Julianna Morris - The Hometown Hero Returns

She glanced at him and there seemed to be a hint of pity in her blue eyes. “Of course I live here, it’s home,” she said simply.

Home.

He shook his head. It didn’t make sense to him, but it wasn’t his concern if she wanted to bury herself in a backwater town. Thank God Divine was only a few short hours from Chicago by car, or he would have had trouble managing his frequent trips into rural Illinois.

Regret stabbed at Luke with the thought, and he looked at his grandfather, sitting vacantly by the cold fireplace. John McCade did little during the day except sleep or turn his chair periodically, as if turning from a painful memory taking hold of his mind—senility, accelerated by grief.

Luke sighed. They’d hoped the medicine would help, but it hadn’t. And if Granddad could no longer function, he couldn’t stay alone. Grams would have hated seeing him like this. She’d been so full of life, tending her garden and her family with equal zest and pleasure.

A hand touched Luke’s arm and he noticed Nicki watching him gravely. “I’m really sorry about Professor McCade,” she whispered.

“It’s just one of those things.” He shrugged with false indifference. “You can’t let it get to you.”

Instead of seeming shocked, Nicki looked sadder than before. “You don’t have to pretend,” she said, letting her hand drop.

“Who says I’m pretending?”

“I do. Even an idiot could tell how much you care about Professor McCade, and I’m not an idiot.”

Luke pressed his mouth shut. Nicki was far from being an idiot, but since it was easier thinking about anything but his grandfather, he narrowed his gaze and tried to decide if the years had added any inches to her bustline. She wore a pair of loose slacks and an oversized shirt that wasn’t tucked into the waistband, so her figure was left to the imagination. Typical Nicki.

He remembered the day she’d edged into his hospital room, clutching a stack of books to her chest, wearing clothes so baggy they were practically falling off. She’d kept her gaze fixed to the worn linoleum floor and mumbled that she’d been sent to tutor him on his missed schoolwork.

Tutor him?

His temper, already on edge because his girlfriend and the other cheerleaders hadn’t bothered to visit, flared hot and furious. The day he needed tutoring from a flat-chested, stringy little girl would be the day he froze in hell. He’d followed up his reaction with language from the boys’ locker room to shock her into running away. But, instead of backing down, she’d sat in a chair and begun reading aloud.

After a while he’d run out of things to say and started listening. Boredom was a tough enemy and he’d had more than enough to last a lifetime. And as it turned out, Nicki hadn’t been as flat-chested as he’d thought, he eventually discovered.

“Do you have any preferences about where I start?” Nicki asked, as if nothing had been said about his grandfather. Yet traces of compassion remained in her eyes and he had a bizarre urge to spill his worries to her.

Luke’s mental images of the past faded with her words.

Aside from Nicki’s clothes and the lingering remnants of her stiff-necked pride, she seemed nothing like the girl she’d once been. He might have trusted her in the past, but nowadays he didn’t trust any women except his mother and sister.

He shook his head. “No. Start wherever you want.”

“Thanks. I’m sure you have things to do,” Nicki said. “And I don’t need company. It will just keep me from concentrating. I’ll call if I need you.”

She’d dismissed him so coolly he felt he might have imagined the quick, warm sympathy he’d seen in her face. Of course, he’d bet anything that she regretted letting down her guard…just as much as he did.

A certain defensiveness was probably the only thing they’d ever had in common, except that he was obviously still better at keeping things to himself than Nicki had ever been.

Nicki walked into the spacious foyer, trying to regain her composure. She didn’t often get a chance to explore such a lovely old house, but it wasn’t John McCade’s house raising her temperature, it was John McCade’s grandson.

Darn him.

She didn’t flatter herself that Luke’s leisurely appraisal of her body indicated an attraction. It was second nature for jocks and ex-jocks to look at a woman as if she were a piece of meat. The only thing that Nicki did flatter herself about was not giving into the embarrassment. She knew she barely filled out a B-cup bra—something her ex-husband had regularly pointed out—but she had a good brain and wouldn’t apologize for not being a sexpot.

Yet her edgy response to Luke was deeper and earthier than anything she’d felt before, making her aware of her body in a whole new way. Even after yesterday’s less-than-friendly encounter, the slide of sheets against her legs had made her think of him. Then she’d found herself thinking about him when she put on her typical practical clothing that morning, followed by the thought that wearing something more flattering wouldn’t be such a terrible thing. After all, it wasn’t as if she were trying to attract Luke, just trying to look a little nicer.

Jeez, she had better get herself in hand, or she’d be in big trouble.

With a last glance into the living room and John McCade’s sad face, she started up the sweeping staircase. The one place Luke hadn’t shown her was the interior of the attic. He’d simply pointed to a door on the second floor, in the back near the kitchen staircase. It was the logical place to start.

Though it was still cool in the rest of the house, heat had built up in the attic, and Nicki fanned herself as she stared in awe at the gaping space.

“Holy moly,” she breathed.

It was huge.

And filled with everything imaginable, from an old pedal sewing machine, to paintings, to an accumulation of dust and spiderwebs that made her acutely nervous. She really didn’t like spiders.

“Phobias are the sign of a disorganized mind,” she reminded herself as she lifted a painting from where it leaned against a broken coatrack. She smiled as she recognized one of her favorite artists, and before long she was exploring the farthest corners of the crowded attic.

Antique furniture comingled with art and an old gramophone that actually still worked. In a trunk she found an Edwardian-era dress and wondered how she would look in such a lovely gown. Ridiculous, probably. Yet she couldn’t resist holding it up and swishing the ivory skirt so it swirled around her ankles.

What would it be like to feel pretty and sexy? To wear something that was deliberately provocative? Something silky and outrageous?

Nicki frowned and rustled the skirt again. She’d always worn practical, oversized clothing, clothing that lacked style of any kind. It might have been different had her mother lived, but her father had never paid attention to anything but her schoolwork. Later, her then-husband, illogically jealous, hadn’t wanted her to wear anything revealing.

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.