The Hometown Hero Returns

Sexy?

He frowned.

That was odd.

How he could think Nicki was sexy when she was wearing a shapeless dress and had her obstinate nose up in the air was beyond him. But there was something different about her—a freshness that was undeniably appealing. The women in his circles seemed perpetually bored with life.

“I really don’t think it would work out,” he said.

“Of course it would work.” Sherrie sounded exasperated. “If Nicki is willing to tackle the job, then we’d have someone who we know is honest and competent.” Then she gave Nicki a worried look. “Except you’d have to go into the attic. Granddad put a lot of stuff up there after Grams died, and I don’t know how many spiders and mice might be lurking in the shadows.”

Nicki restrained a shudder. Mice didn’t bother her, but she could imagine what pragmatic Luke would say if he knew how much she disliked anything with more than four legs.

“N-no problem,” Nicki said quietly and less firmly than she would have liked.

Luke shook his head. “No, Sherrie.”

“Yes.”

Brother and sister glared at each other and a twinge of envy went through Nicki. They might disagree, but they were plainly fond of each other.

“Besides, Nicki could talk to Granddad about art,” Sherrie argued. “It might help him. We’ve tried everything else, why not this?”

Uncertainty flickered across Luke’s face. It was the first time Nicki had ever seen super-confident Luke McCade look unsure of himself. His unshakable confidence was one of the most irritating things about him. Even lying in a hospital bed with one leg suspended lamely in the air he’d managed to be cocky.

And heart-stoppingly handsome.

It was Luke who’d made her really aware of the opposite sex—not that she’d known what to do about it. She’d stayed ignorant until she’d met Gregory “Butch” Saunders in graduate school. It was too bad that for the second time in her life she’d fallen in love with the wrong man. Only that time she married the wrong man—someone who expected her to just look the other way when he cheated. She sometimes wondered if Butch had picked a not-so-gorgeous wife in her because he thought she’d be so grateful for a husband that she wouldn’t object to his indiscretions.

“We don’t want to impose,” Luke said finally.

Nicki’s eyes narrowed.

She didn’t want to be around Luke any longer than necessary—and part of her hoped he’d talk Sherrie out of the appraisal—but you helped a neighbor because you cared, and because it was the right thing to do.

Someone like Luke wouldn’t understand that.

He’d always wanted to make it big. First he’d planned to be a famous football player, then, after his accident, it was all about making a million dollars by the time he was thirty—something he’d accomplished numerous times over according to the newspaper and Divine’s inescapable grapevine.

“It’s no imposition. I’d love to help,” she repeated, trying to sound sincere. She did want to help, she’d just prefer helping when Luke was out of town. “I wouldn’t have offered if I hadn’t meant it.” She almost said something about men with cash registers for souls not understanding old-fashioned neighborliness, then decided it would be too rude.

Really, for his grandfather’s sake somebody ought to save Luke from himself. Not her, of course, but somebody.

“That’s terrific,” Sherrie said. “You’re hired.”

Nicki shook her head. “Not hired. I’m not teaching this summer, so I have plenty of free time. And it’s a privilege to do something for Professor McCade. I’ll come back in the morning, if that sounds all right.”

“No.” The word burst from Luke and they both looked at him. “That is, go ahead and start tomorrow, but we’ll pay you.”

Nicki gave Luke a smile she hoped would drive him crazy. “No thanks. I’ve already been on the McCade payroll once, and I don’t care for the working conditions.”

He glowered at the reminder of their adolescent encounters. Or maybe it was just his stubborn pride. She didn’t know why Luke had resented her so much, or why he’d alternated his resentment with killer smiles, blinding charm and invitations to “warm up” his hospital bed. She did know that every time she’d refused, or kissed him and drawn back again, he’d gotten more outrageous…and his sarcasm had gained a sharper edge.

But they weren’t teenagers any longer, and she wasn’t the same uncertain girl who’d found herself in a situation she couldn’t handle. She was twenty-nine years old. She’d gotten a doctorate by the time she was twenty-one. She had been married and divorced from the worst philanderer on the planet. She knew Luke could only turn her world upside down again if she let him.

And she had no intention of letting him do any such thing.

Chapter Two

“Drat,” Nicki muttered as she rang the McCade doorbell.

She’d told him she would be here at nine this morning and it was nearly a quarter past. As a rule, she was never late. But her neighbor had come down sick and needed some groceries, so she’d run to the store first.

“You’re late,” Luke growled as he opened the front door.

Normally she’d apologize, but this was Luke, and it wasn’t a good idea to let him get the best of her. “Then I guess you’ll have to dock my pay.”

He had the grace to look uncomfortable at the reminder she was donating her time out of respect and appreciation for his grandfather.

“May I come in?” Nicki asked. “Or should I use the back door with the rest of the help?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Luke growled.

A smile tugged at her mouth as she stepped inside, this time better able to appreciate her surroundings.

A wide, graceful staircase swept down from the second floor to hardwood floors that contrasted nicely with scattered Oriental rugs. Mahogany framed the doors and archways, while delicate eggshell-white walls lightened the overall effect.

And once again, through an archway, Nicki saw Professor McCade sitting in the rear living room. This time he was awake, though he seemed to be staring at nothing at all.

Instinctively Nicki took a single step toward him, then stopped and sighed. She’d never seen anyone look so sad. What would it be like to love someone so much that when you lost them your entire life turned gray and empty? It was scary; yet at the same time it was the kind of love she wanted—the kind of unconditional love she’d always heard about but never found, not even from her own father.

“I guess you’ll want to start in the attic,” Luke said. “There’s a lot of stuff up there.”

“Er…I thought I’d do a general walk-through to begin with,” Nicki murmured, still distracted by the elderly man’s distant eyes. Was he remembering the good days, when his wife would bring cut flowers into the house and he’d rush home, just to be with her? Nicki had never spoken about personal matters with John McCade, but as the author of several books, he’d written eloquently of his wife and her passion for gardening.

“Come along, then.” Luke proceeded to give her a ruthlessly efficient tour of the large house, pointing out various places where paintings had once hung. “We think they’re in the attic,” he explained.

“Like the portrait of your great-grandmother?”

Luke glared. Trust Nicki to bring up that damned portrait. He’d done some Internet research on Arthur Metlock the previous evening, and the information had shocked him. If it were genuine, the painting she’d returned was indeed worth a huge chunk of money.

He didn’t know anything about art, though Granddad had tried to interest him in the subject. And Luke had certainly never realized anything in the collection was worth more than a few dollars. John McCade had always spoken of his art in terms of its beauty rather than its monetary value. If he’d attached a dollar sign to the lessons, it would have been more interesting.

“I’m sure that was just an accident,” Luke said, wincing at his stuffy tone. “My mother talked about getting rid of things in the house that the family wouldn’t care about keeping. She probably started collecting things together and stuck the painting in with the rest of the stuff Granddad put up there, thinking it wasn’t worth anything.”

“Hmm. Your parents retired and moved to Florida a few years ago, didn’t they?”

Luke grimaced because it was such a small-town thing for everyone to know everyone else’s business. Privacy was not a prized commodity in Divine. He preferred the anonymity of city life. “Yes, but they’ve been coming back every couple of months to help Granddad out. Do you need anything to get started with the inventory?”

Nicki didn’t say anything right away, she just looked around the front living room where he had ended the tour, a thoughtful expression on her face, one that seemed to be less about curiosity than about gathering her thoughts.

She’d always been an odd mix of nervous energy and intelligence. It was easy to forget that a formidable brain hid behind her habit of running off at the mouth, but even when he was a brash kid, Luke had known that Nicki Johansson was smart, so why hadn’t she gotten out of Divine for good? After the way the townspeople had acted when he hurt himself, he hadn’t been able to leave fast enough.

“I did leave for a while, then I came back,” she said without looking at him.

Luke winced, suddenly realizing he’d voiced the question aloud. “I…uh, would have thought you’d go crazy here. Divine isn’t the intellectual capitol of the state.”

She shrugged. “The college is excellent—highly academic—and I often travel with my consulting work. Just last year a museum in New York sent me to London as part of a team to authenticate a newfound Rembrandt.”

“But you live here. The college is closest to Divine, but even the students live over in Beardington. This town is dying and everyone knows it. I’ll bet there hasn’t been a new business here in twenty-five years.”

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.

“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.”