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Georgia Meets Her Groom
Elizabeth Bevarly






“I Was Hoping We Could Be Alone,” (#u89580abb-6e82-5e13-906c-adfb44c0c7cd)Letter to Reader (#u3def9b00-46de-57ce-99f2-43ee0dfca62d)Title Page (#u2cbdaf7b-cd9e-5465-a15e-4a41dc289e55)About the Author (#ucba824d2-10cd-55f8-a0f0-44b17ff64b11)Dedication (#u1dd2d50d-dfd4-5648-90af-71fceabac20e)Prologue (#u24f3c27c-f248-5d3d-8afe-892a82d3886f)Chapter One (#u3e13d73c-ac4f-5ea8-a493-afd26847e6e8)Chapter Two (#uc608c900-89a1-5575-ae64-6913f3294ec8)Chapter Three (#u805b2108-c804-5523-8c7f-4ad9fe4d600e)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


“I Was Hoping We Could Be Alone,”

Georgia admitted.

Jack nodded slowly. “Just you and me,” he said. “Like old times.”

Well, not quite like old times, she thought. There was that small matter of countless hours of unbridled sex she was hoping for now that had been totally absent from their relationship before.

“Just like old times,” she agreed a little breathlessly. Except that you wouldn’t believe what kind of underwear I have on under this autfit...nothing like the white cotton stuff I used to wear. Which he’d never seen anyway. So how was he going to know how much trouble she’d gone to today?

He’d know, she assured herself. Oh, yeah.

He’d know.


Dear Reader,

THE BLACK WATCH returns! The men you found so intriguing are now joined by women who are also part of this secret organization created by BJ James. Look for them in Whispers in the Dark, this month’s MAN OF THE MONTH.

Leanne Banks’s delightful miniseries HOW TO CATCH A PRINCESS—all about three childhood friends who kiss a lot of frogs before they each meet their handsome prince—continues with The You-Can’t-Make-Me Bride. And Elizabeth Bevarly’s series THE FAMILY McCORMICK concludes with Georgia Meets Her Groom. Romance blooms as the McCormick family is finally reunited.

Peggy Moreland’s tantalizing miniseries TROUBLE IN TEXAS begins this month with Marry Me, Cowboy. When the men of Temptation, Texas, decide they want wives, they find them the newfangled way—they advertise!

A Western from Jackie Merritt is always a treat, so I’m excited about this month’s Wind River Ranch—it’s ultrnsensuous and totally compelling. And the month is completed with Wedding Planner Tames Rancher!, an engaging romp by Pamela Ingrahm. There’s nothing better than curling up with a Silhouette Desire book, so enjoy!

Regards,






Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3


Georgia Meets Her Groom

Elizabeth Bevarly














www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


ELIZABETH BEVARLY is an honors graduate of the University of Louisville and achieved her dream of writing full-time before she even turned thirty! At heart, she is also an avid voyager who once helped navigate a friend’s thirty-five-foot sailboat across the Bermuda Triangle. “I really love to travel,” says this self-avowed beach burn. “To me, it’s the best education a person can give to herself.” Her dream is to one day have her own sailboat, a beautifully renovated older model forty-two footer, and to enjoy the freedom and tranquillity seafaring can bring. Elizabeth likes to think she has a lot in common with the characters she creates, people who know love and life go hand in hand. And she’s getting some firsthand experience with motherhood, as well—she and her husband welcomed their firstborn, a son, two years ago.


For Ana Sofia

The score is now: Girls 3, Boys 1

So who’s going to go next?


Prologue

He knew her only by sight, knew that her name was Georgia Lavender and that her daddy practically owned the whole damned town. Carlisle, Virginia, even if it was a thriving beach resort in the summer, was barely a smudge on the map the rest of the year. And just as everybody knew that Georgia was rich, everybody knew she was smart—the kid who’d been skipped a couple of grades back in elementary school, and who, just shy of fourteen, was the youngest member of the sophomore class.

Just as everybody knew he was the oldest at almost seventeen, having been held back twice—once in sixth grade and once in seventh. They also knew it hadn’t been because he was stupid so much as it had been because he was such a troublemaker.

And hell, he wasn’t even from Carlisle. This just happened to be the most recent place the state had dumped him, after he’d been exiled from yet another group home because of what the social workers had politely called “antisocial behavior.” In spite of being the new kid in town, though, it had taken him no time at all to acquire a reputation.

Jack McCormick strode across the school parking lot and watched with veiled interest as Georgia Lavender made her way reluctantly toward her father, who was leaning against an expensive, late-model car. Her clothes suggested she had a modest disposition—a tan skirt and white blouse, white knee socks and plain brown shoes. Jack had heard Susie Morris and some of the other girls laughing about Georgia’s clothes pretty often, but he’d never really paid much attention until now.

She wore glasses, too, their huge frames and thick lenses giving her the appearance of some kind of small, timid animal whose eyes had outgrown the rest of its body. Her hair was sort of a medium everything—medium red, medium long, medium curly—but he noted it was touched with splashes of gold when she was out in the sunlight this way.

She wasn’t much of a looker, Jack reflected. But then, at the moment, neither was he. Gingerly he brushed a knuckle over his left cheekbone, where he knew the purple discoloration was still present. His foster father had backhanded him but good yesterday as soon as he’d gotten a load of Jack’s report card. Nothing much new in that, but Jack wished just once he could escape the house without having to dodge the old man’s fist.

Brushing back an errant length of black hair that had fallen over one eye, he glanced over at Georgia and her father again. She had slowed down and was warily studying the man by the car. Inexplicably, Jack slowed his own pace, taking his time as he unlocked the door of his old, battered Nova and tossed his books into the back seat. He squared his shoulders and rubbed the back of his neck, feeling tense and edgy for no reason he could name.

“Georgia,” the man said in a voice that chilled Jack’s blood. With that one word he had managed a greeting, an insult and a threat. It made no sense, but Jack became immediately defensive, his fingers curling reflexively into fists.

“Georgia,” the man repeated in much the same voice. “Why didn’t you show me your report card last night?”

She came to a halt precisely one foot in front of her father. Jack would never have done that. He always made it a point to keep out of swinging distance.

When she didn’t reply, her father pushed himself away from the car to tower over her. “Why, Georgia?”

Without looking up, she replied so quietly that Jack had to strain to hear her. “You weren’t home.”

“You knew I was working late. Why didn’t you leave it on the table the way I instructed?”

She glanced up once very quickly, then dropped her head in submission again. “I—I’m sorry, Daddy. I—I forgot.”

“You forgot.”

She nodded silently.

“Well, I didn’t forget. And just for your information, between the mattress and box springs is a terrible hiding place. It was the first place I looked.”

His voice oozed disdain, and Georgia flinched as if he had slapped her.

“You got a B, Georgia. A B!” His voice surged from condemnation to contempt in one syllable. “In chemistry, for God’s sake! How the hell are you going to get into a university like MIT with grades like that?”

Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Her old man was upset because she’d received a better grade than he could ever have hoped for, in a class he wasn’t even allowed to take because of his lousy academic record. What was the guy—nuts?

“I’m sorry, Daddy, I—”

“You’re sorry,” her father jeered. “I’ll say you’re sorry. A sorry excuse for a human being. If you ever get another grade like this one on your report card, I swear I’ll...”

To Jack, the unuttered threat sounded a lot scarier than the graphic warnings he received from his foster father on a regular basis. He shook his head silently. Grown-ups were such jerks. He started to get into his car, but when he heard Georgia’s father start up again, he turned around, wondering why the old guy couldn’t drop the subject.

“I’ve had it with you, Georgia. You’d better straighten up and fly right, because what do you think will happen to you if you don’t get into college? Certainly you won’t get married. Look at you—what man would want you? And I won’t have you being a burden on me for the rest of my life.”

As her father berated her, Georgia simply stood still with her head bowed and listened. Jack, on the other hand, grew angrier and angrier with every word the man spoke. Before he realized his intention, he was marching over to stand behind her. Then, without a word, he cupped his hands over her shoulders and gently pushed her aside, stepping in front of her to shield her.

Where Georgia’s father had been looking down to shout at her, he was forced to tilt his head back to look at Jack. For one tense moment, no one said a word. Finally, the older man broke the silence.

“Who the hell are you?”

Jack twisted his mouth into a sneer, an expression that always preceded the first punch he threw in a fight. “Name’s Jack McCormick. Who the hell are you?”

Georgia’s father was clearly taken aback. “I’m Gregory Lavender, Georgia’s father. Now step aside.”

Jack shook his head slowly. “Georgia and I have plans.”

Gregory Lavender narrowed his eyes in outrage. “Now, you listen to me—”

“No, you listen to me.” Jack cut him off, tilting his head down toward Gregory Lavender’s with the express purpose of getting in the guy’s face. “You wanna whale into somebody, you try whaling into me and see what it gets you. But leave Georgia alone. She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

The old man poked a finger against Jack’s breastbone—hard. “This is none your business, boy.”

Jack effortlessly shoved the finger away. And although his gaze remained fixed on Gregory Lavender’s, he directed his next words to the man’s daughter, dismissing the man himself. “Come on, Georgia, let’s go.”

He took her hand and tugged gently, urging her toward his car. But she didn’t follow him. When he turned around to look at her, she was staring at him with huge, disbelieving eyes, her lower lip trembling with utter terror.

“Georgia?” he said softly. “You coming?”

She clasped her books tightly to her chest, her knuckles almost white where they gripped her binder. With one quick glance at her father, she took a slow step toward Jack. Then another. Then another.

“Georgia...” her father warned her.

“I won’t be late, Daddy,” she said in a quivering voice. “I’ll be home in plenty of time for supper, I promise.”

“Georgia, we are not fin—”

“Hey, old man, she told you she’d be home in time for supper,” Jack interrupted as he led Georgia away, his steps, unlike hers, never faltering. “What’s the problem?”

He was amazed that Georgia’s father didn’t respond to his taunt, didn’t suppress the small act of rebellion on the spot. He hoped she wouldn’t be in for a rough time when she got home. But for now, he’d helped her win this one battle, and in doing so had given himself a little boost, too.

From now on, he thought, Gregory Lavender would know that his daughter had a champion to rally whenever she felt threatened by dragons. And maybe, just maybe, that would make a difference in her life. And hell, who knew? he thought further. Maybe it would make a difference in Jack’s life, too.

He opened the passenger door of his car and helped her in, then went around to seat himself behind the wheel. Gunning the engine in the way teenage boys do, he turned to her and smiled.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi, yourself,” she rejoined.

His smile broadened. “I’m Jack McCormick.”

“I know,” she replied with a shaky smile. “I’ve always...”

Her voice trailed off and she shrugged anxiously, pushing her glasses up onto the bridge of her nose with her index finger. Innocently, and not a little awkwardly, she lifted her hand to cup his jaw, rubbing her thumb gently across his cheekbone where his skin was still tender beneath the bruise.

“I know,” she repeated quietly. “I’m pleased to meet you.”


One

Jack McCormick sat behind his big, executive, mahogany desk, staring blindly at his big, executive mahogany-paneled office. A crisp white sheet of stationery and a torn envelope marked Confidential sat neglected on the blotter before him, the tidy black letterhead on both stating, among other things, Roxanne Matheny Investigations, Inc. He had read the letter four times already. But he could still hardly believe what it said.

Scarcely thinking about what he was doing, he tugged open the top right-hand drawer of his desk and extracted a battered baseball that was more innards than out. He curled his fingers comfortably over the worn leather and rubber, palming the sphere with affection the way he would a lover’s breast. It was the only thing he owned that had been with him forever. All else had been lost at some point along the way. Until now.

He gazed at the letter again, his eyes feasting on the message it bore. They’d found him. Finally. Before he’d even had a chance to look for them.

A soft rap of knuckles on his office door brought Jack out of his deep ruminations, and he lifted his head toward it. “Come in,” he called ouL

Adrian Chavez, his highest-ranking associate, nudged the door open and strode confidently through. But when he observed his employer’s expression, he hesitated.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Jack shook his head slowly and gripped the baseball more firmly, but he didn’t elaborate. “What’s the word?” he asked instead.

Adrian extended a hefty accordion folder toward him. “The Lavender acquisition. As it currently stands, anyway.”

Jack clamped his jaw shut rigidly and set the baseball aside, then reached for the record his associate offered, his attention suddenly focused tighter than it had been for some time. “And what did Gregory Lavender have to say today?”

Adrian paused, eyeing his boss thoughtfully, then linked his fingers together behind his back. “Not much that he hasn’t already said over the last few months.” Clearly restless, he then brought his arms forward, crossing them negligently over his chest, as if giving another matter much thought.

“What?” Jack asked, grinning with satisfaction. “Did he have something else to add this time?”

“Yeah,” Adrian told him. “As a matter of fact, he did have something else to say about you.”

“I can only imagine what.”

Adrian studied his employer with something akin to admiration. “Gregory Lavender said he’d see you dead before he turned his company over to you. Especially after what you did to his daughter.”

Jack expelled an errant breath of air that almost—almost—sounded like a chuckle. “Yeah, I’ll just bet he would.”

Adrian rocked back on his heels. “So...just what did you do to his daughter?”

Jack glanced up and narrowed his eyes at his associate. “I freed her.”

Adrian nodded. “Sounds like fun.”

Jack emitted another rough sound. “Actually, it was more like...”

He inhaled a deep breath, and left his thought unfinished. More than twenty years had passed since he’d seen Gregory Lavender’s daughter. But scarcely a day had passed that he hadn’t thought about her. He’d freed her? he asked himself. Hell, more like she had been the one to free Jack.

Adrian simply continued to gaze at his employer, not pressing the issue of Georgia Lavender. “So what do we do now?” he asked instead.

This time, when Jack chuckled, it was heartfelt. He’d been waiting a long, long time for this. What was that old saying about revenge being a dish best served cold? That was a good way to describe the feeling nestled deep in Jack’s belly. Cold. Raw. Bitter. He was about to make up for much of what had been dumped on him in his past—and Georgia Lavender’s too. He was about to repay a debt to her that had gone far too long unsettled. Oh, yes. He’d been waiting a long time for this.

He gazed down at the letter on his blotter from Roxanne Matheny, P.L, lifting it to scan the message there once again. He’d been waiting a long time for that, too. Everything was coming together, but it was coming too soon. He wasn’t sure he could tackle both at once. Still, a man had to take his opportunities where he found them and play them for all they were worth. It was the only way Jack knew how to survive. It was what had saved his life.

Well, that and Georgia Lavender.

It was time, he thought. Time to go back to Carlisle. Time to make good on his debt to Georgia. Time to make Gregory Lavender pay for what he did to his only child.

Time for Jack to reclaim what was rightfully his.

The quickly curling waves were huge, thick and slate gray, crashing into sprays of white foam as they slammed against the beach below Georgia Lavender’s house. As she stood on her deck, her long, fiery hair buffeted wildly by the cold winter wind, she could barely distinguish the thin line of a horizon smudged a little darker gray than the shades of ocean and sky. It had been days since she had seen the sun. And that was just fine with her.

If she hadn’t already painted this scene a dozen times over the past few months, she would run into the house for her paint tubes, and would return with only black, white and perhaps a bit of green and blue. Carlisle’s coastline in the winter was awash with grays of every variety, and she had captured them all on canvas at some point. Her gallery was full of such paintings. But the tourists never seemed to tire of buying them.

The temperature hovered around forty degrees—probably below thirty with the windchill—and she felt like taking a walk. Evan wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours, and she was feeling restless for some reason. She went inside to find her golden retriever, Molly, sound asleep on the couch, but at her quick whistle, the big dog awoke and leapt down, wagging her tail furiously.

“Wanna go for a walk, girl?” Georgia asked unnecessarily.

Molly barked loudly three times, clearly ready for some exercise.

She tugged a thick, oatmeal-colored sweater on over her jeans, then wove her unruly russet tresses into a fat braid that fell down between her shoulder blades. Shrugging into her oversize, flannel-lined denim jacket, she decided not to bother with Molly’s leash, because she knew the beach would be deserted. Living year-round in what was predominantly a rental community meant that at this time of year, she and Evan were virtually the only inhabitants for miles.

The solitude didn’t bother either one of them, though. They both liked being far from society’s constraints. They had Molly to keep them company, after all, and Molly never had a mean thing to say about anybody.

As Georgia and the golden retriever clattered down the wooden stairs and wandered onto the beach, she felt as if she were the only human being left in the world. She walked for a long time, cutting a path well away from the water, taking a moment here and there to pick up a fragment of seashell for inspection. But none of the pieces she found was any different from the ones she had amassed over the past four years, so she left them for someone else to find.

When they reached the pier at the Carlisle Yacht Club, Georgia turned around to head back. The chilly air had numbed her fingers and face, and her ears ached where the wind had whipped about them. A cup of hot chocolate would really hit the spot right now, she thought as she gazed wistfully at a ramshackle building near the entrance to the pier.

It was as gray as everything else seemed to be that day, but the sign in front, proclaiming Rudy’s Local—The Place For Fish, looked cheerful despite the dingy day. Rudy himself was a very colorful fellow, she thought further with a smile, and she looked forward to whiling away an hour or so with him before heading home. With a quick whistle, she summoned Molly back to her side, and they made their way toward the restaurant.

“Rudy! It’s Georgia!” she called out as she entered the deserted building. She plopped down on a stool at the counter, and Molly stretched out on the floor behind her. It was a familiar place, a familiar position. “Rudy?” she tried again when she received no answer.

“I’m in back!” a ragged voice finally shouted in reply from somewhere beyond the kitchen. “Be out in ’bout fifteen minutes, soon as I get this freezer unit fixed. Help yourself to hot chocolate—I know that’s what you’re here for. Vandermint’s under the cash register for spiking it the way you like.”

Rudy knew her too well, she thought as she rose to move behind the counter and follow his instructions. After fixing herself a large mugful of the concoction, Georgia began to wander restlessly around the room to wait for him, humming under her breath a slow number from her teenage years, and sipping her hot chocolate carefully.

Gazing out the window, she watched as a spotless, gunmetal gray Jaguar sedan with a Washington, D.C., license plate eased to a halt in a parking space in the lot outside. She wondered what would bring a traveler to a summers-and-weekends community like Carlisle in the dead of winter and the middle of the week.

The person who emerged was tall, broad shouldered and very male, with coal black hair that the wind immediately caught and danced with. He had apparently been on the road for some time, because while she watched him, he began to stretch, flexing his arms out to his sides before curling them back in toward his exquisitely formed body.

He still had his back to her and had not put on his coat, and Georgia could almost swear she saw the muscles in his back bunch and ripple beneath his dark blue sweater every time he moved. When he leaned forward, she couldn’t help but notice how well he fit his jeans. He reached back into the car and extracted a leather bomber jacket, carelessly thrust his arms into the sleeves and turned toward the restaurant.

It was then that her breath caught in her throat and, almost involuntarily, she moved closer to the window. It wasn’t so much because the man was one of the most handsome she had, ever seen. And it wasn’t because his gaze was so utterly fixed on hers as he approached. It wasn’t even because of the way his appearance had suddenly roused feelings and sensations in her that she knew were best ignored.

It was because he seemed very familiar somehow.

She wasn’t sure, but she thought his steps faltered somewhat when he saw her watching him through the window, but he recovered quickly and kept coming. She lifted a hand to flatten her palm against the pane, her eyes never straying from the man as he neared the front door of the restaurant. The wind shoved his hair down over his forehead, preventing her from seeing his eyes clearly, but he watched her in return as he drew nearer, his expression puzzled and wary.

She lost sight of him as he entered, but she turned away from the window and spun around to find him pushing through the second set of doors that would bring him into the restaurant’s main dining room. In the dim light she could scarcely make out his face, but her heart hummed and skipped as she studied him. He looked roguish and gentle at the same time, and definitely very familiar.

The man took a few measured steps forward, bringing his tall frame out of the shadows, but leaving his face still hidden from the light. When he spoke, his words sounded as if they were filled with something almost akin to...melancholy ?

“Don’t you remember me?” he asked softly, his voice sounding thunderous in the otherwise silent room.

At first, Georgia shook her head slowly in response. Then he took one more step forward and brought his face into the light, and she saw his eyes—eyes of a dark blue color she had never quite seen anywhere else, as often as she had searched to find an adequate comparison. Expressive eyes, compelling eyes. Eyes that had once looked upon her full of laughter and a languid kind of affection.

Georgia bit her lip. Now Jack’s eyes were sad and fatigued and framed by shadows. In many ways, it seemed to her then, he was indeed a man she didn’t remember.

“Jack McCormick,” she said on a shallow breath.

As soon as she spoke his name, his eyes cleared of their troubling clouds and his lips turned up slightly at the corners, hinting at a smile she remembered only too well. Her stomach clenched into a tight fist when she realized how much she had missed him all these years.

“So you do remember,” he replied quietly, approaching her with slow, uncertain steps. His voice had deepened over the years, but was still a little rough and youthful. And, as it always had, the sound of his voice made her smile.

Jack laughed then, low and strong, and for a moment she could detect a trace of the boy she had known for a little over a year more than two decades before. Something in him relaxed, the shadows left his eyes and he looked at her with the same puzzling expression he had always seemed to reserve for her alone. For a long time they only gazed at each other silently.

Georgia studied the face above her, comparing it with the one she had known so long ago. Essentially, they were one and the same, yet there were so many differences. His tousled curls, the curls she had thought made him look so rebellions and that she had always had to force herself not to wind around her fingers, were gone. Now his hair was cut casually short. Lines fanned out at the corners of his eyes and slashed along the sides of his mouth, and his cheeks were rough from a half day’s growth of beard.

He’d barely been shaving the last time she saw him, she thought—that morning of his eighteenth birthday, just before he had slipped away from Carlisle without a care, without a plan, without a backward glance.

Without even telling her goodbye.

Before she realized what she was doing, she set her hot chocolate down on the nearest table, then lifted her hand to cup his cheek, skimming her thumb along the ridge of his cheekbone as she had done the first day they’d met. She didn’t know what made her do such a thing. For some reason, it just felt right. Somehow, the years slipped away, and she felt as if she were thirteen again, seeing Jack up close for the first time.

Jack McCormick closed his eyes when Georgia Lavender touched him so tenderly. The gentle motion was nearly his undoing. It was going to be more difficult than he’d anticipated, he thought, seeing Georgia again after all this time. He wished they could go back for just one day—one hour, even—just long enough that he could tell her so many things he wished he’d said to her when he’d had the chance.

He had always regretted not telling her goodbye. It had left him feeling incomplete somehow, unfinished. All these years, he’d just never quite come to terms with the way Georgia had always made him feel. Mainly because he’d never quite understood his feelings for her.

He tilted his head into the soft caress of her fingers, and couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps now it might be too late to try. For over twenty years she had lived a life that he knew nothing about, and he himself had changed in so many ways. The Georgia of his memories was just a kid—a troubled kid, at that.

When he left Carlisle she’d been a scrawny, awkward girl of fourteen, almost fifteen, swallowed by a big pair of glasses, and generally frightened of life. He’d never once felt a stir of sexual anything where Georgia was concerned. Affection, yes. Perhaps he’d even loved her in a way. But she’d been his friend. His confidante. His sanctuary. It had never occurred to him that she might someday become something more.

He opened his eyes and studied her again. The Georgia who greeted him today, however, was a different person entirely. Her coppery hair was shot through with silver now, and her gray eyes were lined with life and laughter. She was round and soft and beautiful. She was a woman through and through. And something inside Jack responded to her in a way he never would have imagined—immediately and irrevocably.

And suddenly he wondered if it had been such a good idea to return to Carlisle after all.

Gently he wrapped his fingers around hers and pulled her hand away from his cheek, noting the hurt in her eyes as he did so. But he said nothing. He had planned to come into the restaurant for a cup of coffee to fortify himself before driving the final mile to the address he’d located in the phone book, and to prepare himself for what he would find when he located Georgia Lavender. But he’d been denied that last little moment of preparation. And he still couldn’t quite assimilate the woman of thirty-seven with the girl of fourteen. So he studied her in silence for a moment more.

Gone was the timid, mousy girl who had slouched through life, averted her eyes from everyone she encountered, and cowered at the mention of her father’s name. In her place was a beautiful, vivacious woman whose dark gray eyes were alive with a vibrant spirit. He wondered what—or who—had brought her to such life in the years that he’d been gone. And something pinched inside him at the knowledge that it hadn’t been he.

According to the listing in the phone book, her last name was still Lavender, but that didn’t necessarily mean she hadn’t married. His gaze flicked down to her left hand, and when he oted no sign of a wedding ring, he relaxed a little. There was a good chance she was involved with someone, though, he reminded himself. A woman who looked like she did couldn’t possibly be wanting for dates.

Then he reminded himself that all of that was immaterial. He’d come back for Georgia because she was his friend. Because he’d left her at a time when she needed him, and he wanted to make up for that. What difference did it make if she was married, or even involved? Romance had never been on his mind where she was concerned. He just had a debt to pay to her, and a score to settle with her father, that was all.

Before he realized what he was doing, he pulled her into his arms and hugged her fiercely. He tried to tell himself it was an embrace two very good friends would naturally share after such a lengthy separation. But as he wrapped his arms around her waist and settled his chin on top of her head, his heart began to beat faster than it had for more than twenty years.

When he felt her stiffen in his arms, he immediately released her, remembering that she had never been comfortable with close physical contact. Even where he had been concerned, he recalled sadly. She had always been the first to pull away whenever one of them had needed holding.

He let her move within arm’s length of him, but no farther. For long moments they only studied each other wordlessly, lost in thought, memory and speculation.

Jack McCormick, Georgia marveled. What on earth was he doing back in Carlisle? He was quite possibly the last person she might have expected to see after all this time. But even two decades had not diminished her memory of him. He was still breathtakingly handsome, still touched by roughness and softened with gentleness.

Still able to make her heart race by his mere presence in the room.

It was as if something inside her that had been chained down for centuries suddenly broke free and soared toward the light. All the adolescent longing that had gone unassuaged, all the needful yearning left unfulfilled, all the tentative joy she’d never found elsewhere in her life... All of it rose to the surface in a swift, stormy rush of emotion, and she felt all over again as if she were fourteen years old and would die without Jack McCormick in her life.

His hug had been almost too much for her to bear. How many times in their youth had she been forced to push him away before he somehow discovered just how desperately in love with him she’d been? His embraces back then had resulted from his need for comfort after his foster father’s overbearing bullying. But hers had gone beyond a desire for comforting. Hers had been because she simply wanted to be as close to Jack as two people could be.

What would he say now if she told him how often she had fantasized about making love with him, even at the tender age of fourteen? What would he do if she confessed right now that she’d wanted nothing more in her young life than for him to be the man who made her a woman?

But someone else had performed that service years ago, and Georgia had always regretted not asking Jack to be the one. He would have been more gentle, more tender, more loving. The event might even have been special if Jack had been the one sharing it with her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him.

He didn’t answer right away, and Georgia felt a tingle of apprehension shimmy up her spine.

“I needed to talk to someone.”

She chuckled a little nervously. “Don’t tell me you’re so alone that you have to look up a friend from twenty years ago when you want to have a conversation.”

“It’s about my brother and sister.”

Georgia sobered immediately. She wondered if she was still the only person he’d ever confided in about his family, then decided she must be if he’d risked a time warp back to Carlisle just to have someone to reminisce with about them.

“Is there someplace we can talk?” he asked.

“What’s wrong with right here?”

He looked around, and seemed to realize for the first time that the place was empty except for the two of them. Apparently unmoved by the knowledge, however, he said, “Maybe your house would be better. I’d rather not talk about them in public.”

“But—”

Her objection was cut short, because Rudy chose that moment to appear behind the counter, and he was clearly suspicious of the scene that greeted him.

“Georgia?” he asked in an aged, anxious voice. “This guy buggin’ you?”

She almost laughed out loud. Bugging her? Jack McCormick had been bugging her since she was thirteen years old, when he had sent her pubescent hormones into a frenzy.

“No, Rudy,” she told the old man softly. “This is Jack McCormick. You might remember him. He used to live in Carlisle. But only very briefly.” Too briefly, she added to herself.

Rudy scratched his grizzled chin. “McCormick, eh? Yeah, I remember you. Got in a lot of fights, right?”

A small, irritated sound erupted from the back of Jack’s throat. “Yeah, that was me. I’ve changed quite a bit since then, though.”

“What?” Rudy asked. “Ya don’t fight no more?”

Jack glanced down at the floor, and Georgia got the feeling it wasn’t so much to avoid Rudy’s gaze as it was to avoid hers. “I didn’t say that,” he told the other man. But he didn’t elaborate further.

Rudy nodded, but still seemed wary of the no-longer juvenile delinquent. “Where’s Molly?” he asked Georgia.

At the mention of her name, the big yellow dog on the floor lifted her head from her paws and wagged her tail. She, too, had been eyeing Jack since he’d entered the restaurant, but seemed to harbor considerably less concern about his character than Rudy did.

“She’s right here,” Georgia told the old man, trying to hide a smile. “So don’t worry. Molly will protect me if Jack starts to become his old beastly self.”

Rudy nodded slowly, but added, “I’ll be here all night if ya need me. Supper crowd will be comin’ in any time now.”

Georgia smiled at him. This time of year the “supper crowd” consisted of maybe a half-dozen people, but she took comfort in Rudy’s obvious concern, and his assurance that the entire community would rush to her rescue should Jack try anything funny.

“Thanks,” she said as she lifted a hand in farewell. “Molly? You coming, girl?”

As the couple turned to leave, the big dog ambled after them. The moment the restaurant door closed behind them, the wind assailed them with bitter cold. Georgia braved a glimpse at Jack as they strode toward his car, trying to assimilate the boy of seventeen and his sloppy jalopy with the man of forty who drove something sophisticated and expensive. He’d sold his beloved, beat-up Nova just before leaving town, and although he’d never mentioned it, she knew it was because he’d needed the money. Now, however, judging by his chosen mode of transportation, money wasn’t much of a problem for him.

Jack McCormick had changed, she realized. A lot. And she wasn’t sure whether change was something she wanted to see in him or not. With a wistful sigh, she folded herself into the car after Molly and told herself not to think about it.


Two

They drove the mile to her house in silence. Molly sat in the back seat, leaning forward between them, her heavy panting the only sound interrupting the quiet. Jack gazed with interest at his surroundings as they made their journey. He’d spent less than two years in Carlisle as a teenager, and it had been only one of a dozen locations where the state had placed him. But the small town had always been stamped indelibly at the front of his brain, never to be forgotten. Because this was where he had known Georgia Lavender.

Since his parents’ deaths when he was seven years old, Jack had been shuttled and shunted from group home to foster home to correctional home and back again. He’d been a discipline problem from day one, fighting and backtalking and being generally bad tempered. That’s what happened when a boy was ripped from his home and his family without warning or concern. But no one had ever bothered to address that fact. No one had much cared. Not until he had come to Carlisle.

The place had changed a lot, he noted. It had grown outward and upward, and looked to be quite prosperous for a small coastal community. Georgia lived in a subdivision that hadn’t existed when Jack had last been here, in an area well away from town, where the beach and ocean were too treacherous for swimming, but breathtaking to view, and made less accessible by jagged dunes.

As they drew nearer, he saw that the houses were built up on stilts, unoccupied for the most part, with signs in the front yards advertising that they were for rent. Georgia’s house, sitting alone at the end of a cul-de-sac, seemed particularly isolated, a fact that didn’t set well with him for some reason.

It, too, was perched on stilts, but where some of the other houses were looming structures of two and three stories, geometrically designed with sharp corners and slanted lines, hers was a simple ranch style with a series of stairways that started on the ground and wound about the house, ending in a square deck placed at the center of her roof.

As they emerged from his car, he heard her keys jingling, Molly barking at nothing and the wind whipping wildly about the softly moaning house. And all of a sudden he felt as if time and the rest of the world had receded into nothing.

“You’re awfully isolated out here,” he said, speaking his earlier observations aloud as they trudged up the creaking steps.

“Yes, I am,” she agreed as she shoved back a fistful of hair that the wind had tossed ferociously down on her forehead. “I love it here.”

The interior of the house reminded Jack of Georgia’s bedroom in the big house in Carlisle, where he had spent many a night as a teenager—unbeknownst to her father, of course—when he’d been too afraid to go home. Soft colors, lots of light and flowers everywhere—in paintings, on wreaths, in the fabric of the furniture, growing in pastel-colored planters. Everything was scented with the subtle fragrance of spring blossoms, made all the more poignant because it was the dead of winter and he knew he should be denied such pleasures at this time of year.

He noted a telescope angled upward in front of the windows that faced the ocean, and remembered that she had always had an interest in astronomy, something her father had insisted she turn into a degree in astrophysics or aeronautical engineering. Jack wondered how things were between her and her old man these days. Although he’d been keeping track of Gregory Lavender from a business standpoint, he knew little about the man’s personal life. Certainly, from the looks of her, Georgia seemed to be out from under his thumb, but there was no way of knowing for sure where father and daughter stood currently.

Wordlessly she closed the door behind them, went to the kitchen to fill Molly’s bowl with fresh water, returned to the living room to shrug out of her coat, and turned to face Jack fully.

“So what’s the real reason you’ve come back to Carlisle?” she asked bluntly.

He removed his own jacket and tossed it onto the same chair upon which she had discarded hers. But he remained rooted on the other side of the room opposite her, not certain exactly how to act. Georgia’s question was a simple one, he told himself. So why did he find it so impossible to answer her?

When he met her gaze, he realized she was studying him intently, much as she had been since he’d pushed through the doors of the restaurant a half hour earlier. “Have I changed that much?” he asked quietly, sidestepping her question for the time being.

She nodded. “Yes. Yes, you have.”

“So have you.”

“It’s been more than twenty years, Jack,” she said with a shrug. “That’s a long time. People can’t help but change.”

He nodded. “I know. I just didn’t expect...”

“What?”

He shook his head and left his statement unfinished.

“He’s dead, you know.”

Georgia couldn’t imagine what made her blurt out the news that way—the words just tumbled out without her even having planned to say them. A muscle twitched once in Jack’s jaw, but he offered no other indication that he’d even heard what she said.

“Buck, I mean,” she added softly. She hadn’t uttered the name of Jack’s foster father for two decades, but it still left a bad taste in her mouth when she did. “He died about three years ago. Finally drank himself to death. Faye is dead, too. About six months ago.”

“I knew Buck was dead, but I hadn’t heard about Faye,” Jack said, a complete absence of any kind of emotion in his voice at the mention of his former foster parents. “Can’t say that I’m sorry to hear it, though.”

Georgia nodded. Although his foster mother hadn’t beaten him up the way his foster father had, she’d never done anything to stop the abuse, either. It was easy to understand why Jack couldn’t forgive either of them.

No other words passed between them for several moments, then Georgia remembered she was playing hostess to someone she hadn’t seen in ages. “Would you like some coffee?” She gestured at the fireplace behind her. “I could switch on the fire. We could spend the whole afternoon catching up on everything that’s happened since we saw each other last.”

“That could take a lot longer than one afternoon,” Jack told her with a sad smile.

She shrugged again, a little more anxiously this time. “Then we’ll just have to give it more than one afternoon.”

He said nothing in reply to that, and Georgia nibbled her lower lip fretfully. This was just too weird. Although she had never forgotten. Jack McCormick, he was frozen in her mind as a boy of barely eighteen. A surly, angry boy at that, one who’d had no money, no prospects and no hope when he’d left Carlisle. The man who stood before her now was like a stranger. He looked like Jack, kind of, and he spoke like Jack, in a way, and he moved like Jack, a bit, but he wasn’t Jack. Not the Jack she remembered, anyway.

That other Jack had been such a big part of her life at a time when she’d needed someone badly. For one full year in her young life Georgia had had someone to care for, someone who had cared for her in return. For one full year she’d felt like a human being, and it had been enough to generate the strength she’d needed to start pulling away from her father’s bullying.

But after one year, just when things were starting to look up—for her, at least—Jack had disappeared from her life completely, and she’d been left alone again.

Not that she hadn’t expected him to leave. From that first afternoon when he’d driven her away from her father’s wrath, Jack had made no secret of the fact that the day he turned eighteen, when he was no longer answerable to the state of Virginia, he was hightailing it from Carlisle forever. He’d made clear, too, that he’d never again—not in a million, trillion years—set one foot in any of the towns where he’d been placed as a kid.

And Georgia had never doubted that he would stick to that vow as if it were sacred. However, she’d always thought he might consider taking her with him when he left Carlisle, even if she wasn’t of legal age. Or that he might come back for her when she turned eighteen, too. At the very least, she had thought he would tell her goodbye before he left.

But none of those things had happened. Back then, she had told herself she would be prepared for Jack’s departure when it came, and that she would somehow manage without him once he was gone. And she had. Although it had been painful to lose him, Jack’s determination to survive and thrive in the face of adversity had infected Georgia enough to keep her going, even after he was gone.

And now he was back, a man full grown, driving a car that cost more than most houses, self-assured, successful, dynamic. He was no longer surly, but there still seemed to be an unmistakable anger about something simmering just beneath his surface. Evidently, these days he had plenty in the way of money and prospects. As for hope, however...

“I’m not going to be in town for very long,” he said in response to her earlier suggestion that they give it more than one afternoon, scattering her ruminations.

“So why did you come back?” she asked again. “You don’t honestly expect me to believe you’re here because I was the only person you could talk to, and I just so happen to still be in Carlisle.”

“Something that surprises me, quite frankly,” he remarked, once again avoiding a response to her real question.

She shrugged. “This is my home, Jack. It’s where I grew up. I have a business here, and people know me. I even have a few friends these days. I like Carlisle,” she told him simply. “In spite of...everything else.”

“And just what’s your father up to these days?” he asked.

That was Jack, she remembered as a ripple of tension seared her belly. Always straight to the point. “I assume he’s the same as always. We don’t see too much of each other. Not deliberately, anyway.”

“Why not?”

She gazed at him blandly. “You, above all people, should know the answer to that question.”

He shook his head. “I just thought you might have patched things up between the two of you by now.”

She expelled a sound of disgust. “Not likely.”

He nodded, as if the information were no surprise at all. The silence stretched between them until it became an almost palpable thing. Georgia stared at Jack, and Jack stared at Georgia. Both of them obviously had a lot on their minds. So why weren’t they talking about much of anything?

“Jack,” she finally said when she could no longer tolerate the quiet, “for the last time, what are you doing back in Carlisle?”

She thought she detected a slight hesitation before he told her, “I have some business here.”

Georgia nodded, resignation coiling like a chunk of ice in her midsection. So it wasn’t she who had brought him back to town, after all. “What kind of business?”

“Long story. But obviously having to come to Carlisle reminded me of you. And then I got the news about my brother and sister, and...” He inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly. “I wanted to see you, Geo. I’ve wanted to see you for a long time now.”

Geo. It was the nickname Jack alone had used for her. A term of endearment. A term of affection. And hearing it again for the first time in more than twenty years made Georgia want to cry for some reason. She turned hastily, recalling that she had been about to make coffee, and crossed quickly to the kitchen. Unfortunately, with the layout of the small house being what it was, the kitchen was pretty much just an extension of the living room, so she was still well within Jack’s view.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about you for the last few days,” he continued. “I’ve needed someone to talk to, and you were really the only person I could ever open up to, you know?”

She nodded, the motion jerky and fast, but kept her back to him as she filled the coffeemaker with the dark, fragrant powder.

“I...it’s—”

He bit off the statement immediately after beginning it, and she detected something in his voice then that was troubled and wary. Quickly she completed her task and gathered her thoughts, then returned to the living room to join him while the coffee brewed. He had moved away from the windows, and now occupied the place where she had last been standing herself. She gestured toward the sofa, but he declined the invitation without even acknowledging it. So Georgia dropped down to seat herself there instead.

“It’s what?” she asked.

Instead of answering, Jack moved back to the chair where he had draped his coat, then withdrew a slender white envelope from the inside pocket. Wordlessly, he crossed the room again and handed the letter to Georgia, and she eyed him with puzzlement as she extended her hand for it.

“Just read it,” he said softly.

She scanned the Washington, D.C., return address—evidently a private investigation firm—and looked back at Jack, still confused. When he nodded silently, she withdrew the letter from inside and read:

Dear Mr. McCormick,

I represent a brother and sister, the former Stephen and Charlotte McCormick, now named Spencer Melbourne and Lucy Cagney, originally of Richmond, Virginia, and now living in Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Virginia, respectively. The matter concerns their search for an older brother, Jack William McCormick, from whom they have been separated for more than thirty years. Through my investigative endeavors, I have reason to believe you are that brother....

“Oh, Jack,” Georgia said as she glanced up at him again. “You’ve found them.”

He shook his head, his expression a mixture of joy and terror. “No, they’ve found me.”

She dropped her gaze back to the letter and read through to the end, marveling at how much this must mean to him. “Have you contacted them yet?” she asked when she completed the missive.

He shook his head again.

“Why not?”

“I’m not ready yet.”

“But you’ve been wanting to find them ever since I met you.”

“I’m not ready yet,” he repeated.

“But, Jack...”

He strode restlessly across the room and collapsed onto the sofa beside her, as if his legs were no longer sturdy enough to hold him. He tipped his head backward until it was resting on the sofa’s back, stared blindly up at the ceiling and sighed with much vigor.

“Do you remember how I told you I made a promise to myself the day the social workers came and took Stevie and Charley away from me?”

Her heart turned over at the memory of the vow a small boy had made. “You swore you would find them someday,” she said. “And that the three of you would be a family again.”

He snapped his head forward, his expression vicious as he stared out at the living room. “And I promised myself I’d be in a position to take care of them when I did. That no one would be able to take them from me again. Ever.”

For the first time since encountering him again, Georgia saw a clear sign that the boy of seventeen was still very much alive in Jack McCormick. Part of him was still scared, still unsure of himself, still untrusting of the world. She smiled sadly, wondering why she was surprised. In spite of making it on her own all these years, a big part of Georgia would never be able to leave behind the frightened girl she’d been before meeting Jack.

“But the twins must be over thirty years old now, Jack—”

“Thirty-five,” he interrupted her.

“Surely they’ve been taking care of themselves for years. No one could take them away from you now. They’re adults. They can come and go as they please.”

“They might still be in trouble,” he told her. “They might still need someone to look out for them. Hell, look what happened to me.”

“Hey, if that nice little foreign job you drove up in is any indicator, it looks to me like you’re a big success,” she said.

He turned to look at her full on, his eyes dark and angry. “Success is a relative term,” he told her softly. “And you have no idea what it’s taken to get here. Until I know for certain, I can’t be satisfied that the twins are okay. They could have been constantly moved from one place to another, like I was. They could have ended up with people who didn’t give a damn about them, like I did. Anything could have happened to...”

He rose abruptly and began to pace restlessly the length of the small room. Georgia watched him in silence, giving him a moment to cool down. It was funny, how easily the two of them had slipped back into their old rotes—Jack feeling edgy and anxious about something, Georgia there to listen and reassure.

“They both have different names now,” she began again when he seemed to be calming down somewhat. “Obviously they were adopted. They probably had very good lives. Just because you were forsaken by the state doesn’t mean they—”

“They weren’t with their family,” he interrupted again, halting his pacing directly in front of her. “Their rightful family, I mean. They weren’t with me. They couldn’t possibly have lived lives as good as they could have had if we’d all stayed together.”

Georgia couldn’t argue with that. Even though her own experience with family was a painful one, she felt certain that Jack McCormick would have made a difference in his twin siblings’ lives, however those lives had been lived.

“You should answer this letter,” she said. “You should see them. As soon as possible.”

“I will. But not yet. I’m not ready. There’s one more thing I have to do. One more promise I made to myself that I have to keep before I can send for my brother and sister.”

“What promise is that?”

His gaze snapped to hers, his eyes stormy. But he said nothing to enlighten her.

Georgia opened her mouth to say something else, then thought better of the action. Obviously, Jack had given this matter some thought, and nothing she could say would change his mind. She folded the letter neatly back into thirds, carefully slid it into its envelope and handed it to him. He took it from her silently, gazed at it for a moment, then slid it back into his jacket pocket.

The coffeemaker in the kitchen wheezed its last gasp. Georgia rose and filled two mugs, then carried them carefully back to the living room. When Jack only stared blindly at the mug she extended toward him, she set it on the coffee table and sat down on the sofa beside him again.

As covertly as she could, she stole a glance at his profile, still unable to believe he was actually there, chatting about the twins as if twenty-three years hadn’t passed since their last conversation. He gazed toward the windows that overlooked the beach, obviously consumed by thoughts of his family, and she took advantage of his preoccupation to consider him more fully.

His black hair was kissed with silver, and he had a small scar high on his cheek that hadn’t been there before. She wondered how he’d come by it, wondered about everything that had happened to him after he’d left Carlisle. Without even realizing what she was doing, she glanced down at his left hand to see if he was wearing a wedding band but saw no indication that he had ever slipped one on.

His hands seemed bigger somehow than they had been before. All of him seemed bigger somehow. Over the years, whenever her thoughts had strayed to memories of Jack, she’d recalled a young man of wiry build and awkward movement, a boy who always seemed to be looking over his shoulder or dancing around as if dodging a punch. She supposed that was understandable, seeing as how it hadn’t been unusual for him to show up at her bedroom window bloodied and bruised. The Jack of her youth had been running every bit as scared as she had been.

But this Jack seemed fearless. Solid. Unwavering. His focus was sharp, and he clearly had a plan of action. She just wished she could tell what it was. Somehow, she sensed he was hiding something from her. Even though so many years had passed, and in the scheme of things she really hadn’t known him for that long, Georgia felt as if she could still read Jack intimately. And even beyond all the outward changes, for some reason something about him wasn’t...right.

“So what have you been doing all these years?” she asked, striving for something innocuous to ease the tension she felt eating him up. “Looks like you found a decent job,” she said with a chuckle. “Finally got that car you always wanted, I see, though those D.C. plates come as a surprise. I never thought of you as the urban type.” She tried to sound nonchalant as she added, “What else is there? Are you married with children?”

When he met her gaze again, his eyes were edged with fatigue and sadness. “I’m kind of surprised you’d care about what happened to me after I left Carlisle.”

She was honestly stumped by his response. “Why wouldn’t I care about you?”

He shrugged, sighing heavily. “For some reason I thought you’d be angry with me when I saw you again.”

Again she was puzzled by his assumption. “Why would I be angry with you?”

“Because I... left you.”

The way his voice softened on the last part of his statement made Georgia’s heart hammer a little more fiercely behind her rib cage. “You always promised you would. It’s not like I wasn’t prepared.”

He nodded, straight white teeth catching his lower lip as he thought about something. “Yeah, well, that made one of us,” he told her cryptically.

She decided not to dwell on his odd assertion and instead continued, “After you left town, I consoled myself by telling myself you’d come back for me. Then, after a while, I knew that would never happen. Once I turned eighteen, I sometimes thought about coming after you. But I was never sure where to look.”

“Anyone could have found me who wanted to,” he said. “But no one ever wanted to, apparently.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” she objected when she realized what he was trying to say. “Don’t make me out to be the bad guy in this. You’re the one who left Carlisle without even saying goodbye.”

His gaze snapped up to meet hers. “Like you said, I never made a secret of my intentions.”

“No, but you never extended me an invitation to come along, either.”

He shook his head at her in disbelief. “I didn’t think you’d need one. Besides, you were only fourteen—you weren’t legal to come. Your father would have had the law on us in no time. Geo, I—”

“Jack, stop.” She rose abruptly and ran a hand nervously through her hair, wanting to kick herself for ever getting them started on this. “There’s too much we could have—should have—said and didn’t. We were kids. Two totally different people from who we are now. Let’s not even talk about your leaving or my not looking for you. We both could have done things differently, but we didn’t, and there’s nothing we can do to change that, all right?”

She forced a smile. “Let’s not allow it to wreck our friendship. You were the best buddy I ever had. We just found each other again. I don’t want anything to spoil that.”

He continued to stare down into his coffee instead of meeting her gaze, but he mumbled softly, “All right. We’ll let it go. For now.”

For now, Georgia repeated. She supposed it was inevitable that they’d have to address the past eventually. But today they were both more than a little dazed at seeing each other again after the passage of so much time. Jack had a lot on his mind where his family was concerned. The last thing they should be doing was rehashing the old days that had brought them so many hard times, and so much unhappiness. But there was still far too much left unsaid and unsettled, she knew. And somehow, some way, soon, they were going to have to address that.

The moment stretched taut, until the back door careened open on the winter wind, and a male voice shouted out, “Georgia! I’m home!”

Georgia and Jack spun abruptly around toward the announcement in time to see a young boy in his middle teens burst into the kitchen and slam the door good-naturedly behind himself. He heaved a stack of school books onto the counter and moved immediately to the refrigerator, yanking open the door to study its contents for a moment before snatching a soda and popping the top with a quick pffft. He was relaxed and unconcerned and clearly quite at home in his surroundings.

Until he looked up and saw Jack. And that’s when the boy snapped to wary attention.

Immediately his gaze shifted to Georgia, his expression a silent question mark. She smiled as she rose from the sofa, then made her way around it and into the kitchen, pulling the boy into a fierce bear hug. Then she stood beside him with her hand roped around his waist, and he draped his arm casually over her shoulder.

But he continued to eye Jack with suspicion, a reaction that Georgia had hoped Evan would be over by now. Still, she supposed he had a reason and a right to be cautious. And maybe someday he wouldn’t be so quick to mistrust.

She gave him another affectionate squeeze, then turned to Jack to make introductions. “Jack,” she said with a proud smile, “I’d like you to meet my son. Evan.”


Three

Her son? Jack echoed to himself, the small word nearly choking off his breath. Georgia had a son? How the hell had that happened? Well, of course, he could pretty well figure out how it had happened, but when? And with whom? And why?

Why? That was the question that stuck in his head most profoundly. Not so much Why does she have a son? but rather Why cou/dn’t she have waited for me? And then he asked himself further just what the hell he was thinking by asking himself that. Before the incongruity of all those questions had time to jell in his brain, he shook them off—both mentally and physically—with one quick, imperceptible gesture.

Then he studied the boy more closely, only to find that Evan was just as intent on studying him right back. For one long, silent moment, the two men sized each other up in the way men do when both of them care deeply about the same woman. While Evan considered Jack, Jack considered Evan. Looking at the boy was like seeing himself too many years ago to consider. He towered a good four inches over Georgia, his dark, shoulder-length hair unruly, his casually hooded gaze from piercing blue eyes hiding anything he might be feeling, his menacing stance announcing to the world that he was ready for any and all takers.

Evan narrowed his eyes even more angrily at Jack and demanded, “Who the hell are you?”

“Evan!” Georgia cried as she took a step away to glare at the boy. “That was completely uncalled for. You apologize to Mr. McCormick right now.”

For Jack it was the proverbial déjà vu all over again. A quarter century melted away, and he was standing back in the parking lot of Carlisle High School East, getting to know Georgia’s family for the first time, up close and personal. And he was seeing all over again, too, just how badly he measured up to the standards of the other man in her life. Only this time it wasn’t Georgia’s father who found him so lacking. It was Georgia’s son.

“Name’s Jack McCormick,” he retorted in much the same way he had to Gregory Lavender that day two decades ago. He would have tacked on another Who the hell are you? as well, but seeing as how Georgia had just introduced the boy as her son, it wasn’t exactly necessary.

Nevertheless, he felt compelled to add, “Not that it’s any of your business.”

This time Georgia pivoted to glare at him. “Jack...” she said softly, her voice edged with warning.

She turned back to her son. Her son, for God’s sake. “Evan,” she began again, her tone stern, “Jack is an old friend of mine who used to live in Carlisle. I will not tolerate you speaking to him in such a way. Apologize to him.”

Evan met Jack’s gaze levelly, but no apology was forthcoming.

“Now,” Georgia told the boy.

“Sorry.” Evan spat it out without an ounce of contrition.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jack told him, certain the admonition was completely unnecessary. Evan didn’t seem the type who was likely to lose any sleep over his transgressions.

Georgia shook her head at both of them, as if trying to figure out what she’d done to deserve being saddled with two such men in one lifetime. “You want coffee?” she asked the room at large.

“Yeah,” both men chorused as one.

She nodded, and when she went to pick up Jack’s mug, he remembered that he hadn’t even touched his coffee yet. “Just top mine off,” he told her.

She looked down at the full mug. “Uh, yeah. Sure. Fine.”

“I’ll take mine back to my room,” Evan told her, his gaze still fixed on Jack. “I have an exam tomorrow, and I have to work tonight. So I need to spend the afternoon studying.”

“Fine,” Georgia reiterated, her vocabulary now fully reduced to single-syllable words.

“On second thought,” Jack told her, still watching Evan, “don’t bother topping me off. I need to get going.”

From the corner of his eye he saw her whip around to stare at him. “But I thought—”

“I have a dinner date, and I need to get back to the hotel to shower and change before I go.”

He had deliberately chosen the word date instead of the word appointment—which would have been much more accurate—because he specifically wanted to give Georgia the wrong impression. Although he knew it was childish, he wanted to get back at her for having a son, even if his retaliation was lame and unfounded. And evidently his ruse had worked, because when he glanced over at her again, she looked stricken and hurt.

“Okay,” she muttered. “No problem. Maybe we can get together for lunch tomorrow.”

He shook his head. “I’m pretty booked up for the duration of my visit.”

“But you said you wanted to—”

“I’m going to be busy.” He cut her off.

When he turned to retrieve his jacket, his gaze inevitably fell on Evan, and he realized immediately that Georgia’s son understood exactly what had just passed between the two adults. Oh, he might not have known the particulars of the situation, but Evan was obviously smart enough to see it for what it was, and he glared murderously at Jack as a result.

And, really, Jack couldn’t blame him. If someone—some interloper from the past—had just gone out of his way to hurt the woman he loved, Jack would feel pretty homicidal, too. Good thing he didn’t love Georgia, he told himself. At least, not like that.

“Where are you staying?” he heard her ask as he jammed his arms into the sleeves of his jacket.

“At The Bluffs,” he told her.

The Bluffs was the local nickname for The Carlisle Inn, a historic cliffside resort overlooking the Atlantic, a hotel that drew only the wealthiest, most elite vacationers. It was where Jack had worked as a busboy when he and Georgia were teenagers.

“Oh, great,” Evan said. “Then I guess I’ll be seeing more than enough of you.”

“Evan...” Georgia said, her voice laced with warning.

Jack narrowed his eyes at the boy, but Georgia was the one to enlighten him. “Evan works at The Bluffs,” she said softly. “As a busboy.”

Jack nodded, but kept his gaze trained on Georgia’s son. “I’ll try to stay out of your way.”

“Yeah, you do that.”

Georgia took a few steps forward to stand between them, shaking her head once again at both men. But instead of commenting on the animosity burning up the air between them, she only instructed Evan to take his coffee back to his room and hit the books. As he moved to follow her instructions, she turned to Jack.

“We need to get together again before you leave town,” she told him. “How long will you be here?”

“I’m not sure. A week. Maybe two. But like I said, I’ll be—”

“You won’t be that busy,” she interrupted him.

He turned to watch Evan’s retreating back, knowing there was little chance the boy wasn’t eavesdropping on every word the two of them uttered. “All right,” he said. “Maybe we can do lunch tomorrow.”

“Fine,” Georgia told him. “I’ll even make it easy on you. I’ll meet you at The Bluffs, all right?”

“I’ll be in the lobby at noon.”

“I’ll see you then.”

What had started off barely an hour ago as a warm, wonderful welcoming had dissolved quickly into an anxious, awful antagonism. Jack knew when it had happened—the moment Georgia’s son had walked into the house. But he didn’t know why. And he didn’t know what to do to put things back to rights. Geo was correct about one thing, though—the two of them needed to get together again before Jack left Carlisle, and for more than just lunch. What she didn’t know was the real reason why.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he told her, not knowing what else to say.

And before Georgia could answer him, he crossed quickly to the door and made his way back out into the cold.

Jack had concluded his dinner with Adrian an hour earlier and was poring over the Lavender file in his hotel suite when a knock sounded at the door. Expecting it to be room service delivering the industrial-sized pot of coffee he was going to need for the work he had ahead of him that night, he left the scattered papers where they lay on the table, tossed his reading glasses down on top of them and rose to answer the summons.

So The Bluffs hadn’t changed the service uniform at all in the twenty-plus years since Jack had worn one himself, he noted when he pulled the door open and frowned at the kid standing on the other side. But where he himself had always grudgingly followed the rules and kept his hair short, Evan—was his last name Lavender, too?—had simply gathered his long tresses at his nape with a rubber band. And while Jack had always given in and worn the requisite—and very dorky—black patent leather oxfords with the black pants, white jacket and bazillion brass buttons, Georgia’s son wore ratty black hightops.

“Your shoes aren’t regulation,” he said to the boy by way of a greeting.

Evan thrust his chin up in what Jack supposed was meant to be a threatening posture. Funny, though, how it just made the kid looked scared somehow. “You gonna report me?” he challenged.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Jack retorted. “It would give you yet another reason to dislike me.”

“Hey, I don’t need another reason to dislike you. I’ve already got plenty.”

Jack narrowed his eyes at the boy. But instead of commenting on Evan’s contempt, he said, “I thought we agreed to keep out of each other’s way.” To punctuate his assertion, he barred the kid’s entrance by bracing both forearms against the doorjamb on each side.

Evan shook his head. “No, you agreed to stay out of my way.”

Jack chuckled without humor. “Guess I just assumed that meant you were going to steer clear of me, too.”

Georgia’s son sneered at him. “Guess you guessed wrong, man.”

Boy, the kid had an attitude, he thought, deciding not to dwell on the fact that it was a lot like the one he’d nurtured himself when he was Evan’s age. “I thought you worked as a busboy,” he said instead.

Evan shrugged, glancing at the carafe and coffee accoutrements—cup, saucer, creamer, sugar—he balanced on a tray in one hand. “On slow nights, if they want to send someone home early, we double up on jobs sometimes. So tonight I’m room service, too.”

“Well, aren’t I just the lucky boy, then?” Jack muttered.

“I dunno,” Evan said. “Guess we’ll have to wait and see about that.” Before Jack could comment, he added, “You want your coffee or not?”

Reluctantly, Jack stepped aside, allowing the boy enough room to pass by. Where he had half expected Evan to just heave the tray’s contents angrily into the room and leave, he instead followed the hotel procedure, moving swiftly to the table and chairs on the other side of the room, arranging everything just so. Jack moved to the dresser for his wallet and extracted a couple of bills for a tip.

“I don’t want your money,” Evan told him when he noted Jack’s intention.

“Oh, so you’re one of those philanthropic busboys who’s only doing this for the good of humanity, is that it?” Jack asked sarcastically, feeling irrationally stung that the boy had rejected his tip.

Evan narrowed his eyes viciously. “No, I just don’t want your money, okay?”

Jack tossed his wallet back to the dresser, then turned to face the boy squarely, settling his hands on his hips in challenge. “Well, I sure as hell get the impression that you want something from me.”

Evan’s lips thinned into a tight line. “Yeah, I do. I want you to stay away from Georgia.”

That was the second time Evan had referred to his mother by her first name. Jack noted. And although the kid came across as surly enough to do something like that just because it would annoy people, he got the feeling there was more to it than that in Evan’s case.

“Anything going on between your mother and me goes way back before you were even born, and is frankly none of your business,” he told the boy.

Evan shifted his weight to one foot and settled his hands menacingly on his own hips, mimicking Jack’s posture. Although he couldn’t have been more than sixteen, he was only a few inches shy of Jack’s six feet two inches, if much less solidly built—for the time being, at any rate. Doubtless he would fill out considerably before reaching full maturity. And with that big chip on his shoulder, the kid probably outweighed Jack by a good two tons.

“Look, I know who you are,” he said. “Ever since I met Georgia, she’s been telling me how much I remind her of someone she used to know, and—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Jack interrupted, his head spinning as he tried to absorb this new information. “Ever since you met her? I thought she was your mother?”

Evan shifted his weight to his other foot, then seemed to soften a little as he replied, “She’s not my real mother. She’s my foster mother. Not that it’s any of your business,” he tacked on meaningfully.

Jack could only stare dumbfounded at the boy. Georgia didn’t have a son? Georgia was a foster mother?

“She calls me her son,” Evan went on, evidently mistaking Jack’s turmoil for confusion. “And I let her do it, because she seems to think it’s important.” He dropped his gaze to the floor before adding, “But I’m not her son. And she’s not my mother.” His gaze was fiery with resentment when he glanced up at Jack again. “But she is my friend. And I don’t want to see her get hurt.”

“How old are you?” Jack asked, thinking the kid was way more knowledgeable about... stuff... than a teenager had a right to be.

“Fifteen,” he answered immediately. “I’ll turn sixteen this summer.”

“How long have you known Georgia?”

“Since I was eleven.”

Jack nodded. “Yeah, well, I’ve known her a lot longer than you have,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean squat. If you were really her friend, you wouldn’t have left town and let her be alone for so long.”

“She told you about that?” Jack asked incredulously. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing Georgia would have taken up with a young boy.

“I figured it out for myself,” Evan retorted. “I’m not stupid.”

“I never said you were.” On the contrary, Jack thought, the kid was way too smart for a fifteen-year-old.

A fifteen-year-old, he reminded himself. Evan was just a kid, one with all the strange baggage that came with the simple act of being a teenager. And if he was in foster care, then there was more to his story than the average fifteen-year-old’s, at that. Now Jack understood his surliness. Now he knew the root of Evan’s immediate and irrational anger. Now he could sympathize with why the kid overreacted to Jack’s sudden reappearance in Georgia’s life.

But that didn’t mean he had to tolerate any of it.

“Look, Evan, Georgia is my friend, too, and was my friend at a time when no one else would be. I left Carlisle behind—not her—and I had my reasons for doing it. I also have my reasons for coming back. And none of them has anything to do with hurting Georgia. As a matter of fact, what I’m doing back here has to do with helping her. Helping her and me both.”

Evan eyed him warily, straightening to his full height again, seemingly unbothered by the fact that Jack was still a good deal larger. “I don’t trust you.”




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