Amanda had just changed back into her jeans and a T-shirt when the thunderous knock sounded at the door. Expecting an enthusiastic salesperson, she was taken aback to find Jordan standing on her porch, dripping rainwater and indignation.
“Aren’t you going to ask me in?” he demanded.
Amanda stepped back without a word, watching with round eyes as Jordan stomped into the warm kitchen, scowling at her.
“Well?” he prompted, putting his hands on his hips.
He seemed to have a particular scenario in mind, but Amanda couldn’t think for the life of her what it would be.
She left him standing there while she went into her bathroom for a dry towel. Handing it to him upon her return, she asked, “Well, what?”
“What are you doing in this house? For that matter, what are you doing on this island?” He was drying his hair all the while he spoke, a grudging expression on his face.
Amanda hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her jeans and tilted her head to one side. “I own this house,” she replied. “As for why I’m on the island, well—” she paused to shrug and spread her hands “—I guess I just didn’t know I was supposed to get your approval before I stepped off the ferry.”
Jordan flung the towel across the room, and it caught on the handle of the old-fashioned refrigerator. “Are you married to James?”
She went to the percolator and filled two cups with coffee, one for her and one for Jordan. “No,” she answered, turning her head to look back at him over her shoulder. “I explained the situation to you. I was only trying to help James in my own misguided way. Where did you get the idea I meant to marry him?”
Jordan sighed and shoved his hand through damp, tangled hair. “Okay, so my imagination ran away with me. I tried to call you on Christmas Eve, and you weren’t home. I had all these pictures in my mind of you lying on some secluded beach in Hawaii, helping James recuperate.”
Although she was delighted, even jubilant, to know Jordan had tried to call her, she wasn’t about to let on. She brought the coffee cup to him and held it out until he took it. “How would my lying on a secluded beach help James recuperate?”
“With you for a visual aid, a corpse would recuperate,” he replied with a sheepish grin. His eyes remained serious. “I’ve missed you, Mandy.”
She felt tears rising in her eyes and lowered her head while she struggled to hold them back. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
Jordan took her coffee and set it, with his own, on the counter. “Don’t you have any chairs in this place?”
Amanda made herself meet his eyes as she shook her head. “Not yet. The movers will be here on Monday.”
He approached her, hooked his index fingers through the belt loops on her jeans and pulled her close. So close that every intimacy they’d ever shared came surging back to her memory at the contact, making her feel light-headed.
“I may have neglected to mention this before,” he said in a voice like summer thunder rumbling far in the distance, “but I’m in love with you, and I have a feeling it’s a lifetime thing.”
Amanda linked her hands behind his neck, reveling in her closeness to Jordan and the priceless words he’d just said. “Actually, you did neglect to mention that, Mr. Richards.”
He tasted her lips, sending a thrill careening through her system. “I apologize abjectly, even though you’re guilty of the same oversight.”
“Only too true,” Amanda whispered, her mouth against his. “I love you, Jordan.”
He ran his hands up and down her back, strong and sure and full of the power to set her senses aflame. He pressed his lips to her neck and answered with a teasing growl.
Amanda called upon all her self-control to lean back in his arms. “Jordan, we have things to talk about—things to work out. We can’t just take up where we left off.”
His fingers were hooked in her belt loops again. “I’ll grant you that we have a lot to work through, and it’s going to take some time. Why don’t we go over to my place and talk?”
With considerable effort, Amanda willed her heart to slow down to a normal beat. She knew what was going to happen—it was inevitable—but she wanted to be sure they were on solid ground first. “We can talk here,” she said, and she led him into the giant, empty parlor with its view of the sound. They sat together on a window seat with no cushion, their hands clasped. “I was wrong not to tell you I was seeing James again, Jordan, and I’m sorry.”
He touched her lips with an index finger. Outside, beyond the rain-dappled glass, the storm raged on. “Looking back, I guess I wouldn’t have been very receptive, anyway. I was feeling pretty possessive.”
Amanda rested her head against his damp shoulder, unable to resist his warmth any longer, trembling as he traced a tingling pattern on her nape. “I thought I was going to die when I saw you at Ivar’s with that corporation chick.”
Jordan laughed and curved his fingers under her chin. “’Corporation chick’? That was Clarissa Robbins. She works in the legal department and is married to one of my best friends.”
Amanda felt foolish, but she was also relieved, and she guessed that showed in her face, because Jordan was grinning at her. “You have your girls back,” she said. “I saw you on the ferry last night.”
Jordan nodded. “They didn’t actually move in until a month ago. After all, they were used to living with Paul and Karen, so we just did weekends at first. And they’re staying with Becky’s parents until tomorrow night.”
She tried to lower her head again, but Jordan wouldn’t allow it.
“Think you could fall for a guy with two kids, Mandy?” he asked.
“I already have,” she answered softly.
Jordan’s mouth descended to hers, gentle at first, and then possessive and commanding. By the time he withdrew, Amanda was dazed.
“Show me the bridal suite,” he said, rising to his feet and pulling Amanda after him.
She swallowed. “There’s no bed in there, Jordan,” she explained timidly.
“Where do you sleep?”
His voice was downright hypnotic. In fact, if he’d started undressing her right there in the middle of the parlor, she wouldn’t have been able to raise an objection. “In a little room off the kitchen, but—”
“Show me,” Jordan interrupted, and she led him back to where she slept.
“That’ll never hold up,” he said, eyeing the cot Amanda had spent the night on. With an inspired grin, he grabbed up the sleeping bag and pillow. “Now,” he went on, grasping her hand again, “let’s break in the bridal suite.”
Amanda felt color rise in her cheeks, and she averted her eyes before leading the way around to the front of the house and up the stairs.
The best room faced the water and boasted its own fireplace, but it was unfurnished except for a large hooked rug centered in the middle of the floor.
Jordan spread the sleeping bag out on the rug and tossed the pillow carelessly on top of it, then stood watching Amanda with a mingling of humor and hunger in his eyes. “Come here, Mandy,” he said with gentle authority.
She approached him shyly, because in some ways everything was new between them.
He slipped his hands beneath her T-shirt, resting them lightly on the sides of her waist; his hands were surprisingly warm.
“I love you, Amanda Scott,” he told her firmly. “And in a month or a year or whenever you’re ready, I’m going to make you my wife. Any objections?”
Amanda’s lips were dry, and she wet them with her tongue. “None at all,” she answered, and she drew in a sharp breath and closed her eyes as Jordan slid his hands up her sides to her breasts. With his thumbs he stroked her long-neglected nipples through the lacy fabric of her bra. When they stood erect, he pulled Amanda’s T-shirt off over her head and tossed it aside.
“Let me look at you,” he said, standing back a little.
Slowly, a little awkwardly, Amanda unhooked her bra and let it drop, revealing her full breasts. She let her hand fall back in ecstatic surrender as Jordan boldly closed his hands over her. When he bent his head and began to suckle at one pulsing nipple, she gave a little cry and entangled her hands in his hair.
He drew on both her breasts, one after the other, until she was half-delirious, and then he dropped to his knees on the sleeping bag and gently took Amanda’s shoes from her feet. She started to sink down, needing union with him, but he grasped her hips and held her upright.
She bit down on her lower lip as she felt his finger beneath the waistband of her jeans. The snap gave way, and then the zipper, and then Amanda was bared to him, except for her panties and socks.
Her knees bent of their own accord, and her pelvis shifted forward as Jordan nipped at the hidden mound, all the time rolling one of her socks down. When her feet were bare, he pulled her panties down very slowly, and she kicked them aside impatiently, sure that Jordan would appease her now.
But he wasn’t through tormenting her. He massaged the insides of her thighs, carefully avoiding the place that most needed his attention, and then lifted one of her knees and placed it over his shoulder.
Amanda was forced to link her hands behind his neck to keep from falling. “Oh,” she whimpered as she realized what a vulnerable position she was in. “Jordan—”
He parted her with his fingers. “What?”
Her answer was cut off, and forced forever into the recesses of her mind when Jordan suddenly took her fully, greedily, into his mouth. She thrust her head back with the proud abandon of a tigress and gave a primitive groan that echoed in the empty room.
Jordan raised one hand to fondle her breast as he consumed her, and the two sensations combined to drive her to the very edge of sanity. She began to plead with him, and tug at the back of his shirt in a fruitless effort to strip him and feel his nakedness under her hands.
He lay back on the floor, bringing Amanda with him, and she rocked wildly in a shameless search for release while he moved his hands in gentle circles on her quivering belly. When he caught both her nipples between his fingers, Amanda’s quest ended in a spectacular explosion that wrung a series of hoarse cries from her throat.
She sagged to the floor when it was over, only half-conscious, and Jordan arranged her on the sleeping bag before slowly removing his clothes. When he was naked, he tucked the pillow under her bottom and parted her knees, kneeling between them to tease her.
The back of one hand resting against her mouth, Amanda gave a soft moan. “Jordan—”
“Umm?” He gave her barely an inch of himself, but that was enough to arouse her all over again, to stir the fires he’d just banked. At the same time, he bent to sip at one of her nipples in a leisurely fashion.
Amanda groaned.
“What was that?” Jordan teased, barely pausing in his enjoyment of her breast.
“I want—oh, God, Jordan, please—I need you so much….”
He drew in a ragged breath, and she felt him tremble against the insides of her thighs as he gave her another inch.
She clutched at his arms, trying to pull him to her. “Jordan!” she wailed suddenly in utter desperation, and he gave her just a little more of himself.
Amanda couldn’t wait any longer. She’d had release once, it was true, but her every instinct drove her toward complete fulfillment. She needed Jordan’s weight, his substance, his force, and she needed it immediately.
With a fierce cry, she thrust her hips upward, taking him all the way inside her, and at that point Jordan’s awesome control snapped.
Amanda watched through a haze of passion as he surrendered. Bracing his hands on the rug and arching his back, he withdrew and lunged into her again in a long, violent stroke, leaving no doubt as to the extent of his claim on her.
Triumph came at the peak of a sweet frenzy that tore a rasping shout from Jordan’s throat and set Amanda’s spirit to spiraling within her. For a few dizzying moments she was sure it would escape and soar off into the cosmos, leaving her body behind forever. The feeling passed, like a fever, and when Jordan fell to her, she was there to receive him.
He kissed her bare shoulder between gasps for air, and finally whispered, “Don’t mind me. I’ll be fine in a year or two.”
Amanda’s breath had just returned, and she laughed, moving her hands over his back in a gesture meant both to soothe and to claim. But her eyes were solemn when Jordan lifted his head to study her face a few moments later.
“Do you think it will take a long time for us to get things ironed out, Jordan?”
He kissed her forehead. “Judging by what just happened here, I’d say no.”
He traced the outline of her mouth with the tip of one finger. “Will you give me a baby, Mandy?” he asked huskily.
Her heart warmed within her, and seemed to grow larger. “Probably sooner than you think,” she replied.
Jordan chuckled and drew her close to him, and they lay together for a long time, recovering. Remembering. Finally, he bent to kiss her once more before rising from her to reach for his clothes. He gave her a long look as she sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees, then sighed. “We’ve got a lot of talking to do,” he said. “Now that there’s some chance of concentrating, let’s go over to my place and get started.”
Amanda nodded and grabbed her jeans and panties. Because her things were scattered all over the rug, she wasn’t able to dress as fast as Jordan, and he was brazen enough to watch her put on every garment.
Fifteen minutes later they pulled into his garage. When a blaze was snapping in the living room fireplace, they sat side by side on the floor in front of it, cross-legged and sipping wine.
Amanda started the conversation with a blunt but necessary question. “Are you still in love with Becky?”
Jordan considered her words solemnly and for a long time. “Not in the way you mean,” he finally said, his eyes caressing Amanda he watched her reactions. “But I’ll always care about her. It’s just that I feel a different kind of love for her now. Sort of mellow and quiet and nostalgic.”
Amanda nodded, then let her head rest against his shoulder. “In a way, she lives on in Jessie and Lisa.”
Jordan sighed, watching the fire. He told her about the accident then, about feeling Becky’s arms tighten around his waist in fear just before impact, about the pain, about being in the hospital when her funeral was held. “I felt responsible for her death for a long time,” he said, “but I finally realized I was just using that as an excuse to go on mourning forever. Deep down inside, I knew it was really an accident.”
Amanda gave him a hug.
“Thanks, Mandy,” he said hoarsely.
She sat up straight to look at him. “For what?”
“For coming along when you did, and for being who you are. Until I met you, I didn’t think love was an option for me.”
The rain began to slacken in its seemingly incessant chatter on the roof and against the windows, and Amanda thought she saw a hint of sunshine glimmering at the edge of a distant cloud. She linked her arm through Jordan’s and laid her temple to his shoulder, content just to be close to him.
Jordan intertwined his fingers with Amanda’s, and his grip was strong and tight. With his other hand he tapped his wineglass against hers. “Here’s to taking chances,” he said softly.
The movers arrived on Monday, and so did the furniture Amanda had bought at the estate sale. She called in several plumbers for estimates on extra bathrooms, and that night she and Jordan and the girls sat around her kitchen table, eating chicken from a red-and-white striped bucket.
“I’m glad you didn’t go to heaven,” Jessie told Amanda, her dark eyes round and earnest.
“Me, too,” Lisa put in, nibbling on a drumstick.
Amanda’s gaze linked with Jordan’s. “I could have sworn I visited there once,” she said mysteriously.
Jordan gave her a look. “Dirty pool, lady,” he accused.
“Uh-uh, Daddy,” Jessie argued. “Amanda doesn’t even have a pool.”
“I stand corrected,” Jordan told his daughter, but his eyes were on Amanda.
Tossing a denuded chicken bone onto her plate, Amanda stood up and bent to give greasy, top-of-the-head kisses to both Jessie and Lisa. “Thanks for being glad I’m around, gang,” she told the girls in a conspiratorial whisper.
“You’re welcome,” Jessie replied.
Lisa was busy tilting the bucket to see if there was another drumstick inside.
Jordan watched Amanda with mischievous eyes as she dropped her plate into the trash and then leaned back against the sink with her arms folded.
“I suppose you people think I can’t cook,” she said.
No one offered a comment except for Gershwin, who came strolling into the kitchen with a cordial meow. The girls were delighted, and instantly abandoned what remained of their dinners to pet him.
When he realized he wasn’t going to get any chicken, the cat wandered out of the room again. Jessie and Lisa were right behind him.
“Come here,” Jordan said with just the hint of a grin.
“I’ve got no willpower at all where you’re concerned,” Amanda answered, allowing herself to be pulled onto his lap.
“Good. Will you marry me, Mandy?”
She tilted her head to one side. “Yes. But we agreed to wait, give things time—”
“We’ve had enough time. I love you, and that’s never going to change.”
Amanda kissed him. “If it’s never going to change, then it won’t matter if we wait.”
He let his forehead fall against her breasts, pretending to be forlorn. “Do you know what it’s going to do to me to go home tonight and leave you here?” he muttered.
She rested her chin on the top of his head. “You’ll survive,” she assured him. “I need a few months to get the business going, Jordan.”
He sighed heavily. “Okay,” he said with such a tone of martyrdom that Amanda laughed out loud.
Jordan repaid her by sliding a hand up under her shirt and cupping her breast.
Amanda squirmed and uttered a protest, but the steady strokes of his thumb across her nipple raised a fever in her. “We’ll just have to be—flexible,” she acquiesced with a sigh of supreme longing.
“We’re not going to have much time alone together,” Jordan warned, continuing his quiet campaign to drive her crazy. “Of course, if we were married, it would be perfectly natural for us to sleep together every night.” He’d lifted one side of Amanda’s bra so that her bare breast nestled in his hand.
“Jordan,” Amanda whispered. “Stop it.”
In the parlor, Amanda’s television set came on, and the theme song of the girls’ favorite sitcom filled the air. “A nuclear war wouldn’t distract them from that show,” Jordan said sleepily, lifting Amanda’s T-shirt and closing his lips brazenly around her nipple.
She knew she should twist away, but the truth was, the most she could manage was to turn on Jordan’s lap so that she could see the parlor doorway clearly. The position provided Jordan with better access to her breast, which he enjoyed without a hint of self-consciousness.
When he’d had enough, he righted her bra, pulled her shirt down and swatted her lightly on the bottom. “Well,” he said with an exaggerated yawn, “it’s a school night. I’d better take the girls home.”
Amanda was indignant. “Jordan Richards, you deliberately got me worked up….”
He grinned and lifted her off his lap. “Yep,” he confessed, rising from his chair and wandering idly in the direction of the parlor.
Flushed, Amanda flounced back and forth between the table and the trash can, disposing of the remains of dinner. After that, she wiped the table off in furious motions, and when she carried the dish-cloth back to the sink, she realized Jordan was watching her with a twinkle in his eyes.
“In three days we could have a license,” he said.
In the parlor, Jessie and Lisa laughed at some event in their favorite program, and the sound lifted Amanda’s heart. The children would always be Becky and Jordan’s, but she loved them already, and she wanted to be a part of their lives almost as much as she wanted to be a part of their father’s.
She walked slowly over to the man she loved and put her arms around his waist. “Okay, Jordan, you win. I want to be with you and the kids too much to wait any longer. But you’ll have to be patient with me, because getting a new business off the ground takes a lot of time and energy.”
His eyes danced with delight as he lifted one hand for a solemn oath. “I’ll be patient if you will,” he said.
Amanda bit down on her lower lip, worried. “I don’t want to fail at this, Jordan.”
He kissed her forehead. “We’ll have to work at marriage, Mandy—just like everybody else does. But it’ll last, I promise you.”
“How can you be so sure?” she asked, watching his face for some sign of reservation or caution.
She saw only confidence and love. “The odds are in our favor,” he answered, “and I’m taking the rest on faith.”
It was September, and the maples and elms scattered between the evergreens across the road were turning to bright gold. They matched the lumbering yellow school bus that ground to a halt beside the sign that read Amanda’s Place.
The bus door opened and Jessie bounded down the steps and leaped to the ground, then turned to catch hold of Lisa’s hand and patiently help her down.
Amanda smiled and placed one hand on her distended stomach, watching as her stepdaughters raced toward the house, their school papers fluttering in the autumn breeze.
“I made a house!” Lisa shouted, breathless with excitement as she raced ahead of her sister to meet Amanda on the step.
Amanda bent to properly examine the drawing Lisa had done in the afternoon kindergarten session. A crude square with windows represented the house, and there were four stick figures in front. “Here’s me,” Lisa said with a sniffle, pointing a pudgy little finger at the smallest form in the picture, “and here’s Jessie and Daddy and you. I didn’t draw the baby ‘cause I don’t know what he looks like.”
Amanda kissed the child soundly on the forehead. “That’s such a good picture that I’m going to put it up in the shop so everybody who comes in can admire it.”
Lisa beamed at the prospect, sniffled again and toddled past Amanda and into the warm kitchen.
“How about you?” she asked Jessie, who had waited patiently on the bottom step for her turn. “Did you draw a picture, too?”
“I’m too big for that,” Jessie said importantly. “I wrote the whole alphabet.”
Putting an arm on the little girl’s back, Amanda gently steered her into the kitchen. “Let’s see,” she said.
Jessie proudly extended the paper. “I already know enough to be in second grade,” she said.
Amanda assessed the neatly printed letters marching smartly across Jessie’s paper. “This is certainly one of the nicest papers I’ve ever seen,” she said.
Jessie eyed her shrewdly. “Good enough to be in the shop like Lisa’s picture?”
“Absolutely,” Amanda replied. To prove her assertion, she strode through the big dining room, now completely furnished, and the large parlor, where Lisa was plunking on the piano, into the shop. Several of her quilts were displayed there, along with the work of many local craftspeople.
Her live-in manager, Millie Delano, was behind the cash register. It had been a slow day, but there were guests scheduled for the weekend, and the quilts and other items had sold extremely well over the summer. Amanda was making a go of her bed and breakfast, although it would be a long time before she got rich.
She held up both Lisa’s picture and Jessie’s printing for Millie’s inspection. The pleasant middle-aged woman smiled broadly as Amanda made places for the papers on the bulletin board behind the counter and pinned them into place.
Jessie, who sometimes worried that her fondness for Amanda made her disloyal to her mother, beamed with pride.
The girls were settled in the kitchen, drinking milk and eating bananas, when Jordan arrived from the city. “Is my family ready to go home?” he asked, poking his head around the door.
Jessie and Lisa, who were always delighted to see him, whether he’d been away five minutes, five hours or five days, flung themselves at him with shrieks of welcome. Amanda, her hands resting on her protruding stomach, stood back, watching. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she thought how lucky she was to have the three of them filling her life with love and confusion and laughter.
After gently freeing himself from his daughters, Jordan walked over to Amanda and laid his hands on either side of her face. With his thumbs he brushed away her tears. “Hi, pregnant lady,” he said. A quiet pride made Amanda’s heart swell. “Hi,” she replied with a soft smile.
He gave her a leisurely kiss, then steered her toward the door. Her coat was hanging on a wooden peg nearby, and he helped her into it before handing Jessie and Lisa their jackets.
Amanda was struck again by the depth of her love for him when, in his tailored suit, he dropped to one knee to help Lisa with a jammed zipper. She couldn’t have asked for a better father for her child than Jordan Richards.
When the hectic family project of preparing dinner was behind them, and Lisa and Jessie had had their baths, their stories and their good-night kisses, Jordan led Amanda into the living room. They sat on the sofa in front of a snapping fire, with their heads touching.
Jordan brought his hand to rest on Amanda’s stomach, and when the baby kicked, his eyes were as bright as the flames on the hearth. Amanda couldn’t help smiling.
He smoothed back a lock of her hair. “Tired?” he asked.
“Yes.” Amanda sighed. “How about you?”
“Beat,” Jordan replied. “Personally, I don’t see that we have any choice but to go straight to bed.”
Amanda laughed and thrust herself off the couch. “Last one there is a rotten egg!” she cried, waddling toward the stairs.