Page 29 of Finding Amanda

Jamie's eyebrows disappeared beneath her red bangs. "Whenhe reads it?"

Amanda shrugged. "I sent him a proposal and the first three chapters this morning. If he wants to read the rest?—"

"What did Mark think about that?"

Amanda wiped her fingers on her napkin. "I didn't tell him."

"I see." Jamie cocked her head to the side. "How did Mark respond to the memoir?"

Amanda nodded toward her friend's untouched eggs. "Are you going to eat that or not?"

Jamie cut off a bite and gingerly placed it in her mouth. "Oh,that's good."

"Brittany was such a great student. She really had a knack?—"

"Don't change the subject."

She pressed back against her chair. "I'm sorry, but I don't want to talk about it."

"Mark misses you," Jamie said. "When you were threatened last weekend?—"

"I wasn't threatened."

Jamie shrugged. "That's how Mark saw it, and he was scared to death. He loves you."

"He doesn't love me. He loves the girl he thought I was. That sweet, innocent girl he met in Providence."

"Why would you say that?"

"Look, I've never met anybody like Mark before. He's everything I ever wanted in a man. He's strong and protective and . . ."

Emotion threatened to bubble over. She was so tired of the tears. "When we first married, he never had to tell me he loved me. I could see it in the way he wanted to be with me, and I could feel it in his touch. If I was in the kitchen, cooking, he'd sit at the bar and talk to me. If I was in the office working, he'd bring his computer back and sit across from me, doing his own work. In the evenings, we'd sit together on the couch and watch TV or watch the girls play. He'd lay his hands in my lap, and I'd massage them."

She remembered the feel of his hands, how rough they were, how strong. Always scrubbed clean of the remnants of his job, sometimes raw from the scrubbing. Amanda had kept a tube of hand lotion in the living room, so she could work it into the dry, cracked skin. She could feel how Mark would relax then, putting the stress of the day behind him.

"Some evenings, he could hardly wait until we tucked the girls in before he lured me into the bedroom." Warmth rose to her cheeks as she remembered his touch, how his desire alwaysfueled hers. She'd never felt more loved, nor loved him more, than when they were intimate.

Jamie smiled, encouraging her. Well, she asked for it. "And then I told him about my past."

She could still see the horror in his face. She would never forget it.

"And what happened?" Jamie asked.

Amanda shook off the haunted image of her husband. "Suddenly, ESPN was more interesting than watching me cook. He did his books at the dining room table instead of in the office with me." She felt the sadness welling up, pushed a sob down. “He sat on the far end of the sofa, arms crossed."

And he never enticed her into their bed. The first few times they'd made love—if you could call it that—after she'd told him about Gabriel, it had been awkward, like they hardly knew each other. After that, he rarely came to bed, preferring to fall asleep on the couch. And when he did reach out for her at night, she felt no love in his touch. No intimacy. Just physical need—like scratching an itch.

Since she'd left, he told her he loved her more often. He was trying to convince her, probably trying to convince himself. But she didn't feel it in his touch, hadn't for two years. She was done pretending.

"Your sex life suffered," Jamie said, guessing what she hadn't said.

Amanda pushed away her plate and rested her hands on the table.

"Did you ever ask him about it?"

She nodded, studying her fingers. No wedding ring. She couldn't bring herself to put it back on.

"What did he say?"

---