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  Swept Away

  By:

  Marie Byers

  Copyright © 2013 RascalHearts.com

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  For questions and comments about this book, please contact us at [email protected]

  Chapter One

  Most people meet the love of their life when they’re old enough to process what being in love means. Amber is pretty certain that’s the way things are supposed to go. That’s the way she’s always imagined it anyway; the way she’s always planned it.

  This was the plan: she’d grow up, go to college and meet the perfect guy. She’d be an adult, independent, confident, beautiful (because beauty and self-confidence go hand in hand and bloom with maturity, right?) and devoted to her studies. And then, one day, out of the blue, a guy would appear. And he’d be sweet and funny and understanding.

  Amber has a whole list of requirements from his exact height (5’10 ¾ which is exactly 4 inches taller than she is so he’s not so tall she has to get on her tip-toes to kiss but not so short that if she wears heels she towers over him) all the way down to the kinds of foods he likes to eat. He’d be a vegetarian, by the way, because she’s always wanted to be one but in a family full of steak and potato people it’s hard ignoring the temptation of succulent meat. So wouldn’t it be cool to have a boyfriend that already is one and can show her how to do it?

  It’s a long list, admittedly, but she thinks it’s worth it. And maybe it’s the romantic in her but she’s sure there’s that perfect guy out there for her that fulfills each and every item. One day, when she’s ready, he’ll appear before her and they’ll live happily ever after. The key there is the “when she’s ready.” Not a moment sooner.

  But this is real life, not the movies or a nice little fairytale. She’s Amber Olivia Moore not Cinderella. That’s not the way it happens to her. All three times she falls in love it’s just as scary, just as overwhelming, and she’s just as unprepared as anyone could ever possibly be. And maybe she handled some things wrong but, God, she wasn’t ready.

  She wasn’t ready for his windswept, surfer-boy, blond bangs, or those piercing green eyes that always seemed to laugh at her, or the way she could feel his voice in the pit of her stomach like each and every word sunk into her skin and burrowed into her. She wasn’t ready for Michael’s full throaty laugh, or the way his touch lit her freakin’ soul on fire like a damn romance novel, or how he could be so boyishly young in one second and scarily mature in the next. She wasn’t ready for him, so maybe she can be forgiven.

  * * * *

  It’s Amber’s first day of school as a high-school student and she’s terrified.

  Her older brother, Jeremy, has spent the last week and a half of summer vacation crowing about all the evil things that happen to “fresh meat” and scaring the crap out of her. Heads in toilets, spitballs spat from high distances, books knocked out of hands, bodies shoved into lockers, tripped up, name-calling, paint-buckets of blood-red goo poured over unsuspecting victims. She woke up screaming one night and couldn’t settle down until she’d turned on the lights and read a book - a nice safe fantasy adventure about rodents finding a new home.

  Jeremy had laughed at her the next day when he found her slumped over on her pillow, the book trailing from her hands and all the lights still on. Sometimes her brother can really be a jerk.

  Amber knows he’s full of crap—half the stuff that comes out his mouth is designed to twist her up into a rage—but the thing is, Valeria from three blocks over and a grade ahead keeps going on and on about how high-school is “different” and how “nothing will ever be the same again. ” And Amber hates change. Hates it. Change is her Mom and Dad deciding they’re better off in separate houses, with separate lives and separate families.

  Change is moving half a country away to be closer to judgmental grandparents who think her Dad’s new family is the one he should have had to begin with and Amber and her brother are just the kids he practiced on in the meantime. Change is picking up and leaving all her friends she’s known since before she could talk, right before she starts high-school, only to be dropped blind and dazed in the midst of teenagers built like shiny, plastic, perfect twenty-somethings.

  Not for the first time, glancing around at the mob of perky tits and muscled chests, Amber wonders what the hell they’re feeding the kids in this state. Is she the only one who’s still flat-chested and tiny?

  The halls are wide and bright with the lights shining blindingly, emptily, off the linoleum floors; it’s a weird contrast because it’s also swollen with the press of bodies. Teenagers yelling and talking and running past, late for classes like Amber is right now.

  A boy in track pants (and is it really time for gym already?) pushes past her and all her books go scattering to the ground.

  Amber groans and drops to her knees to scoop them up before they’re lost in the crowd of shifting, shoving, kicking feet. A hand lands by her ear and grabs her mammoth History book before she can pull it into her overstuffed arms.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  Amber looks up and, well, that’s it. This is the moment she’s dreamt about—actual dreams not the nightmare of sneering teens and laughing, pointing students making her flee from the lunchroom with tears streaming down her face. No, the other kinds of dreams. The ones where a knight in full armor rides up to her house on a pure white horse, he takes off his helmet and tosses his head—and silky blond locks shake into place—and bellows for her to come to the window.

  Amber swallows hard. The boy in front of her has the brightest pair of green eyes she’s ever seen. She hadn’t imagined what her dream man’s eyes would look like but if she had this would be it.

  The boy’s about her age maybe two or three years older, and has the whitest teeth too. Like a toothpaste commercial. Her heart is fluttering so fast she thinks she might be sick.

  Oh God, no seriously, she really might be sick with her brain buzzing with too many stupid meaningless things to remember how to speak.

  “You a freshmen? Hello? Are you like deaf or something?” The boy does a complicated maneuver of his hands that doesn’t look like any type of sign language she’s ever seen. Then shrugs and tucks the book back into her arms. “Well, okay. Be careful, all right?”

  Her heart is pounding in her throat, stupidly. And then he’s gone and Amber’s blinking down at her full arms, hopelessly late.

  And that’s the first time and she’s so woefully underprepared for him that it takes her the rest of the day just to settle back down again.

  Later she learns his name is Michael Westlake and he’s on the baseball team. And the football team. And basketball team. And in swimming. And still somehow manages to be vying for valedictorian position and volunteering afterschool to tutor wayward youth. So. Pretty much perfect.

  He occasionally smiles at her, and when he finally figures out she’s not deaf (they share a class and she’d responded to her name during attendance) he stops gesticulating at her from across the hall and instead speaks in a loud over-enunciated tone of voice that makes her suspect he just thinks she’s slow instead.

  That’s the first time she falls in love. So fast and so hard she can’t even talk.

  If she believed in signs she would have known that pesky little thing with being unable to speak around him was just foreshadowing of things to come and she might have done things differently. No. She would have definitely done things differently.

  But an
yway, that was half a life ago and there’s no point regretting and ‘what if’-ing things that can’t be changed.

  * * * *

  A few weeks after their first meeting Amber’s invited over to Michael’s house. Indirectly.

  So indirectly he doesn’t even know she’s coming.

  She’s not stupid, she might be a little bit in love with him already but she knows nothing’s going to come of it.

  He’s a popular jock, she’s a middling debate team and drama club shy girl. He’s a senior, she’s a freshman.

  Outside of school and his pitying offers of—well, Amber doesn’t really know what he’s offering, friendship?—well, outside of school, anyway, they don’t see each other at all.

  Still she’s kind of excited, even if that excitement is all mixed up with a little bit of dread.

  She’s at a party she never would have attended, half the people there are faces she recognizes but she’s never talked to them. The only reason Amber even got in, in the first place, is the fact her Dad’s the caterer and he’s roped her into helping out when one of the servers call in sick.

  The party is in full swing when she arrives. People are shouting and talking and bumping into each other half-drunk and it reminds her of that first day in high-school when everything blurs with sound and motion around her and she feels a little sick from trying to track it all.

  They are all teens with no guardians or chaperones that she can see, and from here it’s obvious that her father's jaw is clenched so hard he’s going to have a headache later. The wait staff looks bedraggled and strained. There’s a server in the corner that’s clearly trying to maintain her cool and be professional even as a pair of half dead on their feet from booze and not enough food teens, who’ve gorged themselves on hors d’oeuvres but nothing else, are blocking her in and trying to pick her up in the smarmiest way possible.

  After a moment of consideration, Amber decides it’s probably better if she doesn’t interrupt, the server looks like she’s handling things fine and besides she never gets to say what she means when she says it and no one at school takes her seriously anyway, except for Mr. Davis and that’s only because he sees “promise and ability” in everyone.

  Amber dons her apron and picks up a tray. She thinks that, somewhere between the original intentions and now this party has lost its way. No one could have honestly wanted this mess, right?

  It’s a wild revelry now and doesn’t resemble in the least a quiet day of classy celebration. Amber looks around miserably and can’t decide which drunken student to go serve first. Then a familiar head of shaggy hair and a laugh that rumbles through her own chest with the way it makes her heart stutter and her feet stumble and she’s directing herself towards him though no thought or consideration or agreement of her brain has gone into it. Michael. The boy is a staple at Fairmount High, just as much as the school colors or mascot is. He’s safely ensconced—depending on which angle you’re viewing it from, for Amber it’s quite a dangerous crowd he’s surrounded by—on all sides by cheerleaders and the resident Football king. Michael is more of an easygoing cross athlete and competes on pretty much all the teams instead of reigning high in just one sport.

  She keeps walking towards him anyway, despite the misgivings that flit through her head, because she’s already there and she has no choice and it’s Michael and she’s been drawn to him since the first moment they met. At least his group doesn’t appear quite as inebriated as the rest. As far as she can see anyway.

  They’re holding those same oversized bright red party cups that the caterers—she knows for a fact—did not provide. Her Dad is many things but he would not agree to serve alcohol to minors. For so many reasons, the least of them being he’d have his license taken away and would be sent to jail.

  “You got any more of those little sausage things?” A curly blond popping bubblegum between her teeth asks, she’s splayed halfway across Michael’s lap and is making no effort to sit up and face Amber properly. Beverly Hall never did have any manners.

  “I don’t know,” Amber says, glancing around at the items held on the other trays. What the hell were sausage ‘things’? “What did they look like?”

  Beverly scowls. “Like sausage things. What do you think?”

  “Come on, Bev, we talked about this remember. Polite and nice when asking for a favor.” Michael is amused and Amber blushes red hot.

  “I don’t know,” Amber repeats, “but I can go check.”

  Beverly turns around, no longer interested in conversation and Amber is obviously dismissed. It pains her just a little that Michael doesn’t bother saying any more to defend her, instead he’s drawn back into conversation with the other girl.

  Amber stands there for a moment, stuck, awkward. Finally her limbs start moving again and she’s halfway down the hall before Michael’s distinct baritone is bellowing out her name, “Hey Alice!”

  Well. Close enough. He got the first letter right at least. She knows he’s talking to her because he’s heading her way and she feels his eyes on her like a physical weight. “Umm… I think that’s your name?” Unsure has never looked more adorable on anyone Amber is fairly certain.

  “It’s Amber, actually,” she mumbles through numb lips. And it’s absolutely ridiculous this crush she has. She knows better than this, she’s the school debate Queen; words are her friends and confidantes. She is almost fluent in Latin (as fluent as you could get with a dead language anyway) and she in a short few weeks has paved the way for their school to remain in the top five tier of debating championships. She shouldn’t be so freaking tongue tied over a boy who probably thinks she’s mentally slow and goes out of his way to say hello but still doesn’t know her name.

  “Sorry, Amber then. I just wanted to ask…” He trails off, distracted by the crash of something that was probably expensive clattering to the floor overhead. “Fuck, not my mom’s glass vases,” he moans. And before she can ask him what he wanted he’s dashing away. Again. Just like their first non-conversation.

  Amber sighs and heads for the kitchen, following her father in his retreat.

  “They want more of some sort of sausage…?” She asks. Dad is in the middle of flipping what looks like very thin pancakes though she’s sure he has another word for it that’s half a mile long and unpronounceable.

  “The Sautéed Chorizo?”

  “I guess?” There’s an array of edible delicacies lining the counter top and as quickly as her father puts them down there’s someone sweeping them up and out the double doors.

  “Did they say what it looked like?” He’s flipping the pancakes with short jerky motions of his hand and the smell of cinnamon and fried meat lingers heavily on the air.

  “Just sausage thingies, quote unquote.”

  Dad’s frown gets bigger and deeper around the creasing of his mouth and she knows he’s finding this whole ordeal beyond insulting. He used to be a cook for a high-class restaurant when she was little but ever since the move it’s been harder and harder for him to find work. People only hire those in their inner circle and there’s no doubting the fact that David Moore sticks out like a sore thumb that’s bleeding and oozing pus, with the Beverly Hills crowd.

  She feels sorry for her dad sometimes. He keeps trying when the saner option is just to let it go and accept the fact that they’ll always be on the bottom of the totem pole.

  “There should be some more over there by the second oven.”

  Amber refrains from gawping and just shakes her head. Who ever heard of more than one oven in someone’s actual house? It’d been too noisy and she’s been too nervous about coming to help out that she hadn’t really got a change to look around. It’s pretty much a mansion and just setting foot in here makes her feel tiny and awkward and clumsily out of place, but other than that she hadn’t given a thought to exactly how much money his family had to have until she was confronted with the second oven.

  “Take them out for me?” Dad asks but his back is turned and it
’s more a thoughtfully worded demand than a real question.

  “Sure,” she answers anyway. They’re right where he said they’d be and there’s a trail of steam still rising from them so they’re ready to eat. She gingerly picks the tray up and is careful not to burn her hands. And returns to back through those double doors to the noise beyond.

  Three hours later the party is still in full swing despite the increasingly drunk state of the teenagers that are partying. The music is blasting, the full body thumpa thumpas shuddering through her very soul, and as the night approaches the lighting dims too until it’s rather like what she supposes a club would be and not someone’s house. Granted, someone’s huge, mammoth, gigantic, mansion-sized house.

  Her feet are killing her and she’s stumbled upon no less than four couples making out in varying states of undress.

  Her father’s mood has soured as the night drags on and he’s fairly grunting orders at her and sending her out with plate after plate with barely a chance to stop and breathe in between. By the time another hour and a half passes, so very slowly, Amber isn’t bothering with asking what they want any more, people take what she has or they go bother some other poor server because she’s through with this entire thing.

  Somebody bumps into her from behind and makes her drop a whole tray of steamed shrimp and red cocktail sauce down her shirt.

  “Christ!” She yelps as the whole mess squelches in her bra and red spreads across her crisp white blouse like a blood stain. It’s cold and smells like vinegar and she feels tears prickling at her eyes.

  The person doesn’t bother to stay and help her clean up and that is it. She’s done. Amber dumps the tray in amongst the others they’ve set to the side to wash and retreats to a bathroom she saw earlier during her rotation around the mansion halls in search of hungry guests.

  She locks herself in when she finds it, uncaring if there’s someone out there that might need to use it. She deserves it more because this day has been absolutely horrible.