Rainier Drive (Cedar Cove #6)(45)

Trying to catch up, Olivia trotted along, breathing hard by the time she reached his side. “How much farther?” she panted.

“Around the next corner is three full miles.”

As soon as they rounded the curve in the road, Olivia stopped, slumping against the speed limit sign, exhausted. She leaned forward to catch her breath. “I can’t keep up with you anymore,” she said, gulping air into her lungs.

Jogging in place, Jack looked exceptionally proud of himself. “You might want to lose a few pounds.”

“Jack!” She straightened and glared at him, hands on her hips.

“Just kidding,” he said, chuckling.

“No, you weren’t.” The thing was, she probably could afford to lose five pounds. Except that at her age, it wasn’t as easy as it had once been. Despite all her hard work, those few stubborn pounds refused to budge. It would be easier to melt them off with a blowtorch, as she’d recently told Grace.

Grace and Olivia were back to meeting every Wednesday for their aerobics class. Afterward they went for pie and coffee at the Pancake Palace. However, Olivia had forsaken dessert in the last few weeks. But she might as well have indulged in that coconut cream delight for all the good it’d done her to go without.

“I was thinking we should take a nice, hot shower when we get home,” Jack suggested, jogging circles around her. He jiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

“Jack Griffin, you’re outrageous.”

“Yeah, but you love it.”

He was right; she loved everything about this man.

After being single for nearly twenty years, she’d had to make a real adjustment to return to married life. Jack had been divorced for almost as long, and he’d had to make his own compromises.

It had taken Jack’s heart attack to show her—remind her—what really mattered in life and in marriage. She loved her husband. That fact was immutable; everything else was negotiable.

She only hoped that her daughter’s marriage was equally strong, equally capable of surviving a crisis.

They started the three-mile walk back to the house, their pace more leisurely than before.

“Oh, oh,” Jack said after a moment. “You’ve got that look. Better tell me what you’re thinking about.”

Olivia sighed and supposed she should get straight to the point. “Justine mentioned that Warren Saget’s been coming by the bank a lot.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Jack muttered. He shared her distaste for the other man.

Her daughter’s relationship with Warren had always made Olivia uncomfortable, and her disapproval had driven a wedge between them for a long time. Good grief! Warren was Olivia’s age, old enough to be Justine’s father. In fact, Olivia had worried that her daughter was seeking a father figure in him. Stan had been a good husband and father until their son’s death. Afterward, it was as if her ex had abdicated those roles. In retrospect, Olivia believed this was how Stan had dealt with Jordan’s loss. Stan had remarried almost immediately after the divorce, and while he’d continued with child support payments, he’d had practically no emotional involvement with either Justine or her brother, James.

“Did she tell you what Saget wants?” Jack asked, frowning.

“Not really. She just said he’s making a lot of unnecessary visits to the bank. I don’t think she’s told Seth about it.”

“Maybe she should—to avoid any misunderstandings.”

Olivia agreed with him, but it wasn’t her decision.

“Warren knows Justine isn’t interested in him, right?” Jack asked.

Justine had assured Olivia she’d made that abundantly clear. “She loves her husband and family.”

“I wouldn’t trust Warren Saget,” Jack said, walking faster now. Olivia picked up her pace, too. “Justine would be well advised to stay away from him,” he said.

“I agree.”

“Do you figure he’s trying to get on her good side? Because he wants the contract to rebuild the restaurant?”

“Perhaps,” Olivia said, but she doubted it. Warren’s company was successful, despite a number of complaints and even lawsuits through the years. Olivia had never understood how he stayed in business and yet he did. Warren had lost some of those lawsuits, and won others, and still he thrived.

What bothered Olivia most was the way he kept turning up in her daughter’s life, like the proverbial bad penny. Olivia knew it’d been hard on Warren’s ego when Justine left him and married Seth. Five years had passed. Surely he was over her daughter by now.

“Did you hear about Sandy Davis?” Jack asked suddenly.

Olivia shook her head. Sandy was the sheriff’s wife; she and Troy Davis had been married nearly thirty years. Sandy had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a young adult. She’d spent the last two years in a nursing home.

“She died yesterday.”

“I’m so sorry,” Olivia murmured. She’d always admired Troy and the way he loved and cared for his wife. He rarely talked about Sandy or her condition, seldom disclosing his own troubles.

“The funeral’s going to be low-key,” Jack said. “That’s what Troy and his daughter told me when he brought in the obituary. Pastor Flemming is doing the service.”

“Poor Troy,” she said, wishing she could think of some way to help. “We’ll definitely go to the funeral.”