The Awakening Read online

  “You are home, girlie.”

  He put one arm under her knees and lifted her as he sank to the ground.

  She was frightened now and she began to struggle in earnest, but she was half his weight and she had no effect on his strength. “No!” she screamed, pushing at him, pummeling any part of his body she could reach with her fists.

  He grabbed her sleeve and she felt the fabric tear away as he began to run hot kisses down the front of her. She leaned her head back to scream for help but he put a thumb to her windpipe.

  “No reason to make a fuss, baby,” he said. “I’m just givin’ you what you been wantin’ all evenin’.”

  His mouth fastened on her breast and all Amanda could do was fight for air. She knew she was losing consciousness.

  And then, all of a sudden, the thumb was removed. She opened her eyes to see that Dr. Montgomery had Sam by the hair.

  “You bastard,” Hank said, seething. “You’re just what I thought you were.”

  Sam jerked out of Hank’s grasp. “She wanted it. She’s been askin’ for it all night. You mad because she won’t give it to you?”

  The next second Sam was on his back, blood running from his split upper lip where Hank had hit him.

  “I’m gonna massacre you, old man, then I’m gonna take her,” Sam said, coming to his feet and preparing to run at Hank.

  “You and what army?” Hank said softly before sidestepping Sam’s head-down charge. He laced his fingers and brought both fists down on the back of Sam’s head.

  Sam kept going for a second, then fell facedown in a hop plant.

  “So much for old men,” Hank said from above Sam’s inert body, then he turned to look at Amanda. Her face was whiter than the silk of her dress and she was holding the bodice together with her hands.

  “Come on, let’s go,” he said as gently as he could, considering the fact that he could easily wring her neck. He put out his hand to her but she walked past him, her little nose in the air. All right, if that’s the way she wanted it, she could have it. He wanted to comfort her but she didn’t look like she needed any comfort. He didn’t glance at the unconscious football player but rubbed his aching hands and followed Amanda back to the road.

  Reva was waiting for them, but Amanda walked right past her and started back toward town and the car.

  “Sam do that?” Reva asked, referring to Amanda’s torn dress.

  “Yeah,” Hank mumbled, watching Amanda as she stalked ahead.

  “I guess our date’s over,” Reva said. “It sure has been interesting.”

  Hank wasn’t listening to her. He’d barely heard Amanda’s cry of no. If he’d been two hop rows farther away, he wouldn’t have heard her. Thinking about seeing that jerk’s body wrapped around Amanda made him want to go back and kill him.

  Amanda didn’t stop until she was at Hank’s Mercer, then she stepped inside, sat down and looked straight ahead.

  “Move over and let Reva in,” Hank said with more anger than he meant.

  “No thanks,” Reva said. “I think I’ll go back to the dance. But thanks a lot, Doc. Maybe we can get together again sometime.” She practically ran across the street to the steps of the Opera House.

  Hank started the car, got in the driver’s side and turned toward the Caulden Ranch without saying a word to Amanda, but he silently cursed her all the way back. She had no sense about men, or sense about anything else for that matter. All she knew about were books and schedules. Why did she think she could handle some lusty young man like that Sam? And Hank didn’t really blame Sam after the way Amanda had thrown herself at him.

  He turned an angry look toward her just as another car passed them, and when he saw Amanda’s face, his anger left him. She looked scared to death, as if her life were over. He pulled the car down a side road, stopped under an oak tree, then went to her side of the car.

  “Get out,” he said.

  “I want to go home,” she said in little above a whisper.

  He put his hand on her arm but she flinched away from him.

  “Don’t touch me!” she said in a high-pitched half-scream.

  “Amanda, I’m not a rapist and I’ll be damned if I’ll let you think all men are.” He put one arm behind her back and another under her knees and scooped her out of the seat and into his arms.

  When he touched her, she came alive, pounding his chest, kicking, pulling his hair. But he held her tightly, only grunting a few times when she hit some sensitive spot. After a long while she began to cry, and Hank moved with her to sit under the tree, where he held her close to him and stroked her hair while she cried.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked softly.

  Amanda was beginning to recover. “My pride.”

  Hank handed her a handkerchief. “Nothing else? Just an ugly dress torn?”

  “It’s a beautiful dress. The prettiest one at the dance.”

  “Think so?” Hank said happily.

  Amanda blew her nose again. “I don’t know what happened. He was so kind at the dance. And it was nice to have a man want to kiss me.”

  Hank felt personally insulted. “I keep kissing you and you don’t seem to think it’s so nice.”

  “Yes, but you just want to teach me a lesson. You want me to change myself into what you want me to be, and Taylor wants me to be whatever he wants. Sam just thought I was…that I was pretty.”

  Hank knew there was more truth in her words than he liked to admit. “But you flirted with him and made him think you were easy.”

  “I just wanted to feel wanted.”

  “I see. You want to tell me what happened today with you and Taylor?”

  She shuddered at the memory of the scene in the library. “No, I don’t.”

  “That bad, was it?”

  She sat up in his lap, and for all the intimacy of their contact they may as well have been sitting in a parlor on chairs.

  “Something I’d like to know is, if you wanted a man to make you feel desirable, why didn’t you come to me?”

  “You?” she asked. “But you don’t make me feel desirable. You make me feel stupid. You make me feel that everything I do is wrong. You yell at me, ridicule me, threaten me, tell me I have no idea what life or love is. Taylor may not make me feel like a femme fatale but he thinks I’m smart.”

  She got off his lap, stood and tried to pull the torn parts of her dress together. “Taylor chooses my clothes; you pick out a dancing dress for me. I really don’t see any difference except that Taylor does it without shouting. I must say, though, Dr. Montgomery, I do like your food better than Taylor’s, but as for day-to-day contact, I much prefer Taylor’s quietness, and after tonight I am further convinced that he’s the man for me. Tell me, are dates always this much ‘fun’? I think I’ll stay home next time if you don’t mind. Now, may we return to my home where I’m safe?”

  She turned away and got in the car, trying to conceal that her body was still trembling from Sam’s attack. During the years she’d stayed at home with Taylor as her tutor, she seemed to have missed out on part of her education. Taylor never kissed her, but then along came Dr. Montgomery and he did. Yet Dr. Montgomery didn’t maul her or hurt her, nor did his hands feel like slime on her skin like Sam’s had.

  She turned her face to the wind and tried not to cry. For the thousandth time she wished she had never met Dr. Montgomery. If Taylor rarely kissed her, it wouldn’t have mattered because she never would have known about kissing or fast little cars, or dancing, or succulent food if she hadn’t met Dr. Montgomery. And she wouldn’t have become reacquainted with Sam or Reva, who had given her dagger-looks all evening. How different her life would be now if he’d never come.

  And now she needed to get it back where it had been. She had to get home, sneak into the house (something else she’d never done before he came) and get to her calculus book so she could pass her test in the morning.

  Hank stopped the car some distance from the house so no one would see the lights or hear the moto