“Great.” He seemed to have absolutely no remorse about pretty much blackmailing her into accepting. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“Yeah,” she grumbled as she hung up the phone. “Great.”
Why, oh why, had she let him talk her into this?
Geoff arrived at Cecilia’s house a bit earlier than seven o’clock. As it was, he’d had to make himself kill a little time before leaving his condo. His eagerness to be with Cecilia was a bit daunting, since it seemed so uncharacteristic.
He could list plenty of things that were different about this relationship from the casual and temporary affairs he had enjoyed in the past. The way he counted the minutes he was away from her. The way he savored each one he spent with her. The way he woke thinking of her every morning. Hell, the way he found himself grinning at nothing in the middle of a busy afternoon.
He’d been accused of being a little slow when it came to relationship issues, but even he could figure out that there was more than simple friendship involved in his feelings for Cecilia.
Even his eagerness to have him join her at Myrtle’s was a little suspect. He usually tried to keep his girlfriends away from his matchmaking grandma. While the excuses he had used with Cecilia about deflecting Myrtle’s attention were all legitimate, they didn’t fully explain his compulsion to invite her. Cecilia seemed to fit with his family. He and Myrtle would both enjoy having her there.
This was definitely getting complicated. Especially when he considered how reluctant he was to think about leaving town again in a couple of weeks. For the first time he would be leaving behind someone other than family whom he would greatly miss.
He wasn’t expecting to spot Cecilia standing in the front yard next door to her house, involved in a visibly tense confrontation with Brandy and the notorious Marlin. Keeping his eye on that scene, he climbed slowly out of his car.
He couldn’t hear the words, but he heard the voices—Marlin’s arrogant and furious, as usual, Brandy’s tearful and pleading, also as usual, and Cecilia’s firm and authoritative. Geoff hesitated, unsure whether to get involved or stay right where he was for now.
The decision was made for him when the argument turned violent. Marlin must have said something about leaving, because Brandy launched herself at him, obviously trying to hold him there. He shoved her, making her fall backward on the grass. Cecilia immediately rushed forward, and Marlin whirled, one arm cocked back as though to strike her.
Brandy cried out, “Marlin, no!”
Forgetting his sore muscles, Geoff sprinted in that direction. If that thug laid a hand on Cecilia…
Some last-minute shred of common sense—or maybe a glimpse of Geoff charging toward him like an enraged bull—made Marlin drop his arm and turn toward his truck. Geoff caught up with him at the door of the ugly vehicle. “You must be Marlin.”
A scowl darkening his rather greasy face, and a bully’s cowardice reflected in his eyes as he faced the man who was older, taller and in peak condition—except for a few recent dings and dents, Geoff thought ruefully—Marlin responded wittily. “Yeah. So?”
“My name is Geoff Bingham.” Pausing a beat to let the significance of the last name sink in, Geoff added, “I’m a friend of Cecilia’s, and of Brandy’s. And if I hear that you’ve laid a hand on either of them, I will make your life a living hell.”
Marlin blanched a bit, but he tried not to lose his blustering defiance. “You can save your threats,” he snarled, jerking open the driver’s door of the truck. “’Cause I don’t plan to see either of them ever again.”
Brandy broke into wails as Marlin drove away. Geoff moved to assist Cecilia in helping the girl to her feet.
“I thought he was going to hit you,” Brandy told Cecilia.
“I thought so, myself, for a moment,” Cecilia said, brushing a strand of red hair away from Brandy’s tear-dampened face. “Of course, if he had, I’d have been forced to pound him into the ground.”
Brandy hiccuped in surprise at Cecilia’s unexpectedly fierce response. “You…you would?”
“Honey, I’ve told you before. No man—or overgrown brat of a boy—has a right to put his hands on you in anger. Ever. And I promise you, no guy is ever going to do so with me. Not twice, anyway.”
“Why do you think he backed off?” Geoff tried to keep his tone as light as possible under the circumstances. “Bullies are all cowards under the surface. If they can tell someone’s going to fight back, they swagger off.”
“He said he wasn’t ever coming back,” Brandy said, sounding forlorn.
“Actually, he probably will—the next time he needs a cheering section. Or a punching bag,” Geoff said bluntly. “You’re the one who’s going to have to be strong and send him away. Even if it means calling the cops to escort him off the property.”
“He really can be sweet, if he could just learn to control his temper.”
Geoff trie
d to hide the impatience that would serve no purpose at all in helping get through to her. “Brandy, you’re an attractive, intelligent girl. You don’t have to put up with being treated the way he treats you. You deserve better.”
Brandy looked from Geoff to Cecilia again. “I thought I loved him. And maybe I still sort of do, but when I saw his face when he turned on you, well, he looked like a stranger. A scary one.”
“You were seeing who he really is, Brandy,” Cecilia told her firmly. “And I agree wholeheartedly with Geoff. You deserve better.”