My Hero (18 page)

Ruth slammed the phone down so hard she nearly broke it.

“What's going on, honey?” Dooley asked.

“Calvin Griffin!” she screamed. “If your gun is in your room, you better hide it from me.”

Cal glanced at the maple dresser, where his holstered semi-automatic was stashed with his socks and underwear, and then with his head still braced against the back of the sofabed, he closed his eyes. He'd been anticipating some sort of explosion ever since he heard the truck roll into the driveway just as the phone began to ring. He had answered it himself an hour earlier, just in case Ruth and Dooley had a problem on the road and needed his help, and he'd politely informed good old Chuck Bingham that he had the wrong number. The realtor, obviously unconvinced, had been phoning every ten minutes since. Such aggressive phoning could only mean one thing, Cal decided. Titanium and dead goats to the contrary, Chuck wanted to make a deal.

God help him. He didn't want to trample Ruthie's dreams, but he just wasn't ready to sell his half of the ranch. It wasn't out of any particular loyalty to family history, or because he didn't have anything else, any place else in the world to call his own. It was mostly because he simply didn't trust himself to make irrevocable decisions right now. He'd been thinking about that ever since leaving Holly's room this morning.

Why taking the producer to a roadhouse tonight struck him as an irrevocable decision, he wasn't sure. Coward that he was, he'd called Holly half an hour ago to cancel their date, but nobody answered the phone at Ellie's. Now he was wishing he'd jumped in the car and driven into town to tell her personally. Then he wouldn't have to face the furious woman who was just now stomping into his room.

“You did it again, didn't you?” his sister screeched. “I can't believe it. You did it again.”

“Hey, Sis. How was Corpus Christi?” he asked, hoping to re-channel her anger so they didn't have to have the sell-the-ranch discussion right now.

“Don't you ‘hey, Sis’ me, Calvin Griffin, after you promised Dooley you'd behave and then gave the real estate man some cock and bull story about plutonium and dead animals.”

“Titanium,” he said, suppressing a grin.

Ruth threw up her hands. “I don't care if it was uranium or arsenic in the well water. You flat-out lied to the man and I'm so damn mad I can't see straight.”

“Well, Ruthie darlin'.” He laughed softly, sadly. “I can't think straight so I guess that makes us quite a pair.”

Cal could see the blue flames in her eyes lower to a simmer. The anger was still there, but her expression softened. So did her voice. “I just wish…oh, I don't know. I'm not trying to sell the ranch out from under you, Cal.”

“Then don't,” he said. “Give me a little more time to get myself together, and then we'll work something out.”

“I'm forty-two years old,” she said, shaking her head, bearing an almost eerie resemblance to their mother all of a sudden. “I don't have that kind of time anymore. This restaurant is important to me. It's all I want.”

“I know that, Ruthie.”

“And yet you're doing everything in your power to prevent it,” she said. “That's just not fair.”

“Did Bingham make you an offer?”

“It was insulting,” she said. “A joke, thanks to you and your silver tongue.” Her eyes narrowed. “He said you were with your wife. Did you bring a woman back here yesterday?”

Ah. She had reverted to Sergeant Ruth of the Sex Police. This facet of his sister was far easier to deal with than Ruthie the Restaurant Dreamer. “Two women,” he said. “Twins. We did unspeakable things in every room but the kitchen.”

Luckily she didn't have anything in her hand to throw at him. Just a searing blue glare. “I'll bet it was that woman from New York. That producer person. And I'll bet you let her snoop all over the house.”

“Actually she only snooped in here, through my boxes.” He gestured to the stack beside her. “We were looking for my high school yearbook.”

“Well, it's not in those boxes. I can tell you that right now.” Ruth sniffed. “It's on the bookshelf in the living room, right next to mine, right where it's always been. Mama kept them side by side.”

The phone rang again, and Ruth gave a little start. “I hope it's not that idiot calling to insult me with another low offer,” she said, cocking her head toward the hallway as the ringing stopped. “Dooley must've answered it.”

They both listened to Dooley's soft drawl as it drifted down the hall. It was a short conversation, comprised mostly of
yeps
and
nopes
and a final
okey-doke
before he hung up.

“I'll bet it's Bingham wanting to come back and look at the place again,” Ruth said, her voice rising with hope. “And if that's the case, Cal, I want you to tell him you were just pulling his leg yesterday with all that nonsense. You hear me?”

Before Cal could answer, Dooley appeared in the doorway.

“Who was that on the phone?” Ruth asked.

“It was for Cal.”

Her mouth curved down in disappointment. “Well, he was right here, Dooley,” she snapped. “Why didn't you…?”

“She didn't want to talk to him.”

“She?” Cal asked, sitting up.

“It was that little New York gal,” Dooley said. “She said she's sorry but she won't be able to see you tonight.”

Cal shook his head. “Okay. Thanks, Dooley.”

So much for irrevocable decisions. But now that he didn't have to make one, it was somehow all he wanted to do.

Why the hell was she breaking their date?

Chapter Eleven

H
olly switched off her phone. There. That was that. She'd broken her date, and now she could concentrate fully on her story. And she would—just as soon as she stopped feeling lower than the belly of a worm for leaving the message with Cal's brother-in-law instead of speaking with Cal, himself.

She shouldn't have agreed to go out with him tonight in the first place. She wasn't here to have fun, for heaven's sake. Who did she think she was kidding with that “One date and then I'll never think about him again” business? She certainly wasn't here to date the subject of her documentary. There was probably something starred and highlighted and double-underlined in one of her old journalism textbooks about this exact ethical dilemma. She would check that out when she got home.

That was the good news, of course. That she was headed back to New York. The bad news was that it was so soon.

On Thursday.

Oh, God. There was still so much she had to do.

“Holly? You up there?” Ellie called from the bottom of the stairs. “Yoo-hoo.”

Holly slid off the bed and went to the door of the bedroom. “I'm here, Ellie. Just doing a little work.” Emphasis on little, she thought with some disgust.

“Well, come on down here,” her hostess' voice boomed. “I've got a surprise for you.”

Uh-oh. If the surprise had the world's most beautiful blue eyes, she wasn't going to be very pleasantly surprised. As far as she knew, though, ol' Blue Eyes was still back at the ranch, where Dooley Reese was probably relaying her cancellation right about now. “Okay,” she answered. “Be right there.”

On the off chance that it was Cal, Holly checked the mirror before she left the room. She almost wished she hadn't when her hair turned out to be beyond redemption.

Much to her relief, it wasn't Cal standing at the bottom of the stairs, but rather Ellie and three women—a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead. With Ellie's gray hair, the women looked almost as if they were posed for a Clairol ad. She recognized the brunette as the busy beautician and former friend of Cal, Nita Mendes. Holly paused on the staircase, not knowing quite what to make of the little group. Were they a welcoming committee or a mini-mob, ready to ride her out of town on a rail? Should she smile or scream? Walk toward them or run for her life in the opposite direction?

“Holly Hicks,” Ellie said, “I want you to meet Carol Dug-gan, Jen Eversole, and Nita Mendes. We all got to talking after church about you and your program, so I said why didn't these gals come back here for some iced tea and cookies and a little talk about you-know-who.”

Holly knew who, indeed. “Oh. This is wonderful! Let me just run back up to my room and get my tape recorder.”

Out on Ellie's patio, it didn't take long for the women to warm up to their topic, and after ten or fifteen minutes, nobody was even glancing at Holly's little black tape recorder where it sat between the sugar bowl and the big glass jar of sun tea. They seemed to have forgotten that they were speaking on the record. Or else they no longer cared as one story about Cal instantly sparked memories of another. And another. Holly had already decided the VIP Channel had erred by featuring him on Hero Week. To hear these women talk, Calvin Griffin was far better suited for Heartthrob Week.

Carol, the blonde, hadn't spoken much at all, but now she laughed as she spooned sugar into her second tall glass of iced tea. “All right, well, shit, since everybody's 'fessing up here, I guess I'm gonna have to admit that in our junior year I had a not-so-accidental flat tire out at Rancho Allegro.”

“Now how'd you manage that?” Ellie asked while Jen and Nita exchanged knowing looks.

Carol blinked innocently, then replied, “With a steak knife. What I hadn't counted on, though, was that it would be Dooley Reese instead of Cal coming to my rescue. Damn the luck. He'd gone off to Padre Island or someplace for the weekend. It must've been about a hundred and ten that afternoon, but Dooley was so sweet when he changed my tire. Poor thing kept apologizing for not being Cal.”

“He and Ruth were probably still newlyweds then,” Jen, the redhead, said. “I hardly remember ever being so young.”

“And foolish,” Carol said.

Jen nodded. “On the other hand, I do remember I used to turn down dates with other guys in the hope that Cal would call and ask me out.” She took a thoughtful sip of her tea before adding, “And I sat home plenty of Friday and Saturday nights, too, when he didn't.”

“For Lord's sake, girl. Why didn't you just call
him?”
Ellie exclaimed. “I don't understand it. Or was I the only one in our class who subscribed to
Ms.
magazine back then?”

“Yes,” all three women answered in perfect unison, after which all four of the former classmates dissolved in laughter.

It was like a class reunion, Holly thought, this unexpected get-together out on Ellie's flagstone patio, sipping from tumblers of iced tea in the deep shade of ancient oaks, the hems of the women's Sunday summer dresses rippling with an occasional breeze while they fanned themselves with little paper napkins that Ellie had brought out with a tray of ginger cookies. It was like a time-out from present-day demands and problems, an opportunity to reminisce, to linger awhile in lost times.

Holly was loving every minute of it. She'd never been to a class reunion herself. She wondered if she'd feel quite this comfortable, sitting on a patio in Sandy Springs with her own classmates, and she tried to imagine having anything in common with Lynda Bryan or Deb Sims or Bethany Watts. Of course, they wouldn't be discussing Cal Griffin, would they? Nor would Holly be hanging on their every word and gesture, telling herself her interest was strictly professional.

“Well, I guess we were all pretty smitten with Cal, if that's the right word,” Jen said with a sigh. At thirty-nine, she was the oldest of the group, as well as a three-time grandmother already, a status that Holly found almost staggering considering that the woman was only eight years older than she.

Nita, who still looked about twenty and had the longest fingernails that Holly had ever seen, laughed. “Smitten's good. It sounds a lot better than saying we all had the hots for him.”

“And guess who wound up with him most of senior year?” Carol said, grinning. “Nita, you slut.”

The beautician's glossy lips curved in an inscrutable smile and her dark eyes gleamed, leading Holly to believe Nita was probably savoring a few memories—maybe the drive-in movie scenario—that she wasn't entirely willing to share.

“You
did
sleep with him!” Jen squealed. The young grandmother sounded like a teenager, and her charm bracelet, bedecked with the birthstones of children and grandchildren, went wild as she clapped her hands. “I knew it. Didn't I tell you, Carol? I just knew it. Nobody ever looks that happy in high school unless…”

Ellie, far more matronly than her classmates and the self-appointed mistress of ceremonies this afternoon, cleared her throat. “More cookies, y'all?” she asked, running interference with her silver tray. “I'm not sure this is exactly what Holly came all the way from New York City to hear. Are your ears just about melting, honey?”

“No,” Holly said, taking a gingersnap from the tray. “I'm really enjoying this. Honest. Tell me more.”

“Yeah, Nita.” Carol winked over the rim of her glass. “Tell us all more.”

“Well, that's the funny thing.” The expression on Nita's face changed dramatically from decadent to wistful, from secretly sensuous to visibly sad. She almost looked like a different person, older, much older, and not necessarily wiser.

“We never did,” she said, all of the earlier good cheer gone from her voice. “Oh, I know what everybody thought, and I didn't even mind that people sort of assumed that Cal and I were sleeping together. I thought I was pretty hot stuff back then, you know?”

The beautician blinked back the mist in her eyes. “But the truth is that, in spite of all those steamy nights in the backseat of Cal's mother's old Plymouth or on the couch in my parents' den or wherever, we never did it. We never made love. Not once.” A wistful little laugh broke in her throat. “And since we're being so damned honest, it wasn't because I said no, either.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment, and Holly wasn't sure if the silence was out of disappointment at a shattered myth or disbelief or a kind of awe at such long-ago restraint on the part of a teenage boy. Whatever it was, though, it was very, very personal. This information was not for an audience of sixteen million. Holly leaned forward and shut off her tape recorder.

“Hard to believe, huh, guys?” Nita summoned up a fraction of a smile.