Georgia Meets Her Groom

“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.