to her amazing blue eyes and Grant’s old pull toward her tightened again, tugging on his heartstrings.
“Your mother’s been preoccupied,” Sally Mae said.
“With teaching?” Merrilee shook her head. “Mom never put her career first. Dad’s always been the center of her universe.”
“Her universe has shifted,” Sally Mae said with dry disapproval. “Cat took a sabbatical last fall. Went back to school for her Ph.D.”
“I know that,” Merrilee said. “I may not have come home, but I have stayed in touch by phone and e-mail.”
“And your parents have told you only what they wanted you to know,” her grandmother said sharply. Sally Mae’s expression and her voice softened. “Don’t blame yourself. None of us knew the full extent of the problem. Not until yesterday.”
Merrilee straightened her shoulders, as if bearing up under a heavy burden. “So you’re telling me, with Dad’s heavy workload and midlife crisis and Mom’s going back to school, my parents have simply drifted apart?”
Sally Mae nodded, and Grant kept quiet, waiting for the bomb to drop.
“No wonder you called me,” Merrilee said with a sigh that sounded relieved. “I’ll talk to them. I know how much they love each other. If I can get them to communicate, they can work this out.”
Grant closed his eyes. Here it comes.
Sally Mae fidgeted with the sterling silver flatware beside her plate. “There’s a…complication.”
“What kind of complication?” Merrilee didn’t have a clue and Grant wished she could remain ignorant. The truth was going to break her heart.
“Ginger Parker,” Sally Mae said in a tone that suggested the mere name made her sick to her stomach. “She’s the complication.”
“Another woman?” Merrilee said with a gasp, as if someone had sucker-punched her. “My dad with another woman? I don’t believe it!”
“That’s where he went when he moved out,” her grandmother said with obvious distaste. “There’s no fool like an old fool.”
“Who is this Ginger?” Merrilee demanded. “I’ve never heard of her.”
“Tell her, please, Grant,” Sally Mae said. “Just talking about that…that woman makes me ill.”
From the emphasis Sally Mae gave the word, Grant knew full well woman wasn’t what Merrilee’s grandmother had in mind, but she was too well-bred to verbalize her true opinion. Grant could think of a dozen words that fit Ginger Parker, but none that would ever cross Sally Mae McDonough’s lips.
Merrilee’s gaze fixed on him, waiting.
“Mrs. Parker came here over a year ago,” he began. “She bought the old Patterson place up on Cradle Creek.”
“‘Mrs.’? She’s married?” Merrilee asked in a tone even more horrified than before.
“A widow,” Grant explained. “Moved here from New Jersey when her husband died.”
“What does she look like?” Merrilee said. “Young and pretty, I’ll bet.”
“Bottle pretty,” Sally Mae said with a sniff. “She must spend a small fortune on auburn hair dye. And applies her makeup with a trowel. Amy Lou down at the Hair Apparent has made enough profit off that woman to buy a new car.”
“Mrs. Parker is several years older than your father,” Grant added.
Merrilee’s mouth gaped. “Daddy left Mom for an older woman? I don’t believe it.”
“She may be older, but she keeps herself in shape,” Grant said. “She’s a runner. Jogs for miles every day in tight little spandex outfits that accent her behind and, uh, generous chest size.” Grant glanced at Sally Mae, whose eyes were closed in disgust. “And she chooses her routes carefully.”
“Chooses her routes?” Merrilee frowned.
“Her jogging itinerary makes her highly visible to the male population,” Grant explained. “The woman’s been hot to trot ever since she arrived in Pleasant Valley. She’s cast her net at every man in town.”
“Correction,” Sally Mae interjected, “only at men with money. She’s a gold digger.”
“Unfortunately,” Grant said, “your father’s the first catch she’s landed.”
“The others had more sense,” Sally Mae said with distinct bitterness.
Grant didn’t bother mentioning how Ginger Parker had made a play for him last fall, pretending to sprain her ankle in front of his house. When he’d picked her up off the driveway, she’d twined her arms around his neck, pressed her breasts against his chest, batted her eyelashes and asked him to take her home. She’d filled his ear the whole time with how lonely she’d been since her husband, a retired army colonel, had died, and had shed tears that seemed transparently fake.
Refusing to fall for her ploy, Grant had called 9-1-1, and Brynn Sawyer had driven the woman to the hospital in her patrol car. After a thorough examination and X rays, the ER doctor had found nothing wrong with Ginger’s ankle and sent her home. Jim Stratton may have found the woman sexy, but Grant thought her pathetic.
Guilt gnawed at Grant. Ginger had been as persistent as a burr on a dog. She’d bought a canary after the twisted ankle encounter and showed up at the clinic for a consultation. If Grant hadn’t pawned her off on Jim, believing her no danger to his happily married partner, maybe none of this would have happened.
Merrilee shook her head. “I can’t believe this. Daddy has more sense than to fall for another woman, much less one like that.”
“Your father isn’t thinking with his brain,” Sally Mae said.
“Nana!” Merrilee’s face flushed deep crimson.
Grant wasn’t shocked by the oblique reference, only that a woman as genteel as Sally Mae would utter it. What she’d said was true. Jim Stratton hadn’t been thinking clearly for a long time. Ginger Parker had only one thing to offer a man like Jim.
Sex.
The two had nothing else in common.
“I’ll talk to him,” Merrilee said. “Make him see what a fool he’s making of himself. And how much he’s hurting Mom.”
“No.” Sally Mae shook her head firmly. “I don’t think you should do that.”
The older woman’s response surprised Grant. He’d figured Sally Mae had summoned Merrilee home specifically to talk some sense into Jim. She was the apple of her father’s eye and had always been able to wrap him around her little finger. Grant, too, before she shook the dust of Pleasant Valley off her shoes.
“Then why did you call me home?” Merrilee pushed back from the table, stood and paced the antique Oriental rug that covered the highly polished heart-pine floor.
“Men are stubborn,” Sally Mae said. “The more you tell them they shouldn’t do something, the more dead set they are to do it.”
Grant opened his mouth to protest, but Sally Mae cut him off. “Sorry, Grant, but that’s the truth as I see it, and especially where my son-in-law’s concerned.”
“If Daddy can’t be influenced, what can I do?” Merrilee’s reddened cheeks would have been appealing if not for her distress.
Sally Mae smiled with an almost feline cunning that made Grant glad she was plotting against Jim and not him. “I didn’t say your father can’t be influenced.”
Merrilee took her seat. “I know that look, Nana. You’ve got something up your sleeve.”
“Sit down, Merrilee June.” Sally Mae reached for a platter of sandwiches