Julianna Morris - The Hometown Hero Returns

She frowned, thinking about Butch.

Maybe he had loved her in the only way a possessive, insecure jock could love anyone. He’d certainly begged her not to divorce him, swearing he would change if she’d just give him another chance. Problem was, she had already given him too many chances, and she’d realized that her ego would eventually get so beaten down by his insults and cheating that someday she wouldn’t be able to leave.

The sad thing was they ought to have been good together—they’d laughed at the same things, loved watching old movies, had both wanted a honeymoon at Walt Disney World. People who could laugh and play together had a head start in making a marriage work, didn’t they? But things changed just before they got married. His older brother died and Butch tried to fill Danny’s oversized shoes in a family that never approved of him and his dropping out of college after only one semester.

“Forget it,” she murmured. Part of her was sad that her marriage had ended, and part of her was desperately relieved. With a sigh, she tucked the gown away again and continued looking through the crowded attic.

Every now and then she startled a mouse, which would squeak and run in terror into the shadows. But it was Nicki who yelped when she reached for a dusty crystal vase and a fat, hairy spider tumbled onto the back of her hand.

The spider hit the opposite wall, and with more speed than grace, she hopped over a steamer trunk and raced down the stairs, slamming the door behind her. In her head she knew most spiders were harmless, but there was something about a creature with a surfeit of legs that gave her the willies.

“Is something wrong?” Luke came out from the study.

“Uh…no. I’m just…you know, taking a break. It’s a little warm up there.”

He gave her an irritated look and waved the sheaf of papers in his hand. “I can’t concentrate on my work if you’re slamming doors all day! I’ve got business that needs my attention.”

She wanted to smack him. The reaction distracted her spider-jangled nerves. “I’m soooo sorry, Mr. McCade. I won’t let it happen again.”

Luke opened his mouth, then shut it. It wasn’t Nicki’s fault he couldn’t concentrate, it was worry over Granddad and making decisions for him that got him so tense. Nobody in the family wanted to make a decision, they just wanted everything to be miraculously restored to how it used to be. But wishing wouldn’t work.

He kept running it over and over in his head. The family had practically forced Granddad to see the doctor because of his vague and forgetful behavior, and Dr. Kroeger had finally diagnosed senility. But the medication wasn’t having any effect, and neither had the mental exercises they’d tried—it was hard to keep therapy going when the patient wouldn’t cooperate. Too bad he couldn’t fix granddad’s problem the way he’d handle a contractor who didn’t do his job.

Luke again wished he could talk it over with Nicki. She had a good head on her shoulders, and since she wasn’t family she might not let emotion cloud her judgment. But it wasn’t possible; some things you didn’t discuss with virtual strangers, especially when that stranger was so sentimental about the man in question.

He cleared his throat. “I shouldn’t…that is, I didn’t mean to bark at you like that. I’ve been working on a land deal that isn’t going well. Did you find anything valuable?”

“Right now I’m just getting an idea of what’s there and how to organize myself.” She seemed pale and was scrubbing the back of her hand on her thigh.

Luke frowned, remembering the small cry he’d heard from the floor above. “Are you sure nothing is wrong?”

“What could be wrong? It’s warm, that’s all.”

“I don’t want you passing out from the heat,” he said, his brow still creased. “I’ll bring a bunch of stuff down to one of the spare rooms. You can work in there. When you’re done with the first batch, we’ll move it to another room and I’ll bring more down. This house is huge, so there’s plenty of space.”

“That’s thoughtful of you,” Nicki said politely. He was sure she hated saying anything of the kind, since he hadn’t exactly proven himself thoughtful, either in the past or in the present.

But nothing added up when it came to Nicki. Why had she decided to live in Divine? With her brains she could have done anything, gone anywhere. Yet she’d chosen to come back, and talked about the town as her home. He couldn’t see why anyone would live here if they had a chance to get out.

“You must have family here in Divine, right?” he asked abruptly, again breaking his cardinal rule of noninterference.

“No.” She blinked. “My mom died right after I was born, and my father passed away when I was a junior in college. He did have a sister—in Texas, I think—but they’d lost contact. I’m not sure if I have anyone else—Dad wouldn’t talk about family.”

“I didn’t know about your father. I’m sorry.”

Nicki looked pensive, then sighed. “We weren’t close.”

For some reason Luke wanted to know more, to hear why Nicki and her father hadn’t been close and why he hadn’t talked about family. But it wasn’t his concern, any more than anything else was about Nicki.

“I’ll go get a load,” he murmured.

Luke went up the steps to the attic, memories crowding in on him. Once his grandparents’ attic had been a place of vast adventure where he and Sherrie and their cousins played to their hearts’ content. The floor had been clear and open then, and his grandmother would bring up lemonade and apple cake to slow them down when things got too rowdy. Grams’s apple cake had been delicious, always winning awards at the county fair until she stopped entering the competition, citing her eight grand-prize ribbons as an embarrassment of riches.

A nostalgic smile curved Luke’s mouth before he shook his head. Times changed, he reminded himself. Grams was gone and he wasn’t eight and content with imaginary adventures any longer. Yet it was nice to be reminded of happier days in Divine. Usually, his memories lingered on that disastrous last year of high school.

“Do you need some help?” Nicki asked. She had followed and was cautiously peering around the door frame.

“Don’t tell me, you thought you saw a mouse up here,” Luke guessed dryly. He’d never met a woman who wasn’t scared of mice. Even his sister hated rodents, which was a problem when someone brought one to her as a veterinary patient.

Nicki shrugged. “I’ve seen several, actually. You need to set some traps to get rid of the old ones, then get a cat to scare any new ones away. I don’t have anything against mice, I even think they’re cute, but they’re dirty houseguests and destroy paper and fabric.”

“Cute?”

“Sure. With their big ears and bright eyes, field mice look like they walked right off a greeting card.”

Luke grunted in disbelief and shifted a large basket to one side. Predictably, three mice went scurrying, two of them in Nicki’s direction. Despite her claims of being unafraid, he expected her to scream. Yet, while a screech came from one of the mice, she watched them run across her feet without a peep.

“Definitely a cat,” she announced. “Da Vinci would have a ball up here. He loves to hunt.”

“Stands to reason you’d name your cat after Leonardo da Vinci,” Luke grumbled, though he secretly wanted to laugh. Two mice had just done aerobics over her sneakers and she hadn’t blinked an eye. Some men wouldn’t have taken it so calmly, but she was obviously made of sterner stuff.

“It fit. Da Vinci is curious about everything, and so was his namesake.”

“All cats are curious. It’s one of their defining characteristics.”

Nicki looked surprised. “I didn’t know you liked cats.”

“They’re all right. It isn’t like I have one or anything.”

She shook her head at his hasty denial of a feline soft spot and reached for a painting. Picking it up, she looked carefully at the front, back and sides, then selected another, checking it just as carefully. “What room do you want me to use?” she asked.

“Second floor, second door to the left. It’s Grams’s old sewing room, so there’s a big table you can work at.”

She nodded and walked back down the stairs, holding the paintings as if they were made of gold. Which, Luke supposed, they might as well be if they were anything like the one of his great-grandmother. Surely that was a fluke, though—an old family portrait, by an artist who was unimportant at the time it was painted.

Because Nicki had been so careful, Luke also checked the paintings he carried, even though he didn’t know what he was looking for. He brushed away a few spiders and their webs, but they weren’t doing any harm as far as he could tell.

“Do you need anything else?” he asked after they’d carried down several armloads and crowded one side of the room with paintings. He recognized some from when they’d hung in the house; others were unfamiliar.

“No, I’m fine.” She opened her briefcase and removed notebooks and a magnifying glass. “Don’t let me keep you.”

Luke scowled. Once again he was being dismissed. He tried to remind himself that Nicki was a college professor accustomed to dealing with students. Only he wasn’t a student; this was his grandfather’s house, and he still wanted to learn more about her.

Nicki seemed to have a curiously appealing inner peace. But it wasn’t just that. She was different from the women he knew. She didn’t hide her feelings beneath a sophisticated veneer, and seemed willing to do her part.

“How long were you in Europe on your study trips?” he asked, turning a chair backward and straddling it.

She cast him a startled glance. “I thought you had work to do.”

Luke lifted his shoulders, a wry smile quirking his mouth. He did have work to do. A mountain of work. There were contracts to review and sign, proposals to study, negotiations pending, calls to make, endless e-mails and a flood of other paperwork to review. A lot of money was riding on his taking care of business, yet at the moment he’d rather talk to Nicki. The feeling reminded him that she was a distraction that might prove problematic.

“I…um, decided to knock off for a while,” he said. “So, how long?”

“Three months the first time, six on the second trip. I also did an intensive course of study at the Sorbonne for several months.”

Though he expected her to run off at the mouth like always, she instead bent over a small painting and began examining it as if her life depended on the results. His jaw tightened. “What did you enjoy seeing the most?”

She slapped a notebook on the table and glared. “Why are you still here? Don’t you want me to get the inventory done quickly? I’m sure I’m the last woman you want hanging around—you always preferred women with bra sizes bigger than their IQ.”

“Look, if it’ll help if I…well…apologize for the way I acted when we were kids, I will,” Luke said in the least apologetic tone he’d ever used. He counted to ten and tried again. “I was a jerk. Okay? You have every right to hate me.”

“It has nothing to do with when we were kids. That is, you obviously haven’t changed—you practically have ex-jock tattooed on your forehead.”

It wasn’t hard to guess that “ex-jocks” weren’t Nicki’s favorite kind of men. It ought to have been reassuring, considering the way he hadn’t been able to control his uncomfortable thoughts about her. But after the accident he’d disliked being called a jock. He was about to say so when Nicki stuck out her chin.