By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda (19 page)

"No! I mean, lie with me. Hold me. I might
fall asleep, and then I won't be able to get back. You have to make
sure I get back. At least hold my hand," she begged, seeing the
look of caution on his face. "At least do that," she whispered.

She hadn't even used his name. For her he
was just a live, warm body, proof positive of the three-dimensional
world. It tore at his heart to climb, fully dressed, into the
iron-bound bed with her; and when she laid her head timidly on his
chest, when she extended one arm across his stomach, he had to
suppress a sob of frustration. For most of the next hour he was in
a state approaching physical pain. Not since he was sixteen had he
been so acutely aware of needing release. And yet his heart ached
with tenderness for her, as it would for a sleeping child. She'd
fallen asleep so easily, so trustingly. He'd been stroking her hair
because it soothed her and because he wanted to stay awake to savor
it all—his arousal; her warm breath and soft body; his self-imposed
restraint; the incredibly deep feeling of protectiveness he felt
for her. Three months ago he was an emotional void. Now he felt a
little like a demi-god.

But demi-gods needed sleep too. Before long
Geoff was nodding off. Some time after that, when sleep makes
instinctive decisions possible, he slid down from the feather
pillows that were propping him up and curled his form around
Amanda's, warming her, warming himself.

He awoke before she did—still desperately
aroused. The trouble was, he wasn't feeling nearly so noble as he
had the day before. It seemed to him part of God's divine plan that
he should peel away the heavy flannel nightshirt that Amanda was
wearing and kiss her body into wakefulness. He closed his eyes
again, this time in pain. He understood, more than some, that life
wasn't fair. But if he'd played that damn game of bridge just a few
days earlier, he surely would have been there for Amanda when the
bomb went off on Wall Street. Maybe Perry would have been with
them, and the tragedy would have been left on page one, where it
belonged.

Geoff's arm was still around Amanda, his
body still curled around hers. It occurred to him that when she
awoke she might find this disorienting, although it seemed the most
natural thing in the world to him. He began to ease his way away
from her, with about the same success as grains of iron trying to
crawl away from a magnet.

Amanda did awake, and with a start. Her
little gasp of shock cut him to the quick. "Geoff! So it wasn't a
dream?" she murmured in some confusion.

"If it was, we are such stuff as dreams are
made on," he said, quoting his beloved Bard out of context.

"I don't understand ... does that mean ...
are we ... lovers?"

"Oh, we're not such stuff as all that," he
answered with an affectionate look. She was so sweet, so completely
desirable. But was she Amanda?

She fetched a deep, long sigh, obviously
trying to separate fact from nightmare. This would be the hard
part, he knew. He'd gone through the same thing those weeks in
hospital, after the trenches.

"Do you know what date this is?" she asked
with a puzzled frown.

"The twenty-second of September."

She seemed to calculate for a moment. "Then
I have to get back."

She swung her legs over the side of the bed,
but he restrained her. "Hold on! You're in no shape to make that
drive."

"I know what shape I'm in, thank you," she
said stubbornly. "I don't know what shape Perry's in. They wouldn't
let me see him. But I'll break down the door this time if I have
to."

"I spoke with your mother yesterday. Perry's
coming along well."

"That's what you
say."

"That's what I
know,
damn it."

Yes, indeed. She was sounding more and more
like Amanda every minute. "Amanda, your aunt and uncle need a
little time to cool off. They're being irrational now,
understandably so—"

"You think I had something to do with that
horrible affair, too," she murmured, bowing her head.

"My God—how could I?" he asked, astonished.
Clearly she had no idea why he was there.

They were sitting side by side on the bed.
Amanda turned to him and in a wooden voice—as if she'd offered the
same defense to a thousand different juries in her head—said, "I
went to see Lajos right after the bombing. He was genuinely
shocked. He said he and the others had nothing to do with it. He
said that there's a splinter group, a more radical group, that he
has no control over. I don't know if I should believe him, but I
do. I want to believe him. I need to believe him. If I couldn't, I
would kill myself. It would be the only fair thing to do. An
innocent man was killed."

"How deeply were you involved with Lajos?"
he asked her quietly.

"Lately, not at all. I felt ashamed not to
be more committed to the movement, but my sculpture was taking up
more and more of my time. Besides, I lost my enthusiasm after ...
after that day on the
Victoria.
You were so scathing."

"Well, what do
I
know? Probably I
envied your enthusiasm, your willingness to take a stand on
something. Don't you know a cynic when you see one, Amanda?" He
smoothed her sleep-rumpled hair. It was a bit longer now, prettier.
"No, I don't suppose you'd know one if he fell on you."

Which is pretty much what Geoff wanted to do
just then.
Someone get me under control,
he prayed,
irrationally happy.

"I don't think it's very funny," she said
somberly, misinterpreting the smile on his face. "You may not
always mean what you say, but I've listened to every word. When you
told me I had talent, I believed you. When you told me to go sit in
a corner until I grew up, I took you very seriously. You've
affected my politics, my art, my family life. And now you smile and
say it was all a joke." She looked away from him. "Do you enjoy
that sort of thing?" she asked, playing with a thread hanging from
the cuff of her nightshirt.

"No, no, you have it all wrong." He took her
hand in his. "I'm smiling because—"
Because I'm thirty-one years
old and hopelessly in love with you.
Should he tell her
that?

"—because you're looking so much better than
you did yesterday," he said. Nope. Not yet. This was an unusual
situation, and Amanda was in an unusual mood. There must be a
better time to tell her that his sexual frustration had reached the
knuckle-gnawing point.

"You're right," she said with sudden
resolve. "I
am
much better than I was yesterday, and I'm
leaving." She stood up rather quickly, got dizzy, staggered, and
fell back into his waiting arms. "For God's sake, what's wrong with
my knees?" she whispered.

"They want their breakfast. Get back in bed.
There's an egg farm not far from here. I'll bring back some real
food, and then we'll see about the drive to New York. I mean it,
Amanda. Stay where you are."

****

It took longer than he'd hoped, naturally,
to scrounge up the fresh supplies, but the boot of his Buick was
filled with eggs, milk, produce, and a block of ice when he
returned, thanks to an obliging farmer's wife. Feeling smug and
humming a tune, Geoff was not prepared for the sight of the bright
yellow Daniels, hung up on one of the more impressive of the frost
heaves in the access road to Fain's Folly. Amanda was trying
without success to rocket the disabled car over the hump.

When she saw Geoff slam his car door and
come marching toward her, she winced, then threw the engine into
reverse one more time.

Obviously he'd missed his chance. He ought
to have declared himself to her at the exact moment when she was
poised between delirium and obstinacy, sometime in the middle of
the night. Now that she was back to normal, things were going to be
a bit more dicey.

He walked around her car, surveying the
damage she'd done by ramming her low-slung car over the heaved-up
boulder. He peered underneath the chassis. "Ayuh," he said,
mimicking the accent of the egg farmer, "jest like I figgered.
Busted axle."

Amanda stared stonily ahead. "It's your
fault. You threatened me."

"Oh yes. Back home they call me The
Brutalizer."

"I can't drive it now."

"That's for damn sure."

"Will you drive me back to New York?"

"After breakfast."

"Fine."

"Okay."

"Now what?"

"Out."

He reached inside and opened the door for
her. Amanda climbed out, a little shaky still, but able to manage.
As for Geoff, he was left facing a quarter-mile of mountain terrain
with a block of ice, a plucked chicken, a dozen eggs, a milk can
filled with surprisingly heavy whole milk, and other treats and
sundries pressed upon him by the kind-hearted egg farmer's wife. So
much for impulse buying.

As he staggered up the remaining access road
which Amanda had managed to make so inaccessible, his back numb
from the block of ice that was melting through its canvas carrier,
his arms aching with pain from trying to haul everything in one
load, he thought:
Do
I love her?
Can
I love such an
obstinate, perverse, unmanageable, impulsive female?

Just then Amanda, who'd been able to keep up
with his slow progress, turned and gave him one of her patented
looks, part miffed, part teasing, part apology, part guilt, part
double-dare. It was the look he had sailed three thousand miles
for, and he still didn't have a clue what it meant.

"Damn
it all!" He stopped. She
stopped. He put down the ice, the dead chicken, the milk can. "Just
what are you trying to say?"

Amanda shrugged her shoulders. "I didn't say
anything."

"Of course not!" he said angrily. "With you
it's either a look or a deed, never a well-placed word in between.
Grab a gun, slug a cop, run away from those who care—do anything
but sit down and talk about what's on your mind. That's too
civilized, too logical an approach."

"Look who's talking!" she answered, roused
at last. "The master of British reserve! When have you ever said
what's really on
your
mind? I'm so tired of all your
pleasantness: 'Thanks awfully. Frightfully good of you. So kind of
you, old chap.' So this! So that! Why don't you haul off once and
let go? That's how we do it over here. God knows, you've seen it
done enough times. What are you afraid of?"

She wrapped her sweater more tightly around
her. That little gesture, far more than her words, struck him as
unacceptably belligerent. He threw down the produce, the cupcakes,
and the fresh-picked apples, took her in his arms, and kissed her
as he'd never kissed a woman before in his life. His mouth was
bruising hers, but she didn't retreat from the kiss, not one inch.
It surprised him. Somehow, he thought she'd find a way to turn the
kiss into a cat-and-mouse game. But her lips were there for him;
her arms were around him tight; her body stood up to his,
unflinching before his arousal.

Is that all it took? One good kiss?

Breathless, he broke away and said in a
voice shaky with passion, "I love you, Amanda. You know I do."

"I've had ... my suspicions," she answered
in a voice as breathless as his. "But then again ... I've had my
doubts," she added, curving her neck to him.

"For pity's sake, woman—do you love me or
not?" He trailed kisses on her cheek, her temple, coming back to
her mouth, not knowing where to start, where to finish.

Amanda's answer was low with pleasure. "I
memorized your face the first moment I saw it, at my father's
house."

"Woman, is that a yes or not? Don't do this
to me," he moaned, returning again and again to her lips.

"It's as yes as it can get. I love you,
Geoff."

He kissed her again, long, hard, hungrily.
"It goes without saying that I'm perishing with desire for you," he
murmured after the kiss, burying his face in her hair.

"My father's right. You do have a way with
words," she said. Her laugh was low, throaty.

She was sounding coy, too coy; he began to
panic. "What about now? Is now all right?"

"Or later," she teased. "Whichever."

He looked around him at the scattered food
and melting ice. His dilemma was of the fox-and-corn-and-chicken
type. If he left the food out here in the wild, it was good-bye to
any more meals. But if he let Amanda walk all the way back, she
might be too tired to make love. Or she might change her mind. She
could twist an ankle or get appendicitis; anything could happen. He
stood there, arms around Amanda, his rational processes destroyed,
the little that was left of his mind racing and plotting like a
sixteen-year-old's. He hadn't planned it this way. He'd planned
dinner, roses, a ring ....

"My God!" he cried. "I forgot to ask you to
marry me!"

Her eyes got rounder, but she scarcely
missed a beat. "So—ask me."

"Naturally I'll understand if you decline,"
he added immediately. "You have a fortune to protect; I'm one step
from the poorhouse. But understand this, Amanda," he said in a
voice husky with emotion. "I need you at my side." He took her by
her shoulders and gazed deep into her dark eyes, peering through
the veil of banter that she liked to wear. "It may take me a while,
but sooner or later I'll be able to afford you. And until that
time, I plan to love you every chance I get. Saturday nights, every
night—whenever you'll have me. I'll live with you or you can live
with me, it makes no difference."

He lowered his mouth to hers to seal his
pledge. The kiss left him lightheaded. In his soul he understood
that Amanda would always have this effect on him—when he was young,
when he was old, and all the years between.

He released her from the kiss and she smiled
a blurry smile, then seemed to shake herself free of it, which he
hated to see.