imaginative came to her, and she sat there behind her broad desk, blushing like an eighth-grade schoolgirl trying to work up the courage to ask a boy to a sock hop.
His low, masculine chuckle came over the wire to surround her like a mystical caress. “If I promise not to ask any more questions about you know who, will you go out with me? Some friends of mine are having an informal dinner tonight on their houseboat.”
Amanda still felt foolish for talking about James in the therapy session, then practically bolting when Jordan brought him up again over Chinese food. Lately she just seemed to be a mass of contradictions, feeling one way one minute, another the next. What it all came down to was the fact that Dr. Marshall was right—she needed to start taking chances again. “Sounds like fun,” she said after drawing a deep breath.
“Pick you up at seven?”
“Yes.” And she gave him her address. A little thrill went through her as she laid the receiver back on its cradle, but there was no more time to think about Jordan. The telephone immediately rang again.
“Amanda Scott.”
The chef’s assistant was calling. A pipe had broken, and the kitchen was flooding fast.
“Just another manic day,” Amanda muttered as she hurried off to investigate.
2
It was ten minutes after six when Amanda got off the bus in front of her apartment building and dashed inside. After collecting her mail, she hurried up the stairs and jammed her key into the lock. Jordan was picking her up in less than an hour, and she had a hundred things to do to get ready.
Since he’d told her the evening would be a casual one, she selected gray woolen slacks and a cobalt-blue blouse. After a hasty shower, she put on fresh makeup and quickly wove her hair into a French braid.
Gershwin stood on the back of the toilet the whole time she was getting ready, lamenting the treatment of house cats in contemporary America. She had just given him his dinner when a knock sounded at the door.
Amanda’s heart lurched like a dizzy ballet dancer, and she wondered why she was being such a ninny. Jordan Richards was just a man, nothing more. And so what if he was successful? She met a lot of men like him in her line of work.
She opened the door and knew a moment of pure exaltation at the look of approval in Jordan’s eyes.
“Hi,” he said. He wore jeans and a sport shirt, and his hands rested comfortably in the pockets of his brown leather jacket. “You look fantastic.”
Amanda thought he looked pretty fantastic himself, but she didn’t say so because she’d used up that week’s quota of bold moves by talking about James in front of people she didn’t know. “Thanks,” she said, stepping back to admit him.
Gershwin did a couple of turns around Jordan’s ankles and meowed his approval. With a chuckle, Jordan bent to pick him up. “Look at the size of this guy. Is he on steroids or what?”
Amanda laughed. “No, but I suspect him of throwing wild parties and sending out for pizza when I’m not around.”
After scratching the cat once behind the ears, Jordan set him down again with a chuckle, but his eyes were serious when he looked at Amanda.
Something in his expression made her breasts grow heavy and her nipples tighten beneath the smooth silk of her blouse. “I suppose we’d better go,” she said, sounding somewhat lame even to her own ears.
“Right,” Jordan agreed. His voice had the same effect on Amanda it had had earlier. She felt the starch go out of her knees and she was breathless, as though she’d accidentally stepped onto a runaway skate-board.
She took her blue cloth coat from the coat tree, and Jordan helped her into it. She felt his fingertips brush her nape as he lifted her braid from beneath the collar, and hoped he didn’t notice that she trembled ever so slightly at his touch.
His car, a sleek black Porsche—Amanda decided then and there that he didn’t have kids of his own—was parked at the curb. Jordan opened the passenger door and walked around to get behind the wheel after Amanda was settled.
Soon they were streaking toward Lake Union. It was only when he switched on the windshield wipers that Amanda realized it was raining.
“Have you lived in Seattle long?” she asked, uncomfortable with a silence Jordan hadn’t seemed to mind.
“I live on Vashon Island now—I’ve been somewhere in the vicinity all my life,” he answered. “What about you?”
“Seattle’s home,” Amanda replied.
“Have you ever wanted to live anywhere else?”
She smiled. “Sure. Paris, London, Rome. But after I graduated from college, I was hired to work at the Evergreen, so I settled down here.”
“You know what they say—life is what happens while we’re making other plans. I always intended to work on Wall Street myself.”
“Do you regret staying here?”
Amanda had expected a quick, light denial. Instead she received a sober glance and a low, “Sometimes, yes. Things might have been very different if I’d gone to New York.”
For some reason Amanda’s gaze was drawn to the pale line across Jordan’s left-hand ring finger. Although the windows were closed and the heater was going, Amanda suppressed a shiver. She didn’t say anything until Lake Union, with its diamondlike trim of lit houseboats, came into sight. Since the holidays were approaching, the place was even more of a spectacle than usual.
“It looks like a tangle of Christmas tree lights.”
Jordan surprised her with one of his fleeting, devastating grins.
“You have a colorful way of putting things, Amanda Scott.”
She smiled. “Do your friends like living on a houseboat?”
“I think so,” he answered, “but they’re planning to move in the spring. They’re expecting a baby.”
Although lots of children were growing up on Lake Union, Amanda could understand why Jordan’s friends would want to bring their little one up on dry land. Her thoughts turned bittersweet as she wondered whether she would ever have a child of her own. She was already twenty-eight—time was running out.
As he pulled the car into a parking lot near the wharves and shut the engine off, she sat up a little straighter, realizing that she’d left his remark dangling. “I’m sorry…I…how nice for them that they’re having a baby.”
Unexpectedly Jordan reached out and closed his hand over Amanda’s. “Did I say something wrong?” he asked with a gentleness that almost brought tears to her eyes.
Amanda shook her head. “Of course not. Let’s go in—I’m anxious to meet your friends.”
David and Claudia Chamberlin were an attractive couple in their early thirties, he with dark hair and eyes, she with very fair coloring and green eyes. They were
