Once a Hero

by Lisa Childs

  “Just long enough to hear about mistakes,” she said. Anger flushed her face as brightly as passion had mere hours ago. “So you were just going to sneak out?”

  His face heated, too, with embarrassment. “I was going to leave a note.” Once he’d figured out what to write, how to back away without hurting her.

  “You should have woke me up.”

  If he had, he wouldn’t have been able to leave her. “I wanted to spare us both an awkward conversation.”

  “You’re a coward, not a hero,” she accused.

  He couldn’t argue with that. “I didn’t know what to say.”

  “Goodbye? Thanks? See you later?”

  He latched on to the one he least wanted to utter, but he had no choice. He couldn’t expect her to stick by him, not with his uncertain future. “Goodbye.”

  She drew in a sharp breath. “Goodbye?” Her head jerked in a nod that sent that lock of hair tumbling across her cheek. “So you can’t forgive me for what I’ve written about you, for what I believed?”

  His heart clenched. The last thing he wanted was for her to blame herself for his walking away. “You thought the worst of me, Erin,” he reminded her. “You don’t trust me.”

  “I was wrong.” She lifted her chin. “And if you walk away from this, from us, you’re wrong, too.”

  “Then I guess I’m wrong.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “As Lieutenant O’Donnell said, I’m pretty sure everyone knows how to lodge a complaint,” Kent said with that charming grin that so infuriated Erin. “You can pick up the phone and call, or come down in person to the department.”

  Erin hadn’t done either of those things. Yet. Three weeks had passed since they’d made love.

  “And now, Internal Affairs Investigator Lieutenant Wendy Bell will explain the process that happens once a complaint is made,” Kent continued, “and she’ll explain the difference between a formal and informal complaint.”

  Like the last time he’d helped introduce a class, Kent didn’t take his chair at the officers’ table, but headed out the door again. And just like last time, Erin followed him. He moved slower tonight, with the slight limp she had noticed he’d had at her place, and she caught up with him easily.

  She ducked in front of him, so that he couldn’t step onto the elevator and ignore her. “I’d like to lodge a complaint,” she said.

  A muscle twitched in his cheek as he stared over her head, as if unable to meet her gaze. “Then you need to talk to Lieutenant Bell.”

  “It’s an informal complaint,” she explained, “just between you and me.”

  He shook his head. “There is no you and me.”

  She sucked in a breath as if he’d slapped her. “You really can’t forgive me?” she asked. “Even now?”

  Herb had let up on her at the Chronicle, no longer requiring the vindictive tone she’d used when writing anything pertaining to the police department. She suspected Joelly had talked to her father.

  “There’s just too much between us,” Kent said. “I’m always going to be the guy that arrested your brother.”

  “But I don’t blame you anymore,” she insisted. “I realize you were just doing your job and that Mitchell was in the wrong.”

  “It’s too complicated between us,” he stated, his gray eyes dark with regret. “There’s so much hurt and mistrust. But even if there wasn’t, I don’t have time for a relationship. Because of my job, I can’t give you and Jason the attention you both deserve.”

  “Jason said you’d told him you’re going to be very busy.” Anger coursed through her as she remembered the disappointment on her nephew’s little face. “That’s just what the kid didn’t need—one more person dropping out of his life.”

  “I know.” Kent rubbed his hand around the back of his neck, as if trying to relieve tension. “I never meant to hurt him.”

  “Well, you have,” she said. “He keeps asking me when you’re going to come to dinner again. Or over to watch movies.” She blushed as she remembered how Kent had explained his being there late that night. She wanted to “watch movies” with him again. Her body ached for his touch—ached for his…

  He lifted his arm as if he couldn’t help himself, as if he felt the same way she did. His fingers trembling, he pushed the lock of hair behind her ear, the one that always fell across her cheek.

  Her skin tingled from the brief contact with his fingertips. “Kent, tell me what’s going on,” she implored. “Why you’re pulling away…”

  She could feel the attraction burning between them, the electricity they hadn’t been able to deny even when they’d hated each other. That muscle ticked again in his cheek as he clenched his jaw.

  He shook his head. “Like I said, I shouldn’t have gotten involved,” he repeated. “With either of you. I’m not able to be the man you two need.”

  Was he like Jason’s stepfather? Unwilling to raise another man’s son. She suspected he had another reason.

  “You really can’t forgive me for the things I wrote about you?” she asked doubtfully. He wouldn’t have made love with her if he’d been unable to forgive her, but she couldn’t blame him if he was still mad. She’d been so unfair. “Herb’s loosened up on me, but he won’t let me write a formal apology to you.”

  It killed her that her boss wasn’t actually sorry for what they’d done. He was worried about being sued for libel, which he should have considered when he’d been encouraging her to be harsh.

  “I don’t need one.” From his tone, Kent was telling her he didn’t need her, either.

  He stepped around her and jabbed the button for the elevator, offering her no explanation, just another apology. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.” Sorry she had fallen for a man who couldn’t love her back. Or who wouldn’t allow himself to love her back. Kent Terlecki was no hero.

  WITH THE SURGERY ONLY a week away, Kent should have been worried about going under the knife again, but all he could think about was Erin. She hadn’t tried to talk to him since that class a few weeks ago—when she had filed her “informal” complaint.

  She had every reason to complain. He’d treated her horribly. But maybe someday she would understand that he was trying to protect her, to save her from making any more sacrifices.

  Someone slapped a newspaper against his shoulder, where he sat at the bar at the Lighthouse.

  “So when are you going to tell her?” Paddy O’Donnell asked as he slid onto the empty stool next to Kent’s.

  Kent glanced down at the paper Paddy had laid next to his untouched plate of fish, chips and coleslaw. His breath backed up in his lungs at the sight of her picture next to her column, Powell on Patrol. God, he missed her. But the feeling wasn’t mutual, if her words were any indication—she’d gone back to calling him a player.

  He couldn’t blame her. He’d had no right to get involved with her when he’d known he had nothing to offer her.

  “Tell her what?” he asked.

  “That you’re having surgery.”

  He ignored Paddy’s comment. “Thanks for picking up a lot of the slack when I’m off. I couldn’t find anyone but you willing to take on those school assemblies.” Even Lieutenant Michalski, who took everyone’s extra shifts at the department, had refused. But he’d lost a baby some years ago, and spending time with kids was probably a difficult reminder of that.

  Kent turned the paper over, hiding her picture from his sight. It wasn’t class night, so she wasn’t at the Lighthouse. It was early, too, so she was likely still at work. If there’d been any chance she might have been in the bar, Kent would not have come.

  “I like kids,” Paddy said, and since his divorce, he didn’t see enough of his own children, thanks to the manipulations of his ex-wife.

  Kent squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “I appreciate it. And I appreciate you talking to Anita Zerfas for me.” Thanks to Paddy, Anita had agreed to help reduce Mitchell’s sentence for supplying names that had led to seve
ral arrests.

  Paddy sighed. “I wasn’t sure if my talking to her would help or hurt.”

  Kent didn’t know if his friend was referring to Mitchell or himself. “Did it hurt?”

  O’Donnell chuckled. “This isn’t about me.” Talking about Anita had been off-limits for years with Paddy. “We’re talking about you, Bullet. Are you ready for the surgery?”

  Kent nodded. “Yeah, thanks to all of you helping to cover me at the department.”

  Paddy shrugged off his gratitude. “Hey, we’re all going to be here for you, you know.”

  “I know.” He remembered how everyone had rallied around him after the shooting. His biological family hadn’t been there for him, but the family he’d chosen, the one who mattered most to him, had been.

  “She would be there for you, too,” Paddy said, flipping the paper back over. “Despite what she writes, I can tell that she cares about you. A lot.”

  Kent sighed. “I care about her, too.”

  “So tell her about the surgery,” Paddy urged.

  “It’s because I care about her,” he explained, “that I don’t want her to know.”

  “THERE’S SOMETHING YOU need to know….”

  Erin turned to where Patrick O’Donnell sat behind the wheel of the black patrol car. She still couldn’t believe that not only had the watch commander assigned himself to her ride-along, but that he hadn’t cancelled it altogether.

  Maybe he’d wanted to get her alone to talk. After responding to a couple of calls, one a noise disturbance and the other an alarm going off at a business, O’Donnell had pulled into a park in the suburbs of Lakewood. Since it was late, the park was deserted.

  “Here comes the lecture….”

  “Here comes the truth.”

  “I know the truth,” she replied as she fiddled with the pages of her open notebook. She’d written down a few notes, but most of the pages were blank. “I know that my brother is really guilty and that Kent is really a hero, that he saved the chief’s life.”

  “He did more than save the chief’s life,” Paddy said.

  “He saved other people, too?” She didn’t doubt it, and she wasn’t surprised that Kent hadn’t mentioned it.

  “The woman who shot him,” Paddy said. “Kent talked to the district attorney on her behalf.”

  “On her behalf?” Erin hadn’t thought to ask who’d shot him, suspecting it had been difficult enough for him to still have the bullet in his back. “Why would he do that?”

  Paddy sighed. “He felt sorry for her.”

  “But she shot him!”

  “She’d tried to kill the chief, thinking he’d given the order for the SRT sniper.” O’Donnell swallowed hard, as if choking on emotion and regret. “To shoot her son.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t know all the details,” he realized.

  “No. Kent wasn’t even the one who told me about the shooting.” He hadn’t wanted her to know.

  “Billy told you.”

  “Yes.”

  “It was a hostage situation—a dangerous one. The mother of the suspect didn’t appreciate how it was handled. Later, outside the department building, she came after the chief.”

  “And Kent was the one who got hurt…” Erin closed her eyes, seeing the image of a wounded Kent.

  Paddy nodded.

  She sucked in a shaky breath. “And he stood up for this woman, anyway.”

  “That’s the kind of guy he is,” his friend admitted. “He takes care of everyone…but himself.”

  “The bullet’s bothering him,” she mused, remembering the pain on his face, and that Jason had said he’d had to tie Kent’s shoes that last night they’d been together.

  “Yes,” Paddy said. “That’s why he’s having surgery—to have it taken out.”

  “What?” Fear clenched her heart in a tight fist. “But isn’t there a risk of paralysis?”

  Paddy’s face paled in the faint glow of the dashboard lights. “I guess that’s a risk he’s willing to take.”

  Her fingers trembled against the notepad. “When’s he having the surgery?”

  “Next week. He scheduled it a while ago.”

  A while ago? “He never said anything to me.” Anger tempered her fear for him; she was so sick of people keeping things from her. First her parents, then Mitchell and Kent.

  His voice low and gentle, Lieutenant O’Donnell said, “He doesn’t want you to know.”

  She flinched, hurt that Kent was determined to keep things from her, to shut her out of his life. “But you’re telling me despite what he wants.”

  “I think you should know.”

  “He doesn’t.” She blinked against the scalding tears, unwilling to give in to her hurt feelings. Kent, and the risk he was facing, were more important. And if he didn’t want her to be there for him, she had to honor his wishes.

  “He doesn’t want you to know because he doesn’t want to burden you,” Paddy explained, reaching over to squeeze her hand. “He’s used to taking care of everyone else—the whole damn department. He doesn’t want anyone taking care of him—especially someone he loves.”

  She closed her eyes, afraid to hope, only to have that hope crushed again. “He loves me?”

  “If he didn’t, he would have told you,” Paddy said matter-of-factly.

  She wasn’t convinced of the lieutenant’s logic. “Thanks for telling me.”

  “I thought you had a right to know.”

  But Kent hadn’t. She wasn’t certain what to do now. How could she be there for him if he didn’t want her?

  Lieutenant O’Donnell steered the car out of the parking lot onto a quiet residential street. Erin was grateful for the darkness so that she could wipe away her tears and pull herself together. She was grateful for the silence, needing to think.

  Suddenly O’Donnell flipped the switch for the siren, shattering the stillness, before shutting off the siren mid-wail. Startled, Erin gazed through the window. “What happened? What…”

  The lieutenant stared straight ahead, grinning.

  Then Erin noticed the vehicles pulled to the side and the man kneeling before the woman in the middle of the street. The blonde flung her arms around the man’s neck, holding tight. “Is that…”

  “Chad Michalski and Tessa Howard,” Paddy said, his deep voice vibrating with satisfaction as his grin widened. “Yes, it is.”

  Despite what she’d just learned about Kent, Erin’s lips lifted in a smile, too. “Is he…”

  “Proposing? He damn well better be.” He pulled the car next to the surprised couple and rolled down Erin’s window. “Everything all right here?” he asked.

  Chad Michalski grinned; Erin couldn’t remember ever seeing him that excited before. “Everything’s perfect here, Paddy,” he assured the watch commander.

  “Congratulations,” Erin said, moved by their obvious happiness.

  Paddy chuckled as he drove off, leaving the newly engaged couple alone.

  “You’re really happy for them,” she observed.

  “I don’t know how much you know about Lieutenant Michalski, but he was married before.”

  “He’s divorced?” she asked, curious now about the man who’d made her new friend that happy.

  “Widowed, like the chief,” he explained. “His wife died in a car accident. She was pregnant.”

  Sympathy filled Erin. That poor man. “He lost the baby, too?”

  O’Donnell nodded. “Chad’s been miserable these past four years without them. He never intended to risk his heart again, to risk that kind of loss again.”

  “But he did.” She doubted he could have resisted Tessa. The beautiful woman was a force of nature.

  “He was brave enough to take a chance on love, Erin,” Paddy pointed out.

  She smiled at the lieutenant’s obvious ploy. “I have an older brother. I realize when I’m being goaded.”

  “You’re a smart woman,” he said. “Too smart to give up without a fight.”
>
  “I’ve been fighting with Kent since I joined the Chronicle staff a year ago,” she reminded him. “I don’t want to fight anymore.” She just wanted to love him, but he kept pushing her away.

  “Then don’t fight,” the watch commander advised. “Just be there for him. Even though he’d be the last one to admit it, he needs you.”

  And she needed him. She glanced down at the notebook she’d intended to fill with research for her next column, and she flipped through the blank pages, which were going to stay that way.

  “Can I cut my ride-along short?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Paddy said, his lips curving into another grin. “I can drive you back to the department anytime.”

  “Now, please.” She had somewhere more important to be.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Hammering at the door awoke Kent from a fitful sleep. Had Billy forgotten his key again? Disoriented, Kent stumbled out of his bedroom and crossed the living room to open the front door.

  Erin pushed her way past him, then whirled, slamming her palms against his bare chest. Her dark eyes bright with anger, she shouted, “How dare you not tell me!”

  “Tell you what?” he asked, trying to clear his head. Her warm hands against his bare skin distracted him, drawing him back into the dream he’d been having of her…of them making love.

  “About your surgery,” she replied, her voice now soft with hurt.

  “Oh, that,” he said, wondering which one of his so-called friends had told her. Then he remembered that she’d been riding along with Paddy tonight. “O’Donnell told you?”

  “He thought I had a right to know,” she said.

  “He needs to stop meddling in other people’s lives,” Kent griped. “He thinks that because he’s watch commander he can play matchmaker, too.”

  Kent had actually thought it funny when Paddy had messed with Michalski’s life; now he realized he owed Chad an apology.

  “He cares about you,” Erin said, defending the lieutenant. “And he knows I care about you.”

  He closed his eyes in a rush of emotion. “That’s the problem, Erin. I don’t want you to care about me.”

  “I think this might be the first time you’ve actually lied to me,” she mused. “You’re happy I care about you, Kent. You’re just afraid to care about me.”