By The Sea, Book Two: Amanda (15 page)

"Dad! You're being outrageous!" cried his
daughter.

"It's your shipyard, Mr. Fain," said Geoff
quietly, and he left.

Geoff was nearly at the payroll office when
Amanda caught up to him. "I'm sorry about that scene in there," she
said, out of breath.

"Scene? What scene? It looked like business
as usual to me."

"Well, it wasn't. My father's not that
heartless. But he's been under a lot of strain lately."

"Which you, of course, have nothing to do
with." Geoff picked up his stride.

"Will
you slow down?" she
demanded.

He stopped. The simple truth was, he was
embarrassed: for her, for her brother, about his absurd dismissal,
everything. Each of them was at fault, and yet no one was at fault.
It was what his own father would call a deucedly awkward situation.
Geoff's gut response was to walk away from it. And yet here he was,
face to face with the most awkward part of the situation.

The wind was lifting Amanda's bobbed hair
and whipping it across her cheek. Her face was flushed with anger
and—he hoped to God—embarrassment of her own. As always when she
was animated, her dark eyes got darker—like a cat's, before it
springs. The wind flattened her crepe dress, of some damnably
flattering shade of mauve, against her body, distracting him as
usual, making it hard for him to concentrate on what she was
saying.

"I said, do you plan to take this to the
end, or not?"

The lift of her chin, her flashing eyes—he
didn't know whether to slap her silly or take her in his arms and
cover her body with kisses. She seemed so totally oblivious of him
as a man; it infuriated him. From the day he'd met her, she'd
treated him as a handy instrument, an extension of her money, a
means to an end. Maybe she counted on his British civility. Maybe
she thought he was hanging around, eyeing her inheritance. Whatever
the reason, she didn't seem to reckon on the word "no."

"Are you coming with me to pay them off or
not?" she repeated.

"I will pay them off. Or you will pay them
off. We will not both pay them off."

"Are you saying that you expect me to hand
you over a suitcase with thirty-five thousand dollars cash in
it?"

"I'll give you a receipt."

"Very funny. We'll go together."

"Together? Amanda. Read my lips." He grabbed
her shoulders and brought his face within inches of hers, mocking
the way she had of getting her cousin's attention.
"No."

She winced—whether from the nearness of him
or from the intensity of his grip, he couldn't tell. In a very
small voice she said, "I guess I'll go myself, then."

"The hell you will," he shouted,
contradicting himself. "What kind of addle-head are you? They'll
feed you to the pigeons—or worse! It's not as if you wear
underclothes!" Amazed at his own vehemence, he released her with a
frustrated shake. In a slightly steadier voice he added, "After
we've got the money, you will rejoin your brother at the Elm Tree
Cottages. And wait. I'll let you know when it's over."

The stunned look on her face was similar to
the one he'd seen in her father half an hour before. Maybe she
wasn't a changeling after all. Geoff wondered what in his little
speech shocked her most, but he didn't have time to speculate. The
sooner he got this whole sorry episode over with, the better.

Amanda fell back in beside him, almost
skipping to keep up. "How do I know these guys won't take the money
and then come back after David for more?"

"How do you know I won't take the money and
reshingle the roof of the servants' quarters at Seton Place? Come,
come, Amanda. These thugs are at least as honest as I am," he said
dryly. "Where's your sense of trust?" Now that he thought about it,
where
was
her sense of trust? For a girl who had everything,
she seemed pretty damned insecure. Maybe living in a big city like
New York did that to her; Londoners tended to be a jumpy lot, too.
Aloud he said, "Tsk, tsk," for no other reason than to see her eyes
flash like a leaping cat's.

Flash they did. "Trust!" she cried. "That's
easy for you to say—you have nothing to protect, no one to care
for. You won't let yourself be put in a position where you have to
trust."

She was good at that kind of probing
accusation, he thought, angered. Naturally he refused to respond,
thereby proving she was right. Tough
.
If he wanted to bare
his soul, he'd rather write an agony aunt.

Together they went to the payroll office,
where a cashier's check was drawn for them. Amanda stayed with
Geoff as far as the bank. When they came out Geoff had a death-grip
on a cheap leather briefcase and Amanda was scanning up and down
the street like an armed guard.

"For pity's sake, woman, why not just
announce it with a bullhorn?"

"All right, all right. I'm going. I'll see
you back at the cottage. But Geoff—" she began in a threatening
voice.

He sighed. "What, Amanda?"

"Don't you dare—don't you dare do anything
stupid."

"Go home, Amanda."

She turned, reluctantly, and headed for her
car. The look on her face stayed with him as he loaded the suitcase
into his own car and aimed it at New York. What a look: one part
pathos, one part envy, one part suspicion, one part unfathomable
womanhood. A look like that could keep you puzzling over it through
a whole winter of cold nights.

****

Traffic was horrible and Geoff was late; the
park had begun to thin out. He made his way quickly to the
rendezvous point, afraid that Vinnie and Dominic had given up on
him. They were still there—pacing, growling, hungry; but waiting.
Vinnie took a seat on the bench; so did Geoff. Dominic stayed on
his toes. The suitcase was handed over to Vinnie, who opened it
discreetly and fanned through the money inside. No one spoke while
he counted.

After a while Vinnie said, "Okay. Looks
good. You drive a damn hard bargain, Mr. Seton. The boss tells me
this deal is going down hard with his business associates."

"The shipping industry is a volatile one,
Vinnie," Geoff answered blandly.

"Vola ... yeah." Vinnie stood up. "I guess
this concludes the negotiations." He held out his hand to Geoff who
took it. "I said something yesterday about having your head,"
Vinnie said with a shrug and a grin. "So I exaggerated. You
understand."

"Sure. A tactical ploy," Geoff agreed.

"But I do owe you one," Vinnie added, still
holding Geoff's hand in his. His grip tightened and his left fist
rocketed into Geoff's stomach, buckling him over, sending his
breath whistling from his body. Geoff groaned; a color kaleidoscope
played on the inside of his eyelids as he struggled to keep his
balance.

"That's it! Stop right where you are!" The
voice was loud, clear, and Amanda's.

Vinnie turned around; Geoff opened his eyes;
Dominic came down off his toes.

"Who the hell are you?" growled Vinnie to
Amanda, who was standing there holding a gun with both hands for
all it was worth.

"Oh, Christ," muttered Geoff, fighting back
the nausea from the blow. Just what he needed: a vigilante.
"Amanda, not now."

"You know this dame? What does she think,
she's a cop?"

"Never mind who I am," Amanda said with the
same bravado as before. "Just hand over the suitcase and then beat
it."

Geoff saw Vinnie and Dominic exchange
glances. Dominic's fist was balled in his jacket pocket. The
question was, what was it balled around? "Amanda, they're entitled
to the money."

"Too bad. They should have said thank you
and walked away nicely when they had the chance. Are you hurt?"

"Who
is
she?" Vinnie repeated.

"That was very good of you, defending my
honor," said Geoff to Amanda, "but we were working it out between
us." He began to approach her, cautiously, with the design of
lifting the gun from her hands. The one thing he knew about Amanda
was that he knew nothing about how her mind worked. He kept his
voice calm, but inside he was seething. Not to mention, he didn't
feel particularly safe walking the line between Amanda's wobbly
grip and Dominic's balled-up fist.

"You're in my way, Geoff!" she cried in an
agony of tension.

"Don't you think I know that?" he snapped.
Immediately he brought himself under control. "Now listen to me,
darling. The money belongs to these men. Give me the gun, and I'm
sure they'll understand that you just got caught up a little in
events. Please, Amanda. I don't want you to get hurt. I don't want
me to get hurt." He held out his hand.

Her grip wobbled, wobbled some more, and
dropped. He took the gun from her, slowly, and turned to the
racketeers. With a reassuring smile at Dominic he said, "Women!
They'll do the damnedest things to protect their men."

"Huh!" Vinnie's grunt was surprised. "She's
your—"

"Oh, yes," Geoff said, intercepting. "For
quite some time now."

"You got weir-rd taste, Mister Seton."

Geoff smiled. Thinly.

Vinnie turned to Dominic. "Let's go."

Geoff took Amanda by the arm and held her
while the two men hurried off into the dusk. "I ought to chain you
to the nearest tree and leave you there," he muttered between his
teeth. After the men were out of sight he dragged her to the edge
of a nearby pond, hauled back his free arm, and let fly with the
gun, which landed with a heavy splash thirty yards from the shore.
Then he turned to her.

"That was the most asinine performance I've
ever seen," he said in a voice shaking with anger. "If you're going
to sound like a gangster's moll, at least learn to hold a gun like
one. You could have damn well killed me, shaking over the trigger
like that!"

"I know it," she mumbled. "I don't—"

"Whose gun was that, anyway?" he demanded,
grimacing at the memory.

"D-
David's .... I t-took it from him
...."

"To do what? Shoot yourself in the
foot?"

"I—I thought it might get rough ...."

"Well, it very nearly did, now, didn't it?
My God! I can't believe you're that—"

"Stupid. Say it," she said, trembling.

"All right.
Stupid."

But calling her names wasn't nearly enough.
He had a raging need to set the record straight with her—with her
kind—once and for all before he fled to the sanity of Hampshire
County. He knew she was frightened, was almost in shock, from the
encounter. But he had to speak his piece.

"I don't know if it's you," he said, "or
your family, or this country, but something's out of control on
this side of the Atlantic. You're all spoiled by your own
success—and you definitely have too much money. You're like
children with too many toys. They're all around you; you don't even
see them, except to pick up and throw at one another—to hurt one
another with. You don't mean it, maybe, but that's what happens.
Maybe you're just looking for attention—"

"I don't want attention," she said quickly.
"I'm fed up with—everyone."

"Then go sit in a corner for a while until
your mood changes. Read a book, hum a tune, learn to play the
saxophone. Just stop running around hurling bricks at everything
that doesn't please you."

"I see. You want me to be like you. To cover
my head and hide."

"Sure, why not? Give the Western world a
break. There's been a war. We all worked hard. Everyone's tired,
Amanda. Don't you ever get tired?"

"Not while there's work to be done," she
said stubbornly. "Not while there's unfairness."

She was rubbing her arm where he'd grabbed
her, completely unaware, Geoff was certain, that he was the source
of her pain. That was the thing about her: she was at war with
mankind in general, but she never seemed to hold a grudge against
any one individual person. Probably she couldn't sit still long
enough. He was wasting his breath; she'd never change.

"Well, then, this must be goodbye," he said
at last. "I'll be off for Hampshire by the end of the week."

Even in the near-dark, he saw her body tense
up with surprise. It gave him a nice little rush: at last, he'd
caught the brat off balance.

"But what about your rooms? What about your
car?"

"By the week. By the month."

"I see. How practical of you."

"I only meant to stay two weeks."

"For the races?"

"What else?"

"To be honest, I thought you were ...
shopping."

"For?"

"Oh, a fortune, whatever. A wife."

He chuckled pleasantly. "The thought never
occurred to me. Where did you hear that?"

They were nearly at her Daniels now. "A
friend of mine was on the same liner that you took over here. You
know how shipboard gossip is."

Oh my God in heaven. Lotsy.
"Really?
Small world. What was her name?"

"Elizabeth."

He resumed breathing.

"That's her real name. But she goes by her
nickname."

Oh my God in heaven. Lotsy.
Amanda
was torturing him, obviously. She knew he'd behaved like a rutting
antelope his last night at sea. This was it. This was her final
vengeance for what she perceived as his high-hat superiority over
the last several weeks. She was going to rub his nose in a pool of
his own semen.

"Well?" he insisted, abandoning all attempts
to seem blasé. "Are you going to tell me her nickname?"

Every streetlamp in New York, every star in
the universe could have gone out just then: he would still be able
to see, with metrical precision, the exact slant of Amanda's lips
as she smiled and said, "I don't think I should tell you. It would
be betraying a confidence, wouldn't it?"

"That's, of course, for you to decide," he
replied through gritted teeth. "Sooner or later I'll probably find
out." But during the intervening months, years—perhaps the rest of
his life—he wouldn't be able to think of this parting, in this
park, with this woman, without having something inside of him
retract in pain.