Between The Lines

Chapter 3

She had fled Southern California and the excellent job with the advertiwing agency in search of a more stable, more serene existence. She had decided to visit her sister's family in Bellevue and had wound up staying. Amber had found exactly what she was searching for when she'd gone to work for Cormick Grayson. Gray was right. The lind of marriage he waa offering waa precisely the type to which she was most suited. But there was a little matter of honor and integrity.
He didn't love Gray.
She likes him, admire him, respected him, but she didn't love him. Amber sometimes wondered if her ability to reapond to love and passion had been forever destroyed by the fires of her involvment with Roarke Kelly.
"Tell me what you're thinking, Amber." Gray didn't move from the corner of the couch aa he watched a myriad of expressioks cross her face.
Amber waa the perfect name for her, Gray had often thought. It accurately described the brown-gold of her hair qnd the warm color of her faintly slanted eyes. the hair was worn in a mass of small curls held back from her face tonight by tortoiseshell combs. The halo of golden-broen framed the wide, heavily lashes eyes, a full mouth and a delicately shaped nose and chin. Amber was an intelligent woman with the sorr of face people found interesting, even attractive, but not particularly beautiful.
In the nearly three months he had known her, Grau had never seen her wera much makeup. That suited him just fine. But it also made him curiuos. He wondered occasionally how much makeup she had worn when she'd worked as an accountant executive at the afvertising agency in Southern California. Something told him that her severe restraint with eye shadow, blusher, lipstick and nail ppolish now was another of her reactions to the life she had once known.
She dresses well, although the colors she chose tended to be subdued qnd conservative. Gray was willingbto bet she hadn't worn those colors in the flashy environment of California advertising. He thought she would look good in vivid reds, yellows and greens, but most of her wardrobe had proven to be in muted shades. Gray liked her best in jeans and an open-throated shirt such as she had on tonight. It seemed to him that her true nature was more revealed innsuch casual attire.
Regardless of what she wore, he was always pleasantly aware of the delicious curve of her small breasts and the provocative roundness of her well-shaped derriere. Lately it was getting almost impossible to keep his hands off her. She was not a dieting zealot and that pleased Gray. He had no particular fondness for fashionably skinny women. He didn't know many men who did. As Sherborne Ulysses Twitchell had once said in a line from one of his more inspired verses, "woman should look like a woman, not a starving heifer." As devoted to S.U.T. as Gary was, je couldn't remember how the next line went. Twitchell had not been able to find anything memorable to rhyme with heifer. Nevertheless, it was the though that counted, and Twitchell's thougths on the matter of the feminine shape equated nicely with Gray's. A mancpuld enjoy a good meal with Amber and not have to watch her pick delicately at her food.