The First Crush Is the Deepest

by Nina Harrington

  ‘Have you decided on a name for the school you are paying for?’ Sam asked as he picked up his bag and they strolled out into the evening air. ‘The DuBois centre? Or the DuBois School for Girls. What is it to be?’

  ‘Oh, you would like that, wouldn’t you? No. I suggested a few names to the board of governors and they came back with one winner: the Elwood School.’

  ‘Elwood? You named the school after your friend Saskia? Why did you choose that name?’

  Amber leant back and gestured towards the girls who were playing on the grassy lawn under the mango and cashew nut trees. ‘Do you see these lovely girls? They are so talented and bursting with life and enthusiasm. And yet not one of them has a home to go to. They are not all orphans as we would define orphans—far from it. Most of them have parents who cannot look after them or there were problems at home which mean that they only see their parents for a few months every year. But one way or another they have found their way here to this girls’ home, where they can feel safe and protected by people who love them.’

  Amber turned back to Sam with moisture sparkling in the corners of her eyes and when she spoke there was a hoarseness in her voice which clutched at Sam’s heart and squeezed it tight. ‘Well, I know just what that feels like. Saskia and her aunt Margot gave me a safe refuge when I needed to get away from my mother and whatever man she was living with who struggled to recall my name.’

  Then she shook her head with a chuckle. ‘They even let me stay with them after the mega-row I had with my so called parents after the disaster that was my eighteenth birthday party.’

  Sam coughed, twice. ‘You had a fight with your mother? I haven’t heard that part of the story.’

  She sniffed. ‘I had no idea that those particular terms of abuse were in my vocabulary until I heard them come out of my mouth. Harsh words were exchanged about the expensive education I had been subjected to. It was not my moment of shining glory. And then I stomped out of the house with only my handbag and walked around to Elwood House. And Saskia and her aunt Margot took me in and looked after me as though I was one of their own.’

  Amber sat up straight and curled her right hand high into the air with a flourish. ‘Ta da. Elwood School.’ Then she blinked and gave a curt nod. ‘It may surprise you but I do have something in common with Parvita and these girls.’

  Then she shivered and chuckled. ‘Well, I did tell you that this article was going to be a challenge. I cannot wait to see what you do with that little insight, if it was on the record.’

  ‘Any more like that?’

  ‘Plenty. Just wait and see what tomorrow brings.’

  ELEVEN

  From: Amber@AmberDuBois.net

  To: Kate@LondonBespokeTailoring.com;

  Saskia@ElwoodHouse.co.uk

  Subject: My fiendish plan

  Well, this is turning out to be a very odd week.

  I came out first thing this morning to find Sam halfway up a jackfruit tree tossing fruit down to the girls below. He claims that he couldn’t sleep because of the heat but he is now their official hero in long pants and is mobbed wherever he goes. I have just peeked outside and he is showing his little gaggle of fans the slideshow of photos on his digital camera. Amazing!

  He even had me playing Christmas carols and nursery songs to amuse the girls during meal times in exchange for helping to organise the juniors. They adored him. I think he may never be allowed to leave!

  My fiendish plan is to steal Sam away long enough for a walk along the beach at dusk and talk him into working on Parvita’s story instead of mine. It is worth a try. Otherwise I don’t know how long I can keep him hanging on.

  The good news is that my wrist is feeling a lot better and I am enjoying playing for the first time in ages.

  Cheers from Kerala. Amber

  From: Kate@LondonBespokeTailoring.com

  To: Amber@AmberDuBois.net

  Subject: Sam Report

  Sheesh, that man has no shame when it comes to charming the ladies. Don’t be fooled. Glad that your hand is feeling better. Don’t forget to drink plenty of water. Love ya. K

  Sam wiped the spark plug from the janitor’s ancient motor car on a scrap of cotton and held it up to the fading sunlight before deciding that the plug had lived a very long life and needed to take retirement, as of right now. He had managed to find one replacement at the bottom of a tool kit which was so rusty that it had taken hours to clean the tools to the stage where he could use them to service what passed as a car.

  But at least the work had kept him close to Amber.

  They still had a lot of work to do to rebuild that fragile friendship but she had seemed genuinely delighted when he helped her collect the girls together and keep them in one place long enough for her to explain about the keys on the piano and what the notes meant. With a bit of help from a couple of coconut shells, three tin buckets and a wrench.

  Weird. He had surprised himself by actually enjoying playing on a makeshift set of drums.

  The only thing they were not doing was talking about her career.

  She might have trusted him enough to take the risk and invite him here to his magical place to see what she was doing with her life but that was as far as it went.

  So far there had always been some excellent excuse why this was not a good time to record an interview and after three days he had all the background photos he might need but not the exclusive extra material he needed to create a compelling story—her story.

  So what was the problem?

  The sound of female laughter echoed out from the school room and he peered in through the window just in time to see Amber conducting a mini orchestra of five girls playing wooden recorders in tune with some Italian baroque music which blasted out from a cheap cassette player perched on the teacher’s desk.

  He smiled and dropped back down before she saw him.

  It might have been his idea for her to play a few simple tunes, one note at a time, but once she got started the girls and teachers had begged her for more and now there was no stopping her.

  Amber had a way with the girls that was nothing short of astonishing. It was as if they knew that she understood what they were going through and wanted to help them any way she could.

  And it had nothing to do with her musical talent, although she was playing more and more every day.

  Amber was giving these girls the kind of unconditional love he hadn’t seen in a long time.

  Seeing her with the children, it was obvious that Amber would make a wonderful mother—but how did that happen? Her own parents certainly had not been good role models. No. This came from her own heart and her ability to reach out and touch a child’s life and make a little girl laugh.

  Perhaps it was a good thing that Amber had thrown herself into working with the girls at the orphanage. Because the longer he spent with her and listened to her sweet voice and shared her laughter, the harder it was to kid himself that he could control this burning attraction to her.

  He was falling for Amber DuBois all over again.

  And that had to be the craziest thing that had happened to him in a long time.

  But the worst thing that he could do right now—for either of them, was tell her how he felt. He had to be patient, even if it killed him.

  Somehow he had to stay objective and cool enough to write an exclusive celebrity interview which gave no hint of how badly he wanted to be with the celebrity, talk to her and tell her how much she meant to him.

  No. Forget wanted. Make that needed to be with her while he had the chance.

  In the past few weeks he had seen Amber the cold, snarky concert pianist, Amber the fashion designers’ favourite model, who happened to love Indian food as much as he did, and now he was mending the janitor’s car while a stripped down, enchanting Amber taught small girls with bangles on their wrists all about Italian baroque.

  And guess which version of Amber was capable of rocking his world just at the sight of her?

  Every d
ay she spent here seemed to make her even more relaxed and at ease. Happy and laughing. Enjoying her music again with every note she played and loving every minute she spent with these girls. And she could teach—that was obvious, even if she did roll her eyes at him every time he applauded after a class.

  He must have told her a dozen times how good it was to hear her play with such delight—even if it was with one hand and a few fingertips, and his message seemed to be getting through. She had actually admitted over breakfast that she had never enjoyed music so much in a long time.

  Maybe retiring from concert performances was not such a bad idea for Amber DuBois?

  Everything he had seen and heard so far told him that she was serious about turning her back on the offers streaming in from orchestras all over the world. Frank had got that wrong. She was a lot more interested in the girls here than a prestigious career—for the moment, at least.

  Sam jumped into the broken driver’s seat and listened as the engine reluctantly kicked into life.

  The problem was that after listening to Amber’s countless stories about how wonderful her friend Parvita’s wedding had been, it was fairly obvious that her idea of a happy relationship meant a ring on her finger and a house and a garden with children to play in it.

  What was it with women and weddings? Why couldn’t two people accept that they wanted to share their lives and be happy at that?

  A few months before his ex-girlfriend Alice took the initiative in Los Angeles, they had travelled to New York for her cousin’s wedding and over a very long weekend at grandiose parties he had fended off at regular intervals the constant ribbing from her relatives about when they were going to make an announcement about their wedding. Alice had done the same, only with a twist. ‘Oh, Sam is not the marrying type. You can take a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Isn’t that right, Sam?’

  And he had smiled and replied with yet another joke, just a bit of fun to amuse the other guests. Alice had known, even then, that they would never be together long-term, and he had been too complacent to talk to her about it. Too content to accept second best and go with the flow. Until she’d decided to take the initiative and organise the wedding on her own. And he had bolted.

  Coward. After he’d left, Alice had found someone she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

  Amber was bound to do the same. She was beautiful, funny and talented and she deserved some happiness in her life. With a man who could give her what she wanted.

  He wanted Amber to be happy—why wouldn’t he?

  The problem was, he had broken the unwritten rule. He cared about Amber. If he went back to London without telling her how he felt he would be walking away from the best thing in his life. And breaking both of their hearts all over again. And that truly would make him a coward.

  ‘Hey there. Good news. You have just won the prize for inventing a new musical instrument. Coconut shells and buckets filled with different amounts of water make different sounds when you hit them with a wrench. Who knew? The girls loved it! What made you think of that?’

  ‘Ingenuity. And drumming on oil cans in my dad’s garage. I thought it might work.’ Sam chuckled up at Amber, who was waving goodbye to the girls who were streaming out from her classroom. ‘Failing that, I could always play the spoons. But I am saving that for an encore. I live in hope.’

  Amber gave a small shoulder shrug. ‘Either one of those would work for me. It seems that you have hidden talents after all. Are your mum and dad musical?’

  ‘Not a bit. Nobody in our house could sing a note in tune but I like the drums. Not exactly the most subtle of instruments and my mum couldn’t stand me making a noise in the house so my dad let me make loose on the oil drums. I hope I didn’t scare the girls.’

  ‘Not a bit and I was impressed. But, speaking of hope, are you free to come down to the beach for a stroll before it gets dark? It’s lovely and cool down there.’

  ‘Five minutes to wash my hands and I’ll be right with you. That’s the best offer I have had all day,’ he replied with a sexy wink.

  ‘Keep that up and it will be the only offer you have. Meet you under the palm tree. Second from the left.’

  ‘It’s a date,’ he whispered and was rewarded with a definite flush to her cheeks before she lifted her chin in denial, rolled her eyes in pretend disgust and strolled down the lawns towards the bay.

  * * *

  In the end it took Sam ten minutes to wash then extricate himself from the gaggle of girls who clutched onto his legs as he made his way across the gardens towards the beach.

  But it was worth it.

  Sam reached for his small pocket digital camera so that he could capture the lovely image of the woman who was sitting on the edge of an old wooden fishing boat on a wide stretch of the most incredible fine golden sand, on a beach fringed with coconut palms.

  She looked up as he took the shot and gave him a warm smile which came from the heart.

  And he knew. Just like that. This was the photo he would use on the cover of his article—and keep in his wallet for rainy days back in London when the office got too much.

  She was wearing a simple tunic and trousers, the plaster cast on her wrist covered with children’s names, and her hair was tied back with a scarf. And in his eyes she was the most beautiful woman that he had ever seen in his life.

  And then he saw it. Nestling at her throat. It was a gold heart shaped pendant that had cost him every penny of the money that he had been saving for spare tyres for the car his dad was working on for him.

  He had given her the necklace in the car the evening of her eighteenth birthday the moment before he had turned the key in the ignition. And it had been worth every penny just to see her face light up with joy and happiness at that moment.

  It was the first time she had kissed him without him prompting—and it meant the world to him.

  He couldn’t drag his eyes away from it. Of all the jewels she must have collected she had chosen to wear his necklace tonight. Had she chosen it to provoke him, or, and his heart swelled at the thought, to show that she had not forgotten how very close they had been?

  Sam shuffled closer to her, stretched out his hand and, with two fingers, lifted the gold chain clear of her remarkable cleavage and dangled the heart pendant in the air.

  ‘Nice necklace.’

  ‘Thank you. It was a gift from a boy I was in love with at the time. I wear it now and again.’

  ‘To remind yourself that you were loved?’

  ‘To remind myself that love can break your heart,’ Amber replied and reached up and took hold of Sam’s fingers in hers. ‘And that I was loved. Yes, that too.’

  And she took his breath away with the honesty.

  So much so that, instead of sitting next to her, Sam knelt down on the sand in front of Amber and looked deep into her surprised eyes before asking the question which had been welling up all day.

  ‘Why are you avoiding our interview, Amber? What is it that you are so afraid of telling me?’

  Her reply was to break off eye contact and look out over his shoulder to the sea in silence.

  ‘We were such close friends once,’ he went on. ‘We used to talk about everything. Our hopes and our dreams. Our great plans for the future. Everything. I don’t think you have any idea how much it hurts me that you find it so impossible to get past the mistake I made when I listened to your mother and walked out of your birthday party that night.’

  She glanced back at him, reached out and plucked a leaf from his shoulder. ‘I thought that you were the one who had thrown our friendship away as though it didn’t matter.’

  ‘You were wrong. So wrong. I was confused about where we could go as a couple—but never about that. You were always the friend I came to when I needed someone. Always.’

  His gaze scanned her face from her brow to her chin and back again. ‘You were the only real friend I had. Oh, I know that you and your pals thought that I was the popular boy ar
ound town, but the truth was harder to accept. I knew everyone in my area, played football and talked big, but I was still too raw from my parents’ divorce to talk about what really mattered to anyone at school. So I kept my deep feelings to myself. Even if that meant being lonely.’

  ‘Was that why you talked to me, Sam? Because I was an outsider?’

  ‘Maybe.’ He shrugged. ‘I may also have noticed that you were not hard to look at. But hey, I was a teenage pressure cooker of hormones and bad skin. Nothing special about that.’

  ‘Yes, you were. You were always special. To me at least.’

  ‘I know.’ His brows squeezed together. ‘I think that was what scared me in the end, Amber.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You took me seriously. You listened to me babbling on about what a successful journalist I was going to become and actually encouraged me to stick my neck out and pass the exams I needed to go to university. You believed in me. And that was one of the reasons why I fell in love with you.’

  He heard her sharp intake of breath but ignored it and carried on. ‘And it terrified me. I had seen my parents fall apart from all of the fights and arguments which they tried to keep from me, but failed miserably. You were not the only one to be dragged around from new house to new house as your mother found a new partner. I refused to go to see my mum the minute I turned eighteen but she still had the power to make my life miserable.’

  Sam paused. He had not thought about that in years. Strange. ‘And then you stepped out of a limo with your mother one evening. Amber Sheridan DuBois.’ He grinned up into her face. ‘And suddenly my life was not so miserable after all. And I will always be grateful to you for being the friend that had been missing from my life and I hadn’t even realised that fact. Always. I couldn’t have been happier that last year.’

  ‘Until we became more than friends. Is that what you are saying?’