fifteen-two, he thought, judging with an eye more used to calculating height on horses than on people. Especially women.
“You’ve…changed,” he said. And it was true; he remembered her as a live-wire girl who had looked a great deal like his half sister, except for green eyes in place of Kristina’s pale blue, a girl with a lot of energy but not much stature. The stature hadn’t changed much, but the energy had; it seemed nowhere in evidence now.
“Changed, but not grown, is that it?” she said, sounding rueful.
“Well,” he said reasonably, “you haven’t. Much.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re the one who grew four inches in one summer.”
Grant’s mouth quirked. That had been an awkward summer, when his fifteen-year-old body decided now was the time and shot him to his full six feet in a spurt that indeed seemed to happen in a three-month span. He’d been embarrassed at his sudden gawkiness and the clumsiness that ensued, and the fact that none of his clothes fit anymore, but even more embarrassed by the fascination the change seemed to hold for his half sister’s annoyingly omnipresent best friend.
“Amazing I grew at all, with you glued to my heels, Meredith Cecelia.”
She winced. “Ouch. Please, stick with just Meredith. Or Meri.”
She gave him a sideways look. He read it easily, and laughed.
“Or Mercy?” he suggested. “Or rather, ‘No Mercy’?”
He’d been rather proud of his own cleverness in coining the name for her when they met that first summer so long ago, combining her first and middle names and his own irritation at her tenaciousness in following him around.
“You always were annoyingly proud of coming up with that,” she said dryly.
“It fit,” he pointed out. “You never would leave me alone. Every time I came to visit Mom, you were always hanging around. I’ll never forget that time you followed me to the ice rink and got stuck in the turn-stile.”
“I was only twelve,” she explained with some dignity. “And I had a huge crush on you, after you saved me from those boys who were teasing me.”
Grant blinked. He’d guessed she had a crush on him—it hadn’t been hard, with the quicksilver girl dogging virtually his every step each summer he came to visit—but he hadn’t realized it had started then. He remembered finding her that first summer, cornered by the two bigger boys, her chin up proudly, despite the tears welling from her eyes. He’d chased her tormentors away, then walked her home. She’d said nothing until they got to her house, and then only a quiet thank-you. But now that he thought about it, that was about the time she had become his ever-present shadow.
“They were just a couple of bullies,” he said.
“And you were my white knight,” she returned softly.
Grant winced; he wasn’t hero material, not even for an impressionable child.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she said, as if in answer to his expression. She smiled widely—a better smile this time, one that almost brightened her eyes to the vivid green he remembered. “I got over it long ago. Once I grew up enough to realize I’d fallen for a pretty face without knowing a thing about the man behind it, I recovered quite nicely. Thank goodness.”
“Oh.”
It came out rather flatly, and Grant’s mouth quirked again. Was he feeling flattered that she’d admitted to that long-ago crush? Or miffed that she’d gotten over it so thoroughly? And seemed so cheerful about it? He nearly laughed; hadn’t he had enough of women enamored purely of his looks? And more than enough of those who, when they found out there was a comfortable amount of money behind the McClure name, became even more enamored?
At least Mercy had never been that kind of female; even at her adoring worst as a child, she’d never fawned on him. She’d been too much a tomboy for that, an unexpected trait in such a delicate-looking little pixie. A tiny dynamo with a blond ponytail, she’d merely followed him. Everywhere.
She still had the ponytail. But the tomboy had grown up. And there was no denying that the gamine features that had once reminded him of a mischievous imp were now enchanting. Big eyes, turned-up nose, sassy chin…Meredith Brady had become a beautiful woman. A very beautiful woman. No wonder Chipper had looked dazed.
Chipper. Who was standing there with wide eyes and wider ears, Grant thought wryly, listening to this entire exchange. And stealing shy but eager glances at Mercy, who seemed utterly unaware of the eighteen-year-old’s fascination.
Which didn’t mean, Grant told himself sternly, that he had any excuse for standing here staring at her himself. And the fact that he had been alone for a long time wasn’t any justification for the sudden acceleration of his pulse, either. This was the bane of his teenage existence, after all. No Mercy, the pest. Just because she’d grown into a lovely adult didn’t mean a thing. Not a darn thing. But he did wonder if she ever let down that ponytail, and how the silky-looking hair would fall if she did.
“Get on those salt blocks,” he instructed the young hand firmly. “I’ll show her up to the house.”
Chipper looked crestfallen. “I was gonna carry her bags up for her—”
“I can manage,” she said. “There’s not that much. I tend to travel light.”
“But I—”
“I need those salt blocks set out,” Grant said. “Now.”
“Yes, sir,” Chipper said resignedly. Then he brightened, turning his freckled face back toward Mercy. “If you need someone to show you around—”
“I’ll keep you in mind,” she said, smiling at the boy.
An utterly charming smile, Grant thought. And utterly without heart. A practiced, surface smile, reflecting nothing of the woman behind it. Yet it didn’t seem to him a phony smile, not like those of some of the women he’d encountered in his infrequent forays into the society his mother was now a part of.
No, this wasn’t a smile to hide shallowness, it was more of a mask, to hide…what? Emptiness? Pain?
It came back to him in a rush then, what Kristina had said in her phone call to him last week. It had taken him a moment to connect the name that sounded familiar to the memory of his pesky blond shadow, so he’d missed the first part of what his half sister said. But her plea had been simple enough; Meredith needed someplace to go, a shelter, away from the city, for a while, after the death of her partner, Nick Corelli, who had been murdered in the line of duty.
“She and Nick were very close,” Kristina had said, in the most patently sincere part of her wheedling request. “She’s devastated. She needs to rest, she’s running herself ragged. Please, Grant. Just for a while. She needs someplace quiet, where people won’t talk about what happened all the time. Someplace to grieve, and to heal.”
That was it, he thought. Grief was what was living behind that careful smile. She must have loved the man a great deal. And here he was overheating absurdly, not only over his childhood nemesis, but over a woman grieving for a loved one. Mentally chastising himself, he reached for the two bags Chipper had set down beside the truck.
“I
