“That will be difficult.”
“I will, you’ll see,” Amanda said, backing toward the door. “This won’t happen again, I promise.” She slipped through the library door and ran up the stairs.
Inside the library, Taylor sat down heavily and was horrified to find that he was shaking. He had almost lost everything: the ranch, Amanda, future security, everything. But something else that bothered him was that he hadn’t been the least bit tempted by Amanda’s kiss.
He stood. That was perfectly proper. He shouldn’t think of her any other way except as his pupil until they were married. Even so, the whole episode had left him shaken. To come so close to losing the ranch and to see Amanda, the only female he’d ever come to trust, acting like a woman of the streets, had left him feeling as if the foundation had been knocked from under his feet.
For the first time in his life, he went to J. Harker’s whiskey decanters and poured himself a two-finger-deep shot of whiskey, then downed it. He was sure his throat was burned raw, and his eyes teared as the hot liquid hit his stomach, but he felt better as he went back to the account books. Whatever had got into Amanda? Maybe she had too much free time. Maybe her lessons weren’t difficult enough and didn’t challenge her active mind sufficiently. He’d work on tightening her schedule and on giving her something to occupy her.
Amanda tried to keep her composure but she couldn’t. Once inside her room, she flung herself on her bed and cried as if her life were over. She had almost made Taylor leave her.
She beat her fists into the bed and kicked her heels. She hated, hated, hated Dr. Montgomery. He was ruining everything in her life. Why didn’t he go back to where he came from? Why didn’t he just leave her alone?
She cried for nearly thirty minutes until a knock sounded on her door and she opened it to Mrs. Gunston. Amanda averted her eyes so the woman wouldn’t see that she’d been crying.
“He sent this to you,” the big woman said, looking smug and pleased about something.
Amanda took the book and paper and practically closed the door in the woman’s face.
“Beginning Calculus,” she read aloud, then looked at the new schedule. She was to study this book and there would be a test on the first four chapters at six o’clock the next morning.
“But tomorrow is Sunday,” she whispered, then her shoulders drooped as she flipped through the book. It looked awfully complicated, and if she was to do well she’d have to stay up all night. And she would do well! She’d make Taylor see she wasn’t frivolous, and wasn’t a wayward woman.
She went to the desk and opened the book to page one.
She was so engrossed in trying to understand the basic principles of calculus that she didn’t hear Hank enter her room t
hrough the window, so when he spoke, she jumped.
“Lost the bet, did you?” Hank said from behind her.
Amanda put her hand to her heart as she turned toward him. “Really, Dr. Montgomery, must you skulk about like a burglar? Couldn’t you come to the door and knock like an educated, mannered person? Or perhaps I’m asking too much. Maybe you grew up in a stable with the rest of the animals.”
Hank grinned at her. “Turned you down so bad he made you snippy, didn’t he?”
She gave him what she hoped was a look to kill. But he didn’t even so much as stop grinning. She turned back to her book.
“Ready to go? I bought you a new dress. It’s supposed to be the latest thing for a young lady to tango the night away in.”
She gritted her teeth and kept her face turned toward her book. “I’m afraid something has come up. I can’t go.” She waited for his explosion, but there was no sound from him for so long that she turned. He was sprawled on her bed, his long body taking up the whole bed. For just a second, he looked rather appealing, but she stopped that thought.
“Well?” she said. She might as well get the argument over.
“Well what?” He continued looking at the ceiling.
He had more ways for angering a person than most people had hairs on their head. She stood, her fists clenched at her side. “Dr. Montgomery, I want you to leave my room and I never want you to enter it again. Also, I want you to stop interfering in my life. As for this afternoon, I was…well, I was not myself and I said things I didn’t mean. If you misunderstood and thought I meant to go to a dance with you I’m very sorry, but I have work to do and I cannot leave the house.”
He just lay there, not saying a word, his hands behind his head.
“I asked you to leave!”
“What kind of work?” he asked at last.
She sighed in exasperation. “If you must know, it’s Beginning Calculus and I have a test on it early tomorrow morning, so I have to use every minute to study.”
He rolled off the bed and came to stand in front of her. “So you got punished, did you? A test early Sunday morning. What did you do? Wrestle him to the floor? Climb in the bathtub with him?”
“Get out of my room.”