“I didn’t want to take advantage of a fluke,” she said tightly. “You came here to talk to Fortune, he offered you the first chance, and that was all.”
“Was it? Sure there wasn’t a little bit of charity and self-preservation involved? I told you I had limited resources, that I knew the competition could outbid me easily. Was that when you decided to stay carefully out of it? To neatly remove yourself from the fight before it became a fight, because you were so sure I’d lose and you didn’t want that on your conscience?”
“I’m not bidding,” she said, the words evenly spaced and distinct.
He looked at her for a moment, then said flatly, “Amanda, I’ll fight—or I’ll walk away. But I will be damned if I’ll win by default.”
“Why?” Her voice was shaking now. “Why are you doing this?”
“Expectations,” he said very softly. “It seems I’m the only one who has them in this relationship. And I do have them. I expect you to fight for what’s best for you and your company. I expect you to have the strength and the courage to fight. I expect you never to take the easy way just because the other ways are tough. And I expect you to get the hell off that fence and take sides.”
“Against you?”
If he hesitated, it was almost imperceptible. “In this case, yes. The ghosts are still there, Amanda. You’re afraid to risk anything. You won’t risk your emotions with me; you won’t risk my emotions in fighting me. You sit on your safe little fence and insulate yourself.”
“I can’t be your competitor and your lover!”
He took a half step closer but didn’t touch her. He seemed a little pale to her, and his eyes were glittering in a way she’d never seen before. When he spoke, his voice was very soft. And cut like a knife.
“You aren’t my lover, Amanda. Lovers risk. They make themselves vulnerable to each other. Remember what you said? What you so carefully explained? You didn’t make yourself vulnerable to me. All I wanted was sex, you said, and that was fine with you. You could accept that…and expect nothing from me. We aren’t lovers. We just sleep together.”
Amanda wanted to lash out at him, to protest that he hadn’t risked. But he had. Not his heart, but something. He’d asked her to live with him, had offered a commitment of a kind. And she hadn’t been able to accept it.
She wondered, for the first time, and with a jolt, what her love was worth if it had to be hoarded, had to be wrapped in careful layers to protect it from harm. What would happen to it there, locked away in that dark, airless place? What would her love be if she was ever able to offer it to him?
Would it be worth having then? Or would it be something withered and dead?
It hurt to think that. It hurt dreadfully. The pain of shattered illusions and girlhood dreams had not been nearly so bad as this. Ryder’s fence analogy had been apt, she realized bitterly. She’d avoided taking sides her entire adult life, sitting safely on a fence, wrapped in her detachment.
And when she had landed in love despite that, she had instantly sealed the feelings deep inside her, where he couldn’t see them and she wouldn’t have to deal with them. She had offered her desire because his was so intense, and she would therefore risk nothing.
She looked at him, and blinked because he seemed hazy. The mist cleared slowly. She felt curiously numb, thinking idly that his gray eyes were so intense they were almost silver, oddly fierce.
Tonelessly she said, “I can have the paperwork here by tomorrow afternoon.”
“All right.” He sounded a little hoarse, and cleared his throat quickly. “I’ll tell Cyrus that we’ll both submit sealed bids to him as soon as your paperwork’s here.”
She nodded.
Ryder seemed to hesitate for an instant, then turned and left the room.
Amanda walked slowly to the counter in the foyer and stood for a long minute staring at the phone. She was still fence-sitting, she realized. Risking nothing of herself. In fighting Ryder this way, she wasn’t likely to lose. Not the business deal, at least.
She reached for the phone.
—
With the workmen back on the job, it was easy to stay busy for the remainder of the day. Amanda saw Ryder and Cyrus Fortune at meals, but otherwise occupied herself in other parts of the house.
But no matter how busy she made herself, she couldn’t stop trying to sort through the tangle of emotions. She loved Ryder, yet she hadn’t dared risk telling him, showing him. The desire between them was overwhelmingly intense, yet she hadn’t dared assume that he felt something deeper than passion.
Once, she had looked at a man with unshadowed trust, with blind certainty and said, “I love you.” It had felt so natural then, so simple. A fact, stated with assurance. An emotion confident of a matching response.
Because she had believed in princes then. And happy endings.
It would never be that easy again.
I expect you to never take the easy way just because the other ways are tough.
Dear Lord, was she such a coward? So wary of pain she wasn’t willing to risk anything for love?
The questions went around and around in her head until she felt sick with the struggle to come to terms with them. She ate almost nothing at supper, conscious of Ryder’s gaze on her but unwilling to meet it. As soon as she could decently slip away, she did, retreating to the solitude of her room.
She took a long shower and washed and dried her hair. She put on her prettiest nightgown, realizing suddenly that Ryder had never seen her in sleepwear. In the nights they’d spent together, she’d slept naked in his arms.
She prowled restlessly around her room, picking up a book and then putting it down, filing her nails. Nemo asked to be let in, but clearly sensed her tension and didn’t remain long before asking to be let out again.
It was nearly midnight, the house quiet, when Amanda realized he wasn’t going to come.
She crawled into bed and turned out her light.
—
“I didn’t know anyone was still up.”
Ryder looked around, a bit surprised himself to see Cyrus Fortune come into the den. The room was dark except for a dying fire in the hearth, and Ryder had been alone in there for several hours. He watched the old man move around the end of the couch and sit down before he spoke.
“I couldn’t sleep.” He felt peculiarly comfortable with Fortune, and had from the beginning, a rare occurrence in his experience.
“Troubles of the mind, or the heart?” Cyrus asked in his gentle baritone.
“Six of one and a half dozen of the other.”
After a moment of silence Cyrus said, “I have a sympathetic ear, my boy, and a discreet tongue.”
It was a curiously old-fashioned phrasing, but Ryder wasn’t tempted to laugh. He stared into the dying fire and, even though it wasn’t in his nature to confide his troubles, he felt the urge to talk.
“Have you ever wanted something so badly that you were terrified it would slip through your fingers?” he asked the older man slowly.
“Yes. You’re talking about Amanda.”
Ryder wasn’t surprised by the statement. He knew he’d given himself away to nearly everyone in the house. Everyone except Amanda. “I’m afraid I pushed her too hard. She looked so…so white. So withdrawn. I’m afraid I sent her so far into her shell that I won’t be able to reach her again. That’s why I’m sitting down here. Because I’m afraid to go upstairs and find out.”
“I knew a young man once,” Cyrus said softly, “who fell in love with a woman who bore scars. He wanted to heal her, to see her look at him with the trust that had been stolen from her. But what he didn’t understand, what his love blinded him to, was the simple fact that the unshadowed trust he wanted from her no longer existed within her. Because he didn’t understand that, he kept searching, probing. He believed that she had only to realize that he wouldn’t hurt her for that trust to shine in her eyes.”
“What happened?” Ryder asked when the old man’s voice trailed away
.
“He lost her. She was everything to him. He went to her heart—whole and untouched by pain. And being so flawless in his own love, he expected as much from her. She gave him all of herself—except that part of her forever lost. And that was the part he wanted so badly.”
“But if they loved each other?”
“It should have been enough, shouldn’t it? And perhaps it would have been, had things been different. You see, he didn’t lose her because she couldn’t give him what he wanted. He lost her because he thought his love was obvious—and it wasn’t. She couldn’t look at him with unshadowed trust, and so she never saw his love.”
Ryder hesitated, then repeated slowly, “Unshadowed trust…”
“Unshadowed trust,” Cyrus said gently, “is the trust of a child. Not a woman. A child sees what is there and trusts blindly. But a woman has to hear the words before she believes.”
The old man’s story sank into Ryder’s mind, and he felt a pang sharper than anything he’d ever felt before. Was that what he wanted from Amanda, unshadowed trust? Was that why he had remained silent about his own feelings even after he was certain of them? Because he wanted her to trust him so completely that she would willingly offer up everything she was to him?
Cinderella and a faith in princes.
He had battered at her detachment, seeing it for the defense it was, and yet not seeing it, not realizing that the kind of trust he wanted from her was gone. What trust she had to give would have to be won with patience and care.
And he had offered her nothing to believe in.
“I ought to be shot,” he muttered, hardly aware of speaking aloud.
“Surely nothing so drastic,” Cyrus murmured. He glanced at the younger man rather searchingly, and frowned a little.
Ryder started slightly as the sound of a muffled thump came from the general direction of the kitchen. “Damn furnace,” he said. “I’ll have to go kick it.”
“Why don’t you let me deal with that,” Cyrus said casually. “I have a way with furnaces. You might want to take an extra blanket up to Amanda. She might get cold.”
Ryder looked at him for a moment, then slowly smiled. “Yes, I think I should do that. Thank you, Cyrus.”
The old man sat placidly on the couch and watched Ryder leave the room. He made no effort to rise and go attend to the temperamental furnace, but continued to sit tranquilly and gaze into the fire.
He wasn’t at all surprised when the furnace started back up a few minutes later.
—
Ryder didn’t stop to get an extra blanket. He went upstairs quickly to reach Amanda’s bedroom door. He hesitated, then turned the knob silently and went into the room, closing the door behind him. The snow outside still provided considerable brightness, and he could make out her slender form in the bed. She was on the far side, turned toward the window with her back to him.
He listened for a few moments, suspending his own breathing in order to hear hers. It was deep and even, almost soundless. She was asleep, he knew. Without reaching the decision consciously, he began unbuttoning his shirt.
Amanda was vaguely aware of some indefinable difference, but she couldn’t seem to wake up and find out what it was. She thought she felt a whisper of cool air, then a movement beneath her, and there was a warmth beside her that she was hazily delighted by.
“Beloved…beloved…”
She felt gentle hands touching her, turning her onto her back, and she lifted her arms instinctively to encircle his neck. A low, rough voice was still whispering to her, and warm lips touched her face with the lightness of a breath.
Dreaming. That was it. She was quite definitely dreaming. On the point of opening her eyes, Amanda chose to keep them firmly closed instead. She tilted her head to allow the warm lips access to her throat, murmuring a kitten-like purr of pleasure.
“You’re so beautiful…Amanda…”
He was so gentle. Her nightgown was smoothed away tenderly, his hands stroking her body as if it were some precious jewel. His mouth caressed her with silky hunger. She began to burn, slowly, her nerve endings tingling, her blood heating, rushing through her veins. Her heartbeat seemed to spread throughout her body until she could feel it everywhere, a slow throbbing.
Eyes still tightly closed, she shifted restlessly, a pleading murmur escaping her lips. She felt him move, and eagerly cradled his body as he rose above her.
“Look at me, sweetheart,” he whispered.
She was afraid the dream would vanish if she looked, but she couldn’t ignore that husky command. Her eyes drifted open, and she saw him. The pale light provided by the snow outside lent his face an expression of stark tenderness she’d never seen before.
“Ryder,” she murmured.
He lowered his head and kissed her, and her last doubt about this being real vanished like smoke. It was electrifying, overwhelming, consuming her. She moaned into his mouth like a wild thing trapped on the run, desperate, her arms tightening frantically around him as she felt the slow invasion of his body.
In the past, the intensity between them had grown quickly, a swift, unrelenting coiling of passion that never let up until it finally snapped. This time the dreamlike beginning had built desire slowly to a white-hot need that seared them both.
Amanda had never felt such pleasure, waves and waves of it, swamping her senses. She was hardly conscious of crying, of repeating his name over and over in a voice that was hardly there.
And when it was finally over, she was so utterly drained and peaceful that she could only cuddle close to the hard warmth of his body, secure in his arms, and tumble instantly into a deep, dreamless sleep.
—
Beloved.
Sweetheart?
She was just beginning to wake up. And, as always, it was a slow process. A friend had once talked about going to a dentist to have wisdom teeth extracted under an anesthetic; she’d said that the sensations had been so strange as she was waking up, that first she’d heard sounds, and then her mind had begun working, but her eyes had been the last thing to function properly.
Amanda had been mildly surprised. Not by the sensations, but by the fact that her friend had found them unusual. She’d thought everyone woke up that way.
So now, as usual, she was dimly aware of sound first. Breathing. Her mind started sluggishly to work, and she realized it wasn’t her breathing. She gradually recaptured the misty thoughts that had followed her up from dreaming.
Beloved.
Sweetheart.
She had dreamed about Ryder. Slipping into bed with her in the middle of the night and making love to her. But…it hadn’t been a dream, because he was with her now.
Amanda forced her eyes open. A blur, as usual. She fumbled one hand up to rub her eyes gently. Her other hand, she realized dimly, was trapped somewhere. Either under her or under him.
The dryness under her eyelids eased, and she blinked several times. Better.
“Awake?”
He was raised on an elbow beside her, one arm lying across her middle. She still couldn’t figure out where her other arm was. It was still attached to her, presumably, but— She felt pins and needles, and gingerly worked the missing arm out from under the pillow. His pillow.
“Yes,” she said cautiously. “I think.”
“Good. I love you, Amanda.”
Chapter 9
“What?” she said.
Ryder smiled, but his eyes remained very serious. “I said I love you.”
She swallowed hard and tried to think. “This is very sudden, isn’t it?”
“No. You may have noticed that I’ve been chasing after you like a madman.”
Amanda stared up at him, feeling the sudden burning of tears and a wild surge of happiness. “You love me? Really?”
“I love you desperately.” He bent his head and kissed her with all the tenderness she had thought she’d dreamed.
“Ryder,” she said when she could, “you were right about me. I was so afraid to ri
sk anything—”
“Wait.” He rested his fingers gently, fleetingly, over her lips. “I want you to hear all of it.”
She nodded, not wary but more than a little worried because he looked so grave. “All right.”
The fingers that had covered her lips began to stroke her cheek lightly. His voice was low and steady. “When you fell off that ladder into my arms, I wanted you. It was so sudden it was like a bolt of lightning. I didn’t even know your name, and, to tell the truth, I didn’t care. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before, and I didn’t quite trust it at first.
“You were beautiful and, heaven knows, desirable, but what I felt was so intense, it couldn’t be rationally explained. So I stopped trying to explain it for a while. I just accepted it. I wanted you. So, naturally, I went after you.” He smiled.
“I noticed,” she murmured.
“Yes. Well, I suppose I thought that it would all make sense once we were lovers. But that’s not what happened. The feelings just kept getting stronger. And I kept shying away from defining them.”
Amanda was puzzled. “Why? Because you didn’t want to fall in love?”
“No. Because I was convinced I couldn’t be in love. Not with you.” When she started to speak again, he shook his head. “Wait. Hear me out. I knew you’d been hurt, and I guessed that your…your detachment was a kind of defense, but it was driving me crazy that I couldn’t get close to you except physically, and I couldn’t explain to myself why I’d suddenly become so intense and possessive. I wanted to be important to you, to matter to you. I wanted you to trust me enough to be vulnerable with me, to share yourself with me.”
“That sounds a lot like love to me,” she said a bit unsteadily.
“It did to me, too. When I stopped denying that, I realized it was true. I was in love with you. It came as a shock because…the week before you and I met, I’d been obsessed with another woman.”
Amanda went very still. “You were?”
“Yes. I couldn’t understand how it was possible for me to feel so much for two different women. Then, the day before yesterday, I found you on another ladder. You said something totally innocent, and it clicked in my mind with another thing that had been nagging at me subconsciously. And it all made sense.”