My Hero (7 page)

Holly wasn't sure if it was the delicate touch of his fingertips or the soft sound of his voice or the way his incredibly blue eyes were searching her face, but suddenly something had her heart moving up into her throat and then bungee jumping down to her stomach. Her hair? She couldn't have said just then whether it was blond or brunette.

Whoa. Talk about up close and personal.

She cleared her throat. It was all she could do not to fan herself when she said, “You know, I'm the one who's supposed to be asking the questions here.”

“Okay. Ask away. But you're going to be pretty disappointed in the answers.”

“So, you don't think of yourself as a hero?”

He laughed so loud it startled her. Even Lucifer the bull stopped scratching his ear and turned his head their way. But before Cal Griffin had a chance to tell her just how he did think of himself, his sister yelled to him out the back door.

“Cal, the muffins are done. I just called Ellie and told her to be expecting you in about ten or fifteen minutes, so you'd best get a move on.”

Cal tried to imagine what his hometown must look like to a stranger. Honeycomb was basically a wide spot on the blacktop that supplied the needs of ranchers and farmers within a thirty- or forty-mile radius. Not much had changed since he'd left two decades ago.

The false-fronted buildings still needed paint. The pickups parked in front of them all sported rifles across their windows and American flags on their bumpers. The Long-horn Café was still serving their heart attack special, a sixteen-ounce rib eye with hash browns and biscuits and gravy on the side. Ramon's had been called Desert Pete's when Cal was in high school, but it had still been home to Honeycomb's wretched refuse, including one Calvin Griffin, Sr. And now it looked as if Junior just might be taking the ol' man's place.

After he dropped his passenger off at Ellie's, his duty to the White House would be done. He was going to take his little gold star for cooperation, slog through another lousy workout on the track, and then settle in at Ramon's for a long, liquid afternoon. It was the only sure way he knew to make his troubles disappear.

He glanced to his right at the trouble in the passenger seat, and once again felt a discernible jolt, a pronounced quickening south of the border. It had been a long nine months since his libido had run underground, then all of a sudden last night—bam!—it had surfaced at Gate 44 at the Houston International Airport. The good news was it was back. The bad news was the woman who was responsible for its improbable return.

Last night, at first glance, he had this Holly figured for a type he was pretty familiar with—early thirties, single, on a fast upward track. A highly motivated woman two thousand miles from home who probably wouldn't decline a brief encounter of the sexual kind, especially considering there was little else to do in Honeycomb since the movie theater closed in 1984.

But then she'd declared her disbelief in heroes, obliterating any notion that Cal might have had about brief, unencumbered sexual encounters. This Holly was as complicated as her hair was curly, as candid as her clear green eyes, as unexpected as any slug fired from an M16, and nearly as unsettling.

Like so many of his colleagues, he'd gotten used to easy pickings. Some women would do anything for a guy wearing a gun. Most women, at least in Cal's experience, maintained an almost desperate belief in heroes. And, although he never pretended to understand the qualifications, he didn't exactly turn his back on the benefits. Even with Diana, there hadn't been much of a challenge. Of course, her belief in heroes hadn't extended to fallen ones.

If this Holly had come along at a different time in his life, he'd have relished the chase. But at the moment his own personal challenges were foremost on his agenda. And if he was completely honest with himself, he wasn't up to the challenge of a beautiful, hard-won woman right now or willing to risk rejection.

Holly Hicks was off limits now. He'd just have to take his newly discovered libido elsewhere.

“You'll like Ellie,” he said as he turned off Main Street onto Washington Avenue. The founding fathers of Honeycomb named the cross streets for American presidents, but only got as far as Jefferson before they ran out of roads. “That's her house over there on the right.”

“It's huge,” Holly said. “It must be over a hundred years old.”

“Probably.” The house sat, as it had forever, under the cool shade of its surrounding oaks. It looked just the same as it had when Cal was a boy. Hell, probably the same as when his grandfather was a boy. “Ellie's great-grandfather had all those limestone blocks hauled overland by mules from Missouri or someplace. He didn't trust ships. Or so the story goes.”

“Interesting,” she murmured.

“I'm sure she'll tell you all about it. She's the town historian, or something like that.” He swung into the driveway and pulled up in front of the wide steps that led to the big wraparound porch just as the door opened and three-hundred-pound Ellie Young stepped out. Cal killed the engine.

“Welcome!” Ellie called. “Howdy, y'all. Welcome!”

For such a big woman, she came down the porch steps with surprising agility and grace in her long denim skirt and tan, hand-tooled boots. Ellie was Cal's age, but the extra weight and her graying hair made her appear much older. Well, at least it had before Cal had aged quite a bit himself in the past few months.

“Hi, darlin'.” He stepped around the T-bird and wrapped his arms around her soft bulk. “I've brought you warm muffins and a real, live, paying guest. Sorry we're late.”

Her gray head snapped back. “You're not late. For Lord's sake. Ruth always wants everybody to travel on her itinerary. Any time you got here was fine by me. Now introduce me to this little television lady from New York.”

Cal gestured to his passenger. “Miss Ellie Young, meet Holly Hicks.”

While the two of them chatted, he retrieved the suitcase and the laptop and her other luggage from the backseat, and carried them up to the front door. For a minute he was almost tempted to ask Ellie if she had another room available. That way he could avoid most of Ruthie's tongue lashings, plus just walk the long block to the high school track and Ramon's. Then he looked at Holly Hicks' lithe little body and her pretty face, and decided he really didn't need to spend any more long nights with just a wall or two and his newly awakened longings between them. One night had been quite enough.

“Holly, I'm leaving you in good hands,” he said, stretching out his own to say good-bye.

Her hand was tiny, but strong in his. Her nails were on the short side, unpainted, unglossed. Sexy in their natural state. So different from Diana's acrylic talons.

“Thank you, Cal. I'll be in touch with you in a couple of days with those questions.”

“Fine.” He didn't want to let her go, but he did. “That ought to give me plenty of time to come up with some interesting answers.”

“Stay, Cal, and help us with these muffins,” Ellie said.

“I would, Ellie, but I've got a couple appointments.”

He didn't bother to tell her they were with old Bee at the track and then with a certain Dr. Heineken at Ramon's.

Ellie Young's house was as huge and welcoming as the woman herself. It was furnished with an interesting mix of antiques and comfortable contemporary pieces. Except for the pair of longhorn horns mounted above the big stone fireplace in the library, it might have been a country home in Connecticut or a fancy hunting lodge in Maine.

Holly counted at least a dozen rooms on the ground floor alone, each one of them reminding her of a museum. Every horizontal surface, from tabletops to mantelpieces to shelves and even the top of the concert-sized grand piano, was covered with framed pictures and knickknacks and memorabilia, and every object seemed to have a story that Ellie was only too happy to tell.

“That's probably more than you ever wanted to hear about my great-great grandfather,” the woman said, smiling rather sheepishly as she returned an ancient, heavily engraved pistol to its bed in a velvet-lined box. Augustus Young, Ellie's ancestor, had apparently used the weapon with much success and without regard to race, religion, or gender. “People tell me I spend way too much time in the past, but what's a historian to do?”

“It's fascinating,” Holly told her in all sincerity. “And I'm sure I can use a lot of this information as background for my story.”

“You work for the VIP Channel? Is that what Ruth told me?”

Holly nodded.

“I've watched pretty near every one of those biographies. I especially enjoyed that month-long series on the presidents. So, you did some of those?”

She nodded again. Well, she wasn't really lying. Not exactly. Her hostess hadn't asked if she'd produced them. Ellie asked if she “did” some of those biographies. What Holly did was tons of research, coordinate a slew of production schedules, and edit several of the final scripts, particularly the Millard Fillmore segment which nobody else wanted to do.

Her stomach growled again, as if to change the subject.

Ellie laughed. “Well, here I am, going on about things that happened a hundred and fifty years ago while you're starving to death, you poor little thing. Come on. Let's take those muffins of Ruth's out back and make quick work of them. How do you like your coffee?”

“Black, please.”

“Atta girl.”

It was only a bit after ten in the morning and the temperature was probably already ninety-five degrees, but the huge oak trees around the house helped to keep them reasonably comfortable as they sat on the flagstone patio in the back yard with Ruth's muffins and Ellie's cast iron black coffee.

Holly couldn't have chosen a better place to stay. Ellie knew everyone and everything about Honeycomb.

“I went to school with Cal,” she was saying. “From kindergarten all the way through high school.”

“Was he a good student?”

“Yep.” She took a few sips of her coffee. “When he wasn't raising hell, that is.”

“Really.” Holly leaned forward. “What kinds of hell?”

Ellie narrowed her eyes. “I'm not sure I should be telling you this. I wouldn't want you to get the wrong impression.”

“Well, I'd like to know the whole story in order to do it right.” Holly didn't add that her personal curiosity was piqued, as well. So, Calvin Griffin had been a hell raiser in high school, one of those wild, golden boys who never cast Hollis Mae Hicks a second glance. An inexplicable ripple of disappointment went through her, and once more she remembered why she didn't want to be back here in Texas, the place where her reputation as a dork was probably engraved on a chalice somewhere.

Ellie took the last bite of her third muffin, chewed inscrutably a moment, then sipped her coffee. “Here's what I'll do,” she finally said. “I'll make a list of former classmates, teachers, neighbors, people like that. People who go back a long way with Cal. Then if anything not-so-flattering comes to light, I won't be responsible. I like the man too much to say anything that might be considered detrimental.”

“That'll work,” Holly said. She'd been planning to ask the woman for a list like that anyway. “I'm not here to do a hatchet job on him, you know. The story is scheduled for Hero Week. I don't know if his sister told you that.”

“Oh, yeah. She told me.”

From Ellie's tone, and judging from her own experience this morning, Holly guessed Cal didn't exactly top his sister's list of personal heroes. She definitely wanted to look into that.

“I'll go write that list,” Ellie said, “and then I'm going to have to leave you. I'm giving a talk at the Kleberg County Historical Association this afternoon. Come on upstairs, Holly honey, and pick out a room.”

The room Holly chose was a Victorian delight, papered in huge white cabbage roses on a deep pink background. The big hand-carved walnut bed was covered with a white spread crocheted by Ellie's grandmother. The
Gone With the Wind
lamp had belonged to old, shoot-em-up Augustus himself.

There were two tall windows with wavy glass, and between them a small door that opened onto a rusty fire escape. Ellie had told her she could use it as her private entrance and exit, if she wanted, then she'd laughed when Holly asked her for a key.

“Honey, this house hasn't been locked a minute since it was built. I wouldn't even know where to look for a key if I needed one.”

Was that comforting or terrifying? Holly, who'd spent the past few years behind safety chains and triple locks and dead bolts, couldn't quite decide.

Left to her own devices then, she unpacked, located her cell phone at the bottom of her handbag, then clambered up on the high bed and called her office. She had to wait a full five minutes for Cheryl, Mel's secretary, to track him down.

“Hey, kid. How's Texas?” His gruff, three-pack-a-day voice had never sounded so good.

“It's right where I left it,” she said. “Big and hot as ever. What's going on in the office?”

“Nothing,” he growled. “Maida started her vacation early, and Arnold's pissed so he's not coming in today. What a way to run a station, huh?”

Holly laughed.

“So, how's your hero?” he asked.

“Sexy.”

Good God. Where had that come from? It was as if Mel had said, “Hey, kid. Let's free associate. Color.”

Blue.

“Eyes.”

Blue.

“Calvin Griffin.”

Sexy.

Thank God her boss chuckled at her unprofessional remark. “Sexy, huh? Hey, Maida's going to love that. The word is that they're having trouble getting more than a word or two out of Neil Armstrong, and that NYPD hostage negotiator is turning out to be a heroic pain in the butt.”

“Griffin's very cooperative,” she said.

“That's because you know how to get a story. These other idiots .. .well, don't get me started. So, where are you staying?”

Holly flopped back on the pile of soft pillows at the head of the bed. “A bed and breakfast in beautiful downtown Honeycomb. I wish you could see this room I'm in, Mel.” Her gaze drifted around the room as she spoke. “The wallpaper's bubble gum pink with humongous white roses. The bed's comparable to an ark, and the bedspread's handmade, almost seventy-five years old.” Holly snapped up to a sitting position. “God, maybe I shouldn't be sitting on it.”