Page 55 of Vodka and Chocolate Drops

Forever.

8

Amber was a mess. Scott had kissed her like crazy there against the water tower, then let her go.

She’d lain awake all night thinking about him, his kisses, and how she wanted more. A lot more.

Amber paced around her yard, wondering how on earth she was going to find a version of herself that was ready to dive into forever without even a first date. She trusted Scott, loved him. But there was still something about herself that prevented her from saying those three little words. They were so simple.

“I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Simple. Easy. And completely unavailable when she needed them the most.

She needed to figure it out.

And then there was her mother. Amber was getting nowhere there, either.

She sat on her front step, inhaling the fresh mountain air. She would miss the way mornings smelled in Blueberry Springs if she went back to Dakota. The quiet. The peacefulness. The way she’d see bears walking down the road, toward town to find garbage to munch on before the berries ripened.

Bear.

Amber scrambled to flatten her back against the closed door behind her, not moving, even though the animal was well over two hundred feet away. She’d never liked the fact that bears sometimes came into town. When they did it usually meant the berries weren’t ready and they were looking for other meal options.

Such as Amber.

Pulling her phone out of her back pocket, she quickly texted Scott, alerting him about the situation. The idea of him having to deal with the wild animal sent her heart racing. Bears tended to be fairly predictable, and Rob Raine--Jen’s boyfriend--would likely be doing most of the bear herding. But Amber knew Scott would be backing him up, trying to chase the bear out of town.

Was this love--a deep-seated fear that something would happen to Scott and she wouldn’t have the chance to tell him how she felt?

A familiar tightness gripped her vocal cords at the thought of expressing how she felt. What would it take to be able to tell him?

Maybe finding her sister and her fatherwerethe missing pieces. Maybe it did matter more than she’d realized. Maybe knowing them would help her get over this feeling inside that she wasn’t enough, help her understand herself better. It seemed ridiculous to depend on someone else to figure out what she needed to fix, but she was out of ideas again.

The dress and the grand gesture had belly flopped. All that was left was being herself.

Which would be easy if she knew who she was. If she knew where she had come from. If she understood how it all fit together.

And there was only one person who could help her with that.

Her mother.

Realizing that she had no car, no golf cart, and a bear was in the middle of the road, Amber groaned. She was trapped.

Sighing, she climbed into her car, hoping for a miracle. She fished the keys from above the visor and held her breath as she cranked the engine, keeping her forehead against the steering wheel as the motor turned over, first try.

She sat up, staring out the dusty windshield at the town nestled in the valley below. Blueberry Nosy-Rosy Springs. Someone must have fixed her car, because no amount of sitting would have cured the shudder it had had just before it died.

She grinned.

“I love you, Blueberry Springs. See? I can say it. Love, love, love.”

Maybe her life wasn’t what she wanted it to be yet. Maybe it wasn’t as exciting as she had dreamed it could be. But it wasn’t so bad, either. She didn’t need a lot to be happy, so maybe she simply needed to stop trying to chase dreams that weren’t her own, and start loving it.

* * *

“Mom?”Amber walked through the house, searching for her.

“I’m out back,” Gloria called.

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