He still had his back to her and had not put on his coat, and Georgia could almost swear she saw the muscles in his back bunch and ripple beneath his dark blue sweater every time he moved. When he leaned forward, she couldn’t help but notice how well he fit his jeans. He reached back into the car and extracted a leather bomber jacket, carelessly thrust his arms into the sleeves and turned toward the restaurant.
It was then that her breath caught in her throat and, almost involuntarily, she moved closer to the window. It wasn’t so much because the man was one of the most handsome she had, ever seen. And it wasn’t because his gaze was so utterly fixed on hers as he approached. It wasn’t even because of the way his appearance had suddenly roused feelings and sensations in her that she knew were best ignored.
It was because he seemed very familiar somehow.
She wasn’t sure, but she thought his steps faltered somewhat when he saw her watching him through the window, but he recovered quickly and kept coming. She lifted a hand to flatten her palm against the pane, her eyes never straying from the man as he neared the front door of the restaurant. The wind shoved his hair down over his forehead, preventing her from seeing his eyes clearly, but he watched her in return as he drew nearer, his expression puzzled and wary.
She lost sight of him as he entered, but she turned away from the window and spun around to find him pushing through the second set of doors that would bring him into the restaurant’s main dining room. In the dim light she could scarcely make out his face, but her heart hummed and skipped as she studied him. He looked roguish and gentle at the same time, and definitely very familiar.
The man took a few measured steps forward, bringing his tall frame out of the shadows, but leaving his face still hidden from the light. When he spoke, his words sounded as if they were filled with something almost akin to...melancholy ?
“Don’t you remember me?” he asked softly, his voice sounding thunderous in the otherwise silent room.
At first, Georgia shook her head slowly in response. Then he took one more step forward and brought his face into the light, and she saw his eyes—eyes of a dark blue color she had never quite seen anywhere else, as often as she had searched to find an adequate comparison. Expressive eyes, compelling eyes. Eyes that had once looked upon her full of laughter and a languid kind of affection.
Georgia bit her lip. Now Jack’s eyes were sad and fatigued and framed by shadows. In many ways, it seemed to her then, he was indeed a man she didn’t remember.
“Jack McCormick,” she said on a shallow breath.
As soon as she spoke his name, his eyes cleared of their troubling clouds and his lips turned up slightly at the corners, hinting at a smile she remembered only too well. Her stomach clenched into a tight fist when she realized how much she had missed him all these years.
“So you do remember,” he replied quietly, approaching her with slow, uncertain steps. His voice had deepened over the years, but was still a little rough and youthful. And, as it always had, the sound of his voice made her smile.
Jack laughed then, low and strong, and for a moment she could detect a trace of the boy she had known for a little over a year more than two decades before. Something in him relaxed, the shadows left his eyes and he looked at her with the same puzzling expression he had always seemed to reserve for her alone. For a long time they only gazed at each other silently.
Georgia studied the face above her, comparing it with the one she had known so long ago. Essentially, they were one and the same, yet there were so many differences. His tousled curls, the curls she had thought made him look so rebellions and that she had always had to force herself not to wind around her fingers, were gone. Now his hair was cut casually short. Lines fanned out at the corners of his eyes and slashed along the sides of his mouth, and his cheeks were rough from a half day’s growth of beard.
He’d barely been shaving the last time she saw him, she thought—that morning of his eighteenth birthday, just before he had slipped away from Carlisle without a care, without a plan, without a backward glance.
Without even telling her goodbye.
Before she realized what she was doing, she set her hot chocolate down on the nearest table, then lifted her hand to cup his cheek, skimming her thumb along the ridge of his cheekbone as she had done the first day they’d met. She didn’t know what made her do such a thing. For some reason, it just felt right. Somehow, the years slipped away, and she felt as if she were thirteen again, seeing Jack up close for the first time.
Jack McCormick closed his eyes when Georgia Lavender touched him so tenderly. The gentle motion was nearly his undoing. It was going to be more difficult than he’d anticipated, he thought, seeing Georgia again after all this time. He wished they could go back for just one day—one hour, even—just long enough that he could tell her so many things he wished he’d said to her when he’d had the chance.
He had always regretted not telling her goodbye. It had left him feeling incomplete somehow, unfinished. All these years, he’d just never quite come to terms with the way Georgia had always made him feel. Mainly because he’d never quite understood his feelings for her.
He tilted his head into the soft caress of her fingers, and couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps now it might be too late to try. For over twenty years she had lived a life that he knew nothing about, and he himself had changed in so many ways. The Georgia of his memories was just a kid—a troubled kid, at that.
When he left Carlisle she’d been a scrawny, awkward girl of fourteen, almost fifteen, swallowed by a big pair of glasses, and generally frightened of life. He’d never once felt a stir of sexual anything where Georgia was concerned. Affection, yes. Perhaps he’d even loved her in a way. But she’d been his friend. His confidante. His sanctuary. It had never occurred to him that she might someday become something more.
He opened his eyes and studied her again. The Georgia who greeted him today, however, was a different person entirely. Her coppery hair was shot through with silver now, and her gray eyes were lined with life and laughter. She was round and soft and beautiful. She was a woman through and through. And something inside Jack responded to her in a way he never would have imagined—immediately and irrevocably.
And suddenly he wondered if it had been such a good idea to return to Carlisle after all.
Gently he wrapped his fingers around hers and pulled her hand away from his cheek, noting the hurt in her eyes as he did so. But he said nothing. He had planned to come into the restaurant for a cup of coffee to fortify himself before driving the final mile to the address he’d located in the phone book, and to prepare himself for what he would find when he located Georgia Lavender. But he’d been denied that last little moment of preparation. And he still couldn’t quite assimilate the woman of thirty-seven with the girl of fourteen. So he studied her in silence for a moment more.
Gone was the timid, mousy girl who had slouched through life, averted her eyes from everyone she encountered, and cowered at the mention of her father’s name. In her place was a beautiful, vivacious woman whose dark gray eyes were alive with a vibrant spirit. He wondered what—or who—had brought her to such life in the years that he’d been gone. And something pinched inside him at the knowledge that it hadn’t been he.
According to the listing in the phone book, her last name was still Lavender, but that didn’t necessarily mean she hadn’t married. His gaze flicked down to her left hand, and when he oted no sign of a wedding ring, he relaxed a little. There was a good chance she was involved with someone, though, he reminded himself. A woman who looked like she did couldn’t possibly be wanting for dates.
Then he reminded himself that all of that was immaterial. He’d come back for Georgia because she was his friend. Because he’d left her at a time when she needed him, and he wanted to make up for that. What difference did it make if she was married, or even involved? Romance had never been on his mind where she was concerned. He just had a debt to pay to her, and a score to settle with her father,