Hometown Hero

by Dani Collins

  Hometown Hero

  A Montana Born Homecoming Novella

  Dani Collins

  Hometown Hero

  Copyright © 2014 Dani Collins

  EPUB Edition

  The Tule Publishing Group, LLC

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-942240-00-6

  Dedication

  This book simply must be dedicated to the amazing Megan Crane (aka Caitlin Crews) who has been an incredibly supportive friend since before we properly met.

  When I finally sold after a million years of trying, I quickly learned that my first book was not going to come out in North America. I was devastated and put out a call for ‘pictures in the wild.’ My first came in from Megan, who happened to be in the UK, bought it and sent me her photo, reading my book, along with a lovely note that she’d read it and loved it.

  About six months later, I met her at an RWA conference. I had pretty much dropped out of the RWA world in the previous decade, convinced by all my rejections that everyone in publishing hated me. I felt like The New Kid Who Doesn’t Know Where To Sit. Megan introduced herself and told me again that she liked my book. I was astonished that she remembered me or my book. I must have looked like a deer in headlights. I’m pretty sure she thinks that’s my signature look.

  Along with being incredibly savvy about the publishing business, she is funny and smart and introduced me to Jane and Tule. (And told me how to pronounce Tule. ‘Jane’ I figured out on my own.)

  So this book really wouldn’t exist without Megan (and Jane and the amazing team at Tule.) So a big hug of thanks to all of them, but particularly you, Ms. Crane. I’ve got your back should we ever venture into the dark alleys of the French Quarter again.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Dear Reader

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Blame the Mistletoe

  The Montana Born Homecoming Series

  About the Author

  Dear Reader,

  What drew me in most about writing for the Montana Born series was the setting of Marietta.

  I live in BC, not Montana. I come from farm stock, not horse people, but small town is small town. It has its own mindset and I love it. You wait in the line at the grocery store because the person ahead of you has to chat with the cashier. (Sometimes that’s me!) When friends and family come to visit, they see me waving at people and ask, “Who was that?” “I don’t know,” I say. “We just do that here.” My sister came back from running out for milk one time and said excitedly, “A stranger waved at me while I was out!” See? It makes you feel good.

  So I knew that genuine love and connection to the town would be a cornerstone of my story. Skye Wolcott’s ancestors pioneered a ranch in the area. She’s the school secretary. She knows young and old alike in Marietta. It’s her home.

  Chase Goodwin suffers the other side of small town life. His father was the town drunk and everyone knew it. He worked his butt off to get out of town via a baseball scholarship and now plays in the big leagues. His worst nightmare is returning to Marietta.

  They always had a thing for each other, though. When Chase is forced back to town to help his younger brother, and he discovers Skye is recently divorced, they have a chance to see where things might have gone. But Chase can’t give up his career and Skye doesn’t want to leave Marietta. Where does that leave them?

  I hope you enjoy learning how they answer that question.

  Chapter One

  ‡

  Chase Goodwin was in the one place he had never wanted to come back to, especially in September: Marietta Senior Secondary.

  At least he was in the gymnasium, the part of the school he could tolerate if he wasn’t on the field. Watching a basketball game would have been his preference, but it was a school dance complete with the kind of club music he hated. Not that he’d minded the dances so much ten years ago. The girls were as giddy and nubile as he remembered, but so young. They nearly leapt out of their skin to land on a boy. The boys were all limbs and pimples. Had he overflowed with that much fascination coupled with terror back then?

  “It’s like watching kittens and puppies,” he said to Max beside him, one time catcher to his pitch when it wasn’t football season. Max was a good four inches taller than his own six two and was twice as wide. He’d taken over Mr. Kelton’s job running the P.E. department and watched the poorly lit, gamboling teenagers like he was watching the progress of a game, ready to shout orders to pass.

  Max flashed a grin. “You said you wanted to know what your brother was up to.”

  No, what he’d said was, If you want some help with the teams, I’d love to keep busy while I keep an eye on my brother. Max had put in a good word for him with the new football coach, Mitch Holden. In exchange, Max had roped Chase into chaperone duty. So here he was, suckered into reffing body contact at a dance to raise money for the homecoming float.

  Another slender, ripening body swished across his field of vision. Don’t look, he reminded himself, but—hold the phone. He recognized that ass.

  Deep in the back of his brain, where a crew was supposed to be working to retrieve her name, every single cell dropped his tools to take a long drink of the female that had paused about ten feet away to talk to his old classmate, Chelsea Collier.

  The woman was a knockout, athletic and tight beneath a red plaid shirt knotted at her waist. Faded blue jeans hugged her firm round ass and were painted against long thighs before they disappeared into sassy red cowboy boots. Her shiny brown hair cut a precise line across her shoulder blades, held off her face by a headband like Alice in Wonderland’s—exactly the way she’d always worn it and it was still too innocent a look for a body like that.

  He couldn’t hear her over the music, but the way she leaned close to Chelsea and gestured gave an impression of animation and humor. From her profile, he could see pale, clear skin without so much as a freckle to mar it. Her cheek rounded and he glimpsed perfect teeth, braces gone. She smiled and nodded.

  Brown eyes, he recalled, even though he couldn’t see them. She had melty brown eyes like a baby animal. The kind that made you want to cuddle her to your chest so she wouldn’t get stepped on. She used to look at him like that when he came up to his locker and she was already at hers. She’d hide behind her door and watch him like she didn’t quite trust him.

  Maybe she’d known she made him hard.

  Skye Wolcott.

  God, he hadn’t thought about her in years. He’d made a concerted effort to forget everything about this town except to send money home and check in with his brother as often as possible. His reaction to Skye was as strong as he remembered, though. He tried to turn it off, exactly the way he had intentionally resisted the lure of her then. She’d been taken and so had he. She’d also been a lifer, obviously intending to die here in Marietta. He’d been determined to get a scholarship, preferably baseball, and leave. He’d set her on the out-of-bounds shelf and barely chucked her a Hey when he saw her.

  H
e was ready to talk now. Hey girl. Damn.

  “You’re staring, dude,” Max said, keeping his own eyes forward.

  “That Skye Wolcott?” he asked, pretending he wasn’t sure. Pretending that was the only reason he was asking. Pretending he wasn’t blindsided by old lust that threatened his well-developed, no distractions, determination.

  A blank pause before Max gave a jerky nod. “Yeah. She goes by her married name, Mrs. Baynard. It took me a sec to remember that’s who she used to be.”

  Married? Fuck.

  Oops. Where the hell had that come from?

  Wait, “Terry Baynard? She married him?” Dusty pieces of history fell together, reminding him of the other reason he’d held off pursuing her.

  “Yeah. People are saying she turned him gay.” Max rolled his eyes at the small-minded concept. “They’re divorced now. He moved to San Francisco, but she still uses his name. I don’t get how they’re still friends when he lied to her all that time and she was as shocked as anyone when he came out, but I guess they are.”

  Chase stared at Skye’s back, dumbfounded. And a tiny bit uncomfortable. She must have known Terry was gay. Maybe the guy had been deep in the closet, but he’d known Terry was gay. He’d honest-to-God believed she was Terry’s beard. He had thought she was being nice to a guy who was obviously terrified of being found out, which had made him like her even though he barely knew her. He hadn’t totally understood why a girl like Skye Wolcott, with so much to offer, would tie herself up like that, but he hadn’t seen the point in going after her, wrecking Terry’s setup, when he wasn’t sticking around.

  “So she’s not married,” he said, grasping at the most important detail.

  “Yeah, but she’s not interested,” Max said matter-of-factly. He was married with two kids so his dismissive warning wasn’t male possessiveness. It was the tone they used to take when out-of-town players thought they could hit on the local girls. Small town wasn’t all small minds. There were things about it, people here that were nice. They were a community, a team. They looked out for each other.

  Chase knew that and respected it.

  “I’m not interested either,” he drawled. “Especially if she has the power to turn men gay—”

  Oh shit. The music stopped. His voice, pitched to carry over the pulsing beat, came out nice and loud and hit Skye right between the shoulder blades. He saw her back jerk like an arrow had struck the middle of her spine. She turned and her vulnerable brown eyes weren’t the least bit soft and helpless.

  Her eyes narrowed, dark and ferocious, wounded and angry. They fixed on him like the dark spiral of a tornado seeking its touchdown point.

  Oh hell.

  *

  Skye was trying very hard to pretend she wasn’t on pins and needles. Chase Goodwin was back. Dear God she’d had a crush. Such a deep, terrible crush. One so everlasting that whenever she crossed paths with Flynn, his half-brother, and Flynn smiled his good-natured Goodwin smile, she always wanted to ask, How’s Chase? Like she and Chase had been friends or something.

  Oh how she’d ached to be something with him.

  But he’d been a year ahead of her, dating a cheerleader, and focused. So incredibly determined to play ball. And he’d done it. Like everyone in town, she was incredibly proud of the local boy done good, drafted out of high school and playing for the majors, doing stints on talk shows and even cheesy sketches on Saturday Night Live. Chase Goodwin had been a legend in high school. The full package of brains, brawn, and backbone. Now he was epic and even further out of her reach. Well beyond her small-town after-school league.

  No, she’d gone after good, solid, comfortable Terry. Who’d had orientation issues he hadn’t confronted until she had begged him to start a family. That’s when he’d finally admitted he wasn’t in her league either. He was playing for the other team.

  After a loss that big, she’d quit the game.

  But when she’d heard whispers that Chase was back in town, her inner teenager had tingled back to life, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, just like old times. Then she’d walked into the gym, caught an eyeful of his muscled silhouette against the strobing colors of the dancing bodies and a whoosh of excitement had nearly knocked her off her feet.

  Nothing wrong with going to the stadium to watch, right? It wasn’t like she actually wanted to take the field with him.

  Except she couldn’t resist getting close to him. It had taken supreme concentration to walk naturally as she crossed to Chelsea and tried to hold a normal conversation, all the while aware she was reverting to high school tactics, using her friend to put herself in a particular male’s line of sight. It was juvenile and she felt immature and uncertain, yet so thrilled to be near him again.

  Aware. Chase Goodwin had energy so intense it practically gave her a tan, filling her with warmth and making her heart race with excitement.

  Not that she expected him to notice her. He’d rarely made eye contact with her back in the day, never mind actually talked to her. She had always frozen like a bunny whenever he had arrived at his locker beside hers. He had usually acted like he didn’t even see her.

  This moment of regression was silly and she didn’t need to look a bigger fool than she already did, given how the last two years had gone, but she stood there aching for him to notice her and—

  The music stopped. Chase Goodwin’s deep voice stated in his confident way, “—not interested either. Especially if she has the power to turn men gay.”

  The rest of the world stopped.

  Chelsea’s face fell in shock before her. She reached out, like she was trying to catch Skye from falling off a cliff.

  It was Skye’s worst nightmare, the acknowledging of the elephant that had been running amok in this town since Terry had come out. Sure the talk shows could tell people that being gay wasn’t a choice, but there were still plenty of folk who believed that Terry had chosen to become a homosexual and Skye must have done something to drive him to it.

  Why it had to be Chase Goodwin who brought it all to the surface she didn’t know, but it was the final straw. Her wall of I’m Fine crumbled. All the whispers, all the suspicions, all the lies Terry had told her over the years as he denied something he didn’t want to admit, all the minutes of all the hours she’d spent holding his hand, telling him it was okay while she died a death of a thousand cuts, all of the tears and years empty of the babies he refused to give her… It all detonated under that one flippant comment by Chase Goodwin.

  Chase Goodwin, with his perfect life, his money and smarts and stupendously wrong summation of her life, was the final kick from life that made her turn and fight back. She spun and charged toward him.

  “What the hell do you know?” she choked.

  “Hey—” he started, holding up forestalling hands. “I—”

  “You what?” she demanded raggedly, fists pounding into the air beside her hips. Distantly she recognized he was a lot bigger than her. She shouldn’t pick a fight with a guy this big, but the toxic spew wouldn’t stay inside. “You have a tiny dick to match your tiny mind! I didn’t turn him gay, okay? He was always gay, but jocks like you kept him in the closet, afraid to tell me or anyone else in case of ignorant statements like that. Terry and I don’t blame each other, but I blame you—” She stabbed a finger in his direction, “—and you—” she pointed at Max, ready to condemn every straight man in the room for her pain, “—and every other prejudiced asshat who made him afraid to admit who he is. That kept me in a marriage doomed to fail and all because you enjoy being cruel to someone who can’t help being who he is. Go to hell, Chase Goodwin. Go to hell and rot there.”

  A familiar arm came around her, mashing her into commiserating softness. Chelsea’s kindest tone, the one that had been Skye’s lifeline through the breakup, murmured, “Okay, Skye. That’s enough. Let’s go home.”

  She firmly steered Skye’s wilting body out of the gym. They left a silence so profound that the one whispered, “Holy pajamas,” was like a
shout.

  In the office, Chelsea got Skye’s purse out of her desk drawer and said, “Give me your keys.”

  Beginning to shake, Skye protested she could drive herself, but Chelsea assured her Jasper would help her get her car later. She picked up a bottle of wine on the way to Skye’s place even though it was a school night. Then she stuck around to share it with her and, one more time for the cheap seats, fed Skye tissues while Skye cried her eyes out over a dream that had been seared into a pile of ashes.

  Chapter Two

  ‡

  Skye woke to the buzz of her mobile on the bedside. She was just hung over enough to consider calling in sick, but she couldn’t. It would be bad enough facing the students and teachers snickering behind her back. She’d learned through the scandal-heavy months of her divorce that the first day after each horrid revelation was always the worst so she ought to just get it over with. Face the music.

  But honestly, that tinkling ringtone was more than she could stand at the moment. She didn’t want to talk to anyone, wanted to pull the blankets over her head and die. What had possessed her to lose it like that? Wolcotts were good, solid, normal people with manners. If they had a complaint about something, they wrote a polite letter and requested a refund. When they had a disagreement with someone, they were the first to make apologies and amends. They didn’t pitch a scene in a public place.

  The phone stopped and started again.

  Snaking a hand from beneath the quilt, she snagged it and glanced at the face. Her brother’s photo glared at her. Sliding her thumb across the strip, she brought it to her ear. “Hey, Stan.”

  “Why are you on the internet calling a major league pitcher a homophobe?”

  “Whaaaat?” Her heart stopped. “That’s not funny.”

  “Some kid posted it last night. It’s gone viral.”