Golden Vows (3 page)

What had she done to him? If she’d stayed another minute, another second, he’d have lost control, maybe even followed through on his threat to wring her neck. His fingers curled tightly around the delicate, crystal glass, and he had to force them to relax.

Whom was he trying to kid? If he’d touched her, there would have been no threat. The feel of her smooth skin beneath his hand would have been his undoing and he would have crushed her in his arms and punished her with kisses until she yielded to his will.

Once he wouldn’t have hesitated.

Once he wouldn’t have doubted his right to touch her.

And once she would have yielded.

He stopped the useless thoughts. Once was gone. Over. Finished. She was leaving. And he would forget.

Dane took another swallow of bourbon and felt his whirling thoughts slow and settle in his mind. It was best this way, he told himself. A divorce. A quick, clean break with the past.

I’m leaving you.

The memory of her softly spoken words twisted inside him like a knife blade. But the wound wasn’t fresh. Amanda had left him a long time ago. He didn’t know when or how or even why, but it had happened. So slowly that he hadn’t realized it until too late, she had drawn away from him, shut him out of her life by degrees and left him waiting helplessly for the finale.

He’d been expecting her to do something to change the situation. He’d even been aware of her struggle to reach a decision, but still he felt as if his whole world had collapsed at his feet.

And she had stood there, so calm and composed, with no desire to talk to him or to work things out. She had just stood there, as if leaving him were the easiest thing she would ever do. He hadn’t realized until that moment just how far apart they’d grown.

I’m leaving you.

Well, he could survive without her.

He caught sight of his reflection in the window. The offset lighting gave back a distorted image, and he closed his eyes against what he saw there. But shutting out the visual image only made the inner one more clear.

He was afraid.

A derisive sound tore from his throat. He, Dane Cameron Maxwell, survivor of all challenges fate had thrown his way, was afraid that he couldn’t survive without Amanda.

So why was he letting her leave? The whisper came faint but persistent from his heart. Had he grown so soft that he didn’t have the courage to fight for what he wanted?

Considered the idea, he let his mind replay the conversation with Amanda. Was it his imagination or had he seen a flicker of disappointment in her eyes tonight? Was there an ember of love for him hiding behind that cool indifference?

Determination flowed through him in a sudden, exhilarating wave and the fragile glass in his hand shattered under the pressure. He was hardly aware of the splintering glass, thinking only that he would make her love him again.

“All right, Amanda,” he whispered to the silent night. “I’ll do
things your way ... for now. If you want a divorce, we’ll go through the motions of getting one, but I’m not going to make it easy for you.”

Picking up a napkin from the table, he dabbed at the cuts on his hand and studied the rock fireplace.

He’d built that wall himself, stone by stone. And if it took every ounce of strength he possessed, he’d tear apart the wall Amanda had built between them.

Stone by stone if necessary, but one way or another, he would win her back.

Chapter Two

The Maryland countryside rolled past the car window in vivid splashes of color as the odometer of Dane’s Mercedes clicked off the miles with solemn insistence. Amanda could almost hear the seconds ticking past with the same urgency. Time was spinning crazily forward, rushing her toward the inescapable consequences of her decision.

Glancing sideways at Dane, she wondered if he dreaded the next few hours as much as she did. His face was unrevealing, his attention focused on the highway and his hands sure and confident on the steering wheel. If he had shared any of her apprehensions, it didn’t show.

She turned her head and stared out the window, unable to deny her own disquiet. Her mother and father had accepted the news with concern, insisting that Amanda come home to them to think things through. But she had refused, knowing that their home was no longer hers and that she couldn’t bear their solicitous advice. Dane’s parents had offered their standard, pessimistic, “We’ve been expecting something like this to happen” answer.

But Martha.

Amanda felt a sigh catch in her throat. Telling Martha would be one of the harder consequences to face.

Martha Pemberton had been friend, family, and surrogate mother to Dane since his childhood. Amanda had been surprised and at first, even a little jealous of his respect and love for the elderly woman. But Martha had soon stolen her heart as well, and there had never been any doubt about the love that overflowed from Martha to Dane and expanded to include Amanda. Over the years of her marriage Amanda had grown to feel as comfortable with Martha as she did with her own parents and infinitely more comfortable than she had ever felt with Dane’s.

Brushing at an imaginary wrinkle in her navy cotton slacks, Amanda frowned. If only Dane had let her come alone.... But she knew, as well as he did, that Martha would expect them to face her disapproval together. Even though she herself had never married, Martha was a staunch believer in the institution of marriage, of couples working to make one last, and she wouldn’t be reticent about voicing her opinion.

Amanda could imagine the fierce disappointment that would alter Martha’s usually amiable expression and roughen her already gruff voice. It was all too easy to imagine the look in her green eyes—a look that said they were naughty children in need of a scolding. And she would take it as her right to scold them.

But in the end, she would accept the inevitable and love them both as unconditionally as she always had.

Pressing her lips into a tight line, Amanda focused on the passing landmarks. Divorce. Was there no end to the guilt? She had wrestled with her conscience during the last few days, struggled with the reality of what she’d done. Leaving her marriage wasn’t a decision she’d reached overnight. It had been building inside her for months, but now that it was almost a fact, she was plagued by doubt. It was the right decision, the only logical thing to do.

So why did it feel so wrong?

She glanced at Dane’s familiar profile. How had they come to this? When had their love changed from the lighthearted give and take to this heavy feeling that there was nothing left to give? And when had the ordinary quarrels inherent in marriage changed to resentful, angry attacks that undermined the roots of their relationship? And when had the suffocating politeness begun?

Amanda knew she could search her memory for the rest of her life and never pinpoint the beginning. Maybe it had started with the divergent course of their careers. As his architectural designs began to gain an appreciative audience, Dane had spent more and more time at the office and away from her. His business trips came more frequently and always at an inconvenient time for her. Finally he’d stopped asking her to accompany him. She had invested more of her energy in her own career as an interior design consultant, but that hadn’t satisfied her longing for a family.

Maybe it had started when they decided to have a baby ... and couldn’t. Maybe it was Dane’s gradual forming of new friendships that never really included her. There could be a dozen maybes that sparked the beginning, she thought with a rueful sigh.

Hurried meals, hurried conversations, a life-style that left them little time for each other. It had all spelled trouble, but she had been naively confident that the pace would slow, that they would be able to really communicate again, once they had a child. But when she finally did become pregnant, the respite from tension had been short-lived and nothing seemed to be right between them.

And now, months later, they were traveling a familiar road on their way to face Martha and an impossible explanation of how they had come to this end.

“Only a few more miles.” Dane’s voice brought her around to meet his eyes.

“Yes,” she said as her stomach muscles tightened in protest. How could he be so calm? “Only a few more miles.”

She noticed how his gaze lowered to her hands and immediately realized she was twisting her wedding ring back and forth. With a conscious effort she stopped the nervous action and wondered what habit would replace it once she removed the ring.

“Not nervous, are you?” he asked casually.

“Of course not.” She paused before tempering her denial with the truth. “At least not any more so than I was the first time you brought me to meet Martha.”

“That bad, huh?”

Biting her lower lip, she nodded. “I’m not looking forward to this.”

“I’d be disappointed if you were.” His lips curved in a sudden smile. “We could always take the shortcut.”

“Oh, no. I remember exactly where that shortcut leads,” she stated, visualizing a grassy clearing cradled by tall trees and rocked by the gentle lullaby of a nearby brook. If she closed her eyes, it would all come back to her. The sights and smells and sounds of the secluded clearing would all come back as a soft background for the memory of Dane loving her. She kept her eyes determinedly open. “No shortcuts. We almost didn’t make it to Martha’s house at all that day.”

“But when we did, you weren’t nervous anymore.”

Amanda couldn’t have prevented her fleeting, reminiscent smile even if she’d tried. “No. I wasn’t nervous anymore.”

He studied her thoughtfully. “Martha isn’t going to take sides on this. You’re not worried about that, are you?”

“No. I’m sure she’ll be very understanding.” Abruptly Amanda turned her gaze to the window. “I didn’t think this would get so complicated.”

“No, I don’t imagine you did.”

The faintly pious tone of the words irritated her. Dane, of course, would have expected complications. Thrived on them, in fact. And he’d certainly weathered the tension of the past week better than she had.

No. That wasn’t fair. Or true.

Several times lately she’d noticed definite signs of strain in his face. Tiny lines fanned the corners of his eyes, and the scar had become more evident to her experienced gaze. This wasn’t easy for him either. But soon it would be over. Soon she’d have a minute to stop, take a deep breath, and gain some much-needed perspective on the new direction of her life. Some insight into the woman she had become during the past year.

The rough motion of the car made her suddenly aware of the new direction of the road. She glanced curiously at Dane.

“Is this the right turnoff to get to the clearing?” he asked, peering inquisitively at the graveled road. “Do you remember?”

As if he didn’t, she thought. “We’ll be late getting to Martha’s. She’s expecting us.”

For a second he looked deeply into her eyes and her breath caught as it once had done whenever he glanced in her direction. Was there a shadow of hurt in his eyes? Or was it simply impatience?

She had no way of knowing if she had seen either emotion or if it was just a trick of the sunlight.

“Martha won’t worry if we’re a few minutes late,” he said. “And this won’t take long. I just want to see the brook, see if it’s as peacefully beautiful as I recall.”

A shiver of reluctance coursed through her at the thought of finding their special place just as she remembered it. “The clearing has probably been bulldozed into oblivion to make room for a housing addition.”

“They wouldn’t dare.”

His reaction pleased her but, as he guided the Mercedes over the bumpy road, the protest grew inside her. She didn’t want to see what had happened since the last time they’d been together at the clearing.

Amanda sighed softly. And if it was still the same, lovely spot, she didn’t think she could bear to know.

“See? I told you.” Dane seemed almost jubilant as he slowed the car beside a cluster of tall, leafy sycamore trees on the edge of a wooded area. “Not a house in sight. I’m going to check on our brook. Do you want to come?”

Yes. Of course she wanted to. “No. I’ll wait in the car,” she said, hoping he would accept her refusal at face value.

His eyebrows quirked with the merest hint of a challenge. “Somehow I didn’t think you would. No point in raking up old memories at this point, is there? It’s probably best that you stay here. I’ll let you know if anything is different.” He shut the car door and strode toward the trees without a backward glance.

Frowning, she watched him walk away.

Everything would be different because she was different. He was different.

And it was just a place after all.

Her fingers hovered uncertainly above the door handle. Just a place, she thought. A place where Dane had asked her to marry him. A place where he’d held her, kissed her, loved her.

Just a place.

The door swung open at her touch and she stepped onto the graveled road. She narrowed her eyes at the cluster of trees before starting forward. As her feet followed the barely discernible trail, her wary heart followed the more clearly perceptible path of memory. It had been a long time since she’d thought about that first shortcut into the woods. A long time since she had remembered that mischievous light in Dane’s eyes. The light that should have warned her—if she had wanted to be warned.

“Look at this, Amanda,” he’d shouted that day, calling her to his side and pointing to the overgrown path. “This looks suspicious. We should investigate.”

She had glanced over her shoulder to Dane’s old, but treasured Chevrolet and then met his eyes with a lift of her brow. “I thought you said this was a shortcut to Cape St. Claire and that you knew this area like the back of your hand. Don’t tell me you don’t know where this path leads.”

He lifted his right hand in playful solemnity. “On my sacred honor as a gentleman, I swear I do not know where this path will lead.”

He reached for her hand and covered it in his. “And if I should be lying, may the ogre of the woods come and carry me away.”