“More soup?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No, thanks. I was asking about Brittany. I didn’t have a chance to talk to Jodie about her this afternoon. How is my goddaughter?”
Grant thought for a moment before answering, wanting to share his concerns about his niece but not wanting to betray his sister’s confidences.
“She’s growing up,” he hedged. “She’s already taller than her mother.”
“And only fourteen. If she keeps growing, maybe she’ll be a model.”
Model wasn’t a word he associated with Brittany, except as a model pain in the ass. He kept his features neutral, resisting the scowl that thoughts of his niece usually generated.
“Whatever you do,” he warned, “don’t try to give her advice, on careers or anything else. She’s going through her adolescent rebellion stage. Not even reverse psychology works on her now.”
“She’s not causing Jodie problems?”
Grant tried not to swear under his breath. Merrilee was already worried enough about her parents. She didn’t need to add Brittany to the list.
He forced a smile. “Not anything Jodie can’t handle. Right now they’re negotiating clothing styles, body piercings and tattoos.”
Merrilee sighed and shook her head. “I guess the days of ruffled pink dresses and patent-leather shoes are gone for good.”
“You got that right. Now it’s ratty jeans and T-shirts, in any color as long as it’s black.”
“I can’t believe Brittany’s a teenager,” Merrilee said with a sigh. “She makes me feel ancient.”
Grant laughed at that idea. Merrilee had the kind of spirit that would be eternally young. “Maybe you should sit by the fire, granny, and doze while I do dishes.”
“Granny!” She feigned indignation. “I can work circles around an old guy like you any day.”
Glad to see Merrilee’s sense of humor revived, he suggested, “Then I should sit by the fire and let you clean up.”
Merrilee looked thoughtful. “That’s fair. You did the cooking.”
“Letting my guest do all the work would give Southern hospitality a black eye. Can’t have you carrying that tale back north.”
“Then you scrape and I’ll load the dishwasher?”
“Deal.” He rose and began clearing the table.
MERRILEE WATCHED Grant work with the smooth, efficient movements of a man at home in the kitchen. His actions triggered a memory and she knew instantly who he reminded her of.
Her father.
Every night for as long as she’d lived at home, her father had helped her mother clear the table, load the dishwasher and clean the kitchen. Her parents had made the chore seem more like fun than work. Sometimes they’d sung old tunes from the sixties and improvised dance steps. They’d even had soapsuds fights that ended in peals of laughter and soaked clothing.
Other nights, when her dad was concerned over a critically ill animal or her mother worried about a problem student, they worked silently, communicating only with an occasional touch, an understanding glance or a brief kiss. Most often, however, they’d simply shared the mundane details of their day with an intimacy Merrilee had envied. She’d longed to have someone of her own to share that kind of closeness with.
Now with Ginger Parker in the picture, her parents might never do dishes together again. Her family could be shattered for good.
That prospect hit her like a sledgehammer and she gasped for breath.
“Hey.” Grant rinsed his hands, dried them and reached for her. “You okay?”
The pain had taken her breath. She shook her head, because she couldn’t speak. In the next instant she was consumed by great, gulping sobs that ripped from the depths of her body.
Grant scooped her into his arms, carried her into the living room and settled her on his lap in the antique rocker. Smoothing her hair, he held her close and rocked her gently until her crying subsided. His embrace warmed her, his voice calmed her, but nothing he did could close the void or pull her back from the precipice where she watched her family disintegrate into nothingness.
When she finally regained control, she pulled away to find the front of his shirt soaked by her tears.
“Sorry.” She attempted to rise.
He held her fast. “Don’t apologize. I understand.”
She gazed into his eyes and saw the flickering light from the fireplace reflected in the molten bronze of his pupils. “How can you know what I’m feeling? Your family’s all in one piece.”
A smile tinged with sadness tugged at the corners of his mouth. “My parents are together, but I lost my family when I lost you.”
She didn’t want to hear this. She was too vulnerable and those old wounds she’d worried about were beginning to ache.
This time she did push away and he let her go. Wiping her damp cheeks with the back of her hands, she moved to the recliner on the opposite side of the hearth, hoping for invulnerability with distance.
Safely out of his reach, she cast about for a topic, any subject that would make conversation safe again and divert her attention from the love—and sadness—shining in his eyes. One look at him, however, and her mind went blank, leaving her speechless.
“Why?” he asked.
She pretended to misunderstand. “I guess I wouldn’t accept the possibility of Mom and Dad splitting for good until tonight.”
He shook his head. “You know what I mean. Why did you break our engagement?”
She suppressed the urge to flee into the night, away from the warmth and security of this house that would have been theirs, away from the man who loved her. How could she possibly explain why she’d abandoned someone she had loved more than life when she couldn’t fully understand it herself?
“We were all wrong for each other,” she said.
“Liar.” Anger joined the love in Grant’s expression and his fierceness made him even more attractive.
“There’s no point in rehashing this,” she said with a shake of her head.
“Rehash?”
At the volume and force of that single word, the wolfhound lifted her head from her bed by the fire, ears alert, her muscles tensed, eyes anxious. Gloria crept from the bed and lay at Grant’s feet.
“You never explained in the first place!” Grant shouted. “And God knows, I asked. But you wouldn’t return my calls or answer my letters.”
Guilt racked her. MJ hadn’t answered because she hadn’t known what to say six years ago, didn’t know now. She shoved to her feet. “It’s ancient history. Will you please take me home?”
“Not until I have an answer.” His low, quiet voice disturbed her more than when he’d shouted.
She sank back into her chair. “I don’t know the answer.”
“You broke our engagement and don’t even know why?” Astonishment was evident in his voice, his eye-brows shot up in disbelief and a deep red flushed the strong angles of his cheeks.
She remembered the last time she’d watched Grant’s temper flare, at this very house the day before she’d broken their engagement. And she remembered, too, even though it was cliché, that he truly was more handsome when he was angry.
“I told you why a moment ago and you called me a liar,” she snapped.
“How can you say we’re all wrong for each other after what we shared?”
His voice and face displayed a mix of anger and sadness again, evoking a tenderness she fought to crush. “I need to go,” she insisted.
“Give me one example, just one, of how we’re wrong for each other,” he demanded, “then I’ll take you home.”
“We fight. Like we’re doing now.”
His jaw dropped. “And fighting voids everything else?”
“It’s not a good indicator,” she said defensively. “I never once saw my parents fight.”
“Well, they’re certainly the poster kids for marital bliss.” His sarcasm stung.
At her master’s sharp tone, the dog cowered at his feet, flattened her ears
and whimpered.
Grant was instantly remorseful, but toward Gloria, MJ realized, not her. He knelt at the dog’s side, stroked her gently and spoke soothingly until the wolfhound appeared to relax.
MJ didn’t want to distress the poor animal any more than Grant did, so she tried to keep her voice calm. “It wasn’t just the fights. You and I wanted different things.”
“Not that different.”
“You loved this house. I hated it.”
He jerked his head up in surprise. “You did? I didn’t know.”
“It was a shambles, filthy and falling down. And you expected me to live here. I didn’t have your vision for what it could be.”
“You should have told me.”
“It was more than this place. I love the city. You love the country.”
“You thought we could work out the location problem.”
She shook her head. “I was wrong. We took forever to decide when to marry, where to honeymoon. And then there was this house and your anger. I was scared.”
“Of me?”
His amazement would have been comical if the memories hadn’t been so painful.
“Of us.”
The truth hit her like a runaway truck. She had refused to recognize her fear before, had always insisted, even to herself, that her career was the reason she’d left Grant.
With Gloria calmed, Grant returned to his chair. Bewilderment shone in his eyes, his forehead wrinkled in a frown. “Scared of us? I don’t get it.”
“We had too many negatives working against us,” MJ admitted.
“But they were outweighed by positives. At least, I thought they were.”
“I kept thinking of my parents. They never fought and they always agreed on everything. I wanted a marriage like theirs.”
“And look where it got them.” The sarcasm had crept back into his voice.
“Which proves my point,” MJ said. “If my parents, who had the perfect marriage, couldn’t stay together, what hope would there have been for us?”
He shook his head, his eyes sad. “I can’t believe we see things so differently.”
“You’ve just proved my point again,” she said softly.
“So love had nothing to do with it?” His gaze bored into her.
She looked away. “It couldn’t have been the kind of love that lasts, or we wouldn’t have had so many differences.”
He started to say more, then seemed to think better of it. His expression softened with a tenderness that created an ache beneath her breastbone.
“It’s late,” he said, “and you’re exhausted. I’ll drive you home.”
“But Nana’s car’s at the clinic.”
“I’ll pick you up in the morning and take you to get it.” He turned to Gloria. “Want to go for a ride, girl?”
The dog, her earlier anxiety forgotten, leaped to her feet and raced to the door.
THE TRIP INTO TOWN was a silent one. MJ, afraid of renewing their previous discussion, said nothing. Grant kept his eyes on the road and his thoughts to himself.
Try as she might, she couldn’t shake the certainty that their discussion hadn’t settled anything, at least not as far as Grant was concerned.
When they reached her parents’ house, she didn’t recall leaving the porch light on, but was glad she had. Facing going inside without her parents waiting was hard enough. At least the glowing porch light provided a smidgen of cheer.
She opened her door and climbed out, hoping to say goodbye at the curb, but Grant hopped out, too, and caught up with her.
“Thanks for dinner,” she said as Grant walked her to the door. “And for the afternoon. I’ll show you the pictures once I’ve printed them.”
She turned to unlock the door.
“Wait.”
He caught her by surprise, pulling her into his arms and crushing his mouth to hers. Desire shot through her, mowing down reason and resistance like a tsunami hitting a beach. Her brain shut down and muscle memory took over, recalling in intimate detail every time their bodies had touched. Without thinking, she twined her arms around his neck, strained on tiptoe and arched against him. As in one of a thousand dreams she’d had over the past years, she opened her lips to his, breathed in his scent of sunshine and spicy aftershave and felt the cordoned muscles of his arms tighten and lift her off her feet.
A moan of pleasure escaped from the back of her throat. Another emotion, stronger and more powerful, burst from the shadows of her heart where it had lain trapped and buried for so long. It joined with her desire. She ached with love as she savored the taste, the touch, the essence of him once again. And recognized the black, gaping hole his absence in her world had caused.
Another part of her clamored for her attention, fed her fears, sounded the alarm bells in her mind, but the power of Grant’s embrace, his mesmerizing kiss, blocked all other sensations.
Without success, she tried to break away, to focus on their earlier discussion, on all the reasons they were wrong for one another, but with his strong hands kneading the muscles of her back, his breath mingling with hers, his lips shooting heat throughout her body, she couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t do anything but kiss him back with every fiber of her being.
Grant twined his fingers through her hair. Then he lifted his head and stared at her in the yellow glow of the porch light, but didn’t loosen his grip. His eyes sparked with fire and when he finally spoke, his voice was raw, as if he’d spent the last hour screaming.
“Now tell me we’re all wrong for each other. I dare you.”
“I—”
She was saved from answering by the sudden opening of the front door. Grant released her and they turned to find her father standing on the threshold.
“Daddy!” she sputtered in surprise.
In the lighted hall behind him sat a stack of luggage partially obscured by a pile of clothes on hangers.
“Merrilee June?” Her father’s face showed both strain and astonishment.
She straightened her clothes with a self-conscious gesture, knowing her lips were still swollen from Grant’s kiss, her cheeks flaming with excitement.
Fighting through the haze of desire, she realized that her father was home and had brought his belongings with him. Her hope for the survival of her parents’ marriage soared.
“What are you doing home, princess?”
If the situation had been less serious, she would have laughed at his befuddled expression. “Guess I could ask you the same thing, Daddy.”
Chapter Eight
Early the next morning Merrilee must have been watching for Grant from the porch, because she sprinted down the front walk before he’d even pulled his truck to the curb. His pulse accelerated at the sight of her, with her honey-blond hair tousled by the wind, cheeks flushed from the cold, her stride graceful and athletic.
He grinned when he realized what he was thinking. She doesn’t run like a girl.
But she was definitely one hundred percent female and the only woman he’d ever loved. If he’d had any doubts—and he hadn’t—last night’s kiss would have destroyed them. Having Merrilee back in Pleasant Valley and in his arms made him happier than he’d been in over six years.
“Calm down,” he ordered Gloria, who’d barked in greeting at the sight of Merrilee.
As the wolfhound complied with her characteristic eagerness to please, he reached across the seat to open the passenger door.
Merrilee slid inside. “Thanks for coming.”
“No problem. Your dad have an emergency?”
The previous night, knowing Merrilee needed to talk privately with her father, Grant had left almost immediately after Jim had opened the door. She’d called to Grant that her dad would drive her to the clinic this morning to pick up her grandmother’s car.
Last night, Grant had been glad for the reprieve, giving him time to cool off, slow down. In his frustration, he’d pushed too hard with both his kiss and his questions.
But he’d a
lso learned two very important facts. First, that Merrilee loved him. They had shared that kiss and he’d been blown away by her response. Her hunger had matched his in intensity. Good thing Jim had opened the door when he had or Grant might have carried their embrace to its logical conclusion, something Merrilee wasn’t ready for, not emotionally anyway.
Because the second fact Grant had learned yesterday was that Merrilee’s love for him scared her to death. With her parents’ so-called perfect marriage crumbling in front of her eyes, she was more terrified than ever of being hurt. If Grant intended to convince her that loving him was a safe bet, that he wasn’t going to break her heart, he’d have to back off and go slow.
Today, in the bright, clear light of morning, while his heart urged him to grab her and hold her close, reason insisted he wait until she’d come to terms with whatever was happening between her parents before pressing his own case.
But the knowledge that Merrilee still cared, even though she was too frightened of her feelings to admit them, gave him hope.
And fueled his patience.
For now he’d give her the emotional distance she needed. The last thing he wanted was to spook her into taking off for New York again.
Beside him, Merrilee scrunched her face into a frown. “Dad was gone when I woke up. Left a note on the kitchen counter that he’d see me later, but it didn’t say where he was going.”
“Back to Ginger?”
“Maybe.” She shuddered. “Frankly, I don’t have a clue what’s happening.”
Grant put the truck in gear and pulled onto the street. “Last night it looked like Jim was moving back home.”
Merrilee’s smile held such sadness, Grant was tempted again to stop the truck and wrap his arms around her. But he didn’t.
Play it safe, he reminded himself. Let her get her bearings again.
“When I first saw Dad last night, I thought for sure he’d left Ginger,” Merrilee said.
“He hasn’t?”
“From what little I talked to him, Dad sounds as infatuated as ever. He’s not himself. He’s…detached. It’s like some alien has taken over his body. Like in that old sci-fi movie where space beings come to earth, leave their pods under the beds and use humans for hosts.”
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