Page 2 of Save the Last Dance
The farmhouse needed a coat of paint and new shutters, something his father hadn’t let Mack do while he’d been alive. Stubborn to a fault, the old man had liked to do things himself even when the effort had exhausted him. Maybe Mack would be able to accomplish more than just helping with the Harvest Fest while he was in town. He could use the distraction of painting if Nina was going to be nearby.
Then, without warning, he heard her voice from around the side of the house. What would she be doing back there?
His step faltered. Nina had a laugh he could have picked out from a thousand other women’s. Low and throaty, like she’d just confided a wicked secret. The sound drifted around the corner and out to the front of the deep wraparound porch just as he hit the painted wooden steps.
The screen door creaked on its hinge as the two Spencer women emerged from the old enclosure near the side door. Mack had a nanosecond to see Nina before she spotted him, and he drank in the sight.
Dark blue jeans hugged lean curves and a thin, silvery belt wrapped around a slim waist. A simple black T-shirt and a long chain around her neck with a heart pendant both looked like things she would have worn eight years ago.
Her shoulder-length blond hair was a shade darker and she had styled it sleek and straight. From her profile, he could tell she still had the same broad grin and moody gray eyes. She hadn’t aged a day. Then their gazescollided. Her gasp was audible. Sharp. And about as warm and welcoming as a woman who had just seen a ghost.
“Nina.” His voice caught on her name even though he tried to smile through it. “Welcome back.”
When a womandreams of running into an old flame—the one who took her virginity then really and truly shredded her heart—she imagined looking like a million bucks, not something the cat coughed up.
Nina couldn’t have been any more humbled to come back to Heartache now, her career in ruins, while Mack Finley cruised up in a vintage Cadillac convertible and looking good enough to eat. There’d been a time when she’d confided all her secret ambitions of success in New York City to the tall, incredibly well-sculpted man standing in front of her.
How ironic that he’d found plenty of success a stone’s throw away in Nashville with a country music bar, while she was crawling back home to debate the merits of declaring bankruptcy for her cupcake bakery.
From his light brown hair and square jaw to the rogue dimple in one cheek, he was a hot guy by anyone’s standard. And no matter how long she spent outside of Tennessee, Nina was still particularly vulnerable to a man who knew how to wear a pair of jeans—present company undoubtedly included if she allowed her eyes to venture any farther south than his shoulders.
Awkward silence stretched.
“Hi.” Her heart hammered a crazy rhythm in her chest, which pissed her off considering the way thingshad ended between them. “Thank you. Nice to see you, too. We were just leaving as your mother doesn’t appear to be home.”
A social nicety to say as much; Nina was certain Mack’s mom was hiding behind a curtain of that big farmhouse and glaring down at her even now. Mrs. Finley had bipolar disorder, a disease that made her unpredictable. She’d made it clear eight years ago that everything that had gone wrong in Mack’s life was Nina’s fault, and he’d be better off—they’d all be better off—if she left town.
Her grandmother, though, had been perplexed when Mack’s mom hadn’t answered the door, and they’d ended up leaving the pie inside the screen porch.
“Oh, good gracious, Mack Finley, let me look at you,” Nina’s grandmother exclaimed, her fingers digging into Nina’s arm for support as she inched forward across the wide plank floor with the help of a cane in deference to her bad knee.
“Careful,” Nina warned, her arm going around Gram’s waist as her priorities shifted to what really mattered—her eighty-four-year-old grandmother’s health. The only thing that could have dragged her back to Heartache.
Daisy Spencer had given Nina a home and a family even before her parents’ bitter divorce sent them to opposite coasts to get away from each other. And away from the burden of parenting. From the time she was ten, Nina had been dropped off at her grandmother’s house for longer and longer stretches until her parents just never returned. She owed her Gram more than she could ever repay.
“How are you, Mrs. Spencer?” Mack smiled before he reached down to carefully wrap his arms around her grandmother’s shoulders for a gentle hug. “It’s great to see you.”
The mayor’s son had inherited his father’s charm. Nina met his golden-flecked dark gaze over her grandmother’s shoulder, her body trapped close to his for that brief moment. She caught a hint of his aftershave and her thoughts caught on an old memory of whisker burn on her cheeks after a date at the drive-in.
“You’ve been too much of a stranger these last few years,” Gram chided him, shaking a manicured pink fingernail in his direction while Nina tried to pull herself together.
“But I’m home now,” Mack assured her grandmother, keeping a hand beneath Gram’s elbow in a way that put his fingers in close proximity to Nina’s where she held her grandmother’s waist. “I figured I should give Scott a hand with the Harvest Fest, so I’ll be sticking around for a couple of weeks.”
Nina stumbled. Her gaze shot to his over her grandmother’s head, but Mack was already talking about hay rides and the Harvest Dance as he helped her grandmother down the porch steps. Collecting herself, Nina matched her step to theirs along the front walkway, but realized that Mack was doing the majority of the work where Gram was concerned.
Had he honestly just said he was in town for two weeks? Right when her cupcake shop had failed and her business partner was up to her ears in scandal? Nina had never thought Mack was the type to gloat. Then again, they’d ended on bitter terms.
“I can manage from here,” Nina interrupted as the Finleys’ old black lab walked with them toward Nina’s pickup truck. “Thanks for the help, Mack, but we’ll be fine.”
Her heart beat hard in her chest. Indignation and wounded pride were stupid things to feel toward a guywho’d dumped her eight years ago. Apparently, coming home brought out her childish side.
“Actually.” Gram cleared her throat. “I have my own ride andI’llbe fine.” She freed her elbow from where Mack had held it and waved at a silver sedan just cruising up the street. In her pink track suit with a big silk daisy pinned to the collar, she was tough to miss.
“A ride where?” Nina squinted into the sunlight. “Gram, I came home to take care of you?—”
“But I’m in very good hands,” Gram protested as the car slowed to a stop behind Nina’s truck. “Scott’s daughter, Ally, works at the hairdresser and I need a little color touch-up.” She cupped a handful of white curls and winked at Mack. “A girl is never too old to want to look her best.”
“That’s Ally?” Nina waved at the young woman behind the wheel of the car, trying to reconcile the sad-eyed teen with the wild-child nine-year-old she remembered from when she’d dated Mack. She used to babysit the girl regularly.
