Once a Hero

by Lisa Childs

  It was too late for those fears. He already cared about her. Hell, he loved her; that was why it was so damn hard to push her away. But he had to—for her sake. He opened his eyes and met her determined gaze. “Erin…”

  “You already care about me,” she said with a triumphant smile.

  He couldn’t deny his feelings. “That’s why I want you to forget about me. You deserve more than I can give you.”

  “But I want you, Kent,” she said, stepping even closer so barely a breath separated their bodies. “I want you.”

  “Erin…” Maybe it was because he’d been dreaming about her that Kent’s resolve weakened. He couldn’t fight his feeling for her. Not tonight. Holding her hands to his chest, to where his heart pounded madly with desire for her, he leaned over and kissed her.

  He hadn’t imagined how soft her lips were, how sweet her mouth. He slid his palms down her back, pressing her against him. A groan tore from his throat.

  She pulled back, breathing hard. Her brown eyes were even darker with desire. “Is—is Billy here?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No, we’re alone.” He knew this was a bad idea and that he should lead her to the door and make her leave. Instead, he entwined his fingers with hers and tugged her toward his bedroom.

  “You have on too many clothes,” he protested, as he lifted her sweater over her head and tossed it onto the hardwood floor. She wore a shirt beneath the sweater, one with buttons that were too small for his impatient fingers. So he pulled that over her head, too.

  “You don’t have on many clothes,” she said, trailing her fingers down his bare chest to the waistband of the gym shorts he wore.

  His erection strained against the material, pressing against her hips. He groaned at the sweet torture. “Erin…”

  His fingers shaking slightly, he undid the clasp of her bra, sliding the straps down her shoulders, letting the scrap of lace fall away. “You are so beautiful,” he murmured. “Am I still dreaming?”

  She shook her head. “If you are, then we’re sharing the dream.”

  He dipped his head, taking her lips in another deep and consuming kiss. Her tongue darted into his mouth, teasing his. He groaned again and skimmed his knuckles down her bare back.

  “You feel so real,” he murmured against her lips, which curved into a smile.

  She moved her hands to the front of his shorts. “You feel so real, too.”

  He chuckled at her boldness. But when she slipped her fingers inside his shorts, the chuckle stuck in his throat as desire rushed through him. Impatient for her, he undid her pants and pushed them down her hips. “I have to have you….”

  “Yes,” she agreed, and stepped out of the rest of her clothes so that she stood naked before him.

  “Now,” he said, as he tumbled her onto his rumpled bed. He’d been restless, unable to sleep for wanting her.

  “Yes.” She reached for him.

  But he pulled back, then dug through the drawer of his bedside table, looking for protection. With a triumphant “yes,” he held up a foil packet.

  She took it from him, tore it open and rolled the condom down his shaft. “Now.”

  With a flash of guilt, he shook his head. “I’m rushing you….”

  “You’re going too slow.”

  He made sure she was ready for him, caressing and kissing every inch of her, savoring each soft touch and sweet taste. If the surgery didn’t go well, he might never be able to do this again. To love her the way she deserved to be loved.

  Tears streaked from the corners of her eyes as she shattered in his arms. “Kent! Now! Please!”

  She locked her legs around his hips, and he slid home in her wet heat. Her lips skimmed down his throat, her teeth nipping gently as he thrust in and out. She lifted her hips, matching his rhythm until she came again.

  He tensed, then his passion for her exploded.

  He slipped from the bed for a few minutes, then returned, to drop down beside her, exhausted.

  “Wow…” she murmured, her breasts rising and falling with her erratic breathing. “That was some dream….”

  “Some dream,” he agreed as he leaned over her, brushing his mouth across hers.

  Her lips parted, but before he could deepen the kiss, she murmured, “I want to be there for you.”

  He shook his head. He couldn’t ask that of her. It was too great a sacrifice. He encircled her wrists with his hands and lifted her from the bed. “You need to go home, Erin.”

  Shock and hurt widened her dark eyes. “No, I want to be with you.”

  “But Jason…” He should have thought of the boy earlier. Heck, he should have thought of Erin earlier, before he’d made love with her again. Kent hated himself for having been so selfish. He never should have made love with her again, but with the very real possibility of the surgery paralyzing him, he was glad that he had. At least he’d have one more memory of being that close to her. Of being a part of her…

  “Jason’s with my parents,” she said, “he’s spending the night.”

  “But what about getting him ready for school…”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I can be with you,” she offered. “Tonight. All night. Always.”

  It was the always that scared him most, the sacrifice she was more than willing to make. The sacrifice he loved her too much to ask her to make. “No, you can’t.”

  “I know you’re worried about what might happen with the surgery,” she said, excusing his rejection. “That you’re worried that you might be…”

  “Crippled,” he finished for her, when she couldn’t even say the word. “That I might wind up spending the rest of my life in a wheelchair.”

  “Kent, don’t worry. I’ll be here for you. I’ll be by your side,” she promised, “no matter what happens.”

  His worst fear realized, he closed his eyes. God, he loved her. And it was because he loved her he couldn’t accept her offer. He couldn’t burden her.

  “That’s why I don’t want you to stay,” he said. “I don’t want your pity.”

  “It’s not pity,” she protested, her anger returning. “I love you!”

  He sighed. “That’s too bad.” Because before he’d only guessed what he was giving up. Now he knew.

  Erin realized he was deliberately pushing her away again, but knowing that didn’t make his rejection hurt any less. Feeling too vulnerable naked, she grabbed her clothes from the floor, awkwardly tugging them back on.

  He lay on the bed, his arm across his face as if he were falling back to sleep. Or as if he couldn’t look at her.

  “Don’t do this,” she pleaded.

  “Don’t do what? Be honest?” he asked.

  “Don’t try to protect me,” she said.

  “To protect and serve, that’s the oath every police officer takes,” he murmured. “I can’t break my oath—not even for you, Erin.”

  “I don’t need protecting,” she insisted.

  “Yes, you do,” he said. “You need protecting from yourself. You keep taking on other people’s responsibilities.”

  “Jason isn’t a responsibility. He’s a joy. I love him. I love taking care of him.” She didn’t know what she would do, how she would handle the loss if his mother or Mitchell took him from her. Just as she didn’t know how she would handle the rejection if Kent kept pushing her away—especially now, when she knew how much he needed her.

  “I don’t want you to take care of me,” he said, his voice rough with pride.

  “You are so damn stubborn,” she complained. “And chauvinistic. Why can’t I take care of you?”

  “Because it would kill me,” he said, “to be a burden to you. You deserve more than I can offer, Erin.”

  Paddy was right. Kent loved her, he was just too proud to admit it.

  “I still have my question,” she remembered. “The one you promised to answer honestly.”

  “Erin, it’s too late….”

  She shook her head, refusing to give up on him. “Do
you love me, too?”

  “You waited too long,” he said. “The expiration date ran out on that question a long time ago.”

  “Then tell me you don’t love me,” she challenged him.

  He sighed. “It doesn’t matter. We have no future, Erin.”

  Tears burned her eyes, but she blinked them back. She was proud also. Too proud to keep throwing herself at a man who only wanted to share his body with her—not his heart, not his life.

  “Fine,” she agreed. “I’ll leave you alone. I think I was wrong, anyway.”

  “About what?” he asked, as if helpless to resist his curiosity.

  “I don’t love you,” she said. “I don’t even know you.”

  “You know me.”

  She shook her head. “You won’t let me know you. Time and time again you’ve kept secrets—important secrets—from me. Things I had a right to know. I thought you were protecting me, like my mom and dad claim they were protecting me when they didn’t tell me about Mitchell’s arrest while I was in South America.”

  She swallowed hard, her throat dry. “Then Mitchell…When he didn’t tell me the truth, I figured it was because he was protecting me from disillusionment. And I gave you the same excuse for all the things you’ve kept from me—that you were protecting me.”

  She shook her head, thoroughly disgusted with herself and everyone else she cared about. “Now I realize you all were just protecting yourselves.”

  “Erin…”

  “You’re the worst,” she accused. “You’re the most scared to let me get to know you, to let me into your heart. I’m done trying,” she said, throwing his words in his face. “I’m just done.”

  “YOU’RE SURE YOU WANT to do this alone, son?” the chief asked him.

  Kent sat up in the hospital bed, waiting for the orderlies to bring him to surgery. He stared at all the faces around him. Almost the entire department was present; he hoped the criminal element wasn’t aware of how short-staffed the Lakewood PD currently was.

  Even some of the CPA members had shown up to support him. Rafe Sanchez and the youth minister, Reverend Thomas, crowded into the room with the police officers, and Brigitte Kowalczek, the bartender from the Lighthouse. Marla Halliday stood close to the chief’s side.

  “I’m not alone,” Kent said with a slight grin, amused that so many people had managed to fit into such a small room, and touched that they were there for him.

  “But the person you want the most to be here isn’t,” Marla said as she leaned over the bed rail and patted his arm. “Why don’t you let me call Erin?”

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t want her here.”

  “Liar,” the chief muttered.

  Selfishly, Kent did. He needed her support, her smiling face, to assure him that he was doing the right thing by going through with the surgery. But calling her, asking her to be here when he had nothing but uncertainty to offer her, would be the wrong thing.

  Honestly, he doubted she would come anyway. As she’d said, she was done with him. She hadn’t tried to call him again. Hell, she hadn’t even written about him since that night.

  “I can’t have her here.”

  “You can’t have this many people in here,” a nurse complained as she shoved through the crowd. “You cannot have surgery if your blood pressure or your temperature is too elevated.”

  They were other reasons it was good that Erin hadn’t showed up, since she had a knack for raising both. Hell, he would have to be dead not to react to Erin Powell.

  “The surgeon is running behind schedule,” the nurse continued as she tightened a blood-pressure cuff around his biceps, “so it’s going to be a while yet. You need some quiet time.”

  If the only thing his friends were going to do was badger him to call Erin, he agreed with the nurse’s prescription.

  “Only one person can stay with you,” she added.

  He nodded, not caring, since he couldn’t have the one person he truly wanted with him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “So did you draw the short straw?” he asked Billy, since his friend was the first to walk back into the room after the nurse had shooed everyone out.

  “No, we all agreed that I probably had the best chance of getting through your thick skull.”

  Kent groaned. “I’m supposed to be having quiet time,” he reminded his housemate.

  “I’m not going to talk to you.” Billy slapped a newspaper against Kent’s chest. “You’re going to read this.”

  He shook his head. He couldn’t even look at the paper. If he caught a glimpse of Erin’s picture, he would weaken and call her, and that wouldn’t be fair to her—if she even took his call. He had pushed her away so many times that she was probably too far out of his reach.

  “Okay, you stubborn ass, I’ll read it to you,” Billy said, grabbing the paper. “‘Today, Lakewood Police Department’s public information officer, Sergeant Kent Terlecki, is undergoing surgery at Lakewood Memorial Hospital. Terlecki is having a bullet removed that’s been lodged against his spine for the past three years, when he leaped into the line of fire and saved Chief Archer’s life.’”

  “Dammit,” Kent cursed. “She betrayed me. She knew I didn’t want that made public!” Maybe he’d been wrong about her—she wasn’t being forced to continue the sensational angle of her column. She chose to do it.

  “‘The shooter, whose son had been killed earlier that day by police, intended to kill the chief out of revenge.’”

  “How the hell did she find out about that?” he asked. “Did you tell her?”

  “Shut up and listen.” Billy continued, “‘The shooter, Mrs. Sherry Ludlowe, is serving out her sentence at a psychiatric hospital instead of in prison due to a deal Sergeant Terlecki himself negotiated on her behalf.”

  Billy hadn’t even known that, and probably not the chief, either. Someone else had talked to the prosecutor with whom Kent had worked out that agreement. “Damn Paddy…”

  Billy ignored his outburst and kept reading. “‘Ludlowe commented, “Terlecki saved my life the day I nearly took his. If I had shot the chief, I would have turned the gun on myself. He protected the chief that day, he protected me and he continued to do so by keeping quiet about what I had done. My son, having taken his class hostage, had already made enough headlines that day. I understand now why the Lakewood SRT officer had to shoot him, so he wouldn’t have hurt those innocent children and their teacher. My son was not innocent. And neither am I. I don’t deserve the sergeant’s protection, his kindness or his forgiveness. He’s a true hero.”’”

  Kent shook his head. “Erin shouldn’t have talked to Mrs. Ludlowe. She shouldn’t have brought up all that pain for her again.”

  “What about your pain?” Billy asked.

  Kent gestured around the hospital room, which was as sterile-looking with its white walls and floor as it probably was. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “And this is why I’m here,” Billy said. “To make sure you read this part. It’s the best, so listen closely.”

  Kent sighed. If not for the IV in his arm, he might have climbed out of bed to escape Billy.

  Suspecting that he was tempted to do just that, Billy laid a hand on Kent’s shoulder as if to hold him down. “‘Lakewood needs to keep Sergeant Kent Terlecki in their prayers today as he undergoes this risky surgery that could possibly leave him paralyzed. The city owes him a debt of gratitude for protecting us. He is our hero. He is my hero.’”

  “That was Erin’s column? She wrote that?” Kent asked, glancing up at his friend for confirmation.

  But a female voice answered, “Yes.”

  He turned toward the doorway, where Erin stood, and his pulse tripped and his skin heated just in reaction to seeing her. She was so damn beautiful. “I don’t think that’s going to sell that many papers.”

  “I don’t care about the Lakewood Chronicle’s sales or circulation.” She stepped forward, approaching his bed. “I care about you.”

&
nbsp; Billy patted his shoulder. “I’m getting out of here before Nurse Ratchet tosses me out for us being one over the room limit.”

  Kent reached out a hand to stop him, but his friend slipped from his grasp. Before leaving, he stopped next to Erin and pulled her into a quick hug. “Good luck with him.” Billy turned back to Kent with a wink. “He’s a stubborn ass, you know.”

  “I know,” Erin agreed with a smile at Kent as Billy disappeared into the hall.

  “Seriously, you’re probably going to get fired over this,” Kent said, tightening his grasp around the paper Billy had left on his bed.

  Erin detected the real concern in his voice, and her smile widened. He loved her. He was just too much of a stubborn ass—as his friend had said—to admit it. Yet.

  And she loved him. She hadn’t slept at all the previous night for worrying about him and his surgery. He looked so healthy, so strong sitting up in bed. The pale green hospital gown took nothing away from his masculinity.

  “Erin, you can’t afford to lose your job,” he said, his concern all for her and none for himself.

  “I’m not going to lose my job,” she assured him, covering his hand with hers. “Herb okayed the column or it wouldn’t have gone to print.”

  Kent turned his hand over, entwining their fingers. “How did you manage that?”

  “With a little help from a fellow CPA member,” she said. “Joelly talked to her dad.” In fact, she’d tried a while ago, but she finally got through to him.

  Disbelief narrowed his eyes. “Joelly? The mayor’s daughter?”

  Everyone had been wrong about the heiress. She wasn’t the bubble-headed ditz she’d been labeled.

  “The mayor approved that article?” Kent persisted.

  “Shh…” Erin murmured. “Don’t worry about any of that. You’re off work now.”

  “I’m going to be off to surgery soon.” He swallowed hard then released her hand. “I don’t want you here, Erin.”

  “That’s too damn bad,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere…that you’re not going. You’re stuck with me.”