Читать книгу One Bride: Baby Included - Doreen Roberts - Страница 10

“Absolutely not. It’s out of the question.” George Bentley, Jr., dabbed furiously at his mouth with his linen napkin and scowled across the spotless white tablecloth at his mother.

Framed by the tall window behind her, Bettina Bentley was a magnificent sight, as usual. Her blue feathered hat exactly matched the color of her elegant dress and jacket, her hair had been tinted a perfect shade of dark blond, and, with the help of clever makeup, she looked much younger than her fifty-six years.

Not that George appreciated the charming picture she made right then. He was too irritated.

“George.” His mother breathed his name, leaning forward until her bosom hovered perilously close to her hot fudge sundae. Her coated eyelashes flapped at him in feminine appeal. “I’m desperate. I promised Jessica you’d take care of things. Do be a darling. I assure you it will be fun.”

Fun? George almost snorted. He should never have accepted her invitation for dinner, even if Martoni’s was his favorite restaurant. He should have known she had something devious up her sleeve.

He glanced up at the sparkling chandeliers that hung from the ornate ceiling. Dining at Martoni’s was always a pleasant experience. The Italian-style furnishings and decor gave the whole room a festive atmosphere, with colorful floral arrangements and bright paintings of hot, sunlit streets hanging on the peach walls. Elegant—like his mother. Bettina revered elegance to the point of making it a religion.

Since the heart attack that had taken his father’s life, he’d done everything in his power to be there for his mother when she needed him, but sometimes her demands could border on outrageous.

He glared at her, more angry at himself than at her. “Mother, you must have a dozen friends who would be only too happy to show Amanda—”

“Her name is Amelia.”

“—Amelia the sights. After all, Portland isn’t exactly New York. It doesn’t take that long to find your way around.”

“I’m not asking you to show her the city. All cities are pretty much the same, after all. Oregon is such a beautiful state. I just know the girl would adore a trip to the mountains, the ocean, the gorge, the desert, the wineries.…” She paused to give him the smile she usually reserved for her charity targets. “You are terribly knowledgeable about wine, darling. I’m sure Amelia would be awfully grateful to learn from you. After all, one can never know enough about good wines, don’t you think?”

“Mother…” George laid his napkin down at the edge of his empty plate, “I do not have the time or the inclination to play travel guide to that little brat.”

Bettina’s perfectly tweezed brows rose a fraction. “How on earth can you say that? You don’t know anything about her. You can’t even remember her name, for heaven’s sake.”

“We practically grew up together. From what I remember, she took great pleasure in humiliating me.”

“Amelia liked to tease. It wasn’t her fault you had no sense of humor. Besides, that was fifteen years ago. Amelia was just a child then. She’s all grown up now.”

“In that case, she doesn’t need someone to show her around. She’s old enough to take care of herself. I have far better things to do with my time.”

The stubborn look he dreaded appeared in Bettina’s blue eyes. “Doing what? All I can say, George, is that your father would be most disappointed in you. He would have jumped at the chance to help Ben Richard’s daughter.”

George could never understand how a woman as tiny as his mother could have such a formidable will. His father had been a giant of a man, towering over his wife, yet had seemed totally incapable of opposing her. No wonder his son was having so much trouble filling his shoes. Afraid he might weaken, he strengthened his resolve. “I’m far too busy right now. My work—”

“You spend far too much time in the office.” Bettina wagged a finger at him. “When you’re not there you’re cooped up with no one but a cat to keep you company in that dreadful apartment, doing God knows what—”

He straightened. “The apartments at River Park West happen to be some of the nicest in town.”

“—when you should be out enjoying yourself with a nice young lady. All you care about is that job and that ridiculous car of yours.”

George took time out to swallow the last of his chardonnay. Even so, he couldn’t quite contain his resentment when he said stiffly, “My Lexus happens to be an excellent car, my job pays my rent and I have all the social activities I can handle.”

Bettina uttered a short bark of derision. “Two nights a week at a fitness club? An occasional night at the theater? You call that a social life? You happen to be a very handsome man, George, if I say so myself. There are at least three women in this room right now who can’t keep their eyes off you. You have the looks, the money and the time, so why don’t you have girlfriends? What’s wrong with you? You’re thirty-two years old, for heaven’s sake. You should be giving me grandchildren.” Her eyes narrowed and she leaned forward again. “You’re not one of them, 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, 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 her Aunt Betty?” He wondered how his mother felt about that. Somehow he couldn’t see her as anyone’s Aunt Betty.

She nodded cheerfully. “Always have. Mom talks about you both quite a lot.”

“Really?” He couldn’t help wondering just what fascinating tidbits about him his mother had passed on to Jessica Richard and her exuberant daughter.

“Really.” Amelia beamed at him.

Dazzled in spite of himself, he seized a suitcase in each hand and almost groaned when he felt the weight of them. Someone must have helped her with her bags. She couldn’t possibly have lifted them herself.

He felt somewhat vindicated when she said hurriedly, “Hope they’re not too heavy for you. I had to cram as much as I could into them. Heaven knows when the rest will get here. The poor driver took two tries to wrestle them out of the luggage compartment.”

Determined to impress her, he swung the cases off the ground, and almost swung himself off his feet. “Car’s outside,” he panted, then staggered out into the burning sun.

Amy had to admit as she followed him that Georgie was stronger than he looked. Tight buns, too. He must take very good care of his body. Who would have thought that the wiry, nervous, irritable teenager she’d adored as a child would have grown into such a striking specimen of manhood? She’d hardly recognized him at first. He seemed so much taller now. He’d always been nice-looking, but now that he’d grown up and filled out, he was so much more virile than she remembered.

He still had the same dark hair, though it was cut shorter, and there were faint crinkles at the corners of his dark-brown eyes. The no-nonsense chin had hardened into a rugged jaw, and his voice held a resonance that had echoed somewhere deep inside her when he’d spoken her name. Altogether, Georgie would have been a knockout in Willow Falls. The women would have been following him everywhere.

According to Aunt Betty, not too many women followed Georgie around Portland. Obviously he still had trouble in that department. Too bad his reserved nature hadn’t expanded along with his muscles.

“Is this your car?” she exclaimed, as he unlocked the trunk of a sleek blue Lexus. “Wow, I’m impressed.”

“Thank you.”

He opened the door for her and she slid onto the soft, smooth seat. The inside smelled faintly masculine—a mixture of leather and spicy cologne.

“Nice car,” she commented, hoping to get some reaction out of him. “Must have cost a bomb.”

“It did.” George patted the steering wheel with a proprietary air. “It was worth every penny.”

Well, it was obvious where his priorities lay. “Super!” she said, and sat back to enjoy the ride.

George sat by her side, his back as straight and stiff as a telephone pole as he maneuvered the car through the intricate maze of downtown streets. Amy kept up a stream of chatter, hoping to break through his faintly disapproving air.

She watched, fascinated, as they passed by tall high-rises, neat city parks, fancy hotels, quaint sidewalk cafés and interesting-looking stores. She just couldn’t wait to explore her new home, and bombarded George with questions about the city.

After a long period of receiving little more than noncommittal grunts in response to her comments, she glanced sideways at her host. He seemed upset by something. “I hope I’m not stopping you from doing something important,” she said tentatively. “I’m sure you’d rather be with your girlfriend.”

He sent her a startled glance. “What? Oh, no. I don’t have a girlfriend.”

She already knew that. George’s lack of women friends seemed to be Aunt Betty’s greatest disappointment in life. Still, she’d succeeded in getting his attention. “Why don’t you?”

His jaw clenched slightly. “Why don’t I what?”

“Have a girlfriend.”

She waited quite a while for his answer.

“Not that it’s any of your business, of course, but since my mother immediately jumps to the wrong conclusion on the subject, I’ll satisfy your inappropriate curiosity enough to say that I don’t have a girlfriend at this present time. I believe the expression is that I’m between relationships.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “You don’t have to be so defensive about it. I was just wondering, that’s all.”

“You were wondering if I’m gay.”

The idea hadn’t even occurred to her. She was awfully happy to know he wasn’t, though. “Not at all. I was just wondering why someone like you didn’t have hordes of women panting after you.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

She rather liked the way one of his eyebrows twitched. “Take it how you like.” Deciding it was time she changed the subject she leaned back in her seat. “Tell me all about River Park West. What’s it like there? Are there lots of singles? Do they have a rec room?”

“Fine, yes and yes.” He pulled up at yet another stoplight.

She watched his hands on the wheel—capable hands, with strong, square-cut nails. Everything about him seemed capable. And too controlled. She wondered just what it would take to penetrate those formidable defenses. “Swimming pool?” she prompted.

“There’s a swimming pool, yes.”

Just when she thought he wasn’t going to say anything else, he added, “And a gym.” The light turned green and he pulled forward.

“Ah!” Amy exclaimed. “So that’s where you get those muscles.”

His head jerked around as if he’d been stung. “Huh?”

She grinned at him. “You handled those cases like a WWF wrestler.”

He looked back at the road, but she could tell by his profile that she’d unsettled him. Terrific. It would do him good to get rattled now and again. No wonder he didn’t have girlfriends. He needed to lighten up if he wanted to get some fun out of life.

She tried to imagine the kind of woman Georgie would be interested in. Someone dark and mysterious, and at least four inches taller than her five-foot-four. Her complete opposite, in other words. Which was just as well, under the circumstances. Someone who looked like George Bentley, Jr., could make her forget the reason she’d left Willow Falls. And that would be a big mistake. For both of them.