He smiled. “When I went down looking for coffee, she handed me two cups. Why?” he added abruptly, the smile fading. “Does it bother you that she knows?”
Now, why, she wondered with vague surprise, did he sound defensive about it? She kept her own voice mild. “Why should it? We’re all over twenty-one, Ryder.”
“I know. I just didn’t want you to be upset about it.”
Amanda looked at her coffee, and then carefully drained the rest of it. The methodical action kept her attention occupied so that she couldn’t blurt out the question in her mind. But she couldn’t help but wonder what he’d planned to suggest if she had been upset about it.
She leaned over to set the empty cup on the nightstand, and said, “If breakfast is ready, we’d better go down.”
“Okay.” But he didn’t move, except to take his hand off her stomach.
She waited a few beats, then realized that he wasn’t going to get up. He was waiting. Watching her. Amanda was not, and never had been, a shy woman, but his concentrated attention was very unnerving. She felt ridiculously self-conscious; especially ridiculous given the fact that this man certainly knew every inch of her body naked or clothed.
“I realize,” she said carefully, “that for me to feel embarrassed is a bit absurd. After last night. And this morning. But that’s the way I feel. I’m not used to dressing in front of a man.”
“Good,” he said.
“Well, don’t sound so arrogant about it,” she said in sudden annoyance.
A gleam entered his eye, and though it contained amusement, it also held something else. “Amanda, maybe your past lover—or lovers—liked sex in the dark and dressing in the bathroom, but I don’t. Not with you.” His voice had a bite in it.
She stared at him, feeling a little stunned. Her first impulse was to tell him that the “lover” in her past was quite definitely singular, but she was too surprised by what had sounded like jealousy in his voice to be able to explain that immediately. And before she could get the words organized in her head, he was going on.
“I won’t let you shut me out of anything in your life, especially not in the bedroom.”
Because she was perplexed by the intensity of his reaction to what was, after all, a fairly minor point, Amanda instinctively took refuge in mildness herself. “I can see you’ve never lived with a woman.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?” There was still a taut note in his voice.
“Well, she probably would have taught you never to pick a fight first thing in the morning. She also would have exposed you no doubt to the knowledge that we girls have modesty drummed into us from infancy. For most of us, parading around in front of a man stark naked is something we have to get used to. Gradually. In spite of what’s gone on in the bed.”
After a moment he said, “Was I trying to pick a fight?”
“It sounded like it from where I’m sitting.”
He eyed her speculatively. “Your past lovers, you mean?”
Amanda sensed a corner, and didn’t want to get backed into it. She felt as wary as she would have been in a cage with a full-grown tiger. “Look,” she said slowly, “I’ve already told you that I’m not a morning person. I don’t cope well with stress until I’ve been up and about for an hour or so. Right now I want more coffee, and breakfast.”
“So we postpone the fight?”
“If that’s what we were about to have, yes, I’d rather we did. Do you mind?”
“Do you always schedule your fights?” he countered.
“Only when they start first thing in the morning.”
“Okay.” And then, dryly, he added, “Don’t lose our place.”
“Not a chance.” She gazed at him for a minute or so, then muttered, “Oh, hell,” threw back the covers, and slid out of the bed.
Ryder leaned back on his elbow and watched her very deliberately. But he couldn’t hold on to the anger, not when he looked at her. If she did indeed feel embarrassed, he thought, it certainly didn’t show. She moved with the easy, flowing grace of a young cat, her naked body creamy pale in the brightness of the room. Her hair was a tumble of fire around her shoulders.
He felt the simmering hunger inside him flare up, his heart slamming rapidly in his chest as if there’d been some jolt to his entire body. And there had been. She was so beautiful he couldn’t stop looking at her, so damn sexy he couldn’t stop wanting her. The round firmness of her breasts made his mouth go dry, and the slight sway of her hips was the essence of female suppleness.
He watched her bend slightly to pull clothing from the drawers of her dresser. Lord, he thought, even the curve of her back was erotic. He was shattering inside, coming apart just looking at her.
Then his gaze moved slowly to her face, and a flicker of renewed anger tangled with desire. She looked aloof, detached, as if she were alone in the room. But before he could react to that, she stepped to the bathroom door and sent him a smile.
A very sweet smile. And then she went into the bathroom and shut the door softly. The click of the lock was audible.
Ryder looked down at the remains of his cold coffee and reflected somewhat wryly that he had only himself to blame. He had pushed, and what little experience he’d had of her should have warned him that wasn’t the way to go. Not with Amanda. When she was pushed, she either bristled or else retreated into a shell he hadn’t been able to penetrate.
But she’d been so responsive in his arms, so utterly willing and passionate, he had assumed…what had he assumed? That the fight was over? That she belonged to him now, his to touch or kiss or watch whenever he damned well pleased?
Arrogant, she’d said. Maybe he was at that.
He had half expected her to be a bit shy with him after the tempestuous night before, but she hadn’t been. Granted, she’d been a bit slow to completely wake up, the interim filled with her apparent surprise that he could feel such strong desire for her so soon again.
That was when it began to bother him. He had sensed the distance between them, her emotional aloofness, and it had been a curious, unwelcome jolt. She had neatly sidestepped the issue of them living together. She’d been casual about birth control, surprised that he’d thought she might mind Penny knowing about their relationship, and even more surprised when he had—he admitted it to himself—uttered a probing taunt about her past lovers.
She’d recognized that taunt for what it was, and had instantly retreated behind her mild shell. She’d shown no curiosity about his past affairs except in a very general way, and she was clearly unwilling to satisfy his about the men in her past.
Not, at least, until she’d had another cup of coffee.
Ryder didn’t know why it was bothering him so much until he thought it through. He had never felt the slightest bit of jealousy or possessiveness over a woman. Until Amanda. But not knowing what lay in her past was deeply disturbing, because he didn’t know how much it mattered to her even now. He knew she’d been hurt, but he didn’t know how badly. He didn’t know if her emotional distance with him was some defense or the natural response of a woman who had given her heart to another man.
Could she be so responsive to him physically if that other man was still in her life? In her heart?
He didn’t want another man in her life…in her heart. He wanted her to think only of him, to be aware of him the way he was aware of her. He wanted her to snap at him if he made her mad, a gut-level response instead of that quick, careful retreat.
He wanted to matter to her.
She smiled at him when she came out of the bathroom, then went to the closet and slipped her feet into a pair of loafers, then turned to look at him with a questioning lift of her brows as she picked a brush up from the dresser and quickly restored order to her thick hair.
She spoke as if nothing at all had happened between them, he thought. She was wearing an emerald green sweater over jeans, looking very lovely. Her expression was calm, but there was a shadow of wariness in her eyes. Still looking at h
im, she reached for a tiny bottle of perfume and dabbed a bit absently on her throat and wrists.
“You going to lie there all day?” she asked briskly.
Ryder got off the bed slowly. He picked up her coffee cup, holding it with his own in one hand. “Well, certainly not alone,” he said.
Without responding to that, Amanda walked to the door and opened it, automatically looking down to keep from falling over Nemo. Except he wasn’t there. “Have you seen Nemo?” she asked as Ryder joined her in the hall.
“In the kitchen. Sulking.”
“Why’s he sulking?”
“Because,” Ryder said, “I nearly broke my neck over him when I went to get the coffee. He was parked outside the door.”
“Did he faint?”
Ryder rested his free hand on the small of her back as they went toward the stairs. He had to touch her, it was compulsion. Whenever he was near her it was as if he couldn’t help himself. “Yes. I caught myself apologizing to him when he came to, but he wasn’t having any.”
Amanda wanted to be amused about that, but all she could think of was the possessive hand on her back. Until this morning she’d thought that Ryder’s intensity came from building desire, that there would be less of it once they slept together, but she knew now there was more to it than that. Much more. Because he was even more intense than he had been. It was in his eyes, was an undercurrent in everything he said. It was in the proprietorial way he touched her and the intent way he looked at her.
She felt…claimed. She wasn’t angry about that, since she was convinced it was a temporary thing. She just wanted to understand. But she couldn’t ask him because asking would be implying the need to define boundaries, to agree on ground rules, to set up expectations.
“Are you taking Nemo back to Boston with you?” Ryder asked as they reached the bottom of the stairs.
She answered almost absently. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.”
“There’s plenty of room at my place for a big dog.”
On the surface it was such an innocent comment, but Amanda’s abstraction vanished. She didn’t look at him as she said casually, “Then I’m surprised you don’t have one.”
“I was saving myself for you and Nemo.”
The retort was almost funny, but she heard a note of frustration in his voice, and wasn’t tempted to laugh. And she was very grateful that they reached the kitchen then, where they wouldn’t be alone, where he would stop pushing.
Penny looked up as they came in, her expression as calm as always. “According to the weather reports, the storm’s pretty much over. And the temperature’s rising. Some of that stuff out there might even melt before the next storm system moves through.”
“I liked being snowed in,” Ryder said.
Amanda couldn’t help watching him when she thought he wasn’t looking. He drew her gaze like a magnet. It was taking every bit of control she could muster to keep a part of herself unaffected by him, separate from him. But she needed that distance for her own sanity. She loved him so much that holding it inside her was like pain, cutting her up. She wanted to reach out to him, to offer her love, to accept anything he had to give her.
She was afraid of losing emotional control. Afraid that her love would make her cling, make her assume things. Before, she had loved with the recklessness of youth, with the blind faith in princes and happy endings.
But she wasn’t reckless anymore. She didn’t expect men to be princes, and she didn’t expect happy endings.
—
“Ready to finish the fight?”
They were in the den, alone since Nemo had chosen to remain in the kitchen after breakfast. The worst of the storm did seem to be over, and only a light snow was falling outside while the wind had stopped. Amanda wandered over to the window and stood looking out, very conscious of the peculiar quiet that always wrapped a house when there was snow on the ground.
“No,” she said finally.
“Why not?”
She half turned to look at him, feeling the coldness of the window against one arm. “Because I don’t want to fight with you,” she said.
Ryder was standing by the fireplace only a few feet away, watching her. He wanted to go to her, to take her in his arms so that she couldn’t hold him away from her. He wanted that so badly his whole body ached. But the memory of last night kept him still. He could bridge the physical distance between them easily, and he knew it; she was too responsive to him to be able to hold him off that way.
He’d thought about it during breakfast, realizing finally that his taunt about past lovers had been more than just his worry about how much her past meant to her. It had also been a dig at the shell she had retreated into, an effort to close the emotional distance she had created.
Maybe passion would do that as well, at least while it was burning between them. But the problem with that was his own response. He could barely remember his name when he held her, no less manage to string a few words together and demand answers.
She shifted nervously as he stared at her, her eyes wary. His own gaze narrowed. He didn’t like the idea that he made her nervous, but ignored the pang for the moment. If that was all he had, then he’d damned well use it to break through her shell. No matter what it cost him.
“Did those past lovers of yours like sex in the dark, Amanda? Dressing and undressing in another room? Did they let you pretend you’d never gone crazy in bed?”
She paled slightly, and a glint of green fire ignited in her eyes. “What is this, male-ego time? You want to know how you compare with your predecessors?”
There was nothing mild about her expression now, nothing guarded or careful in her words. That was a surge of pure temper, and Ryder didn’t hesitate to keep throwing wood on the fire. “Well, if I’m the most recent in a long line, I’d really like to know it.”
“My bedroom doesn’t have a revolving door, dammit!” she snapped.
“No, but it’s filled with ghosts, isn’t it?”
She shook her head angrily. “Stop it.”
“Was that why you backed off so quickly this morning? Was that why you didn’t want to talk about living together, about any kind of future? Because you woke up with a man instead of one of your ghosts?”
“Stop it!”
“But it’s just one ghost, isn’t it, Amanda? Just one ghost you can’t get out of your head.”
“Yes!” She glared at him furiously. But then, as the satisfaction in his eyes registered, her anger died. He hadn’t been accusing her of sleeping around, she realized slowly. And he hadn’t wanted her to compare his prowess as a lover to any other man’s. That had been a…a diversionary tactic. He’d chipped away at her guard, arousing her anger deliberately in order to get at the truth.
“One man,” he said quietly. “One past lover. And it was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”
Why was he doing this? She didn’t understand why he wanted to know. But she couldn’t retreat from his insistence, because he had stripped away something and there was nothing left for her to hide behind.
“What were those expectations of yours, Amanda? How did he hurt you?”
After a moment she went over to the couch and sat down. She didn’t speak until he joined her. He didn’t touch her, just sat about a foot away, half turned on the couch so that he could watch her.
“Ryder, I was nineteen. He isn’t in my head anymore. I can barely remember what he looked like.”
“That isn’t what I meant, and I think you know it.” Ryder hesitated, then said, “You don’t expect anything at all from me, do you? Nothing. And I want to know why, Amanda.”
“I don’t expect anything from anyone.” Her voice was tightening. “And I don’t see why that should matter to you. It’s my own business.”
“Tell me.”
She looked at him levelly. “All right. But telling won’t change anything.”
“Just tell me.”
Amanda shrugged. “As I said once before
, it isn’t a particularly original story. I fell in love. It’s easy to do when you’re nineteen. Storybook stuff. We were going to get married. And live in an ivy-covered cottage with a rose garden and a white picket fence. I was that far gone,” she added self-derisively.
Ryder felt an urge to reach out to her but kept himself still and waited.
She wasn’t looking at him now. She wasn’t looking at anything at all. “I think they ought to have mandatory high school courses in reality,” she said softly, not at all derisive now. “Because it was right there in front of me all the time, and I didn’t see it. I was in love, so I…I expected him to be in love. That was what hurt so much in the end. Not that he didn’t love me, but that I had so blindly assumed he did. That wasn’t his fault. It was mine.”
“What happened?” Ryder asked.
Her smile was twisted. “You know what they say about eavesdroppers hearing no good of themselves. I heard him talking to a friend of his one day. He was bragging that he had me right where he wanted me. He said I’d do anything for him, anything at all. And he was right, that was what sickened me. He was right.”
“Amanda—”
“I stood there, listening. And I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. All that storybook stuff kept getting in the way, all those expectations. Even when I listened to him talking to his friend, carefully detailing his step-by-step plan to marry a fortune, I was making excuses for him. Because I couldn’t bear to lose the dream that everything was perfect.
“But every word he said tore the dream away until there was nothing but reality left. And do you know, I was still willing to believe in him. I thought he could explain away that cold-blooded plan, convince me it was just a joke or something. So I confronted him.”
“And he couldn’t,” Ryder said quietly.
“He didn’t even try.” Her voice was almost inaudible. “He was the one who was convinced. Convinced that I’d do anything for him. That I’d even marry him knowing the truth. He said we were a perfect match. That hurt most of all.”
Ryder drew a hard breath. “So, no expectations. Keeping yourself emotionally detached.”