Amanda (19 page)

Walker thought she was a fine actress.

It was only, he thought, because he watched them so closely that he had picked up on the slight tension between her and Jesse. It wasn’t obvious, but it was there. And at least twice he had seen Jesse say something to Amanda that met with a slow shake of her head, a reaction that clearly displeased Jesse.

Walker didn’t know what it was about, but it made him acutely uneasy.

Kate came by the dessert table just then to make sure plates, forks, and napkins were laid out and ready, as usual performing the many small and large
duties with an attention to detail that made her such an excellent hostess. If she resented Amanda’s presence and her place in the spotlight, it wasn’t apparent, and the coldness Sully had alluded to was not visible.

“Nobody’s eating dessert,” she said to Walker, a good hostess worried that her guests were not satisfied.

“They will. We will. It’s just that the steaks were huge.”

She made a little grimace. “Well, for heaven’s sake tell Sharon her blueberry pie is wonderful; she’s testing a new recipe, and I can’t try it because of my allergy.”

“I hate blueberry pie,” Walker reminded her.

“Do you? Yes, of course you do. I wonder why I’d forgotten that. Sully, you can—”

“I,” Sully said, “hate pie. Period.”

“Do you have to be so hard to get along with?” she asked him a bit plaintively. “Go ask Niki Rush to dance, why don’t you? She’s been eyeing you all night.”

Unmoving and unmoved, Sully said, “I also hate to dance. Particularly with grown women who spell their names in cute ways.”

Kate rolled her eyes at Walker, then headed off, apparently to herd stuffed guests toward the dessert table.

“Has she lost weight?” Walker asked Sully.

“Probably. Like I said—the past two weeks haven’t exactly been fun for any of us, and this last week has been worse. Jesse’s new will ready?”

Walker looked at him. “Not quite. The computer blew a hard disk, causing a delay.”

“Handy things, computers.”

“When they work.”

“And sometimes when they don’t.” Sully shrugged, then added abruptly, “he’s cut me out, hasn’t he?”

“You know I can’t answer that.”

Sully’s mouth twisted. “you’re a discreet bastard, aren’t you?”

“it’s my job, Sully.”

“Yeah.” Sully set his glass on the dessert table and muttered, “I’ve been here long enough to satisfy the old man, I think.” He took a couple of steps toward the house, then paused and looked at Walker. “By the way,” he said, “according to Reece, twenty years ago, Amanda was right-handed.”

Walker stared at him.

Sully smiled. “Interesting, huh? See you around, Walker.”

“We didn’t have the clinic then; Jesse put up the money for it about fifteen years ago—before that the doctor worked out of a house on Main Street,” Dr. Helen Chantry explained. “And I was hardly dry behind the ears, so to speak. Educated and willing, but inexperienced. In 1974, old Doc Sumner had just retired and I’d taken over his practice late in January.”

Amanda nodded. “Then you were—when my father was killed, you were called?”

“Well—yes.” Shrewd dark eyes studied Amanda for a moment, and then Dr. Chantry said impersonally, “There was nothing I could do for him. The fall broke his neck.”

“He was such a good rider,” Amanda murmured.

“Even Olympic-class riders come off their horses sometimes; Brian Daulton came off his. Unfortunately, he hit the fence at the precise angle and speed to turn what should have been merely a bruising fall into a deadly one. He died instantly.”

Amanda was silent for a moment, listening with half an ear to the band and gazing around at the small tables on the patio, most occupied by guests sampling desserts. A couple of uniformed maids moved about emptying ashtrays and refilling glasses, and three couples danced languidly near the pool.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Chantry said.

Amanda looked at her and smiled. “No, I asked. Besides—it’s been twenty years and I barely remember him. I was just curious because … well, because in the newspaper clippings about the accident, it said he was killed attempting to take a young horse over an impossible jump. That doesn’t sound like an Olympic-class rider, does it?”

“No, but people sometimes do stupid things—especially when they’re upset.”

The doctor didn’t say that Christine’s abrupt departure scant weeks before that day might well have caused Brian Daulton to do something stupid. She didn’t have to say it.

“I suppose.” Amanda hesitated, then asked, “Do you remember my mother?”

Helen Chantry, who was about the same age Christine Daulton would have been, nodded. “Socially, though—not professionally. She never came to me with a medical problem.”

Amanda hesitated again, then said, “Doctor—”

“Helen.”

“Helen, then. Thank you. Do you … have any idea why my mother left so abruptly?”

“Jesse said there were things you didn’t remember, but—didn’t she tell you later?”

“No.”

“Odd.” Helen looked at her thoughtfully. “I wish I could help, Amanda, but I honestly don’t know that answer. As I said, I only knew her socially. We
weren’t friends. I don’t think she had any female friends. She wasn’t a woman’s kind of woman, if you know what I mean.”

Slowly, Amanda said, “She was beautiful. She attracted men. Is that what you mean?”

Helen smiled. “More or less. She didn’t just attract men, though, Amanda, she fascinated them. Maybe even … enthralled them. Whatever she had packed quite a wallop, and I don’t believe it was really deliberate, that she controlled it. I can recall more than one happily married and perfectly level-headed man looking at her with glazed eyes when she walked by on a public street. It was actually sort of eerie.”

“She wasn’t like that later.” Amanda distractedly pushed a small plate containing a couple of leftover spoonfuls of peach cobbler and apple pie away from her. There were still half a dozen desserts left to sample, but she wanted to wait a few minutes before making the attempt.

“What do you mean?” Helen asked.

Amanda recalled her wandering thoughts. “Oh … she was restrained, I guess. Not at all provocative in any way. Self-contained. Very quiet.”

Curiously, Helen said, “Tell me it’s none of my business if you like, but—she never remarried?”

“As far as I know, she was never even involved with a man after we left here.”
Or was she? What about Matt Darnell?
“Of course, I might not have known those first years, since children often don’t notice such things, but I think I would have when I got older. Surely I would have.”

Whatever Helen might have said to that was lost for the moment as Jesse called to her from a neighboring table to come and settle some bit of medical dispute.

“Our master’s voice,” she said to Amanda with a smile.

Amanda rose along with the older woman. “Well, I have to go back to the dessert table anyway. There’s still strawberry, blueberry, and about four other berries to sample.”

Helen chuckled. “I see You’ve been warned.”

“In spades. I played a careful game of word association with myself just to make sure I’d know and remember who made which dessert. I don’t want to offend anybody.”

“If you get it right, in the next election We’ll put your name on the ballot for mayor.”

Amanda was still smiling as she went to the dessert table. She had rather hoped to find most of the remaining pies all sampled out, but there was still enough left of each to provide one more generous serving or several test-size ones. Sighing, she got a clean plate and began cutting tiny wedges to sample.

Strawberry belonged to Mavis Sisk, who had red hair. Blueberry belonged to Sharon Melton, who was wearing a pair of blue topaz earrings and a blue ribbon in her hair. Amy Bliss, the preacher’s wife, had contributed raspberry (for some reason, Amanda had no trouble connecting those two without benefit of further association). And a fine gooseberry pie belonged to a very sweet older lady with snow-white hair named Betty Lamb. Goose—lamb; it wasn’t perfect, but it worked for Amanda.

“You going to eat all that?”

Amanda looked up at Walker McLellan and felt her rueful good humor evaporate. She also felt her pulse skip a beat. She’d been aware of him all evening, aware of being watched by him. She had known that sooner or later, he would come to her—with, no doubt, some new accusation or variation on an old one.

Her memory of their last encounter, of his cold face and harsh voice, helped stiffen her spine and raise her
chin—which was all to the good. She felt disturbingly vulnerable, and needed all the help she could get. He was angry; she couldn’t see it, but she could feel it.

“I have to sample,” she said, trying for a light note. “Wouldn’t want to hurt the ladies’ feelings.”

“Your accent’s getting thicker,” he said.

“You just haven’t heard it in a while.” Amanda wished she could take back the remark, annoyed at herself for letting him know she’d noticed his absence these last days.

“I’ve been busy,” he said. “Why don’t you ask me about the will?”

“Maybe I’m not interested in the will.”

“Or maybe you’re just content to wait—knowing it’s only a matter of time now until you have it all.”

Amanda began to turn away, but stopped when she felt his hand grip her arm. “Let go of me, Walker,” she told him evenly.

“I have a question.”

“Let go of me.” She was glad the music from the band kept them from being overheard, but she was all too aware that more than one pair of eyes watched them curiously.
That
would be all she needed—to make a scene with the Daulton family lawyer.

He held her arm and her gaze for a deliberately long moment, then released her arm. “it’s a simple question. You’re left-handed, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Amanda Daulton,” he said, “was right-handed.”

She smiled. “I’m surprised it’s taken you this long to bring up the subject. Wasn’t it on your list of verifying traits? Black hair, gray eyes, AB positive blood —right-handedness.”

“No. It wasn’t on my list.” His voice was tight.

“Maybe you’re slipping, counselor.” Amanda went back to her table, now deserted with the doctor gone,
and tried to keep a pleasant expression on her face for the benefit of onlookers. Of which there were many. She put her plate down, but before she could sit, Walker was there and had her hand.

“Dance with me,” he said curtly.

It was the last thing Amanda wanted to do, but she couldn’t jerk away or protest with so many people watching—and he knew it, damn him. He led her toward the tiled area around the pool, where several couples were dancing to a slow, rather erotic beat, and pulled her firmly into his arms.

She had never been so close to him, and Amanda was overwhelmingly aware of the fact. His body was harder than she would have expected, his arms stronger and, curiously, more possessive. He smelled of something sharp and tangy, a woodsy aftershave and pipe smoke, she thought, even though she’d never seen him smoke a pipe. The combination was pleasant.

Too pleasant.

He moved easily to the music, guided her easily. He was looking down at her; as always, she could feel it. She lifted her own gaze reluctantly and only when she thought she would be able to hide her thoughts from him.

“You’ve had time to think about it,” he told her, his voice still abrupt. “So let’s have it. How did a right-handed girl become a left-handed woman?”

“you’re so sure I have an answer?”

“I’m counting on it.”

Amanda wondered at that reply, offered with every word bitten off, but gave him the answer anyway. “I broke my right arm a couple of years after we left here. It was a long time healing, and there was nerve damage. I had to learn to be left-handed. Even now, my right arm’s weaker.”

“Was this the same accident that caused your fear of horses?” Walker asked mockingly.

She ignored the derision. “No. The truth is, I fell out of a tree.”

“That was careless of you.”

Amanda held on to her temper with difficulty. “Wasn’t it? And all because I wanted to see inside a bird’s nest. Which turned out to be empty, wouldn’t you know. So I ended up with a broken arm and a concussion.”

He nodded, but it was the gesture of a man who had been given something expected and was, therefore, unsurprised. “Very good. Simple, but filled with creative details. Believable. And I’ll bet if I had a talk with Helen, she’d tell me it was medically quite possible.”

The beat of the music slowed even more, and Amanda had to fight a sudden urge to break away from him. She hated this, hated being held by him when he looked at her this way, when his voice bit and his eyes scorned. She hated it.

“it’s the truth,” she said.

“You wouldn’t know the truth if you fell over it,” Walker told her.

Amanda felt a hot throbbing begin behind her eyes.
Oh, God, not a migraine.
But, of course, with her luck that’s what it would be. She’d had only a few in her life, but those had been memorable. They tended to be triggered by stress. She felt very stressed at the moment.

The music stopped with a flourish just then, and Amanda pulled away from Walker with more haste than grace, not caring now how it would look to those watching. She returned to her table, where pieces of pie waited to be sampled, and she thought that if he
followed her and kept hammering away at her, she’d dump the pie in his lap.

He didn’t follow immediately, but came soon and brought drinks with him. Wine.

“No, thank you,” she said politely, trying the strawberry. It was good, very good. “I’m not drinking.” The blueberry had been even better, and the gooseberry was remarkable.

“To keep a clear head?” he asked mockingly, sitting in the chair beside hers with the air of a man who wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

“If you say so.”

Amy Bliss, Amanda decided, had better have talents other than pie baking, because her raspberry pie was lousy. Naturally, Amanda wouldn’t
tell
her that—so what could she say? That the crust was crusty?

“Amanda, stop picking at that pie and look at me.”

“I’m not picking, I’m sampling.”
At least he said my name.
It was so hard to get the man to say her name. You would have thought he expected to be drawn and quartered for it.