When Love Comes Home

Grady worked at shutting his mouth before he could mutter, “I don’t think that’s ever happened before.”

“Oh, you might be surprised,” she told him. “There are some big sports fans around. My father was one of them, you see, and having only daughters, he literally pined for someone to discuss statistics with. My older sister, Carol, wasn’t interested. She lives in Colorado now.”

“And you were? Interested, I mean.”

“Very. I much preferred sitting in the living room with Dad discussing RBIs and pass completion rates to washing dishes with Mom in the kitchen.” She laughed again.

“So it was more an attempt to get out of your chores than a real interest in sports,” he surmised.

She shook her head. “No one got out of chores in our household. I just like knowing things. Information is powerful, don’t you think?”

Did he ever. “Key to my success as an attorney,” he heard himself say, and then when she asked him to explain that, he did. She asked a question, which he answered, and before he knew what was happening they were in Tulsa.

He quickly became consumed with finding a parking spot in the crowded terminal lot. As a consequence, it didn’t hit him until he was dragging his briefcase out of the backseat of his car that he’d just spent over an hour in conversation with a woman talking mostly about himself—and he had enjoyed it!

The thought literally froze him in place for a moment. Then Paige Ellis tossed her plaid scarf around her neck and tucked the ends into the front of her bright gold, three-quarter-length coat, looking more polished and lovely than a woman in cheap clothes ought to. Grady shook himself, recalling that she was in an emotional stew at the moment and probably wouldn’t remember a word that had been said between them. Her distraction had no doubt led to his own.

Feeling somewhat deflated, he trudged toward the terminal. She fell into step beside him. It had apparently rained in Tulsa the evening before, and little glossy patches of damp remained along the pavement. Paige failed to see one, and the slick sole of her brown flat skidded, so naturally Grady reached out to prevent her from falling. Somehow, she wound up in his arms. She beamed a smile at him, stopping the breath in his lungs. After that he couldn’t seem to find a way to let go of her, keeping one hand clamped firmly around her arm until they were safely inside the building.

Thirty minutes later as they moved from check-in to the passenger screening line he began to worry that arriving a mere hour ahead of their departure time had been foolishly shortsighted. Thanksgiving, after all, was the busiest travel day of the entire year.

Paige chattered about first one thing and then another. His fear that they might not make their flight was reason enough not to interrupt her ongoing one-sided conversation about… He lost track of what it was about. But it allowed him to worry for them both, then to be relieved when they walked onto the plane and into their seats with minutes to spare.

When she reached for the in-flight magazine, he knew a moment of mingled relief and disappointment. Apparently, she thought he would be interested in an article, for she began a running commentary on a piece about the latest in computer technology.

Grady remembered his brother saying that because he lived with four women he heard at least 100,000 words per day. At that moment, Grady didn’t doubt Dan’s assessment. But surprisingly Grady found himself interested. Afterward, they found themselves discussing her work.

Paige Ellis, it turned out, was a marvel of ingenuity and self-discipline. Not only was she a self-taught medical transcriptionist, she had her own cottage industry. By means of a small business loan, she had supplied state-of-the-art computer transcription equipment to four other women, all of whom worked out of their homes and were paid by the hour. By concentrating on doctors in the smaller communities around Fayetteville, Paige had garnered the lion’s share of the transcription contracts in the area. Due to the lower costs of her business format, she was able to undercut her competition substantially.

“Thank the good Lord,” she declared happily, “I will have the time I’ve been dreaming about to spend with my son before it’s too late.” She laughed, and then, to Grady’s shock and dismay, she suddenly began to cry.

For Grady it was like being pulled out of a comfortable chair and thrust on to a torture rack. He didn’t know what to do or say, so he just sat there like a deer frozen in the headlights and listened to her.

“He’s eleven now. Eleven! I’ve missed four birthdays!”

Grady already knew from reading the case file that Nolan Ellis had ostensibly taken the boy for a two-week camping trip at the end of June, three-and-a-half years earlier. It was to have been Vaughn’s birthday gift from his dad, and they were to have returned before the boy’s actual birth date of July 1. The camping trip, of course, had been a ruse meant to give Nolan a two-week head start to disappear, and it had worked like a charm. Only as she’d sat alone hour after hour, she told him, waiting to light the candles on Vaughn’s birthday cake, had Paige begun to realize that the two weeks of her son’s absence might well turn into a lifetime.

The particulars of the divorce were likewise already known to Grady, though the Jones firm had not handled it. That, in his opinion, was most unfortunate, something she matter-of-factly confirmed as the story spilled out of her.

High school sweethearts, she and Nolan had married young. By the time their son had reached the age of four, Nolan had decided that he didn’t want to be married, after all. Resentful over his “lost youth” and the burden of family responsibilities, he had simply walked out.

Even more shocking, the divorce papers had alleged that Nolan might not be Vaughn’s father. Angry and hurt, Paige had signed without even consulting an attorney. Only later did she realize what Grady, or any other halfway competent attorney, could have told her: she had, in effect, signed away her and Vaughn’s right to financial support.

She’d realized her mistake when she’d transcribed notes concerning a case in which one of her clients, a medical lab, had been called upon to verify paternity so that child support could be levied. After hearing Paige’s story, a helpful lab technician had arranged for Vaughn to be tested and had also recommended an attorney who dealt with paternity cases. When Nolan predictably resurfaced several months before Vaughn’s eighth birthday, Paige had been ready. She’d hit Nolan with a court order, proved that he was Vaughn’s father and been awarded substantial monthly child support. Nolan had been livid, but he’d seemed to calm down fairly quickly.

“I did think he might disappear again after the court decision went against him,” she said, sniffing, “but after he stuck around for a while, I started to believe that he really wanted to be a father to Vaughn. That’s what my little boy wanted, and who could blame him? Every little boy wants a daddy. I never dreamed Nolan would take Vaughn and disappear.”

“It’s not your fault,” Grady said, wondering when his arm had come to be draped about her shoulders.

“I can’t help wondering if he’s missed me,” she whispered.

“Little boys want their moms, too,” Grady assured her.

“Do you really think so?”

Grady realized suddenly that all this chatter was a product of her emotional state, so when she turned that hopeful, tear-stained face up to him, what else could he do but tell her about his own experiences?

“I know so. I was six when my mom died, and nothing’s been quite right in my world since.”

How on earth they got from talking about losing his mom to talking about his divorce, he would never know. At some point he started telling her how his marriage had fallen apart.

“So, she left you to marry your boss,” Paige clarified sharply, both surprising and puzzling him.

Embarrassment and pain roiled in his gut, but he’d come so far already that he didn’t see any point in pulling back now. “Technically he was her boss, too, since we both worked for the same Little Rock law firm.”

“And how did that come about?” Paige wanted to know.

Grady shrugged. “I asked them to hire her.”

Paige folded her arms at this. “So let me get this straight. First she refused to stay in Fayetteville and join your family’s practice.”

“There aren’t any opportunities for advancement in a small family partnership,” he explained.

“Then, the firm in Little Rock hired you, and wanted you bad enough to take her in the bargain. Right?”

Eventually he nodded. “Right.”

“So she used you to get into a firm she couldn’t have gotten into on her own, then she left you for someone with more power and prestige.” Paige threw up her hands, exclaiming, “Well, at least she stayed true to form!”

“T-true to form?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? She manipulated you, and when she found someone else who could offer her more, she traded up.”

He was so taken aback by the idea that for a moment he couldn’t even give it proper thought. Paige must have taken his silence for censure, for she suddenly wrinkled her pert little nose, sighed and muttered, “Okay, I shouldn’t be judging, but such selfishness gets to me.”

His family had hinted at the same thing, that Robin had left him for his boss not just because the man was elegant, affable and downright loquacious but because she was greedy. It hadn’t made sense at the time. His bank account was hefty enough, after all. Since then he’d avoided thinking about it because it was too painful.

Now, after several years, he could see things from a different perspective. Robin had used him. That didn’t make the hurtful and numerous accusations she’d thrown at him any less true. Did it?

He shook his head. Robin was correct about him being inept with women. Had she not pursued him, he doubted that they’d have ever gotten together. One-on-one with a woman, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and his mind went completely blank. The more attractive he found her, the worse it was.

Usually, he amended silently, glancing sideways at Paige.

It was nuts to think that he might be any different with Paige. If his poor communication skills and emotional ineptness were not enough, there was his clumsiness. Okay, maybe once he’d been fleet of foot and a force to be reckoned with on the athletic field, but those days were long gone. That he’d been able to discuss them, even briefly, with Paige Ellis had been terribly flattering, which had led to hours of conversation. The fact that he’d enjoyed those hours so much suddenly made him seem especially pathetic.

None of this meant anything to Paige, after all. She was an admitted sports freak; he’d allowed her interest in the fact that he’d once played college football to become more personal than it was surely intended to be.

Disturbed, Grady let his seat back, mumbling that they had a long day ahead of them, and closed his eyes. She agreed with him and curled up in her seat, but she did not sleep. He knew this because he didn’t sleep, either.