The Awakening Read online

  “Get out of my room.”

  “Or did you just try to hold his cold hand?”

  She looked away from him.

  He leaned close to her, his lips near her ear. “Or did you maybe kiss him?”

  Amanda sank onto the chair. “Would you please leave?” she whispered.

  He put his hands on her shoulders and lifted her up to face him. “You ready to admit I was right? Your Taylor doesn’t have any blood in his veins. He’s incapable of anything resembling passion.”

  She twisted out of his grasp. “He’s a good man and I want to please him.”

  “Why don’t you please yourself?”

  She gave him a false little smile. “It would please me to get back to my studying. And it would also please me if you left my room. Better yet, it would please me if you left America.”

  He pulled his watch from his vest pocket. “We’re going to be late. I’m supposed to meet Reva at eight, so that gives you about ten minutes to dress. You’ll like this dress I bought you.”

  “Does it have a bodice? Or is the skirt missing? Dr. Montgomery, I am not going to some loud, beer-swilling party with you and your equally disgusting friends.”

  He grinned at her. “You’ve already lost one bet today; what d’you want to bet you lose this one too?”

  Chapter Ten

  By the time Hank entered the dance with a woman on each side of him, he was ready to enter a monastery. Reva was angry because he’d shown up for their date with another woman and Amanda was angry because he’d threatened her until she had to attend the dance with him. Added to this was the fact that the two women were natural enemies and they’d had to share the passenger seat in his Mercer and Hank was beginning to think pleasantly of Amanda’s suggestion that he leave the country. Maybe a long cruise on a ship. Maybe a cruise on a Navy ship where he’d see only men for months at a time.

  “There’s a table,” Reva said over the noise of the ragtime music. “Of course it has only two places.” She gave Amanda a withering look. Reva thought she could cheerfully kill Amanda right now. She finally got a chance at a gorgeous, rich, educated, rich, respectable, and, most of all, rich man like Dr. Montgomery and who should show up but Amanda? And to make it worse, Amanda was wearing a stunning white satin dress with a slant-cut overskirt that dripped with a fringe of crystal beads. Reva didn’t know dresses like that existed, and it made her frilly blue dress that had cost her a week’s salary look cheap and gaudy.

  “It doesn’t look like there’s room,” Amanda said. “You two go on. I’ll find another table.”

  Hank’s hand clamped down on her upper arm.

  “Maybe I should be the one to leave,” Reva said, then Hank took her arm, too, and began pulling both women toward the tiny table.

  No cocktails were being served but beer and wine were abundant, so Hank ordered a bottle of champagne for their table. The three of them sat in silence, laughter all around, music playing, couples dancing, and waited for the wine. When it came, Reva and Hank drank greedily, but Amanda ignored her glass.

  “Drink,” Hank commanded her.

  “And what will you do to humiliate me if I don’t?”

  “I’ll make you dance with me,” he said so just she could hear.

  “I’ll drink out of the bottle to escape that,” she said, picking up her glass. The wine was heavenly, sour, effervescent, cold. She emptied her glass and the waiter refilled it.

  “You don’t have to get drunk. Is there any food you don’t like?”

  “There are just men I don’t like.”

  “Excuse me,” Reva said, “but I don’t think I’m needed here. There are some people over there I know. I think I’ll join them.”

  “Wait,” Hank said, “let’s dance.” He took Reva’s hand, and as he rose he looked down at Amanda. “You leave and you’ll be sorry.”

  She just looked into her third glass of champagne and smiled.

  “And slow down on that stuff.”

  Hank led Reva onto the dance floor and she nuzzled as close to him as was decently possible, but she didn’t think he was aware of her. He kept looking at Amanda and frowning. Reva took his chin in her hand and turned those beautiful blues so they looked at her. “What’s with you?” she said. “Are you in love with her or something?”

  “God no,” Hank said in horror. “I happened to have been cursed with a social conscience. I hate to see anyone who’s under the rule of someone else.”

  “You mean Amanda? Some ruler she has, all that money, that big house of hers. Just that dress she has on is enough to make a woman forget any problems she ever thought she had.”

  “Yeah? You like that dress? Amanda thought it looked like something a saloon girl might wear.”

  “She was lying. Believe me, she was lying.” This remark seemed to please Hank, and Reva smiled when he moved a little closer to her. He was an excellent dancer, and she loved the feel of all those muscles under her hands and those legs of his touching hers. If Amanda was going to get this man she was going to have to fight for him.

  Amanda started on her fourth glass of champagne before the tension left her body. Or maybe tension wasn’t the word for it. Maybe stark terror was what she was feeling. Dr. Montgomery had threatened to tell Taylor everything that had gone on between them since the professor’s arrival if Amanda didn’t go to the dance with him. Amanda was faced with definitely losing Taylor if Dr. Montgomery told or just the possibility of losing him if someone checked her room and found she was gone. She didn’t even want to think about what her grade would be on tomorrow’s test.

  She took another swallow of the wine and began to look about the room. It wasn’t as garish as she’d first thought and the music was much nicer than it had sounded at first.

  “Amanda?”

  She looked up to see a divinely handsome man leaning over her. Not as good-looking as Taylor, of course, or even Dr. Montgomery for that matter, but very pleasant, with dark brown hair, dark brown eyes and a nicely full lower lip under a fat mustache. She kept looking at that lower lip as he sat down beside her.

  “It is you, Amanda. I haven’t seen you in years. Remember me? Sam Ryan.”

  She looked back at his eyes. “Sam Ryan, the love of the whole elementary school. I remember we girls used to take turns swooning when you came by.” Amanda was shocked that she’d said such a thing but she felt so relaxed that it didn’t really matter.

  Sam ducked his head in embarrassment. “I don’t know about any of that, but you look great. I like that dress.”

  “Do you? I’ve had it for ages.” It seemed that he was better-looking with every sip of the magic drink.

  “Would you like to dance?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know how.”

  “Oh.” He smiled at her and leaned forward. “Are you here alone? I mean, is that guy you came with your date or Reva’s?”

  “Reva’s!” she practically yelled. “He’s nothing to do with me. He just drove the car. He’s Reva’s and no one else’s. At least not mine. I hardly know him. I don’t want to know him.” She shut up.

  Sam looked at her for a while. She had grown into a beautiful woman, with her hair soft around her face, her beautiful white shoulders exposed under the transparent sleeves of her dress. “It’s awfully noisy in here, don’t you think? Why don’t we go somewhere and get somethin’ to eat and talk about old times?”

  “Food would be lovely,” she said, thinking that she hadn’t eaten since that disastrous picnic with that odious man. When Amanda started to stand up, she nearly fell, but Sam’s strong arm caught her and she smiled at him as if he’d just saved her life. She was very happy to see a look in his eyes that she’d seen several times in Dr. Montgomery’s. She didn’t want to think about the way Taylor looked at her. His rejection of her today had hurt more than she wanted to admit.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, holding on to him, and the warmth in his eyes increased. He was making her feel very good. She clung to his arm as if