The First Crush Is the Deepest

He had been so furious with his dad for not changing jobs like his mother had wanted him to.

Furious for not running after her and begging her to come back and be with them—like he had done that morning when he came down for breakfast early and saw her going out of the front door with her suitcases. He had followed that taxi cab for three streets before his legs gave way.

She had never even looked back at him. Not once.

And it was all his dad’s fault. The arguments. The fights. They were all his fault. He must have done something terrible to make her leave.

Sam’s gaze flicked up at the thin partition wall that separated the cab office from the workshop. Just next to the door was a jagged hole in the plaster sheet the size of a teenage fist.

Sam’s fist.

It was the closest he had ever come to lashing out at his dad physically.

The screaming and the shouting and the silent stomping about the house had no effect on this broken man, who carried on working as though nothing had happened. As though their lives had not been destroyed. And to the boy he was then, it was more than just frustrating—it was a spark under a keg of gunpowder.

They’d survived three long, hard years before Sam had taken off to America.

And along the way Sam had learnt the life lessons that he still carried in his heart. He had learnt that love everlasting, marriage and family were outdated ideas which only wrecked people’s lives and caused lifelong damage to any children who got caught up in the mess.

He had seen it first-hand with his own parents, and with the parents of his friends like Amber and the girls she knew. Not one of them came from happy homes.

The countless broken marriages and relationships of journalists and the celebrities he had met over the years had only made his belief stronger, not less.

He would be a fool to get trapped in the cage that was marriage. And in the meantime he would take his time enjoying the company of the lovely ladies who were attracted to luxury motors like free chocolate and champagne, and that suited him just fine.

No permanent relationships.

No children to become casualties when the battle started.

Other men had wives and children, and he wished them well.

Not for him. The last thing he wanted was children.

Pity that his last girlfriend in Los Angeles had refused to believe that he had no intention of inviting her to move into his apartment and was already booking wedding planners before she realised that he meant what he said—he cared about Alice but he had absolutely no intention of walking down an aisle to the tune of wedding bells any time soon. If ever.

No. Sam had no problem with using his charm and good looks to persuade reluctant celebrities to talk to him—and he was good at it. Good enough to have made his living out of those little chats and cosy drinks.

But when it came to trust? Ah. Different matter altogether.

He placed his trust in metal and motor engineering and electronics. Smooth bodywork over a solid, beautiful engine designed by some of the finest engineers in the world. People could and would let you down for no reason, but not motors. Motors were something he could control and rely on.

He trusted his father and his deep-seated sense of integrity and silent resolve never to bad-mouth Sam’s mother, even when times had been tough for both of them. And they had been tough, there was no doubt about that.

But there had always been one constant in his life. His dad had never doubted that he would pass the exams and go to university and make his dream of becoming a journalist come true.

Unlike his mother. The last conversation that they ever had was burned into his memory like a deep brand that time and experience would never be able to erase.

What had she called him? Oh, yes. His own mother 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.’