Chase started across the lawn, straight toward Amanda. “Come on, Nicky!” he called, and held out his arms. The child was off like a shot, and his father swung the child up onto his shoulders and came straight toward Amanda.
She sat there on the lawn with her feet pulled up under her, one hand spread against the cool grass to support herself, and watched as he walked toward her.
For the last several years, curiosity and admiration had made her follow his career and consume every word written about him. The moment she met him, however, curiosity and admiration had given way to a deeper and more personal attraction, which had in turn grown into longing and desire.
And then – slowly, quietly and inevitably – longing and desire had shifted into something deeper yet. Something she did not want to admit, but could no longer deny.
It had turned to love.
And as she watched him come across the lawn to her, Amanda wished with all her heart that he was seeing not just a kind young woman who had befriended a child in need, not an attractive woman to help pass a few lonely weeks – but a woman he could love for all time, as much as she loved him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Admiration and curiosity – who would have dreamed that those things could possibly lead to a lasting love?
But they hadn’t, Amanda admitted. She had been intrigued by Chase Worthington, that was true – but from the moment they had met, it hadn’t been the movie star she had found so fascinating, but the man. That overwhelming presence of his – the vibrancy, the sensual aura – caused a subdued throb of excitement which pulsed through her whenever he was around. But it was strongest at the moments when he was simply being himself.
She deliberately thought it all through on the half-hour drive up to Sapphire Lake that afternoon.
She supposed she should have expected something like this to happen. Under the circumstances, thrust together as they had been at all hours, in all kinds of intimate situations, it was perfectly reasonable that they had begun to think of each other in physical terms.
Chase was a normal, virile man, caught up in an unexpectedly domestic situation. In the limited space of a hotel suite, with Nicky next door and the whole of Springhill watching, he could hardly be anything but discreet – and so it was quite natural that he had started to look at Amanda with interest. That was as far as it went, as far as Chase was concerned. He had said he wanted to sleep with her, but that was hardly an invitation for a lifetime together.
But for Amanda – well, that was something different. This was no passing attraction, no minor fling. This was a summer to treasure – a few weeks stolen out of time, to hold close to her heart forever...
“Are we almost there?” Nicky asked plaintively.
Amanda wondered if, caught up in her own thoughts, she’d been ignoring him. “Almost. Tell you what – let’s see who can spot a cow first.”
Nicky peered out the window and almost immediately shouted in triumph. They played games the rest of the way to the lake, and when the car pulled up beside Stephanie’s summer home, on a choice lot directly on the shore, he sighed with disappointment. “I didn’t get to see a pig.”
“We’ll start with that on the way home,” Amanda said. “Remind me, all right?”
Stephanie was on the big deck at the back of the house, overlooking the lake, with a stack of snapshots and a big piece of poster board on the table in front of her.
“What on earth are you doing?” Amanda said. “A kindergarten art project?”
“I’m making a collage of pictures of all the houses we’ve sold in the last six months, for an ad to run in the newspaper next week. You know, sort of a ‘Look how well we’re doing’ kind of thing.” She pushed the photos away with a sigh. “Sounds dumb, doesn’t it?”
“No, it’s a great idea. Everyone wants to associate with a winner.”
“I know – but I’m not patient enough to do the cutting and pasting, I’m afraid. And people think kids have life easy because all they have to do is learn to cut on the lines... Iced tea?”
“Please.”
“How about a lemonade for you, Nicky? Zack’s down in the sandpile if you’d like to go play with him now and have your drink later.” She pointed over the deck rail. In a fenced area a few steps down from the deck, Zack was industriously loading sand into a dump truck that was almost as big as he was.
Nicky nodded shyly, and Mandy took him down. When she came back to the deck, her iced tea was waiting and Stephanie was trimming the photograph of a ranch house, trying to leave just enough border to make it stand out. Her scissors slipped and she put them down in disgust.
“Well, at least you can color inside the lines,” Amanda said cheerfully. “You did almost as well as Nicky the other day.”
“Thanks a heap, friend.”
Amanda leaned back in her chair. The breeze ruffled her hair as softly as Chase had caressed her temple last night...
Enough of that, she warned herself, and sat up, looking over the rail to check on Nicky.
“He’ll be all right,” Stephanie said. “They’re perfectly safe down there – the fence is tight, so they can’t escape to the lake.”
“I know. You’re too careful with your kids to take chances like that. Still, it’s a bit different for me.”
“Since you’re just babysitting? I don’t know. A little benevolent neglect can be good for kids.”
“You might be right. Nicky said his nannies never let him get dirty.”
Stephanie eyed the two little boys in the sandpile. “He obviously isn’t having any trouble remembering how. Besides, leaving kids alone a bit lets them learn to entertain themselves and work out their own social conflicts.”
Amanda teased, “Always assuming they don’t know where the black crayons are hidden.”
Stephanie winced. “You had to remind me of that, didn’t you? Why are you babysitting, anyway?”
Amanda sipped her tea. “I told you. It just seemed easier.”
“For Chase, no doubt. But you?”
“It’s working out fine. I take Nicky to the office with me, and on my inspection tours. What I can’t accomplish with him around, I do after Chase takes him back to his suite for the night.”
Like last night, she reflected, when she had been up till the wee hours balancing the inn’s books. Though to be perfectly fair, she had to admit that it wasn’t bookkeeping which had occupied her mind so completely, but that kiss...
Stephanie shook her head.
“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”
“Not exactly. But I think you’re walking a tightrope. For one thing, you’re developing a king-sized soft spot for Nicky.”
“Wouldn’t anybody?” Amanda glanced over the rail toward the sandbox at the two little boys, heads close together over the big dump truck. The sunlight caught in Nicky’s curls, giving them a golden glow.
“All right, I admit he’s a whole lot sweeter than I thought he could possibly be. Still... it’s dangerous, Mandy.”
“Because no good can possibly come of it?” Amanda knew she sounded almost bitter. “I know that, Stephanie. Two more weeks and he’ll – they’ll – be gone. But –”
“But you’d rather have the two weeks, and heartache to follow? Oh, Mandy... why Chase? There are a dozen men right here in Springhill who would be better for you.”
“Are you thinking of the production manager?”
“Maybe. Who knows? You certainly don’t. You haven’t even given him a chance.”
Amanda was glad when rapid footsteps sounded on the deck stairs and Katie came into view. “Mom! Where’s my – Oh, hi, Mandy.” She dispensed hugs. “Mandy, come to my room and listen to my new CD. It’s the best new singing group ever.”
Amanda laughed. “Katie, I think I’d better stay –”
“Oh, go along,” Stephanie said. “I’ll keep an eye on Nicky, and if the Sapphire Lake Monster carries him away I’ll even explain it to Chase.”
Once plunged into Ka
tie’s world, it took a while to extract herself again, and when Amanda returned Stephanie was in the kitchen pouring them each a fresh glass of tea. “I’d really better get back,” Amanda said.
“Oh, don’t rush. You haven’t helped me decide how the pictures should be arranged in my collage.”
At least, Amanda thought, there wouldn’t be any more lectures about the foolishness of letting herself care for Chase and Nicky.
“Well, the bigger ones at the bottom of the ad, of course, and scatter the really nice houses around...” They stepped onto the deck once more.
Nicky was perched on a corner of a chair, and Zack was standing beside him, wielding Stephanie’s scissors. Around his feet was a pile of soft dark curls, and as Amanda watched in horror, too paralyzed to move, Zack neatly snipped another lock of Nicky’s hair and let it fall. Then he turned around with a grin. “I’m making Nicky pretty,” he announced. “Just like me.”
“Good lord,” Stephanie whispered. She snatched her son up and wrenched the scissors out of his hand. “Zack Kendall, you’re incorrigible!”
Zack started to wail. “But Mandy said –”
Amanda closed her eyes in pain. “I said that Nicky needed a haircut. Oh, Steph, he was only trying to help.”
“At this rate of helpfulness,” Stephanie said grimly, “the kid is going to be locked into his room till he’s twenty-one! No, I won’t punish him for cutting hair. But taking my scissors is a different matter, because he knows quite well he’s not supposed to touch sharp instruments.”
“In the meantime,” Amanda said, “what are we going to do about Nicky?”
Nicky was shrieking now, too, and she gathered him up and tried to get a look at the damage. Zack had gotten only halfway around, that was one blessing – but in places his scissors had almost reached Nicky’s scalp.
Katie leaned against the deck rail and thoughtfully bit into a juicy nectarine. “He looks like he’s been peeled,” she observed.
Nicky screamed all the harder.
It took a while for Amanda to get him calmed down, and even then he sobbed quietly as she and Stephanie combed and clipped and tried to cover the worst of the damage. By the time they were finished, Nicky’s hair was almost even once more, but there was a whole lot less of it.
Stephanie gathered up handfuls of dark hair from the deck. It was hard to believe Nicky could have had so many curls, once upon a time. “Do you suppose Chase will want these as a memento?”
Amanda shrugged. “I’ll take them, just in case.”
“So much for my theory of benevolent neglect. Nicky looks like he’s ready to join the Marines. Mandy, I am so sorry.”
“You only took your eyes off them for a couple of minutes. I know how it feels, Stephanie. Don’t forget I was supposed to be watching Katie the day she ran into the tree while she was flying a kite and gave herself a concussion.”
“Yes, but nobody had to explain that one to Chase,” Stephanie said drearily. “Look, I’ll come into town with you and tell him how it happened.”
“No. I have no idea when he’ll be home –” She caught herself and hoped Stephanie had been too preoccupied to notice what she’d said. “–When he’ll be off the set tonight. There’s no sense in you sitting around waiting for him.”
And if I have any luck at all, she thought, Nicky will be out of sight when Chase comes, so at least I can warn him before he gets a glimpse of the damage!
She left Nicky in the tub till he was wrinkled, but Chase didn’t come. So she used the blow-dryer on his hair, which added a little fullness and body. In fact, she decided, it wouldn’t have been too bad if it wasn’t for the bare spot behind his left ear. Nicky, who couldn’t see the bare spot, seemed to think it was all right; he even admired himself in her hand mirror.
At the last minute she decided to take him to the concert after all. Hiding in her apartment was cowardly, she told herself. Besides, the evening was warm and beautiful, and she could hear the lilting music drifting all the way from the park. Why not go and enjoy it? The odds were that the concert would be over long before Chase left the set.
But in fact, the band had just struck up a medley of Broadway show tunes when she spotted Chase at the edge of the park. He must have opted to walk back to the inn.
Reluctantly she raised a hand to catch his attention. He might not have seen her if she hadn’t, for they were sitting in the shadow at the verge of the park, as far from the bandstand as they could be. But even if she avoided him now, the reckoning couldn’t be postponed for long; she might as well get it over with.
He stopped at the edge of the blanket Amanda had spread on the grass and stared down at Nicky with an expression she had never seen before. It wasn’t horror, exactly – and yet it wasn’t mere shock either...
“He’s half-bald,” Chase said. He sounded as if someone had hit him in the stomach with a baseball bat. “What happened to my kid?”
“I meant to ask you about cutting it,” Amanda began.
“You sliced off all his hair without even consulting me?”
“– But before I had a chance to ask, the kids got hold of scissors and...” She ducked her head miserably. “I’m sorry, Chase. I didn’t have much of a choice, you see. He looked a great deal worse before I evened it up a little.”
Nicky was biting his lip, his eyes wide, as if he knew there was big trouble somewhere, and he was simply waiting for the roof to fall in.
“I turned my back for just a few minutes,” Amanda admitted. “It’s entirely my fault. I know Zack Kendall is dangerous, but I didn’t even think...”
“Nicky looked worse than this?”
Amanda whispered, “I wouldn’t blame you if you want to take him away from me entirely.”
“Daddy?” Nicky said uncertainly. “Don’t you think I look nice?”
“Once you get used to it,” Amanda said hopefully, “it’s really not so bad. It’s the contrast which makes it such a shock.”
Chase sat down on the blanket as if he was folding up in slow motion, propped his elbows on his knees, and put his face down into his hands. He sounded as if he were choking; Amanda wondered if she ought to slap him on the back.
Nicky patted his father’s arm.
“I saved his curls for you,” Amanda said.
Chase raised his head, and she saw that his eyes were wet.
Tears? Amanda thought in astonishment. Now that was ridiculous; it was only hair, after all, and it would grow back. She almost said so, before she realized that Chase was laughing.
He lay back on the blanket and pounded his fist on the ground. “Oh, Nicky,” he said finally, “you’re absolutely guaranteed to give me a lift!”
The clouds on Nicky’s face dissipated in an instant. “And Amanda, too,” he pointed out loyally. “She helped.”
“Thanks a lot for the recommendation, pal,” she muttered. She held out a small envelope.
Chase sat up and looked at it warily. “What’s that?”
“What was left over after Stephanie and I finished the job.”
He glanced at the contents and tucked the envelope into his shirt pocket. “Did you say her little demon was in on this?”
Amanda nodded. “And there’s worse.”
“Hit me with it. At least I’m sitting down.”
“I can’t find anyone to take care of Nicky on Sunday, so Stephanie invited him to come play with Zack during the party. And I said yes – before this happened.”
“Well, at least we know one thing they won’t be doing.” Chase sounded awfully cheerful about it.
“I don’t quite know what you mean.”
“They won’t be cutting any more hair – because there isn’t enough left to get a grip on.” He pulled Nicky down to sit between his knees.
“You mean he can go?”
He tipped his head to one side. “Unless we skip the party to do something else, and take Nicky along.”
It sounded like a wonderful idea to her. The party itself had nev
er been an overwhelming attraction; spending another afternoon and evening with Chase had been what she found appealing. With Nicky or without, at the party or not, or doing nothing at all...it wouldn’t matter, so long as she was with Chase.
She kept her voice steady. “I don’t think the director would like it if you cut his party.”
She was glad the evening light was fading; the streetlights hadn’t yet started to come on, and at the edge of the park the shadows were thick, so Chase wouldn’t be able to see the longing in her eyes.
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