The Reluctant Hero (7 page)

Andrea was lethargic and sore, but the soreness somehow managed to feel good. Matt was sleeping, his arm draped heavily across her stomach. She thought she should be able to sleep as well, but her mind was conjuring up stories fast and furiously. Heck of a time for her muse to want to come out and play.

Gingerly, she eased out from beneath Matt's arm. Her bare toes felt the blanket that he'd kicked onto the floor earlier. She picked it up, wrapped it around herself, and with only moonlight to guide her, walked into his office.

At his desk, she fumbled around until she located the matches and lit his lamp. She sat in the chair behind his desk. It gave her a different perspective on his room, made her feel closer to him. She thought she would forever see him sitting here, tending to the law.

She needed to write, but his desk was clear except for the lamp. She opened a drawer and found a pencil as well as what appeared to be an old wanted poster. It was yellowed and ragged.

Surely he wouldn't mind if she used it to make a few notes. She laid it facedown and wrote until the words no longer flowed. Yawning, she turned the paper over and immediately regretted that she'd not looked at it more closely before she'd scribbled on the back.

It was a poster announcing the reward for the four members of the Ace in the Hole Gang. Four members? Matt had only killed three. She wondered what had happened to the fourth member. Had he been there that day and escaped? Or had he been captured or killed before?

They had a likeness of each member on the poster. Something about Sam Jenkins tickled at her memory. Something in the eyes. He and his brother, Matthew Jenkins, were worth a five-hundred-dollar reward. Matthew Jenkins.

Her heart slammed against her ribs, because his likeness was much more familiar. She picked up the pencil and began to shade in a mustache. . . .

“What are you doing?”

She jerked her gaze up. Matt stood there wearing only his trousers. She shook her head. “Nothing. I couldn't sleep. I had an idea for a story . . .” She glanced down at the likeness of Matthew Jenkins, then looked back up at Matthew Knight. The resemblance was uncanny.

His gaze dropped to the paper beneath her trembling hands.

“I thought it was an unimportant piece of paper,” she whispered. “I was writing a story on the back.”

Reaching out, he snatched the paper from her, then balled it up.

“I tried to tell you I wasn't a hero.”

She felt the tears burning her eyes.

“You want to know it all, don't you?” he asked, resignation in his voice. “But you're afraid to ask, not sure you want to know the truth.”

She couldn't nod or shake her head. She felt as though her heart was being crushed.

“Sam pretty much raised me after our pa died,” he said, as though she'd given some indication that she wanted him to speak. “I rode with him, got tired of it, and came here three years ago. I don't know if Sam knew I was here, if he thought I'd be his ace in the hole, or if it was just bad luck.

“I was sitting on the bench, the day he and the gang rode into town. I saw them and recognized my brother. I went into my office, closed the door, and pretended that I didn't know what was going to happen. Josh Logan is dead because he had the courage to do what I didn't. He tried to stop them.”

She dipped her gaze to the crushed paper in his clenched fist. “And you're still wanted?”

Not waiting for him to answer, she got up and hurried into the back room. She snatched her dress from the floor, then slipped it on.

“Andi?”

He was standing in the doorway. She couldn't bring herself to look at him as she fastened her buttons.

“Doc told you that people leave their pasts at the outskirts of town. That's what I'm trying to do.”

She spun around and glared at him. “You want me to admire you for that?”

“I never asked for your admiration or your hero worship or any of it. Has it occurred to you that you're not searching for a hero for your story, but you're searching for a hero for yourself? I'm willing to bet you once thought your father was a hero . . . and that beau of yours, too.”

She was afraid to answer, embarrassed to admit that he might have hit on the truth. That she wanted more than a hero for a story. That she was no different than Joe Sears, wanting to believe in the type of person who didn't exist, someone who only existed in her imagination.

She grabbed her shoes, and without bothering to put them on, she rushed past him, got to the door, and stopped.

“I won't tell anyone,” she said quietly, then looked back over her shoulder at him. “I'll be leaving on the noon stage. You finally managed to convince me, Sheriff. You're not a hero.”

He looked as though she'd fired a bullet into his heart. She didn't want to think about it, about him, about what he'd done, or who he really was.

As she rushed back to the hotel, she was acutely aware of the horrendous truth of her situation.

She'd fallen in love. Fallen in love not with a hero, but with an outlaw.

Eight

What was a hero?

Sitting in her library in her home in Fort Worth, Andrea stared at the words she'd typed. She'd thought she'd always known. He was bigger than life and brave. Courageous to a fault. He always saved the day. Was kind to pets and children.

He was a man who looked deep within himself and liked what he saw. He could look himself in the mirror.

The knock on her door barely disturbed her. It opened, and her mother's nurse poked her head through the opening. “I know you're busy writing your story—”

She wished.

“—but there's a doctor here to see you.”

“A doctor? Is mother—”

“She's fine. This doctor's not from around here. He says he's from Gallant?”

Andrea came to her feet. “I'll see him.”

Her heart was thundering so hard that she was certain anyone coming into the room would be able to hear it. Wiping her suddenly damp palms on her skirt, she crossed to the door just as John Martin walked in. She gave him a tremulous smile. “Is it Matt?”

His face was somber. “Not in the way that I think you probably mean.” He extended a package. “He asked me to bring this to you.”

She hesitated to take the offering, but in the end curiosity got the better of her, as well as disappointment that Matt was too cowardly to face her.

Although she didn't know why she should be surprised that he was cowardly. He'd spent his entire life taking the easy way out. Robbing people instead of working hard. Hiding when responsibility stared him in the face.

“Would you like some tea?” she asked as she walked over to a chair and sat, not realizing until she was in place that she was clutching the package as though it were something precious.

Doc took the plush chair nearby and shook his head. “No, thanks, but I would like to stay in case you need me after you open the package.”

“Do you know what's in here?”

“A portion of it.”

“Do you think I'm going to swoon?”

He smiled. “No.”

“Then why would I need a doctor?”

“Not a doctor. A friend.”

She released a heavy sigh. “Yes, I could probably use a friend.”

She unknotted the string, and when it fell away, she pulled back the brown paper and gaped at the pile of money resting inside.

“Five hundred dollars,” Doc said quietly.

She lifted her gaze to him, afraid to ask, afraid she already knew the answer, wondering why the thought didn't bring with it any comfort. “Where did it come from?”

“Matt turned himself in to the authorities. He asked me to bring you the money and that letter.”

That letter. She looked at the folded piece of paper resting on top of the money. With trembling fingers she unfolded it.

 

 

With tears burning her eyes, she looked at John Martin. “Did they send him to prison?”

“For ten years.”

“Where?”

“He doesn't want you to know. I think that letter was supposed to be good-bye.”

With determination she rose to her feet. “The problem with Matthew Knight is that he has no idea what a hero is.”

“Are you going to teach him?” Doc asked.

“I'm going to try.”

She walked over to her desk, jerked out the story she'd been unable to write, put in another piece of paper, and began typing.

 

 

Matt Knight noticed her the second she stepped out of the noon stage onto the dusty street. Her blond hair was tucked up beneath a fancy bonnet. The green of the bonnet matched the green of the dress that he knew matched the green of her eyes.

His mouth went dry. His heart was hammering so hard that he thought he might crack a rib. He watched as the stagecoach driver and his guard struggled to get her trunk down from the roof of the stagecoach, watched as they carried it over to the boardwalk and set it down in front of the hotel.

Then to his utter and complete amazement, she left it there and began strolling up the boardwalk, toward his end of town. He swallowed hard, slowly came to his feet, and swept his hat from his head with a shaking hand. He hoped he wasn't going to need that hand to aim his gun anytime soon.

As she drew nearer, he realized that he'd forgotten exactly how pretty she was. Maybe that was a good thing, because it would have only added to his loneliness, and it had been fairly unbearable as it was. He hadn't been able to figure out how a man could be so dadgum lonely when there were other people around, but standing here now with her before him, he was beginning to suspect that his loneliness had come about because
she
hadn't been there. The one woman he'd come to care about more than any other.

He thought he'd be content to simply stand there and look at her for the remainder of his life.

“Hello, Andi,” he said quietly.

“Sheriff.” She studied him as though she was as hungry to take him all in as he was her. “How was prison?”

He flinched. There was an unexpected spark of anger in her voice.

“Not as bad as it might have been,” he said. “Not as long as it should have been. Thanks to you and Doc.”

They'd petitioned the governor to grant him a pardon based on his heroics in saving the town. He'd never think of his actions that day as heroic, but he was tired of fighting it. Considering every citizen of Gallant had signed the petition, Matt figured it was a battle he'd never win anyway.

“And the citizens of Gallant,” she said.

“Yep. They even gave me my job back. I hadn't expected that.”

“Has it never occurred to you that you're not the man you once were?”

“Every day, but I'm still not—”

She pressed a finger to his lips. “I know. You're not a hero. I'm not here looking for a hero, Matt. I'm looking for the man I've come to love.”

He was afraid to reach for her, to take what he so desperately wanted. But she apparently had no such compunctions. She stepped forward, wound her arms around his neck, and reached up to press her mouth to his.

He greedily took what she offered, wrapping his arms around her, holding her tightly against his body, kissing her as though his very life depended on it. And maybe it did.

He drew back and cradled her face between his hands. Here they were in broad daylight, carrying on like no one could see. “I've got a powerful urge to carry you inside, but it would ruin your reputation, and one of us ought to have a good reputation.”

“You could come to the hotel tonight, and I could show you my typewriter.”

He smiled and touched her cheek. “I'm sorry that the reward offered for my capture wasn't enough to pay off your father's debt.”

“Is that why you turned yourself in? To help with my debt?”

He shook his head. “I did a lot of bad things in my youth, Andi. I thought being sheriff here could make up for it. But that morning, the look in your eyes when you realized what I was . . . Until I faced my past, I realized I could never have a future. The thing was, until you, I never cared if I didn't have a future. I'll never be a hero, but I got to thinking that I might not mind being a husband.”

Smiling brightly, she wrapped her arms around his neck again and came up on her toes. “Are you asking?”

“Reckon I am.”

Her eyes grew somber. “I won't walk away from my father's debt.”

“I'm not asking you to. But I will ask you to let me help where I can. As far as I can see your fiancé was a fool. If all I ever have is you, Andi, I'll always be a rich man.”

Epilogue

THE END.
Andrea Knight finished typing two of her favorite words and sat back in her chair with a sigh, feeling a sense of accomplishment. Her series about Tex Knight had done well for her over the years, and this was her final installment.

She looked at the crumpled wanted poster that sat on the edge of her desk, a constant reminder to her that heroes could be found in the most unlikely of places.

She and Matt had bought the Logans' house shortly after they were married. They'd also bought another typewriter, so she had one in his office where she could be with him for a few hours while he worked and one here at the house so she could write when the muse struck.

Her mother had gone to quietly join her father, and Andrea continued to make payments on her father's debt.

She heard Sammy's barking. She was beginning to think that he really did know how to tell time. He was always waiting outside Matt's office at the end of the day, even though he still spent his nights near his former master.

Andrea got up from her desk, walked through the house, and onto the porch, so she could watch her husband approach. He smiled much more these days.

“Ma!” Their four-year-old son released his hold on his father's hand and rushed straight into her arms.

She lifted him up and hugged him tightly.

“Did you finish?” he asked.

“Yes, I did.”

Matt walked up to her, slipped his arm around her, and drew her up against his side. “How did it end?” he asked.

She smiled up at him. “Like any good story. The hero got the girl.”