Amber closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. She knew Katie would never let this go. “Yes, he is,” Amber confirmed reluctantly.
“Seth is Mystery Man!?” Katie exclaimed, her voice rising with every syllable.
“Really?” Amber said in disbelief. “You had to scream that?”
“No one heard...” Katie waved her hand dismissively, just before her attention was diverted just over Amber's shoulder and her eyes grew wide.
The hairs on the back of Amber’s neck stood up.
“He’s behind me, isn’t he?” Her voice was barely audible. She searched Katie’s eyes for the verdict, and then reached out and grabbed her hand so she didn’t fall over.
Katie smiled, and then said with a shaky voice, “Hey, Seth. Have you, uh...met Amber?”
Amber was gonna kill her. Well...right after she passed out or threw up, she was gonna kill her.
Voices filled the room as people started making their way into the kitchen, probably to see the guest of honor.
Katie patted Amber’s hand as she pulled her arm away, taking control of the situation. “Hey guys, let’s give Seth a minute. He’s had a long day. Let’s let him grab some food and eat in peace. We can catch up with him in a few.”
She heard the sounds of people mumbling that they wanted to eat, too, and Katie’s too-high-happy voice ushering them out.
Amber knew the mature thing to do would be to turn around. Maybe even to say hello. Instead, she reached for the doorknob. She would be mature later when she could feel her legs again.
“Amber.” His deep, sexy voice stopped her dead in her tracks.
Okay, well, looks like maturity was on deck. Better just walk up to the plate and swing.
She slowly turned, trying to regulate her breathing so she didn’t hyperventilate. What she saw standing before her did not help her efforts. Somehow, he had actually gotten better looking. Either that or her memory and dreams had just not done him justice. Either way, he was...incredible. He looked taller, more filled out, and his face, well - that was still, well...perfect.
“Hi, Seth,” Amber said, going for casual coolness.
--- ~ ---
Seth could not believe that she was really here. In his home town. In his brother’s house, for God's sake. Standing in front of him. And her name was Amber. And she was even more beautiful than he remembered.
He had been trained to effectively deal with pretty much any situation you could think of, but he had no idea what to do in this one. Not a day had gone by since that night in DC that he had not thought about her.
When he had woken at five a.m. and realized she was gone, he was furious with himself for falling asleep, and sleeping so soundly, at that. He never slept soundly. It was an occupational hazard that could cost him his life.
He hadn’t even meant to close his eyes that night. The last thing he remembered was her naked body draped over him and the soft sounds of her breathing as she slept. The next thing he knew, he was waking up in bed. Alone.
“So, yeah, uh...small world, huh?” she said nervously.
“Why did you leave?” he heard himself ask bluntly.
She flinched at his question. He quickly assessed that he was going about this all wrong. She looked unsteady. She was shaking like a leaf.
He pulled out the kitchen chair beside him. “Do you want to sit down?”
He realized what he had said the second the question left his mouth.
Her eyes shot to him as her cheeks flushed. She obviously remembered the question's significance. At least she didn’t look like she was about to pass out anymore.
She looked down at the chair as if she was battling with the decision to sit down and talk with him. Finally she said, “This isn’t the time to do this. You have a house full of people waiting to talk to you, Seth.”
“Say that again,” he commanded.
“I just don’t think…,” she began.
“My name. Say my name again.” He stared at her intensely.
Her lips parted as her breathing quickened, “Seth.”
He closed his eyes and exhaled. He didn’t even try to disguise how the sound of his name on her lips affected him. He had waited eight long years to hear it.
Voices in the kitchen caused him to open his eyes again. He heard people talking and laughing behind him. He knew it was a matter of seconds before someone would interrupt them.
Amber looked panicked. He saw her eyes darting around at all of the new arrivals. He needed to get her alone. Talk to her. Isolation. That is what they needed.
If he ignored everyone and just got her out of here then maybe she would relax, calm down. At least enough to talk to him. He was forming a tactical plan when he felt a slap on his shoulder.
“Can’t believe all my boys are under the same roof,” his dad’s voice boomed from behind him.
Seth resigned himself to the fact that ignoring his father was not an option. He turned around and his dad pulled him into a hug. He saw Katie standing by the kitchen island, she shrugged her shoulders, holding her hands up as she mouthed, “Sorry.”
Before his dad had even released him from the tight embrace there were several more people circled around, all talking to him at once. He realized that the prospect of getting Amber alone was looking as if it was not going to be an option.
He heard the back door shut behind him and knew even before he turned that she had left. Still, he couldn’t help it. He looked over his shoulder and saw the empty space where she had stood.
She was gone. Again.
Sure, he knew her name this time. But did it really matter?
Chapter Three
Sunlight shone brightly through the bedroom window. Amber squinted her eyes as she reached across her pillow and turned off her alarm before it even had a chance to buzz. She had not overslept this morning. Of course, that was mainly due to the fact that she would have actually had to sleep for oversleeping to occur. Sadly, she had just tossed and turned all night and hadn’t drifted off once.
Amber had not been able to shut off her brain since leaving Jason and Katie’s the previous night. Her head was...spinning, turning, flipping...with so many conflicting thoughts and feelings. The main two were disbelief and shock. There were a few (hundred) others in there as well, but those would definitely be the two emotions overriding all of the others.
Next was embarrassment. Normally, Amber faced things head on. If something needed to be dealt with, she did just that. She dealt with it. She didn’t run away. She didn’t hide. Last night she had done both of those things. Why? Because her Mystery Man was no longer a mystery at all...although he was certainly still all man, Amber reflected ruefully. Still, he wasn't a mystery. He had a name now: Seth Sloan.
She dropped her head into her hands. Of course! Fricking of course he would end up being a Sloan. Right?
Not only did she now know Mystery Man’s name, she knew his whole family! And not just in passing, but really well. Her amazing, out-of-this-world, incredible, anonymous night was not so anonymous anymore. Not even close.
She knew she was going to have to deal with this. Deal with him. Harper’s Crossing was a fairly small town and obviously they knew a lot of the same people. In fact, probably more than half of her inner-circle were related to him. So yeah, she was going to need to address the elephant in the room, and – being Amber – she would be taking care of that sooner rather than later.
First, before any addressing, facing, or dealing with occurred, she needed a shower. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, and reaching her arms up high over her head, she stretched her back.
Yoga. That’s what she needed before her shower. She needed to find her Zen place.
Amber didn’t believe she had ever actually achieved finding said Zen place in the two yoga sessions that she had attempted. But, what the hell? Today was a new day, and if there ever was a time in her life that she needed to feel centered and stress-free (which was what Zen was, right?) then today was that day.
&
nbsp; Just as she was pulling her barely-used yoga pants from her drawer, her phone rang.
Seth! The thought popped unbidden and instantly into her mind, but she realized almost immediately that it was completely ridiculous. He didn’t have her phone number. Duh! Still, that realization did not stop her hands from shaking as she picked up the phone.
She looked at the caller ID. Great.
Well, at least her hands were steady as a surgeon's now.
“Hi, Mom,” she tried to cover the stress in her voice.
“Hey pumpkindoodlebug,” her mother slurred brightly.
Amber’s eyes slowly closed and her hands began shaking for an entirely different reason than they had a moment before.
Taking a deep breath, Amber could feel her nostrils flaring as she asked, “Where are you Mom?”
“Well, that’s the thing, I don’t know. But if you could just put some money in my account then I’m sure that I could figure it out,” her mom reasoned.
“That’s not going to happen. I already told you I am not giving you any more money, Mom. I will come pick you up, wherever you are, and take you back to Horizons. But that’s it. Nothing else,” Amber stated firmly as she tried not to let her blood pressure spike.
“Please doodlebug, just this one last time, pleeeaassee,” her mother begged. Amber felt her stomach clench as she called upon her steel will to help her stay strong.
“No, Mom. No money. Where are you so I can come and get you?”
“I’ll never ask you for anything ever again!” her mother pleaded.
“Where are you?” Amber repeated the question.
“It doesn’t matter!” Her mother began to sob. “How can you treat me like this? You are my only daughter! I’m your mother!”
Don’t remind me, Amber thought to herself as she calmly explained, “I know that, Mom, and that’s why I will drop everything to come pick you up.”
Her mother’s sobs instantly turned into anger, “You really are a bitc..”
Amber disconnected the call. She had no desire to listen to her mother’s drunken opinion of her. Her chest felt tight and her limbs were heavy.
God, she missed her mom.
Not the person that her mother had become since they lost Aaron. That was not who Amber missed. She missed the mom that had been front row at all of her ballet and jazz recitals, who never missed one of Aaron’s baseball games no matter how far they had to travel to get there. The mom who made sure that there was always food on the table and a roof over their heads even if she had to work several jobs to make that happen.
She sniffed as she felt moisture welling in her eyes.
No, she told herself firmly. She was not going to waste one more moment of her life crying over things she could not change. She had spent a good part of the last decade doing just that and she was done.
She had good friends. An amazing business that was thriving even in tough economic times. She had too much good in her life to constantly live under a dark cloud of sadness.
The past was behind her. This was a new day. Out with the old, in with the new.
--- ~ ---
As Amber pulled into the back parking lot of Bella, the boutique clothing store she owned on Harper's Crossing's postcard-perfect downtown main street, she noticed both Haley and Sophie’s cars parked in the back lot. Strange.
Haley was an employee at Bella but was not scheduled to work today, and Sophie hadn’t worked there for a couple of years. Of course, she stopped by a lot now. But, Amber reflected with a small smile, even when she had been an employee, she had never arrived this early. Sophie was a night owl, through and through. So even if she had the opening shift she wouldn’t roll in until five minutes before they unlocked the doors.
Amber looked at the digital clock in her dashboard, it read 9:05. Hmmm. She figured they probably knew about Seth and wanted the scoop. Well, it looked like her past was not as firmly behind her as she had wanted, after all. She sighed, thinking to herself that it was just better to get this over with.
Stepping through the black beaded curtains that separated the employee break room from the dressing rooms, Amber saw that, not only were Sophie and Haley both in attendance, it looked like Katie and Chelle were there as well.
They were all seated in the small lounge area Amber had recently added to the boutique so that when customers were shopping, those accompanying them would have a comfortable place to wait. She might have thought twice about putting it in if she had known that it would so quickly be used as a place where her friends would comfortably wait for her, with an interrogation in mind!
Oh, boy.
Amber stepped around the corner and was faced with four very eager expressions. She sat down beside Katie on the small red loveseat that faced the dressing rooms.
“Really?” Amber intoned dryly as she turned to Katie, whom she assumed had been the one to tip everyone off about the newest development in Amber’s wacky world of crazy coincidences.
“Hey, they wanted to go to your house last night but I convinced them to give you a little space,” Katie said, sounding proud of herself. “You’re welcome.”
They all continued to stare at her. Amber had the sudden urge to go back home, climb into bed, throw the covers over her head, and stay there for the next….mmm, year or so.
“Alright, go ahead. What do you want to know?” Amber resigned herself to the inevitable.
“So it’s really him?” Sophie asked.
Amber nodded her head. “Yes.”
“Seth, my cousin, is Mystery Man,” Haley clarified.
“That appears to be the case,” Amber confirmed.
Everyone was staring at her with varying degrees of disbelief on their faces.
“Yeah, I know,” Amber shook her head, “it’s crazy.”
The room erupted as each girl spoke in a rush, putting forth their own unique take on just how crazy it was and what the odds were of this happening. Basically, voicing all of the thoughts that had been crashing into each other like bumper cars in her brain, for the last twelve hours.
Katie spoke over the loud chatter, asking, “So what did he say to you when I left?”
The entire room fell silent.
“Not a lot,” Amber replied.
All of her friend’s facial expressions told the same story. Namely, that there was no way Amber was going to get away with an answer that vague.
“Fine.” Amber sighed in resignation. “He asked why I left. Then asked me if I wanted to sit down.”
Which had immediately taken her right back to the room in DC, but they didn’t need to know that. “Then he asked me to say his name again.”
“What?” Katie asked, her head tilted to the side.
Ooookaaay, it looked like Amber was going to have to go the verbatim route for this crowd. Luckily, she had a really good memory.
Amber’s hands flew up in exasperation as she explained, “He wanted to talk. I said ‘This isn’t the time to do this. You have a house full of people waiting to see you, Seth.’ He said, ‘Say that again.’ I tried to explain again and he said,” Amber lowered her voice an octave in a sad attempt to recreate Seth’s deep timbre, “‘my name, say my name again.’”
Her friends remained sitting, all staring at her, waiting.
“And then…” Katie prompted.
“Then I said his name again. Then the room filled up with people. Then I left. Then...nothing. That’s the whole sordid tale.”
There. Now that they knew that nothing noteworthy had happened, maybe she could just go on with her day.
“What did he do when you said his name?” Katie continued the line of questioning as if she were cross-examining Amber in court.
Amber hung her head slightly. Really, Katie?
“He closed his eyes and just...” Amber didn’t know how to explain what he had done, “He just…breathed.”
“Wow,” Katie and Haley said in unison.
“Okay, not to be the one that has to inject a li
ttle reality into this romantic Ripley's Believe It Or Not situation, but did anyone else notice that Bobby and Seth look exactly alike?” Sophie asked, looking at Amber in disbelief, “You never noticed the resemblance?”
“No,” Amber replied honestly. “Bobby was a teenager when I met Myster…er, um…Seth. And remember, I only really got to know Bobby when you two started dating. Which was years later. It never crossed my mind.”
“So what are you going to do?” Chelle asked, and she seemed to be beyond being merely wrapped up in the salacious drama of it all, but was rather genuinely concerned.
“Nothing,” Amber stated flatly.
“Nothing?” All four women repeated in disbelief.
“What am I supposed to do?” Amber did not know what these ladies wanted to hear but she had been running possible scenarios of how this could all play out in her head and she still had no idea how to handle the situation at hand.
“You have to talk to him,” Katie explained. “Obviously that night meant something to him, too. He made a beeline for you. He wanted to talk to you. He wanted you to say his name. Don’t you think at the very least you could get some closure?”
Amber’s stomach dropped and her heart sank at that word. Closure. Because if she were being honest with herself she didn’t want closure with Seth. That night, her one night with him, had gotten her through some pretty bad times in her life and she wasn’t ready to lose it as her go-to coping method.
“I honestly don’t know what I would even say to him,” Amber confessed.
“Well, let’s start with his opener. Why did you leave that night?” Katie asked.
“I left because, I just…I don’t do well with…I’m not very good at…” This was exactly the reason she didn’t want to talk to him about it. She was a mess.
Katie came through with the assist, “You don’t do well with what? Emotions, feelings?”
“Yes. Those things.” Amber realized that it was odd to feel those things after knowing a person only a few hours but that was exactly the reason she had left the hotel room. The whole night, the connection she felt to him, was just too intense to process.
My Everything - Seth & Amber Page 3