12. Andrew #4
“That was not one kiss.”
“No.”
“Your negotiating position collapsed early.”
“It was undermined.”
“By what?”
He looked at the green silk, the loosened hair, her swollen mouth.
“You know.”
She smiled.
The social smile was gone. She gave him the private one he had once watched from outside the barn, the one she had believed no one could see.
This time she gave it to him.
He brought his hand up and put the loose strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers stayed against her face.
Amanda leaned into them.
They separated slowly. The practical indignities returned all at once. He found a clean handkerchief in the glove box. She straightened the dress as well as a woman could after what they had done to it. Two pins remained in her hair. The rest lay somewhere in the truck, likely never to be found.
His hat had gone under the brake pedal. He retrieved it and set it on the dash.
The cab looked as if weather had passed through.
Amanda settled beside him, close enough that her thigh remained against his.
Then she said, “Stillwater Land and Cattle.”
The name entered the cab.
Andrew’s hand stilled on the handkerchief.
She felt it.
“I knew there was more,” she said. “I didn’t know what. Greg looked as if he had almost announced the amount of a wire transfer in church.”
Andrew looked through the windshield. Darkness. Highway beyond the turnout. Nothing coming.
“You are not scraping by.”
“No.”
“The cabinet doors are missing because you like open shelves.”
“Yes.”
“The truck is old because you refuse to replace it.”
“It runs.”
“Debatable.”
He could not smile now.
She studied him.
“How much more, Andrew?”
He could tell her.
The acreage. The leases. Wyoming and New Mexico. The accounts Mary Jo handled. The properties held under names no one in Marlow connected to him. He could put the whole figure in the cab between her bare legs and his open coat and watch what happened to her face.
Caroline’s face returned with perfect clarity.
The earlier face. The one in the kitchen when he told her what he had built and mistook calculation for wonder.
Amanda shifted beside him, the movement small and intimate, and fear moved through him cold.
“I should have told you more,” he said.
“Then tell me now.”
He could not.
Her eyes stayed on his.
“Is the ranch in trouble?”
“No.”
“Are you?”
The answer should have been easy.
He looked at her.
“Yes.”
She understood that he was not talking about the ranch.
Her hand came up and touched the gray at his jaw.
“I’m not asking you for anything.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He closed his eyes for one second beneath her hand.
When he opened them, she was still there.
“I don’t know,” he said.
It was the most honest answer he had.
Amanda sat with it. She did not move away immediately. She did not cover herself or take back her hands. She looked at him for a long time, hurt beginning at the edge of the pleasure still on her face.
“Do you regret this?” she asked.
“No.”
The answer came before the question finished.
She heard it.
“Then what happens now?”
He had no answer that would not expose the thing he had spent twenty years hiding.
“I take you home.”
The hurt sharpened.
“That is not what I asked.”
“I know.”
He put the truck in gear.
Neither spoke for the rest of the drive.
The repaired fence passed on the left. He felt her notice it, though she kept her face toward the windshield. He turned at the Stillwater gate and took the home road.
The kitchen light burned at the end of it.
He parked and shut the engine off.
The silence that followed was different from the silence they had carried to the lodge. That one had been made of wanting neither had touched.
This one knew what their hands could do.
He opened his door and came around. Amanda had her hand on the handle before he reached it, but she waited. He opened the door. She gathered the dress and stepped down.
At the porch, he let her go in first.
The kitchen light caught the pins holding one side of her hair and the loose fall on the other. She stopped at the spare-room door and turned.
“Andrew.”
“Yes.”
“I am not ashamed of what happened tonight.”
“You have no reason to be.”
“And I’m not going to let you become ashamed for both of us.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re doing something.”
He stood in the dim front room, turning his hat once between his hands.
“Yes.”
“What?”
He looked at her. The green dress. Her bare mouth. The woman who had put her hands on him in the dark and asked for the truth afterward.
“I’m trying to work out whether I can keep this from ruining you.”
Her face changed.
“That is an awful thing to say to me.”
He knew it as soon as he heard the words.
“Amanda—”
“No.” She put one hand on the door. “You do not get to decide what ruins me. I have had enough men doing that for one lifetime.”
He had no defense.
She waited, perhaps for him to try.
He did not.
“Good night, Andrew.”
“Good night.”
She went into the room and shut the door.
Andrew stood in the dark with his hat in his hand. Her laughter was still in the cab. Her taste was still in his mouth.
Down the hall, the lock turned.