Amanda (41 page)
Authors: Kay Hooper
Walker felt his heart skip a beat and then begin thudding heavily in his chest. Slowly, he said, “I … don’t recall asking you in the last couple of months.”
“No. You never did ask me. You just demanded my promise that I’d marry you. When I grew up.”
He didn’t move or say anything, even more conscious now of his heart pounding.
“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “not once through all of this, not once in all these weeks, have you asked me if I remember you. Why didn’t you ask?” She looked at him, smiling a little.
“At first … because I wanted to wait and see if you brought it up.”
“You mean you wanted to wait and see if I realized that I
should
have remembered you?”
He smiled. “A pretender might have realized that belatedly after finding out that King High was so close —and that path so well-worn.”
“Umm. But you eventually realized I was the real Amanda.” Suddenly curious, she said, “When was that, by the way?”
“The day we made love in the gazebo,” he replied without hesitation.
Amanda was surprised. “But … you called me to your office after that, to confront me about my not being Amanda Grant.”
Walker nodded. “I knew you’d lied about that. But, as you said yourself, the name you grew up using had nothing to do with whether you were born Amanda Daulton.”
Her gaze searched his face intently. “What made you so sure I was the real Amanda?”
He answered simply, his very conviction saying more than words ever could. “The way I felt about you. I could never have loved a pretender, and I realized that day I loved you so much it was terrifying.”
After a moment, Amanda drew a breath. “Why didn’t you ask then if I remembered you, Walker?”
“Maybe I didn’t want to put it to the test.” He shrugged slightly. “There was so much you didn’t remember. I suppose I didn’t want to hear you say I was part of those missing memories.”
Amanda took his hand and led him toward the gazebo, her expression grave. “The first time you brought me out here,” she murmured, “I wondered why you didn’t say something about this place. Then I wondered if you were waiting for me to say something.
“Then it occurred to me that maybe it just wasn’t important to you. I mean, you could have put a gazebo here only because it’s a lovely place, or because you thought something ought to be built here near the ruins of the old gatehouse. That seemed … a reasonable sort of thing for you to do.”
He waited, silent.
“I couldn’t really ask you about it. I’d already made up my mind that it would be best if I offered no one absolute proof I was Amanda Daulton, that I’d be safer as long as there was still a doubt in most everyone’s mind. So I was careful of what I revealed to anyone. I tried to stick to memories she
might
have told someone else, and made myself ignore the things she wouldn’t have shared with another living soul. Like this place, and what it meant.”
Releasing his hand at the gazebo, she walked to the old oak, stepping over the roots to get close to the
trunk, and pushed aside the heavy branches of the azalea that hid so much with their thick summer foliage. Slowly, her index finger traced the awkwardly carved heart and the two sets of initials inside it.
WM
and
AD.
“I suppose,” she said, “even a fake Amanda might have found this. And drawn her own conclusions.”
Walker cleared his throat and, hoarsely, said, “I suppose she could have.”
She allowed the azalea branches to hide the heart again, then turned and came to him. Halting an arm’s length away, she slid a hand into the front pocket of her jeans and drew out a small object. She held out her hand, palm up.
“But could she have found this?”
In her hand lay a green stone a couple of inches long and an inch or so wide. It was more opaque than translucent, the color deep and oddly mysterious. It might have been a chunk of green glass from a bottle, or a piece of the quartz so common to the Carolina mountains and streams. Or it might have been—
“You believed it was an emerald,” Amanda said, looking up at him rather than the stone as he reached out slowly to lift it from her hand. “You had heard your grandfather talking about the night his father won King High, and how the winning pot held a number of raw emeralds, and when you found this here in the creek you were certain that’s what it was. Even though your father told you it was only quartz, you believed it was an emerald. And so did I.”
He raised his gaze to meet hers, finding her smoky gray eyes so tender it nearly stopped his heart.
“The night we left,” she said, “I made Mama wait while I ran back to my room to get it. I knew we wouldn’t be coming back, and I couldn’t leave without it.”
“Amanda …”
Softly, she said, “When a twelve-year-old boy gives his most precious possession to the little girl who adores him, it’s something she’ll remember—and keep —for the rest of her life.”
With a rough sound, Walker pulled her into his arms, his mouth finding hers blindly, and Amanda melted against him with the deeply satisfied murmur of a woman who had, finally, come home.
K
AY
H
OOPER
, who has more than four million copies of her books in print worldwide, has won numerous awards and high praise for her novels. She lives in North Carolina, where she is currently working on her next novel.
Look for Kay Hooper’s novel
available
from Bantam Books
Here’s a sneak peek.
ONE
TUESDAY, MARCH 21W
hoever had dubbed the town Silence must have gotten a laugh out of it, Nell thought as she closed the door of her Jeep and stood beside the vehicle on the curb. For a relatively small town, it was not what anyone would have called peaceful even on an average day; on this mild weekday in late March, at least three school groups appeared to be trying to raise money for something or other with loud and cheerful car washes in two small parking lots and a bake sale going on in the grassy town square. And there were plenty of willing customers for the kids, even with building clouds promising a storm later on.
Nell hunched her shoulders and slid her cold hands into the pockets of her jacket. Her restless gaze warily scanned the area, studying the occasional face even as she listened to snatches of conversation as people walked past her. Calm faces, innocuous talk. Nothing out of the ordinary.
It didn’t look or sound like a town in trouble.
Nell glanced through the window of her Jeep at the newspaper folded on the passenger seat; there hadn’t been much in yesterday’s local daily to indicate trouble. Not much, but definitely hints, especially for anyone who knew how to read between the lines.
Not far from where she stood was a newspaper vendor selling today’s edition, and she could easily make out the headline announcing the town council’s decision to acquire property on which to build a new middle school. There was, as far as she could see, no mention on the front page of anything of greater importance than that.
Nell walked over to buy herself a paper and returned to stand beside her Jeep as she quickly scanned the three thin sections. She found it where she expected to find it, among the obituaries.
GEORGE THOMAS CALDWELL
,
42, UNEXPECTEDLY, AT HOME
.
There was more, of course. A long list of accomplishments for the relatively young man, local and state honors, business accolades. He had been very successful, George Caldwell, and unusually well-liked for a man in his position.
But it was the
unexpectedly
Nell couldn’t get past. Someone’s idea of a joke in very poor taste? Or was the sheriff’s department refusing to confirm media speculation of only a day or so ago about the violent cause of George Caldwell’s death?
Unexpected. Oh, yeah. Murder usually was.
“Jesus. Nell.”
She refolded the newspaper methodically and tucked it under her arm as she turned to face him. It was easy
to keep her expression unrevealing, her voice steady. She’d had a lot of practice—and this was one meeting she had been ready for.
“Hello, Max.”
Standing no more than an arm’s length away, Max Tanner looked at her, she decided, rather the way he’d look at something distasteful he discovered on the bottom of his shoe. Hardly surprising, she supposed.
“What the hell are you doing here?” His voice was just uneven enough to make it obvious He couldn’t sound as impersonal and indifferent as he wanted to.
“I could say I was just passing through.”
“You could. What’s the truth?”
Nell shrugged, keeping the gesture casual. “I imagine you can guess. The will’s finally through probate, so there’s a lot I have to do. Go through things, clear out the house, arrange to sell it. If that’s what I end up doing, of course.”
“You mean you’re not sure?”
“About selling out?” Nell allowed her mouth to curve in a wry smile. “I’ve had a few doubts.”
“Banish them,” he said tightly. “You don’t belong here, Nell. You never did.”
She pretended that didn’t hurt. “Well, we agree on that much. Still, people change, especially in—what?— a dozen years? Maybe I could learn to belong.”
He laughed shortly. “Yeah? Why would you want to? What could there possibly be in this pissant little town to interest you?”
Nell had learned patience in those dozen years, and caution. So all she said in response to that harsh question was a mild “Maybe nothing. We’ll see.”
Max drew a breath and shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, gazing off toward the center
of town as if the bake sale going on there fascinated him.
While he was deciding what to say next, Nell studied him. He hadn’t changed much, she thought. Older, of course. Physically more powerful now in his mid-thirties; he probably still ran, still practiced the martial arts that had been a lifelong interest. In addition, of course, to the daily physical labors of a cattle rancher. Whatever he was doing, it was certainly keeping him in excellent shape.
His lean face was a bit more lived-in thin it had been, but just as with so many really good-looking men, the almost-too-pretty features of youth were maturing with age into genuine and striking male beauty—beauty that was hardly spoiled at all by the thin, grim line of his mouth. The passage of the years had barely marked that face in any negative way. There might have been a few threads of silver in the dark hair at his temples, and she didn’t remember the laugh lines at the corners of his heavy-lidded brown eyes. …
Bedroom eyes. He’d been known for them all through school, for bedroom eyes and a hot temper, both gifts from a Creole grandmother. Maturity had done nothing to dampen the smoldering heat lurking in those dark eyes; she wondered if it had taught him to control the temper.
It had certainly taught her to control hers.
“You’ve got a hell of a nerve, I’ll say that for you,” he said finally, that intense gaze returning to her face.
“Because I came back? You must have known I would. With Hailey gone, there was no one else to … take care of things.”
“You didn’t come back for the funeral.”
“No.” She offered no explanation, no defense.
His mouth tightened even more. “Most people around here said you wouldn’t.”
“What did you say?” She asked because she had to.
“I was a fool. I said you would.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.”
Max shook his head once, an almost violent negation, and his voice was hard. “You can’t disappoint me, Nell. I lost ten bucks on a bet, that’s all.”
Nell didn’t know what she would have said to that, but she was saved from replying when an astonished female voice exclaimed her name.
“Nell Gallagher? My God, is that you?”
Nell half turned and managed a faint smile for the stunning redhead hurrying toward her. “it’s me, Shelby.”
Shelby Theriot shook her head and repeated, “My God,” as she joined them beside Nell’s car. For a moment, it seemed she would throw her arms around Nell in an exuberant hug, but in the end she just grinned. “I thought you’d probably show up here eventually, what with the house and everything to take care of, but I guess I figured it’d be later, maybe summer or something, though I don’t know why. Hey, Max.”
“Hey, Shelby.” He stood there with his hands in his pockets, expressionless now, dark eyes flicking back and forth between the two women.
Nell kept her own gaze on Shelby’s glowing face. “I thought about waiting until fall or until storm season was mostly past,” she said easily, “but it worked out that I had some time now before beginning a new job, so I came on down.”
“Down from where?” Shelby demanded. “Last we heard, you were out west somewhere.”
“Heard from Hailey?”
“Yeah. She said you were—well, I think the word
she used was
entangled
, with some guy in Los Angeles. Or maybe it was Las Vegas. Anyway, out west somewhere. And that you were taking college courses at night. At least, I think that’s what she said.”
Rather than commenting on the information, Nell merely said, “I live in D.C. now.”
“Did you ever get married? Hailey said you came close once or twice.”
“No. I never married.”
Shelby grimaced. “Me either. Matter of fact, half our graduating class seems to be single these days, even though most of us have hit thirty. Depressing, isn’t it?”
“Maybe some of us are better off alone,” Nell offered, keeping her tone light.
“I think there’s something in the water,” Shelby said darkly. “Honest, Nell, this is getting to be a weird place. Have you heard about the murders?”
Nell lifted an eyebrow. “Murders?”
“Yeah Four so far if you count George Caldwell— remember him, Nell? ’Course, the sheriff hasn’t been eager to put this latest death on the list with the others, but—”
Max cut her off to say, “We’ve had killings here before, Shelby, just like any other town.”
“Not like these,” Shelby insisted. “People around here get themselves killed, the reason why is generally pretty obvious, just like who the killer is. No locked-room mysteries or other baffling whodunits, not in Silence. But these deaths? All fine, upstanding men of the town with reputations the next best thing to lily-white, then they’re murdered and all their nasty secrets come spilling out like a dam broke wide open.”
“Secrets?” Nell asked curiously.
“I’ll say. Adultery, embezzlement, gambling, pornography—you
name it, We’ve had it. It’s been a regular
Peyton Place
around here. We haven’t heard anything about poor George’s secrets so far, but it’s early days yet. The other three, their secrets became public knowledge within a couple of weeks of their deaths. So I’m afraid it’s just a matter of time until we find out more about George than we ever wanted to know.”
“Have the killers been caught?”
“Nope. Which is another weird thing, if you ask me. Four prominent citizens killed in the last eight months, and the sheriff can’t solve even one of the murders? he’s going to have a hell of a time getting himself reelected.”
Nell glanced at Max, who was frowning slightly but didn’t offer a comment, then looked back at Shelby. “It does sound a little strange, but I’m sure the sheriff knows his job, Shelby. You always did fret too much.”
Shelby shook her head but laughed as well. “Yeah, I guess I did at that. Oh, hell—is that the time? I’ve gotta go, I’m late. Listen, Nell, I really want to catch up—can I give you a call in a day or two, after You’ve settled in? We can have lunch or something.”
“Sure, I’d love to.”
“Great. And if you get lonesome in that big old house and want somebody to talk to in the meantime, you call me, okay? I’m still a night owl, so anytime’s fine.”
“Gotcha. See you later, Shelby.”
With a wave to Max, the redhead rushed off, and Nell murmured, “She hasn’t changed much.”
“No.”
Nell knew her best bet would be to get in her car and just leave, but she heard herself saying slowly, “These murders do sound pretty unusual. And to go
unsolved for so long … Doesn’t the sheriff have at least a few suspects?”
Max uttered an odd little laugh. “Oh, yeah, he has a few. One, in particular.”
“One?”
“Yeah, one. Me.” With another laugh, he turned on his heel and walked away.
Nell gazed after him until he disappeared around the next corner. Then she looked at the busy little town that seemed oblivious to the storm clouds moving in and, half under her breath, murmured, “Welcome home, Nell. Welcome home.”