Read the book: «Daring Moves»

1

The line of people waiting for an autograph reached from the bookstore down the length of the mall to the specialty luggage shop. With a sigh, Amanda Scott bought a cup of coffee from a nearby French bakery, bravely forgoing the delicate, flaky pastries inside the glass counter, and took her place behind a man in an expensive tweed overcoat.

Distractedly he turned and glanced at her, as though somehow finding her to blame for the delay. Then he pushed up his sleeve and consulted a slim gold watch. He was a couple of inches taller than Amanda, with brown hair that was only slightly too long and hazel eyes flecked with green, and he needed a shave.

Never one to pass the time in silence if an excuse to chat presented itself, Amanda took a steadying sip of her coffee and announced, “I’m buying Dr. Marshall’s book for my sister, Eunice. She’s going through a nasty divorce.” The runaway bestseller was called Gathering Up the Pieces, and it was meant for people who had suffered some personal loss or setback.

The stranger turned to look back at her. The pleasantly mingled scents of new snow and English Leather seemed to surround him. “Are you talking to me?” he inquired, drawing his brows together in puzzlement.

Amanda fortified herself with another sip of coffee. She hadn’t meant to flirt; it was just that waiting could be so tedious. “Actually, I was,” she admitted.

He surprised her with a brief but brilliant smile that practically set her back on the heels of her snow boots. In the next second his expression turned grave, but he extended a gloved hand.

“Jordan Richards,” he said formally.

Gulping down the mouthful of coffee she’d just taken, Amanda returned the gesture. “Amanda Scott,” she managed. “I don’t usually strike up conversations with strange men in shopping malls, you understand. It’s just that I was bored.”

Again that blinding grin, as bright as sunlight on water.

“I see,” said Jordan Richards.

The line moved a little, and they both stepped forward. Amanda suddenly felt shy, and wished she hadn’t gotten off the bus at the mall. Maybe she should have gone straight home to her cozy apartment and her cat.

She reminded herself that Eunice would benefit by reading the book and that, with this purchase, her Christmas shopping would be finished. After today she could hide in her work, like a soldier crouching in a foxhole, until the holidays and all their painful associations were past.

“Too bad about Eunice,” Jordan Richards remarked.

“I’ll give her your condolences,” Amanda promised, a smile lighting her aquamarine eyes.

The line advanced, and so did Amanda and Jordan.

“Good,” he said.

Amanda finished her coffee, crumpled the cup and tossed it into a nearby trash bin. Beside the bin there was a sign that read Is Therapy For You? Attend A Free Minisession With Dr. Marshall After The Book Signing. Beneath was a diagram of the mall, with the public auditorium colored in.

“So,” she ventured, “are you buying Gathering Up the Pieces for yourself or somebody else?”

“I’m sending it to my grandmother,” Jordan answered, consulting his watch again.

Amanda wondered if he had to be somewhere else later, or if he was just an impatient person.

“What happened to her?” she asked sympathetically.

Jordan looked reluctant, but after a few moments and another step forward as the line progressed, he said, “She had some pretty heavy-duty surgery a while back.”

“Oh,” Amanda said, and without thinking, she reached out and patted his arm so as not to let the mention of the unknown grandmother’s misfortune pass without some response from her.

Something softened in Jordan Richards’s manner at the small demonstration. “Are you attending the ‘free minisession’?” he asked, gesturing toward the sign. The expression in his eyes said he fully expected her to answer no.

Amanda smiled and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Why not? I’ve got the rest of the afternoon to blow, and I could learn something.”

Jordan looked thoughtful. “I suppose nobody has to talk if they don’t want to.”

“Of course not,” Amanda replied confidently, even though she had no idea what would be required. Some of the self-help groups could get pretty wild; she’d heard of people walking across burning coals in their bare feet, or letting themselves be dunked in hot tubs.

“I’ll go if you’ll sit beside me,” Jordan said.

Amanda considered the suggestion only briefly. The mall was a well-lit place, crowded with Christmas shoppers. If Jordan Richards were some kind of weirdo—and that seemed unlikely, unless crackpots were dressing like models in Gentlemen’s Quarterly these days—she would be perfectly safe. “Okay,” she said with another shrug.

After the decision was made, they lapsed into a companionable silence. Nearly fifteen minutes had passed by the time Jordan reached the author’s table.

Dr. Eugene Marshall, the famous psychology guru, signed his name in a confident scrawl and handed Jordan a book. Amanda had her volume autographed and followed her new acquaintance to the cash register.

Once they’d both paid, they left the store together.

There was already a mob gathered at the double doors of the mall’s community auditorium, and according to a sign on an easel, the minisession would start in another ten minutes.

Jordan glanced at the line of fast-food places across the concourse. “Would you like some coffee or something?”

Amanda shook her head, then reached up to pull her light, shoulder-length hair from under the collar of her coat. “No, thanks. What kind of work do you do, Mr. Richards?”

“‘Jordan,’” he corrected. He took off his overcoat and draped it over one arm, then loosened his tie and collar slightly. “What kind of work do you think I do?”

Amanda assessed him, narrowing her blue eyes. Jordan looked fit, and he even had a bit of a suntan, but she doubted he worked with his hands. His clothes marked him as an upper-management type, and so did that gold watch he kept checking. “You’re a stockbroker,” she guessed.

He chuckled. “Close. I’m a partner in an investment firm. What do you do?”

People were starting to move into the auditorium and take seats, and Amanda and Jordan moved along with them. With a half smile, she answered, “Guess.”

He considered her thoughtfully. “You’re a flight attendant for a major airline,” he decided after several moments had passed.

Amanda took his conjecture as a compliment, even though it was wrong. “I’m the assistant manager of the Evergreen Hotel.” They found seats near the middle of the auditorium, and Jordan took the one on the aisle. Amanda was just daring to hope she was making a favorable impression, when her stomach rumbled.

“And you haven’t had lunch yet,” Jordan stated with another of those lethal, quicksilver grins. “It just so happens that I’m a little hungry myself. How about something from that Chinese fast-food place I saw out there—after we’re done with the minisession, I mean?”

Again Amanda smiled. She seemed to be smiling a lot, which was odd, because she hadn’t felt truly happy since before James Brockman had swept into her life, turned it upside down and swept out again. “I’d like that,” she heard herself say.

Just then Dr. Marshall walked out onto the auditorium stage. At his appearance, Jordan became noticeably uncomfortable, shifting in his seat and drawing one Italian-leather-shod foot up to rest on the opposite knee.

The famous author introduced himself, just in case someone who had never watched a TV talk show might have wandered in, and announced that he wanted the audience to break up into groups of twelve.

Jordan looked even more discomfited, and probably wouldn’t have participated if a group hadn’t formed around him and Amanda. To make things even more interesting, at least to Amanda’s way of thinking, the handsome, silver-haired Dr. Marshall chose their group to work with, while his assistants took the others.

“All right, people,” he began in a tone of pleasant authority, “let’s get started.” His knowing gray eyes swept the small gathering. “Why does everybody look so worried? This will be relatively painless—all we’re going to do is talk about ourselves a little.” He looked at Amanda. “What’s your name?” he asked directly. “And what’s the worst thing that’s happened to you in the past year?”

She swallowed. “Amanda Scott. And—the worst thing?”

Dr. Marshall nodded with kindly amusement.

All of the sudden Amanda wished she’d gone to a matinee or stayed home to clean her apartment. She didn’t want to talk about James, especially not in front of strangers, but she was basically an honest person and James was the worst thing that had happened to her in a very long time. Not looking at Jordan, she answered, “I fell in love with a man and he turned out to be married.”

“What did you do when you found out?” the doctor asked reasonably.

“I cried a lot,” Amanda answered, forgetting for the moment that there were twelve other people listening in, including Jordan.

“Did you break off the relationship?” Dr. Marshall pressed.

Amanda still felt the pain and humiliation she’d known when James’s wife had stormed into her office and made a scene. Before that, Amanda hadn’t even suspected the terrible truth. “Yes,” she replied softly with a miserable nod.

“Is this experience still affecting your life?”

Amanda wished she dared to glance at Jordan to see how he was reacting, but she didn’t have the courage. She lowered her eyes. “I guess it is.”

“Did you stop trusting men?”

Considering all the dates she’d refused in the months since she’d disentangled herself from James, Amanda supposed she had stopped trusting men. Even worse, she’d stopped trusting her own instincts. “Yes,” she answered very softly.

Dr. Marshall reached out to touch her shoulder. “I’m not going to pretend you can solve your problems just by sitting in on a minisession, or even by reading my book, but I think it’s time for you to stop hiding and take some risks. Agreed?”

Amanda was surprised at the man’s insight. “Agreed,” she said, and right then and there she made up her mind to read Eunice’s copy of Gathering Up the Pieces before she wrapped it.

The doctor’s attention shifted to the man sitting on Amanda’s left. He said he’d lost his job, and the fact that Christmas was coming up made things harder. A woman in the row behind Amanda talked about her child’s serious illness. Finally, after about twenty minutes had passed, everyone had spoken except Jordan.

He rubbed his chin, which was already showing a five o’clock shadow, and cleared his throat. Amanda, feeling his tension and reluctance as though they were her own, laid her hand gently on his arm.

“The worst thing that ever happened to me,” he said in a low, almost inaudible voice, “was losing my wife.”

“How did it happen?” the doctor asked.

Jordan looked as though he wanted to bolt out of his chair and stride up the aisle to the doors, but he answered the question. “A motorcycle accident.”

“Were you driving?” Dr. Marshall’s expression was sympathetic.

“Yes,” Jordan replied after a long silence.

“And you’re still not ready to talk about it,” the doctor deduced.

“That’s 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.

She sighed. All her instincts told her he was telling the truth about his marital status, but those same instincts had once insisted that James was all right, too.

Amanda was waiting when the bus pulled up at her corner the next morning. The weather was a little warmer, and the snow, so unusual in Seattle, was already melting.

Fifteen minutes later Amanda walked through the huge revolving door of the Evergreen Hotel. Its lush Oriental carpets were soft beneath the soles of her shoes, and crystal chandeliers winked overhead, their multicolored reflections blazing in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

Amanda took the elevator to the third floor, where the hotel’s business offices were. As she was passing through the small reception area, Mindy Simmons hailed her from her desk.

“Mr. Mansfield is sick today,” she said in an undertone. Mindy was small and pretty, with long brown hair and expressive green eyes. “Your desk is buried in messages.”

Amanda went into her office and started dealing with problems. The plumbing in the presidential suite was on the fritz, so she called to make sure Maintenance was on top of the situation. A Mrs. Edman in 1203 suspected one of the maids of stealing her pearl earring, and someone had mixed up some dates at the reception desk—two couples were expecting to occupy the bridal suite on the same night.

It was noon when Amanda finished straightening everything out—Mrs. Edman’s pearl earring had fallen behind the television set, the plumbing in the presidential suite was back in working order and each of the newlywed couples would have rooms to themselves. At Mindy’s suggestion, she and Amanda went to the busy Westlake Mall for lunch, buying salads at one of the fast-food restaurants and taking a table near a window.

“Two more weeks and I start my vacation,” Mindy stated enthusiastically, pouring dressing from a little carton over her salad. “Christmas at Big Mountain. I can hardly wait.”

Amanda would just as soon have skipped Christmas altogether if she could have gotten the rest of the world to go along with the idea, but of course she didn’t say that. “You and Pete will have a great time at the ski resort.”

Mindy was chewing, and she swallowed before answering. “It’s just great of his parents to take us along—we could never have afforded it on our own.”

With a nod, Amanda poked her fork into a cherry tomato.

“What are you doing over the holidays?” Mindy asked.

Amanda forced a smile. “I’m going to be working,” she reminded her friend.

“I know that, but what about a tree and presents and a turkey?”

“I’ll have all those things at my mom and stepdad’s place.”

Mindy, who knew about James and all the dashed hopes he’d left in his wake, looked sympathetic. “You need to meet a new man.”

Amanda bristled a little. “It just so happens that a woman can have a perfectly happy life without a man hanging around.”

Mindy looked doubtful. “Sure,” she said.

“Besides, I met someone just yesterday.”

“Who?”

Amanda concentrated on her salad for several long moments. “His name is Jordan Richards, and—”

“Jordan Richards?” Mindy interrupted excitedly. “Wow! How did you ever manage to meet him?”

A little insulted that Mindy seemed to think Jordan was so far out of her orbit that even meeting him was a feat to get excited about, Amanda frowned. “We were in line together at a bookstore. Do you know him?”

“Not exactly,” Mindy admitted, subsiding a little. “But my father-in-law does. Jordan Richards practically doubled his retirement fund for him, and they’re always writing about him in the financial section of the Sunday paper.”

“I didn’t know you read that section,” Amanda remarked.

“I don’t,” Mindy admitted readily, unwrapping a bread stick. “But we have dinner with my in-laws practically every Sunday, and that’s all Pete and his dad ever talk about. Did he ask you out?”

“Who?”

“Jordan Richards, silly.”

Amanda shook her head. “No, we just had Chinese food together and talked a little.” She deliberately left out the part about how they’d gone to the minitherapy session and the way she’d reacted when Jordan had asked her about James.

Mindy looked disappointed. “Well, he did ask for your number, didn’t he?”

“No. But he knows where I work. If he wants to call, I suppose he will.”

A delighted smile lit Mindy’s face. Positive thinking was an art form with her. “He’ll call. I just know it.”

Amanda grinned. “If he does, I won’t be able to accept the glory—I owe it all to an article I read in Cosmo. I think it was called ‘Big Girls Should Talk to Strangers,’ or something like that.”

Mindy lifted her diet cola in a rousing roast. “Here’s to Jordan Richards and a red-hot romance!”

With a chuckle, Amanda touched her cup to Mindy’s and drank a toast to something that would probably never happen.

Back at the hotel more crises were waiting to be solved, and there was a message on Amanda’s desk, scrawled by the typist who’d filled in for Mindy during lunch. Jordan Richards had called.

A peculiar tightness constricted Amanda’s throat, and a flutter started in the pit of her stomach. Mindy’s toast echoed in her ears: “Here’s to Jordan Richards and a red-hot romance.”

Amanda laid down the message, telling herself she didn’t have time to return the call, then picked it up again. Before she knew it, her finger was punching out the numbers.

“Striner, Striner and Richards,” sang a receptionist’s voice at the other end of the line.

Amanda drew a deep breath, squared her shoulders and exhaled. “This is Amanda Scott,” she said in her most professional voice. “I’m returning a call from Jordan Richards.”

“One moment, please.”

After a series of clicks and buzzes another female voice came on the line. “Jordan Richards’s office. May I help you?”

Again Amanda gave her name. And again she was careful to say she was returning a call that had originated with Jordan.

There was another buzz, then Jordan’s deep, crisp voice saying, “Richards.”

Amanda hadn’t expected a simple thing like the man saying his name to affect her the way it did. It was the strangest sensation to feel dizzy over something like that. She dropped into the swivel chair behind her desk. “Hi. It’s Amanda.”

“Amanda.”

Coming from him, her own name had the same strange impact as his had had.

“How are you?” he asked.

Amanda swallowed. She was a professional with a very responsible job. It was ridiculous to be overwhelmed by something so simple and ordinary as the timbre of a man’s voice. “I’m fine,” she answered. Nothing more 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.