Chapter 3
Amber always thought that no other town could compare to Nashville, but after living in Orlando for a little over two years, she’d discovered she was wrong. There was something pleasing that could be said about the central Florida town that she now considered home. At a time in her life when she had needed to make a change and leave her problems behind, Orlando, with its friendliness and charm, had been just the place.
As she went about restocking the shelves in her bookstore, she couldn’t help but remember the day her mother and sisters had approached her about coming to Florida to check on Aunt Rachel’s house. Aunt Rachel, their mother’s only sister, who’d never been married or had any children, had died three years before and had willed her home to her four nieces. Since neither Amber nor any of her sisters had been interested in relocating to Florida, they had rented the house out and split the proceeds between them each month. But their most recent renter had been the tenant from hell, who thought it was his right to pay his rent whenever he felt like it. After trying to work with the man for over six months, giving him as many chances as possible to catch up on the late rent payments, they’d had no choice but to take drastic steps and have him evicted.
Amber had flown to Orlando to handle the legal matters and had discovered the beautiful home was badly in need of major repairs. She had returned to Nashville with her report, along with several photographs, as well as an offer to her sisters: she wanted to buy the dilapidated piece of property and was willing to procure their share of the house to become the sole owner.
Amber had been dying a slow death in Nashville. Most of the time she was so depressed over her divorce that she’d found comfort in eating, which only escalated her health problems.
She saw moving permanently to Orlando as the answer to her prayers. Besides, she no longer wanted to remain in the same town where her ex-husband, Gary Stuart, also lived. She had never told anyone in her family but he had shown up late one night at her place, and with only a few kind words from him, she’d forgotten what a dog he was and let him get inside her panties. The next morning he’d left, acting like he had done her a favor and saying she was sex-crazed, hot between the legs. She’d felt cheap and stupid for falling off the wagon and saw distance between them as the only thing to help her get over Gary.
Although her family hadn’t been happy at the thought of her leaving Nashville and moving to Orlando, they had understood her need to make a new life for herself and gave her their blessings.
Now, over two years later, she had lost over sixty pounds, which meant her health was the best it had been in years. Being overweight had not been a size issue for her but a health issue, since diabetes ran in her family. Now she maintained good physical fitness by walking at least three miles each morning, something her doctor had highly recommended.
She had done a number of major repairs to the house she now considered home and was the proud owner of Amber’s Books and Gifts, which was located in the Florida Mall. Her shop sold books by and about people of African descent, various figurines, greeting cards and calendars, children’s books, games, black history literature, and Masonic, fraternity, and sorority paraphernalia, as well as a number of other gift ideas. Because the mall was usually busy on any day of the week, the shop reaped the benefits of its location, and with a small business loan through the city, she’d recently expanded and had decorated it just the way she wanted. She had discovered that she was a natural at dealing with the many customers who came through her doors, some to make a purchase and others just to browse and check out her vast inventory.
Her store hours mirrored those of the mall’s hours, which meant she opened at ten each morning and closed at ten each night. Those hours were no problem for her since she lived five miles from the mall. It also helped that she had two very dependable ladies who assisted her. They were older ladies, both in their sixties, who were retired librarians and loved books.
In a few weeks the store would be celebrating its second anniversary. Already she’d made plans to host a party. Nothing extravagant, but just a little something to let her customers know how much she appreciated their business. Her menu would be simple and several of the distributors she dealt with had agreed to provide free books as giveaways.
Amber glanced down at her watch. It was edging toward five o’clock and she needed to get home to shower and change. There was the monthly Savvy Sistahs Mean Business meeting tonight, as well as dinner afterward with Brandy and Carla.
She smiled when she thought of her friendship with Brandy and Carla. Someone once told her that Philadelphia was the City of Brotherly Love. If that was true then Orlando deserved an award for being the City of Sisterly Love. It had been totally refreshing at her first Savvy Sistahs meeting to become acquainted with Carla and Brandy, and to discover as their friendship progressed that they were women who enjoyed being single and weren’t hard-pressed to find a man. From the beginning, they had felt an intrinsic need to bond and it had been special to get validation and support from sistahs who’d had similar circumstances in their pasts. However, it hadn’t been until their dinner a few weeks ago that she had discovered what those circumstances had been and why her friends, like her, had been standoffish when it came to a brother. All three had had bad experiences with men, but instead of dwelling and wallowing in self-pity, they had found the inner strength and peace to put it behind them and move on. They enjoyed the growth of realizing that there was more to being a woman than getting wrapped up in a man.
She glanced over to where her staff members, Jennifer Claymore and Eileen Brogan, were standing, erecting a huge floor display of the latest romance novels that had arrived that week. She knew the two were die-hard romantics who usually tried to talk any customer who claimed not to read romance novels into trying one. They had even talked her into reading one, and she had to admit she’d rather enjoyed it, although while reading she kept thinking it was pure fantasy and that real life was totally different. But still, it had been a wonderful way to pass a few hours, to rest her mind and escape. She figured there was nothing wrong with wanting to believe that there was some handsome, drop-dead gorgeous man out there who could sweep a woman off her feet and who actually treated a woman like a queen.
“Don’t forget I’m leaving early tonight,” she called out to Jennifer and Eileen.
Eileen raised a brow. “Got a hot date?”
Amber smiled. At sixty-four the woman liked getting the scoop on Amber’s love life—or lack of it. At first it had irked her but now she simply ignored it. She knew Eileen meant well and managed to take both Eileen’s and Jennifer’s lectures to heart. They lived by the theory that when you were young you were supposed to enjoy life to the fullest, married or unmarried—but preferably married. It wasn’t until their age that you sat back and savored the memories or created some new ones.
Jennifer, at sixty, was a widow but had a constant companion by the name of Moses Lakestone and Eileen had been married for over forty years. Both women embraced life and looked upon Amber the same way they would their granddaughters.
But Amber felt that she knew more than anyone else what was best for her. Neither woman had been married to Gary Stuart, so they would never understand her reluctance to get involved with another man. Establishing a relationship took hard work and she didn’t have the time or the desire to do that.
“Sorry to disappoint you but there’s no date. My Savvy Sistahs meeting is tonight and later Carla, Brandy, and I are going to dinner and possibly take in a movie.”
“No men?”
Amber couldn’t stop the smile that began to play around her mouth. “No, there won’t be any men. The three of us have sworn off the opposite sex.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re all turning gay does it?” Eileen asked with concern etched on her face.
Amber couldn’t help but chuckle. “No, it means we’ve all been through hell with the male species and don’t need or want any more of the aggravation.”
“All men aren’t jerks, Amber. My Henry is wonderful,” Eileen said with a firm conviction in her voice.
“Then consider yourself blessed. And I don’t mean to sound like I’m grouping all men into the same category as my ex-husband, but at the moment I have a lot going on in my life and don’t have the time to devote to a relationship, or at least to making one work.”
“You would think differently if the right man came along,” Jennifer said with a twinkle in her eye.
Amber shrugged as she grabbed her purse from behind the counter. Maybe Carla and Brandy would feel that way but she wouldn’t. By staying away from men she was trying to prove a point to herself: that she was not the sex-crazed, hot-between-the-legs person Gary had accused her of being. She had been celibate for over two years and was damn proud of it. There was more to life than great sex. She had a thriving business, a neat house she enjoyed decorating, and according to her doctor she was now as healthy as an ox and had achieved the weight loss she needed to stay that way. As far as she was concerned, for the first time ever her life was in perfect order, and she didn’t need a man messing things up.