Becoming (3 page)

Well, she
had
been obsessing lately
about having an incident. She guessed it was only natural that when
The Dream decided to make another appearance, it ended in such a
weird way.

With more pressing concerns at hand, The
Dream faded to the back of her mind. In a weak moment that she
barely remembered through the haze of perplexing styling products
and Lulu’s repeated assurances, she even allowed the woman to wax
her eyebrows and apply some makeup—though she had made her swear on
her grandma’s grave it would be subtle.

And subtle it seemed to be, as she didn’t
detect any raccoon smudges under her eyes or bloody red paint on
her lips when she finally looked in the mirror. Instead, she
acknowledged that whatever Lulu had done to her usually
unremarkable brown hair had given it much more life, leaving behind
what Amber could only think of as a kind of shimmer along with the
stylish cut. Her light brown eyes now stood out, highlighted by
mascara-enhanced lashes and a touch of neutral-toned eye shadow on
her lids. The lip gloss Lulu had used was understated but
becoming.

Mrs. B returned just as Amber was settling
herself under the nail dryers. She gasped, came to a halt in the
room’s doorway and brought a hand to her mouth.

“Oh, Lulu—what a wonderful job!”

Amber felt her face reddening as the ladies
hugged and talked about the changes Lulu had managed to implement.
The attention was just a step above torturous, to Amber’s
thinking.

“We’ll take all of the products you used
today, Lulu, from the gloss to the hairspray,” Mrs. B declared.

Amber opened her mouth to protest, but when
she glanced up and saw the look in her guardian’s eyes, she snapped
her jaw back shut.

After Mrs. B made her purchases and Amber had
been cleared for departure, they headed up the basement stairs to
the car. Mrs. B kept glancing over at her and shaking her head,
making Amber want to run her painted nails through her hair. It
occurred to her that she couldn’t remember ever having her nails
painted by someone else.

What a strange day. But at least she had
managed to escape this experience incident-free.

They reached the car and Mrs. B placed the
bag of styling products in the back seat along with what Amber saw
were a number of plastic Walmart bags.

Mrs. B grinned at her over the roof of the
car. “Just wait until he gets a load of you.”

“‘Til who gets a load of me?”

Raising her eyebrows, Mrs. B studied her
another moment, then gave a throaty laugh. “Lord, child, you have
so much to learn! Now let’s get in this car and get you home.”

Gabriel approached the front porch, knowing
Amber and Mrs. B could be home at any moment. While he wanted to
spare Amber the headache of dealing with Michelle, he was also
facing the uncomfortable fact that he had used Michelle as the
reason for Amber to attend the pool party with him. He had insisted
that by serving as his date, Amber would help him avoid going with
Michelle. That was certainly true enough, even if it wasn’t his
real motivation. By framing it as a favor to him, he had gotten her
to agree to it when she otherwise never would.

Michelle hardly knew that, however.

“Come on up here, Gabe.” She sat on the porch
swing and rubbed the seat next to her.

He considered and instantly dismissed the
idea of offering her something to drink, though he sure could have
used a tall glass of sweet tea himself. “So, what brings you by?”
he asked, wiping his hands on the rag as he took the three steps up
onto the covered porch. He stuffed the rag back into his pocket and
leaned against the porch railing rather than sit beside her.

Her red lips moving into a pout, she twirled
her ponytail with one hand and lifted the other one to rest on the
back of the swing. She lifted one of her tanned legs to the porch
railing to give herself a little push, exposing enough of herself
to have him flushing uncomfortably.

Smiling knowingly, she answered, “I wanted to
share the good news that I found a way for us to attend the pool
party together.”

He stilled. “Come again?”

“Well, you said you couldn’t go with me
‘cause you had to take your sister.”

His jaw clenched. Slow anger replaced the
flush in his face as he realized what she was doing. And he was
suddenly quite all right with shoving the gentleman to the
side.

When they arrived home, Mrs. B had to park on
the six-foot wide strip of grass near the street since Michelle
Moron’s convertible blocked the driveway. Amber recognized the
vehicle with a curl of her upper lip. Michelle had been the bane of
her existence throughout high school. She had taken every
opportunity she could to get under Amber’s skin. And she had always
saved her best insults and snide remarks for whenever Gabriel
wasn’t around to hear them.

As Amber and Mrs. B got out of the car, their
across-the-street neighbor, Mrs. Porter, called out to them in
greeting from where she knelt weeding her flower beds. Amber
assured her guardian that she would take a load of bags up to the
house and recruit Gabriel’s help for the others so she could chat
with the neighbor. Then she made her way around the tall, lush
Italian Cypress trees separating the house from Highway 29 and
approached the familiar front porch.

Gabriel faced away from her, his tall,
muscular frame supported by the porch railing. She spotted a
stained rag hanging from the pocket of his shorts and knew he’d
been working on the ZX, one of his favorite weekend chores. A quick
glance at the front yard told her he’d also fulfilled Mrs. B’s
request to cut the grass. Sweat stains covered his gray T-shirt and
glistened on the back of his neck, dampening the dark brown waves
of hair that curled there. That didn’t seem to be any kind of
deterrent for Michelle, whose split-legged pose would have done any
Maxim
spread proud.

Amber snorted in dry amusement. If Michelle
thought she could capture Gabriel’s interest by acting like a
skank, she was impossibly clueless. He may have been one of the
most popular guys in school, but he had high standards when it came
to the people he hung out with. In her opinion, Michelle didn’t
even rank high enough to live in the same zip code as he did.

“Well, you said you couldn’t go with me
‘cause you had to take your sister,” Michelle said when Amber got
within hearing range.

Oh, Lord. She rolled her eyes in annoyance,
realizing Michelle had come to make another pitch in her attempt to
attend the stupid pool party with Gabriel.

“Amber isn’t my sister. She’s my best
friend,” he replied in clipped tones.

That brought an unexpected smile to her face.
Until she heard Michelle’s next words.

“Whatever. I know that you didn’t want her to
go to the party by herself like a loser. And she’s hardly likely to
get a date on her own. She hasn’t even got any friends.”

Amber flushed hotly. She stood in rigid fury,
staring at Michelle with the distinct desire to chop her in the
throat with a hard knife-hand strike.

Then Gabriel responded, “Is that so?”

She guessed Michelle missed the warning in
his tone when she said, “I mean seriously. You’ve looked at her,
right? I guess since y’all live together you probably don’t notice
how she looks. Anyway, I got Jason Harrison to do me a favor. He
said he’ll take her.”

Amber battled dueling waves of humiliation
and anger. Then an unexpected surge rushed through her, this one
much more disturbing than mere emotion. Much more powerful.

Much more dangerous.

“I figure she’ll be beside her little ol’
self,” Michelle continued. “Jason’s so popular that he could go to
the party with any girl he wants, but he’s willing to go with
her.”

As Amber fought to control the tremors in her
arms as well as her rising panic, she watched Michelle get up and
approach Gabriel, giving him a head-to-toe study. “Which means
you’ll be free to take me.” And now, she ran a fingertip down his
bicep, looking up at him over the top of her sunglasses. “And I
will most certainly let you. Take me, that is.

“So…what time will you pick me up
tomorrow?”

Gabriel caught and held Michelle’s gaze until
she finally realized how he was reacting to her words. She lost her
smile and wisely took a step back.

“It seems you misunderstood,” he said, his
tone degrees beyond cold. “I didn’t say I
had
to take Amber
to the party. I’m taking her because I want to. And if you think
that it would’ve been any kind of inconvenience to Jason to go to
the party with her, you’re dead wrong.”

She blinked rapidly at that, but then seemed
to collect herself. Tossing her head so her ponytail flipped over
her bare shoulder, she sniffed. “You just feel sorry for her.”

“Amber’s hardly the one I feel sorry for,” he
said, watching the remark hit home. Her jaw flopped open. “Quite
frankly, you can’t hold a candle to her. And I’m quite sure you
know it.”

“Gabriel.”

Jerking away from the railing at the sound of
Amber’s voice, he turned and saw her in the driveway. A grin pulled
at his mouth, despite the awkwardness of the situation. Then he
noticed that she wasn’t moving and her arms were stiff at her
sides. The plastic bags in her hands shook.

Instantly alert, he hurried to her side and
took the bags from her. “Hey, Am. You okay?”

She took a deep breath. He couldn’t see her
eyes behind her sunglasses, but he feared they were more gold than
her usual brown. Like last time.

Then she whispered, “I just had a surge.”

“You mean…a
surge
?” His voice was
equally soft and intense. They hadn’t discussed this at all in the
past three years. Since the last one.

“Not a full one. Maybe a, um, prelude.”

His jaw tightening briefly, he nodded. “Okay.
We’ll both be on alert. You’re okay now?”

“I think so. Yeah.”

Michelle stepped off the porch and approached
them. “Trying to fit in better, loser?” she said in a snarky voice,
staring at Amber. “Well, it’s a little late now. Four years of high
school with frizzy hair, no makeup and unpolished nails, and now
this? Please.”

Taking a closer look, Gabriel realized what
Michelle meant. Amber’s hair had been tamed and trimmed, and was
styled around her face in a way that drew attention to her
features. Her full, heart-shaped lips were coated in light pink
gloss. And when he glanced at her long, lovely fingers, he saw the
polish Michelle mentioned.

Feeling like an ass for not noticing, he
turned to Michelle. “You need to move your car.”

With a huff of disgust, she flounced past
them and climbed into her car. Then she started the engine and tore
out of the driveway, almost getting creamed by a car on Highway 29
in the process. They watched her departure in silence.

“There are more bags in Mrs. B’s car,” Amber
said at last. Her tone clearly indicated that she didn’t want to
discuss the surge. He would certainly respect that.

“Okay.” He couldn’t seem to stop staring at
her.

“Mrs. B took me to her salon after karate,”
she explained. She sounded as though it had been quite a trial for
her. “It was my graduation present.”

“Ah.”

“Don’t you dare laugh,” she ordered. Then she
sighed, lifted her sunglasses and looked at him.

“I’m not going to laugh,” he managed, hoping
he wasn’t gawking like a total dweeb. “You look—”
Gorgeous.
Amazing. So beautiful you make my chest hurt.
“Very nice.”

“Yeah, right. Well, come on. Let’s move Mrs.
B’s car and get the rest of the bags.”

“Sure.”

But rather than move, they both looked again
where Michelle’s car had been. Amber lifted an eyebrow and glanced
at him sideways.

“You know if we had a pet rabbit that
Michelle would probably end up boiling it on our stove
Fatal
Attraction
-style after all that, right?”

“Shut up,” he said.

Knorbis stood facing the long window in front
of him, but the beautifully landscaped courtyard outside the window
escaped his focus. Instead, his eyes settled on his soft, blurred
reflection in the crystal clear sheet of glass.

The smooth planes of his face had settled
into a seemingly permanent frown of concern. White-blond hair stood
up from his scalp in unruly tufts, something he would normally have
done something about, but could not find the energy to do so now.
His hands were cupped together behind his back, his posture stiff
and unmoving. He had not slept in almost a week, and the dull
throbbing in his head served as a constant reminder of his
exhaustion, as did the dark circles under his deep purple eyes.

The sound of a door opening behind him had
him shifting his gaze within the window’s reflection to see who had
entered the chamber. When he realized who it was, there was a
subtle clenching in his chest…something he could not identify.

“Good afternoon, Knorbis.”

Turning at last, he responded, “Good
afternoon, Malukali.”

She left the door open as she walked in,
telling him the others were not far behind. He took this moment
with just the two of them to study her. She had the most marvelous
long, brown hair. The rich stuff was straight and lustrous,
capturing the rays of the sun as they filtered through the windows.
He frequently found himself wanting to touch it to see if it was as
soft as it looked, though he could not imagine why. Her scent
floated across the room, like a warm, tropical breeze over a
bouquet of vibrant orchids. She pulled a chair out from the table
centered in the meeting room, her every movement filled with
elegance and poise.

When she turned her potent, dark green gaze
to his, the foreign sensation in his chest tightened again, causing
him to inhale sharply.