CHAPTER 1- The Girl Who Smelled Like Ginger Tea
1134 Words
Amber Smith clutched her backpack marginally and got out of the shabby bus that had deposited her at the university gate. It was a cold morning, the sort of morning that oozed in her bones and she did not resist. It helped her to remain awake following another visit to the hospital.
When she left her mother was asleep.
Still pale. Still breathing shallowly.
Even now still connected to the machines Amber could only fantasize about owning.
Hold on, Mom, please hold on to me, hollering.
She gulped down her throat and began to walk back to campus. Young people who surrounded her talked, laughed, took photos, and lived their lives. Amber didn't have the luxury. She had overshot her first lesson, once more but after stopping in a little shop to get ginger tea, the ten dollars she could afford to make this week.
She brought the cup up between her cold fingers and made a cautious drink. The warmth did not go to her heart.
Numbers flashed through her mind, bills, rent, hospital bills, textbooks, and medications for her mother. She was not able to breathe, still less to think.
She needed a job.
Fast.
And then she saw it.
A white poster, taped unevenly to a sign on a bus stop, fluttering in the wind as though it were fate itself, which arranged it there precisely on her account.
WANTED: Private Chef
Elite household.
Should be competent, tolerant, and instructive.
High pay. Immediate employment.
Apply online.
Amber froze.
A chef?
Her?
Cooking was the only thing she could do, and do well, which was truly natural, and she had not been professionally trained. She had been taught in the little kitchen of her grandmother, how to put the right amount of seasoning in, how to transform plain stuff into ambrosia, how to add color to the warmth and love.
She made a step nearer, and, straining her eyes, read the address at the bottom.
"The Cooper Residence..." she murmured.
Her brows lifted. "As in Richard Cooper?"
The billionaire CEO who was on billboards, magazines, and charitable galas. The fellow all business students referred to as they would have referred to the Bible.
That Cooper.
Amber's heart thumped.
She took out her phone, opened the site indicated, and began scrolling through the app. Resume. Experience. Post pictures of food that you have prepared.
Her chest tightened.
What if I'm not enough? What if they laugh?
But her mother had to have the money.
She needed hope.
When she was walking towards the university parking lot, on her phone screen, attempting to persuade herself to tap on the screen and press Apply, she failed to see a black Rolls-Royce Phantom driving up next to the building.
Or the man stepping out.
Richard Cooper.
Tall. Straight-lined shoulders. Sharp jaw. A dark suit is worth more than her life. His hair was greased down his face was inscrutable as he went to his company door.
Until it happened.
Amber stepped forward.
One of her feet stumbled on the sidewalk.
The ginger tea flew out of her hand..
and slopped over the flawless thousand-dollar suit of Richard.
"Oh my God!" she screamed and threw her phone to the ground. "I..I'm so sorry, I wasn't looking, I..”
She huddled to pick up her phone and would not even look at the person she had just sprayed. Her heart pounded violently. I am very sorry, sir, I am sorry, please excuse me..
And then she ran.
Just bolted.
The crowd, down the walk, without even having the courage to look at the man she had mauled with tea.
Behind her was Richard Cooper motionless.
Up the front of his charcoal suit, the hot ginger tea dripped down, and wet the pavement. His assistant gaped and went on with a handkerchief.
"Sir, are you alright? Do you want me to…"
But Richard didn't hear a word.
His gaze was still on the girl fading into the crowd in the university, her disheveled brown hair blowing behind her in a kind of flight before life itself.
He didn't see her face fully.
Only her profile.
Her trembling hands.
The manner in which she ran was as though the world were ending.
And in him there was... a movement.
"Sir?" the assistant tried again.
Richard shut his eyes and at last moved away, face going back to that cold, unreadable mask with which he had such a good face.
Cancel my first meeting, he said.
"But sir…"
"I said cancel it."
He entered the building, though a part of his consciousness remained outside, repeating the scene, the girl, how she shivered in her voice.
He did not know why it was bothering him.
But it did.
Amber did not slow down until she got to her lecture hall. She sank into the nearest seat trembling like a leaf.
Oh my God, she swore in her hands. I have splashed the tea on a billionaire.
A tear slipped down her cheek. This was not her day. Not her month. Not her year.
She was able to endure the lecture but she did not hear anything the professor said. She could hardly breathe between concern on behalf of her mother, humiliation from the accident, and the job application scalding her brain.
Later in the same night she sat on the floor of her small dorm room with her laptop.
Her fingers were floating above the apply button.
She pressed it.
Uploaded her dish photos.
Typed her skills.
Added a brief note regarding the necessity of a part-time job.
After that, she gazed at the confirmation message.
Application sent.
"Please," she whispered. "Please let this be my miracle."
Richard was scrolling through the applications of chefs in his home office in the largest mansion that Amber had ever heard of in the city.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
He lazed on, not interested, then he saw her name.
Amber Smith.
His eyes narrowed.
He clicked 'Open Application.'
And the photo popped up.
Her face.
Her food.
The tremulous apology resounded in his ears.
Richard sat back in his chair and breathed out. He was not conscious of the queer pull in his heart, he did not need to be.
He just clicked one button.
HIRED!.
Caroline Cooper came out of her bedroom and stood still down the hall when she heard the notification in the office of Richard.
Hired?
Who?
She walked a little closer...
Then she saw the profile picture through the half-open door.
Amber Smith.
A name she had not heard in many years. One more face she was not likely to see again. Her blood ran cold. She whispered. "She looks familiar " Her jaw clenched.
And something in her was awakened and was a little terrified, but still she didn’t know why.
- Writer
- chap_listContents
- likeADD