Amanda (14 page)

Ben was first to move eventually, easing away and lifting himself off her. He didn’t kiss her, as he normally did at that moment, and his expression was unusually intent. He remained between her legs on his knees, pulling up his jeans and fastening them as he looked down at her in silence.

For no reason she could have explained, Kate felt an abrupt wave of anxiety. The pleasantly limp aftermath of orgasm was all too brief; she had to force spent muscles to obey her commands. She sat up quickly, pushing herself a little back on the grass so that she put some distance between them and was able to close her legs—and also allowed the friction of the movement to work her skirt back down over her hips and thighs. She drew her blouse closed over her breasts
and buttoned it, focusing all her concentration on the task.

“Kate.”

He had scattered her hairpins, she realized, and they were no doubt lost in the grass. Now, how was she supposed to put her hair back up? Anyone looking at her would
know—

“Kate, look at me.”

She did, but spoke before he could. “we’re not going to be able to meet again for a while,” she said as if it didn’t matter. “I’m going to be very busy.”

Ben didn’t look surprised. “I’ve gotten too close, haven’t I, Kate?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But her denial was too swift, too adamant, and Kate knew it.

“Is this how You’ve always handled it before?” Ben’s voice remained curiously flat. “A lover gets too close, maybe begins to look at you in a different way or asks why he can’t spend the night with you, and you break it off?”

“I didn’t say I was breaking it off. I just—”

“You won’t be any busier this summer than usual.”

“I’m volunteering at the clinic,” she said. “Three afternoons a week. And I’m helping raise money for the new park, and—”

“Kate, I didn’t say you weren’t busy, so don’t sound so defensive. Between the charity work and doing the books for Glory, you’re plenty busy. I know that. But You’ve found time to meet me for more than six months now.”

“I want to spend time with Jesse. He—”

“He,” Ben told her stonily, “wants to spend time with Amanda.”

She drew in a quick breath as that blow landed. “I said you were a son of a bitch, and I was right.”

“Because I tell the truth? Kate, when are you going
to accept the fact—the
fact
—that nothing is going to change between you and Jesse no matter what you do? He’ll go to his grave feeling nothing for you except indifference, and the sooner you realize that the sooner you can make some kind of life for yourself.”

“I have a life!”

“You have Jesse’s life. Ever the dutiful daughter, you follow along behind him, eager to be helpful, to do anything he asks, pleasant and low-key and a willing target for abuse if he feels like yelling at someone. You stand in his shadow hoping against hope that He’ll throw a smile or maybe a kind word your way—and it isn’t going to happen.”

Kate managed a laugh, but it hurt her throat. “Who gave you a license to practice psychology?”

“I don’t have a license. But I minored in psychology. Horses aren’t my entire life, you know—or would know, if you cared enough to ask.” He looked at her, suddenly, as if he were a psychologist and she were on his couch. “you’re Daddy’s girl, and Daddy doesn’t care, Kate. And if it weren’t for one small but vital difference, you’d end up like those stereotypical Southern virgin spinsters We’ve all read about, worshipping Daddy long after he’s gone and living in a mausoleum devoted to his memory.”

Through lips so tight they felt numb, she asked, “What difference?”

He smiled, without amusement. “you’re about as far from being virginal as a woman can get.”

Ben caught her wrist easily when she would have hit him, and held her glittering silvery eyes with the same inescapable force. “Insulted, Kate? Don’t be. It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me how many men You’ve had. I don’t even mind being used as a stress-buster, if that’s what you need. But I’ll be damned if I’ll meekly let you break it off with me just
because I might want more than you’re willing to give. I warned you more than once—I’m not a toy, Kate, I’m a man.”

She laughed with a brittle sound. “You got what you wanted out of this, and don’t pretend otherwise.”

“Sure I did, in the beginning. Now I want more.”

“Oh, I see.” Kate’s smile was bitter. “You won’t be a rich woman’s pet, but you wouldn’t mind a bit of compensation for all your extra … work. How much?”

Ben flung her wrist away from him in a gesture of disgust, his expression suddenly furious. “If you can think that, then the hell with you,
Miss
Daulton.” He got up and got his shirt, shrugging into it angrily. “Find yourself another stud.”

“Maybe I’ll do just that,” she snapped.

“Be my guest. But if it’s Jesse you’re trying to punish by jumping from man to man, you can save yourself the trouble. He doesn’t give a shit, Kate.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told him in a voice shedding icicles.

“Don’t you? Then I’ll explain it so you do. Jesse knows about us. He’s known about all your men.”

She blinked in shock, her righteous fury draining away as though through a gaping hole in her defenses. “No—he’s never said—”

“Get it through your head. He doesn’t care.” Ben’s voice remained hard, precise. He tucked his shirt into his jeans with jerky movements.

Kate was shaking her head. “he’d care. At least for —for our good name,” she all but whispered.

Ben shook his head, pityingly. “Jesse’s good name is invulnerable no matter what the rest of you do, and he knows it. Besides, Daultons have always been known for—taking lovers. He told me that himself, Kate. He wished me luck with you. He said nobody
ever lasted long. He even said he was thinking about formally adding it to the expected duties of Glory’s trainers. Must oversee a dozen horses and riders at any one time. Must prepare both for shows. Must get results. Must fuck Kate.”

“No.”

“That’s what he said. And that’s a direct quote.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said numbly.

“Oh, yes, you do. Because when you take off your rose-colored glasses, you can see him as well as the rest of us can—and you know he’s capable of it.”

Kate looked at Ben with hatred. “Get away from me. Do you hear? Get away and stay away!”

“Gladly.” He walked past the trellis of roses, turned a corner formed by shrubbery, and disappeared, leaving her sitting on the shady grass.

She sat there on the ground, long legs curled to one side, skirt smoothed down and blouse neatly buttoned and tucked in, and when she heard a little whimpering sound, Kate was shocked to realize it came from her. She pressed her fingers hard to her lips, trying to contain the pain and stop the trembling and summon enough control to enable her to get up and seek the more secure refuge of her bedroom.

God, it hurt. It hurt because she believed every awful word Ben had flung at her, because she knew it was the truth. It hurt because what he’d told her about Jesse—what Jesse had said to him—was the ultimate betrayal, an unthinkably callous reaction from a father to a daughter’s sexuality. It hurt because it shattered the last fragile hope she’d had that Jesse loved her despite all evidence to the contrary.

She was nothing to him. Worse than nothing.

Her whole body hurt.

Kate forced herself to get to her feet, and it was only when she stood on shaky legs that another shock
distracted her from her anguish. For the first time in her life, she felt the warm wetness of a man’s seed trickling down her inner thighs, and she realized that during that second frantic coupling with Ben, he hadn’t worn a condom.

She should have made sure, since it was her responsibility as well as his—why hadn’t she? In twenty years, she had not
once
so lost control of herself with any man that she hadn’t made very sure protection was used; she’d had no intention of being forced to deal with an unexpected pregnancy.

And even though she wasn’t much worried now about getting pregnant—she’d been on the pill for nearly a year to correct a hormonal imbalance—she was more than a little unsettled by such an unprecedented lack of caution. Why hadn’t she reminded Ben? Why hadn’t she even
noticed?

And why had Ben, always before so observant of her wishes, forgotten this time?

Kate rubbed her forehead fretfully, then made a halfhearted attempt to smooth her hair and looked down at herself. The back of her blouse was probably one big grass stain, and the stuff was probably all in her hair. She knew her lips were swollen because they were hot and tender, and her breasts felt heavy, aching, and sensitized. She knew she looked as if she’d just left a lover.

“you’re about as far from being virginal as a woman can get.”

Cheap, he’d meant. She was cheap. She had given herself to too many men, mostly for the wrong reasons, and what she had to show for the various brief relationships was … nothing.

Her life was going by with shocking speed, and what did she have? She had no career, no absorbing interest to fill her time, no skill to refine. She had no
husband, no child, no home of her own—because Jesse would certainly leave Glory to Amanda or, failing that, one of the boys, Sully probably. But Amanda was more likely, of course, and even if she wanted Kate to stay, it would be impossible.

She could have a house of her own, Kate thought vaguely. She had a trust fund that had come from the mother she’d never known, more than enough for a house … and a life.

But the house wouldn’t be Glory, and the life … What would the life be? Ben had been right about that, too. She didn’t have a life. And when Jesse was gone, even whatever she had now would be in the grave with him.

She had tried all her life to get her father to look at her and
see
her—if not as a loved daughter, then at least as a person who counted—and no matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried, it had never been enough.

It would never be enough.

Kate felt very much alone right now, and the anguish was terrible.

Walker saw the dog first, and stood waiting until the big black and tan animal bounded up to him. “Hello, Bundy. What are you doing so far from home?” The Dobermans, trained to guard, tended to stick close to Glory; he couldn’t remember ever finding them out here.

Bundy paused to have his small, pointed ears briefly rubbed, then whirled away and went a few yards before halting to stare back at Walker, his stump of a tail wagging.

“Okay, Lassie,” Walker said, amused at himself for
reading human intelligence—or, at least, deliberation —into canine behavior, “I’ll follow.”

He did, and it wasn’t until he topped a rise and stood looking down on a clearing that Walker realized he had unconsciously expected to find Amanda with the other dog. He had noticed, during the past few evenings, that they seemed to have adopted her, and Jesse had told him, proudly, that Amanda had won them over.

After a momentary hesitation, Walker began making his way down the slight incline toward her. She hadn’t seen him. Hands on her hips, she was studying the clearing with a faint frown of puzzlement.

“it’s called a bald,” Walker said.

She jumped and glared at him. “Dammit, don’t sneak up on a person.”

It was the first time since they had met that she’d looked at him without wariness in her eyes, and Walker was surprised by how different she seemed. More vivid and alive. Younger somehow—or maybe that was due to her jeans and the way she’d tied her hair back with a colorful silk scarf.

“I didn’t sneak,” Walker told her, “you just didn’t hear me.”

Amanda eyed him when he stopped a couple of feet away from her. “Next time wear a bell,” she told him.

He ignored the suggestion. “These clearings,” he said with a slight gesture, “are called balds.”

She accepted the change of subject with a shrug. “This is the second one I’ve seen today. Did somebody cut all the trees?” she asked.

“No, trees won’t grow here. Nobody knows why. There are balds scattered all through the mountains. Ones like this—where there’s only grass, weeds, and wildflowers—are called grass balds. Heath balds support some shrubbery. But never trees.”

“A little eerie,” she commented, her tone thoughtful.

Walker shrugged. “Superstition has it that the balds were created when the devil walked through the mountains; each footfall resulted in a bald. And, of course, nothing of any consequence would dare grow in the devil’s footprints.”

“Definitely eerie.” She lifted her gaze to the spectacular scenery all around them and added, “And … almost … believable. I wonder why.”

“Probably because these are old mountains, and the age shows. They were here when the world was young. When uncanny things might have been possible. When giants might have roamed the earth.” He paused, then added, “Dinosaurs, maybe.”

Amanda smiled slightly. “I thought you were getting a little whimsical there for a minute. Very unlike you, Walker. Dinosaurs, huh?”

“They were everywhere else.”

She gave a little laugh and shook her head, but whether at his comment or his reliance on science over less tangible faiths, he couldn’t tell.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked, then looked around them with a frown. “I am still on Daulton land?”

“This is Daulton land. And I’m out here because I sometimes am on Saturdays. I enjoy hiking. As you obviously do.” He shrugged. “I sometimes ride, but my horse cast a shoe the other day and …”

Even as his voice trailed off, the wariness returned to shadow her eyes. She slid her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and looked at him with a faint smile holding far less humor and acceptance than only moments before.

“I suppose I hadn’t thought about you on a horse,
but everyone else around here seems to ride. Do you show horses?”

“No, I’m a Sunday rider,” he told her, surprised at the pang of regret he felt. “Barely good enough to know what I’m doing in the saddle, and for pleasure only. I have an old retired show horse that gives me a quiet, calm ride when I feel the urge—which is less and less frequently these days. I probably would have sold him years ago, but since he’s pastured with the broodmares, he has company and exercise even if I don’t take him out for months.”