Page 57 of Chasing Amanda

“I can see what you’re doing, and you need to stop.” Before she could argue, Mark hopped out, rounded the car, and opened her door. “Come on.” He helped her out, then pulled her in for a hug.

Pressed against his chest, the argument with his mother floated away on the sea breeze. Amanda wrapped her arms around his neck and held on. She inhaled his scent, now mixed with brine and exhaust from the passing cars. Waves crashed against the shore, but she focused on the beating of Mark’s heart and the feel of his warm breath in her hair.

They didn’t move for a long, long time.

“This is all I wanted.” His words rumbled. “This is why I came home.”

“I thought your CO insisted.”

She shouldn’t have said that. At the accusation in her tone, she expected him to go still or get annoyed, but he chuckled.

“You met my mother. Would you want to go home to her?”

Good point. He could come home to Amanda, but they weren’t married, and he refused to stay at her apartment with her.

Mark was old-fashioned about such things. She’d minded until he’d explained that he intended to honor her—that she was worth waiting for.

Sweet. But his ideals were keeping them apart, and she didn’t like that one bit.

And he’d be going home to his parents’ house, and it wasn’t like she’d be invited there to visit. “I wanted your mother to like me.”

“That was never going to happen.”

She leaned back. “Am I so unlikable?”

He smirked. “Yeah, that’s the problem. That’s why I love you, because you’re unlikable.”

“I’m serious. What did I do wrong?”

“Are you rich? Famous? Connected?” His eyebrows hiked. “Can you get her into the right country clubs or introduce her to powerful people?”

“She doesn’t know I can’t.”

“She would assume because I chose you, and that’s not the kind of woman I would choose. Or, let me put that differently. If that were the kind of woman I’d chosen, I’d have told her so she would like you. Or she thinks I would have, anyway. She thinks everyone values the same shallow things she values.”

“So there was never a chance?”

He exhaled, shaking his head. “I guess, if you were the boot-licking sort. But I don’t like to kiss boot-lickers. Bad breath.”

She smiled at his attempt at humor. “Which was Annalise, then? Rich and famous, or a bootlicker?”

Mark’s expression darkened like someone had shut off the light. He stepped back. “Who told you about Annalise?”

She explained how she’d overheard his parents talking at the airport, and the more she talked, the darker his expression became. By the time she was done, his shoulders were hunched, and his head hung low.

“I’m lucky you didn’t run screaming before I got off the plane.”

“I’m not going anywhere. You’re worth whatever your mother throws at me. It’s just that I wondered who Annalise is, that’s all. Especially when your father seemed…” Amanda wasn’t sure how to explain what she’d heard—or hadn’t heard. “He said you’d made your choice, but it didn’t sound like he thought you’d made the right choice, if that makes sense.”

Mark leaned against the hood of her car, facing the ocean. He wrapped one arm around her, and she nestled in beside him.

“I dated Annalise in high school. She wasn’t any of those things I said—rich or famous or connected. Her family immigrated from Germany, and she was awkward, sort of a fish out of water. She used to ask my mother a million questions about everything you can imagine. Where to shop, how to dress, how to organize an event, how to host a dinner party. She wasn’t a boot-licker, but she adored my mom, which, of course, convinced Mom she was brilliant. Annalise just wanted to fit in, and she didn’t have anybody else to ask. She didn’t have a lot of friends.”

“Why not?”

He glanced at Amanda. “She was…is very attractive. The guys were too intimidated to ask her out, and the girls apparently didn’t want to be friends with her for the same reason. I only got to know her because I was assigned to be her partner on a project in school. We became friends and then started dating.”

“It was serious.”