Her Sweet Surrender: The First Crush Is the Deepest. Nina Harrington
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had called him a useless dreamer who would never amount to anything and would end up driving other people around for a living, just like his father.
Well, he had proven her wrong on every count, and this editor’s job was the final step on a long and arduous journey that began the day she left them.
It was time to show his dad that he had been right to keep faith in him and put up with the anger. Time to show him that he was grateful for everything he had done for him.
All of which screamed out one single message.
He needed that interview with Amber. He knew that she was in London—and he knew where her friends lived. He had to persuade her to talk to him, no matter what it took, even if it meant tracking her down and stalking her. He had come too far to let anything stand in his way now.
Amber DuBois. The girl he left behind.
His hands stilled and he stepped back from the car and grabbed a chilled bottle of water from the mini-fridge in the corner of the workshop and then pressed the chilled bottle against the back of his neck to try and cool down. Time to get creative. Time to...
The bell over the back door rang. Odd. His dad didn’t like customers coming to the garage. This was his private space and always had been. No clients allowed.
Sam turned down the radio to a normal level and was just wiping his hands on a paper towel when the workshop’s wooden door swung open.
And Amber ‘legs up to her armpits’ Bambi DuBois drifted into his garage as though she was floating on air.
* * *
He looked up and tried to speak, but the air in his lungs was too frozen in shock. So he squared his shoulders and took a moment to enjoy the view instead.
Amber was wearing a knee length floral summer dress in shades of pastel pink and soft green which moved as she walked, sliding over her slim hips as though the slippery fabric was alive or liquid.
Sam felt as though a mobile oasis of light and summer and positive energy had just floated in on the breeze into the dim and dingy old garage his dad refused to paint. The dark shadows and recesses where the old tins of oil and catalogues were stored only seemed to make the brightness of this woman even more pronounced.
She took a few steps closer, her left hand still inside the heart-shaped pocket of her dress and he felt like stepping backwards so that they could keep that distance.
This was totally ludicrous. After all, this was his space and she was his visitor.
His beautiful, talented, ridiculously lovely visitor who looked as though she had just stepped out from a cover shoot for a fashion magazine.
She was sunlight in his darkness—just the same as she had always been, and seeing her again like this reinforced just how much he had missed her and never had the courage to admit it.
Amber looked at him with the faintest of polite smiles and slipped her sunglasses higher onto her nose with one fingertip.
‘This place has not changed one bit,’ she whispered in a voice what was as soft and musical and gentle and lovely as he had remembered. A voice which still had the power to make his blood sing.
Then she glanced across at the car. ‘You even have the same sports car. That’s amazing.’
Sam had often wondered how Amber would turn out. Not that he could avoid seeing her name. Her face was plastered on billboards and the sides of buses from California to London. But that was not the real Amber. He knew that only too well from working in the media business.
No. This was the real Amber. This beautiful girl who was running the manicured fingertips of her left hand along the leather seat of the sports car he had just polished.
Maybe she had decided to forgive him for the way they had parted.
‘My dad kept it.’ He shrugged. ‘One of a kind.’
Amber paused and she sighed. ‘The last time I saw this car was the night of my eighteenth birthday party and you were sitting in the front seat with your tongue down the throat of my so called friend Petra. About twenty minutes after you had declared your undying love for me.’
She gave a strangled chuckle. ‘Oh, yes, I remember this car very well indeed. Shame that the driver was not quite as classy.’
Or maybe she hadn’t.
Sam pushed his hand down firmly on the workbench behind him.
So. Here we go. In her eyes he was still the chauffeur’s son who had dared to date the rich client’s daughter. And then kissed her best friend.
Goodbye editor’s desk.
Time to start work and turn on the charm before she chopped him into small pieces and barbecued him on the car’s exhaust pipe.
‘Hello, Amber. How very nice to see you again.’ He smiled and stepped forward to kiss her on the cheek but, before he got there, Amber flipped up her sunglasses onto the top of her head and looked at him with those famous violet-blue eyes which cut straight through any delusion that this was a social call.
Her eyes might have sold millions of tubes of eye make-up, but close up, with the light behind her, the iridescent violet-blue he remembered was mixed with every shade from cobalt to navy. And, just for him today...blue ice.
The contrast between the violet of her eyes and her straight blonde hair which fell perfectly onto her shoulders only seemed to highlight the intensity of her gaze. The cosmetic company might have chosen her for her peaches and cream ultra-clear complexion, but it had always been those magical blue eyes that Sam found totally irresistible. Throw in a pair of perfect sweet soft pink lips and he had been done for from the first time he had seen her stepping out of his dad’s limo with her diva mother screaming out orders from behind her back.
She didn’t seem to know what to do with her long legs, her head was down and she peered at him through a curtain of long blonde hair before brushing it away and blasting his world with one look.
Now she was standing almost as tall as he was and looking him straight in the eyes. The smile on her lips had not reached her eyes and Sam had to fight past the awkwardness of the intensity of her gaze.
‘My agent mentioned that you were back in town. I thought I might pop in to say hello. Hope you don’t mind.’
Her gaze shifted from the casual trainers he had found stuffed in the bottom of the wardrobe in the spare bedroom, faded blue jeans and the scraggy, oil-stained T-shirt he kept for garage work. ‘I can see that your fashion sense hasn’t changed very much. Shame, really. I was hoping for some improvement.’
Sam glanced down at his jeans and flicked the polishing cloth against his thigh. ‘Oh, this little old outfit? Don’t you just hate it when all of your chiffon is at the dry cleaner’s and you can’t find a thing to wear?’ He crossed his arms. ‘And no, Amber, I don’t mind you popping in at all, especially since my editor has been harassing your agent for weeks to arrange an interview. He will be delighted to hear that you turned up out of the blue, expecting me to be here.’
Amber floated forward so that Sam inhaled a rich, sweet floral scent which was almost as intoxicating as the woman who was wearing it.
A whirlwind of memories slammed home. Long summer days walking through the streets of London as he memorised routes and names and places for the limo business. Hand in hand, chatting, laughing and enjoying each other’s company as they shared secrets about themselves that nobody else knew. Amber had been his best friend for so long, he hadn’t even realised how much she had come to mean to him until they were ripped apart.
‘Don’t flatter yourself. May I sit?’
Sam gestured to the hard wooden chair his dad used at the makeshift desk in the corner. ‘It may not be quite what you’re used to, but please.’
She nodded him a thanks and lowered herself gracefully onto the chair and turned it around so that she was facing him.