The sound was certainly nothing unusual, but it fairly stopped Amanda’s heart. She kicked the switch on the vacuum cleaner with her toe and lunged for the telephone, hoping to hear Jordan’s voice since she hadn’t seen or heard from him in nearly a week.
Instead it was her mother. “Hello, darling,” said Marion Whitfield. “You sound breathless. Were you just coming in from the store or something?”
Amanda sank onto the couch. “No, I was only doing housework,” she replied, feeling deflated even though she loved and admired this woman who had made a life for herself and both her daughters after the man of the house had walked out on them all.
“That’s nice,” Marion commented, for she was a great believer in positive reinforcement. “Listen, I called to ask if you’d like to go Christmas shopping with me. We could have lunch, too, and maybe even take in a movie.”
Amanda sighed. She still didn’t feel great about Christmas, and the stores and restaurants would be jam-packed. The theaters, of course, would be full of screaming children left there by harried mothers trying to complete their shopping. “I think I’ll just stay home, if you don’t mind.” She stated the refusal in a kindly tone, not wanting to hurt her mother’s feelings.
“Is everything all right?”
Amanda caught one fingernail between her teeth for a moment before answering, “Mostly, yes.”
“It’s time you put that nasty experience with James Brockman behind you,” Marion said forth-rightly.
The two women were friends, as well as mother and daughter, and Amanda was not normally secretive with Marion. However, the thing with Jordan was too new and too fragile to be discussed; after all, he might never call again. “I’m trying, Mom,” she replied.
“Well, Bob and I want you to come over for dinner soon. Like tomorrow, for instance.”
“I’ll let you know,” Amanda promised quickly as the doorbell made its irritating buzz. “And stop worrying about me, okay?”
“Okay,” Marion answered without conviction just before Amanda hung up.
Amanda expected one of the neighbor children, or maybe the postman with a package, so when she opened the door and found Jordan standing in the hallway, she felt as though she’d just run into a wall at full tilt.
For his part, Jordan looked a little bewildered, as though he might be surprised to find himself at Amanda’s door. “I should have called,” he said.
Amanda recovered herself. “Come in,” she replied with a smile.
He hesitated for a moment, then stepped into the apartment, his hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket. He was wearing jeans and a green turtleneck, and his brown hair was damp from the Seattle drizzle. “I was wondering if you’d like to go out to lunch or something.”
Amanda glanced at the clock on the mantel and was amazed to see that it was nearly noon. The morning had flown by in a flurry of housecleaning. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll just clean up a little—”
He reached out and caught hold of her hand when she would have disappeared into her bedroom. “You look fine,” he told her, and his voice was very low, like the rumble of an earthquake deep down in the ground.
By sheer force of will, Amanda shored up her knees, only to have him pull her close and lock his hands lightly behind the small of her back. A hot flush made her cheeks ache, and she had to force herself to meet his eyes.
Jordan chuckled. “Do I really scare you so much?” he asked.
Amanda wet her lips with the tip of her tongue in an unconscious display of nervousness. “Yes.”
“Why?”
The question was reasonable, but Amanda didn’t know the answer. “I’m not sure.”
He grinned. “Where would you like to go for lunch?”
She would have been content not to go out at all, preferring just to stand there in his arms all afternoon, breathing in his scent and enjoying the lean, hard feel of his body against hers. She gave herself an inward shake. “You know, I just refused a similar invitation from my mother, and she would have thrown in a movie.”
Jordan laughed and smoothed Amanda’s bangs back from her forehead. “All right, so will I.”
But Amanda shook her head. “Too many munchkins screaming and throwing popcorn.”
His expression changed almost imperceptibly. “Don’t you like kids?”
“I love them,” Amanda answered, “except when they’re traveling in herds.”
Jordan chuckled again and gave her another light kiss. “Okay, we’ll go to something R-rated. Nobody under seventeen admitted without a parent.”
“You’ve got a deal,” Amanda replied.
Just as he was helping her get into her coat, the telephone rang. Praying there wasn’t a disaster at the Evergreen to be taken care of, Amanda answered, “Hello?”
“Hello, Amanda.” She hadn’t heard that voice in six long months, and the sound of it stunned her. It was James.
Grimacing at Jordan, she spoke into the receiver. “I don’t want to talk to you, now or ever.”
“Please don’t hang up,” James said quickly.
Amanda bit down on her lip and lowered her eyes. “What is it?”
“Madge is divorcing me.”
She drew a deep breath and let it out again. “Congratulations, James,” she said, not with cruelty but with resignation. After all, it was no great surprise, and she had no idea why he felt compelled to share the news with her.
“I’d like for you and me to get back together,” he said in that familiar tone that had once rendered her pliant and gullible.
“There’s absolutely no chance of that,” Amanda replied, forcing herself to meet Jordan’s gaze again. He was standing at the door, his hand on the knob, watching her with concern but not condemnation. “Goodbye, James.” With that, she placed the receiver back in its cradle.
Jordan remained where he was for a long moment, then he crossed the room to where Amanda stood, bundled in her coat, and gently lifted her hair out from under her collar. “Still want to go out?” he asked quietly.
Amanda was oddly shaken, but she nodded, and they left the apartment together. The phone began ringing again when they reached the top of the stairs, but this time Amanda made no effort to answer it.
“I guess I can’t blame him for being persistent,” Jordan remarked when they were seated in the Porsche. “You’re a beautiful woman, Amanda.”
She sighed, ignoring the compliment because it didn’t register. “I’ll never forgive James for lying to me the way he did,” she got out. Tears stung her eyes as she remembered the blinding pain of his deceit.
Jordan pulled out into the rainy-day traffic and kept his eyes on the road. “He wants you back,” he guessed.
Amanda noticed that his hands tensed slightly around the steering wheel.
“That’s what he said,” she confessed, staring out at the decorated streets but not really seeing them.
“Do you believe him?”
Amanda shrugged. “It doesn’t matter whether I do or not. I’ve made my decision and I’m not going to change my mind.” She found some tissue in her purse and resolutely dried her eyes, trying in vain to convince herself that Jordan hadn’t noticed she was crying.
He drove to a pizza joint across the street from a mall north of the city. “This okay?” he asked, bringing the sleek car to a stop in one of the few parking