Georgia Meets Her Groom

“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.”