Read Online Golden Vows by Karen Toller Whittenburg - Free Book Online Page B

had a first name other than Mister.
    She liked him, liked the crusty way he talked and the faded blue of his eyes. And she liked the way he handled Martha. Amanda’s curiosity had pushed forth a dozen possible definitions of the relationship, but none of them seemed to fit. She remembered asking Dane what he thought.
    “Well, if you want my opinion,” he’d replied with a slyly suspicious arching of his brow. “I suspect that Martha and MacGregor are living in sin.”
    Amanda had gasped in shocked surprise. “You don’t mean—!”
    “Yes.” Dane had frowned in mocking sobriety. “I suspect they are carrying on right in this very house. And you know what else, Amanda?”
    “What?” She had practically fallen off her chair waiting for him to continue.
    “It’s none of our business.”
    Of course, it hadn’t been then and it wasn’t now. There had never been an iota of evidence to support the idea. But there had been none to discredit the possibility either. And she did wonder....
    She let her lips tip up at the corners and wished Dane were here to speculate with her again.
    “See, Amanda? What did I tell you?” Martha gave a disparaging look at the food being placed on the table. “It’s a miracle that I haven’t gotten sick eating all this health food.”
    “You’re never sick, Martha.” Amanda thought the food looked appetizing and smelled even better. “It must be all those vitamins you take.”
    “Vitamins?” Martha grumbled as she ladled extremely healthy portions onto her own and Amanda’s plates. “It’s good, clean living. That’s what it is.”
    Amanda couldn’t resist the laughter that welled in her throat and her gaze automatically crossed the table to share.
    Loneliness closed around her like a cold December day. Dane should be there and he wasn’t. She should be looking into brown eyes spiced with laughter and she was staring at an empty chair.
    Oh, Dane.
    Her heart twisted with missing him.
    Dinner passed in a superficial haze of conversation. Martha talked about something, but Amanda didn’t really pay much attention. She supposed she made the proper responses, smiled at the right times, but her mind was caught in a tide of memories that ebbed and flowed through her consciousness. A reminder of Dane called to her from every corner of the room and superseded Martha’s words to plunge deep into the past and reminisce.
    Images bathed in the perspective of time; glimpses of moments, indistinct in their importance except for the quiet pleasure they evoked. Dane, captured in a heartbeat, for her own private portfolio. How strange that she had fought these memories, chased them from her whenever they appeared. Yet now, unexpectedly, to the accompaniment of a mundane conversation, she welcomed that which she had forbidden herself to recall.
    She felt warmed by her thoughts of Dane and curiously comforted by the admission that she missed him. Even when she followed Martha into the front room again and resumed her place on the sofa, Amanda let the memories drift at will.
    Was it a good sign? Was her heart finally accepting the past, both painful and sweet? Would there be times, like now, when she could wrap herself in memories and not be afraid?
    She sipped at the coffee Martha had so thoughtfully provided and was grateful for the companionable silence. Perhaps she was entering a new phase of healing. Perhaps this was a natural progression of emotion. Perhaps one day she really would feel whole again.
    “You’re very quiet tonight.” Martha set the rocker into a gentle, mesmerizing motion. “Would you like to tell me where your thoughts have been all evening?”
    Amanda let her lips slant in a fleeting confession. “I’m sorry. I suppose I haven’t been very good company, have I?”
    “The nice thing about family is that you don’t have to pretend. I may not be your blood kin, Amanda, but we’re family just the same. The first time I saw Dane when he was just a tow-headed,