by Anthology
Present Day
Katie’s actions and words, on that day, still gave him comfort now. He couldn’t believe he had let so much time pass and had not gone to see her. So many years he had wasted, not seeing her, not talking to her, not touching her.
Well, damn it, there’s no use crying over spilled milk. Today was a new day and he was not going to let her slip through his fingers again.
Chapter Ten
Knowing she didn’t have time for the nervous breakdown she deserved, Katie shook off what had just happened in the truck, hurried across the empty parking lot, and opened the back door Jason had instructed her to, stepping into what appeared to be a very upscale boutique. Looking around, she saw that she appeared to be in what she assumed was the employee break room, but it was much nicer than any employee lounge she had ever seen. There was a plush, red Italian leather couch and a flat screen TV. A massage table sat in the left corner of the room, and there was a state-of-the-art stainless steel refrigerator to her right.
Katie stood for a moment, taking in her surroundings and wondering what to do next, when she heard the sound of beads brushing against each other. Looking up Katie felt her eyes widen as the most beautiful, exotic woman Katie had ever seen in her life walked through the black bead-curtained doorway, creating the illusion that she was magically taking form from the onyx baubles right before Katie's eyes.
The woman stood about five feet six inches tall, and had long, thick, shiny black hair and gorgeous hazel cat-shaped eyes. Her flawless olive skin gave her the air of Middle Eastern royalty. Katie thought that she looked like nothing so much as an Arabian princess brought to life.
The woman was wearing a pair of fitted white linen slacks and a tailored black halter top with intricate beading along the neckline. The ensemble was finished with elegant black slingback flats. She looked like she’d just walked off the pages of Vogue.
Katie tried to be subtle as she glanced down at her own (distinctly underwhelming) ensemble and attempted not to feel like a peasant in the presence of nobility.
“Katie,” the woman said warmly, and her smile revealed a row of the straightest, whitest teeth Katie had ever seen outside of a movie screen.
“Hi, um, yes, I’m Katie,” she mumbled uncomfortably, slouching her shoulders unconsciously because she suddenly felt so frumpy and dowdy. “You must be Amber.”
“Yes, I am. Wow,” Amber enthused, looking Katie up and down. “It is so nice to finally meet you.”
Oh, God, please don't look me up and down, Katie pleaded inside her head, feeling supremely uncomfortable under the stunning woman's gaze. Katie couldn't be sure if Amber was really happy to meet her or if this was like in middle school when the popular girls would tell you that you had the ‘cutest skirt’ and then as soon as you walked away, they would laugh behind your back and joke that you must have bought it at UglyMart.
Either way, she felt on display and it wasn't a pleasant feeling. Her breathing started coming in short pants. Wait, no—please no panic attack.
Katie pulled it together enough to manage to say (and not mumble), “Um, it's nice to meet you, too.”
There was a semi-long, semi-awkward pause. Katie waited. Hey, she had said the last thing, right? It was Amber's turn. That's how conversations worked.
When it became apparent that wasn't going to happen, Katie cautiously continued. “Jason said you were holding a dress for me?”
“Oh, yes. Of course.” Amber shook her head back and forth, her dark locks swaying as though she were in a shampoo commercial. “Sorry, I don’t know where my manners are. I think I might be in a little bit of shock. It’s just, I have been hearing about you for years now. Even seen a few pictures, but here you are in the flesh. It's surreal.”
This didn't make Katie feel less like a bug under the microscope. Nope. Not at all.
Amber stared wonderingly for a few more seconds, but then she stepped back through the doorway, pushing the beads to the side and gesturing for Katie to follow her. She said, “I certainly am holding a dress for you, and I know you are in a time crunch, so let’s get you in it.”
Still in shock that this complete stranger seemed to know who she was when Katie didn’t know her from Adam, she mindlessly followed Amber down a short hall painted a muted shade of red. As they reached the dark wood door to the dressing room, Amber abruptly turned to her. As she opened the fitting room door, she said, “You should find everything you need in there, but if you need a different size or you'd like to try different accessories, just let me know. I'll be in the front closing up.”
With that, Amber practically pushed her into the room and closed the door. Katie leaned against the door and took a deep breath. She really needed a moment to collect her thoughts and compose herself. Hmm, that seemed to be her theme of the day.
In this instance, ironically, the cause of her needing a few minutes was the same reason she did not have that luxury at the moment—Jason.
Always the pragmatist, she shook off those thoughts and set about the task at hand. She put her purse down and picked up the hanger from the ornately crafted hook on the back of the door. There was a lovely and feminine blue silk sundress with a sweetheart neckline and crisscrossing straps down the back, a white cashmere button-up sweater, and adorable white wedges with crisscrossing straps that echoed the pattern in the dress.
Quickly pushing down her jeans and removing her tank top, she slipped the dress over her head, luxuriating in the way the soft silk whispered over her skin. She got a sudden mental image of Jason's hands lightly trailing over her skin in all the same places the fabric was touching her and had to put a hand against the wall to keep from tipping over as her knees buckled.
No time for that now, Lawson.
She stood up straight, shook off the short moment of erotic dizziness, and turned to look at herself in the three-way mirror. She was pleasantly surprised by what she saw.
The dress fit her perfectly. It hung well, and the draping hit her curves in all the right places. She found herself starting to wish that Jason could see her in it and had to nip that in the bud. Best to move on quickly to the accessories.
She slipped her feet into the sandals and grabbed the sweater that was hanging on the back of the door. Katie quickly folded her clothes into a neat pile and placed her Converse tennis shoes on top. She grabbed her purse and headed out of the dressing room to the front of the store where she saw Amber behind an onyx counter top.
“Thank you so much,” Katie said sincerely. “This is such a pretty dress and the shoes fit perfectly. Did you just guess my shoe size?”
Amber looked up. “Whoa, that was record time. You’re like Wonder Woman. Well, damn, the dress looks amazing on you. And no, I didn’t guess. Jason told me you wore a size five-and-a-half shoe.”
“That’s so weird,” Katie mused. “How would Jason know what size shoe I wear?” Katie suddenly noticed that Amber was locking up the register and gathering up her purse, and she put a hand out to stop her. “Oh, wait. Before you lock up, how much do I owe you? I didn’t see any tags.”
As Katie spoke, she was fumbling through her purse to try to retrieve her wallet at the same time as she was attempting to balance her folded jeans, tank, and sneakers. Oh, and not get her dress wrinkled, of course. She felt like a klutz. She was sure if Amber were trying this whole act, she would just wave her hand and her wallet would magically appear in her palm. But grace and elegance had never been Katie's strong suit.
“Oh, I took them off. And don’t worry. The payment has already been taken care of.” Amber smiled as she came around the counter. She was carrying her purse as well as a beautiful silver and white tote bag. She reached over, deftly grasped the jeans, tank, and shoes from Katie’s hand, and placed them in the bag before handing the bag back to Katie.
Katie was confused and wanted to seek clarification, but at the same time her brain took a split second to stop and let the little voice in the back of her head point out to her, ‘See? Tol
d you she'd look graceful if she tried to handle those…’
She shook her head to clear it of that thought and then asked, “Taken care of? Wait, what do you mean? Did Jas…? No. I can’t let him do that. How much do I owe you?”
Katie put on her 'insistent lawyer' voice and held out her wallet. She did not often deal with Jason or his Harper's Crossing minions, though, so she was out of practice when it came with talking to people to whom her 'insistent lawyer' voice meant exactly nothing.
“It's out of my hands at this point,” Amber said in a cheerful tone, putting up her hands in surrender. “You'll have to take that up with Jason.”
“Great. I need that about as much as I need a huge, sweltering cold sore,” Katie mumbled, the good mood that had begun when she looked at herself in the dressing room mirror beginning to crumble. Then she stopped herself, realizing that Jason wasn’t trying to one-up her or win—he was being…nice. She just wasn’t used to it. It was a lot to process.
Making a concerted effort to brighten and look at the good side of a situation in which she felt increasingly out of control, Katie said, “Oh well, I guess this is as close as I will get to my own real life Pretty Woman moment.”
She paused a moment, and then the meaning implicit in the reference hit her. Without thinking, she blurted out, “Not that I’m a prostitute.”
Amber burst out laughing so hard that it caused her to bend over at the waist. Katie realized what she’d said might be considered to some a little amusing, but this reaction seemed a tad out of proportion.
Katie shrunk inside. Umm…clearly she had made some hilarious faux pas. Yeah. That grace and elegance thing had not gotten any better in the last five minutes, it seemed.
Amber looked up at Katie, wiping her eyes, and—clearly taking in her stricken look—said through her laughter, “Sorry. Oh, sorry, hon. I'm not laughing at you. It’s just…that's exactly what Jas said that you would say. He told me—and I quote—‘She will be upset at first but then it will probably remind her of Pretty Woman, minus the whole hooker thing.’ It’s like he’s in your head.”
“No, it’s not.” Katie automatically retorted and then realized that the extreme quickness with which she shot that answer back may have actually disproved the point she was trying to make. Backpedaling, she explained, “I mean...it's just, we grew up together, but you know…we haven’t seen each other in years.”
Katie was confused. She couldn’t help the twinge of—if she didn’t know any better—jealousy that swept over her when she heard Amber refer to Jason as Jas. Which was ridiculous. Everyone called him Jas or J. It didn’t mean anything. But the familiarity in her tone just rubbed Katie the wrong way.
And even if it did ‘mean something,’ why should she care? Seriously. She had no business feeling anything about any relationship Jason had had in his life.
Realizing how her outburst must have sounded, she tried her best to recover. “I just mean, people change a lot in ten years. I knew Jason a lifetime ago.”
“Okay, you just keep telling yourself that,” Amber said and flashed her a very knowing smile as they walked together towards the arched double doors at the front of the store. Why was that the second time she had heard that today? First Jason had said it, and now Amber. Damn, she thought. What is with these people?
As Amber held open the door for her to walk through, Katie said, “Well, thank you, again, for all of your help. I love the dress. You're a lifesaver, honestly. It was really nice meeting you.”
“Thanks, and it was nice meeting you, too,” Amber said as she turned to lock the door, “but if you wait just one second while I lock up, I’ll head over with you.”
Katie stopped and waited. “Oh, are you going to the luncheon?”
“Yeah, of course. Oh, I mean…I thought you knew. I am one of Sophie’s bridesmaids.”
Katie laughed. “You can add that to the long list of things I've spent my morning trying to play catch-up on. No, I didn’t know. But please don't take it personally. I just got into town this morning and haven’t really been brought up to speed yet. Were you at the fitting? I don’t remember seeing you there. But then again, I was in the back most of the time getting my dress pinned.”
“No, I couldn’t make it. My assistant store manager called in sick this morning. It sounded like it might be more than a twenty-four-hour bug, and with me up at Whisper Lake for the wedding the next few days, I figured there was a good possibility the shop would be shut down for the rest of the weekend after this morning. I decided I'd better keep it open today, at least for part of the day. And it's a good thing I did. Otherwise you might have been going to this luncheon in jeans and a tank top.” Amber smiled as they started off across the parking lot together.
“Yeah, that would not have been good,” Katie laughed. She liked Amber and—other than the momentary insane twinge of jealousy—she was really enjoying her company.
It dawned on Katie that, in California, she really didn’t have any ‘friends.’ She talked to Sophie on the phone regularly but Sophie lived here in Harper’s Crossing. In San Francisco, Katie had colleagues, but they were all so competitive that it didn't really count. Plus, they really didn’t talk about anything that was not related to the firm, the law, and sometimes, briefly, certain reality shows they were interested in at the moment. Hey, everyone needs some sort of mindless escape. If you could find it in forty minutes of Survivor, then God bless. That was Katie's philosophy. But they never talked about anything personal.
Katie realized, with a jolt, that there were a couple of her associates—people that before this moment she would have described as being 'close'—she did not even know the most basic of details about, such as where they had grown up or their marital status.
Damn.
She realized she had really missed having friends. Not just ‘friends,’ but actual friends. “So how do you know Sophie?” Katie asked. She figured that, in a break from the pattern she had established with the people at work, she would start this relationship by finding out the details of Amber's life.
“Well, let’s see…” Amber took a deep breath before she began, the first indication Katie had that this might be an actual Story-with-a-capital-S. “I moved to town about eight years ago. Right when Sophie started high school, actually, and we had, um, a…mutual friend, I guess you could say.”
Amber looked down at the ground, avoiding eye contact with Katie, and Katie felt the return of the twinge, even though she had nothing to base it on but pure instinct. Amber shook her head a little and continued. “She was going through a pretty rough time. She needed a good listener and that just happens to be one of my specialties. Before I opened Bella, I was going to school to be a psychologist. Even then, though, fashion was always my passion. When I see people walk out of my store feeling like a million bucks in my designs, it feels like my own personal form of therapy.
“I hired Sophie part-time when I first opened the boutique. We always got along really well, but we got even closer when I lost my brother a few years ago.” Amber finished the story, sadness coloring her voice when she reached the last part.
“Oh, I am so sorry.” Katie touched her arm sympathetically. She had forgotten how easily people shared their life stories in small towns. She guessed she had been living in the ‘big city’ so long that she was really out of touch with small-town life.
“Thanks,” Amber said with a melancholy smile. “He was a really great guy. He was in Afghanistan, and there was a car bombing. My mom still has a really rough time dealing with it, but I try to get through it by choosing to focus on the good stuff. He was only eleven months younger than me, you know. Sometimes we seemed more like twins than just siblings.”
Amber was quiet for a couple of steps, and Katie sensed that it was best to just let her process her thoughts in that moment without saying anything. After a few beats, Amber continued. “Sophie really helped me get through that time. She taught me some really great coping methods she had learned in
grief counseling. I love her so much. She's such a sweet girl. I'm so happy she and Bobby finally got together, aren’t you?”
Amber turned to Katie as she asked the last question just as they walked into Salvatore’s.
“Yep.” Katie replied, maybe a little too enthusiastically she realized as she heard herself. It had just occurred to her as she processed Amber's question that she didn't even know what the 'finally' entailed. In fact, she had absolutely no idea what Sophie and Bobby’s path to romance had been.
She knew that they had known each other since grade school and that Bobby was a couple years older than Sophie. Sophie had told her when they had gotten together about six months ago and then gotten engaged three months ago. But a lot of times their conversations were short due to Katie’s busy schedule.
Oh, she also knew now that this wasn’t—as had immediately jumped to her mind in the CVS parking lot and Jason had been so quick to point out—a shotgun wedding.
She knew all of that. What she didn't know was their love story.
Dang.
She felt a little out of place and really sad that she had missed being around for such big chunks of Sophie’s life. She truly considered her to be like a sister.
Reminding herself that she hadn’t planned to stay away this long, didn't really make her feel any better.
Katie took a deep breath as they walked into Salvatore’s. She let the wave of sadness she was feeling go ahead and wash over her unchecked because she knew it would be worse if she tried to push it down. Better to just feel it, acknowledge it, and move on.
She and Amber strode through the fancy restaurant and entered the banquet room in the back of Salvatore’s. She put on a smile and resolved to let that smile reach down inside her and influence her heart, spreading its joy so that it became a reflection of her true feelings and not just the instrument she used to hide them.
She had missed out on so much of so many peoples' lives—people who she loved so much—because the past was just too overwhelming. But that was over. She was living in the moment now. For every single minute of the coming weekend she was going to enjoy being right here, right now. She was going to soak it in. She was going to bask. She wasn't going to think about the past or the future. She was all about the present.