Local Hero by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

both. “Really, can I?”
    â€œWell, I wanted to think about it and talk to you before—”
    â€œI’ll behave.” Radley rushed over to wrap his arms around his mother’s waist. “I promise. Mitch is much better than Mrs. Cohen. Lots better. She smells like mothballs and pats me on the head.”
    â€œI rest my case,” Mitch murmured.
    Hester sent Mitch a smoldering look. She wasn’t accustomed to being outnumbered or to making a decision without careful thought and consideration. “Now, Radley, you know Mrs. Cohen’s very nice. You’ve been staying with her for over two years.”
    Radley squeezed harder and played his ace. “If I stayed with Mitch, I could come right home. And I’d do my homework first.” It was a rash promise, but it was a desperate situation. “You’d get home sooner, too, and everything. Please, Mom, say yes.”
    She hated to deny him anything, because there were too many things she’d already had to. He was looking up at her now with his cheeks rosy with pleasure. Bending, she kissed him. “All right, Rad, we’ll try it and see how it works out.”
    â€œIt’s going to be great.” He locked his arms around her neck before he turned to Mitch. “It’s going to be just great.”

Chapter 3
    Mitch liked to sleep late on weekends—whenever he thought of them as weekends. Because he worked in his own home, at his own pace, he often forgot that to the vast majority there was a big difference between Monday mornings and Saturday mornings. This particular Saturday, however, he was spending in bed, largely dead to the world.
    He’d been restless the evening before after he’d left Hester’s apartment. Too restless to go back to his own alone. On the spur of the moment he’d gone out to the little lounge where the staff of Universal Comics often got together. He’d run into his inker, another artist and one of the staff writers for
The Great Beyond
, Universal’s bid for the supernatural market. The music had been loud and none too good, which had been exactly what his mood had called for.
    From there he’d been persuaded to attend an all-night horror film festival in Times Square. It had been past six when he’d come home, a little drunk and with only enough energy left to strip and tumble into bed—where he’d promised himself he’d stay for the next twenty-four hours. When the phone rang eight hours later, he answered it mostly because it annoyed him.
    â€œYeah?”
    â€œMitch?” Hester hesitated. It sounded as though he’d been asleep. Since it was after two in the afternoon, she dismissed the thought. “It’s Hester Wallace. I’m sorry to bother you.”
    â€œWhat? No, it’s all right.” He rubbed a hand over his face, then pushed at the dog, who had shifted to the middle of the bed. “Damn it, Taz, shove over. You’re breathing all over me.”
    Taz? Hester thought as both brows lifted. She hadn’t thought that Mitch would have a roommate. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. That was something she should have checked out. For Radley’s sake.
    â€œI really am sorry,” she continued in a voice that had cooled dramatically. “Apparently I’ve caught you at a bad time.”
    â€œNo.” Give the stupid mutt an inch and he took a mile, Mitch thought as he hefted the phone and climbed to the other side of the bed. “What’s up?”
    â€œAre you?”
    It was the mild disdain in her voice that had him bristling. That and the fact that it felt as though he’d eaten a sandbox. “Yeah, I’m up. I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”
    â€œI only called to give you all the numbers and information you need if you watch Radley next week.”
    â€œOh.” He pushed the hair out of his eyes and glanced around, hoping he’d left a glass of