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His talk with Jake hadn’t helped any. He’d meant it when he said there was no peace with Amanda. But back in the day he hadn’t been looking for peace, had he? All he’d been able to think about was her. Her laugh. Her eyes. Her scent. Her taste. The feel of her hands on his body and the sweet brush of her breath when she kissed him.
Hell, no, that wasn’t peaceful.
It was…consuming.
And it was happening again. Only this time, he’d come up with a plan to combat it. It had hit him in the shower just that morning—another damn cold one—that what he needed to do was get Amanda back in his bed.
Over the years, Nathan had convinced himself that he’d idealized what he and Amanda had shared. That was why he hadn’t been able to find another woman to compare to her. His own mind had set him up for failure by making the memories of Amanda so amazing that what woman could hold a candle to her?
What was needed here was a little reality. And sex was the key. Get her in his bed, and get her out of his mind once and for all.
It was the only road to sanity.
Once he’d had her again, he could let her go. This tension between them would finally be over.
As his plan settled into his mind, he smiled to himself.
“What?” Amanda asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re smiling,” she pointed out.
“And that’s bad?” He laughed a little and moved forward as the line continued to snake ahead.
“Not bad,” Amanda said, still watching him warily. “Just…suspicious.”
Behind them in line, someone chuckled.
Nathan frowned. Damned hard to work on seducing a woman when you had half the town watching your every move. “So when I’m angry, you’re mad and when I’m not, you’re worried.”
She thought about it for a second, then nodded. “That’s about right.”
For just a moment, Nathan enjoyed the confusion in her eyes and found himself laughing briefly. “There really is no one else like you, is there?”
“Probably not,” she admitted and moved a bit closer to the head of the line.
She could always drive him out of his mind, Nathan thought, letting his gaze move over her in appreciation. He’d always liked tall women—they were right in easy kissing range. Amanda, though, was like no one else. Or at least that’s how he remembered it. Even in high school, when she was a freshman and he a senior, he’d been drawn to her. His friends had given him grief over it, of course—but he hadn’t been able to stay away.
And then, years later, those same friends had told him about the rumors that had eventually torn him and Amanda apart.
“So tell me, Nathan,” she said, shattering his thoughts and drawing him back to the moment, “are you interested in my sister?”
“What?” He goggled at her. “Where did that come from?”
She shrugged, glared at the man behind them, openly listening to their conversation, then leaned in closer to Nathan to say, “I’ve seen the way she watches you.”
Nathan thought about that for a minute. He hadn’t noticed Pam looking at him in any particular way. Okay, yes, he’d dated her a couple times a year or so ago, but it hadn’t gone anywhere and they’d parted friends. Or he’d thought they had. Until now. Frowning slightly, he said, “We went out a few times a while back, but—”
Her eyes went wide. “I can’t believe you dated my sister,” she said, cutting him off sharply.
The man behind them in line let out a long, slow whistle, but when Nathan gave him a hard look, the guy got quiet fast.
“It was a couple of dates. Dinner.” He thought back. “A movie.”
“It was my sister.” She fisted her hands at her hips. “How would you like it if I dated Jake?”
“I think his wife would mind it even more than I would.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I do. But we were over, remember?” Nathan whispered and moved with the line. How long was this line, anyway? And were there even more people crowded around them than there had been a few minutes ago? “Besides, Pam was here and—”
“So she was here,” Amanda said, interrupting him again and making Nathan grind his teeth together in frustration. “Well, then. Of course I can understand that. The whole proximity factor.”
The whistler behind them chuckled now and only shrugged when Nathan gave him another hard stare. This conversation was going to be all over town by supper-time, he told himself, and still he couldn’t keep from saying, “At least Pam never lied to me.”
She sucked in a gulp of air and her eyes shone with fury. “Lie to you? I never lied to you. You were the one who—”
“That’s it,” he muttered and grabbed hold of her arm.
He wasn’t going to do this with a couple dozen people watching them with all the avid interest of a crowd at a football game.
Dragging her out of the line, he headed toward the nearest deserted spot. A shade tree close to the now-empty baseball diamond. Naturally, nothing with Amanda came easy. She tugged and pulled, trying to get out of his grip, but no way was he letting her go until they had this settled. And for this talk, they needed some damn privacy.
“Let go of me!” She kicked at him, but missed.
“In a minute,” he muttered.
“I want my coffee. I do not want to go anywhere with you.”
“That’s too damn bad,” Nathan told her and never slowed down. When they finally reached the shade of the oak, he let her go and she stared up at him, furious.
“I don’t know who you think you are, but—”
“You know exactly who I am,” he told her, voice low and filled with the temper crouched inside him. “Just like you know that I hate putting on a show for the whole damn town.”
“Fine.” She lifted her chin, met him glare for glare and then said, “You want to talk, here it is. I never lied to you, Nathan.”
“And I’m supposed to take your word for that?”
“Damn right, you are,” she shouted, obviously not caring who was listening. “When did I ever give you a reason to not trust me, Nathan?”
She had a point, but he didn’t want to admit to it. All he remembered were the rumors she hadn’t been able to disprove. The sympathetic glances from his friends. The gossip that insisted on a completely different story than the one she’d told him. And his doubts had chewed on him until, ragged with temper and tension, he’d faced her down and in one night, they had lost everything.
“What was I supposed to think?” he demanded. “My best friends told me that story. Why wouldn’t I believe them?”
Shaking her head, she looked at him now with more hurt than fury and that tore at him.
“Because you were supposed to love me. You should have taken my word for it.”
Shame rippled through him and was gone an instant later. He’d done what he thought was right. Hell, he’d been half-crazed back then anyway. When he heard she had lost the baby, he was enrolled in the police academy in Dallas and hadn’t been able to get to her. Hadn’t even been able to call her. To figure out truth from lies.
“It was a long time ago, Amanda.”
“Was it?” she asked quietly. “Doesn’t feel like it right now.”
No, it didn’t. The past was there, in the park with them. Shadows of memories crowded together, dimming the sunlight, making the other people in the park fade away until it was just he and Amanda. He looked into her eyes and said, “All right then. Tell me now. The truth.”
She sighed. “I shouldn’t have to tell you again, Nathan. You know me. You knew me then. You should have believed me. I lost our baby.”
Pain slapped at him but he pushed it away. Now that the past was here, it was time to finally settle it. If he wanted to get her out of his mind, then he was going to have to make a start right here.
“Then who the hell was it who made sure I thought you had ended the pregnancy on purpose?”
Five (#u90ebe143-7c0c-5668-a5c5-53c8a3f7a6c5)
“I don’t know,” Amanda said, shaking her head. She still couldn’t believe anyone had spread that rumor. Couldn’t believe that Nathan had thought for even a minute that she would ever do such a thing.
In a flash, Amanda was back there, on the night when everything crashed down around her. They’d been engaged for two weeks—because Nathan had insisted on a wedding the moment he found out she was pregnant. But that night, she had been the one doing the insisting.
“The wedding’s off, Nathan.”
“Just like that?”
“The only reason you were marrying me was because of the baby, right?” Those words cost her. She so wanted him to say that wasn’t true. That he loved her. Always had. That they would be okay, they would get past this.
But he didn’t.
And she couldn’t marry a man who didn’t love her—no matter how much she loved him.
“So that’s it?” he demanded. “Now that you’re not pregnant, you don’t need me anymore, that it? Find someone richer?”
Stunned, she could only look at him. She had never cared a damn about his money. She’d loved him for as long as she could remember. And she’d convinced herself that he cared for her, too. Even though he’d never actually said the words. Now she could see she’d been living in a dream world. “How can you say that?”
“Oh, I’m not done,” he told her flatly. “You said you lost the baby, but that’s not the whole story, is it?”
Amanda stared up at him. She had expected him to be supportive. To share the pain that was still tearing through her. The loss of the baby, her hopes, her dreams for the future. They were all gone now.
She’d needed Nathan so badly. Now that he was here, she only wanted him gone.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said finally.
“Yeah, I think you do.” He stalked around the perimeter of her tiny Midland apartment. “Hell, you hated the thought of marrying me so much you got rid of my baby?”
“What?” Shock held her in place. Outrage made her want to scream. Pain held her in such a tight grip she could hardly breathe. “You think—”
“Thought I wouldn’t find out, didn’t you?” he asked, his voice dripping with ice.
“There was nothing to find out, Nathan.” Through her pain, anger began to blossom like a black rose. She gave it free rein. “I lost the baby. I had a miscarriage. I told you.”
He scrubbed one hand across the top of his head. “Yeah, that’s what you told me. Others told me something different.”
“And you’d believe them? Believe that I could do something like that to our child?”
His eyes were hard, his expression distant, remote. “Why would anyone say that if it wasn’t true?”
Good question, but that was for later. Right now, the most important question on her mind was how could he think for even a second that it was true?
“How do I know?”
“Exactly,” he said. “How do I know what to believe, either?”
“I guess you have to trust me,” she said, knowing he didn’t. Knowing he wouldn’t.
“Yeah.” His eyes were as cold as the moon. Suddenly he looked like a stranger to her and Amanda knew she wouldn’t be able to reach him because he didn’t want to be reached.
So much lost, all in a blink of time. She swayed with the impact of what was happening.
He turned and walked to the door. There, he stopped and looked back at her. “You’re right about one thing, though. The wedding’s off. I was only marrying you because of the baby. With the reason gone, there’s no point, is there?”
The fact that his words echoed what she had thought herself only moments before just made the pain that much deeper. Sharper. When Nathan left, the quiet click of the door shutting behind him sounded like a gunshot. It seemed to echo in the empty room long after he’d left her. Long after Amanda had curled up on the couch to cry herself to sleep.
Shaking her head as if she could somehow dislodge the painful memories, Amanda looked up at him through eyes that were no longer starry with love for a man who refused to love her back. She wasn’t young and foolish anymore. If she still loved Nathan, that was her problem and she’d find a way to get over it. But he would never know that he still had so much power over her heart.
“You walked out, Nathan,” she reminded him in a voice that was low and throbbing with remembered hurt.
“Yeah,” he admitted, “I did. But you were the one to end things between us. Hell, I walked in the door and you handed me the ring.”
“You agreed with me about calling off the wedding,” she reminded him.
“Damn straight, I did. You weren’t pregnant. You’d already handed me the ring—”
“You wouldn’t talk to me,” she said.
“You didn’t give me a chance to say anything and even if you had, what the hell could I say?” he countered. “It was done. The baby was gone and your ring was in my fist. What do you think I should have said, for God’s sake?”
“That you believed me.” That was the one thing that had always stung. He had known her better than anyone else—or so she had thought. And he’d taken the word of malicious gossips over her.
How was she supposed to forget that?
He scrubbed both hands across his face as memories crowded so close he could hardly draw a breath. The rumors had driven him crazy when he couldn’t get to her. At first, she was in the hospital and then when she was out, he was confined to the academy. Couldn’t even talk to her. Couldn’t look into her eyes and see for himself truth from lies. But by the time he finally reached her side, the crazy had taken over. The doubts. The disappointment and fury had him so tangled into knots it was all he could do to hold it together.
Hell, he prided himself on control. On being in charge of every damn thing around him. He had his own personal rules of conduct. And he’d blown them all on that long-ago night. Duty. Honor. They’d both gone out the window when anger made him blind to common sense.
Blowing out a breath, he stared up at the sky for a long minute, then lowered his gaze to hers. Doubts still gnawed at the edges of his heart, but being with her, looking into her eyes, clouded with hurt, he could see the truth that had eluded him for so long. “I do believe you.”
The moment he said it, he knew it was right. Back then, he’d been young and stupid. He’d wanted her to rush into his arms looking for comfort. He’d wanted her to cry and mourn their lost child so he would know that she hadn’t ended her pregnancy. Instead, she’d handed him the ring he’d given her and told him, more or less, to move on.
