“What’s eating you? Is it last night? Or is it this morning? If it’s last night, I—”
“I’d rather forget that, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll never forget it as long as I live,” Hank said softly and started to take Amanda’s hand, but just then the waitress arrived with their food.
To the utter astonishment of both of them, Amanda burst into tears. The waitress heard and gave Hank a dirty look for whatever he’d done to cause her to cry in public. Embarrassed, Hank grabbed the tray from the waitress’s hand, put their plates of food and drinks on it, took Amanda’s arm and began pulling her toward the back of the restaurant. The kitchen workers looked up in surprise, and Amanda tried her best to keep from crying,
but it wasn’t easy. He didn’t stop until they were outside, several feet from the restaurant and in the shade of a big oak tree.
He half shoved her to sit down. “Okay, talk,” he said, putting the tray down and sitting in front of her.
“Dr. Montgomery, I—”
“Don’t give me that doctor stuff, Amanda. After what happened last night we’re past the formal stage. I want you to tell me why you applied for a job with me, why you wanted me to make love to you and why you’re crying now.” Even as he said it, he knew that some part of him wanted her to say that she’d come to him because she was in love with him. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if she did say that, but after last night he was close to willing to ask her to marry him. To spend every night in ecstasy such as he’d experienced last night…
“I was rude to Taylor this morning,” she said, and Hank’s shoulders fell. “And to Mrs. Gunston.”
“Pretty horrible,” he said sarcastically. He’d hoped it was jealousy that had made Amanda so angry this morning. Reva had thrown herself at him, and Hank had wanted to see if another woman’s lips made him forget himself as Amanda’s had. They hadn’t. “So,” Hank continued, “you’re mad at me and crying because you were rude to Taylor this morning?” What about us? he thought. What about last night?
Amanda was trying to get control of herself. Hank handed her a plate of food and she began to eat. She was beginning to associate food with this man. “I came to work for you because I think I realized you were right about something.”
Hank gave her a hopeful look.
“I don’t really seem to know much about life.”
“Oh,” he said flatly.
“I mean I do know about some aspects of life, but not about dating, and—well, Dr. Montgomery, I don’t seem to know much about love.”
“You did all right last night,” he said softly, his eyes hot.
She looked away. “In a way, it has been very kind of you to undertake teaching me what you have. I know I’ve been resentful because I didn’t want you for a teacher, but then when Taylor first came to me I resented having a schedule.” She gave him a little smile.
“I can’t imagine resenting something like that,” Hank said.
“Please do not be rude to me, Dr. Montgomery. You are the one who wanted to be my teacher, not the other way around.”
“So what’s your point?” he asked angrily. “You came to see how the other half lives, right? So now you’ll go back to your teacher/fiancé and you’ll be better for having had your little fling. Is that it?”
Tears came again to Amanda’s eyes and she set down her plate.
“Oh damn,” Hank said and handed her his handkerchief. “All right,” he said softly, “tell me what’s bothering you.”
“Everything!” Amanda said, and the word came from her heart. “I feel so discontent, so restless. I used to be so happy before you came. I studied all day, Taylor and I had such lovely evenings of poetry and music, but now—” She blew her nose. “Now I hear ragtime music in my head and I don’t want to stay home all the time and I want to use my knowledge. And I question what Taylor says and what my father says. And the poverty of those people who came to pick the hops! I feel like a princess who has been isolated in a tower all her life.”
Hank wasn’t going to lecture her, wasn’t even going to tell her she had been isolated. “So you came to work for me to see some more of the world. Was last night part of the cure for your restlessness?”
“I don’t know what last night was,” she answered honestly. “Last night just added to my confusion. I don’t seem to know who I am or what I want anymore. And Taylor seems so different. One minute he treats me as a little girl—he said he thinks of me as a little girl—and the next he’s promising me kisses if I do well on my lessons.”
“He what?” Hank asked, astonished.
Amanda didn’t answer him directly. “I think Taylor may be as confused as I am. I’m not sure he knows if I’m a schoolgirl or a woman. He’s been stuck with me so long that I’m not sure he remembers how to treat a woman.”
Hank didn’t say that it was something one never forgot. He tried to look at her problem from a distance, as if she were his student and not a woman whose mouth had—Student! he thought. Think student. “Which would you like to be, Amanda?” he asked in his teacher-voice. “A woman or a schoolgirl?”
She picked up her plate of food again. “I have been attracted to you, Dr. Montgomery, I can’t deny that.”
Hank gritted his teeth to keep from saying anything.