Icing (Aces Hockey #1)(88)
She’d fallen in love with a guy who thought she was a gold-digging bitch.
“Amber…are you okay?”
She shook her head, her face still buried in her hands. “No.”
Mom was apparently clueless about what she’d done. But whatever. She’d only reinforced what Duncan already thought of her.
“I have to take the car back to him.”
“No! You haven’t even seen it!”
“I’m not keeping it, Mom. I don’t care what it is.” She thought more, everything inside her aching. She needed to move, but her muscles felt stiff and frozen. Finally she lifted her head. “And I won’t be seeing Duncan anymore.”
“I don’t understand.” Mom’s eyebrows sloped down.
“I know you don’t. And I don’t know if I can ever make you understand. I’m going to get dressed. Then I’m going to take the car and drive it to Duncan’s place and leave it there. Then I’m coming back and booking you a flight to L.A.”
Mom blinked.
“Then we’ll go out for lunch or something.” As if she felt like eating. Blerg.
She stood and trudged to the bathroom. In a fog, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. She pulled her hair into a knot, then dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweater. When she emerged from her room, Easton’s door was ajar. He must have heard her, because his face appeared in the door opening.
“What’s going on?” he whispered. Then he frowned at seeing her. “Are you okay?”
“Not really.” She attempted a wobbly smile. “I have to go out for a while. My mom’s going to stay here, is that okay?”
His eyebrows pulled together. “Uh, sure. Why is she here? Is everything okay?”
“With her, yeah. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Okay. I’ll get, uh, reacquainted with your mom. Julie, right?”
“Right.”
He’d met her mom years ago when Amber’d started modeling.
She followed her plan. She located the little red BMW Coupe easily. Yeah, it was nice. It was so beautiful she was afraid to drive it. The blustery weather didn’t help either.
She parked in the visitor parking at Duncan’s building and left the keys with the doorman to give to him. Then she called a cab to take her home.
Sadness pressed down on her as she sat in the back of the taxi, tuning out the sounds of the driver talking and his radio crackling. Then she was home again. She sucked in a deep breath in the elevator, preparing to deal with her mother. That was the immediate problem facing her. She needed to put Duncan out of her mind.
Mom and Easton were sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and talking. Easton gave her a look full of curiosity and concern.
Mom seemed annoyed. “What did he say when you told him you couldn’t keep the car?”
“I didn’t talk to him. He’s probably at the arena. They have a game tonight.”
“Oh, we should go!”
“We can’t, I’m working tonight. Okay, let’s go online and see if we can find a flight home for you. I’ll get my computer.”
She returned to the kitchen table with her laptop and quickly found flights leaving tomorrow.
“Tomorrow! But I booked a week off work.”
Amber bit her lip. “Vacation time?”
“No, just time without pay.”
“Mom! How can you afford to do that? You didn’t even have enough money to pay for a round-trip ticket.”
Mom’s face drooped. “It didn’t seem like that big a deal. I only work part time, anyway.”
“I know.” Amber sighed and rested her head in her hands. What was she going to do with her mother? Mom was like a child who’d never grown up. Married at nineteen while still living with her parents, she’d never had to do anything on her own. Amber, on the other hand, had had to grow up fast when her parents had divorced when she was seventeen.
“I’m booking the flight for tomorrow. I think you should go back to work on Monday. We don’t really have room for you to stay. I’ll sleep on the couch tonight.”
Easton rose from the table. “Tough love.” He patted her shoulder and disappeared down the hall to his room.
She’d heard that from him before when she’d complained about her mother. He’d told her to either cut her mother loose or stop bitching about it. She hadn’t been able to cut her loose. The reason tough love was called that was because it was…tough.
She worked her shift that night at the Sin Bin with no fear of any of the Aces coming in until after the game. She tried not to pay attention to the game on the big-screen TV in the bar, focusing on work, but it was impossible not to be aware that they were getting spanked by the Los Angeles Kings, the constant shout of “He scores!” met with silence in the arena and groans in the bar.