“Oh?” Amanda said and leaned her cheek against the leather seat.
Hank touched her face with his fingertips, moving back to her hairline. Every day her hairstyle had become looser and softer. “And then again he might not.”
Amanda had been teased very little in her life and had never been teased in a playful sexual way by a man. “You!” she gasped, then when Hank put up his hands as if to protect himself from a blow, she lunged at him, packages falling to the floorboard. She slapped at him while his protecting hands kept coming in contact with some of the more delicious parts of her body.
“I give up,” he cried. “I’ll kiss you.”
“You will not, because I won’t allow it,” Amanda said haughtily and got out of the car.
Hank bounded out his side, caught her and spun her about in his arms. “Deny me, will you, wench?” he said, mocking the villain in the film they’d seen. “Either you give yourself to me or I’ll throw your old mother into the snow.”
“But, sir,” she said, turning her head away, “it is eighty degrees outside.”
“Into the desert then. With no water. Now, wench, are you mine?”
Amanda gave one great twist, kicked him on the shin and started running. “Not on your life,” she called.
Hank caught her within a few feet, holding her, her back to his front as she tried to twist out of his grasp. “I want all of you, your lips, your eyes, your breasts. I want to kiss you and caress you, make love to you all night long.”
Amanda stopped struggling and turned in his arms. “To hell with the hero, I’ll take you, the villain.” She kissed him deeply, plastering her body close to his, feeling the hard maleness of him against her.
“Amanda,” he said, crushing her against him, bending his body so that she bent backward. His leg slipped between hers.
Her heart was pounding and she wanted nothing more than to disappear into the darkness with him. “Are you trying to get out of feeding me?” she said at last.
He pulled back to look at her. “You’ve been starving since the first day I met you,” he said, smiling at her. “Starving for more than just food.”
“So you like to think,” she said insolently and pushed him away. “I must look a mess. Get my handbag and take me inside so I can do something with my hair.”
He obeyed her as if it were what he was supposed to do, and Amanda smiled. How wonderfully pleasant to tease and laugh and to order a man around. She smoothed her dress as he returned and they went inside.
It was the first meal they’d shared that they weren’t fighting. In the soft candlelight, he seemed almost as if he were the man she loved. For a moment Amanda wondered what they would talk about, but then it seemed as if there were a thousand things she wanted to know about him: where he grew up, how he came to teach economics, where he’d learned calculus, what his family was like, what he did when he wasn’t saving migratory workers.
“You race cars?” she said when they were on dessert. “Do you win?”
“About as often as I lose.”
“Do you think I could come and watch you win, or lose?” she asked, then remembered that soon he’d be gone and she would still be here. She looked at her plate.
“Maybe you and Taylor can come and watch the races,” Hank said. He meant to sound unconcerned but his voice sounded bitter. “I guess I better get you home.”
Her head came up. “But you promised to teach me to dance. Remember the White House? It’s why we bought me a dancing dress.”
He wanted to take her home, wanted to put some distance between the two of them, but at the same time he couldn’t bear to let her out of his sight. “All right. Dancing it is, but I warn you, don’t get too fresh.”
“Or you’ll what?”
“Do anything you ask of me,” he said more seriously than he meant to. He called for the check and they left the restaurant.
Chapter Fifteen
Amanda stretched in bed, then slid back under the light cover and closed her eyes again. She didn’t ever want to get up, didn’t want to have to face sunlight or other people. She wanted to stay in bed all day and think of last night.
After dinner Dr. Montgomery had wanted to take her dancing, and after a few inquiries they found that the only dance in the area was on a barge floating down the Glass River near Terrill City. The barge had already left and wouldn’t be back until one A.M.
“We’ll make it,” Hank had said, and the two of them went on a wild ride over dark, rutted roads until they’d reached the river, where he rented a rowboat and started rowing toward the barge. He could row like a demon. “Grew up in Maine, remember?” he said to her as she hung on.