A Forever Kind of Hero

by Marie Ferrarella

  “I wouldn’t preach if I were you.”

  How had the ball suddenly been stolen from his court? “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re going after Velasquez like it’s your own personal crusade.”

  Denial was on his lips, but he didn’t say the words. “Maybe it is.”

  Megan had been blessed with more than a touch of curiosity, but it was usually directed toward things that could help her with cases. This time, it was more than that. Why had he pretended not to know what she meant? She wanted to put to rest her questions about this man.

  “Why?”

  “Maybe I don’t like seeing young kids die.” That should be enough for her, Garrett thought.

  It wasn’t. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

  For the first time in over a year, Garrett began to wish he hadn’t given up smoking. She was really getting on his nerves. “Okay, you made your point. I don’t probe you, you don’t probe me.”

  “Uh-uh, you started this—”

  “And now I’m finishing it, understand?” Garrett said tersely.

  Megan understood all right. Understood that what was good for her wasn’t reciprocated. Well, at least they were equal. That meant if she had to answer him, he had to return the favor.

  But before she could drive her point home, she felt something. Megan stared at the car uncertainly. “What’s that?”

  Distracted, Garrett saw and heard nothing but the infuriating woman beside him.

  “What’s what?” she repeated.

  The next moment, he felt it, too.

  “That,” she declared, pointing accusingly at the car’s hood. “Why’s the car shaking like that?” The car had suddenly begun vibrating. And it wasn’t going anywhere. “What’s wrong with it?”

  Chewing on his anger, Garrett didn’t answer her. He felt around under the dashboard.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “A way to make you stop asking questions,” he snapped. “But that probably doesn’t exist.”

  Finding the hood release, Garrett popped it, then got out and strode to the front of the car.

  Perfect, just perfect, he thought darkly. Not only did he have to put up with Megan and her ever-moving mouth, but now the car was giving him trouble as well. He should have traded the car in at the rental agency and gotten a newer one before he started on this leg of the trip. Hindsight was great.

  Yanking up the hood, he looked down at an engine and components that looked even filthier in the creeping twilight. Garrett remembered seeing a flashlight in the glove compartment.

  He turned to get it, and bumped right into Megan. Even through his anger, the contact made a quick, electric impression. He glared at her. “It’s a large desert, why do you have to stand on top of me?”

  “Don’t yell at me because the car died.”

  “The car didn’t die.”

  “It stopped moving, didn’t it?” she accused.

  “I’m not driving it, am I?”

  The conversation was deteriorating. Megan was big enough to retreat first and focus on what was important. “Then you can fix it?” She ran her hands up and down her arms. It was beginning to get cooler.

  Without answering, Garrett pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and gingerly tapped a few engine parts.

  “Well?” she asked.

  Pointing the flashlight at the engine block, he saw the problem.

  “It’s the distributor cap.” One corner of the plastic cap had been burned away, inhibiting contact with the spark plugs.

  Megan had absolutely no idea what that meant. “Do we have a spare?”

  He looked at her. “It’s a distributor cap, not a tire.”

  “Sorry,” she said icily, struggling to control her temper—because at least one of them should. “I don’t know that much about cars.”

  “Obviously.” Looking disgusted, he shut off the flashlight and shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket.

  Megan bit her lower lip to keep from snapping back at him. Turning, she looked in the direction from which they’d just come. “We passed a truck stop about two miles back.” She remembered seeing a gas station beside the diner as well as a couple of other buildings. “Maybe they have a spare distributor thing.”

  “Cap.”

  “A spare distributor cap,” she enunciated. “Happy?”

  Garrett was a long way from happy. But she was right. He shouldn’t be taking it out in her.

  “Sorry.” Leaning in on the driver’s side, Garrett took the keys out of the ignition. “Okay, let’s go see about this truck stop. It’s probably quicker to walk there than to call the rental agency’s emergency repair hotline since we’re probably not near any big garage.” He stopped as he heard something. “Is that your stomach?”

  Megan flushed. “I’m hungry.”

  “See if you can keep it down,” he advised. “You might just attract the coyotes.”

  She looked around uneasily. She’d forgotten about the night life around here. “I didn’t need that.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t let them get you—unless they decide to go after me. Then you’re on your own.”

  “My hero.”

  He laughed, taking the flashlight with him to help them find their way. “I try.”

  Megan frowned as she looked down at her plate. She knew that in reality she had a lot to be thankful for. They’d been lucky enough to have broken down close to a garage. The mechanic, who had to be summoned from the same diner they were now in, had gone back with them. And after looking over the problem, he promised to have them on the road again sometime tomorrow morning.

  It worked out well in the time frame that Garrett was following, but that meant they had to spend the night in a place that wasn’t even a speck on the map.

  The anonymity and inconvenience wasn’t what was bothering her. In all the excitement, she’d forgotten what today was. Until now.

  Garrett watched her pick at her food from the moment the waitress set it down in front of Megan. He’d consumed his own meal quickly enough. The long trip, topped off by the walk, had driven his appetite to a new high.

  The same, obviously, couldn’t be said of hers, even though her stomach had been growling earlier.

  “Food not to your liking?” Garrett finally asked as he finished his cup of coffee.

  She looked at him then with the saddest eyes he’d ever seen. Instead of answering his question, she asked one of her own. “You know what today is?”

  “Yeah.” Garrett shrugged. The holiday bore no significance to him. One day was pretty much like another as far as he was concerned. “Thanksgiving. That’s why the special’s turkey.” He nodded at the stained black menu board that hung on the rear wall.

  He said it as if it was nothing. “And it doesn’t bother you?”

  He wiped his mouth with a corner of the napkin. “Why should Thanksgiving bother me?”

  He was deliberately being obtuse, Megan thought. “Not Thanksgiving. Spending it on the road, in a diner that’s two steps away from being condemned if there was such a thing as a board of health around here.”

  “Gotta spend it somewhere.”

  “Yes, but with your family.” She sighed, looking around. Wichita just didn’t understand. “See that man over there?” She nodded toward the solitary-looking man on the stool, bent over his meal.

  Garrett looked over to size the stranger up, then turned back to Megan. “What about him?”

  Didn’t he see the loneliness, the desolation? “When I was a kid growing up, I always felt sorry for people like that. People who had no one to be with around the holidays. Who sat on solitary stools in dingy diners with no one to talk to, and ate dry turkey that stuck to the roof of their mouth.” Fighting back a burst of emotion, she pushed her plate away from her. “And now I’m one of those people.”

  Garrett took a sip of water and then set the amber glass on the table.

  “You’re not
sitting on a stool,” he pointed out quietly. Her eyes shifted to his, and he felt a tightness in his throat. He slipped his hand over hers. “And you’re not alone.”

  Something very warm slid through Megan. Warm and demanding. “You?”

  “Me. I’m with you.” There was something in her sadness that spoke to Garrett. That made him want to chase it away. “Last I checked, I qualified as a human being.”

  Megan smiled at him, grateful for what he was trying to say.

  “Yeah, maybe you do at that.” She rallied, pulling herself together. This was out of character for her. She didn’t usually let her emotions get the better of her, especially not around others. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to grow all soft and sloppy on you.”

  “That’s all right.” He went back to eating his meal. “It’s nice to see you have a human side yourself.”

  “Maybe,” she allowed as she looked at him, “at times I’m a little too human for my own good.”

  And mine, he thought.

  He nodded toward her plate. “The gravy isn’t half bad. Try putting it on the turkey.”

  He was making an effort, Megan thought. The least she could do was meet him halfway. She smiled. “Maybe I will.”

  Chapter 11

  “More coffee?”

  The tired-looking waitress directed the question toward them from behind the counter. She held up a glass pot half filled with light brown liquid that Megan could see through even from where she sat.

  They were the last two people in the diner, besides the waitress. The short-order cook had left twenty minutes ago.

  Megan shook her head in reply. The cup she’d been nursing had long since grown cold. It hadn’t been much of a help in sliding the last piece of apple pie down. The pie had tasted stale. She’d split it with Garrett, but he hadn’t seemed to notice, consuming his half with gusto. She wondered if he was accustomed to food like that. Given his life on the road, it was probably a good guess.

  She had no idea why she had a sudden urge to make him a real home-cooked meal.

  “I’ve already had enough coffee to keep me up all night. Which,” she glanced at Garrett, “I guess is a good thing, seeing as how we have no place to stay.”

  Crepe shoes squeaked across the cracked vinyl floor as the waitress approached their table. Megan noticed that the woman’s coat was draped over the last stool at the counter. Mechanically, the woman, whose name tag proclaimed her to be Maude, picked up the last of their plates.

  There was a hint of guilt in Maude’s voice as she said, “Well, I’m afraid I’ve got to lock up now. It’s Thanksgiving.” She nodded toward the single decoration on the counter as if that verified her statement. “And I promised my Henry to be home before seven.”

  “Her Henry” had turned out to be the mechanic who’d towed Garrett’s vehicle back to his cluttered, single-bay garage.

  Garrett looked at Megan. The truck stop had nothing in the way of overnight accommodation. “I guess we should go back to the car. We could try sleeping in it,” he suggested. It looked like their only option, since they weren’t going anywhere at the moment.

  Maude looked appalled at the thought. “It’s too cold for that. Temperature’s dropping all the time,” she said, picking up their plates.

  Even if it wasn’t, there was another problem with the solution. “It’s in Henry’s garage, remember?” Megan reminded him. “Which means we can’t get at it anyway.”

  Maude chewed on a wide lower lip that had seen over half a century of bright red lipstick. “Hold on a minute.” Shuffling to the counter, she deposited their dishes and kept on walking. “I’ll be right back.” Maude disappeared through the single swinging door into the kitchen.

  Megan frowned into her coffee cup. In a few hours, she’d probably be longing for this, but right now she couldn’t force herself to finish it. She set the cup down and looked at Garrett.

  “What do you suppose she’s up to?”

  Garrett could predict the actions of men far better than he could those of any woman. He shrugged. “Maybe she’s trying to find a place for us in the freezer.”

  For a split second, Megan was seven again, sitting beside her older brother and watching shadowy creatures on the television screen. An icy feeling slid up and down her spine. It took a minute to remind herself that she didn’t believe in things that went bump in the night. But she’d learned that there were people out there who were a lot scarier than any parade of Saturday-afternoon monsters had ever been.

  “That’s not as funny as it sounds,” she told him. He arched a quizzical brow. “You obviously weren’t raised on horror movies.”

  Megan kept an eye on the swinging door, waiting for Maude’s return. She thought she heard the woman talking to someone—except that the cook had already gone home. “That’s how they got the original Blob, you know. Freezing it to death.”

  “No,” he said, studying her. “I didn’t know. Just how much trivia do you carry around inside that head of yours?”

  She grinned. Like an ever-growing sponge, Megan had a mind that absorbed everything she came in contact with. And remembered it. “You’d be surprised.”

  “No,” the answer was honest and emphatic. “I wouldn’t be.”

  Garrett was beginning to think that nothing about Megan Andreini would really surprise him anymore. The woman was an ongoing surprise, which contradictorily, he reasoned, made surprise predictable.

  She was an enigma.

  “I just called Henry,” Maude announced, returning. Her guilty expression had faded. “He said you can stay in the back room at the garage if you promise not to mess with anything.” She pressed her lips together, embarrassed over the warning she’d been told to deliver. “I know you won’t.” Struggling into the coat she’d brought over with her, she continued. “It’s got a cot.” Maude looked over her shoulder in surprise, as Garrett helped her find her other sleeve and then slid the coat into place. She smiled warmly at him. “Sometimes we stay there during the rainy season when the storm gets too nasty and we can’t get home.”

  Picking up her purse, she led the way to the front door, then waited until they both walked out. “I’d invite you there—to the house—but Henry’s family came, and we’re full up as it is.” She locked the diner. “Lord knows it’s small even just for the two of us.”

  “There’s no need to apologize,” Garrett assured the woman. “You’ve done more than enough as it is. The room’ll be fine.”

  It would have to be, he thought.

  But he had to admit that he had some doubts about it when Maude unlocked the garage and led them to the tiny back room. It hardly seemed like a room at all; it was more of an oversize closet doubling as a storage unit. There were pungent, grease-stained coveralls in a pile in the corner of the floor, and the cot itself was buried beneath stacks of old newspapers. Scattered, empty metal cans on the floor made moving around difficult.

  Maude flushed as she surveyed the garage. “I know it doesn’t look like there’s enough room there for a couple.” She gestured toward the cot. “But Henry and I used to make do.”

  By the reminiscent smile on Maude’s lips, Megan gathered that Henry was a great deal more spry than he appeared at first glance.

  “And we will, too,” Garrett told Maude. Gently, he ushered the woman to the front of the garage. “Now you’d better get home to Henry and his family. We’ve kept you long enough.”

  Maude smiled at him. She leaned her face up to his and whispered, “Tell your wife she’s got herself a charmer.” Patting his arm, she added in a louder voice, “Henry’ll be here in the morning to work on that car of yours.” Confidence shone in her eyes. “Have you on your way in no time.”

  Garrett certainly hoped so. The alternative, he thought as he helped Maude pull down the corrugated garage door and fix it in place, was to put in a call and have someone come and get them in the morning. He preferred not to appear as if he needed bailing out.

  Garrett turned around to assess hi
s surroundings. He’d been in gloomier-looking places—although not recently. There was a single light fixture hanging from the center of several crossed beams. The corrugated roof, a good fifteen feet above them, must have made heating and cooling the place an impossible dream.

  The naked bulb cast eerie shadows everywhere. Their car, the only other occupant, was standing in the middle of the garage. It appeared that business was slow for Henry. Given that the man looked to be in his seventies, Garrett figured Henry probably liked it that way.

  He picked his way back to Megan, taking care not to trip over the wrenches and tools that were flung haphazardly about.

  “It’s not exactly the way I pictured spending the night,” Garrett said, directing his voice toward the back room.

  “Oh?”

  He heard something crash and hurried the rest of the way to the back.

  Megan walked out of the back room carrying an armload of newspapers. She’d taken off her jacket and pushed up her sleeves, obviously digging in. Passing him, she crossed to the workbench and deposited the newspapers against the wall behind it.

  She pushed her hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “And just how did you picture spending the evening?”

  Puzzled, he followed Megan back into the room, entering just in time to see her bend over to pick up another stack of papers. Her cherry-red skirt moved with her, sliding up the remainder of her leg and giving him an eyeful.

  No doubt about it, he thought, the woman had an incredible build.

  Watching her, Garrett realized exactly how he’d pictured the evening—maybe not this one, but some evening.

  Soon.

  He laughed shortly to himself, shaking his head. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to lose his grip. “You don’t want to know.”

  Megan turned around, newspapers stacked in her arms. There was a look in his eyes that she didn’t want to analyze. It gave her butterflies.

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  He followed her out again as she repeated the routine. “What are you doing?”