The Hometown Hero Returns Read Online Free PDF Page B

as he stared at Colleen’s beautiful, tear-dampened face.
    Soon only she, Eric and Marc remained in the parking lot. She couldn’t fully identify the expression on Marc’s face as his gaze flickered over her, then Eric, then her again. It was as if every imaginable emotion frothed inside him at once in that charged moment. His mouth looked set and hard when he turned and walked toward Jake’s Place.
    Mari exhaled shakily.
    Eric and she regarded each other silently in the dim parking lot lights as the band finished a raucous tune. The final chords faded off in the hot, still summer night. She sensed that Eric knew, as she did, that they’d just narrowly escaped a volatile explosion of emotion.
    Nausea rose in her like a striking snake, taking her by surprise. She gagged and bent over, coughing.
    â€œMari?” Eric’s voice sounded shocked and concerned. He touched her back. “Are you okay?”
    She swallowed with effort and straightened shakily. “I…I don’t know. I just felt sick there for a minute.”
    â€œCome on. Let’s get you home. This is the last thing you needed to deal with on top of not feeling well.”
    But as Eric led her to his car, she turned to watch Marc disappear inside Jake’s and willfully tamped down the desire to go after him.

Chapter Three
    T he second Marc joined his mother on the front porch his gaze immediately traveled down Sycamore Avenue to the sandstone, Arts and Crafts-style house down the block. A dark blue sedan sat in the driveway. Mari’s car had been notably absent when he’d returned this afternoon from their annual visit to Harbor Town Cemetery.
    I didn’t come back to Harbor Town for you, he vividly recalled her saying last night. He leaned against the porch railing and crossed his arms below his ribs. What had she come back for, then?
    He inhaled deeply of the fresh air. It always seemed to take several days into his summer vacation to get the city soot out of his lungs. The sky had turned a pale blue, tinged with lavender, but above the beach at the end of Sycamore Avenue, crimson, pink and gold splashed across the horizon. It would be sunset soon—HarborTown’s most famous tourist attraction. How many of those sunsets had he watched with Mari in his arms?
    He jerked his mind into the present.
    â€œWhen did you say you were headed back to Chicago?” Brigit Kavanaugh asked. She’d placed her sneakered foot on the pavement, stopping the porch swing’s movement.
    Marc knew she’d noticed him staring at Mari’s house. Not that it was odd for him to look at the Itani vacation home on his rare visits to Harbor Town. His eyes had been trained long ago to stray toward that house. Even his ex-wife, Sandra, used to take note of it, usually with a flippant, sarcastic remark, on the few occasions she’d accompanied him to Harbor Town.
    â€œI was thinking about staying on a couple days past Brendan’s party,” Marc said, referring to his nephew’s tenth birthday celebration.
    â€œReally? Do you think work can spare you that long?”
    He shrugged. “The county can undoubtedly do without me.”
    â€œMarc,” Brigit scoffed with a smile. “You’re a state’s attorney, for goodness’ sake. You have over a thousand employees working under you.”
    â€œMost of whom are gone for the holiday. I’ve never taken off more than day here and there since entering office. I have the vacation time. I might as well use some of it. It’s not like I haven’t been working from here, anyway.”
    All of the Kavanaugh children had taken jobs that would somehow prove they were hard-working, sacrificing, worthy members of society, Marc mused. His sister Deidre was an Army nurse on her fourth tour of duty. Liam was a twice-decorated detective on the organized crime squad of the Chicago Police Department, andColleen was a psychiatric social worker who