are you, George? Surely a son of mine—”
George gritted his teeth. “As I’ve told you before, many times I might add, I am not gay. You know very well I’ve had some very…healthy relationships in the past. I’m just not in one now, that’s all. I haven’t the time.”
“Of course you have the time. I’ll never understand why you can’t be more like David. At least he joined the navy to see the world. The most you see are the four walls of your apartment. You don’t know what it is to be adventurous.”
Ignoring the pang that had hit him at the mention of his younger brother, George muttered darkly, “I spent half my life keeping David out of trouble. That was enough adventure to last me a lifetime.”
Bettina studied him with a maternal eye. “What you need is a good woman. At least then you would have sex regularly. Every man needs plenty of sex to stay healthy.”
It was time, George decided, that he put an end to this conversation. Discussing his sex life with his mother was low on his list of enjoyable pursuits. “Well, Mother, this has been quite nice, but now I really do have to get back to the office.”
“Not until we have this settled.”
“It is settled as far as I’m concerned. Get someone else to keep an eye on the brat.”
For a dreadful moment he thought his mother was going to cry. Her face puckered up, and he actually saw a tear glistening on her feathery eyelashes. “How can you be so callous, George! Have you forgotten that Ben Richard saved your father’s life in Vietnam? Why, if it hadn’t been for Amelia’s father, you would not have been born. Surely this is little enough to ask when you owe that brave man your very existence? Not to mention thirty years of your father’s life. If your father had been here, he would have expected you to do it. You know that.”
George squirmed in his chair. She’d found his Achilles’ heel. “Well, I suppose…if you put it like that…”
Bettina’s tears vanished and she beamed at him. “So you will meet Amelia at the bus station, then? The bus from Willow Falls arrives on Saturday at three-thirty.”
He made one last desperate attempt. “Why can’t you meet her? You have far more time on your hands than I do.”
“I promised Jessica you’d help her get settled. The child has lived in that sleepy little country town all her life. She’s been protected all those years by four big brothers. She knows nothing about the hazards of city life. She needs someone responsible to watch over her.”
George rolled his eyes heavenward. “Why me?”
“Because,” Bettina said, answering the hypothetical question, “when my dearest 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,
