Hawk & the Lady - Elizabeth Stevens Page 0,46

a woman in love. They seemed like such a mismatched but perfect pair, I couldn’t help asking for her version of events.

“How did you two get together?”

Amber smiled as she snuck a look to Kit again and pushed her glasses up her nose. “Uh, I guess it was sort of an accident. I needed a place to stay so Patrick kind of made Kit take me in. It made us actually talk to each other, you know? And it happened. I still can’t quite believe it really.”

“Why not?”

“That a guy like Kit could be attracted to me? Pfft. It was so not possible.”

I looked between them, wondering how the hell she’d come to that conclusion. “What? You thought you weren’t good enough for a guy like him?”

She shook her head noncommittally. “More I thought we were too different. I’m this geeky girl obsessed with books and studying. He’s the guy with a different tall, thin gorgeous woman on his arm every weekend.” She shrugged.

“But you are gorgeous.”

And she was. Baggy jumpers and a messy bun or not, you could see she shone with the kind of beauty that could only come from inside.

She grinned at me. “Thanks, but I wouldn’t go that far. I never thought I was plain or anything. But there are different kinds of beautiful, aren’t there? There are those classically stunning, put-together women like you. And there’s people like me who feel more at home with a messy bun and a baggy jumper.” She shrugged once more. If only she knew I was, more often than not, the second kind. “Plus, I was all like ‘how could someone so perfect like me with all my many flaws’. My crush kinda made me forget he’s just as human as me, you know? Forget his flaws and my strengths. I’m just glad I was wrong and he sees more than one kind of beauty.”

I got it. All of it.

I was told regularly that I was beautiful – so regularly it often felt like that was all I had to offer anyone, particularly as far as my mother was concerned – but that didn’t mean I always felt it and it certainly didn’t mean that I didn’t want someone to see what made me special. I wasn’t exactly sure what that something was, but a girl could live in hope that one day someone would see it, that something that had nothing to do with my looks, that something that made me the most beautiful woman in the world to them and only them.

“I know what you mean.” I nodded.

Amber’s smile was infectious and I could see the family resemblance to Patrick. “Oh, good. Petra tells me I’m too self-deprecating, even for an Aussie. She keeps wanting to shake some sense into me no matter how much she knows I don’t really mean it.”

I laughed out loud. “I so get it. My sister’s the same.”

“Oh, idea!” she said excitedly. “You, me and Petra can go out and you and me can annoy her with our self-deprecating misery.”

I grinned. “I think I’d like that.”

Amber grinned, too. “I think I would, too.”

“What are you scheming over there, babe?” Kit called.

“Nunya business,” she called back cheekily, throwing me an equally cheeky grin.

In that moment, I felt like Amber and I could be really good friends. In fact, a part of me hoped we could be. She seemed like this live out loud, super comfortable person, just like I saw in Patrick. It was the kind of person I’d never felt like I could be, no matter what opportunities I’d been given in life. It felt good to surround myself with such easy-going and relaxed people again.

Even if they did spend most of the afternoon playing video games and throwing chips at each other like a bunch of children. It was weird, if you’d asked me what I thought about a group of 30-something guys playing games and making crude jokes, I’d have asked if they still lived in their mum’s basements and had ever managed a single date.

But these guys were something else.

It was nothing but laughter and teasing and good-natured banter free-flowing around the room. It was impossible not to get caught up in it…after a period of me feeling like I was the awkward weirdo sticking out like a sore thumb. All it took was one attempt at Mario Kart and I’d devolved to laughing and swearing with the rest of them.

I felt like perhaps Nico noticed the change in