Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
On the same day Cat sealed her fate, Georgie sat alone in the apartment she had worked hard to turn into a stylish, comfortable home.
After she had fallen in love with the apartment’s high ceilings, big windows, and elaborate crown molding, she had obsessed over every piece of furniture, accessory, and detail.
But as she let her gaze travel from one corner of her living room to the other, she realized she had felt more at home in Nathan’s empty house than she ever had here.
Not a day had passed in the long month since she last saw him that she hadn’t thought of him. Well, if she were being truthful, she would admit to thinking about him all day every day.
During the lonely weeks in Atlanta, she had waited on pins and needles for the results of her blood test and had driven Tess and Cat crazy calling to ask if anything had come from the lab.
She finally broke down a week ago and called the doctor’s office only to learn they hadn’t heard yet.
They promised to notify her as soon as they could.
Since then, her heart had raced and her stomach lurched every time the phone rang.
The good news from the calls home had been how happy her friends were with Nathan’s brothers.
It had occurred to Georgie earlier, during an endless, boring meeting at work, that she had failed to properly appreciate the lessons of her mother’s life and death.
She was putting work ahead of what really mattered, and if she had learned anything from the last few months, it was that life is too short to waste on something your heart is no longer in.
Her priorities needed a serious reordering, and they needed it now.
Yes, the promotion had been nice. Yes, the extra money came in handy. Yes, it was gratifying to hold a prestigious position with more authority than she’d ever expected to have. But none of it satisfied her half as much as a day at the senior center had.
That realization had made her laugh out loud in the meeting as she came to a decision she would put into motion tomorrow.
Her time in Atlanta had come and gone. It was time to go home.
She had followed Gus’s advice, played it out, and figured out where she belonged.
Now she could only hope that she would still be welcome there.
When the doorbell rang, she pulled on her mother’s robe and got up to answer the door.
A delivery boy held a huge bouquet of pink roses.
Georgie’s heart raced with excitement as she signed for them. She put them on the kitchen counter and dug out the card, expecting to read about organic farming. However, there was no mention of organics. “Heard you were back in town. Give me a call. I’ve missed you. Love, Doug.”
Georgie laughed so hard she cried. So predictable!
“Oh, Nathan,” she whispered. “I hope you waited for me. I really hope you did.”
Drained after an emotional good-bye with her coworkers, Georgie took a cab home the following afternoon, since she had never gotten around to shipping her car back from Rhode Island.
Carrying a box of personal items from her office, she trudged up the stairs to her second-floor apartment and came to a halt on the landing.
Nathan.
Sitting outside her door eating . . . a peach? Nathan was sitting outside her door eating a peach and letting the juice run down his chin like a six-year-old boy.
“You are not here,” she said as she stepped in front of him. “You can’t really be here on the same day I quit my job and told my boss I’m moving home to Rhode Island. That only happens in really bad movies.”
Letting his gaze wander from her stiletto heels to her pencil skirt to the tailored blouse she had left unbuttoned as low as she dared for work, he swallowed—hard—and took another bite of his peach.
“I thought you weren’t going to come after me.”
“I didn’t think it would take you this long to come to your senses.”
“Your mother said the same thing about your father when he took months to chase her to Utah.”
“Clearly, I’m much smarter than him, because it only took me one month—a month too long, I might add.” He took another juicy bite of peach. “I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, because it’s kind of my secret shame, but chicks dig me.”
Resisting the urge to howl with laughter and weep with joy, she kicked off her shoes and slid down the wall to sit next to him. “Is that so?”
He offered her a peach from the bag on his lap. “It’s my burden in life.”
She picked a fat, ripe peach and took a bite. “You carry it well.”
“I try,” he said gravely. “Anyway, as I was saying, chicks tend to dig me. So I thought if I came down here, took a look at the place, and tried the peaches they’re so famous for in these parts, then maybe I could figure out why the only chick I dig would rather be here than with me.”
“You did hear me say I quit my job and I’m moving home to Rhode Island, didn’t you?”
Wiping the juice off his chin with the back of his hand, he said, “What I didn’t hear is why.”
“You know why.”
“No way,” he said with a chuckle. “You’re not getting off that easily, Georgie Quinn.”
“I love you, Nathan.” Suddenly, it wasn’t hard at all to tell him what she’d always known, from the first time she saw him run by her house. “I love you so much that if I have to spend another second without you, I’m going to lose my mind.”
“That’s good, because I love you, too, and if you don’t come home with me right now, today, I’m going to have to quit my job to move down here and start all over again as a lowly patrolman in the Atlanta Police Department.
You wouldn’t do that to me, would you? You know I was born to be a detective. ”
Exasperated, she said, “Have you heard anything I’ve said?”
“Only the parts I like, which, for once, was all of it.” He flashed that grin she loved so much. “But I had the other thing, about moving here and being a lowly patrolman, all rehearsed, so I couldn’t let it go to waste.” He reached out to caress her cheek.
She turned her face into his palm and pressed her lips to his warm, peach-flavored skin.
“I also wanted you to know how far I was willing to go, what I was willing to give up, to be with you, Georgie.”
“You were supposed to stop saying those things,” she reminded him with a teasing smile.
“Never.” He ran a finger through the groove in her cheek. “Since I’m on a roll, I may as well tell you I fell in love with your dimples first.”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
“Well, if you’re offering. . .” He shifted his hand from her face to the back of her neck and brought her in for a deep, soulful kiss that made her heart sing and her blood boil. God, how she had missed him!
He tugged a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. “Tess asked me to give you this. It came to the house yesterday.”
“What is it?” Georgie glanced down at the postcard and gasped when she saw the return address for the medical laboratory. “Oh! Oh God.” She turned the card over. The only word that registered was “negative.”
He kissed her forehead. “I knew what I was doing when I bet on you.”
Overcome with relief unlike anything she had ever experienced, she swiped at tears that flowed unchecked down her face. “Nathan?”
“What, sweetheart?”
“What’d you think of the peaches?”
“They’re sweeter at home,” he whispered as if he was afraid he’d get run out of town if he got caught dissing Georgia’s peaches.
“Isn’t everything?”