Amanda by Kay Hooper Read Free Book Online

she’d left behind of her thoughts and feelings about him.
    What, if anything, did it mean?
    Amanda shook off the thoughts and looked around her room. There was a shelf holding a number of books near the door, and she contemplated it for a few moments before electing to return the journals to the suitcase’s hidden compartment. The journals might have fit in anonymously with the several hardback and paperback novels provided for a guest’s bedtime reading, but Amanda preferred not to chance it.
    She closed the bag and set both her cases inside the closet. Her makeup case was on the dresser; she opened it and lifted out the tray holding various brushes and compacts to reveal the small niche designedto hold jewelry. Amanda had very little good jewelry: a small diamond cluster ring and one emerald band with very small stones, a couple of bracelets and chains of fine gold, some delicate earrings.
    She ignored those pieces, drawing out a small velvet pouch, which contained a small pendant on a delicate chain. The pendant, hardly more than an inch from top to bottom, was the outline of a heart done in tiny diamonds. It was not an expensive piece or an impressive one, but when she put it on and looked in the mirror above the dresser to study the heart as it lay in the V opening of her blouse, it felt to Amanda as if she had fastened something very heavy around her neck.
    Pushing her luck, there was no question about it. The smart thing would be to say very little and listen to everything during these first days, especially while she was trying to get the feel of this place and these people. Why ask for trouble so soon? She touched the little heart with a fingertip, hesitating, then sighed and left it.
    She fingered a few other items in the jewelry niche thoughtfully. A man’s gold seal ring, a pair of very old pearl earrings, an ivory bracelet—all pieces much older than the others in the niche.
    Tucked into a corner and wrapped in tissue was a small crystal trinket box, which Amanda carefully unwrapped and placed upon the dresser. She took off the lid and removed another bit of tissue paper, this wrapped around an opaque dark green stone.
    There was nothing particularly memorable about the stone. It was hardly more than a couple of inches from end to end, a roughly oval shape with several jutting facets common to quartz. Amanda held it for a moment, her fingers examining the shape and hardness of the stone, rubbing the smooth facets. Then she returned it to the trinket box, adding the two delicaterings and several pairs of earrings from the jewelry-niche. Satisfied with the resulting jumble, in which the green stone seemed merely a bit peculiar, she replaced the lid on the box.
    After a moment’s thought, she deliberately cluttered the dresser’s polished surface, putting out her hairbrush and comb, a bottle of perfume, and several items of makeup. She left the case open.
    A glance at her watch told her it was only three-thirty, which meant she had some time to kill. Supper at six, Jesse had told her, and she might Want to wander around and explore this afternoon. Obviously eager to spend time with her, he had nevertheless made a conspicuous effort to avoid overwhelming her, to give her room and time to herself. There would be a car and driver at her disposal if she wanted to go into town, he had said, and if there was anything she needed—anything at all—she should tell either him or Maggie.
    Amanda felt a brief craven impulse to remain here in her room until suppertime, but shook it off. She’d come this far, and so going on was inevitable.
    She left the window open since it was screened, but closed the balcony doors; summer wouldn’t officially begin for another month, but until Amanda found out how bad the flies and mosquitoes were around here— according to what she’d read, it varied from year to year—she had no intention of issuing a blatant invitation to the insects to enter her bedroom. She went to the hall