Amber: Read My Lips (F&L Story #5)

Read My Lips: Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Linc heard the sound of a car driving off, and he turned his head in time to see a blue Prius pull out of the cemetery.  There was something familiar about the two women inside the car, but he didn’t place too much importance on it.  He had bigger issues.

Like...Macie was silent today.

He’d been sitting there, against Macie’s tree in front of her resting place for over two hours.  And there hadn’t been so much as a whisper inside him, telling him that she was there with him.  She did that sometimes, even when she’d been alive, giving him the silent treatment.  A petty, childish habit of hers.  He loved her, nonetheless, but the cold shoulder routine always irritated him to no end.  He remembered the last time he ever saw her, she’d been silently petulant...all because he wouldn’t let her ride Firestorm, the horse that killed her.  He’d been late for his plane that morning, so he just didn’t want to deal with it...or her.

If he had, then maybe the last thing he’d remember about her was her smile, or her kiss.  But no, it was the barren way she avoided him because he refused to let her have her way.  And she’d gone and rode the damn horse anyway.

Now, here he was.  Not feeling her presence inside him once again.  Was she really telling him that she was displeased with him?  Or was it all a part of his imagination, and he was so wrapped up in his confusing emotions for another woman?  

Finally, he just stood up.  “I brought you some flowers, sweetheart,” he said, laying the roses on her grave.  “Please forgive me for whatever I did wrong.”

Hell, he knew what he’d done wrong.  He kissed Amber.  He felt desire and want for another woman.  And he couldn’t stop himself.  He couldn’t close his eyes and not see her brilliant blue eyes and her perfect mouth and that sweet smile.  Amber had taken over his thoughts of Macie.  When he tried to picture Macie in his mind, he saw Amber instead.  And now he knew it wasn’t because she looked so much like Macie.  

It was because she was quite possibly the most perfect woman in the world...even more so than Macie, which sent strands of potent guilt through his system.  He knew Macie had not been perfect, but he loved her fiercely and always assumed she was perfect for him.  Then along came Amber.  A woman just as beautiful as Macie, and yet more so because of the sweet innocence in her face.

Linc stood there for a few minutes later, hoping to hear Macie, but he didn’t.  All he heard was the early spring birds chirping in the trees and some cars passing by on the nearby street.  Finally, he gave up.  “I’ll be back soon, I promise,” he told her.  “I love you Macie girl.”

Back at his home, he checked on the horses, saw that they were happily grazing out in the small pasture and decided to leave them alone for now.  He still needed to figure out what Raven Rose understood with signs, but he didn’t feel up to it today.  He fixed himself a small dinner from a can of tuna and a bag of corn chips and settled down in his recliner to read.

He chose something light...Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott.  Not the kind of story he usually liked to read, but it seemed appropriate after that morning, mostly just because of the title.  But as Linc read on and on, he soon realized just how much the heroine, Rose, was like Amber.  Both were woman seeking some sort of independence, and reading about Rose and her many suitors brought back the memory from the night before, when he saw how all those policemen gazed fondly at Amber.  Did she share those feelings?  He sensed that Amber didn’t have a lot of experience with men...she seemed so very innocent in that respect, so he wondered about how eager she was to fall in love.  Rose hadn’t been, but in the end, she did find love within her many admirers.

Linc closed his book and ran his hand over the cover.  Mac had been the man to win Rose’s affections, and Linc wondered if Amber would ever find that noble respect for him.  With a derisive snort, he tossed that convoluted idea away.  Amber probably saw him as a Charlie, the suitor of Rose’s who had ruined his hopes by showing up at her house, drunk off his ass.

“...Many girls would have made light of a trespass so readily forgiven by the world, but Rose had no yet learned to offer temptation with a smile and shut her eyes to the weakness that makes a man a brute...”

Linc smiled, remembering that passage in the story.  If he’d done what Charlie had done, Amber would have punched him.  Charlie had brought Rose flowers that next day, too, Linc recalled, and Rose, yearning for some sort of redemption from him which he failed to deliver, saw only petulance in the man.  “...the apology did not satisfy her, and she would not be bribed to silence.”

Sighing with little patience in himself, Linc set the novel aside.  Would Amber react the same as Rose and push his bouquets away?  He’d know tomorrow when she received them all...all five hundred dollars worth of pink roses.  What had he been thinking?  He pictured it now...Amber throwing open her fourth story window and tossing every flower-filled vase out onto the street below.  The woman had a temper, though she controlled it quite nicely.  Linc honestly couldn’t blame her.  She had a lot to be bitter about.  Loosing her hearing, an over-protective family...him calling her Macie, accusing her of stealing from him, laughing at her when he bumped into her at the library...

He was an ass...there was no qualms about it.  And acting this way, he would never get his life back together.  He would never get to kiss those plump lips again.  He would never get over loosing Macie and his unborn child, and he’d never forgive himself for the burden he’d caused on his family and Macie’s family...he’d never become a man until he stopped acting like a child.

*****

Where the hell is Jimmie?

Amber walked out of her boss’s office, fuming.  The man had just disappeared.  Vanished!  Without a trace!  Lucy couldn’t get a hold of him, and Amber had the lending department breathing down her neck to get the a shipment of Shakespeare works catalogued and on the shelves.  But Amber didn’t have a clue where Jimmie stored them, because the stupid man never let her do anything!  She couldn’t find them anywhere, and Lucy had no record of where they might be.

Lucy shrugged and offered a patient smile as Amber came a stop beside her desk.  ‘No word?’

“None,” Lucy said since her hands were busy typing out an email.  “But the director called and wants you to meet him in his office asap.”

‘Wonderful...am I in trouble?’

“I don’t think so.  He sounded angry, but I don’t think it was directed at you.”

Amber noticed the tension in Lucy’s eyes all that morning.  Lucy had tried to call Brian, but her call went straight to his voice mail, and she didn’t leave a message.  Though she couldn’t control  the fact that the man didn’t pick up her call, her pride had been hit.  It took a lot out of her to attempt a connection with Brian -- Amber already knew that about Lucy -- but Amber still wished Lucy would try again.  It didn’t seem a possibility.  Amber hoped Brian figured out the unknown number on his cell phone was Lucy’s.  She hoped he would call her back.

‘Okay...I’ll head up there now.  Text me if you hear from the dumbass.’

Lucy snickered, knowing she referred to Jimmie and not Brian, and though Amber couldn’t hear the sound, her friend’s face conveyed the action very clearly.  Amber rolled her eyes and headed toward the elevators.  I don’t need this today.  She’d been swamped with requests from other departments because they had pending orders from the archives, and she didn’t know anything about them.  Jimmie would never involve her in any of that stuff!  For two weeks, she’d been typing away on her computer, updating the archives, but none of that involved checking out materials, logging new shipments, or even working with the actual items down in the archives.  She’d felt like a freaking extension of her keyboard, seeing those ISBN numbers in her sleep, knowing full well her fingers were twitching right along with her nightmares.  She was supposed to be Jimmie’s assistant.  She was supposed to be helping him, dammit!  If anything, she was heading up to Director Jones’ office to complain about her lack of job duties.

And to top all that, she didn’t get time for lunch, only a quick snack in the employee lounge, and her body ached from all the practice dancing she tried last night.  And her apartment manager called her four times here at work to ask what she wanted him to do about some flowers that were delivered that morning because they couldn’t just stay in the lobby, and Amber didn’t know anything about flowers, so on the last call, she gave him permission to put the damn things in her apartment.  I mean, really!  I received a bouquet of flowers...surely that has happened before at the apartment building.  They should have protocols for those kinds of things.  

Although...the thought that someone actually sent her flowers thrilled her into spontaneous grinning throughout the morning.  She couldn’t wait to get home and see them and read the card, if there was one attached.  Yet, she hadn’t been able to spare the time to walk home real quick and see for herself if it really happened or just a big mistake.  But to call four times over something so ordinary?

Wonder who sent them?  Mom?  Daddy?  Maybe Caleb...he seemed like the type of guy to sent flowers for a girl he just asked out.  Amber blushed at that.  She couldn’t think of anyone else who would have something delivered to her.  She mentioned it to Lucy, but she didn’t have a clue either.  Amber didn’t know that many people here.  Her list of suspects was minuscule.  Her parents, her sister, Lucy, Jimmie (*snort*...whatever...), and Linc.

Linc?

Amber scowled and shook her head as the elevator opened up on the top floor.  Linc give anyone flowers?  Not in this lifetime.  She remembered that he took some to his precious Macie yesterday when she saw him at the cemetery, but who didn’t bring flowers for their dearly departed?

“Hey, Amber,” the director’s secretary called as she approached the office suite.  “Love the hair!  You look so sexy!”

Amber blushed again and self-consciously touched her hair.  Wendy was a sweetheart, but she’d been married five times in her life, and at the age of fifty-three, was still looking for the next one.  Amber and Lucy secretly thought Wendy was a sex-addict.  She was always using words like sexy and hot and yummy.  Her boss, Director Jones, thought she was funny as hell, as did a lot of people at the library, but too much Wendy went a long ways toward uncomfortable and irritating sometimes.

“Thank you,” Amber replied.  “Director Jones see me?”

“Oh, yes, sweetie,” she said with a brilliant smile.  “Go on in there, but I warn you.  He’s hot under the collar today!”

Amber cringed.  Great.  I am not losing my job because of Jimmie’s incompetence!

Harold Jones, director of the Kansas City Library and all of its satellite locations, sat at his glass-topped desk, a wall of windows behind him, grumbling to himself.  Amber liked Director Jones the instant she first met him during one of her interviews, but she always felt a little nervous around him.  He tended to study her in a way that made her wonder if he regretted hiring her...mainly she felt that way because she was deaf.  He seemed to take it in stride, but there was always that underlying scrutiny that made her squirm.  However, he did remind her of her father, a solid figure of a man with graying hair and kind eyes.  Immaculately dressed in a navy blue suit, the jacket thrown over a chair in the corner, a crisp white shirt and a saffron tie knotted perfectly just under his collar.  He ran a tight ship at the library, always checking up on his staff to make sure they had everything they needed to provide this valuable service to the community, but he also had a wicked sense of humor, which contributed to the mass of laugh lines around his mouth and eyes.

He wasn’t smiling now.

“Sir?” Amber said hesitantly to get his attention.  He looked up and finally a smile filled his face.

“Ah, Miss Hayes, so good of you to come up here from the bowels,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, though his forehead still frowned a bit in frustration.  “How are you today, dear?”

“Well,” she replied, gingerly lowering herself into a chair in front of his desk.  “I well.  You wanted to see me?”

A sigh escaped his lips, and though Amber couldn’t hear the sound, his lips puffed out with the exaggerated expression of disgruntlement.  She twisted in her seat, feeling self-conscious about her lack of hearing, as she frequently did in his presence.  “Yes...I’m wondering...what have you heard about Jimmie lately?”

“I not know anything.  He gone for long time.”  She squirmed more to comfortably recline with what she hoped looked like casualness.  She crossed her legs in front of her, clasping her hands together to keep the nervousness at bay.

“Yes...yes, he has.”  Director Jones darted a glance at the open door to his office.  He rose to his feet and walked around to close it.  Amber followed his movements with her eyes, never taking her gaze off his face.  Something was wrong.  Something more than just Jimmie disappearing.

He came back and sat down on the edge of the desk, one leg bent up to perch more surely on the glass top.  Amber hoped he didn’t break it.  He wasn’t a small man by any means, and the desk was really nothing more than a thick glass sheet set on two giant marble pedestals.

“I won’t beat around the bush here, Miss Hayes.  Jimmie is in some serious trouble.  You know about the new exhibit for the charity ball coming up?”

He talked slowly and deliberately, which only made her that more uneasy, but Amber nodded.

“Well, Jimmie was responsible for gathering the items for the exhibit and it has come to my attention that he attempted to sell some of those items to pay off some gambling debts.”  He stopped to wait for her reaction.  All Amber could do was stare...and gape.

“Oh, no,” she said.  “What happen?”

“Well, he was arrested, of course, but the items he tried to sell were given to us on loan, and we have only this morning reacquired them.  They were the original, signed scores from the movies Casablanca and Little Women, and some musical numbers from My Fair Lady and Oklahoma!.”

Amber came out of her seat, forgetting who she was talking to.  “He did not!”

“Yes, he did,” Director Jones replied.  “I can see you are upset about this.”  There seemed to be an inflection of a question in his words, probably because of the raised eyebrow.

“Yes, I mad,” she exclaimed.  “How dare he?  Those iconic to pop culture!”

“Yes,” the director chuckled at her reaction.  “Yes, they are iconic to the film industry.  You knew nothing of this?”

“I know nothing,” Amber stated, sitting back down.  “He not tell me anything.  I do nothing all day.  I not know why I hired.”

Director Jones studied her for a long moment.  “What is it you do all day, Miss Hayes?”

Amber sighed and threw up her hands.  How was she to explain that Jimmie considered her incompetent because of her handicap and only assigned her menial tasks...the same incompetence that she spied in Director Jones’ face on occasion.  “I type.  I update items in new system.”

“You mean to tell me that’s all you do?  For two weeks?  Did you talk to Jimmie about your other duties?”

Great.  Now he’s going to think I’m lazy.  Amber swallowed, but she held her chin up.  She had Lucy to back her up if it came down to her job and what she’d been allowed to do since coming here.  Normally, she wouldn’t feel guilty about this, but he really did remind her so much of her father...the chagrin came easily.  “I try.  I ask for more to do.  But Jimmie...he not let me.  He pat my head and send me away, back to my closet.  I ask every day.  I want to help, but he not let me.”

“I see,” was all he said.  Amber locked gazes with him and felt her temper rise.  “I not beg for my job,” she said stiffly.  “I work hard.  I work all day.  Yes, I deaf, but I not lazy.  And I not liable for Jimmie.  He give me task.  I do it.  I do it well.  I not know what he do with music for exhibit.  I not know what he do with many things.  I just a rabbit, in my hole, waiting for a carrot to pick.”

Director Jones burst out laughing.  Amber watched with frustration as he cracked his jaw with a grin and threw his head back.  Impatient with his reaction, she stamped her foot.  “It not funny.”

“Oh, I am sorry, my dear,” he said, controlling his amusement.  “I’m just a rabbit...I like that.  I’ll have to use it.  And I’m not asking you to defend yourself.  I wondered how you were faring down there with Jimmie.  Before all this mess started, I intended to go down and check on you myself.  Jimmie’s last assistant quit for the very reasons you just described.”

Amber frowned, trying her best to follow his words.  He was still smiling so wide, she had to resort to context rather than the actual shapes of his speech to fill in the missing words.  “He tell me she found new job.”

“Only because I called in some favors,” Director Jones said, smoothing out his features.  “I had hoped that you wouldn’t let Jimmie squash you like he did Helen, but I guess I was mistaken.”

Now, Amber scowled.  “He not squash me.  This still new job.  I still on probation.  I play it safe...for now.  But he not get away with it much longer.  I fight back.”

“Yes, yes...wonderful,” he replied.  “I hoped you would say that.  Because officially, you are now our head archivist.  Think you can handle it?”

Amber didn't know what to say.  Frankly, she didn't know what to think.  She came up here, half fearing she would have to defend her job, but to be promoted?  "I sorry," she said hesitantly, thinking he was pulling one of his jokes on her.  "What?"

He chuckled.  "Miss Hayes, I'm so glad I hired you.  I always thought you were qualified and capable of doing even Jimmie’s job.  If he hadn’t been under contract, I would have fired him long ago just for his insolence.  Of course, I now have a reason to can that cocky prick, which puts you in his position."

Amber still couldn’t make her brain work properly.  He thought I was capable?  That never came across clearly before.  “I deaf,” she said simply.

A soft, gently smile warmed his features.  “And?”

“And...”  She really didn’t know what to add.  Technically, her deafness shouldn’t be considered in the matter.  She had rights...legal rights, moral rights as a human being.  Still, she needed to know if he had doubts about this particular issue.  She worked under the thumb of one close-minded bigot.  Was Director Jones one as well, only hid it behind his playful demeanor and kind smile?

Before anything else was said between the two, the door opened and a very beautiful woman in her forties entered.  She had red-gold hair cut short like a cap on her head, smooth cheeks and that same kind smile as Director Jones.  Amber had never seen her before, but she recognized her face from a photo on Director Jones’ desk.  Amber blinked in reflection as she watched the two embrace.  

“Hello, dear,” the woman said, turn her face slightly toward Amber, enough so Amber could read her lips.  “I know I’m early, but Rebecca had to get to the dressmaker.”

Director Jones patted the woman’s arm and then turned to Amber, "Sorry about this, Miss Hayes.  This is my lovely wife, Cindy.  Cindy, Amber Hayes, the young woman I told you about."

Cindy's face lit up as she turned to Amber.  She opened up to speak, but immediately closed and shook loose of her husband's grasp.  Timidly, she raised her hands and with unsteady jerky motions, signed, ‘Pleased to meet you, A-M-B-E-R.'  It was the formal phrase, rather than everyday, conversational signing, something an old-hand wouldn’t normally sign.

Amber smiled pleasantly.  She recognized a newcomer to ASL.  ‘The pleasure is mine,’ she signed back.

Director looked at his wife with unabashed pride.  "Cindy is still learning.  She lost her hearing - um, twenty months ago?" he asked Cindy, using his fingers to flash ten fingers twice.  Cindy nodded, knowing exactly what he meant.  He turned back to Amber.  "Brain tumor...damaged her acoustic nerve."

Amber turned to Cindy with horror and compassion.  Being deaf most of her life, she went through a period of time when the subject morbidly fascinated her.  Amber knew exactly what a tumor on the acoustic nerve could do.  It wasn’t something to thumb a nose at.  "I so sorry."

Cindy grasped Amber’s hands tightly.  “It’s okay,” she said heartily, using her words, but Amber noticed how her mouth slanted as she spoke, something she recognized as a slur in her speech.  “I have my life and a second chance.”

“That we do,” Director Jones replied, hugging his wife close.  “The cancer is gone, and Cindy still has partial hearing in her left ear, but she’s determined to learn sign language.  Thank goodness for me, the guy with ten thumbs, she can still speak really well.  And she’s learning the lip reading faster than we expected, but that’s my Cindy.  Picks up on new things really fast.”

Cindy carefully watched her husband as he spoke, and now Amber understood why he talked so slow and carefully.  His wife was trying to figure out everything he said by reading the words off his lips, a skill that took years to master.  Pride, love and something bright and happy shone in Director Jones’ eyes as he spoke about Cindy.  He kissed her cheek and then turned to Amber, shielding half his face from his wife as he bent slightly forward and said, “She hates it when I write notes, says she wants to learn by doing.”

In truth that was the only way to learn how to communicate without hearing.  By just doing it.  Amber felt a warmth in the center of her chest as she watched the married couple.  Someday...someday, she hoped to have the same relationship with a man.  A man -- possibly a husband -- who would love her despite her most obvious fault, a man who would adore her for wanting to do things the hard way and be independent of others for help, a man...Amber closed her eyes for a moment, picturing a future for herself.  

A man who would laugh at me for being so damn stubborn...

But when that man’s face morphed into Linc, standing over her, chuckling, Amber jerked herself out of her daydream.  She had other problems right now.

Director Jones spoke to his wife for a moment, and Amber astutely ignored them to give them privacy.  Then he appeared in her line of sight and held out his hand to her.  “Miss Hayes?  Do you have any other objections to taking the job I offered you?”

Amber rose to her feet, now blushing with embarrassment.  She realized that Director Jones never felt concerned about her deafness, merely curious.  And she now wished she’d kept her big mouth shut on the matter.  Smiling with eagerness, she placed her hand in his and shook it.  “I take it.  You not regret.”

“Great!  I’ll send Wendy down with a new contract for you to sign and all the files I was able to locate on the upcoming exhibit.  You’ve got a lot of work to do in the next month.  This mess with Jimmie really screwed some things up, but I have full confidence that you can get it all straightened out.”

Amber nearly skipped out of the office, but at the door, she came to a dead stop.  Oh, now...Lucy.  Turning back to Director Jones, she bit down on her lip.  He raised an eyebrow at her.  “Sorry...Lucy?  Jimmie secretary...what happen to her?”

“She’s your secretary now, Miss Hayes,” he said calmly.  Amber’s face screwed up.

“We good friends.  I not boss her.  I not do it.”

Director Jones laughed.  “Then your assistant.  How’s that?  I’ll let the two of you work out the details.  I’m sure that two friends can come to a compromise.”

Amber smiled and nodded.  “Okay...thank you.”  She looked at Cindy and signed, ‘It was nice to meet you,’ and Cindy grinned and signed back, ‘Same here,’ in conversational signing.  Amber thought she was going to do just fine learning sign language.

Back down in the basement, Lucy was waiting for her.  “Well?”

Amber, still in a mild state of shock, grinned wide.  ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ she signed and then spent the next half hour telling her friend all that happened.