Adam

by Katie Dowe

  He had been furious at her, but to his surprise she had taken a seat next to him and had subjected him to a thorough stare.

  “I see,” he had said coldly. “You scared them off so you could be the focus of my attention.”

  “I scared them off because I cannot bear to see my female counterparts make fools of themselves,” she had told him airily. “And also, because I know who you are, Adam Whitmore, and I am Amber Gardner. We are supposed to be sworn enemies.”

  His eyes had flared at that. “So, what are you doing with me?”

  “Don’t you think it is time to break the feud? I mean isn’t it a little exhausting carrying anger and unforgivingness for so many years?’

  “Your great-grandfather impregnated my great-grandmother and that pregnancy caused her to almost die! It certainly caused her never to fully recover from the ordeal even when she was married and had children with her husband.”

  “At least she got over him enough to have a family of her own,” she had said smoothly. “So it was not a total disaster.” She had held out one slender hand. “What do you say, Adam? How about we break the traditional feud and become friends? Prove that we are way smarter than our ancestors?”

  He shook his head to get rid of the memories as she responded. “I safeguarded my heart against guys like you.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” he asked her with a frown.

  “It means that I do not become attracted to men who are better looking than I am,” she told him with an impish grin. “Now tell me what you have been up to for the last six months.”

  Chapter 3

  Amber stirred sometime around midnight and realized that she had fallen asleep with her head on Adam’s chest. She moved slightly and realized that his arm was wrapped loosely around her waist. They had been sitting in the sofa talking for hours and finishing the bottle of wine and she had no idea when she had fallen asleep. She rose up a little and stared at the beautifully carved face with the evenly tanned skin, the small dent in his chin, and the incredible long lashes that made shadows against his hard cheekbones. His jet-black hair was slightly tousled, giving him an endearing look and he looked boyishly handsome and so innocent! But she knew better! Adam Whitmore was by far one of the most dangerously handsome men she had ever come across and his charm was lethal. He had more women in love with him than there were days in a month and he was acutely aware of the effect he had on the opposite sex. She was different because she knew what he could do to her heart if she let him and she had no intention of being anything other than his best friend. His eyes opened suddenly and the silvery gaze held hers for a moment before a slow smile touched his lips. “Found what you were looking for?” he asked her lazily. She tried to get up and move away from him, but he held her tight.

  “Let go!” She slammed a fist into his flat stomach, and he released her quickly, a pained expression on his handsome face.

  “You are mean.”

  “And you need to go home before people get the wrong impression.” She leaned over and smoothed a lock of dark hair from his forehead and got to her feet. “Thanks for being here.”

  “Where else would I be?” he asked her gently as he got to his feet. He shoved his fingers through his hair. He glanced at the thirty thousand dollar Gessner watch on his wrist and grimaced. He had felt so comfortable that he had fallen asleep on her sofa with her slender body in his arms. He did not want to think about that right now. “I have to go.” He looked around for his sport jacket and she handed it to him.

  “Are you going to the manor?” she asked him as he made his way to the front door with her behind him.

  “Not a chance,” he said with a grimace. “I am going to crash the rest of the night at my apartment and then face the music after I am awake and in full use of all my faculties.” He pulled her into his arms and kissed the top of her head, his fingers tangling into the messy strands of her hair. “Are you sure you will be okay?”

  “I will be.” She rubbed a hand over his muscled chest for a moment before stepping back. “Go,” she urged. “And call me later.”

  He stood there staring at her for a moment before he left with a wave of his hand. Amber watched him move towards the car and get in before she closed the door behind her. She dug her fingers through the thickness of her hair and wandered from the living room into her grandmother’s room. It was as neat and tidy as she had been! Amber went over to the sewing machine that the woman had used up until the point where her arthritic fingers had failed to do the work. Amber took a seat on the edge of the bed and gazed around the simple room, inhaling the scent of peppermint and Joy, the perfume she was fond of and had used over the years. They had spent days talking and laughing and exchanging stories. Her grandmother had lots of stories to tell, including the famous and tragic one about her father who had fallen in love with a Whitmore girl and had gotten his heart broken as a result. Amber shook her head and laughed softly. She remembered the first time she had brought Adam over to the house and introduced him.

  “No need for introductions, my dear,” Mary Louise had told her granddaughter. “The resemblance to your great-grandmother is astounding.” She had tilted her head to look at the strikingly handsome man next to her granddaughter. “And I suspect you already know the history of our families?’

  Adam had responded with a grin. “Your granddaughter decided that the feud has gone on long enough and I agreed with her. She is very persuasive.”

  Amber had seen the speculative look her grandmother had given both of them. “I thought so since I was a little girl. It happened in a time when that sort of thing was taboo, but we are living in a different time now and things have changed.”

  Amber remembered the conversation her grandmother had had with her later that night after Adam had left. “He is very rich and very pretty.”

  “He would hate to hear you call him that,” Amber had pointed out to her. Mary Louise had stared at her for a moment.

  “I would hate to see you end up with a broken heart, honey. We certainly do not need another Whitmore/Gardner tragedy.”

  “And there will not be one,” she had told her firmly. “Adam and I are friends, just that. It is entirely possible for a man and a woman to be just friends, Grams.”

  “He has quite a reputation.”

  “And I cannot entirely blame him. Women follow him around like besotted idiots; no man is immune to that sort of worship.”

  “But not you.”

  “Never me!” Amber had said with a shudder. “We talk and we do have a lot in common. You know I don’t make friends easily, but with Adam it is that easy.”

  Amber flopped back onto the bed and closed her eyes. She missed Grams so much!

  *****

  “It’s nice of you to grace us with your presence!” Abraham Whitmore the Third told his son sarcastically as he strode into the vast dining room where the breakfast was being served. His father and Adam’s grandfather, whose name was also Abraham, looked up from the puzzle he was working on. Adam had gotten his looks and his height from both men that had been passed down from the first Abraham Whitmore and two pairs of sharp silver grey eyes pinned him as he made his way over to the sideboard to pour some coffee. He had decided to skip breakfast at his apartment and come over to get the lecture over and done with. He took his coffee with him over to the table and pulling up a chair, he joined them. He shook his head as a maid materialized to offer him something to eat.

  “I had somewhere to be.” His eyes moved to his grandfather, who was looking at him in speculation, but the anger coming from his father was tangible.

  “And I suppose stopping at that Gardner woman’s funeral was more important than coming here?” his father asked him coldly.

  “That was the specific reason I left Paris to come home to give my support to my best friend in her time of need.” Adam met his father’s frigid gaze unflinchingly. He had been terrified at the betrayal he knew they would feel when they heard that he was friends with a
Gardner, but over the years he had not let it bother him. Amber’s insouciance on the topic had given him courage and he learned not to let them bombard him with reasons why he should not be friends with her.

  “I cannot forbid you to be friends with that woman, Adam, but I expect you to be discreet about it.”

  Adam stared at the man in amazement and burst out laughing. “We are not having an illicit affair, Father. She is my friend and I am not going to sneak around to see her.”

  “It is time for you to choose a wife and no woman is going to put up with you seeing that woman.” His grandfather made his contribution for the first time since Adam had entered the room. “You are going to have to make a choice one of these days.”

  “Then I will surely choose her,” Adam told them sardonically. “Frankly, I am getting weary of having this conversation over and over again.”

  “And we will continue to have it for as long as you refuse to settle down and provide an heir for the family!” his father told him coldly.

  Adam pushed back his chair and stood up.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Somewhere else where the air is not so oppressive.”

  “We have a dinner party here later and your sister and her husband will be here. I hope you will grace us with your esteemed presence.” His father’s tone was bitingly sarcastic.

  “I will do my best.” With a mock salute, Adam strode out of the room.

  “You are going to alienate him to the point where he will not bother to come around,” Abraham the Second told his son gruffly. “You need to lay off him and not harp on the friendship with that woman. He rushes to her defense whenever we mention her name.”

  His son glowered into his orange juice. “I wish he would stop seeing her! That family almost destroyed my grandmother and your mother and he saying that she is his best friend is adding insult to a lot of injury! What does he see in her?”

  “I have a feeling that she is the only one who does not fall over herself to be available to him and therein lays the attraction.”

  His son looked at him startled. “You think it is more than attraction?”

  The man leaned his head back against the soft padded headrest and eyed his son thoughtfully. “He rushes home to be at her side as soon as she needs him and he always refers to her as his best friend. I have a feeling that Adam feels more for her than just mere friendship.”

  “He would not dare!” his son whispered.

  “You have had the woman checked out and we have seen the pictures of her. She is not exactly homely; as a matter of fact from what we have seen of the photos, she is an exceptionally beautiful woman and your son has an eye for beauty. She is beautiful and she is his best friend.”

  Abraham Whitmore the Third turned his head to stare at his father. “I have someone in mind for him and she is beautiful, comes from an exemplary background, dating as far back as ours.”

  “I suggest you try and pair them together without Adam knowing that you are doing so.”

  *****

  She was in the living room with several swatches of fabric strewn around her on the carpeted floor when he came in. He had called her as soon as he finished having lunch with a friend of his and told her he was coming over. She had told him that he should come and bring lunch. He had asked the waiter to bag up some linguine and some of the raspberry tart the place was famous for. The usual argument with his father and grandfather had pissed him off and he was still steaming, but looking at her sitting on the floor with her untidy hair streaming down her back immediately put him in a better mood. She had the ability to do that and he found that when he was around her he felt better. She angled her head around and stared up at him. “I am starving! I think I drank some cold coffee and ate burnt toast this morning and that’s it. Could you put it on a plate and bring it here?”

  “Your wish is always my command.” He bent over double and kissed the top of her head before heading to the kitchen to do as she asked. He came back with the meal and handed it to her along with a glass of orange juice he had seen in the fridge. Amber scooted back against the sofa and bending gracefully, he sat next to her on the floor, stretching his long denim clad out in front of him.

  “You had lunch at Mignon’s,” she murmured as she tasted the linguine. “Who was she?’

  “Does it always has to be a female?” he asked her mildly.

  “Why don’t you shock me and tell me you had lunch with a male?” she said quizzically.

  “You got me,” he said with a grin. “It was just unfinished business.”

  “Is that what they are calling break up these days?” she asked him dryly. “Did she cry and ask you what she did wrong and how on earth she could correct it?”

  He stared at her for a moment and then burst out laughing! “God! You are so cynical!” He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “She took it well; in fact, I was quite surprised.”

  “Be prepared for her not to want to stay in the past, darling.” She boxed at his hand as he reached in to scoop some of the pasta out of her plate.

  “She and I have not been involved since before I left for Europe. I just wanted to let her know that we could be friends.”

  Amber stared at the man seated next to her in amazement. “You played the friend card?”

  “What’s wrong with that?” he asked her irritably.

  “Darling, the one thing we hate more than it is over is that you want to be friends. How do you not know this?”

  “I must have missed that particular memo,” he told her dryly. “In the meantime, I am being warned that I should not see you in the open.”

  Amber looked over at him and smiled. “I am sure you took that well.”

  Adam’s arm drifted to the place on the sofa where she was leaning against, his arm only inches away from her. “I also made it worse when I told them that whenever my best friend needs me, I am going to be there for her.”

  “Uh-oh.” Amber continued eating without saying anything else for the moment. She loved that he defied his parents to keep their friendship alive. At one point, she thought that he would cave at the pressure, but she had come to realize that Adam Whitmore was a determined human being who was not easily swayed. “One day they are going to cut off your inheritance.”

  “I live in dreadful fear of that happening,” he told her with a grin. “Actually, when I turned twenty-five, I inherited the thirty million dollars my mother left in a trust for me. I have a feeling that my father and grandfather regret it sorely.”

  She finished eating and put the plate onto the table in front of them and turned to look at him. She liked the fact that he had a very strong chin, with a slight cleft in the middle of it. “Would you be behaving this way if that was not the case?” she asked him seriously.

  He shrugged eloquently. “Maybe not or maybe I would still be that way. I do not take kindly to people telling me what to do. That was the main reason I moved out of the manor and got on my own. My father and grandfather are stifling and highhanded and are of the opinion that they should control everything around them. My sister fell for it, but I am not that flexible. I do not bend to other people’s will.”

  “Instead, you go out of your way to antagonize them.”

  His silvery eyes stared into hers. “Whose side are you on?”

  “Always yours,” she assured him. “So what are you going to do?”

  “Eat your dessert, darling. I specifically requested it for you,” he told her lightly. He watched her open the container and dip her finger into the concoction before bringing it to her lips. He stared as she used her tongue to lick the raspberry from her finger and had to tear his eyes away from her mouth! Suddenly, inspiration hit! “How would you like to accompany me to a dinner party later?”

  She studied his face and saw the determination stamped there. “Where is this?”

  “At the manor,” he said with a wicked grin.

  “I don’t do family drama and certainly do not
appreciate you trying to strain our friendship by pitting me against your family,” she told him coolly.

  “I am doing the opposite, darling,” he told her soothingly. “I am showing them that our friendship is important to me and that they need to back off.”

  She studied him for a moment and then smiled. “In that case, what time?”

  “Seven, and wear something scandalous and sexy.”

  “Those are the only two adjectives to describe my wardrobe.”

  *****

  Adam found himself watching door every few minutes. The guests had started arriving a few minutes after he had made his appearance. His sister and her husband were already there when he came and she had hurried over to give him a hug. She was as different as he was as night was from day. Adam was incredibly handsome and she was saved from being completely plain by the amazing emerald green eyes she had inherited from their mother, but apart from that she had dark brown hair that came to her shoulders in a straight unassuming bob and a tall, lanky body that had only slight curves. But she loved her brother and he was absolutely fond of her. She was anxious to maintain the peace in the family and often begged her brother to do the same. She did as she was told because she was not one to make waves. She hated confrontation and made Adam anxious to protect her. “You did not call,” she accused him gently as he wrapped his arms around her body and kissed her forehead.

  “You know how I hate to communicate,” he told her gently. His eyes drifted over to the man who his father and grandfather had chosen to be her husband and his lips tightened a fraction. Chad Lancaster was from a very rich family whose fortune derived from real estate among other things. Adam had disliked the man on sight, thinking that he was too pompous and tended to regard Anita as his own personal property. He had taken him aside one night after he had witnessed the man admonishing his sister for not coming fast enough when he called her and had told him in an icy voice that he was not afraid to rearrange his face if he ever spoke to her that way again. Chad had seen the ruthless expression on Adam’s face and had thought better about retaliating or even arguing. He had nodded swiftly and retreated. “How is he treating you?”