by Kay Hooper
She didn’t look at him because she was afraid he’d somehow see that her “detachment” with him was only a lie she was clinging to. “Don’t you see? If you expect nothing, you won’t be disappointed.”
“You let one bastard do that to you?”
Amanda rose abruptly from the couch because she had to move. She stood before the fire, looking down at the flames, aware that he had followed her. “I asked myself that in the beginning. So the next time I met a man I liked, I just tried to—well, expect a little less. But the end was the same.”
“Was he a lover?”
“No. Nor the next man. I didn’t want to be that vulnerable again.”
Ryder put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “What about when I showed up?”
She looked at him and, very deliberately, said, “You didn’t know who I was.”
His jaw tightened. “So you could be sure I wanted you for yourself. But you let yourself be vulnerable again.”
“No. Not this time. You were right. This time I don’t expect anything at all. Why should I? You weren’t using sex as a means to an end—sex was the end. And I wanted it, too.”
Ryder’s hands tightened on her shoulders. In the same deliberate tone she had used, he said, “Live with me.”
She wanted to lean against him, to put her arms around him and agree to anything if it meant being with him. The depth of her own love was terrifying. I would have done anything for him.
“Amanda, dammit—”
“Ryder, we can talk about that later.”
He stared at her for a long moment and then said, “You’re going to live with me, you know. I’ll convince you.”
Relieved that they were at least getting away from that other, painful subject, she managed a light tone. “Oh? Are you going to promise me hot and cold running maids who do windows? All the latest movies beamed into your house by satellite? A spectacular view?”
His lips curved slowly. “No.”
“What, then?”
Ryder lifted her into his arms and strode toward the stairs. “A king-size bed,” he said.
Amanda clutched at his neck. “What’re you—”
“If you don’t know, I wasted my time last night.”
She didn’t know whether to giggle or swear at him. He was so damned overpowering. Baiting her until she told him things she hadn’t meant to reveal, listening without saying very much, and then telling her she was going to live with him. And now…
She couldn’t pretend it was just sex, not when he touched her. He had to know there was more. She wanted to say it, wanted to tell him she’d never felt like this about any man, never felt so wildly. But he hadn’t asked for her love, and she wasn’t going to offer it.
As he reached the landing she cleared her throat and managed to say, “Ryder, it’s almost noon—”
He gave her a fierce look as he carried her into the bedroom and kicked the door shut. “I know, it’s indecent. You’ve got to stop throwing yourself at me like this.”
Amanda might have come up with some retort to that very unfair remark, but Ryder set her on her feet and covered her lips with his before she could say a word.
He had her so off balance by then that she simply melted against him. His hands curved over her bottom to hold her tightly, kissing her the way he did, in that strange, focused way that was like gasoline thrown on a fire.
“No ghost this time,” he muttered as he lifted his head. He caught the bottom of her sweater and pulled it quickly off. Her bra followed, and his hard hands surrounded the swollen curves of her breasts.
Amanda bit back a moan, trying to think. “There wasn’t one before.”
“Yes, there was.”
“No. He—”
“Not him. What he left you with.” Ryder’s voice was low and hoarse, and he didn’t pause in undressing her.
The heat filling her made thought impossible. Amanda gave up trying to understand what he meant. Her senses were reeling and her hands were shaking as she tried to help him get rid of their clothing. And when they fell together onto the bed, she was conscious of nothing but him.
—
“Some manager I am,” she murmured in disgust a considerable time later.
“You’re managing your guest just fine as far as I’m concerned,” Ryder told her complacently, then uttered a faintly exasperated oath as she pulled away from him. “Where are you going?”
Amanda slipped from the tumbled bed and began dressing determinedly. She still felt a bit self-conscious but tried to ignore that. “Downstairs. I’ve heard the phone ring several times, and poor Penny’s had to answer it. I told you I was here to work, dammit.”
“We’ve been snowed in,” he pointed out, linking his fingers together behind his neck as he lay and watched her dress. “There’s been no work to do.”
“There will be now. The storm’s over, and they’ve already started clearing the roads. The work crew will probably be back tomorrow, and I’ve got to get the old office ready for them to paint.”
Ryder frowned slightly. “So that means the other guests will be showing up.”
“I suppose.” Amanda went over to the dresser to run a brush quickly through her hair. Then, with the automatic habit instilled in her by her aunt, she touched a perfume stopper to her wrists and throat. “Unless some of them have canceled by now. That might be why the phone was ringing.”
“All our beautiful solitude shot to hell. Come here.”
She eyed him warily. “I don’t think so.”
“I just want a kiss,” he said in an innocent tone.
Amanda tried to judge his mood. Playful, she decided, but the intensity was lurking. “Ryder, I’m just going downstairs, not out of your life forever. And you’d better head in that direction yourself if you want lunch.”
“You aren’t going to serve me in bed?”
“Fat chance.”
He sat up abruptly. “Then come here and kiss me. It’s the least you can do to keep a guest happy.”
She found herself moving toward the bed, and wondered rather desperately if she was going to have any will left by the time he was through with her. He caught both her wrists and tugged gently until she bent down, then fitted his mouth to hers and kissed her thoroughly.
When Amanda was finally allowed to straighten up, she drew a breath and blurted out, “Lord, you’re dangerous.”
His eyes gleamed at her. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
She backed toward the door. “Don’t take it as a compliment. I’m not sure I meant it that way.”
Ryder swung his legs from the bed. “We should certainly make sure. I hate imprecise definitions.”
The intensity wasn’t lurking anymore. It was there. Amanda opted for discretion over valor, and beat a hasty retreat.
Chapter 8
Ryder sat on the side of the bed, looking blindly at the door. Something was nagging at him, and the feeling had been growing. There was something…something familiar. It was like a tune he knew the words to but couldn’t remember. He drew a short, impatient breath, then went abruptly still.
Again. A sense of déjà vu too fleeting to grasp. Something he had heard before, or said before or done…something. It came in a flash, a maddening sliver of knowledge, vanishing the instant he was aware of it. And it had something to do with Amanda.
He had the feeling that if he could only concentrate when he was with her, he’d have it. But when he was with her she filled his mind to the exclusion of all else.
He rose slowly and began to dress, trying to keep his mind blank and receptive. But the sliver of knowledge remained just out of reach.
When Ryder went downstairs a few minutes later, he found Penny at the counter in the entrance hall frowning down at a paper lying between her elbows. She had the air of someone waiting patiently, which roused him from his abstraction.
“What’s up?” he asked as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
She looked at him.
“I just thought I’d wait for Mr. Fortune to call. He’s the only one who hasn’t.”
“Cancellations?”
“Yep. They hadn’t bargained for full winter, just the edge of it. So they called in regrets and apologies. Everybody but Cyrus Fortune.”
“I don’t think he’ll cancel,” Ryder said absently. “Where’s Amanda?”
She nodded toward the secondary hallway that ran behind the staircase. “In the office. She was looking for a ladder, and then—”
“A ladder?” He muttered a curse and turned away before she could complete the sentence. He went quickly down the hallway, looking into two empty rooms before he found the old office. There wasn’t much in it, just a big steel desk pushed into the center of the room along with a couple of filing cabinets and uncomfortable-looking chairs.
And Amanda up on a ladder as she struggled to unhook a tremendous moose head from the wall between two curtainless windows.
Ryder didn’t waste any time, especially since the ladder looked treacherously unsteady. He went swiftly and soundlessly around the clutter of things in the center of the room, and firmly grasped the ladder on either side of Amanda’s thighs.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
She started and looked back at him. “Damn! Don’t creep up on people like that. You scared me.”
“I think this is where I came in.”
“I didn’t fall this time,” she protested.
“Come down from there. You can’t possibly wrestle with that trophy while you’re on a rickety ladder.”
Since she had already realized how heavy the moose head was, Amanda was forced to agree with him. “I know,” she said with a sigh. “But I want that thing down. I won’t leave any house decorated with an executed animal.”
He eyed the creature in question, which was a very large specimen of its kind. “I’ll get it down for you,” he said. “And you don’t have to sound so hot about it. I don’t really agree with the practice myself, and I certainly didn’t shoot the beast.”
“I should hope not.”
“I shoot only stubborn redheads.”
“With ladder fetishes?”
“Those are the ones.”
“You know, I got along fine with ladders before you came along. I can’t imagine how.”
“Me neither. Get down.”
She looked at the moose head again and shuddered visibly in disgust. “The very idea of it,” she muttered. “Hunting something that can’t shoot back, and then hanging the poor thing on the wall…”
Ryder had his hands on her waist now as she backed down the ladder, and that sensation of déjà vu swept over him again. Triggered, his memory worked. He suddenly recognized the words she had spoken…and what his senses had been telling him. And this time he got it.
The perfume. Dammit, her perfume. He’d been conscious of it only peripherally, as a part of Amanda, a soft, faintly spicy scent that was uniquely her.
Yet it was familiar, that was what had been bothering him. And it all made sense now. She had dropped into his arms from a ladder, and his desire for her had been so instantly aroused that he’d been baffled. He couldn’t understand how he could feel so much, so swiftly, for a stranger.
Until Amanda fell into his arms, he’d been haunted by an enigma. She had danced with him, walked with him in a garden, melted in his arms. She had spoken of the things she was “for” and those she was against—hunting anything that can’t shoot back. And she had talked about not believing in princes or happy endings.
And then…
Amanda taking fire in his arms. Seeming so elusively familiar that he had doubted his senses. Holding herself away from him emotionally with stubborn aloofness because she wouldn’t allow herself to have expectations. Because the prince had seduced her and won her heart with the cold-blooded ruthlessness of ambition.
Amanda was Cinderella.
“Ryder?” She was looking up at him, puzzled. “Is something wrong?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to demand to know why she hadn’t told him, but he swallowed the words. He had to think about this, had to understand why he was feeling a fierce sense of satisfaction, and an even greater anxiety.
“No,” he said. “Nothing’s wrong.” He glanced at the moose head, then back at her upturned face. “Come to think of it, getting that thing down looks like a two-man job. Trust you to try and do it on your own.”
“Well, but—”
He kept one hand on the small of her back as he ushered her firmly from the room. “We’ll let the workmen worry about getting it down. Let’s have lunch.”
“Who elected you chief?”
“I did. The vote was unanimous. We’re going to have lunch and help Penny clean up, and then we’ll both do whatever it is you feel has to be done before the workmen get here.”
“Why both of us? Ryder, this isn’t your job.”
“I want to be with you.”
“How flattering.”
She stole a glance up at his face. It was calm now, but in the office, for just an instant, he had looked strange. The expression had vanished too quickly for her to be able to identify it, but it bothered her.
She didn’t have very much time to think about it during the remainder of the day. There really wasn’t much to do in order to get ready for the returning workmen, but Ryder managed to keep her busy. He seemed to be in a peculiar mood, watchful and somehow withdrawn into himself more than was normal for him.
Amanda wondered if he was already tiring of her, but she was reassured on that score during the night. In fact, if anything, he was more passionate, more intense. So much so that it was late in the morning when she woke up.
Alone.
She could dimly hear sounds of activity in the house, and realized that the workmen had returned. She got up and dressed, wondering where Ryder was. When she went out into the hall, she discovered that Sharon had returned. Sharon was in her late teens, a bright, energetic girl who was taking a year off from college to earn some extra money. She was almost a head taller than Amanda, and very fair.
“Hi, Amanda. Did you like being snowed in?”
“It had its points,” Amanda said with feeling. She sighed as crashes and thumps sounded in the house. “Silence, for one. When did you get back?”
“About an hour ago. We went by the airport to see if there were any stranded travelers bound for here, and since Mr. Fortune had just arrived we gave him a lift.”
Amanda blinked. “You did?”
“Sure. He’s the most amazing-looking man, Amanda. Like Santa Claus—but not fat at all. Just big. And he has the kindest eyes. Mr. Foxx has been showing him around.”
Which explained, Amanda thought, Ryder’s absence. “I see.”
Cheerfully Sharon went on. “I’m going to strip the beds in the rooms we won’t need. Do you want me to do anything to yours?”
“No, thanks. I’ve gotten used to taking care of it myself.”
“Okay. See you later.”
Amanda nodded rather absently, then went on toward the stairs. So Cyrus Fortune had been here for an hour, and Ryder with him. She wondered if the deal was wrapped up already. She was halfway down when she heard voices, and almost at the bottom when she caught the tail end of a conversation.
“…really a splendid example, and a fine piece of work. I can recall outings with my father when I was just a boy. A long time ago, of course.”
As they appeared from the direction of the secondary hallway, Ryder looked up and saw her. “Good morning, Amanda. This is Cyrus Fortune. Cyrus, Amanda Wilderman.”
Her first impression of the man was sheer size. He was extremely large, and moved with surprising lightness and grace. He was also dressed completely in white, possessed a luxurious white beard, and had vivid but benign eyes. He was carrying a gold-headed cane, though he didn’t seem to need it in order to get around.
“Miss Wilderman. A pleasure.”
He also had a low, rich voice, elegant
hands, and an utterly charming smile. And he was— No, she thought. Her memory had to be playing tricks on her. He couldn’t have been the man at the ball, the one she’d run into as she was leaving. That was absurd.
“Make it Amanda, please, Mr. Fortune. Glad you finally made it.”
“I’ve already explained the situation to Cyrus, Amanda.” Ryder’s voice was calm. “I’ve told him we’re both going to make offers for the rights to the patent.”
Shocked, she stared at him. “You told him…”
Fortune’s bright eyes flicked from her pale face to Ryder’s expressionless one. “I believe I’ll go to my room and unpack,” he said gently. “Ryder, thank you for showing me around. I’ll see both of you later.”
They watched him ascend the stairs with an ease that was surprising for a man of his bulk and age, and then Ryder looked at her. “Tactful, isn’t he?”
“You told him—”
“All the privacy of a goldfish now,” he murmured. “The den, or the bedroom?”
Amanda swung around on her heel and went into the den. She felt angry, a little bewildered, and more than a little uneasy. What had Ryder done? The room was empty, but there was no door to close to ensure privacy. She kept her voice low as she turned to face him.
“What was that all about?”
He looked mildly surprised. “I thought it was clear.”
“You’re here to talk to him about the rights. I’m not. I told you we weren’t going to offer—”
“I know what you told me. I have a good memory. You sidestepped that, Amanda. Just the way you’ve been sidestepping any commitment to me.”
She bit her lip, and concentrated stubbornly on the business problem. “Look, I told you we were going to sign Dunbar. We won’t need the new system.”
Ryder shook his head slowly. “Now, that,” he said, “is bull. If you’d had the chance to bid on the rights without knowing me, without having been on the spot more or less by accident, you wouldn’t have hesitated.”
“Ryder—”
“The truth, Amanda.”
She hesitated, then said, “All right, maybe I wouldn’t have. But that doesn’t mean—”
“I’ll tell you what it means. It means you came down on the fence again, detached and safe. You took one look at a potential problem, and removed yourself with all speed to avoid it.”
