“I’m so glad you’re home, Lucas.”
He couldn’t deal with any more emotion at the moment. He decided to turn the questioning back to her. “Did you tell anyone I’m here?”
“Did you want me to keep it a secret?”
He gave her return question a moment’s consideration before answering. “I don’t know.”
“I didn’t tell anyone. I simply said I had some business to attend to. Everyone at the bank assumed it was something to do with my wedding, and the people at the café thought I was buying lunch for myself and Wade.”
He studied her closely. “Why didn’t you tell anyone I’m here?”
Had it been for his sake, or her own?
“I suppose I just wanted to keep you to myself for a little while. I thought we’d call Aunt Bobbie and Uncle Caleb later. I know they’ll want to see you.”
Somewhat doubtfully, Lucas pictured his plainspoken country-lawyer uncle and bossy, schoolteacher aunt. “You think so?”
“Of course they will. Lucas, they’re your family.”
Fifteen years on his own had almost made him forget what it was like to be part of a family. “Maybe Caleb and Bobbie will want to see me, but I can’t think of anyone else who’ll turn out to welcome me. I wasn’t exactly the most popular guy in this town.”
“Martha Godwin would be here in a flash if she heard you’d come back,” Emily murmured, wrinkling her nose.
“Hell, is that nosy old biddy still around? She was the worst gossip in town when I was a kid.”
“She still is,” Emily admitted. “But she’s not all bad, Lucas. She’s just...nosy.”
“How have you been treated by the locals, Emily? Did anyone hold it against you that you’re a McBride? My sister?”
“And Nadine’s daughter,” she reminded him. “I’ve heard my share of comments about you both—but you expected that, I’m sure.”
He nodded. “Yeah. But I’d hoped with both of us gone, the gossip would eventually fade away.”
She frowned. “Is that why you left? To protect me from the gossip?”
Rachel’s face hovered in Lucas’s mind. “One of the reasons.”
Emily shredded a biscuit onto her plate. “I would much rather have had you here.”
He swallowed. “Were you treated well?” he persisted.
“On the whole, everyone’s been kind. I’ve been active. in church, at work and in the community, and I have many friends. Honoria’s grown since you left; there are a lot of people who know very little of the McBride history. With the exception of Sam Jennings and April Penny, for the most part, I’ve been treated with the same respect as anyone else.”
“Sam Jennings?” Lucas almost spat the name. “Has that bastard given you a hard time?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle. He’s a jerk, but I try not to let him get to me.”
“Who’s April Penny?”
“You might remember her as April Hankins, that’s her maiden name. She’s a few years older than I am—she’d have been about fourteen when you left town.”
Lucas shook his head. “I don’t remember her. I knew there was a family named Hankins who lived out on Culpepper Road.”
“Same family. April’s brother Vince was Savannah’s high-school boyfriend. He was the football captain, class president, Mr. Popularity. And so conceited it’s a wonder his football helmet fit over his big head.”
Lucas swallowed a mouthful of still-warm peach cobbler and almost groaned in appreciation of the taste. “Sounds like he and our cousin Savannah were well-matched. Ernestine had her so spoiled, Savannah thought the world should be handed to her on a silver platter. And that she should be wearing a beauty-pageant tiara when she accepted it.”
Emily smiled a little, but shook her head. “Savannah’s changed a lot since you knew her, Lucas. She had to grow up fast when she found herself pregnant with twins at seventeen. Raising them with no help from anyone but her mother put an end to her beauty-pageant days.”