Hometown Sweetheart

Even so, there was no denying that something about being around Theresa’s grandson had turned her into an airhead this afternoon and no matter what that something was, she had to get a grip on it and stop it.

“Stop it in its tracks!” she said to herself as she powdered her nose and applied some blush and mascara. Then she took her hair down from the clip that held it and brushed it before using a very large curling iron to smooth it and curve the ends under her chin.

But getting a grip on herself and on the weird effects caused by Wyatt Grayson didn’t worry her. Now that she knew that a simple touch of his hand or a little conversation or just being around him could knock her for a loop, she knew to go in steeled against it. And once she was steeled and ready for anything, there was no getting to her—that was something that being tormented by five brothers had prepared her for.

“So you’re nothing but another case to me, Grayson,” she said out loud as she finished with the curling iron and combed her hair to fall silkily around her face.

Besides, tonight she would have the advantage of being in her car, of walking around her town. And while they were in her car and walking around her town, her only goal was to do her job. To subtly get to know the man solely in his role as Theresa’s grandson in order to determine if he was a fit caretaker and guardian for the older woman.

Which meant that this was absolutely not a date.

Even if she did have first-date-like butterflies in her stomach to go with her first-date pants.

“You must think I’m an idiot,” Wyatt said later that evening as he and Neily sat at one of the bistro tables in the new coffee emporium that had just opened in Northbridge.

Neily took a sip of the hot chocolate they’d just been served. “Why?” she asked, having no clue what he was talking about.

“I drove up this street when I came in last night. I didn’t know it was all there was of Northbridge or that I hardly needed a tour guide to navigate it.”

Neily gave him a mock frown. “Are you calling us a one-horse town? Because we’re so much more than that. We’re a one-T town—there’s Main Street that runs north and south to South Street, which goes east to west to make the T. Turn left on South Street at the town square and you get to the college and the houses and farms and ranches in that direction. Or turn right on South Street to go to your place and the outlying houses, farms and ranches in that direction—”

“And don’t forget those four cross streets along Main—they’re teeming with at least six or eight stores and businesses,” he added, playing along.

“Plus we have a stoplight and now even this coffee shop,” she reminded.

“Just one coffee shop and just one stoplight, but who’s counting? You’re practically a metropolis.”

Again she pretended affront. “Didn’t you get everything you needed tonight?”

“I did,” he conceded over his own cup. “Although I noticed that there’s a lumberyard but not much in the way of a hardware store.”

“Did you want something more than the nuts and bolts they sell at the Groceries and Sundries?”

“No, it was purely a professional observation.”

“You’re the hardware police?” she asked, joking still.

“No, not the hardware police, but you do know we’re Home-Max, don’t you?”

He didn’t seem to be kidding anymore so Neily said, “Really? Home-Max?”

“Really—Home-Max. I take it you’ve heard of us?”

Home-Max was the chain of large warehouselike stores that sold all manner of building materials, lumber, home-improvement and remodeling supplies, large and small appliances, everything pertaining to lighting, lamps and wiring, as well as garden, patio, barbecue and landscaping equipment and machinery. The company had been in the news lately for sweeping the Western states with openings of new stores and doing newsworthy damage to their competitors.

“Of course I’ve heard of Home-Max, but, no, I didn’t know you—personally—are Home-Max.”

“Well, my family is,” he clarified. “My sister, Marti, my brother, Ry, Gram and I own them all.”

“Theresa didn’t tell me that,” Neily said as the information sank in.

“It isn’t as if she’s involved, and half the time she forgets that it is Home-Max now. She knew it as G and H Hardware—that was how it started, with my grandfather’s one-corner hardware store.”

“Your grandfather—Theresa’s husband,” Neily said to clarify.

“Right. He had the hardware store when they met. Just a small place he ran by himself. Gram had a little money and after they were married she put it into the store to expand it—that’s when it became G and H: G for Grayson, H for Hobbs, Gram’s maiden name, since Hobbs money provided for the expansion. When my grandfather died, the store went to my father—their only child. Things boomed with him in charge, and over the years Dad opened six other G and H Hardwares. We all worked them as soon as we were old enough. But when our mom and dad were killed in a car accident eight years ago, Marti and Ry and I were left in the hot seat.”

“How so?”

“The builder’s-warehouse type of stores had begun to hurt us. Business was dwindling, and we had a fair offer to buy us out.”

“Why didn’t you sell?”

“Mainly because of Gram. She hasn’t always been as bad as she is but her problems weren’t too much better eight years ago than they are now—she needed live-in care, and that’s expensive. The offer to buy us out wouldn’t have left her with enough to provide for that indefinitely, and if Marti and Ry and I went our separate ways, working for other people, we couldn’t be sure we’d be able to afford to make up the difference over time. And the thought of having to institutionalize Gram…Well, we didn’t want that. So we decided to gamble. To play with the big boys rather than sell out to them. We closed all but one of our stores, and turned the only remaining G and H Hardware into the first Home-Max. Then we went from there. And it just worked out.”

Neily was sure he was making it sound less complicated and stressful than it had been.

“You must have always been close to Theresa to risk everything for her sake.”

He shrugged. “Pretty close, yeah. And we just wanted what was best for her. Plus it seemed only fair that—since her money had helped begin things—we do whatever we could to keep them going. But it wasn’t for her sake alone. Marti, Ry and I wanted to go on working together, so it was for our sakes, too. We were all just lucky that we made it.”

Still Neily thought it was admirable that Theresa’s family had considered her contribution and made her welfare a priority. Neily was also impressed that rather than taking the easy way out of caring for a grandmother with special needs, Wyatt and his siblings hadn’t cut and run when the opportunity to do that had presented itself.

The more she learned about Wyatt, the more she leaned away from any thoughts of neglect.

And toward liking him.

They both had another drink of their hot chocolates before Neily decided to use his mention of Theresa as her opening to talk about the older woman. And keep herself from thinking things about Wyatt Grayson that she didn’t want to be thinking.

“So even eight years ago Theresa was basically in the shape she’s in now?”

He nodded, a sad, sober expression on his handsome face. “Gram has had mental-health issues as long as I can remember. She gets into severe depressions. She has times when she’s out of touch with reality, delusional—that’s happening more often as she ages. She was always fearful, and that developed into full-blown phobias—those are what started her being housebound and needing round-the-clock care, and why none of us can understand her doing what she did to get here.”

“And the memory issues?”

“Those are getting worse, especially her short-term memory. Sometimes she thinks that things that happened decades ago were just yesterday, and she forgets what did happen yesterday. She’s really a tortured soul.”

“Does she have a specific diagnosis?”

“A laundry list of them. And she’s on medications to treat them all, which helps to some extent. She’s also had therapy, but nothing has made a huge improvement.”

“I’m assuming the possibility of early abuse has been looked into?” Neily said.

“She’s denied that there was any of that. She makes her childhood sound perfect. Happy. She frequently says that she was the apple of her parents’ eyes, how much she loved them, how devastated she was when they died. I know that losing my grandfather caused more deterioration, and then losing my father brought on more still, so maybe there’s something to that.”

“And even when she talked about her perfect childhood she didn’t tell you anything about Northbridge or that she still had the house here?” Neily asked, finding it curious that Theresa had been so secretive about that.

Wyatt shook his head. “Like I said before, the only mention of where she grew up was a generality.”

“So she didn’t tell you that her family—her father—had owned land here?”

That seemed to surprise him. “No. You mean her father owned more than the house?”

“She told me today that he—and then she—owned the section of land you can see from the sunporch, where there are houses now.”

“Do you think it’s true?”

Neily shrugged. “I’ve never heard that, but it isn’t as if I would have heard about who owned land twenty years before I was born. I was just wondering if maybe that should be looked into. If it’s true, maybe that’s what she thinks she can reclaim.”

“Maybe that’s what was taken from her, you mean? Do you think someone stole it from her or swindled her?”

Neily shrugged again. “I don’t know. I suppose old land records could be checked into.”

Wyatt’s expression had gone from sad to intrigued. “Want to play detective with me?”

Neily laughed. “I don’t think that’s in my job description.”

“Might be fun, though,” he said with an alluring wiggle of his eyebrows.

Too alluring.

Neily reminded herself that she was supposed to be steeled against his charm. But apparently even early practice steeling herself against whatever her brothers threw her way was not enough when it came to resisting Wyatt Grayson.

Both of their cups were empty by then and noticing that seemed like an aid to her cause. Rather than respond to Wyatt’s it-might-be-fun-to-play-detective-with-him, she said, “We should probably go.”

Wyatt didn’t immediately agree. He went on looking at her, smiling as if he was enjoying the view. But he didn’t push the suggestion that she help investigate old land records and after a moment he stood and held her chair while she stood, too.

He’d already paid for their hot chocolates, and now he tossed a tip onto the table before he followed Neily out of the shop.

Don’t let him get to you, she told herself on the way to her car, which was parked at the curb a few doors down.

She slid in behind the wheel and started the engine as Wyatt slipped into the passenger seat. It didn’t help that when he did, he angled toward her and stretched his arm across the back of her seat. It also didn’t help that he was a big man and that he seemed to fill the interior of the car with hundred-proof testosterone.

“So what do you say?” he asked as she headed for South Street. “Will you help me out? I know Northbridge is small and you can probably just point out where I’d find land records, but you also probably know the city clerk—or whoever handles that kind of thing—and could make it easier for me to get access to whatever I need.”

That was all true.

“You could think of it as helping Gram—that is in your job description, right?” he added.

“Right…”

Saying that made it sound as if she were wavering.

She did want to know all she could about Theresa and what was behind the older woman’s flight to Northbridge. A complete picture could be helpful.

But it would mean spending more time alone with Theresa’s grandson. And while they had talked about Theresa, and while talking to Wyatt had given Neily more insight into him and his relationship with his grandmother—all of which qualified as information she needed to be gathering—she couldn’t deny that tonight had seemed less like work and more like an evening with a handsome, easy-to-talk-to, amusing and entertaining man.

It had seemed more like the date she’d been insisting to herself it wasn’t.

“Come on,” he cajoled as she pulled into the driveway of the Hobbs house. “Help me out. For Gram’s sake. And for the sake of your whole one-T town.”

Neily put the car into Park but left the engine running and glanced over at Wyatt. “For the sake of my whole one-T town?”

“What if some horrible, dastardly deed was done to Gram to wrench her land from her, and right in your midst is the rat who did it? Wouldn’t you want to know? What if the rat is your mayor or someone in some position of power, doing more dastardly deeds behind the scenes without anyone knowing? He or she could be embezzling funds or pilfering retirement accounts or selling bogus city bonds—”

“Those would be dastardly deeds,” Neily agreed with a laugh at his melodramatics.

“You are in charge of making sure any wrongs done against Gram are righted,” he pointed out.

The kind of wrong he was talking about was out of her province, but still, Neily was curious about whether Theresa actually had been a victim of some kind of wrongdoing, or if her mental state was further deteriorating.

Which gave her a reason to grant Wyatt’s request without admitting to herself that she kind of wanted to spend more time with him.

“All right,” she said as if he’d worn her down. “I’ll help you. But only to get a more complete picture of Theresa.”

Wyatt smiled slowly, as if he was pleased regardless of what was behind her decision. “Tomorrow?”

“Theresa is on my calendar for every day. But I have a full schedule and you’re last on it, so we’ll barely make it to the courthouse before it closes. That won’t leave us much time to look through land records.”

“Later in the day is actually better for me. I have to make some business calls and I’d rather get them in before we go.”

Neily nodded, knowing even as she did that the fact that she was already looking forward to the next day was a bad sign.

But she didn’t back out.

“Thanks for showing us around tonight,” he said then.

“Thanks for the hot chocolate,” she countered.

Wyatt leaned forward and although there was absolutely no reason to believe it was even likely, Neily thought he was going to kiss her good-night.

Shocked, she bolted up straighter and veered away from him just as he pulled his bags of groceries from behind her seat, obviously having been intent on only that from the beginning.

Of course he hadn’t been going to kiss her! Why would she ever have even thought that?

Wyatt settled his sacks on his lap and looked at her again, showing no sign that he’d noticed her overreaction.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then?”

“You’re my four-thirty.”

Something about that garnered her a sweet, sexy smile.

“Shall I meet you somewhere?”

Maybe it would be better not to be in a car with him again.

“Records are all kept at the courthouse,” she said, explaining to him where that was.

“I’ll be there at four-thirty,” he assured her when she was finished.

“I’ll see you then.”

Wyatt nodded and she expected him to get out. But instead he sat there a moment longer, looking at her, studying her.

Then he smiled again, a mystery-man smile if ever Neily had seen one, muttered “Good night” and finally slid from her passenger seat, closing the door after himself.

She should have immediately put the car into gear and backed out of the drive. But she didn’t. She was too intent on watching the tall, well-built man carry his packages to the front door.

And despite the fact that she continued to remind herself that this had not been a date, and to chastise herself for even fleetingly thinking he might have kissed her, she couldn’t help fantasizing—just a little—about what it might have been like if it hadn’t been grocery sacks he’d reached for.

If it had been her instead.

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