and best friend asks me to find someone to protect her youngest child and only daughter, I feel obliged to offer the most competent and reliable candidate available.”
Less than gratified by the compliment, George mumbled under his breath, “I’d like to know who’s going to protect me.”
Apparently deciding to ignore the comment, Bettina rattled on. “I thought it would be nice if you helped her settle in her apartment. Did I tell you I rented one for her in your complex? Since you seem so pleased with it, I decided it had to be a quiet, respectable place to live.”
Horrified at the news, George cursed under his breath. He’d lost the damn battle. If he didn’t do this, he had no doubt his mother would lay a guilt trip on him a mile long. “Very thoughtful of you, Mother,” he said tightly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”
“Thank you, George.” Bettina smiled fondly at her son. “I knew I could rely on you. Amelia is leaving home for the first time and she’ll need someone she can rely on. I trust you to be the perfect gentleman, of course. No hanky-panky. I promised her mother, so don’t you dare let me down.”
George walked around the table to pull back Bettina’s chair. “You’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about, Mother. If, for some inexplicable reason, I needed that kind of relationship, and I can assure you I don’t, I wouldn’t be in the least interested in a country brat like Amanda Richard. My tastes in women run more to sophistication, maturity and a little spice to liven things up.”
If he’d hoped to shock his mother, he was disappointed. “Her name is Amelia,” Bettina said crisply. “Do at least get her name right, George. We don’t want her to think you’re a complete ignoramus, now do we?”
Having successfully achieved the last word, she swept from the restaurant, leaving George to follow with a grim sense of impending doom.
Three days later he stood near the entranceway to the bus station, wishing he were anywhere but in the heart of the city on a hot summer day. This was the weekend, for pity’s sake. He should be relaxing with his feet up in his air-conditioned living room, reading the new book he’d bought on financial security. Or maybe listening to his favorite jazz station. Anywhere but in this depressing dump with all the noise and smelly fumes and ominous vagrants hovering around.
How anyone as respectable as the innocent young woman he was supposed to meet could spend more than five minutes aboard one of those menacing monsters pulling into the station he couldn’t imagine. Why on earth hadn’t the girl flown in?
The door of the bus opened and people began spilling out. A rough-looking guy with a beard was the first to alight, followed by a stout woman with her arms full of packages.
George’s interest quickened at the sight of the next passenger. She wore high-heeled boots with jeans that tightly encased her lithe figure. An oversized, bulging purse swung from her slender shoulder and she carried a black leather jacket over her arm. Silky auburn hair bounced around her cheeks as she danced down the steps with an air of someone embarking on an exciting adventure.
George watched her as she reached the ground and turned to put her hand under the arm of a frail elderly woman struggling down the steps behind her. The woman smiled, and said something that made the redhead laugh—a musical sound that seemed to echo deep in George’s gut.
Reluctantly he dragged his gaze away from the pair and studied the rest of the passengers as they stepped down. He should have asked his mother what Amanda—Amelia looked like now. The last time he’d seen her she was a skinny nine-year-old, with pigtails and braces and freckles swarming across her nose. He didn’t remember her face that well…but he did remember her voice. High-pitched and painfully shrill.
At seventeen he’d been miserably shy. Too shy to ask a girl to the prom. Too shy to ask a girl to dance. Amelia had had a knack of making him feel clumsy and ineffective. He remembered her taunts as clearly as if he’d heard them a week ago. Georgie Porgie kissed the girls and ran away. Are you afraid of girls, Georgie Porgie?
Actually, he had been, kind of. The thought of going on a date with a girl had terrified him until shortly after his nineteenth birthday when he’d met Marilyn, a bold, uninhibited twenty-one-year-old who had decided it was her duty to teach him the ways of the world. Marilyn had changed his thinking forever. He wondered whatever had happened to her.
Lost in the past, he failed to notice that all the passengers had disembarked from the bus until the thunderous roar of the engine startled him out of his trance. Only three people looked as if they were waiting for someone. The bearded man, a young boy and the redhead. The elderly woman, whom he’d assumed had accompanied the redhead, had disappeared.
Frowning, George studied the boy. The height and weight were about right, but the dark, greasy hair seemed all wrong. Besides, he definitely looked like a boy, though one could never tell these days. George dug deep in his memory, trying to remember the color of Amelia’s hair. Of course. How could he forget? It was a flaming ginger red.
He glanced at the redhead. She stood several yards away with two large suitcases at her feet and a lost expression on her face. A very attractive face, George noticed. He couldn’t tell the color of her eyes from there but somehow he got the idea they were green. Green eyes went with red hair. Amelia’s eyes were green.
Surprised that he’d remembered that, he stared at the redhead. No, it couldn’t be. Not in a million years. Amelia was country—pigtails and freckles. This woman looked far too citified and classy to have come from Willow Falls, Idaho.
The woman turned her head just then and her gaze locked with his. He saw uncertainty hover in her face, while a questioning smile played around her generous mouth. Now he knew why her laugh had stirred a chord. Still unable to believe what he was seeing, he watched her lift a hand to wave at him.
Amelia Richard had arrived.
He headed in her direction, wishing he’d worn a crisp dress shirt instead of the dark-blue polo shirt he’d snatched from the closet that morning. As he approached, she called out in a voice that was at least an octave lower than he remembered, “Georgie? It is you, isn’t it?”
At the sound of that hateful name he cringed inside. There was no doubt now. Amelia the brat. He did his best to look amiable. At least he managed to get her name right. “Amelia. How are you? How was the trip?”
She smiled happily at him. He hadn’t realized she had dimples. Fascinating. The freckles seemed to have all but disappeared from her cute nose. Right then she didn’t look at all like the kid who’d taunted him all those years ago. She looked…mature, sophisticated, with a definite touch of spice gleaming in her lovely green eyes.
Just the kind of woman he would have stared at across a crowded room, a woman with whom he’d share a glass of wine in front of a roaring fire, dance with to slow, sensual music. Maybe drift toward the bedroom…
Shocked to realize where his thoughts were taking him, he abruptly dropped the hand he’d extended before she could grasp it.
Then she spoke, shattering the vision. “Super to see you again, Georgie! You look great! Thanks a heap for coming to meet me. Just call me Amy. Everyone does.”
He gritted his teeth. That name again. The cultured look had fooled him. She was still the brat from Willow Falls. “I’ll remember to call you Amy,” he said grimly, “if you promise never to call me Georgie again.”
The look in her eyes turned wary. “Oh…wow…okay then. Sorry. Force of habit, I guess. I always think of you as Georgie, but I’ll try to remember.” She gestured at the bulging bags at her feet. “This is all I’ve got for now. The rest is coming along later. Aunt Betty said the apartment was furnished, right?”
Still taken aback at the discovery that she’d thought about him all these years, he shook his head in confusion. “Aunt Betty?”
She nudged his arm with her elbow. “Your mother, silly. Who else would I mean?”
“You call