Doreen Roberts - One Bride - Baby Included

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.