The Hometown Hero Returns

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.

“And besides, I don’t hate you,” she added.

“Yeah, right.”

“It’s just that I don’t like you very much,” Nicki admitted, then felt heat rising in her face. “Oh…sorry.” She put her hands over her cheeks and peeked to see how angry Luke might be. To her surprise, he looked pleased.

“That’s one of the few honest things a woman has ever said to me,” Luke murmured, thinking about his one-time fiancеe, Sandra, declaring that she adored him, only to continue sleeping around like a cat in heat. One thing he’d learned since leaving Divine, women were as faithless in big cities as they were in small towns.

God, what a fool he’d been over Sandra. So crazy in love he couldn’t see straight—even decking his best friend for suggesting she wasn’t a paragon of virtue. Luke grimaced, remembering his own anger, and the blood that had trickled from the cut over his friend’s swollen eye.

“You don’t meet the right women,” Nicki said, breaking into his thoughts.

His shoulders lifted and dropped. It didn’t matter. After accepting the truth about Sandra he’d decided there wasn’t any point to getting married when he could enjoy temporary affairs with like-minded females.

“Sherrie says the same thing, but she doesn’t really understand what—” He froze at the sound of a loud voice rising from the first floor.

Luke raced down the stairs and Nicki followed. She’d never heard John McCade’s voice raised in anger, but the furious tirade really was coming from the dear old man.

“Never…can’t believe…such a mess. The Little Sergeant would never have permitted this disgrace. I’ve got to get this place in order…it’s never been so bad…where did these come from?”

The French doors leading to the rear garden were open and Mr. McCade was tearing at a flowerbed by the house.

“Granddad, please come inside. I promise we’ll fix everything,” Luke said, crouching next to him.

“Leave me alone. It’s my fault. I should never have let this happen. She would be so unhappy. I can’t bear for her to be unhappy.” He continued to rip at the long grass, his hands white and shaky in the humidity.

“Please, Granddad, I’ll take care of it.” Luke took his grandfather’s arm, only to be shaken away by an angry exclamation. Luke looked at Nicki, his eyes dark and filled with pain, stripped of arrogance. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered.

Without thinking Nicki knelt and laid her hand on the old man’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Professor McCade. We’ll take care of the garden.”

Her quiet voice seemed more effective than Luke’s frantic tone. The elderly man turned and brushed shaky fingers across his brow. “She would be so…so disappointed.”

“Then we’ll fix it, so she wouldn’t be.”

“It was so beautiful,” he breathed, looking around with tears falling like memories down his face. “She painted this garden for me. A living canvas. Art, young lady, is not confined to a museum.” The last thing sounded so much like an old Professor McCade lecture that she smiled.

“Art is the accomplice of love,” she said obediently, though she didn’t finish the quotation she’d heard him say so often in his lectures…. Take love away, and there is no longer art.

She didn’t think he needed a reminder that his love had been taken away.

“You were always an excellent student, Miss Johansson.”

The fact that he remembered her name startled Nicki, and her gaze met Luke’s equally surprised eyes.

“Thank you, Professor. I teach now, out at the college.”

“Yes, I recommended you for the position when I retired.”

That, too, was a shock. She’d been shy in all his classes, particularly when she was tutoring Luke and her emotions seesawed between terminal infatuation and utter loathing. Though kind to his students, she had never expected Professor McCade to take special notice of a mousy, underage kid who always sat in the rear. He certainly hadn’t seemed to recognize her at his recent yard sale.

“Th-thank you, sir. I appreciate your confidence.”

“It was well deserved.”

His eyes began to lose their focus as he looked again around the garden. It was beautiful, though overgrown and neglected. Nicki could feel the love that lingered there and knew there was beauty in the memory of love, as well. His love had changed shape, and wasn’t nearly as immediate, but it wasn’t wholly lost, either.

“You promise to fix it for the Little Sergeant,” Professor McCade whispered. It was a statement, more than a question.

The Little Sergeant? Nicki mouthed at Luke.

My grandmother, he mouthed back.

Nicki wondered if it was a promise she could keep. She’d never gardened in her life, and Luke surely didn’t want her hanging around any longer than necessary. Yet there was an appeal to working with the earth and painting a picture with growing things. And if it would help Professor McCade…how could she say no?

She gulped. “Um, yes, I promise. Maybe we can get a good yard service. They could put everything in order in a few days.”

“No.” His thin arms made an agitated gesture. “Not in her garden. I won’t allow it.”