Seduced (17 page)

“Take your time,” Amanda told him. She leaned against the door.

Michael patted his shirt pocket, then began searching the top of his desk. Frowning, he said, “Hang on a second, Dave. I can't find the darn thing.”

“What are you looking for?” Amanda asked, coming closer.

“My appointment book.” He glanced around the room. “I must have left it in my coat pocket.”

“Where's your coat?”

“I think I threw it across the back of the couch when I came in. The book should be in the inside pocket.”

“I'll get it,” Amanda told him. “Say hello to Dave for me and tell him he'd better not be late Saturday.”

Humming, Amanda returned to the living room. She spotted Michael's navy jacket immediately. Picking it up, she spread open the coat. A white envelope was sticking out of the pocket.

The marriage license, Amanda thought, and took out the document. She unfolded the paper.

“State of Louisiana. Parish of Orleans.” Amanda scanned the petition.

“In the case of Martha Stallings Winthrop Versus Michael Patrick Grayson, you are hereby ordered to appear in court on the twenty-eighth of June, to determine the custody of Summer Grayson, child of...”

Amanda could feel the color drain from her face. She searched for the date of service. June fourteen. Two days before Michael had asked her to marry him.

She sank to the couch and stared at the Court summons, not wanting to believe what she saw. Blinking back tears, she read through the pleadings. The dry prose set out how eight years earlier a child had been born to Sara Grayson and Phillip Winthrop and had been given the name Summer Grayson. That Phillip Winthrop had died and Sara Grayson had taken the child and left the country. How Sara Grayson was now deceased and that Martha Winthrop wanted custody of her grandchild.

Snatches of conversations came back to her.

Trust me. Martha doesn't stand a chance of getting custody of Summer.

This war between me and the Winthrops is going to be over soon and I promise you, I'm going to win...

I told you, I'm a good strategist. Besides, I have a secret weapon...

He'd used her. Michael had used her in his battle to retain custody of Summer.
She
had been his element of surprise in the war with Martha Winthrop. Her hands trembled, her eyes blurred as she looked down at the petition before letting it fall to the floor.

She covered her face with her hands. The signs had been there all along, only she'd been too blinded by her love for him to see it.

“Amanda, did you find it?” Michael called from the doorway.

At the sound of his voice, Amanda snatched up his jacket and dug in the pocket for the appointment book. Brushing back tears, she carried the little black book into his study.

“What took you so long? Did you have trouble finding—” The smile in his eyes died. “Amanda, what's wrong?” he asked, his voice filled with concern.

“Here's your appointment book.” She tossed the book onto the center of his desk. “And since you've got your lawyer on the phone, you'd better make sure he's got June twenty-eighth blocked out on his calendar for the custody hearing.”

Michael paled beneath his tan. “Dave, I'll call you back.” He hurriedly hung up the phone.

“How silly of me,” Amanda said, feeling slightly hysterical. “Dave already knows, doesn't he? Everyone knows—except me.”

“Amanda, I can explain.”

“Can you, Michael?” Pain and bitterness drove her. “Can you explain why your marriage proposal came only two days after you found out Martha was suing you for custody of Summer?”

“That had nothing to do with my asking you to marry me.”

“No? And I suppose the fact that you bullied me into setting the wedding only days before you're due in court had nothing to do with it, either?”

“It didn't!”

“And all that talk about battles and strategies and secret weapons...” Amanda's voice broke and she choked back a sob. “I'm your secret weapon, aren't I, Michael? Aren't I?”

“No.”

“You planned to use me to beat Martha, didn't you? That's why you asked me to marry you.”

“That's not true! I love you.” He started toward her. “I know how it looks—”

“Don't touch me!” She held out her hands to keep him at bay. “When were you going to tell me about the lawsuit, Michael? After the ceremony? On our wedding night?”

“That's not the way it was.”

His expression was thunderous, but still she pushed. “Or maybe you were going to tell me after you'd made love to me, when I was too sated by your lovemaking to care.”

Michael grabbed her by the shoulders. “Stop it, Amanda. Stop it! You don't know what you're saying.”

She could hear the anger in his voice, see the fury in his eyes as his fingers bit into her arms, but she couldn't stop. The pain was too great. “Tell me, Michael. Was that the plan? Was that when you were going to convince me to go with you to the courtroom and parade our perfect little family in front of the judge?”

Amanda laughed, but there was no joy in the sound.

Michael dragged her into his arms, crushing her against him. “No!” The word was a sob torn from his throat. “You're wrong. I love you. The custody suit has nothing to do with us.”

Amanda struggled in his arms. No match against his strength, she finally went limp against him. Now that she'd vented her rage, the tears were threatening again. She needed to get away, to hide and lick her wounds in private. “Let go of me,” she said in a voice as cold as a Boston December.

“Not until you let me explain.”

“I'm not interested in your explanations. I just want to get out of here and forget you, forget that you were ever a part of my life.”

“I won't let you go.” He held her at arm's length and looked into her eyes. “I can't let you go. You
are
my life. Without you, I have no life. You own my heart, Amanda. Please don't throw it away.”

He sounded so sincere, looked so crushed, Amanda could feel herself weakening.

“You were right. In the beginning, I guess I did set out to use you. I'd been toying with the idea that if I were married, my chances of keeping Summer would be better.”

He swallowed. “I was already attracted to you and you weren't exactly indifferent to me. When I saw how much you cared for Summer, how crazy she was about you, I figured, why not? Marrying you seemed like the perfect answer to everything. Everyone would come out ahead. Only it didn't work out that way.”

Amanda tried to steel herself to the crippling pain his words caused.

“All my plans to make you fall in love with me kept backfiring. I knew you were attracted to me, but you kept turning me down and I couldn't figure out why. I almost abandoned the idea a dozen times, but I couldn't get you out of my mind.”

He laughed, the sound hollow and mocking. “I told myself Summer was the reason I couldn't just walk away from you, but Summer was the last person I was thinking about when we were together. And every time I kissed you, it became harder and harder to let you go.

“That night after we ran into the Winthrops, I knew I'd fallen in love with you. I was going to confess everything to you the night we met at the coffeehouse and tell you how I felt. But then you told me about your ex-husband, how he had used you. I knew if I told you then, I'd lose you for good.”

His eyes were pleading as they met hers. “That night, when you told me to get out of your life, you were so distant, so untouchable afterward. I realized that I didn't dare tell you the truth—not until I got the custody issue behind me. Otherwise, I knew you'd never believe that I loved you. That it was really
you
I loved and not what help I thought you might bring to me in a custody hearing.

“Then you showed up here the afternoon of the school fair and I realized I couldn't wait that long. I told myself if I could get you to fall in love with me first, when I did tell you the truth, I stood a better chance of you forgiving me.”

Was it possible? Could he truly love her as he claimed? For herself? A ribbon of hope began to unfurl inside her.

“I didn't mean to rush you. I'd planned for us to become lovers and gradually work up to marriage. But that first night you were so responsive and after you went to sleep in my arms, I knew I couldn't wait. And I asked you to marry me. But you started talking about having an affair and I got scared. I pushed you. When you said yes...I was afraid you'd change your mind. That's why I insisted we marry right away.”

“But why didn't you tell me about the custody suit after I agreed to marry you?”

“For the same reason I didn't tell you in the first place. The suit had nothing to do with my wanting to marry you, but I was afraid you wouldn't believe me. That you would think that it did. Believe me, Amanda, I never ever intended to ask you to go with me to the hearing.”

“But all that talk about strategy,” Amanda said. “And you sounded so confident that you could win.”

“I had reason to be. Phillip Winthrop isn't listed as Summer's father on her birth certificate and Sara had named me guardian in her will.”

“But if that was enough, why were you so worried about the custody suit in the first place?”

“Because I wasn't sure if that was enough. I didn't think Martha Winthrop would want the scandal, but I couldn't be sure. She has a lot of clout in this city and I didn't trust her not to call in some favors from her friends on the bench.”

“But you're not afraid of her now?”

“No.” He paused a moment as though struggling with some inner battle. “A couple of weeks ago, I finally got around to going through Sara's things. I came across a packet of letters she had saved from Phillip. One of them was written after Sara got pregnant. Phillip told her he loved her and knew the right thing for him to do was to break away from his family and marry her. But he was afraid. In the letter, he seemed disgusted with himself because he was so weak. Phillip blamed his parents. His mother mostly—for making him so dependent upon her financially and emotionally. He said he felt like a cripple and that Sara deserved better. The rest of the letter was kind of disjointed, it seemed to ramble, but at the end Phillip said his only consolation was knowing that in deserting Sara he could ensure that his child would never grow up to be a coward like him. Because his child would never live under Martha's thumb.”

“Michael, it sounds almost like a...a...”

“A suicide note,” he finished. “I know. That's what I thought, too. A couple of days after Phillip was killed in a car wreck, Sara received a letter from him. I think it was
that
letter. She never would tell me what it said, but I remember she was pretty broken up at the time.”

“You were going to give that letter to the judge,” she said, realizing now why Michael had been so confident he could win. He had planned to use the letter to convince the court that not even Phillip had wanted his mother to have Summer.

“I was at first,” he admitted. “But I changed my mind. I couldn't go through with it. As much as I dislike the woman, I couldn't let her spend the rest of her life wondering if she'd caused her son to kill himself. No one deserves that kind of hell, not even her.”

“Oh, Michael.” Amanda threw her arms around his neck and held him close.

He hugged her tight for a moment, then set her away from him. “That's why I called Dave. To have him arrange a meeting with Martha. I did a lot of thinking about what you said the other night, about my not being fair to Summer. I'd decided to tell Summer about Martha being her grandmother. I was going to try to work something out with Martha...where she could see Summer.” His eyes searched her face. “Please believe me, Amanda. I love you. And I need you. But not for Summer, for myself.”

When he pulled her into his arms, Amanda let the tears fall, but this time, they were tears of joy.

After Michael had kissed away the last of her tears and her doubts, he asked, “Will you help me break the news to Summer?”

“Yes,” Amanda whispered. Holding his hand, they went upstairs in search of the little girl.

“Summer?” Amanda poked her head into the child's room. It was empty. “That's odd, she's not here. Michael, check your bedroom. I asked her to move some things in there for me.”

But that room was empty, too. Amanda spied one of the cartons on the floor. “She carried this up for me. Maybe she went down to get the other one.”

The other carton was sitting in the living room where Amanda had left it, but there was still no sign of Summer.

Trying not to panic, Amanda helped Michael search the rest of the house and the yard. When Summer still hadn't turned up at any of the neighbors' homes, both she and Michael were frantic.

Where can she be? Amanda kept asking herself. Pacing the room, she pushed aside the curtain and looked out into the yard once more while praying for a glimpse of Summer.

All she saw was the sun setting, another reminder that neither she nor Michael had seen the child for several hours. “Where could she have disappeared to?”

“I don't know,” Michael said, coming to stand behind her. “But I've called the police.”

Amanda turned into his arms. “What did they say?”

“I have to go down to the station and give them a picture of her and sign a formal statement. After I do that, I'm going out to look for her again.”

“I'll come with you.”

“No. I need you to wait here in case she calls or comes back.” His eyes filled with tears and he pulled Amanda to him. “If anything happens to her...”

“Nothing's going to happen to her,” Amanda told him. It couldn't. Taking a steadying breath, she pulled back so she could see his face. She stroked his jaw with her fingertips, feeling the light stubble that shadowed his face. “We'll find her, Michael. I know we will.”