Almost Heaven Page 7

  MJ shivered. What kind of person had her father hooked up with?

  “And that’s not all,” Brynn added. “Just before Mrs. Parker moved south, she changed her name. Her husband wasn’t a Parker.”

  “That’s strange,” MJ said. “I mean, if she hated him, why wait so long after he died to ditch his name?”

  “I’m still checking,” Brynn said.

  Anger boiled in MJ at the woman who’d thrown so many lives into chaos. “Wish I could think of a way to run her out of town.”

  “If you come up with a plan that doesn’t break any laws, I’ll be happy to help. Thank God, Uncle Bud got her number. Wish your dad was as lucky.”

  Jodie, carrying a food-laden tray, crossed the deck. She set the tray on a nearby rack and placed several dishes in front of MJ and Brynn.

  “Virginia stew and homemade biscuits for you, Merrilee. And dessert for Brynn.”

  “I didn’t order dessert,” Brynn said forcefully but gazed at the dish with unmistakable longing. “I have to fit into my uniforms.”

  “It’s blackberry cobbler à la mode, but I can take it back,” Jodie offered.

  “Touch that bowl and I’ll have to shoot you.” Brynn succumbed with a grin and took a bite. “Where’d you get blackberries this time of year?”

  “I pick all summer and keep a freezer full.” Jodie placed a coffeepot and mug in front of a third chair, poured herself a cup and joined them. “Have you seen Grant?” she asked MJ.

  “He picked me up at the airport.” MJ kept her tone casual, knowing Jodie was digging for more. Her friend never tired of her campaign to enlist MJ as her sister-in-law.

  At MJ’s announcement, Brynn shook her fingers as if she’d touched something hot. “Caroline Tuttle won’t be happy about that.”

  MJ raised her eyebrows. Grant had dated Caroline in high school. “She’s still in town?”

  “And still single,” Brynn said.

  “And more determined than ever to become Mrs. Grant Nathan.” Jodie added French vanilla cream to her mug of steaming coffee.

  “She needn’t worry about me,” MJ said. “She should worry about Gloria.”

  Jodie and Brynn exchanged amused looks over their coffee mugs.

  “Gloria?” they asked in unison.

  “I know she’s living with Grant.” MJ sensed she had missed something. “What’s so funny?”

  “Guess you haven’t met Gloria.” Brynn looked as if she was trying not to laugh. “She’s a real dog.”

  MJ shrugged. “Well, if Grant thinks she’s pretty—”

  Jodie and Brynn burst into laughter and MJ realized instantly that she’d been so worried over her parents that she’d missed the obvious.

  “Gloria is a dog,” she said with chagrin at her own stupidity.

  “An Irish wolfhound,” Brynn said. “I found her by the side of the highway up near Devil’s Mountain. She’d been hit by a car, so I called Grant.”

  “Grant worked a miracle with that poor animal,” Jodie said with more than a hint of pride. “She’d been badly abused before the hit-and-run. She was underfed, mangy and terrified of men. Now she thinks the sun rises and sets with Grant.”

  MJ remembered the wolfhound in the waiting room. “I’ve seen that dog, but I didn’t know she belonged to Grant.”

  “They’re inseparable,” Jodie said. “She goes everywhere with him.”

  Oh boy, MJ thought with a sinking sensation in her stomach. Gloria wasn’t Grant’s new love interest, so when MJ had supper with him tonight, they’d be alone. But no problem, she assured herself. The turmoil she felt when she was with Grant was merely echoes of spent emotions, like the twinges an amputee experiences from ghost nerve endings in a limb long gone. She could handle being alone with him.

  She hoped.

  “You all right, Merrilee?”

  MJ looked up to find Jodie studying her with a commiserating look.

  “I don’t know,” she answered honestly.

  She pushed aside bothersome thoughts of Grant and told them Nana’s plan for her pictorial essay.

  “Haven’t got a clue whether my being around Daddy will do any good,” she admitted when she’d finished.

  “If there’s anything we can do,” Jodie said, “just ask.”

  Brynn nodded. “Me, too.”

  MJ strove to lighten the moment before her friends’s empathy made her cry. “Don’t suppose Jodie could poison Ginger’s coffee the next time she comes in?”

  Jodie scowled fiercely, contorting her usually complacent features. “If I thought I could get away with it…”

  Brynn brightened. “Maybe you could sue the woman.”

  “For what?” MJ asked.

  “You know lawyers,” Brynn said with an expression of distaste. “They don’t need a reason, just a retainer.”

  MJ suppressed a smile. Brynn had less use for attorneys than she had for Yankees.

  Brynn looked thoughtful. “On the basis of her tacky wardrobe, I could arrest her for indecent exposure.”

  Bolstered by her friends’s loyalty and affection, MJ laughed. “You two haven’t changed.”

  The years fell away, and they could have been teenagers again, huddled over cherry-flavored Cokes in the back booth of Paulie’s Drug Store and swooning at the new math teacher’s uncanny resemblance to Harrison Ford. MJ had made friends in New York, but none who knew and understood her as these two did.

  Brynn finished the last bite of her cobbler and looked at her watch. “Gotta go. Have some errands to run before my shift starts.”

  “What time is it?” MJ asked.

  When Brynn told her, MJ shoved aside her untouched food. “Better bring me the check, Jodie.”

  Jodie shook her head. “Lunch is on me. You meeting your father?”

  “Not today. I’m making rounds with Grant this afternoon.”

  Brynn and Jodie exchanged glances and Jodie grinned. “Just like the old days.”

  “Don’t go matchmaking, Jodie Nathan,” MJ warned her. “As soon as I get my father’s head straight, I’m heading back to New York.”

  Brynn shook her head.

  “What?” MJ insisted.

  “Grant hasn’t so much as looked at another woman since you broke your engagement,” Brynn said. “He’s still in love with you, Merrilee.”

  MJ tamped down the old feelings Brynn’s words conjured. She opted for anger instead. “And I’m supposed to marry a man just because he loves me.”

  Brynn wasn’t easily deterred. “Sounds like a good start.”

  “I notice neither of you has a husband,” MJ said pointedly. “Why the push to get me hitched?”

  “When would I find time for a husband?” Brynn asked.

  “And after what I’ve been through, I’m off men for life. But Grant would be good for you,” Jodie insisted with sisterly loyalty.

  “Ah…” MJ softened her expression, unable to maintain the pretension of anger. “But would I be good for Grant?”

  GRANT CHECKED THE TIME. Twenty past three and no sign of Merrilee. She’d stood him up without even calling to say she wasn’t coming.

  Annoyed, he whistled for Gloria, told Fran he was leaving and headed for his truck, parked in front of the clinic. He’d hoped accompanying him this afternoon would take Merrilee’s mind off her troubles, but she must have found some other diversion. His annoyance switched to concern.

  Maybe she’d had an accident on a treacherous curve of the winding valley road.

  He pushed that possibility away and in its place tumbled a bitter memory from six years ago when Merrilee had broken their engagement, returned his ring and shattered his world.

  THE MAGNITUDE of his feelings for her had taken him by surprise that summer he’d first joined the practice, when he’d spent all his spare time with her after his off-the-cuff bet that he’d make her want to stay in Pleasant Valley. He’d given few passing thoughts to marriage before then, had figured only that someday he’d find a woman who’d be a good wife a
nd, if he was lucky, a good friend. He hadn’t expected to experience such gut-wrenching, soul-shaking passion, and had never expected it to last. But that fall, once Merrilee had returned to school, he’d suffered a loneliness unlike any he’d ever known.

  That’s when he’d gone shopping for a ring. He’d selected an aquamarine the color of her eyes and circled with diamonds. And when he’d slipped it on her finger the following Christmas Eve, in an attempt to show her the depth of his feelings, he’d made a complete and total fool of himself.

  “Since I couldn’t give you the sky and the stars, I chose this,” he’d said.

  Luckily, she hadn’t laughed. Instead, tears of joy had sparkled in those remarkable blue eyes when she’d accepted his proposal. Although he hadn’t thought it possible, at that moment she was more beautiful, funnier, more lovable than he’d remembered from their summer together.

  After their engagement, however, the trouble had started almost immediately. After weeks of disagreement, they’d finally settled on a December wedding the following year in the Pleasant Valley Community Church and a honeymoon on Florida’s Longboat Key. Their sticking point had been where they would live afterward.

  Although Merrilee had tentatively agreed, after Grant’s all-out campaign the summer before, that Pleasant Valley wasn’t such a bad place to work and raise a family, she continued to urge Grant to move to New York. They argued New Year’s Eve in her parents’ family room while Jim and Cat were out at a party.

  “With your credentials, you could open a practice on Fifth Avenue,” Merrilee said. “You’d make tons of money.”

  “Tons of money isn’t the point.”

  “What is the point?”

  He had trouble concentrating with her fingers working erotic circles on his earlobe. “I’m a country vet. I like treating agricultural animals and working with farmers. Damned few farmers on Fifth Avenue.”

  “But thousands of dogs and cats who need you.” Her voice was pleading, seductive.

  “Dammit, Merrilee.” Grant pulled away from her enticing touch and walked the floor in front of the hearth. “I didn’t become a vet to treat wealthy women’s pampered pooches. I want to spend my life outdoors, not cooped up in some city office or in a home surrounded by skyscrapers, concrete and traffic.”

  She had risen to her knees on the sofa and fixed her mouth in a pout. “I don’t see why you won’t at least try it for a few years. You could always come back to Pleasant Valley when Daddy retires.”

  His temper flared at her selfishness. He struggled for control and tried to look at their situation objectively.

  “Look,” he said in his most reasonable tone, “you want to be a photographer. Fine. You can shoot pictures anywhere. Ansel Adams and Clyde Butcher are proof of that. You can even shoot pictures in Pleasant Valley, as you discovered last summer. And if I work hard here, we won’t be rich, but we’ll be able to afford long vacations to anywhere in the world you want to go.”

  Her pout disappeared and he could tell she was wavering.

  “Let me practice here,” he said, “and you can decide where we’ll spend our time off, places where you can take all the pictures you want. Fair enough?”

  She climbed off the sofa and came to him, slipping into his arms with the ease that continually reassured him that they’d been made for each other. “Oh, Grant.”

  His name on her lips, a sensuous verbal caress, wilted his resistance and made him almost willing to move to New York.

  “You know I want to be a famous photographer and I want to be with you. We’ll work out something.”

  He pulled back and tipped her chin to look into her eyes. “Like what?”

  “We have months to decide.”

  She raised her lips to his and the kiss that followed was a prelude to lovemaking that had taken his breath away. He left that night, sated, happy and content that their problem could be resolved.

  One day the following summer, after she’d graduated from college, Merrilee was scheduled to meet him at two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon at a dilapidated log cabin set on ten acres that had recently come on the market. Grant had dreams of restoring it and adding a wing that included bedrooms for children and an airy photography studio for Merrilee. He also planned to build a barn and keep his own animals, and there was room for flower and vegetable gardens.

  He arrived at the property early and as he surveyed the potential of the place and pictured his life there with Merrilee and their children, he was the happiest he’d been in his life.

  That happiness dwindled when Merrilee didn’t arrive. The afternoon shadows lengthened, and still she didn’t come. He tried calling her cell phone, but heard only recorded messages.

  At first he was angry.

  Then he grew worried.

  Maybe she’d had an accident. Or taken ill. Or been abducted. Selecting their first home was a milestone in any couple’s life. Only some earth-shattering event would prevent Merrilee from keeping her appointment.

  He called her house and no one answered. He tried the clinic, but Fran said that Jim was on a call and she hadn’t seen Merrilee.

  His imagination went into overdrive. He pictured her trapped in her car. Bleeding. Dying. Or lying ill and unconscious on the floor of her home. Or bound and gagged in the back of a serial killer’s car. The more he tried to convince himself of a reasonable explanation for her failure to show, the worse his fears grew.

  If he lost Merrilee, he didn’t know how he would survive. Her sunny smile, her bubbly laugh, her sense of humor and witty conversation had given new meaning to his days and had him yearning for the long, loving nights ahead of them.

  He refused to contemplate a world without her.

  Grant was ready to call the police and begin his own search when his cell phone rang.

  “I’m on my way,” Merrilee’s breathless voice announced.

  Relief cascaded through him. “Are you all right?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it when I get there.”

  She arrived ten minutes later in a swirl of red dust, hopped out of her car and ran to him, face shining. “There was a carnival in town.”

  Relief transformed into anger so overwhelming he saw her through a veil of red. “You’ve been at a carnival while I’ve been worried out of my mind?”

  “I’m sorry.” She spoke the words, but she neither appeared nor sounded contrite. She looked radiant. “I should have called, but I was so caught up in taking pictures. Wait till you see the shots I have. You’ll understand.”

  “I tried to call you.”

  “I forgot to turn on my phone.”

  “And our appointment? You forgot that, too?” He could feel his blood boiling.

  “Of course not. But I kept finding one more shot to take. And the time got away from me.”

  “Merrilee.” He spoke through gritted teeth. “You’re three hours late.”

  She threw him a dazzling look that under other circumstances would have banished his anger, but Grant had spent three hours in agony, worried sick. Usually a patient man, he let his temper blow. “Obviously buying our first home isn’t a priority with you.”

  “It is,” she said with what seemed genuine remorse. “But you know how I am when I’m working. I lose all track of time. I said I’m sorry, and I am.”

  By this time, Grant had worked up enough steam to power Greenville. “Forget it. I’m going home.”

  He stomped toward his truck.

  “But it’s still light,” Merrilee called after him. “Aren’t you going to show me the place?”

  Afraid of what he’d say in his current state, he said nothing, climbed into his truck and drove away, leaving Merrilee standing in his dust.

  That night, after he’d had time to cool off, he realized that he’d overreacted. Yes, Merrilee should have called him, but Grant could also name a dozen instances when he had become so engrossed in his work that he’d lost track of time. Yes, Merrilee had been wrong, but so had he.

 
He drove straight to her parents’ house to tell her so. Jim had answered the door, his face puzzled. “Sorry, but Merrilee insists she doesn’t want to see you.”

  “I was a jerk,” Grant admitted to his friend and partner. “She was late and I overreacted.”

  “Let her sleep on it,” Jim suggested. “I’m sure she’ll come around in the morning.”

  She’d come around all right.

  Merrilee was waiting at the clinic the next day when Grant arrived before anyone else. Right there on the front porch, she’d given back his ring.

  “I can’t marry you, Grant.” She wouldn’t meet his gaze, fixing her blue eyes on a point past his shoulder.

  He felt as if she’d poked him with a cattle prod. “You’re kidding, right?”

  She shook her head, still avoiding his eyes. “I realized yesterday that my career is more important than you, than us. And the prospect of living in Pleasant Valley suffocates me. I’m moving to New York, as I’d originally planned. I’m sorry.”

  Before he had a chance to gather his wits to reply, she hurried to her car and pulled away.

  Merrilee had left him dazed, as if he’d been clobbered with a two-by-four. When he’d come to his senses again, he’d followed her home, but she had refused to see or to even talk to him before she’d moved out of her parents’ home a few weeks later. He’d tried flowers, candy, love letters. He’d even tried to enlist Cat’s help, all to no avail. For months after Merrilee’s return to New York, she hadn’t answered his calls, his letters.

  For a long time he’d been angry and blamed her for misleading him. Then he’d finally accepted that she’d been right. If her career was more important than their relationship, she’d done the proper thing. Better a clean break early than a messy divorce later.

  But acknowledging that fact hadn’t stopped her desertion from hurting like hell. Hadn’t stopped him from loving her. And now she was back in Pleasant Valley, albeit not of her own accord.

  And she was keeping him waiting again.