He backed two steps away from her and smiled uneasily.
“If anybody finds out I came here,” Amanda said, “they wouldn’t understand.”
“Nobody will ever find out,” Matt said. He held up three fingers in the Boy Scout salute. “Scout’s Honor.”
“Oh, God,” Amanda groaned.
“Bad joke,” he said. “Sorry.”
“And they would, of course, be right,” Amanda said. “Oh, hell! ‘In for a penny’—oh, God!—‘in for a pound.’”
“Excuse me?”
“You know what my reaction was when I heard Penny was dead?”
“What?”
“Thank God. She was going to suck Matt dry and ruin his life.” She looked intently at his face, then moaned. “Oh, God, I shouldn’t have told you!”
“Isn’t that why you came here, to tell me that? Amanda, that’s really—decent—of you. And it really took balls.”
“Balls?” she parroted, gently mocking.
“It took courage,” he corrected himself. “But you’re not the only one who felt that way. Penny…Penny apparently did not enjoy the universal approval of my friends. Half a dozen people told me exactly, or paraphrased, what you just did.”
“That’s not why I came,” Amanda said. “I wanted to be with you.”
“You’re a good friend,” Matt said.
She met his eyes, then looked away, and then met them again.
“Maybe that, too,” Amanda said softly.
“Jesus, Amanda.”
“Does that come as such a surprise? Am I making as much of a fool of myself as I think I am?”
He reached out and touched her cheek with his fingers.
She moved her head away and looked to the side.
“For God’s sake, don’t feel sorry for me,” she said.
“What I’m doing is wondering what would happen if I tried to put my arms around you.”
She turned her face to look at him. She looked into his eyes for a long moment.
“Why don’t you try it and find out?” Amanda asked.
SEVENTEEN
Matt Payne rolled over in bed, grabbed the telephone on the bedside table, and snarled, “Hello.”
“Good morning,” Amanda Spencer said, a chuckle in her voice. “Somehow I thought you’d be in a better mood than you sound like.”Still half asleep, Matt turned and looked in confusion at where he expected Amanda to be, lying beside him. He was obviously alone in his bed.
“Where are you?”
“Thirtieth Street Station,” she said.