My Hero (24 page)

The story wasn't so much about what Cal had done in the past, but what he was doing now. Right now. Her piece would open with the scene that was unfolding before her on the hard track, under a relentless sun, in the punishing Texas heat.

A hero in gray sweats, going the distance, refusing to give up.

Chapter Fifteen

W
hat time's your flight?” Cal asked.

“I told you,” Holly answered sleepily, almost reflexively. He sighed into her hair, nudging his knees more deeply into the backs of hers. “Tell me again.” He thought she'd said nine-thirty, which would mean they'd have to leave for Houston at five, but he wasn't sure. No surprise there.

“Nine-thirty,” she said with a sigh of her own. “Too soon. I don't even want to think about it.”

No. Neither did he, but he had to since he couldn't write it down. There was better, and then there was better.

He wished he could stop time. He wished that the doors and windows of this botanical nightmare of a room were hermetically sealed for the next fifty or sixty years, even longer, centuries maybe, and that archeologists would find their bones—his and Holly's—just like this, all wrapped up together, in the year 2500.

He'd never been so happy or so sad all at the same time. He'd never felt so good or so lousy. It was like straddling a fucking barbed-wire fence. Tomorrow at this time Holly would be gone. She struck him as far too happy about getting back to New York.

“Tell me again when you're coming back,” he said, hoping he hadn't asked more than half a dozen times in the past few days.

“Next month. Over the Fourth of July. I'm not quite sure which exact day.”

“Well, let me know. I'll pick you up at the airport.”

“You won't have to. I'll be coming back with my crew, so we'll just rent a van or an RV or something, and drive on down.”

“A crew,” he muttered. “I keep forgetting about this TV deal. This hero crap.”

She jutted her backside into him. “Don't say that. It's going to be really good, Cal. Just wait and see. I've got some terrific ideas.”

“I've got a terrific idea,” he said, sliding a hand up her flank, over her ribcage, and finding the warm weight of her breast.

“Mmm.” A little murmur of pleasure sounded deep in her throat. “That's nice.”

“Yeah?” With the flat of his palm, he teased her nipple to attention. “And this?”

“That's even nicer.” She moaned. “Oh, God. I don't want to go.” She turned within the circle of his arms. There was just enough light to see the sheen in her eyes as they met his. “Love me again,” she whispered. “Like the last time.”

He smiled, pleased that he had pleased her, made her come,
felt
her come not once but twice. Any awkwardness between them had long since disappeared. He'd learned her body by heart in the past few days as she had learned his. And if he wasn't quite the athlete, sexual or otherwise, that he'd been a year ago, it didn't seem to matter. Along with a good dose of humility these past nine months, he seemed to have learned a patience that served him well in bed.

“Like this?” His lips trailed a stream of kisses from her collarbone to her breasts, from her navel to the nest of soft strawberry blonde hair between her legs, to the soft warm lushness there. “Here?”

“Mmm.”

“Or
here
?”

“Oh, God. Yes.”

Holly drove the first leg to Houston early the next morning. There was hardly any traffic on the highway for which she was hugely grateful, since she hadn't been behind the wheel of a car since moving to Manhattan three years ago. It was true what they said, though. It was like riding a bike. After only a minute or two she and the T-bird were one, whizzing down the road at sixty-five miles an hour while Cal took what he sheepishly referred to as a “power nap” in the passenger seat.

Poor baby. He hadn't gotten a lot of sleep in the last four nights, had he? Well, she hadn't either, but she was so jazzed by their alovemaking that she barely needed to eat, let alone sleep. Just breathing in Cal's wonderful and exotically masculine scent every night in bed seemed enough to sustain her.

She'd spent her final days in Honeycomb traipsing around town, taking photographs, gathering facts, interviewing new people and re-interviewing old ones, hanging out in the ratty little park while she watched the temperature climb to triple digits on the bank's sign and waited for Cal to end his relentless, nearly religious workouts so their night could begin.

Up the rickety fire escape, in the big walnut bed in the rose-papered room, they weren't even in Texas anymore. It was as if they created their own separate country while making sweet, incredible, explosive love. It was as if they created their own universe.

Holy moly. Talk about your Big Bang theory.

She wouldn't have predicted this, not in a million years. She'd tried to tell herself that her obsession with this man was merely fallout from her job, that as the producer of his biography it was only natural that she eat, sleep, and breathe Calvin Griffin—literally! Whenever she started imagining it might be more, she changed the course of her thoughts and turned them back to her job and the dreams that had sustained her for so many years.

That was precisely what she did just then, even as she held the speeding T-bird to the right of the centerline of the ruler-straight highway. Holly changed the course of her thoughts, turned them east where they belonged, where
she
belonged.

They held hands walking through the airport, only letting go long enough for Holly to wend her way through security. Cal was waiting for her on the other side. He took her hand again as they made their way to the gate.

“Seems like I just got here,” she said a bit wistfully.

“Not to me.”

Glum. God, he sounded as if the world were about to end, and for a second Holly felt that way, too. Only she made herself feel otherwise. The world didn't end in Texas. Texas was where you left in order for the world to begin.

“I'll be back in four weeks,” she said. “They'll go fast. You'll see.”

“Not fast enough.”

They announced her flight over the public address system and Cal looped the strap of the laptop over her shoulder while Holly reached into her handbag for her boarding pass.

“Oh, damn,” she muttered. “Nuts.”

“What?”

“I forgot to pay Ellie for my final day.” She pulled out her wallet, riffled through the bill compartment where there were just two singles, a fifty, and her last crisp hundred-dollar bill which she was going to need for the taxi from Newark to midtown. She slid the fifty out and said, “Would you give this to her, Cal? I owe her more, but tell her I'll make up the difference in July.”

“Sure.” He stuffed the bill in his pocket, then drew her into his arms. “Holly, Holly,” he whispered.

Don't say anything more,
she thought.
I couldn't bear it.
“I'll miss you, Cal.”

“I'll miss you, too, baby. Holly, I…”

Let me go. Let me go. Let me go.

She pulled back just as the gate attendant touched her shoulder and said, “We're ready to close the door, Miss.”

“I'll call you,” she said, and then ran without looking back.

Inside the crowded plane, she found her seat and fell into it with a muted curse. Her seatmate, a man in his thirties in a pinstripe suit, rimless glasses, and slicked-back hair leaned toward her.

“How's it goin'?” he asked in pure, unadulterated Brook-lynese.

“Oh. Fine,” Holly said. “Just peachy.”

He leaned a little closer, angled his head toward the window and said, “Fuckin' Texas, huh?”

All Holly could do was weep.

Cal stopped by Ellie's before he went over to the track, and he sat in the shade of the big oaks and sycamores along her driveway for a good while, just thinking, as if he hadn't had plenty of time to think on the way back from Houston.

Okay. So he'd parked on Green at the airport and hadn't even had to write it down in order to find the car again. His head was working well enough that he'd remembered to bring the fifty bucks to Ellie without tying a string around his finger. He was definitely better, but being better wasn't much consolation at the moment. And why was he so goddamned surprised and disappointed that his Holly had practically sprinted down the jetway for the plane to New York?

She hated Texas. She'd told him often enough. She'd had a miserable childhood, being taunted if not directly punished for her dreams and ambitions by classmates as well as her own parents. She'd left the state behind her with no regrets, and she'd only returned—reluctantly, it seemed—because of the opportunity to produce his story. Holly loved New York with a passion she probably didn't feel for anyplace else. Or
anyone
else.

Well, hell. He didn't blame her. He wasn't all that crazy about his native state, either. If he hadn't been shot, he wouldn't even be here right now himself. She could've asked him to go to New York with her, couldn't she? What did he have but time on his hands these days. It wasn't as if he was working or anything for the next four weeks. But she hadn't asked him, had she? Not that he needed a fucking engraved invitation…

“Are you gonna sit out here all day?” Ellie called to him as she stomped down her front steps. “I've been watching you from the front window, thinking you'd be coming up the steps and knocking on the door any minute. Are you all right, Cal? Is anything wrong?”

“No, nothing's wrong, Ellie. Nothing at all. I'm fine. In fact, I'm doing great.”
Yeah, right.

Cal wrenched open his door and got out of the car. “I just stopped by because Holly forgot to give you this.” He reached into his pocket for the fifty. “She said to tell you she'd square up when she comes back next month.”

“Oh, that sweet thing.” Ellie gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “I'm not worried about it.”

“Here you go.” Cal glanced at the bill just as it passed from his hand to Ellie's. Wait. What the hell? “Wait a minute, Ellie. Let me take a look at that, will you?”

“Sure.” She gave it back. “Something the matter with it?”

He squinted in the bright noon sunshine. Damned if old Ulysses didn't look just a tad off kilter on the torn and washed-out bill. Hadn't somebody asked him to check out a fifty just like this sometime this past week? Who was that? Where the hell was it? Not the Longhorn, he was sure. Not El Mariachi. No. Who was it? Where else had he been? And then he remembered. It was Ramon. He wondered how the same limp bill had progressed from the tavern's cash drawer to Holly Hicks' purse. Not that it was impossible, but still…

“Listen, Ellie.” Cal pried his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans. “If you don't mind, I'm going to replace that with these.” He pulled out two twenties and a ten, then handed them to her.

“No, I don't mind one little bit.” She laughed, looked at the money, then back at Cal. “You don't think Holly's trying to pass funny money, do you?”

“Nah. I just thought I'd take this old thing out of circulation.” He held the fifty up to the light before he stuck it in his wallet. “It's just part of the job. I do it all the time.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding surprised. “Well, isn't that interesting? I didn't realize you Secret Service folk did things like that, Cal. Live and learn, I guess.”

“Live and learn, Ellie.” He leaned forward and kissed the top of her gray head before he slid back into the driver's seat.

“You take care now. And don't be a stranger now that Holly's gone. You remember about that yearbook party coming up Sunday.”

“I remember,” he said even though he didn't have the slightest intention of attending that gabfest without Holly by his side. “See you later, Ellie.”

He was headed for Ramon's. Before he twisted the key in the ignition, Cal looked at his watch. It was a little before one, which meant it was almost two in New York. His Holly was probably somewhere between Newark and her office in Manhattan, smiling no doubt, thrilled to be back home in the Big Apple, tickled to death to be anywhere but here.

It was overcast when she landed in Newark, but by the time Holly's taxi pulled up in front of the Media Arts Building, a light rain had begun to fall. Holly checked the meter up in front, computed a handsome tip, and handed her hundred-dollar bill over the seatback to the cabbie.

“Give me thirty-five back, please, Sol.” She'd read the man's name on the posted permit. Sol Majerowicz. Ordinarily she never addressed a cabbie by his first name, but today she felt friendly. More than friendly, she felt magnanimous, so much so that she hadn't even complained about the nasty, soggy cigar he kept in one corner of his mouth and re-lit every five minutes. She merely wrote it off to getting reac-quainted with the fragrance of New York.

Sol snatched the hundred, swore out of the unoccupied corner of his mouth, then shoved a key into the glove box and pulled out a beat-up accordion file. “What's with the C notes? My last two fares gave me big bills,” he said, peering into the file. “All I can give you is a twenty, lady, and, uh, one, two, three singles.”

What? Sol was trying to gouge out a bigger tip by claiming he couldn't make change? Did he think she just fell off a turnip truck at the Newark airport? Well…Holly looked down at her jeans and the T-shirt she'd bought as a silly souvenir of the Longhorn Café. She rolled her eyes.

“Maybe you should check the cigar box stashed under your seat,” she suggested.

Sol shrugged. “You can take this twenty-three bucks, lady,” he said, waving them over his shoulder, “or I can put you back on the meter and take you someplace to get change. What'll it be?”

What'll it be? What'll it
be?
Oh, God. All she could do was laugh as she grabbed the bills and shoved them in her handbag. She couldn't have fashioned a more appropriate welcome to the big city than this.

While she struggled out of the taxi with her handbag and laptop, Sol plopped her suitcase and carry-on at the curb, then beat it back into his vehicle before she could ask him to take the bags to the door. “Schmuck,” she muttered under her breath.

Holly stood there in the rain a minute, debating whether or not to leave her heavy suitcase at the curb while she carried everything else inside the lobby. If this were Honeycomb, she could leave her suitcase on the sidewalk all day and nobody would think a thing of it. Here, if it wasn't stolen by the time she got back to it, somebody would have called the cops to report a nuclear device.