right,” Jordan said. And he got up and walked slowly up the aisle and out of the auditorium.
Amanda followed, catching up just outside. She didn’t quite dare to touch his arm again, yet he slowed down at the sound of her footsteps. “How about that Chinese food you promised me?” she asked gently.
Jordan met her eyes, and for just a moment, she saw straight through to his soul. What pain he’d suffered.
“Sure,” he replied, and his voice was hoarse.
“I’m all through with my Christmas shopping,” Amanda announced once they were seated at a table, Number Three Regulars in front of them from the Chinese fast-food place. “How about you?”
“My secretary does mine,” Jordan responded. He looked relieved at her choice of topic.
“That’s above and beyond the call of duty,” Amanda remarked lightly. “I hope you’re giving her something terrific.”
Jordan smiled at that. “She gets a sizable bonus.”
“Good.”
It was obvious Jordan was feeling better. His eyes twinkled, and some of the strain had left his face.
“I’m glad company policy meets with your approval.”
It was surprising, considering her unfortunate and all-too-recent experiences with James, but it wasn’t until that moment that Amanda realized that she hadn’t checked Jordan’s hand for a wedding band. She glanced at the appropriate finger, even though she knew it would be bare, and saw a white strip where the ring had been.
“Like I said, I’m a widower,” he told her with a slight smile, obviously having read her glance accurately.
“I’m sorry,” Amanda told him.
He speared a piece of sweet-and-sour chicken. “It’s been three years.”
It seemed to Amanda that the white space on his ring finger should have filled in after three years. “That’s quite a while,” she said, wondering if she should just get up from her chair, collect her book and her coat and leave. In the end she didn’t, because a glance at her watch told her it was still forty minutes until the next bus left. Besides, she was hungry.
Jordan sighed. “Sometimes it seems like three centuries.”
Amanda bit her lower lip, then burst out, “You aren’t one of those creeps who goes around saying he doesn’t have a wife when he really does, are you? I mean, you could have remarried.”
He looked very tired all of a sudden, and pale beneath his tan. Amanda wondered why he hadn’t gotten around to shaving.
“No,” he said. “I’m not married.”
Amanda dropped her eyes to her food, ashamed that she’d asked the question, even though she wouldn’t have taken it back. The experience with James had taught her that a woman couldn’t be too careful about such things.
“Amanda?”
She lifted her gaze to see him studying her. “What?”
“What was his name?”
“What was whose name?”
“The guy who told you he wasn’t married.”
Amanda cleared her throat and shifted nervously in her chair. The thought of James didn’t cause her pain anymore, but she didn’t know Jordan Richards well enough to tell him just how badly she’d been hoodwinked. A sudden, crazy panic seized her. “Gosh, look at the time,” she said, pulling back her sleeve to check her watch a split second after she’d spoken. “I’d better get home.” She bolted out of her chair and put her coat back on, then reached for her purse and the bag from the bookstore. She laid a five-dollar bill on the table to pay for her dinner. “It was nice meeting you.”
Jordan frowned and slowly pushed back his chair, then stood. “Wait a minute, Amanda. You’re not playing fair.”
He was right. Jordan hadn’t run away, however much he had probably wanted to, and she wouldn’t, either.
She sank back into her seat, all too aware that people at surrounding tables were looking on with interest.
“You’re not ready to talk about him,” Jordan said, sitting down again, “and I’m not ready to talk about her. Deal?”
“Deal,” Amanda said.
They discussed the Seattle Seahawks after that, and the Chinese artifacts on display at one of the museums. Then Jordan walked with her to the nearest corner and waited until the bus pulled up.
“Goodbye, Amanda,” he said as she climbed the steps.
She dropped her change into the slot and smiled over one shoulder. “Thanks for the company.”
He waved as the bus pulled away, and Amanda ached with a bittersweet loneliness she’d never known before, not even in the awful days after her breakup with James.
When Amanda arrived at her apartment building on Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill, she was still thinking about Jordan. He’d wanted to offer to drive her home, she knew, but he’d had the good grace not to, and Amanda liked him for that.
In her mailbox she found a sheaf of bills waiting for her. “I’ll never save enough to start a bed and breakfast at this rate,” she complained to her black-and-white long-haired cat, Gershwin, when he met her at the door.
Gershwin was unsympathetic. As usual, he was interested only in his dinner.
After flipping on the lights, dropping her purse and the book onto the hall table and hanging her coat on the brass-plated tree that was really too large for that little space, Amanda went into the kitchenette.
Gershwin purred and wound himself around her ankles as she opened a can of cat food, but when she scraped it out onto his dish, he abandoned her without compunction.
While Gershwin gobbled, Amanda went back to the mail she’d picked up in the lobby and flipped through it again. Three bills, a you-may-have-already-won and a letter from Eunice.
Amanda set the other envelopes down and opened the crisp blue one with her sister’s return address printed in italics in one corner. She was disappointed when she realized that the letter was just another litany of Eunice’s soon-to-be-ex-husband’s sins, and she set it aside to finish later.
In the bathroom she started water running into her huge claw-footed tub, then stripped off the skirt and sweater she’d worn to the mall. After disposing of her underthings and panty hose, Amanda climbed into the soothing water.
Gershwin pushed the door open in that officious way cats have and bounded up to stand on the tub’s edge with perfect balance. Like a tightrope walker, he strolled back and forth along the chipped porcelain, telling Amanda about his day in a series of companionable meows.
Amanda listened politely as she bathed, but her mind was wandering. She was thinking about Jordan Richards and that recently removed wedding band of his.
