had any doubts about the intensity of his love for her, the days since Amanda left him had crushed them out of existence.

How could he have been married to her for so long and never really appreciated what an integral part she played in his every thought? He’d been self-sufficient before she came into his life; he hadn’t needed anyone else. Until Amanda.

Amanda.
Even her name was a part of him, a deeply intimate, unconscious part of him. She was constantly with him, in an elusive, intangible way. Ever on the fringes of his mind. Always that empty yearning in his arms.

Had she missed him at all? Martha said Amanda was pining away with missing him, but then you could never depend on what Martha said. She had a way of coloring the truth to suit herself and he had a sinking feeling that Amanda was doing quite well without him despite Martha’s assertions to the contrary.

Well, today he would know. He had stayed away as long as he could, longer than he had wanted, but today he was going to see her, hear her voice, and he would know. The prospect filled him with dread, but he had to follow through. He must see her now.

With a cognizant effort to relax, he moved beneath the shadow of the overhang toward the sounds of children playing. A smile tucked into the corners of his mouth as he rounded the building and saw the playground. Sturdy little bodies of all shapes and sizes scampered in every direction, too busy, too secure to pay much attention to him.