Homepage to display different number of posts.

Hello everybody,

I have set my reading settings to display 7 posts at most on the homepage. Now my theme has a featured post function which displays the most recent post as a featured post. The other 6 posts are shown as 2 columns and 3 rows. Problem is on page 2, 3, etc the featured post is not displayed. So on page 2 of homepage the 7 posts appear in 2 columns and 4 rows(the fourth row displaying only 1 post) causing a non-symmetrical look.

My question is whether I can change the number of posts to display on homepage other than page 1.

I hope I could explain my situation.

Please help.

Thanks.