Page 38 of Finding Amanda

He lifted the heavy black top off the bin and said nothing as she dumped the vase inside.

Silently they made their way back to the house. Once inside, he closed and locked the door behind them.

"You don't believe that," he said.

"What?"

"That he won't hurt you. If you did, you wouldn't be so afraid."

Amanda opened her mouth to speak, snapped it closed. How could she explain what she felt?

"You want something to drink?" she asked.

"Water?"

With a glass of water in each hand, Amanda joined Mark in the living room. She pushed Madi's sketch pad and crayons to the far edge of the coffee table and set each glass on a coaster. After kicking off her shoes, she curled her feet beneath her at the far end of the long sectional.

"I admit, I'm afraid, but not that he'll hurt me." It was true. She was pretty sure it was true, anyway.

He nodded his head once.

"He had such a . . . a hold on me. I know it was a long time ago?—"

"Were you . . . ?" His Adam's apple bobbed above the neck of his Naval Academy sweatshirt. "Do you think you could be . . . sucked in again?"

"No, no. Not at all. In fact, I was disgusted. To think that . . . well, you know. But he's so persistent, and I don't want him in my life. It's like . . . like the flowers. I thought . . ." She let her voice trail off. How could she tell her husband what she'd thought?

"You thought they were from Alan," he said flatly.

"We're just friends."

"Right," Mark said. "I sent flowers to Chris last week, thanking him for the poker game."

"Don't be sarcastic."

"Yeah, my sarcasm. That's the problem."

The wind whistled through the house's old windows. The heat kicked on. Amanda stared at her knees. "Nothing happened between us."

From the corner of her vision, she gauged Mark's reaction. His forearms were propped on his thighs. He fisted his right hand and covered it with his left, looking down at them in a familiar gesture he'd used as long as she could remember. His wedding band glinted in the pale light. He never took it off. She'd asked him about it years earlier when she'd stopped by a house he was renovating. He'd been using his band saw, and she'd asked if it was safe to wear his wedding ring while he used power tools.

He'd swung her into his arms. "If I want you to wear yoursall the time, I'd better do the same." He winked at her. "Otherwise we'd both be fending off advances all day long."

Amanda glanced at her left hand. She hadn't put her ring back on since she'd removed it the day she left for the conference. Obviously he'd noticed—nothing got by Mark. But did he really care?

He cleared his throat. "You need to be more careful."

“What your talking about?”

"What you just did, taking out the vase—you can't do that by yourself, not at night, not when nobody's around. That's why I followed you."

"That's a little?—"

"Protective, I know."

"I was going to say paranoid."

"He knows where you live, Amanda. The flowers were delivered to your house—where you sleep. Where our children sleep. Do you understand that?"

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