Beyond Desire
Gwynne Forster
Amanda Ross is thrilled when she is appointed junior high school principal in Caution Point, N.C. But her promotion will only be a pipe dream if the board of education discovers that she's pregnant–and single.She never expected her baby's father to desert her, but explanations won't satisfy a small town's rumor mill. A husband is what she needs, and handsome music engineer Marcus Hickson looks like the answer to her problem.Embittered by his ex-wife's selfish and cruel behavior, Marcus told himself he'd never marry again. That is, until doctors inform him that his injured daughter needs immediate surgery, and Amanda–financially independent because of her inheritance–offers to pay the medical bills if he'll be her husband. Desperate, Marcus agrees, as long as their arrangement" is strictly business. But days and nights under the same roof soon ignite mutual desire. Now Marcus and Amanda's marriage of convenience has become an affair of the heart…and a deception that endangers everything they hold dear.
Beyond Desire
Beyond Desire
Gwynne Forster
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Acknowledgments
Sources of Quotations
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my stepson, Peter, who willingly uses his skills as an electronic engineer to keep me abreast of ever-changing computer lore; to my husband, who rescues me from day-to-day computer calamities, designs my promotional fliers, bookplates and bookmarks and whose love, encouragement and unfailing support sustain me; and in memory of my deceased friend, Phyllis M. Harewood, who knew the meaning of true friendship.
SOURCES OF QUOTATIONS
Most of the quotations that appear in this book were taken from the following sources: Evan Esar, ed., The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, Dorset Press, New York, 1989; R.T. Tripp, The International Thesaurus of Quotations, Harper & Row, New York, 1970; Beatrice Rosenthal, Webster’s Dictionary of Familiar Quotations, Galahad Books, New York, 1974; and Elza Dinwiddie-Boyd, In Our Own Words, Avon Books, New York, 1996.
Chapter 1
Jacob Graham patted her arm affectionately, his smile sympathetic. “I’m afraid so. There’s no chance of error. Have a seat in the waiting room while I write a couple of prescriptions for you.” She dressed, walked back to the gray carpeted little room and sat in one of the red leather chairs. Not a chance, he’d said. She’d gone to Elizabeth City—forty miles north of her Caution Point, North Carolina, hometown—for the examination, because the old doctor had been her family’s physician for more than forty years; she trusted Jacob Graham. Her gaze captured the man who sat across from her beneath a painting of the perfect family gamboling in pristine snow. She wanted to turn her back to it. Engrossed in the Carolina Times, the man seemed oblivious to her presence. Would he also get bad news?
Dr. Graham appeared, saw the man and greeted him with a smile. “I see you’ve finished it ahead of time. My grandson is going to be one happy boy.” He opened the violin case, examined the instrument and exclaimed, his weathered white face wreathed in smiles, “It’s beautiful, just like new.”
“It’s as good as new, too,” the stranger said. “Ought to last Jason until he’s ready for a Stradivarius.” She shrugged off the tremor of excitement that shot through her when she heard the husky, sonorous voice.
Dr. Graham rubbed the wood gently, as though respectful of its value. “Now, tell me how things are going with you these days. Any better?”
“Nothing new; not a thing.” She reflected on the weariness apparent in the man’s voice and vowed not to let her circumstances whip her. She hated gloom, and she wasn’t going to let it cloud her life. Anxious to leave, she cleared her throat, and the doctor turned toward her.
“Are these my prescriptions?” she asked him as she stood preparing to leave, and pointed to the two sheets of paper that he held.
“Yes, sure.” The doctor looked from her to the tall, dark man beside him, rubbed his chin as though in deep thought and glanced back at her. “Have you two met?” Before she could respond, the big man shook his head more vigorously than she thought necessary. “You two ought to talk,” Jacob Graham declared.
“Why is that?” the man inquired with an exaggerated note of skepticism and without so much as a glance her way. Not that she cared, she told herself.
Her doctor seemed to like his idea better the more he thought of it. “I’ve known both of you for years.” He looked at her. “And you I’ve known all your life. If the two of you were prepared to act sensibly, you could solve each other’s problems.” He shook his almost snow-white head. “But sensibleness seems to be too much to expect of you young people these days.” He handed her the prescriptions and patted her on the back. The other man nodded, but seemed preoccupied and hardly glanced in her direction as she left them.
“Just a second,” Jacob Graham called after her. She waited until he reached the door where she stood. “Lorrianne’s having one of her barbecue brunches Sunday, and I know she’d love to have you come.”
Amanda diverted her gaze from the piercing blue eyes. “I don’t want her to know about this yet. I have to get used to it myself. You understand, Dr. Graham?”
He removed the pencil from behind his ear and made a note on his writing pad. “How will she know if you don’t tell her? I don’t give my wife an account of everything that goes on in this office. You come on over. The garden’s at its peak this time of year, and you know how she loves to show it off. Noon, Sunday. Don’t forget, now.”
Though anxiety boiled inside of her, she raised her head and squared her shoulders with an air of calm and walked out into the April morning, chilled by the Atlantic Ocean’s still wintry breeze.
Amanda plaited her long, thick and wooly hair in a single braid, twisted it into a knot, surveyed the result and made a face at herself in the mirror. She couldn’t bring herself to cut her hair, though she spent a good fifteen minutes every morning braiding it and wrapping the single braid around her head or making two French twists at the back of her head. It would be easier to manage if she straightened it but, as a teenager, she had decided to leave it as nature had ordained. She finished dressing, got into her car and drove to Elizabeth City, giving herself plenty of time to arrive before other guests; joining a crowd of cocktail-sipping strangers was not anything she relished on that particular day. Her concerns were too serious for light chatter. But in spite of her efforts, she arrived to find at least a dozen people milling around, chatting and drinking coffee. No cocktails. She had forgotten Lorrianne’s rule about not serving alcohol before six o’clock. Lorrianne claimed that Americans spent too much money and wasted too much energy on alcohol. Not that any of it mattered to her; a glass of wine was as much as she ever drank.
Her hostess introduced her to the other guests, but she couldn’t muster any interest in the things that concerned them—mostly local gossip and politics—and after a few polite exchanges she focused her attention on the garden. Lorrianne Graham had created a magnificent retreat for a troubled spirit, Amanda decided, as she strolled among the profusion of red, white and pink peonies, pansies, hyacinths, and flowering dogwood and fruit trees. What a pity the tulips had no perfume, she thought, gazing at their array of colors and the many shapes of their petals. Flowers from several fruit trees floated to the ground, leaving behind their tiny green treasures.
She leaned against a wrought-iron bench and inhaled deeply, enjoying the fresh spring air and the fragrant hyacinths. But her weight toppled the three-legged bench and, to her amazement, she lay sprawled across a patch of purple and yellow pansies. Her cheeks burned in embarrassment as she looked around, hoping that she’d escaped notice.
“Here, let me give you a hand.” She had to quell the impulse to ask him to leave her to her own devices, summoned her dignity and smiled politely. Of all people: the man she’d seen that previous Thursday in the doctor’s office.
“Give me your hand,” he persisted. She raised her left hand, because her right one lay trapped beneath her side. “You’re lucky you missed that raspberry bush,” he said, friendlier than she thought necessary. She accepted his assistance with as much dignity as she could muster, thanked him and hoped he’d leave her and join the other guests. She couldn’t think of a way to dismiss him without appearing rude and ungrateful. So she strove to be her normally gentle, courteous self and to make conversation, but her personal problems bore so heavily on her that she couldn’t summon the will to friendliness. I’m in bad shape, she conceded, if I can’t focus well enough to carry on an impersonal conversation with such a man as this one.
“Your head is almost covered with pink and white petals,” he told her, evidently oblivious to her discomfort. That voice. Could he hear the melodies in his speech? Of course, she immediately concluded; enough women must have told him about it. She forced herself to turn slowly toward him, gaining time to restore her equilibrium.
“Oh? Flowers in my hair?” She hated that he disconcerted her to such an extent that she lost her poise.
“Yeah,” he answered, no doubt unperturbed by her aloofness. “Lots of them.” He picked off a few and showed them to her. She backed away, sensitive to the feel of his fingers on her scalp, and resisted the urge to remove her dark glasses. Remove them and get an unobstructed look at eyes she remembered as being the color of dark brown honey and at a flawless almond complexion. She breathed deeply in relief when a beautiful, sepia woman with a mannequin’s build and carriage claimed his attention and took him away. All I need right now is to lose my head over a guy like that one, she told herself, amused that the possibility existed.
She didn’t tolerate the medicine well and went back to her doctor two weeks later for a new prescription.
“Nothing has changed,” Jacob Graham told her when she asked again whether he was certain of the diagnosis. “Only time will change this; you know that, so you might as well start right now to adjust to it. It won’t be easy, but I’m confident you’ll manage.”
“Don’t worry; I’ll be fine. Give my love to Lorrianne.” She doubted that anything could have depressed her more than his declaration that he knew she’d manage. How was she supposed to do that?
An hour and a half later, she slid into a booth at Caution’s Coffee Bean. She had heard it said that, if you went to the popular eatery often enough, you would eventually see most of the town’s fourteen thousand inhabitants. She barely remembered driving from Elizabeth City to Caution Point, North Carolina, or even parking her car. The waiter brought her usual breakfast of coffee and a plain doughnut and would no doubt have paused for their morning chat, had she not been preoccupied.
She sipped the coffee slowly, without tasting it. In two weeks, just two short weeks, she had tumbled from a state of euphoria to one of despair. She almost wished she hadn’t gotten that promotion; a department head might get away with it, but never a school principal. It couldn’t be happening to her. But it was and, somehow, she had to find an acceptable solution.
“It’s ridiculous,” she heard a man in the adjoining booth say. “How can they charge like that? It must be illegal.”
“They can, and it’s legal,” his companion replied in a deep, resonant, almost soothing voice, a familiar voice. “One hundred thousand dollars for my child’s future. A hundred thousand and she’ll be able to walk like other children. She’s had fourteen months of operations, tubes and needles. Fourteen months in intensive care, and now this. Those doctors charge as much as ten times what the insurance pays. I’ve sold my car, mortgaged my home and my business and borrowed on every credit card I have. And now because the insurance company will pay only thirty thousand of it, I have a little more than a week to come up with seventy thousand dollars, or Amy will never walk again.” Amanda couldn’t help listening to the two men.
“And the bank turned you down flat yesterday afternoon?”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t you? I’m a poor risk right now. A year ago, I could call my shots, but now I can’t even take care of my child’s needs. I told the bank officers that I have a strong damage suit in this case, but all that got me was sympathy.”
“Have you tried Helena? Maybe she’d be willing to help. After all, that British polo player she married is rolling in money.”
“I wrote her about the accident the day after it happened, and I got a note about six weeks later saying that she hoped everything was all right. Not that I expected more; Helena doesn’t have the maternal instincts of a flea. She hasn’t written since and doesn’t know what her four-year-old daughter’s condition is.” Amanda empathized with the man; compared to his problem, hers seemed slight. If she could solve her problem with seventy thousand dollars, she would stop worrying. As heir to the wealth of her parents, grandparents and great-aunt—derived from their interests in one of the regions most prosperous fish and seafood canning businesses, money was the least of her problems. She wanted to peer around the coat tree to get a look at him, but she wouldn’t know which one was Amy’s father. Surely that voice couldn’t belong to the man she first saw in her doctor’s office and then at Lorrianne’s barbecue brunch. But how could two men have that same voice? She sipped some water. Great-Aunt Meredith had always said that sipping water slowly was very calming. The men continued to search for a way to pay for Amy’s surgery.
“Can’t you pay the doctors on installment?”
“They want it upfront,” she heard him say. “Every dime of it. But look, Jack, you’d better go. You’ll be late for work, and you’ve sacrificed enough for me.”
She looked up as “Jack” passed her on his way out, then focussed on the man who remained. Good Lord! He was the same one she’d seen in Dr. Graham’s office and at his home. She regarded Amy’s father, a handsome, clean-cut man whom she thought any woman should be proud to have for a husband. Dr. Graham had said that they could solve each other’s problem. Her gaze held him, seemingly deep in thought, as he stared into his coffee cup. Perhaps…No. She pushed back the absurd idea, paid for her breakfast and left.
Amanda drove home thinking that spring recess would soon be over and she hadn’t done any of the things she’d planned. Instead, she had been struggling with the most difficult problem she’d ever faced. She didn’t put her car in the garage as she usually did, but left it in front of the house. She had lived alone in the comfortable, two-story home with its spacious grounds since her aunt Meredith’s death and, though she loved the house with its memories, ghosts and treasures, there were times when she had to struggle with the loneliness. The telephone rang just as she closed the front door.
“Amanda, can you come to my office tomorrow morning?”
“Why, yes. Is there a problem, Dr. Graham?”
“Maybe a solution. I have an opening at eleven o’clock. Would that suit you?” She agreed and hung up. A solution. Solution to what? Well, she’d find out when she got there.
When she walked into Jacob Graham’s office, Amanda supposed that his cheerful greeting was meant to put her at ease but, instead, his smile alarmed her.
“What is it?” He wasn’t wearing his white coat, and he didn’t indicate that he wanted her to go to the examining room. “Is something wrong, Dr. Graham?”
“Amanda, I want to talk with you as an old family friend. Caution Point is a small place, and you’ve just been made principal of the junior high. Small-town people are conservative; you know that. I saw you talking with my friend, Marcus Hickson, in the garden the day Lorrianne had that brunch. Both of you have a difficult problem that you could easily solve together. Marcus is a fine man by any measure, or I wouldn’t say this.”
“Say what?”
“Well, he’s got a problem with his daughter’s health, and…”
“I know,” she said when he hesitated as though not wanting to betray a friend’s confidence. “I overheard him telling someone. What does that have to do with me?” The skin seemed to roll on her neck as she anticipated his next words, and her breath lodged in her throat when he leaned back in his old-fashioned swivel chair, made a pyramid of his hands and prepared to continue.
“Amanda, the answer to your problem and Marcus’, too, is for the two of you to get married. Don’t look so shocked. You pay his daughter’s medical bill, and he’ll be a buffer against what you’ll face otherwise.”
“You’re not serious!”
“Oh, yes, I am. He’s a good man.” Tremors spiraled down her back at the thought of being married to the man she remembered having passed a few minutes with in Lorrianne Graham’s garden.
“But marry a perfect stranger? I couldn’t.” Agitated, she stood abruptly and began to pace. “Do you realize what you’re suggesting?” His gentle smile failed to soothe her, and he must have realized it, for he added, “If the two of you found that after one year you couldn’t get along and didn’t want to stay married, you could separate. Of course, that means you couldn’t consummate the marriage during that year. In fact, I’d counsel abstinence unless and until the two of you learned to care for each other.” She felt the heat scorch her face; she hadn’t been thinking of a marriage of convenience. She sat down and gazed at her feet. Dr. Graham wanted what was best for her, and she couldn’t reject his proposal out of hand.
“What about him?” she asked. “Would he do it?” She was almost certain that he wouldn’t. Jacob Graham looked toward Heaven and slapped his hands on his thighs.
“Probably react same as you, but considering what he’s facing, he may have no choice. Do you want his phone number?” She shook her head.
“I’ll have to think about this.”
Amanda started down the walk toward her car and stopped short. A picture of Iris Elms, a female colleague at the junior high school, flashed before her mind’s eye. Iris, gloating triumphantly. Iris victorious at last. The woman had lost her bid for school principal, but there would be no end to her boasting and baiting if she got the job anyway because of Amanda’s mishap. Amanda was convinced that Iris’ antagonism toward her was more than envy and hatred because she’d lost her bid to become school principal. For months, the woman had derided her at every opportunity. She reached her car and leaned against it. Half of the joy of getting that promotion to principal had come from knowing that Iris would have to treat her with respect. Dr. Graham had said that Marcus Hickson had no options. Did she?
Fighting a feeling of gloom, Amanda got into her car and drove to General Hospital in Caution Point, where she volunteered several afternoons a week. She got in the short cafeteria line, bought a pint of milk and a peanut butter sandwich for her lunch and found a table. Soft music from overhead speakers proclaimed the soothing charm of a wide, sleepy river in the moonlight, and she felt it sweep away the darkness of her mood. Since childhood, she had loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and she rose to get back in line for grape jelly.
“Leaving? I was going to ask if I could join you; the place is practically deserted.” She looked up to see Marcus Hickson holding a tray of food.
“Oh, no. I don’t mind.” Flustered, she pointed to the chair. “Please sit. I’m just going for jelly.” She couldn’t imagine his thoughts as he glanced toward the chair, shrugged one shoulder, hesitated and sat down. She took her time getting back to the table, because she wasn’t in a hurry to talk with him and wondered why he had decided to sit with her when there were at least twenty vacant tables.
“If you’d rather not have company…” he began and let it drift off with a seeming diffidence that she thought didn’t ring true. She remembered that he had a sick daughter and assumed that he had come to the hospital to visit her.
“Please stay,” she said, compassion winning over wariness. “I’m glad for the company.” When she asked if he was visiting a patient, she couldn’t understand his reluctance to admit it. And the dark cloud that seemed suddenly to mark his features troubled her. She thought of Jacob Graham’s advice earlier that day. If this man was as desperate as he looked…
“How is your…your little girl?” She could see that her question surprised him.
“Are you clairvoyant?” She wasn’t, she told him, and waited for his answer.
He didn’t seem to recognize her, but that didn’t surprise her, because she had been wearing dark glasses when they’d encountered each other in the Grahams’ garden and, at their previous encounter, he hadn’t looked straight at her. She braced herself for his reaction to what she was going to say.
“I overheard your conversation with your friend in Caution’s Coffee Bean yesterday morning. I hope she’s better.” He told her that the child was no longer in danger, but that there was a chance she would be crippled permanently. She reached toward him to comfort him when he propped his head with his left hand, his elbow resting on the table, and released a long breath, but she withdrew self-consciously. He stirred his coffee idly, seeming to look through her, lost in his thoughts. If he wasn’t desperate, she decided, the thought of his child’s condition pained him so much that he might…She girded her resolve and seized the moment.
“Since you apparently aren’t married, I have a proposition for you.”
He frowned in disapproval. “I wouldn’t have thought you the type.”
“Please. I’m not trying to pick you up, but you have a problem and I have one, and together we can solve both of them.”
He leaned back, observing her more closely. “Are you by any chance the woman I pulled out of Lorrianne Graham’s flower patch a couple of Sundays ago?”
“Yes.” She bristled at his perusal but, considering what she was about to suggest, he was entitled to appraise her. “Yes, Dr. Graham has tried twice to introduce us, but somehow, it didn’t come off.”
His skepticism was apparent even before he replied. “I suppose you’ve got seventy thousand dollars lying around unused.”
All right, if he didn’t believe her; she knew she didn’t look as if she had a penny. “Yes, I have that much money, and I’m willing to strike a deal with you. I need a husband. At the end of one year, if either of us wanted out of the marriage, we’d call it quits. We could even sign an agreement to that effect. Up to that point, we’d be married in name only. We’d live in the same house, and I’d give you a certified check for seventy thousand.” Both of his eyebrows shot up, his mouth opened, and he stared at her, seemingly speechless.
“I’m only suggesting a marriage of convenience, unless we decided to change that, though I kind of doubt that you’d want to. That way, your little girl can have her operation and I can get out of this predicament I’m in.” He leaned farther back in the chair and looked at her. She saw nothing sensual in the way that he regarded her, but she blushed, obviously surprising him.
“Why do you need a husband desperately enough to put out this kind of money?” She folded her hands in her lap and had to control an urge to squirm, because she hadn’t considered that she would have to give this stranger intimate information about herself. His barely checked sigh suggested that he wasn’t a patient person, and that she’d better hurry and get it out.
“I’m two months pregnant.” That seemed to stagger him, but only for a second, as he blinked eyes that she thought were the most beautiful honey-brown ones she’d ever seen.
“Then you’re talking to the wrong man. You should be talking to the guy who had the pleasure of putting you in this predicament.” She winced, unable to hide her embarrassment, and he apologized.
“I don’t know where he is, and if I did I don’t think I’d marry him. I’d rather be disgraced.”
“Many single women have children outside the sanctity of marriage. Why would you be disgraced?”
“Those women aren’t principal of Caution Point Junior High School. I am. I just got the appointment week before last, and I don’t think the Board of Education would like having an unmarried pregnant principal as a role model for fourteen-and fifteen-year-old girls.”
He knew how to whistle: it was long and sharp. “You don’t have to have it, you know. You’re only two months along.”
Her lips quivered, and she closed her eyes, fighting back the tears. No point in getting annoyed, she told herself, as she gathered her purse to leave, then felt rather than saw his hand lightly on her sleeve, detaining her.
“Why do you want to have it?” he asked softly, showing sympathy for the first time. “You obviously don’t like the father. Why?” She hadn’t had anyone with whom she could discuss personal things since her aunt Meredith’s death eighteen months earlier, just after her friend, Julie, had married and gone to live in Scotland with her husband. She had turned to Pearce Lamont out of loneliness and the need for more than casual contact with another human being, and she had convinced herself that she cared for him and that the feeling was mutual.
“I didn’t plan…that is, I was unprepared for…I mean I wasn’t taking the pill, and he told me that he would protect me. I had every reason to believe him and to trust him, but I found out that he was just stringing me along; he didn’t really care. I’d rather not be pregnant, but I am, and I don’t expect ever to conceive another child. I’m thirty-nine years old, and neither boys nor men ever found me irresistible.”
“At least one man did.” He said it softly, gently, as if he didn’t want to hurt her. “Go on.”
“I don’t have any family, and if I had a child at least there would be someone who needed me and cared about me.”
“Are you sure you’re doing the right thing by not trying to find the child’s father?”
“I cared for him, and he knew it. But I discovered that I was just fun to him, a game, a challenge. He was one of the summer people, the first man who’d showered me with attention, and I wasn’t wise about such things and fell for him. He strung me along through the winter, but I refused to have an affair. Aunt Meredith said that men could change their minds once they got what they wanted. I finally gave in and proved her right. He wasn’t very kind, and I never saw nor heard from him after that night.” She searched her handbag, found her business card and handed it to him. He read: Amanda Ross, Ph.D., Chairperson, English Department, Caution Point Junior High School, followed by her school and home phone numbers.
“I haven’t gotten my new cards printed yet,” she told him, trying to display the cool dignity that was so natural to her. “Please call me after you think about it.” If you refuse, I’ll probably have to resign and leave town, she thought. He put the card in his shirt pocket.
“You have to find that man.” He took the card out and looked at it. “Amanda. The name suits you.”
She smiled. “I’ve always liked it.”
“Amanda, no man is going to take responsibility for a child without knowing something about the father’s whereabouts and his reaction to the whole thing.” For a minute he seemed deep in thought, letting his left hand lightly graze his strong square chin. “Are you being wise to consider marriage to a stranger? You’d be sharing your property as well as your life with me, and you wouldn’t have much protection if I proved to be unscrupulous. Legally, a marriage is a marriage, no matter what kind it is.”
“I am not entirely naive. Taking a chance on a man who would mortgage his life for the health of his four-year-old daughter is no gamble whatever. Besides, Dr. Graham seems to think highly of you. You’re an honorable man, Mr…. Do you realize that this is the second time we’ve talked and that we’ve been sitting here nearly an hour, and we’ve never introduced ourselves.”
“Marcus Hickson. This is a lot of money we’re talking about, Amanda. Will it put you in a hole?”
“No, it won’t. If you can’t give me your answer now, will you call me tomorrow or the next day?” He stood and offered her his hand. Her trembling reaction to the current that shot through her at his touch must have shocked him as it did her, for he quickly withdrew his hand. She couldn’t look at him, merely picked up her tray with the half-eaten peanut butter sandwich and fled.
“I’ll phone you,” he called after her. He looked at the card, then back at her, knowing already what his answer would be. He’d gotten his food, started for a table and noticed her sitting in a far corner of the nearly empty cafeteria shrouded in despondency. Thinking that she might have just left one of the patients and sensing a kindred soul, he’d stopped at her table on an impulse. He hoped she got out of her predicament, but he wasn’t her solution. He’d find a way to pay for Amy’s surgery, and marriage wouldn’t be in it. He had just been curious; he never expected to marry another woman as long as he inhaled oxygen and exhaled carbon dioxide.
Marcus put Amanda’s business card back in his shirt pocket and stood where she’d left him, staring in her direction until she was out of sight. As he stood shaking his head, he didn’t think he’d ever heard of a more ridiculous idea; she had to be out of her mind. Or desperate. He’d had a lot of experience with desperation, and he couldn’t help but empathize with her, but he did not want any part of her scheme. He carried his tray to the disposal carousel and stepped out into the spring sunshine, dreading going to his daughter’s room, abhorring the expectant looks he knew he would see on the faces of the nurses. But they no longer asked him when Amy would have her operation, because they could read the answer in his face. He had to find a way, and it wouldn’t involve Amanda Ross.
Unable to postpone it any longer, Marcus walked past the nurses’ station, relieved to see it unattended, and hurried to his daughter’s room. During the last fourteen months, he had spent so many hours in that corner watching her sleep that he imagined he’d be lonely for it when he no longer had to go there. She opened her eyes, smiled at him and closed them again. He supposed the painkillers made her drowsy. Leaning over her carefully, so as not to touch the tube in her arm, he kissed her forehead, and his heart kicked over when her little fingers brushed his cheek.
Clouds had begun to darken the sky when he left the hospital for the short walk to the railroad station. He ignored the fine mist that soon dampened his cotton poplin bomber jacket and made his way at a normal pace. He grabbed a copy of the Carolina Times, tossed the newsboy fifty cents and boarded the train for Portsmouth, Virginia, and home seconds before it left the station. But he couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t even decipher the words; visions of Amanda Ross flitted around in his mind, troubling him. A couple and their twin daughters around Amy’s age got on at Elizabeth City and sat across from him. He realized later that he’d ridden thirty miles without being aware that he’d covered his eyes with both hands, shutting out the pain of watching that couple with their healthy little girls.
“How’d it go?” Luke, his older brother asked when he opened the apartment door. Marcus walked in, comfortable in his brother’s home, but it galled him that he might be forced to rent out his own house and move in with Luke in an effort to conserve his resources. Yet, he knew that, barring a miracle, the move was inevitable.
“Same old. Same old, man. But I haven’t given up. I can tolerate anything, but I want Amy to have a normal, healthy life and I have to do whatever I can for her.”
“Of course you do. If I hadn’t just bought that resort property on the Albemarle Sound, you wouldn’t have a problem.” He handed Marcus a piece of paper. “The surgeon wants you to call him.”
After the doctor’s first few words, Marcus stopped listening. What was the use?
“I’ll get back to you in a couple of days,” he told the man, but he knew the futility of the gesture.
“Something wrong?”
Marcus pulled air through his teeth, leaned back in the kitchen chair, crossed his knee and took a hefty swallow of the beer that his brother put in front of him.
“Yeah. Plenty. The doctor and his team have two dates open during the next month. After that, it will be too late. They can help some, but if we wait any longer, she’ll be deformed.” A deep sigh escaped him. “Hell must be something like this.” He pushed the beer aside. “I’m going down to Elizabeth City. See you tomorrow.”
“You want to take my car?”
Marcus shrugged. “Thanks, but I’d better take the train.”
An hour later, Marcus sat in Jacob Graham’s living room questioning him about Amanda. “Her suggestion stunned me. She doesn’t know anything about me, except that she saw me here twice and yet she makes this preposterous offer. I shouldn’t mention this to you, and I doubt I’ll do it, but as things stand now I have to give it some thought.” Marcus couldn’t think of a reason for his friend’s smile and happy mood. He frowned. “Am I to think you’re enjoying this, Jacob?” The smile dissolved into a grin.
“Yes, I suppose I am. This is precisely the solution I wanted to propose, but you seemed to find it preposterous that anything involving Amanda would interest you. She’s a fine woman, and she’ll honor any commitment. You could do much worse.”
He spent the next day reviewing his options and concluded that he didn’t have any. At six o’clock that evening, he forced himself to smile and walked into the intensive care room that had been his little daughter’s home for more than a year. At least, she was out of danger now. She would live, but would she ever walk? Her multitude of internal injuries had been repaired, and the web of tubes that for months had reminded him of the frailty of her life had been removed—the last one just that day—and he was thankful. But he wanted his child to be whole, to be like other children. The nurses had propped her up in bed, combed her hair and plaited it with two big yellow bows. Sometimes he thought the doctors and nurses on Amy’s ward ministered to him as carefully as they did to her. He leaned over to hug her and caught a whiff of a lovely, feminine scent. She smiled brilliantly, as if she knew he needed cheering.
“Hi, Daddy. Tomorrow, I’m going to be in a room with other children. I don’t have to be by myself anymore.”
“That’s wonderful. Maybe you’ll make some little friends.” He gathered his child into his arms and hugged her again. He had to do his best for her. The poor child had been in that bed so long that she’d forgotten what living in a real home with him was like. He thought about Amanda and her crazy scheme. He couldn’t, wouldn’t marry again. Marriage as he knew it was hell, and he would challenge anyone to prove differently. I can’t go that route again: I won’t. There has to be another way, he told himself.
“Am I going to get a wheelchair like Brenda and Terry, Daddy? The nurse brought them to see me today in their new chairs.”
Marcus crushed the child to him. “I don’t know, baby. We’ll see.” He held her until she was asleep and then slipped quickly past the nurses’ station to avoid a discussion of the inevitable. Four years old and already inured to pain and discomfort as a way of life. He let a tear roll down his face untouched. Too drained to make the trip back to Portsmouth, he decided to spend the night with his friends, Jack and Myrna Culpepper.
He hadn’t meant to unload his dilemma on his friends. It poured out of him: his child’s health or his freedom.
Flabbergasted, Jack stared at Marcus. “My God, man, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. This is the answer to our prayers. It’s not ’til death do us part, man. It’s just a year out of your life, and you get more of your problems solved than the money for Amy’s operation.”
“I’d like to know what they are,” Marcus said, losing his taste for the discussion. “What is so good about being bought by a woman for a year? It’s one thing to borrow money and another thing entirely to barter yourself. I have never been beholden to others. And since Helena, I’ve been careful not to owe any woman anything. You get screwed even if you don’t owe them. Until Amy’s accident, I didn’t owe one penny. I don’t like being indebted to anybody, much less to a woman in whose house I would be living and who, for whatever reason, would bear my name.” Myrna sat on the floor between her husband’s knees and turned to face their long-time friend, whom she regarded with sisterly affection.
“Look,” Jack explained, “if you stay with her, you’ll be right here in Caution near Amy and won’t have that four-hour daily and expensive commute from Portsmouth. You can lease your house in Portsmouth for the year, and the income will cover the mortgage you put on it. And you can visit the factory from time to time, which is about as often as you get there these days, anyway.”
Marcus stopped pacing and sat down. He hadn’t thought about Amanda’s problem and, suddenly, he did. “Please don’t mention any of this. I wouldn’t like to see her hurt more. As it is, she has a rough time ahead. If it’s all right with you I’m going to call Portsmouth, talk to my brother and turn in.”
Luke Hickson listened to his younger brother’s story about Amanda and her offer. Marcus had always looked up to Luke and would be the first to acknowledge his brother’s sobering influence. He knew that he could be hotheaded at times and stubborn, and he valued Luke’s judgment. He told himself to be open-minded.
“She needs you just as much as you need her,” Luke told him. “Sounds to me like the hand of Providence working here. Not all women are like Helena. The very fact that she wants the child and plans to have it is a major difference. Don’t forget that.” How could he? It was the reason for his divorce. Helena had blithely informed him that she wasn’t having their second baby after all and that it was a fait accompli, a done deed, giving him no choice. And then she’d left him and Amy. But he had wanted no more of her and would never forget the pain that she’d caused him.
“Thanks, Luke. I’ll keep you posted.” He hung up. A man shouldn’t be faced with such choices; he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.
The following evening, Amanda sat on her upstairs back porch looking over at the Albemarle Sound that had been a part of her life ever since she knew herself. She had stopped by the Caution Point Public Library after leaving school and collected books on the North Carolina and Virginia coast towns. Her heart wasn’t in it, but a week had passed and she hadn’t heard from Marcus, so she had to start looking for a new home. Amanda hated the thought of leaving the place where she belonged, where people knew her name and she could distinguish the churches by the ring of their bells, knew the cracks in the sidewalk, the names of the dogs that barked at night and which trees had broken limbs. She would have to move; she couldn’t expect the ultraconservative citizens of Caution Point to accept unwed motherhood from the principal of their junior high school. After all, a lot of people thought it disgraceful that fifty-six-year-old Minnie Carleton, a spinster, had gotten married. A woman in her position wasn’t supposed to think of such things.
Amanda leafed idly through a book on the outer banks of North Carolina, listening to the swirling waters of the Albemarle Sound. She couldn’t contemplate life without it, but she knew she would have to leave if Marcus Hickson turned her down. And he might; the idea didn’t seem to have found any favor with him. But she was betting on his love for that girl, a love that she sensed was strong enough to force him to do things he didn’t want to do.
She sniffed the air with pleasure as scents of the roasting herbed chicken, buttermilk biscuits and apple pie baking in the oven wafted up. She sat on a low hassock, and when the cool April breeze worried her bare toes, she pulled the burnt orange caftan that she wore down to cover them. She loved the color orange, because it flattered her smooth brown complexion. The wall supported her back, comforting her because it was familiar. And she needed, loved, to have familiar people, things and places around her. But for how long? The telephone ring broke into her thoughts, and her heart seemed to drop to her middle as it had with every ring since she’s encountered Marcus at the hospital cafeteria the previous week. She raced to her bedroom.
“Hello.” That nervous squeak couldn’t be her voice.
“Hello, Amanda. This is Marcus Hickson. If you’re not busy, I’d like to come over.” She felt shivers rush through her at the sound of his rich baritone.
“When?” she asked, nervous and excited.
“Now, Amanda. I’m at the hospital. How do I get to your place?”
She gave him her address and the directions. But Caution Point was a small enough town, just over fourteen thousand people, and everybody who lived there knew how to get around. Why did he need directions? She figured it would take him about forty minutes walking and took her time about dressing. When he rang the bell in less than ten minutes, she had no choice but to greet him as she was—thick hair billowing, feet bare and burnt orange caftan clinging.
Her impression of Marcus Hickson had been of a refined, sophisticated man, and she wondered why he seemed less poised.
“Hello, Amanda. I assume you’re Amanda.” He offered her what was barely a smile. “But this is certainly one hell of a metamorphosis.”
Amanda at home was very different from Amanda anywhere else. Gone were the severe suits, sensible shoes and the thick twist or braids in which she always wore her hair. In the evenings, her heavy black mane hung loosely down her back, kinky and wild; she wore floor-length, brightly colored caftans, and shoes never touched her feet.
Thinking that he was disappointed in the way she looked, she apologized. “I’m sorry. I thought you’d need more time getting here. I didn’t have time to get dressed.”
He looked down at her and gave his left shoulder a quick shrug. “God forbid you should make yourself less attractive on my account. I caught a ride. Mind if I come in?” She stepped back and let him pass as she mused over his cryptic remarks. Not an easy man to understand, she decided.
“Before we talk business, let me show you around.” She would be foolish if she didn’t do everything she could to make him decide in her favor, so she began the tour upstairs, showing him first the guest room and adjoining bath that would be his personal quarters.
“You could rearrange it to suit yourself,” she told him, “and I’d change the covers and curtains. You’d want something more masculine.” She walked on. “This is my sitting room.”
He nodded. “You’ve got a complete office up here,” he said of her sitting room.
“You’d be welcome to use it.” They walked out onto the porch.
“This is beautiful, Amanda. Idyllic. Don’t you get lonely here?”
She answered him truthfully. “Yes. But the result of my one experience at reaching out after my aunt died is the reason you’re here. Believe me, lonely is better.”
She’s rambling, because she’s scared and nervous, he thought, and told himself that he should put her at ease. But he didn’t; the little exercise was very revealing.
She took him through the living and dining rooms and, though she didn’t invite him to do so, he followed her through the breakfast room and into the kitchen. She took the pie out of the oven and turned the chicken. Her slight body with well-rounded, feminine hips silhouetted through the caftan sounded a warning to him as she bent to her task. This wasn’t going to work. She’d upped the ante. He refused to believe that she hadn’t presented herself as a little siren just to get him to agree to her mad scheme. He had been astonished when the door was opened not by the lackluster person he’d met previously, but by a lovely and charming woman. He let his gaze travel over her back. Yeah. A real sexy sister. The sensation he experienced was not one that he welcomed.
He brought his left hand up and brushed the back of it against the bottom of his chin. In all fairness, she was entitled to try and win her case, he acknowledged silently; she had plenty to lose. He told himself to lighten up.
“What kind of contract are you offering, Amanda?” The abruptness with which he opened the topic surprised her, but it relieved her, too. If he wanted to discuss it, he hadn’t ruled it out.
“Go on in the living room; I’ll get us some coffee. Sugar or cream?” He took both.
“The kitchen’s fine.” She felt oddly secure as she watched him settle his long frame into the straight-back chair.
“Well, I thought like this. You would have no financial responsibility for me or the baby. We’d stay married for one year, and then consider the future, though I expect you’ll want to end it. You’d live here. Any of your friends or family would be welcome anytime you wanted them to come, because this would be your home. We’d both have physical exams first and you’d get the certified check as soon as we married. We’d divorce after one year on grounds of irreconcilable differences, if that’s what either of us wanted. I would bear all household expenses during that time.”
He turned sharply and stared at her. “You’re proposing to take care of me for one year?” His discomfort with the idea was obvious and, for the first time, she resented what she regarded as his unnecessary defensiveness enough to bristle and show it.
“You’ve got a more reasonable suggestion? Maybe if I knew a little something about you, I’d manage not to insult you. For starters, why did you need directions to my house? Everybody in town knows this place.” She wondered why he seemed pleased at her sharp response. Maybe he preferred women with guts to shrinking violets.
“Amanda, I live in Portsmouth. I’d brought my daughter with me to watch the sailing competition on the Sound, and a building crane fell on our rented car and crushed her almost to death. I was practically unharmed. The emergency squad took her to Caution Point General, and it hasn’t been wise to move her. I could now, but she’s learned to like and trust the nurses and she’s getting the best of care. So I’m keeping her there.”
“You’ve commuted between Portsmouth and Caution Point daily for fourteen months?”
“Fourteen months and two weeks. Sometimes twice daily. I have a business in Portsmouth. I rebuild fine grand pianos, antique harpsichords and spinets. I’ll handle a console or a small string instrument, but only if it’s of superior quality. Right now, the banks own everything I have.”
She shook her head slowly, so slowly that he had to know exactly what she was feeling and that the sentiment was for him.
“Are we going to have a deal, Marcus?” She wanted his agreement, but not at the expense of appearing fragile and vulnerable. He must know that both her future and his child’s future were at stake. Her apparent calm as she waited for his answer was as good a piece of acting as she had ever pulled off, she thought proudly.
“It’s possible, but there’s still the matter of the child’s father.” She handed him a fax from Dexter and Strange, Inc., dated that day. He read it twice before giving it back to her.
“If you had told me his name, I could have saved you the price of those detectives’ fee. Still, it’s a good thing to have a copy of that death certificate. Pearce was always a daredevil and totally self-centered. I think I should warn you, though: you’ll be better off if Pearce, Sr., never learns about this child; he’d give you plenty of trouble.”
She gasped. “How could he? This child is mine.”
“Amanda, Pearce Lamont, Sr., is a rich man. He owns two newspapers, an FM radio station, a string of motels, and he doles out a lot of money to both political parties. He can swing any deal he wants to. He’s bought his son out of jail, out of parenthood…” Seeing her shocked, hurt reaction to that information, he toned it down. “There’ve been several paternity suits against Pearce, Jr., but, as far as I know, he and his family won all of them. We’ll never know what the truth is. Just pray that you’re carrying a girl. Lamont doesn’t have a grandson nor another son, and he’d bend rules and break laws now to get a male heir.”
The more he talked and the longer she shared his company, the more certain she was that she wanted him there. She felt more secure than ever in her life. “Marcus, you’re very big. How tall are you?”
He blinked, obviously surprised by the question. “I’m six feet, three and a half, and I weigh two hundred dripping.” She blanched as the image of a dripping Marcus filled her mind and, from his expression, she didn’t doubt that he knew her thoughts. “And I’m thirty-five years old,” he added gruffly.
“Nothing would frighten a person with you around.” She caught her breath when he threw her off balance with a genuine grin, his white teeth flashing and his enchanting, honey-brown eyes sparkling with deviltry.
“There’s not much to you, is there?” he teased.
“Well, I’m five-three, and it hasn’t hindered me so far.”
“You didn’t tell me what name you’ll put on the birth certificate as the father of your child, Amanda.” She was quiet for a long time before looking inquiringly at the man who sat before her, waiting patiently for this most important of answers. The answer that would determine her future. It was best to be honest.
“I want to put your name there, Marcus. Could you agree to that? It’s very important to me that my child be legitimate. When it’s old enough to understand, I’ll explain to her or him. But I won’t do it unless you agree.”
He studied her for a few seconds. She hadn’t made it a term of the contract, but had asked his permission. And instead of doing it surreptitiously, she had chosen to be open and honest about it. Marcus walked over to the window and stared out at the darkness. The eerie shapes of the big, stalwart pines barely moved in the gusty wind, but the little dogwoods—visible by their bright flowers—bowed low as though under a great burden. He couldn’t help likening the scene to his present dilemma. He had what he needed to withstand the rigors of life but, as small and vulnerable as she was, Amy could not protect herself. Only he could do that. What was one year of his life for the whole of Amy’s? He walked back to Amanda and extended his hand.
“All right, Amanda. If those are your terms, you’ve got a deal, and my name goes on the birth certificate. I don’t know how I’ll feel, though, knowing that there’s a child somewhere with my name and who thinks I’m its father, but to whom I give nothing. It’s never going to sit well with me, but I don’t suppose you’re crazy about the idea, either. Something for something, I suppose. But, honey, this is one tough bargain.” He’d have to tell her not to hope for more than a year; he didn’t see how he could push himself to accept it longer than that. Her face glowed with happiness, and he waved off her thanks. She had tried to make it as palatable as possible, he knew, but it still went against his grain and tied up his guts. Married! After all the promises he’d made to himself and God about tying himself to a woman. Still, it didn’t seem right to make her miserable just because he was. He tried to shake it off.
“Do I have the right to offer a little advice?” When she nodded, he continued. “For the sake of privacy, let’s see a lawyer in Elizabeth City. And I suggest that we get married there, too.” He looked at his watch. “Good Lord, I’ve got to go. I’m just about to miss the last train to Portsmouth.” Amanda glanced at her own watch.
“I don’t see how you can get to the station and on that train in eight minutes, not even if I drive you. So, suppose you stay over and try out your room tonight. Supper’s ready.”
“I hate to put you out, and I don’t want to eat up your meal.”
“Marcus, I’ve never eaten a whole chicken at one sitting in my life. There’s plenty. I made a fresh batch of buttermilk biscuits and there’s a pot of string beans.” It occurred to Marcus that he could stay with Jack and Myrna as he had done many times, but for reasons that he refused to examine, he dismissed the idea.
“What’s that over there?” He pointed to the pie.
“Apple pie.”
He loved home cooking, though he rarely got any. But just the thought of a home-baked apple pie could make him delirious. What was the point of polite pretense?
“You’re on. I love that stuff.”
He finished his third piece of pie and stretched lazily. “Happiness is having ‘a good bank account, a good cook and a good digestion.’ Two out of three’s not bad.” Amanda Ross turned sharply around and stared at the man who’d just eaten half of a roasting chicken, seven biscuits and more than half a pie. He leaned back, watching her. Had she thought he wouldn’t know anything except the way in which wires and hammers functioned on string instruments? From the look on her face, she hadn’t expected a housemate knowledgeable in literature, which he assumed was her specialty.
“I see you’ve been reading Rousseau.”
He smiled wickedly, enjoying her surprise. “And I see you’ve mixed up your metaphors.”
She got up and began to clear the table. “You’ve got many sides; we’ll get along.” Nodding in agreement, Marcus rose and took the plates from her.
“The one who cooks shouldn’t wash dishes. And we’ll do the housework and other chores together. You should have put that in the contract.” And he should have put it in a contract with Helena. She hadn’t done much more than sleep at home, not even after Amy’s birth. Oh, but she had punished him!
“It’s been my experience that one ought to look ahead and start the way one can finish. And that’s from Ross. Amanda Ross.”
“Yeah? Well ‘the only thing that experience teaches us is that experience teaches us nothing.’” He waited for her to identify the quote.
“Maurois, right?” He nodded. She showed him the washer and dryer so that he could wash his underwear, socks and shirt, gave him a large beach towel and bade him good-night.
For the first time since she had learned of her pregnancy, she didn’t dread going to bed. She would sleep. All still wasn’t right with the world, but the outlook was certainly improving.
Several days later, Amanda sat in Jacob Graham’s waiting room. The same painting hung facing her on the wall, and the simple red and gray furnishings hadn’t changed but, to her eyes, the old looked new and what had seemed dull now glowed. She stood when the doctor walked toward her.
“I hope you’ve got something good to tell me,” he said, draping an arm around her shoulder. “Come on in the examining room.” She told him about her agreement with Marcus.
“That’s the best solution for you two; I’m glad you worked it out by yourselves.” She explained about the health certificate she needed.
“All right, and while I’m at it, we’ll see how the baby is coming along. You’re in good shape,” he told her later and advised her to choose a gynecologist in Caution Point. As she left, he assured her, “You will never meet a finer man than Marcus Hickson. I hate to see him down on his luck this way, but I don’t doubt for a minute that he’ll snap back. If you need me, you know where I am.”
She skipped down the walkway to her car, picked up a green crab apple from the lawn and sent it sailing through the air. Turning, she waved to the doctor who stood in the doorway smiling, got in her car and drove off. She stopped at Caution’s Coffee Bean and ordered a chocolate shake from the lone waiter who nodded and asked whether she’d hit the lottery.
“Haven’t seen you this bright in a while now,” he said.
“Haven’t felt this bright,” she answered, smiling to herself. She walked out into the sunlight and looked up and down State Street for her friend Sam, the rag man, who’d been sweeping that street for as long as she could remember, but he was nowhere to be seen. She stopped by the Albemarle Kiddies Roost and bought a book on pregnancy and two on child care. At last, she could have the pleasure of planning for her baby.
Chapter 2
Four days later, in the presence of Jack and Myrna Culpepper, Lorrianne and Jacob Graham and Luke Hickson, Amanda married Marcus in the parsonage of the Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church in Elizabeth City. She had stamped her foot belligerently and made Marcus understand that, even if theirs wasn’t a real marriage, she would not repeat her vows before a Justice of the Peace. When he realized that she was not going to relent, he had conceded defeat and agreed, flashing his charismatic smile and shrugging as if to say, you win some and you lose some. He had also been elegant in an oxford-gray pinstriped suit, pale gray on gray shirt and yellow tie, and his lingering, appreciative look made her glad that she had splurged on a flattering Dior blue silk suit and matching hat. Her eyes misted when Marcus handed her a bouquet of six calla lilies just before the ceremony began; the flowers made it seem like a real, lovers’ wedding. But she noticed the glances that passed between the two brothers when she showed her pleasure and wondered which of them had thought of the flowers.
Two days after the ceremony, on the morning of Amy’s scheduled operation, Marcus stumbled into the kitchen. The rain pouring down in sheets, and a visibility of barely three feet failed to daunt him. He’d be soaked when he got to the hospital, but he wouldn’t think of complaining; Amy meant everything to him, and she would finally have a chance to be well again. He stopped abruptly at the kitchen door, hands on his hips and the surprise on his face unmasked. He hadn’t thought he’d find Amanda there, the table set for one and the odor of food permeating the room at six o’clock in the morning. And when she asked him to sit down and eat a meal of scrambled eggs, country sausage patties, home fries, hot buttermilk biscuits, orange juice and coffee, a feeling of discomfort pervaded him.
“Aren’t you eating?” he asked. He didn’t want to be treated like a husband. He wasn’t a husband; he was a man caught without options and paying a harsh penalty for it. He knew that she sensed his suddenly dark mood and that she even understood the reason for it. Though he tried to hide what he felt, her forced smile was evidence that he hadn’t succeeded. But what was he to do? He didn’t want to hurt her, but neither did he want this cozy husband-wife relationship with her. He didn’t even know her.
“I’d love to be able to eat that,” she said, apparently deciding that it would be she and not he who would set the tone of their relationship. “It’s what I usually have but, these mornings, crackers and club soda are as much as I can manage.”
In spite of himself a feeling of protectiveness toward her sprouted within him. “Bear with me, Amanda. My nerves are raw this morning, what with the operation and all.” Her refusal to take offense at his cool manner was as much punishment as he needed. He told himself he’d make it up to her.
“It’s pouring outside. I’ll drive you.” But as they reached the attached garage, she handed him the keys, and he took them without hesitation, all his battered ego needed right then was for her to drive while he sat beside her like an underaged kid. They drove to Caution Point General in silence, and he wondered whether he’d be able to endure the year ahead. Amanda parked, while he rushed in to comfort and reassure Amy before the doctors anesthetized her. A few minutes later, Amanda walked into the waiting room and sat down, giving him another surprise.
“I thought you’d gone home.”
“I couldn’t leave you here alone for hours, maybe all day, waiting for the outcome of the operation. I’m human, Marcus.” He looked at her through long, slightly lowered lashes. She was human, all right, and she had an old-fashioned mother instinct. Amy would fall in love with her and, when they separated, his child would be motherless again. But this time, she’d be old enough to feel the pain of separation. A sense of foreboding engulfed him. He didn’t want his child hurt because of the bargain he’d made with Amanda. But what choices did he have? He dropped his head into his hands; helplessness was foreign to him.
He had always prided himself in having the intelligence and the mother wit to anticipate and circumvent problems, and the mental stamina and physical strength to handle whatever caught him unaware. He had never shirked a responsibility nor dodged an obligation. And he knew how to be a friend. But it was quid pro quo with him and Amanda, and he didn’t want to be more obligated to her than he was. Like that breakfast this morning. He hadn’t had such a wonderful breakfast since he’d left his parents’ home more than a dozen years earlier. He didn’t know how he could stop Amanda from behaving like a wife without crushing her spirit, and he’d be less than a man if he added to the emotional battering under which she was struggling. But he couldn’t let Amy form an attachment to her. He knew Amy would need and love Amanda, because Amanda was lovable, and then they’d go their separate ways. Not on your life, he swore silently, as he tried to banish a persistent thought: You’re already going to miss her. Give her a year and see how you’ll feel. He stiffened. If his hunch was correct; keeping her own child out of old man Lamont’s clutches would be a full-time job, and that problem was bound to surface as soon as Amanda had her baby. He’d better be prepared for it.
In spite of her lack of experience with men, Amanda wasn’t so naive that she thought she could change Marcus or that he would look upon her as his salvation. He hated and resented that he had been forced to relinquish his personal freedom. She knew that, and she hardly blamed him. What she didn’t understand was why he wouldn’t try harder to make the best of it for both their sakes. Why wouldn’t he acknowledge that she was also a victim and that she might find their situation just as repulsive as he did?
She looked at the big clock hanging on the wall near the nurses’ station in clear view of the waiting room and shuddered. What a thoughtless reminder of passing time for anxious relatives and friends! One o’clock. They had been waiting for five hours, and barely a word had passed between them. Did he know she was there? She left the room just as Marcus buried his head in his arms.
“Marcus.” He looked up in response to her gentle touch. “I’ve brought us a little something to eat.”
“What time is it?” She told him, and watched helplessly as the color drained from his face.
“She’s so little. What could they be doing to her all this time?” Amanda risked draping an arm over his shoulder as she sat beside him and handed him a paper container of coffee.
He glanced up at her. “Thanks.” Encouraged, she passed him a ham sandwich. He bit into it.
“Have you been here all this time? Wouldn’t you think they’d have enough feeling to come out and tell me something? It’s my child in there.”
“Have faith, Marcus. You hired a team of the best physicians in the country. Isn’t it good that they’re taking their time and doing it right so she won’t have to go through this again? I know it’s tough, but it can’t be much longer.” As she spoke, she let her left hand move gently over his broad shoulders, circling and patting him, in an offering of support. He seemed barely aware of it. She talked on, keeping her voice very low and soft, trying to soothe him. It wasn’t difficult. He seemed to be hurting too badly to rebuff her tenderness and caring.
An hour and a half later, huddled together with Amanda’s left arm around Marcus and her right hand grasping his right forearm, they didn’t see Luke as he approached. “How’s it going? Any word, yet?”
Marcus shook his head. “They’re still with her.” He knew that Luke loved the child and was as glad as he that she would have the chance to be like other children again. He felt the comforting arm around him and settled into it, neither caring nor wondering why it was there. He needed it. No words passed between them until finally the doctor appeared, still wearing his surgical greens.
“We’ve done all that we can. The rest is up to God, the therapists and Amy.” Marcus didn’t want to hear that and, at his profane outburst, the doctor assured them that she would be as good as new if instructions were followed to the letter.
“May I see her? I just have to see that she’s all right.” The doctor’s assurance that she was all right, but asleep and in intensive care, didn’t satisfy him.
Marcus turned to Amanda. “I’m going to stay here until I see her. You go on home. And drive carefully. Ocean Avenue was very slippery this morning.”
Amanda didn’t want to leave Marcus, but she did as he asked when Luke promised her that he would remain with his brother. She shopped at the supermarket and had just turned into her lane when she saw a stray kitten, the worst for having been in the heavy morning downpour. Amanda didn’t like pets, because she thought that animals should be free. But she couldn’t bear to see a being suffer, so she took the kitten and her groceries in the house, dried the weak little animal, fed it and put it in a padded basket. She changed her clothes and started dinner, but the kitten cried until she gave it her attention. Marcus arrived several hours later with Luke to find her lounging in an oversized living room chair with her bare feet tucked under her trying to calm the little creature.
Luke paused in the doorway, as though fearing to intrude further; the sight of this adult woman lovingly stroking a kitten while singing it a lullaby, albeit out of tune had dumbfounded Marcus. Luke turned to his brother, intending to remark on the drollery of that bizarre little scene but, one look at him, and the words died unspoken in his throat. With her head bowed and her voice low and sultry, Amanda sang softly, slowly stroking the little cat. Marcus’ eyes sparkled rustic fire, his lips were slightly parted, his face open and filled with emotion. Luke knew that he had never before seen this Marcus, this man smoldering with desire. And he didn’t doubt that Marcus wanted to exchange places with that kitten. What a pity that Amanda didn’t see her husband’s face!
As if she sensed their presence, Amanda looked up, her eyes locking with Marcus’ heated gaze. Luke watched as she caught her breath and lowered her gaze, flustered; surely his brother must see that Amanda was vulnerable to him, aware of him as a man. He shook his head sadly; she was a tender, gentle woman, but would Marcus give up his cynicism and allow himself to see that? He didn’t hold out much hope for it.
Marcus stood rooted to the spot, speechless, remembering how she had held him, caressed and soothed him while he had waited in agony for news about Amy’s surgery. And ingrate that he was, he told himself, he had repaid all of her caring with rudeness. He hadn’t even wanted Luke to come home with him, hating to dignify his circumstances by sharing his temporary home with his brother.
“How is she?” Amanda’s obvious embarrassment as she managed to break the silence aroused his compassion.
“She recognized both of us.” Marcus banked the desire raging in him and tried to smile, but he was so shocked at his unexpected reaction to Amanda that he managed little more than a grimace. “She’s bandaged from her hips to her toes, and she’s heavily sedated, but the worst is over.” He walked slowly over to her. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“For being there when I needed someone.”
She smiled. “You would have done the same for me.” She turned to his brother. “Luke, you’re more than welcome to stay for dinner. I cooked with you in mind.”
“No need for that; we’ll go out,” Marcus said, still unwilling to accept the place as his home and unable to hide his concern for his status there. He saw that Luke’s sympathies were with Amanda when his brother shook his head, and he could almost read Luke’s mind, could almost hear him saying for the nth time: “It’s time you let go of the past and stopped nursing the hatred and bitterness that you’ve wrapped yourself in ever since Helena betrayed you.” Well, I’m the one wearing these shoes, not Luke, he told himself.
Luke scowled fiercely at Marcus, then smiled at Amanda. “I’d love to stay for dinner, Amanda. I get enough of restaurants.” Marcus knew that Luke didn’t care how much he fumed; Luke took the commandment about justice and mercy seriously, even when it wasn’t in question.
“I want to find out what kind of cook my sister-in-law is.” Marcus wasn’t fooled by the remark; it had been intended to please Amanda and to put her at ease. If it made him furious, Luke didn’t mind. He watched Amanda put the kitten in the basket and start toward the kitchen. But when it was deprived of her body warmth, the little animal cried, and Amanda stooped to take it into her arms.
“When did you get a cat?” Marcus asked. He wasn’t fond of cats. More accurately, he disliked them. Amanda explained how she got it and that she planned to take it to a shelter on Monday. A picture of Amanda nursing her baby, coddling it and loving it flashed through his mind’s eye; that child was a lucky one. His Amy hadn’t had that kind of loving from her mother. Could he deny her the sweetness, the loving acceptance that Amanda would shower on her? He glanced at the woman he’d married and couldn’t believe that he hadn’t previously noticed her café au lait complexion and large wistful black eyes. Heart-stopping eyes. Cut it out, man, he admonished himself.
Amanda went on to the kitchen, through the long hallway and past the dining room, wondering why not having a cat around had pleased him so much. He didn’t want them to get too close; she was sure of that. But when he had needed her, she’d had a glimpse of the man without the veneer, without the antiwoman armor that he wore either naturally or for her benefit, she wasn’t sure which. A minute earlier, he’d silently told her that she was in some way special. He confused her. She sensed that Luke was different, more open. When she met him at her wedding, she knew at once that he was an easier, gentler man than his brother. A man with Marcus’ aura of danger but without his anger.
Luke looked around the living room, attempting to glean something of Amanda’s personality, while his brother paced the floor. Her taste in art appealed to him, because he, too, loved the paintings of John Biggers, Elizabeth Catlett and Jacob Lawrence, artists who dug deep into the black soul. Realizing that Marcus hadn’t placed anything of his own in the room because he’d probably decided that the arrangement was temporary and didn’t want to forget that, Luke faced him.
“I’ve got to talk to you.” He could see that Marcus wasn’t ready to give up the pain he felt because of his circumstances, that he found that pain enjoyable, like a balm for his wounded pride or a nice safe place to put his worries.
“It’s a free country,” Marcus told his brother.
“Lighten up, will you, Marcus? Don’t you realize that she’s doing everything she can to make life as pleasant as possible for the two of you? What do you think having to ask you to marry her in these circumstances and paying you to do it has done to her pride? You’re too old for this stubbornness. Can’t you see that you’ve gotten so used to having problems—pretty awful ones, I grant you—that you’ve closed your eyes to the truth. You have struck gold, man, but you don’t even recognize relief when you have it.” He moved to put an arm around his brother’s shoulder, but Marcus stepped away.
“You’re annoyed, but you’ll think about what I’ve said, because you’re a man of conscience and honor. You’ve been reliving Helena’s treachery and betrayal long enough.”
Luke didn’t wait for a reaction. He had already decided that he wanted to talk with Amanda, see what she was like. Even before meeting her, he’d been impressed with her refusal to let Marcus treat their marriage as though it was an incident of no special significance and with her request that they have a dignified ceremony. And after what he’d seen of her today, first with Marcus at the hospital and then with that kitten, he felt that he pretty much understood her, and he had a hunch that she could light up Marcus’ life.
Amanda flipped on the oven light and bent to check her pork roast. When she straightened, a wave of dizziness almost sent her sprawling, but Luke must have stepped into the kitchen just in time to see it. She felt his steadying hand.
“Easy there.” He guided her to a chair and sat her down.
“Where do you keep the glasses?” But even as he asked, he’d found them and was at the sink getting a glass of cold water.
“Drink a little. It will help steady you.” Amanda sipped while Luke waited for her to empty the glass. He’s got a low, gentle voice, she thought, but you wouldn’t dare disobey it.
“Thanks. That’s the first time that’s happened. I thought that once I got over the morning sickness, that would be it for the day.” She didn’t mean it as a complaint, just an observation.
“When are you expecting the baby, Amanda?”
Her lashes swept up quickly. Marcus hadn’t bothered to ask. “November seventh. The doctor was certain, because there’s only been that one time.” She could see that her remark had made him curious, though he tried to appear casually interested. She was thirty-nine years old, after all; any man would wonder about that statement.
“What do you mean, ‘that one time’?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this. But there’s so much I don’t understand. I never discussed anything personal with my father and I’m an only child, so there wasn’t a brother to talk with. And Marcus hasn’t invited any intimacies between us. I feel closer to you than I do to him, but there are things that I could ask him that I don’t think I should be discussing with you.” When Luke glanced toward the kitchen door, she realized he didn’t want to offend his brother, but that he wanted to help her if he could.
“What are you talking about, Amanda?”
She laced her fingers and looked first to the ceiling and then to the floor, before settling her gaze on the refrigerator. “I thought the baby’s father cared for me like I cared for him. But it seems I was just a challenge. He’d made a bet with his buddies, and he won it. He wasn’t nice to me, Luke, although he must have known…he had to know that he was hurting me and he wouldn’t stop. I had to go to the emergency room. He had courted me persistently for six months, but after that night he never called or wrote, and I never saw him again. I had been lonely after my aunt Meredith died, and I didn’t know much about men. I have nightmares about it sometimes. Luke, isn’t there any gentleness in men? If there is, I have never experienced it, not in my father, my baby’s father, nor my coworkers. And so far, not much in my husband.”
Luke bit back an explosive expletive. “I always thought that most men are gentle with women, Amanda. Are you telling me that Marcus mistreats you? I can’t believe he’d lay a finger on you. He’s not that type of man.”
Amanda stood and began to set the table. “Of course not. I know he’s a gentleman, Luke. It’s just…well, if I do anything for him…This morning, I fixed him a good breakfast, but that made him uncomfortable, and anytime he finds himself being nice to me, he quickly withdraws. It’s like he’s trying to make me pay for something I didn’t do.” Luke rested a hand lightly on her shoulder.
“He had a hard time with Amy’s mother, but he’s softening. You can help him, and he can help you. In fact, if the two of you were ever to communicate, really communicate, you’d see that you need each other.”
His words failed to placate her. She had realized earlier that evening that she was vulnerable to Marcus, that she was attracted to him, and it frightened her. She walked to the back door, pretending to look for something on the porch, while she restrained the tears. She didn’t want Luke’s pity or anyone else’s, but her feelings about Marcus, her situation and their relationship troubled her. She stepped back inside and closed the door and, with her back to the kitchen, looked into the darkness. She spoke to him quietly, resigned. “I’m going to pay for that one night for the rest of my life.”
Luke shook his head. “You don’t have to go through with it, you know.”
“Yes I do. Anyway, I don’t have anyone now. At least I’ll have someone to love and to love me. But Marcus says that the baby’s grandfather might try and take the child from me, if he learns about it.”
Luke had heard Marcus walking toward the kitchen, but didn’t look in his direction; it wouldn’t hurt Marcus to know what his wife had experienced and what she feared.
“Who is he?”
“Pearce Lamont, Sr. He lives in Portsmouth.”
“I know him and I know where he lives.” He walked around to face her and handed her his business card: Lieutenant Luke Stuart Hickson, Detective; Portsmouth Police Department. “Don’t worry about Lamont. If he gives you any trouble, let me know.” He acknowledged her thanks with a nod, thinking that she had a lovely smile. But her smile faltered and, glancing around, he frowned in concern. Had she stopped smiling because she’d seen Marcus?
“Where’s this dinner you were promising?” She glanced at Marcus and then smiled when his relaxed manner indicated that the three of them would spend an enjoyable evening. She had wondered what Marcus was doing alone in the living room, whether he was brooding about Amy. She took pleasure in having controlled her urge to go to him, suspecting that he had needed to be alone in order to recoup from the trauma of their long wait for the doctors’ verdict.
Amanda asked Marcus to say grace, explaining that her aunt Meredith had always said that, in a civilized home, the head of the house always says grace before meals. Marcus looked as if he wasn’t sure he was head of that house, but a smirking Luke bowed his head and waited. Marcus said the grace. Amanda wouldn’t have admitted that she had set out to impress Luke with her cooking, but that was the effect she got. He had as big an appetite as his brother, and as he swallowed his fifth biscuit, he told her, “If you feed Marcus like this every night, you’ll never get rid of him.” In a reflexive action, she reached over and gently wiped the scowl from Marcus’ face and got an embarrassed grin for her effort. Her innocent gesture seemed to surprise and please Luke, and she was happier than she’d been at any time since her marriage. She felt that she had a friend and ally in her brother-in-law, and her instinct told her that, in the months to come, she would need his support.
Innocently desiring to communicate to Marcus the feeling that Luke gave her, she told her husband, “I like your brother, Marcus.”
Marcus fingered his emerging beard and shrugged his left shoulder. “Why doesn’t that surprise me? Liking Luke is something women just seem to do automatically.”
Rather taken aback, she responded honestly. “Oh, I can see that Luke is very handsome, Marcus, but not more so than you. Perhaps even less. Do you have any more brothers?” Marcus stopped eating and looked at his wife.
“No. You really think I’m better looking than Luke? You’re pulling my leg. You’ve got to be. Luke’s on the stud list of every matchmaking matron in Portsmouth. If a celebrity beauty comes to town, he’s the man they ask to escort her. He once squired Miss America around Portsmouth. Tell her how many tuxedos you’ve got, Luke.”
Luke’s gruff response reflected his discomfort and belied his commanding presence. “He’s overstating it, Amanda. They all know that I’m a widower, and they take advantage of it.” Amanda postponed commiserating with Luke over his status as widower and turned to her husband. First things first.
“Luke is nice, Marcus, but you’ve got the most bewitching eyes I’ve ever looked into in my life.” She plowed on; make hay while the sun’s shining, Aunt Meredith had always said. “Have you been wearing dark glasses, or are the women in Portsmouth all blind?” Marcus actually blushed, and Luke clearly delighted in it. The exchange gave Amanda food for thought: The brothers enjoyed each other’s company; they loved each other. So this was what she had missed in not having a sibling.
“What’s so funny?” Marcus blustered, but both his wife and his brother could see his delight in Amanda’s compliment.
Luke watched Marcus clear the table, scrape the dishes and put them in the dishwasher while Amanda made coffee and got the dessert. What interested him most was that they did it without uttering a word. Teamwork, he thought. Don’t they know that they would make a great team if they tried? He’d never seen Helena and Marcus cooperate on any level; they had always seemed to be at cross-purposes.
When Amanda served the deep-dish apple pie à la mode, Luke threw his head back and roared with laughter. Marcus knew from his brother’s cheshire grin that Luke was delighted at his discomfort. He scowled. Sure, Amanda was catering to his passion for apple pie. Well, let her. Nobody could blame her for trying. Beside, she made the best apple pie that he’d ever eaten. He didn’t miss her smothered smile.
“The hell with both of you,” he told them amiably, as he gave himself another serving. “You grin and I’ll eat.”
A few minutes later, walking through the hall toward the living room feeling as if she had progressed in her effort to make friends with her husband, Amanda glanced toward him, saw that he had just called the hospital and waited for him to give her news of Amy. He hung up, turned and went to the kitchen apparently to give Luke the information. Sorely disappointed that he hadn’t told her how Amy was progressing, she waited at the bottom of the stairs in the hope that he would realize her concern and rectify the oversight. But he remained in the kitchen and, convinced after a long wait that he didn’t think it necessary to tell her, she pondered what to do. Fighting a growing annoyance, she walked back to the kitchen, interrupted the conversation and asked him if he’d planned to tell her.
“Look, I…she’s…doing fine.”
“But you weren’t going to tell me. Didn’t you think I cared?”
“I’m sorry, but…well…I’m so used to talking with Luke about this…” Realizing his error, he added as an explanation, “He’s her uncle.”
“And I’m nothing to her, right?” He grimaced, but she didn’t care that she’d made him uncomfortable.
“Amanda, please be reasonable. This situation is difficult enough without…”
She didn’t wait to hear the rest of it, but fled to her room, tears stinging her eyes.
“Proud of yourself, Marcus?” Luke asked him. “Are you touched in the head, man? You don’t recognize a good, honest woman when you see one. How could you do that to her, when you know how badly she’s been hurt?”
Marcus braced his elbow against the wall and supported his head with his hand. “Lay off, man.” He shook his head, perplexed. “No, I’m not proud of myself. I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for me to behave naturally with Amanda. I do know that I can’t let her establish any contact with Amy. If Amy starts to like her, she’ll be hurt when we go our separate ways—as you and I both know we will—and she’s already suffered too much. Having her mother reject her is enough.”
“You go right ahead and fool yourself. Where do you keep the bedding? I’m going to turn in. Good night…Oh, Marcus.”
“What?”
“If you’d just try to be your normal self, this would be a peaceful, maybe even a happy home. Amanda is a terrific woman.”
In the quiet house, only the wind could be heard bending the trees as the storm moved off the coast and out to the ocean. Marcus leaned his big muscular frame against the banister at the bottom step and looked up the stairs. How could he have done it, he asked himself. He felt protective toward her, had from the very first. Yet he’d deliberately hurt her when she was only expressing concern. You go right ahead and fool yourself, Luke had said. He wasn’t fooling himself, he argued to himself, he was protecting his child. And he didn’t want any involvement with Amanda or any other woman. He had taken care of Amy by himself since she was two years old, and he would continue to take care of her. “I should have asked him how he knew Amanda was a terrific woman after a mere half-hour conversation with her. Oh, hell. I know she probably is, and that’s the trouble,” he murmured, as he forced himself to climb the stairs.
He saw the light shining beneath her door and paused. She’d been up there nearly three hours, he estimated, and was still awake. What had he done to her? Marcus struggled against his deeply ingrained ethics and lost the battle. He raised his hand, uncertain of his move and, for the first time, knocked on Amanda’s bedroom door. He did it not knowing what he would say. After he knocked several times, she opened it and looked up at him, her wide black eyes reddened by hours of tears. Marcus stared at her, the epitome of femininity in a lacy peach peignoir that covered her from her neck to her bare toes. He wanted her. And the knowledge shook him. He stood there speechless as desire washed through him with such stunning force that he would have left if she hadn’t spoken.
“Marcus…” It was barely more than a sigh, falling off her tongue as if pulled by the force of gravity. His hypnotic gaze bore into her like a sharp drill. He exuded pure magnetism, and the female in her responded to his maleness. She gasped, remembering what she’d felt when she’d caught him watching her right after he and Luke walked in the house, and wrapped her arms around herself for protection as she shivered, rooted to the spot.
“My God!” he muttered, stepping into the room and opening his arms to her. She went into them without a second of hesitation. Her thoughts centered on her need to be held, and when he pulled her to him and cradled her head against his broad shoulder, she moved into him. She relished the comfort of his hand roaming her back, shoulders and arms, caressing her. Zombie-like, she tiled her head back in order to look at him, and he lowered his head. He’s going to kiss me, she thought, and knew that she wanted it. Wanted him. But he stopped and drew back, shaking his head as if in wonder. At her puzzled expression, he pulled her closer and hugged her, then stepped back.
Marcus took her hand and walked into her sitting room, away from that enticing bed. He hadn’t meant to make a move on Amanda, not then, not ever. But his body hadn’t taken his intentions into account. One look at her, red-eyed and miserable, her brown face open and unadorned, and he had wanted her at a gut-searing level. He sat there with both of her hands in his big one, not talking, hardly breathing. Recovering his equilibrium. That had been close.
“I know it isn’t enough to say I’m sorry. We both know you didn’t deserve what I did. I…I hope you won’t hold it against me and that you’ll be able to forget it. I don’t ever remember being so unnecessarily unkind to anyone. It’s been a rough day, and that may account for it; I don’t know. Anyway, I wanted you to know that I regret being rude to you.”
“But you meant it, Marcus. Maybe not so harshly, but you meant it.” He spread his legs, let his elbows rest on his knees and clasped his hands. He knew his response was important to her. But if he told the truth…he had to; he hated lying and liars.
“Yes, I meant it. But I didn’t mean to appear vicious. I know you’re concerned about Amy, but we’ll separate, and that’s it. So I don’t want her to become attached to you.”
Amanda let her hands fall into her lap. As an apology, it was one of the poorest she had ever witnessed.
“And your telling me about her condition would attach her to me?” She was pushing him, but she didn’t care; he deserved it.
“No. Hell, I don’t know. Talking it over with you seemed like the beginning of something that I don’t want.” It wasn’t much of an explanation, and she was tempted to tell him so, but Aunt Meredith had always said that you got more flies with honey than with vinegar.
“It seemed like such a natural thing for you to do,” she said, softly, although she didn’t feel that she should apologize. Oh, the devil with sweetness, she decided, as her anger surfaced. “Any person who knew what that child went through today would be concerned, and you’re old enough to know that. I’m not going to apologize for showing an interest in her. You’re just paranoid, and it wouldn’t hurt you to take a good look at yourself. I was being friendly, Marcus, because I really want us to be friends, but I won’t give my blood for it.”
She got up to dismiss him, then surprised herself by asking, “What happened to make you so wary of people?” That marriage, she thought, and sat back down. “Marcus, what was your wife like?”
“You don’t want to know, believe me.”
“Oh, yes I do.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake? You don’t believe in giving a man one bit of privacy, do you?”
Amanda wasn’t going to be put off. “She must have been exceptional to have driven you to such bitterness. Did you love her so much?”
“I loved her.” He gave her the bare facts.
“Is she beautiful?” Amanda wasn’t sure she wanted to know, because she thought herself plain, but she couldn’t force herself not to ask.
She stared at him in amazement when he laughed, harshly. Nastily. “Beautiful? Helena? Oh, yes, she’s that, all right. Not many women can claim to be the top fashion model on two continents. Oh, yes. Not one processed, glossy strand is ever out of place. Why, the very thought of me seeing her without her famous face made up to perfection annoyed the hell out of her. I still wonder what made her disfigure herself enough to have Amy, and why it came as a surprise to me when she decided that she wasn’t doing it again, no matter how I felt, made certain of that and damned the consequences.” Amanda couldn’t hide her shock, nor her sadness at the obvious strength of his bitterness.
She looked at him then, but spoke mostly to herself. “If I had been in her place, I would have cherished what I had. Some people have all the luck, blessings or whatever you want to call it. And how do they treat it? They practically laugh in God’s face.”
Marcus was sitting beside her, and he had to turn so that he could see her face fully. Her words had touched him more than any statement of intended sympathy ever could have, but when he saw her tears, he had a sense of unease. “Don’t cry for me, Amanda.”
She let the tears roll, as if she hadn’t heard him, but she looked him in the eye and told him, “I never realized that a person could find bitterness to be such a loving, congenial companion.” Then she left him sitting there and didn’t say good-night. But she couldn’t have gone far, he figured, maybe to the middle of her room, before she was back. He sat where she had left him, immobile, contemplating her parting words. The frown that he hoped would discourage further conversation brought another of her big smiles.
“Marcus, you could really use a sense of humor.” At that, he stood up, his imposing physique looming over her. She doesn’t give an inch, he thought, when her smile got broader.
“Why are you suddenly so happy?” he queried, his words tinged with gruffness.
She grinned, her eyes sparkling in a way that he hadn’t seen before. “Because the operation is over, and the doctors expect that she’ll be as good as new. And I’m happy about it, even if you are a grouch.”
“I’m not a grouch, and my sense of humor is as good as the next guy’s,” he informed her. “I’m just a troubled parent. Wait until you get to be a mother. You haven’t worried yet, believe me.”
Amanda regarded him steadily, her face still beaming. “If you’ve got any advice, I’ll gladly take it.” A softer, less defensive mood pervaded him, as he took in her smile, her guileless demeanor and her cheerful warmth. The woman wasn’t beautiful, but she was charismatic, and in that flowing peach gown and peignoir, she was the epitome of feminine softness. A man could get used to that kind of woman. If she wasn’t beautiful, she sure seemed like it. He felt a rush of blood and the swift tightening of his groin and ordered his libido under control. He wouldn’t let her do this to him, he told himself for the second time that night.
His self-control in working order, Marcus grazed her cheek lightly with the back of his left hand and admonished her, “Go to bed, Amanda, before you get into trouble.” She raised one eyebrow, and he watched her smile slowly evaporate as she examined his face. “You heard me.” He said it gently, but in such a way that she couldn’t mistake his meaning nor his sincerity. She went into her room and closed the door.
Amanda hung her peignoir in the closet, opened the window wider and went to bed. She had a sense of unease as she turned out the light on her night table. She might have undertaken more than she could handle. She sensed trouble if she didn’t watch her step with that sleeping giant across the hall. She didn’t doubt that he could be trusted, that he was a gentleman, but she had to admit that her feelings for Pearce Lamont never even approached what she’d felt for Marcus a few minutes earlier. If she had to live in that house with him for a year…She let the thought slide and, as though to banish it altogether turned over so quickly that the bed seemed to swirl around and she had to grasp the side of the mattress to steady herself.
Reminded that she hadn’t had any options before he agreed to their arrangement, she told herself to be thankful and not grumble; being susceptible to a man like Marcus only meant that she was female and human. Even so, her reaction to him had surprised her, and it was he who had stopped that almost kiss when she should have done it. But she had no intention of congratulating him on having such self-control; men had never found it impossible to withstand her charms. “I’m safe from him and from me, too,” she told herself unhappily just before she started counting sheep.
Chapter 3
Ten days after he’d stopped himself from kissing Amanda, Marcus made another trip down to earth and had another hard battle with his feelings. Having just arrived home, jolted by the sound of what seemed like thunder, he raced up the stairs four at a time, feeling as if his heart had fallen into his stomach. What on earth was that noise? He had walked into the front door and gone to the kitchen for some thirst-quenching iced tea. The doctors had told him that Amy was progressing even more rapidly than they had anticipated, and that her therapy would start in a week, so he had come home feeling more relieved and more lighthearted than he had in more than a year. And now this. Where had the noise come from? Something had literally shaken the house, or at least it had sounded that way.
“Amanda! Amanda!” Where was she? He knew she was at home; she hadn’t even put her car in the garage. He ran into her bedroom and found it empty. He listened, heard the water and momentarily froze. If she was in that bathroom with the door locked…He tried the door, pushing it with full force as he did so. “Amanda? Amanda, my God. Are you all right?” He took in the incredulous scene. She lay on her back in the tub, the shower rod, curtain and part of the wall were in the tub with her, and water from the shower sprayed her face. Quickly, he turned off the tap, cleared the debris away from her, lifted her naked body into his arms and stumbled into her bedroom, where he lay her gently on the bed. Then he raised the edge of the bedspread and threw it across her body.
“What happened, Amanda?” He leaned over her. “Amanda, answer me!” His gaze roamed from her head to her feet. “I’m taking you to the hospital. You may have done some damage. What were you doing? Amanda, talk to me!” She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came. He dried her body, got a pair of slacks and a robe from her closet and dressed her as best he could, but by the time he got her in the car, her continued silence had alarmed him. He was thankful that the trip to the hospital was a short one. What if she lost it? He paced the floor in front of the emergency room for what seemed like hours, until the resident opened the door and beckoned him.
“Mr. Hickson, your wife is mildly in shock, but otherwise all right. We’ve given her some medication, and here’s a prescription for some more. Give this to her at bedtime, as instructed. Nothing is broken, but she’ll probably be sore tomorrow. And I’d see that she stays off her feet for a few days.”
Marcus fought to make himself ask that most important of questions. In the end, he didn’t ask it. He just said, “She’s three months pregnant, doctor.”
The doctor smiled, seeming to understand his reticence. “Yes, I know. That’s why she reacted this way. Going into shock, I mean. She was afraid that she had injured the baby or that she might lose it. But she’s healthy and strong so, as I said, she won’t have more than a little soreness. Just keep her in bed for a few days.”
Marcus nodded. “May I see her?” He wanted to see for himself that she was all right. Since he’d met Amanda, he had never known her to be speechless, and he didn’t think that was a good sign. He stood looking down at her, so small in that ridiculously ungainly, utilitarian hospital gown. She opened her eyes and lifted her hand to touch him.
“Thanks for helping me and bringing me to the hospital, Marcus. I was so scared. I slipped while I was taking a shower. Then when I grabbed the shower curtain rod for support, it came out of the wall, and I lost my balance and fell. I was scared to death that I was going to lose the baby.”
“I’m glad I was there. Actually, I had been in the house less than a minute when I heard that noise. The doctor’s going to let me take you home, but only if you promise to stay in bed for three or four days. Will you?” He contemplated the strangeness of the situation. He wanted to comfort her, to hold her, but that wasn’t the kind of relationship they had. Unable to resist at least a minimum display of tenderness, he caressed her cheek and had the pleasure of seeing her turn her face fully into his palm, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
Marcus combed her still damp hair with his fingers, and put her robe on her while they waited for the wheelchair, as the hospital regulations required. And he was very much aware that, within the past hour or so, his relationship with his wife had undergone a subtle change. He wheeled her out to the car, lifted her to put her in the backseat and stared down at her in wonder. He’d had her naked in his arms and had been so alarmed that he’d barely looked at her. That thought brought a half smile from him. Must be getting slack in testosterone, he told himself derisively.
Marcus laid Amanda on her bed, realized it was still damp from his having placed her there earlier, and took her into his room instead. He noted with considerable amusement that she offered no objection. Didn’t even seem concerned. Where was the feisty, independent woman who had turned his life around?
He fluffed the pillow, propped it against the headboard and let her rest there. “Your bed’s wet. Stay here while I get some fresh sheets and try to make it presentable.” When she didn’t answer, merely nodded, Marcus straightened up and looked down at her. There she was in his bed, completely agreeable to his every suggestion, soft and submissive. A woman who could tie him into knots with her big black eyes or her come-here-tome smile. Who said he didn’t have a sense of humor? Marcus threw his head back and roared with laughter.
“What’s set you off?” she asked him testily. He ignored her peevishness and grinned.
“‘Never trust a husband too far, nor a bachelor too near.’ I’m about as close as you can get to a combination of the two.”
She glared at him, trying to ignore the mischievous dance of his luscious eyes. That quote was not only to the point, he could hardly have found one more fitting.
“Why on earth would you read Helen Rowland? She wasn’t exactly enamored of the human male.”
So he had thought that this time he’d outwitted her, had he? He shrugged in the manner of a man caught loafing on the job. “Helena was always quoting her to me, so I read the stuff in order to defend myself. Phooey was my judgment.”
That was the opening she wanted. “‘The average man’s judgment is so poor, he runs a risk every time he uses it.’”
Marcus spread both hands, palms out, in surrender. “Okay, you’ve got me. What pseudo genius wrote that?”
“Ed Howe. And I don’t know whether or not he was a genius.” Her interest in their fun game waned, and she had begun to favor her left shoulder. He remade her bed quickly, carried her to it, lay her there carefully and gently tucked the covers around her.
“I’m going to the drugstore for your medicine.”
“Could you help me into my gown before you go, please?” It worried him that she favored both her left shoulder and her lower back and that she seemed reluctant to move. And the silent plea in her eyes…Was she praying for her baby’s safety? He couldn’t think of anything but that the woman whom he had loved and who had taken his name in a solemn vow had not wanted either one of the children he gave her.
Marcus looked down at Amanda, rooted in his tracks, as the picture of her completely nude in his arms floated back to him. In his mind’s eye, he could see her beautiful and generous breasts with the glistening beige tips, the soft brown flesh of her body, her slightly rounded belly and, below it, the thick, curly black patch that guarded the seat of her passion. He turned quickly, hoping that she hadn’t seen the sudden and unmistakable evidence of his desire for her, and tried to deal with the wild sensation that had him suddenly shackled.
“I’ll be right back” was all he could manage, as he moved away from her bed. He found the peach gown, choosing that one because it was so feminine, and managed to help her into it without looking at her. Perspiration beaded his forehead. He patted her in a self-conscious gesture of comfort, but he wasn’t looking at her and was unprepared for the feel of her erected nipple under his palm. Shocked, he looked over at her to apologize and swallowed it when he saw that she was as disconcerted as he. Best to pretend that nothing had happened.
The medicine she took in the emergency room had begun to make Amanda sleepy, but that light touch of Marcus’ big hand on her breast brought her fully awake. It was accidental, she knew, but that made it all the more erotic. She didn’t like being vulnerable to a man who didn’t want her close to him or to his motherless child. And she certainly didn’t want to feel the raw attraction for him that had begun to suffuse her with increasing frequency. Thank God, he didn’t seem to know it.
There was much about her that Marcus didn’t know and that she didn’t want him to learn. Her almost total lack of experience with men wouldn’t gain her any kudos with him, she reasoned, and might even place her at a disadvantage. And it wouldn’t help if he knew how low her self-esteem had sunk when she learned of her pregnancy. Only that would explain her willingness to bargain marriage with a stranger. She rubbed her tingling breast, wanting his hand back there. “Slow down, Amanda,” she admonished herself. “Only the man responsible finds a pregnant woman attractive, and even for some of them, it’s a turnoff.”
She looked up at the ceiling. Lord, was it too much to ask that a man care deeply for her just once in her life? Forever was too much to hope for. But couldn’t she know what it was like, how it felt, just once? She almost wished that Marcus—when he was tender and caring—hadn’t taught her what was missing in her life.
Marcus returned from the drugstore and found her asleep, her body curled into a fetal position. He stood over her for all of ten minutes, wanting her. Then, in a fit of disgust with himself, he put the medicine on her night table and went to the kitchen, where he dumped the chocolates he’d bought for her safely into the garbage pail. Then he wandered around the kitchen trying to find something to cook for dinner. He hadn’t prepared dinner since coming to live with Amanda, and he had gotten used to her mouthwatering meals. He got busy preparing the food, but his mind was on Amanda. An unusually interesting woman; he hadn’t counted on that.
He let his mind wander over the day’s events. His dangerous attraction to Amanda gave him reason for concern, though he could handle that, but what he’d felt for her when he’d carried her in his arms, dressed and undressed her, was more than lust. He had to watch his step with her. And she was more vulnerable than she knew, he suspected. When he had stopped by the school to report Amanda’s illness, the female colleague who had taken the message had been vicious.
He suspected the woman of jealousy. But why? Unless the two had competed for the principal’s post—and from the look of her he doubted that—what reason could she have for such blatant animosity toward a person with Amanda’s gentle manners? He’d been astonished both at the woman’s words and at her willingness to reveal her dislike to her boss’s husband. He hated seeing black women with their hair dyed red, and this one looked as though her head was on fire. He shook his head as though to rid his vision of her image.
“You don’t mean that Amanda Ross married a number twelve like you. What did you do, make her pregnant?” the woman had asked him. His acerbic reply had definitely not gained Amanda a friend. Sensing that he’d seen her somewhere before, he’d asked her where that might have been. After assuring him that, if she’d ever seen him, she’d never have forgotten it, she replied, “If you’re in on Portsmouth’s social life, you might have noticed me at the Lamont estate. They’re friends of mine.” It was clearly something of which she was proud. He had been careful not to react visibly, because he had learned not to show his hand to an adversary. The woman was a potential source of trouble for Amanda, an unsuccessful competitor and a friend of her unborn child’s ruthless grandfather. He’d have to find out what she knew. She had wanted to prolong their conversation, but he’d finished it, probably more curtly than was wise given the woman’s antagonism toward Amanda.
Odor and smoke from the frying chicken legs warned him that his dinner was in jeopardy, and he brought his mind to the present. He arranged trays of the chicken, baked potatoes, string beans and sliced tomatoes, got iced tea from the refrigerator and hesitated. What the heck? It never hurt to be nice. He’d eat his dinner upstairs with Amanda, he decided, adding glasses of water to their trays. But the minute he saw the glow on her face as he set out their food, he wondered if he was sending her the wrong signal.
Marcus had stayed away from his factory while Amanda was recovering, and he had a backlog of work. “I intend to spend all of Saturday and Sunday in Portsmouth at the factory,” he told her as they cleared away the remains of Friday night’s supper, “but I’ll be here as usual Saturday night.”
“Want me to drive you to the station tomorrow morning?” His answer was going to disappoint her, but he couldn’t help it. She wanted him to accept their relationship and was looking for a sign of his willingness to do that. But he didn’t see how he could accept it, when he couldn’t feel like a man so long as she footed the bills.
“That won’t be necessary. I need the exercise.” It was a pitiable excuse, and he knew it, but he didn’t want to encourage her by letting her do things for him. Afraid that he’d hurt her, he looked up from the pan he was scrubbing, ready to gloss it over, and was surprised that her slacks had gotten so tight, showing her pregnancy, and that her breasts were getting larger. But what shook him was the open plea in her eyes. A wordless appeal to his decency and, God help him, to his masculinity. He dropped the brush and didn’t bother to dry his wet hands; getting to her was an all-powerful urge, and he gave in to it. He’d barely touched her shoulder, and she was in his arms. She looked up at him, her eyes ablaze with passion, and his defences disintegrated. He lowered his head and brushed her voluptuous lips with his own, then raised up slightly to look into her eyes. To check her submission. Females had craved him ever since his voice had changed. But not like this. He squeezed her to him, one hand at the back of her head and the other spread across her buttocks, and kissed her with all of the yearning and hunger that he’d stored in five weeks of want and deprivation. He ran his tongue around her lips and, when she didn’t respond to suit him, he nipped her bottom lip with his teeth. Her lips parted, and he found a place for his foraging tongue within her sweet mouth and let it roam until, as if aching for more, she caught it between her lips and sucked it as if it were the essence of life. He felt her fingers weaving through his thick curly hair, caressing his shoulders and neck, testing his biceps, learning him.
Her response almost brought him to his knees, a position with which he was unfamiliar, and his heart was a pounding drum, beating furiously in his chest, as he gloried in the warmth, the feel, the taste of her. He told himself to pull back, to stop before it got out of hand. But instead, he increased the pressure, deepened the kiss, relishing the fact that she was with him all the way. He told himself to let it go, before it was too late. But he didn’t want to stop, and she didn’t appear to want him to. She seemed to want and to need exactly what he was giving her. And she clung to him. He kissed her eyes, her ears, her neck and her throat as he murmured unintelligible things to her. She trembled from head to foot, enthralled in his sweet loving and consuming passion, released, as if he were catapulting her into the stratosphere. Learning what a man’s tenderness could do to a woman. She craved him in every molecule of her body, and could not have withheld her feelings if her life had depended on it. I should stop him, she thought, because he’ll make me suffer for this. But I don’t care; I need him. I need this. She burrowed into him, holding him. His arousal stunned her, but she accepted him without reservation and tightened her grip on his waist.
As if shaken, she swayed unsteadily and he set her away from him. “Don’t you know how to say stop?” he asked her, his voice a gravelly whisper. She reached for him as she reeled backward, and he caught her, holding her just a little too long.
“Amanda, the way things were going, I would have been inside of you in minutes. I don’t think that’s what you want, and I know it isn’t what I want. We’re both tired and strung out. I’ll see you tomorrow night.” He headed down the hallway.
She ran after him, amazed that he could turn his feelings off at will, while she still staggered under the impact of the first genuine loving she’d ever had. “What’s with you? You may be tired and unstrung, mister, but I’m not.”
He paused, his expression bland, as though his energy had been sapped. “Unless angels come down here, Amanda, we’re going to separate on April eleventh. You know it, and I know it and, if we ignore that fact, we will both regret it. So let’s not fool ourselves. We could easily step across that line and then find the consequences intolerable.” His voice softened. “I won’t risk it, and neither should you.”
“You’re not willing to try?”
“Amanda, a sensible man won’t stick his bare hand in the fire twice, no matter that the flame is a different color. I can’t risk it. I thought I could, but then I remember what is was like…I’m sorry.”
Amanda climbed the stairs with difficulty. She couldn’t say she was sorry that he’d kissed her that way, but she knew she would go through hell reliving it for the rest of her life. What a man he was, she mused. He had stood there in all his ebony male glory, a faultlessly crafted colossus, surrounding her with his consummate male magnetism, beguiling her senses. He had shown her the strong, but loving, gentle and tender man that he was so clever at hiding. Then he had gently, but firmly pushed her away. She didn’t think she could tolerate eleven more months of it.
Amanda got ready for bed and reached for the light to turn it out. Her gaze caught a reflection of herself in the mirror and she walked toward it. What did he see in her? Why had he kissed her and held her like that? She knew he hadn’t wanted to do it and had given in to it against his will. Maybe he just needed a woman, and she was there. That doesn’t make sense, she reasoned; a man who looked like Marcus Hickson didn’t have problems getting a woman. If he needed a woman, there was probably one waiting somewhere.
Agitated and, for the first time, uncertain that she could handle living with Marcus on their agreed-upon terms, she slipped on a cotton robe and walked out on the porch. She listened for the lapping and sloshing of the waves and heard it, but for once, the tune that had nourished her since birth failed to comfort her. Cool, salty air whipped in from the Albemarle Sound, bringing goose bumps to her arms, and the brisk wind that brought it trapped her long thick hair in the branches of a ficus tree that stood behind her in a corner. She looked out toward the Sound for a few minutes and turned to go back into the house, but she couldn’t free her hair. She looked over her shoulder at the tree. I’ll never be able to move it, she thought, declining to panic.
Amanda had been alone for so much of her life that her next thought was whether she could scream loud enough to attract attention. She relaxed when a light flickered on in Marcus’ room. Amused at herself that she could have forgotten his presence after what he’d done to her only minutes earlier, she took a deep breath and called him.
Marcus stepped out on the porch and looked around. “Amanda, did I hear you call me?”
“I’m over here.” She disliked the plaintive sound of her voice; after all, any husband could do what she was about to request of him. Any husband! “The wind blew my hair into this tree, and I can’t get it out.”
“Don’t you have a light out here somewhere. It would be a pity if you had to stand there until daylight.” She told him where to find the switch, and he turned on the light and walked over to her.
“I can’t get between you and the tree, so this will take a while.” Heat suffused her cheeks, and excitement raced through her when he reached over her and began to free her hair strand by strand. He must have noticed her unsteadiness, because he tried to put her at ease.
“Hold on to me, Amanda. If you lean back, you’ll be in a worse pickle than you are now.” Apparently searching for levity to abate the rising sexual tension, he added, “And don’t act so scared; I don’t usually bite.”
“I notice you said, ‘usually.’” She folded her arms across her middle in an effort to create a buffer between them. But he leaned over her to unthread some of her hair from around a branch, and she felt his chest against her face. She couldn’t stop herself from inhaling deeply the scent of his male body. Strength and power emanated from him, and she stifled a rising resentment that it should have such a heady effect on her even as she squelched an urge to wrap her arms around him and let herself soak up the sweetness and know again the torment of holding him close.
He stepped back and looked down at her, his mouth pursed in a rueful smile. “Are you getting the impression that something or somebody is playing tricks on us?” She didn’t answer at once and nearly stepped back, but he quickly prevented it, holding her head with his hand.
“You want to undo all this tedious work I’ve done? You didn’t answer my question.” Amanda couldn’t think of a reason for the dazzling grin that spread across his face, unless it was from a desire to bamboozle her more than the scent of him and the heat of his body had already done.
“How about you’re a human trip-hammer, and I’m standing over a trapdoor? Where’s the trick in that?” she asked him, unwilling to pretend. He let several recently freed strands of hair cascade over her shoulder.
“You wouldn’t be fooling, would you? If you aren’t, let me tell you, lady, that kind of joking is dangerous. And if you are…” He shook his head. “It’s still dangerous.” She wanted him to move away from her, but he didn’t give her an inch, just continued unravelling her hair from the ficus branch.
“Have you almost finished?” she asked him, embarrassed by the quake in her voice. “Maybe you ought to get a pair of scissors and whack it off.”
“Come on, now. Much as you love this thick wooly stuff, you’d cut if off just to get rid of me? That’s hardly flattering.” Let him think what he liked. She had learned that Marcus mastered his emotions with the ease of a glider. She didn’t know much about men, much less how to handle herself around them. But she figured that even if she’d been an expert on them, Marcus Hickson would still be an enigma to her. That is in the past, though, she assured herself. She had just begun to learn that he could have the kind of feelings he generated in her and she knew that, if he were a different kind of man, she’d be in his bed right then. In court, whose word would have the greater weight? Blood rushed to her face, neck and ears, and she lowered her head to prevent his seeing her telltale facial expression. He reached around her and began to untangle some strands from a branch below her waist.
“Marcus…Marcus, would you…please…”
“Would I please what?” He released her hair, grasped her shoulders and took a step back. She looked up into eyes that burned with want and struggled not to let her gaze drift down to his beguiling lips. His rugged breathing tempted her to test her feminine power, and excitement sent shivers through her, as he seemed to weigh her in some way, to anticipate her next move. His hands tightened on her shoulders.
“You’re new at this, Amanda, so listen. Whatever you’re feeling, I’m feeling it at least twice as strongly. That’s because I know what there could be between us, and you don’t. If I get into trouble, Amanda, it’s on my own terms. Nobody leads me astray. So don’t be tempted to see how far you can go with me.” He put a hand behind her head, pulled her hair over her right shoulder and pinched her playfully on her nose. Then he turned and went to his room.
Marcus caught the first morning train to Portsmouth. He’d spent the previous night wrestling with the feelings of tenderness and possessiveness he’d had for Amanda while he picked the strands of her hair from that tree. He wondered where their relationship was headed, but the thought left him when he arrived at the factory and noticed that Jerzy Heiner was already at work.
“I’m planning to ask for an hour off this afternoon,” Jerzy explained. “Oh, yeah,” he said, as though in afterthought, “you aren’t planning to sell the factory, are you?” Marcus stopped raising the window, and turned toward his trusted small-strings expert.
“Of course not. Why do you ask?”
“A man came here just after you left yesterday asking about inventory, profit, outstanding debt and a lot of other things that I told him were none of his business. If you aren’t planning to sell, how’d he get the nerve?”
“Beats me. But I’ll check on it. Let me know if you see him around.” Marcus could hardly wait for his bank to open. He called Allen Baldridge, the president, and learned that it was the bank’s policy to list large mortgages on commercial property in the hope of unloading them if the debtor defaulted. The bank had already had several offers for Marcus’ mortgage, but had refused in view of its long relationship with the Hickson family. However, in the event of a default, the bank would sell to the highest bidder.
Marcus reflected on that news for a while after hanging up. His father and the man with whom he’d just spoken had been roommates at Morehouse College and as tight as peas in a pod. When you had your hand out, he recalled, you didn’t have friends in high places, only some big shots you’d once known who now considered themselves your superior. He’d show them; he’d work that much harder to repay that bank loan. It wouldn’t be without a struggle, and he hadn’t thought it would. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of debt plus what he considered exorbitant interest was an enormous short-term load for any small business. His stomach tightened with uneasiness. He had mortgaged his house and his business, sold his car, Steinway and Stradivarius, given up his credit cards and left himself with nothing but his clothes and his tools. In the end, he’d given up his freedom. But if Amy walked again, he’d have no regrets. He realized for the first time that he could easily lose the fruits of twelve years’ hard work. Everything he had.
Three hours later, emotionally drained from grappling with the problems he faced, he put the felt on the last hammer of a concert grand and looked over at an employee working near him. “Let’s go out for coffee,” he said to the man. “If you feel as old as I do right now, you can use a pick-me-up, too.” Surprised that his boss would take a mid-morning break, the man raised both eyebrows and started for the door.
Amanda awoke early the next morning to discover that Marcus had already left. She decided that he’d probably done that to prevent her from giving him breakfast, and that was just as well. When he was untangling her hair, he had suggested that she might have tried to seduce him, and she couldn’t help laughing at the idea, wishing she knew how. He had been the seducer, and she figured that if he were as clever as he seemed, he’d know that. She dressed in a navy, ruffled skirt and pink peasant blouse and went to the hospital. Anyone who knew her situation would consider her reckless, but she was beyond caring. After reading the second chapter of a novel to a patient with impaired vision, she made her way to the children’s ward, where she identified herself as a volunteer—which she was—and asked directions to Amy’s room. She found the child looking listlessly out of the window, ignoring the other children in the four-bed room. She gave Amy a cone of vanilla ice cream that she’d gotten from the vending machine and asked her whether she’d like to read some stories. To her surprise, the child’s eyes sparkled excitedly at the prospect of reading stories. Amanda read Winnie the Pooh to her, talked with her for a bit and promised a return visit. She had liked Amy, an attractive, bright child, and wanted to see more of her, but she decided not to tell Marcus that she had met his daughter.
Walking down State Street later, after having bought her first maternity clothes, she passed a toy store and couldn’t resist the yellow floppy-eared bunny that gazed beady-eyed at her from the window. Amy hadn’t had a single toy, so she bought it for her, ignoring the warning that sounded from both her conscience and her common sense. She walked briskly up State Street, humming an old tune, feeling happy and even lighthearted, in anticipation of her Sunday visit with Amy while Marcus worked at his factory in Portsmouth.
“Morning, Sam. Lovely Saturday morning, isn’t it?” She hadn’t seen him for weeks and had wondered about him. She couldn’t imagine State Street without Sam with his archaic four-wheel trash cart, battered hat and highly polished, though worn shoes. She stopped, as always, to greet him, and his black, weathered face immediately became wreathed in smiles.
“Mighty glad to see you feeling better, Miss Amanda.” Sam always called her “Miss Amanda,” which was the Southern custom even if a woman was married. He leaned against his old trash cart and peered at her. “Last time I see’d you, you was a mite troubled. I said prayers for whatever it was that was bothering you.”
Deeply moved at his caring, Amanda reached out to touch his bony shoulder and then, on impulse, leaned over and brushed a kiss on his unshaven cheek. “Oh, Sam, I was troubled, but your prayers must have worked.” It was rare that anyone stopped to talk with Sam, and she realized what her brief greetings meant to him. She told the stunned, happy old man, “Since I last saw you I got married. My name’s Hickson now, and next year I’m going to be principal of the junior high school. Thanks for the prayers.” She waved him goodbye as he ducked his head, but not quickly enough to prevent her seeing the old man’s tears.
Amanda looked at her watch. Marcus wouldn’t be back in Caution Point for another four hours, so she could go back to the hospital and take Amy the bunny. She had enjoyed the little girl’s enthusiasm and warmth and couldn’t wait to see her expressions of delight when she gave her the stuffed animal. She went directly to the child’s room and found her in a deep discussion with Winnie the Pooh, lecturing the imaginary little bear about his bad habit of sticking his nose in honey. Amanda couldn’t resist a laugh, and she thought her heart would burst when Amy’s face blossomed in smiles at the sight of her.
“Lady! I thought you were coming tomorrow.” She walked over to the bed, and when Amy raised both arms to her, leaned over and hugged her.
“What’s in that package, Lady?” Precocious little thing, aren’t you, Amanda mused. She handed her the package, sat down in the nearby chair and watched in awe at the child’s patience; in all her years as a teacher, she’d never known a child to unwrap a package with such care. She supposed pain would do that to a child, but this one showed no ill effects of her ordeal; bright, happy and bubbling with energy, Amy had the personality of a child who had known deep love and caring and who expected to be loved. If anyone knew how much Marcus loved his child, she did. Excitement that dissolved into shivers coursed through her at the memory of his passion and, though she fought the image, in her mind’s eye, she saw him as a lover. Her lover. She forced her attention to the little girl, hoping to banish Marcus from her thoughts, but she could have saved herself the trouble. Amy was Marcus incarnate, with the same curly black hair and honey-brown eyes.
“Lady! Lady! Is it mine? I love him. I love him.” Her squeals brought a nurse running to the room. In answer to Amy’s question, the nurse assured the child that she could keep the bunny. Amanda didn’t doubt the difficulty the nurse would have had if she hadn’t allowed it.
“Thanks,” Amy said, wearing the famous Hickson smile. “I’m going to name him Peter.” Amanda left immediately, in spite of Amy’s pleading; she couldn’t risk Marcus’ arriving early and finding her there.
Marcus stared unseeing at the console in front of him. He had been working on that piano for hours, and he might as well have been in Caution Point; he hadn’t done anything right. Normally, he would have had those hammers positioned within an hour; he was, after all, a master craftsman. But not today. On that Sunday morning, his mind was not on his work; it was on Amanda Ross Hickson and their torrid kiss a few nights earlier. Why couldn’t he keep a level head around her? What was it about her, he mused, that made him lose sight of things that were so important to him? And why couldn’t he have found a way to call a halt to it without making her feel as though she might have done something wrong? He’d been gentle, but he suspected that she’d felt hurt nevertheless. She hadn’t been the one to start that…that heated kiss. He groaned. He didn’t want to think of it. He’d been married, and he had known other women, as well, but he couldn’t recall ever having a woman respond to him the way she had. She hadn’t cared about anything, except her need of him. Only him. He got up and walked around, trying to shake off the sensation, the feeling that her scent and warmth still surrounded him. He had never known a woman like Amanda, but he knew that if ever she was in his arms in his bed, she would give him everything and drive him wild in the process. He swore loudly as the telephone interrupted his woolgathering.
“Hickson. We’re closed today.”
“If you’re closed, what are you doing there?”
“What’s up, Luke?” Luke explained that he’d called Marcus at home and learned from Amanda that he was at the factory.
“How about meeting me for lunch? River Café all right with you?”
“Yeah. Twenty minutes.”
“Why so long? It’s only around the corner from you.”
“Yeah. Right.” He hung up. He loved his only brother, but he was not keen on seeing him right then. Luke was the most perceptive person he had ever been around and had been able to read him accurately even when they were growing up.
Marcus didn’t remember having seen River Café almost empty at noon, but this was the first time he’d been in the place on Sunday. The thought that he might be out of step with most of Portsmouth’s working men didn’t give him a feeling of virtuousness; instead, he suddenly felt tired. When would it end? They found their favorite table, sat down and ordered beer.
“Why are you working on Sunday?” Luke asked. Marcus told him of his conversation with his bank’s president, adding that he regretted having taken out all of his loans with one bank and paying them off would be a Herculean job.
“Don’t blame yourself, Marcus; our grandfather banked there. If that’s Baldridge’s policy, I’ll move my account. What kind of contingency plans do you have if you can’t make those payments?”
“I’ve got an order to repair a priceless seventeenth-century harpsichord. As soon as I get all the parts I need, I’ll start on it. I’ve placed orders with master craftsmen in London and Leipzig. When that job is finished and when my suit with the insurance company liable for Amy’s injuries pays up, I’ll be in the clear. Otherwise…” He threw up his hands. “It’s anybody’s guess.”
“When is the hearing on your claim or have you decided to settle out of court?”
“I’m going to court, but I’m having trouble getting my suit on the docket.” He added that his lawyer was working on it.
“Good. I may be able to call in some favors, if you have trouble with it.”
Marcus nodded his thanks. He looked around for a waitress, saw one who wore a short tight skirt and had streaks of yellow in her black hair, reminding him of Iris Elms. He told Luke of his conversation with her.
“She’s a source of trouble, Luke.”
Luke nodded. “I’ll say she is. Have you told Amanda?”
Marcus shook his head. “No. She almost panicked when I told her the old man might try to take the child. I hate to upset her with this.”
“I don’t agree with you. That’s a fox in the henhouse. Amanda is that woman’s boss. You have to warn her.”
“I’ll tell her to watch her back, and I’ll do what I can to protect her, but I’m not going to alarm her unnecessarily.”
“Yeah. Well, if you need me…” The waitress arrived. Luke ordered pan-fried Norfolk spots (a small sweet fish) with hush puppies, and Marcus settled for Cajun fried catfish, French fries and coleslaw. They each ordered another beer.
The waitress didn’t seem anxious to leave. Finally she asked, her tone flirtatious, “Anything else?”
Marcus groaned in disgust, but Luke seemed to think it funny. “Not at noon, honey,” he said, winked and dismissed her. Then he turned to his brother. “What’s eating you, Marcus? And don’t say that nothing is. You can’t even appreciate a little harmless flirtation.”
“I’m a married man.”
Luke snorted. “Really? You’ve consummated this marriage? Congratulations. That’s the best news I’ve heard since we got the result of Amy’s operation. By the way, how is Amy?”
“Amy’s doing great, and my marriage is still one of convenience. Don’t push me, Luke. I’m not in the mood for it.”
“How are Amanda and Amy getting along?” Marcus had low tolerance for Luke’s meddling, but he knew Luke didn’t care. Lately, his older brother seemed to regard their six-year age difference as a license to interfere in his affairs.
“They haven’t met.” There was no point in hedging.
Luke narrowed his eyes. “You haven’t taken Amanda to meet her stepdaughter? Are you out of your mind?”
“I told you not to push. I’m not going to expose Amy to any unnecessary unhappiness. When this year is up, I’m coming back here, and Amanda will be staying in Caution Point. I don’t intend to have Amy’s heart broken. This marriage is a bargain, and I plan to treat it like one.”
“I’m astonished that you can live in the house with a woman like that one, talk to her, eat with her, joke and tease with her and keep your hands off of her. You are keeping your hands off her, aren’t you?” It wasn’t a fair question and it irritated Marcus, because Luke knew that he wouldn’t lie.
“Well, aren’t you?” Marcus knew that his silence was worth a thousand words. Not only had he had his hands on her, but he couldn’t swear that he would refrain from doing it again. He looked at his all-seeing brother and slowly shook his head.
“She gets to me, Luke, like no other woman I’ve ever known. I know I haven’t given her a fair shake. She gives, and I take. She offers everything, and I’m offering her nothing because I don’t have anything to offer. The only time I’ve felt in control, felt comfortable and at times even contented in this situation was when she fell in the bathtub and needed me. And I was there for her, because I wanted to be, because I needed to be. But I had to back off. She’s carrying another man’s child, and all of a sudden I don’t know how I feel about that. I don’t intend for this to be a marriage, but the other night I came pretty close to making it one. I initiated it, but after I got myself in line, I might have made her feel bad. I don’t know. I hope not.”
Luke laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “And it’s eating away at your conscience. Why are you so afraid to care for her? If you’d talk with her about the circumstances, as I did, you’d be more understanding and less wary. I promised myself that I wasn’t going to tell you this, Marcus, but she was a virgin, a thirty-nine-year-old virgin, and the guy showed so little regard for that fact that she had to be treated in the hospital emergency room. She told me that the night I spent with the two of you, and I checked her story. She got there in bad shape.”
Marcus brought his head up sharply, as he sucked in his breath, pulled air through his teeth and released a stinging profanity. “Too bad he’s not around. I would have loved to smash his face.”
“Marcus, go home and look at what you have there. Amanda isn’t a shell of a person like Helena. I told you before you married Helena that she was too self-centered, that she wouldn’t be able to handle the demands of marriage. You loved her, and that was what she wanted—constant admiration. She enjoyed the glamour of being seen with you, of other women envying her. Good-looking woman with good-looking man. Amanda is different, very different, and you know it. There is great depth to her. Real substance. And you’re not going to forget her just because three hundred and sixty-five days have elapsed. You won’t ever forget her. Legally and for all practical purposes, it’s your child she’s carrying. It will bear your name and call you father, and you will always want to know how it’s getting along. Always. Like it or not; those are the facts. And don’t forget that she’s given your Amy a new life; you can’t do any less for her child.”
Marcus nodded as the bright light of knowledge penetrated his mind, and he mulled over words that found their mark and pitched him into distress. “I know all of that, and you know very well that I’ll do the right thing by her. What bothers me is that I don’t have any viable options. The chemistry between us is so strong. Most couples go through a process of getting to know each other, having the attraction between them grow, mature. We started backward with both of us at a disadvantage and with a powerful mutual attraction.” Luke nodded. Marcus knew that Luke had seen it for himself the night that he had slept at their home.
Marcus spoke reluctantly, unaccustomed to sharing such intimacies, even with his brother. “A man wants to protect and care for his woman but, from the outset, I couldn’t have that role. And I don’t want to be married again. I won’t risk it. Not ever. Amanda is a born mother hen and a special woman, but what she wants from a marriage is the whole nine yards. I don’t blame her. It’s her right. But not with me, and I’m going to get out as soon as I can. I’m just going to try not to hurt her anymore. She doesn’t deserve it.” His sigh must have exemplified all that he felt, his hurt and longing, for Luke stared at him. Then he added, “But she’s sweet, Luke. God, she’s so sweet.”
His thoughts of that conversation still plagued him the following afternoon when he went to the hospital, something that he no longer dreaded.
“Hi, Daddy. Do you know about Winnie the poop?”
Marcus beamed at the love of his life. He hadn’t thought that he would ever again see Amy smiling and cheerful and free of pain. He leaned over and kissed her. “You mean, Winnie the Pooh. Yes. But how did you learn about Winnie?”
“A nice lady came and read it to me, Daddy. And she brought me a bunny, too.” He’d noticed how she cuddled the stuffed toy that was almost as big as she. Her toys had been removed to prevent her moving around too much after the operations.
“So you can have toys now?”
“The nurse said I could have Peter.” She kissed the bunny. “Oh, Daddy, bring a book when you come. I already know about Mother Goose and Daddy Goose, too, and I like Daddy Goose the best.”
A tired Marcus looked at his precious little angel. She hadn’t shown any interest in anything for so long. His heart swelled with joy. “Daddy Goose? She read you a story about Daddy Goose?” he asked, disbelieving.
Amy laughed excitedly. “No, Daddy. She told me that story. I said I wanted a story about a daddy goose. She didn’t have the book, so she told me the story. And you know what? Daddy Goose sounded just like you. I liked him much better than Mother Goose. It’s my favorite story.” It had been a rough weekend. He hadn’t gotten much done at the factory and, last night, relations between him and Amanda had been strained. But as he gazed down at the one person who needed him, his mirror image, he felt some of the weight ease from him. His smile came easily, as he squeezed her tightly.
“What’s the lady’s name, honey?”
“I don’t know, Daddy. I just call her Lady.” He kissed her goodbye and left. Somehow, he didn’t want to go home. Amanda would confront him about his inconsistent behavior with her. He didn’t know when, but it was a certainty, and he was not ready for that tonight. Hardly thinking about it, he found himself at Jack and Myrna’s home and knew at once that going there was a mistake. He didn’t want to talk about himself and Amanda. So he drank a mug of coffee, and after an interminable hour of evading their questions, went home, wondering when he’d begun to think of the place as home.
Guilt shot through him when he found her note in a sealed envelope taped to the outside of the front door. She hadn’t told him that she would have an amniocentesis test nor that she had the results. And he hadn’t known, either, that the test could pose problems. Now, she threatened a miscarriage and had gone to the hospital. He went in the house and called a taxi, too drained for the long walk back. Marcus wondered what else was going on that he didn’t know about, and knew that their lack of communication was his fault. Worried and anxious for his wife, he leaned back in the taxi, strung out.
He caught himself rubbing his chin with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, a signal that he faced a moment of truth, and exhaled deeply in an attempt to shrug off his thoughts. But he couldn’t escape the fact that his feeling for Amanda was not the casual interest that one might have in a friend’s well-being, but a deep and personal desire, an increasingly intense concern for her health and happiness. A caring that had nothing to do with lust. When he’d read her note, he’d had a sensation of marbles rattling around in his belly. He didn’t want to care for her nor about her, but he had to admit that fate seemed to be refereeing their game with no consideration for his preferences. He leaned forward.
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