Sunday, September 24, 2023
Sunday's Short Stack: Just George by Mary Calmes
A Matter of Time #8.7
George Hunt can think of nothing he’d like more than to skip the high-society fundraiser where he has to guard a precocious seventeen-year-old girl and her judgmental therapist, but there’s no way out of it. If anything bad were to happen and he wasn’t there to stop it, he’d never forgive himself. So even though she’s grilling him about his dating life and the good doctor is psychoanalyzing him, he’s going to soldier on, because protecting his charges is what a knight does.
What he doesn’t count on is having to use both his training and his gun to make it through the night, or finding the last thing he ever expected… someone who actually sees him, not for the man he is, but for the man he could be with just a little bit of love.
I gotta start out by saying: How on God's Green Earth did I not know Hannah Kage's bodyguard had his own short novella until just a couple of weeks ago?!?!?!?! Mary Calmes' Matter of Time series is one of my absolute faves and is on my annual re-read/re-listen list, as a matter of fact a couple of the holiday shorts get multiple re-visits every year so Just George slipping my reading radar has completely left me flummoxed.
*shaking head in shame*
If you are even only a little bit familiar with the world of Jory and Sam Kage then you know their children, Kola and Hannah are very special characters. They have daddy Jory's penchant for danger magnetting and they also have daddy Sam's standup, never back down, protect(rescue) those in danger determination. From both they've inherited the whole speak first, speak second, speak third, then think, and then speak some more approach and like their dads this can go sideways for multiple reasons😉.
I mention the above point because it gives you an idea of the kind of person required to protect the younger Kages. George definitely has his work cut out for him and Hannah just wants to see the man happy, not settled down because let's face it, there is no "settling down" in Jory and Sam's world. Which also means the someone that Hannah has a mind to find for her buddy and bodyguard, George also has to be pretty special.
Okay, that's all you're getting from me as Just George is a short story and I refuse to spoil it for anyone who like me was completely oblivious to it's very existence. If you are a Jory and Sam lover than you can't not read it, we may not see the guys but the presence is definitely felt via their daughter. If you aren't familiar with Matter of Time . . . well what in the world are you waiting for? Seriously though if you are new to that universe Mary Calmes created then Just George will not leave you confused for your lack of Jory/Sam knowledge but I can safely say it will without a shadow of doubt leave you hungry for more.
There were a lot of things I preferred doing other than talking to a seventeen-year-old girl about my love life. I could easily list twelve without even having to think about it. The only thing worse was her trying to talk me into letting her set me up.
“You have lost your mind,” I pronounced, glaring into the rearview mirror.
“I don’t care what you say. I will save you from loneliness,” she declared dramatically and with grave conviction.
“You weren’t that big a help the last time,” I pointed out. “Your track record is crap.”
She gasped loudly, clearly deeply affronted. “That’s not fair!”
“And I’m not lonely,” I growled, which probably didn’t help. I might have come off as defensive.
“This fellow doth protest too much, methinks,” she said, murdering the Bard and confirming how I sounded at the same time.
I shot her another death glare, which hardly mattered since the first one hadn’t put the fear of God in her even a little.
“You have to be happy.”
“Who says?”
“Don’t be difficult, simply agree.”
“I’m not lonely,” I repeated.
“Yes, you are. There’s been no one since Cynthia.”
My mistake was talking to her that very first time I picked her up for an event. I should have kept things professional and stayed with “Ms. Kage” the whole time rather than taking her suggestion to call her Hannah. It was all downhill from there.
“Are you listening to me?”
Sadly, yes, but what she didn’t know was that there had been many people since Cynthia, both women and men, though no one who I exchanged last names or phone numbers with. I never slept over; I was the guy who left right after the deed was done, which was just fine with most of them. No one I’d ever had a one-night stand with expected a lifetime commitment. Some of them did expect snuggling, however, and I was shit at that. Being held in bed felt like being suffocated. Cynthia often said that it was like trying to hug an eel.
I yawned loudly.
“Oh, is that how you’re going to play this?” Hannah goaded me.
“You need to respect me and my boundaries,” I scolded her. “I’m your elder.”
Her snort of laughter let me know that me being thirty was not what she considered an elder to her seventeen. At least not where being set up on blind dates was concerned.
“Listen,” I said, pulling over and parking in front of a random house in Elk Grove Village. We were on our way to pick up a friend of hers who was her plus-one for a fundraiser she was going to. Normally, she took her boyfriend, Jake, but he was off the hook tonight. If I were him, I too would have taken every opportunity imaginable to not have to attend another auction for another cause that she and her uncle, billionaire real-estate mogul Aaron Sutter, were hosting. As it was, Hannah had asked the boy she was crazy about—I wasn’t sure if it was love or years of infatuation that had culminated in a relationship—to stay home. When I had picked her up, he already had a headset on and was starting Call of Duty with his two best friends, one of whom was Hannah’s brother. “I will die before I let you set me up on a blind date, do you understand me?”
“Mmmm-hmmm,” she agreed, nodding, eyes big, all fake innocence.
“Can we drop it?”
“Consider it dropped,” she assured me.
It was sooooo not dropped. I knew her better than that.
Mary Calmes lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with her husband and two children and loves all the seasons except summer. She graduated from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, with a bachelor's degree in English literature. Due to the fact that it is English lit and not English grammar, do not ask her to point out a clause for you, as it will so not happen. She loves writing, becoming immersed in the process, and falling into the work. She can even tell you what her characters smell like. She loves buying books and going to conventions to meet her fans.
Just George
Matter of Time Series
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