Perhaps it was only because of the fight they'd nearly had, about how welcome Eric would feel at her family's Thanksgiving table, that Amber flinched. Black's not my color. Again her choice was being questioned, waved aside. Eric was being dismissed in those few words. Black isn't my color. House didn't even bother to mock her choice in men because it was simply that beneath him. It was a new kind of anger to Amber and she didn't even know what to do with it, beyond frown disapprovingly at House, hand curling over the locket's metal edge.

"Sorry to disappoint you," Amber said bluntly and without an ounce of self-recrimination, using the force of her previous anger. She was shrugging off her winter coat and hanging it, ready to slip on her lab coat. "But just because I'm happy doesn't mean I've changed. I'll still get you your results. You can keep calling me that, and I could even pretend to hate it." What did she care what the others called her? And the way House was putting it, 'cut-throat' was a compliment; better yet, because she really hadn't changed. She was still the one who got things done.

Amber peered into the mirror, checking quickly. Kissing Eric had smudged her lipstick a bit and it'd be better to fix that, but she wasn't going to primp herself up in front of him. She wouldn't show House the work it took to look as good as she did. "Tell you what, if I'm anything but the best, then you can chew me out." Challenging House could backfire on her, with his ever-moving goalposts, but then again, it could work in her favor. House liked a fight. That was why he was here. And she was the best. Amber smiled at him, confident and cynical.