Man of the Hour

by Diana Palmer

  She met his eyes levelly. “If it does, I’ll have him prosecuted. Nobody should have to take that kind of abuse just to hold down a job. This is a good job, too. I don’t want to lose it.”

  “You won’t.” He turned back toward the door, his hand on the knob, and looked back at her quietly. “How’s your mother?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” she replied coolly. “The last I heard, she and her fourth husband were living in Denmark.”

  He averted his eyes and left without a conventional goodbye.

  Kirry unclasped her hands and discovered that they were cold and shaking. It had been a long time since she’d let her nerves affect her like this. Even finals every semester at college hadn’t rattled her this badly. Of course, Lang was much worse than tests.

  She tried to concentrate on her work, but her mind kept returning to the turbulent days before Lang had left town. She made a cursory examination of a new file, but she couldn’t keep her mind on it.

  She turned her swivel chair around and looked out the window. Lang had just left the building. He was getting into a late-model car with Lancaster, Inc., Security written on the side of it. His dark hair had the sheen of a raven’s wing in the sun. She remembered how it had felt to touch it, to let it ripple through her fingers in the darkness of a parked car. So many years ago….

  The buzzer distracted her. She picked up the receiver. “Yes?”

  “It’s me, Kirry. Betty,” her friend said, identifying herself. “You really get results, don’t you?” She laughed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Our friend Erikson just got the boot. He mouthed off at Daddy Lancaster’s new security chief about women being fair game for any man. His jaw is still dangling.”

  Kirry caught her breath. “Lang fired him!”

  “Lang?”

  “Lang Patton. The new security chief. I…used to know him, when I was younger.”

  “Ah, so that’s how the wind blows.”

  “You didn’t think I was going to take it much longer?” she asked.

  “No. And I wasn’t, either. All of us were sick of Erikson’s innuendos. We’re going to take you out to lunch. Just think, maybe Mr. Patton will send us somebody young and handsome and single.”

  “He’ll probably send you an ex-marine with a sweet tooth.” Kirry chuckled.

  “Spoilsport. Listen, Erikson’s pretty mad. You should steer clear of this area until he leaves.”

  “I’m not afraid of him.”

  “Well, you might be wise to avoid him, just the same. See you later.”

  Betty hung up and Kirry bit her lower lip. She hadn’t wanted to cause trouble. Most men were polite and courteous. But Erickson had been menacing with his remarks and the way he looked at women. Kirry felt unclean when she had to pass him in the hall.

  At first she’d thought that perhaps she was overreacting. After all, she’d just come from university, where men and women enjoyed an intellectual kinship that usually precluded sexist remarks on either side. But in the real world there were men still mentally living in an age when women were treated as sexual property. It had come as a shock to Kirry to find herself working in the same close area with a man who felt free to make suggestive remarks to any woman he chose.

  Erikson had actually pinched Betty on the buttocks, and when she’d slapped him, he’d laughed and said wasn’t that cute. Women always meant yes, even when they said no, he added.

  Kirry could have told Lang a lot more than she had, but apparently he’d found out Erikson for himself. She felt both relieved and sick at the firing. Erikson had no family, but he was an older man and he might have a hard time finding another job. For that, she felt guilty. Even knowing that the man had brought it on himself didn’t make her feel a lot better.

  The phone rang and Kirry picked it up.

  “Don’t think you’re going to get away with it, telling all those lies about me,” Erikson’s harsh voice informed her. “I’ll get you. Count on it.”

  The receiver went down and Kirry felt a curl of real fear. Surely it was just bad temper. He’d get over it. But in the meantime, she was going to make sure that she never presented him with any opportunities to make his threat known. And perhaps she should mention it to Lang. Just in case.

  That evening when she went home, she made sure that she left in broad daylight. There would be no more working late, she told her boss, until the threat was over, and Mack had agreed wholeheartedly.

  It was a long walk from the parking lot into her apartment building. She looked around, but she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She went inside, grateful that there was a security man even here, and quickly went up to her apartment on the second floor.

  She’d decorated it with a lot of greenery and simple furniture. It was a lonely apartment, but very pretty, and she had her own little kitchenette. Not only that, there was a balcony. The balcony had been the drawing card when she settled here. It overlooked the Alamo in the distance, and she had a mesquite tree just outside it, with long feathery fronds of greenery trailing to the ground. She loved the tree and the view. She had a lounge chair out there, so she could laze in the spring sunlight.

  After she changed into jeans and a loose-knit blouse, she fixed herself a cup of coffee and slid onto the lounger. The sun, late afternoon though it was, felt good on her face.

  She remembered another spring afternoon, the day she’d realized that she was falling in love with Lang Patton. She’d been lazing away in the tree in her front yard in Floresville. She’d been just sixteen years old. The Campbell house in those days was just down the street from the Patton home place. Lang was out of school by then and working with the San Antonio police force, but he came home on weekends sometimes to visit his parents and his brother. He’d been going with a model named Lorna McLane, but they’d just broken up. He was alone now when he came home. Kirry was glad. She didn’t like the superior way Lorna looked down her nose at people.

  Kirry had always known Lang. He’d been like a big brother to her most of her life.

  “Get down out of there before you kill yourself,” he’d called up to her, grinning as he stood below in a black T-shirt and blue jeans. He was powerfully built and she loved to look at him. It made her tingle all over.

  “It isn’t against the law to climb trees,” she informed him pertly, laughing. “Go arrest somebody else.”

  “I’m very happy where I am, thanks.” He looked for footholds and handholds, and a minute later he was up in the next limb, leaning back against the big oak’s trunk. “Here. Have a pear.” He produced one from his pocket and retrieved his own from the other.

  Lang had noticed her, too, that day. His eyes had been slow and bold on her long, tanned legs and the thrust of her breasts in the front-tied blouse she was wearing with her cutoffs. He hadn’t made a move in her direction. But after that day, he’d teased her and their relationship had turned to friendship.

  How long ago it seemed that Lang had made time to listen to her problems at school. Her mother was too busy getting married and divorced to pay Kirry much attention, and she had no other relatives. She gravitated toward the Patton place. Lang’s mother had been dead for years. Nobody ever talked about her, least of all Lang. When Lang’s father died suddenly of a heart attack, Kirry was there with quiet sympathy and compassion. She sat and held Lang’s hand all during the funeral. When Bob and Connie’s son Mikey had been born, Kirry had gone with Lang to the christening. And all at once, Lang was everywhere she went….

  The ringing of the telephone made her jump. She went to answer it and hesitated uncharacteristically. Surely it wouldn’t be Erikson. Would it?

  Her heart was pounding as she lifted the receiver.

  “Kirry?”

  It was Lang. She relaxed, but only a little. “Hi, Lang.”

  “I thought you should know that I fired Erikson this afternoon,” he said quietly. “He was pretty mad. If he gives you any trouble, I want to know about it.”


  “He called me before he left,” she returned. “He said he was going to ‘get me.’”

  There was a pause. “Did that frighten you?”

  She smiled, and twirled the phone cord around her fingers. “A little.”

  “Really?” There was a smile in his voice. “The girl I used to know would have laid his head open with a baseball bat.”

  “My mother never cared about me enough to fight my battles. I had to grow up tough.”

  “I fought some of them for you,” he reminded her.

  “Oh, yes. You were my friend.” The eyes he couldn’t see were sad, full of bad memories. “I have to go, Lang.”

  “Wait.”

  “We have nothing to say,” she replied sadly.

  “I’m sorry you wouldn’t read the letter I sent you, Kirry,” he said after a minute.

  “You didn’t trust me,” she reminded him. “You thought that I was a two-timing playgirl.”

  “I was crazy with jealousy,” he replied. “Didn’t you know that I’d cool down and come to my senses eventually?”

  She laughed bitterly. “By the time you did, I’d stopped caring. I was dating a new guy at college and enjoying myself,” she lied with finesse. Not for worlds would she tell him how it had really been when he refused to listen to her explanations.

  Lang froze inside. He’d thought Kirry loved him. If she’d taken up with someone else so quickly, she couldn’t have. It was an unexpected blow to his ego. “Then it was just as well that you refused to accept it.”

  “Was there anything else?” she asked politely.

  “Yes. Let me know if you have any more contact with Erikson,” he replied. “He’s mixed up with a couple of the local outer-fringe elements. I think he’s loopy.”

  “Nice word.”

  “Do you think so?” he said, grinning. “I’m thinking of buying the rights to it.”

  “I’ll call you if I have any trouble. Thanks for checking, Lang.”

  “Sure.”

  She put down the receiver, idly caressing it as she thought about how it had felt to kiss Lang. Pipe dreams, she reminded herself. She couldn’t afford to go that route again. It had really broken her up to lose him, especially since her mother had been in the throes of another divorce at the time. Her home life had been virtually nonexistent, and that was one reason she’d gone off to university without a protest. It seemed like a lifetime ago now. She had to make sure that it stayed that way.

  Lang settled in at his hotel and went to work. Within a week he had a grasp on the security setup within the Lancaster organization, and he was confident that he could upgrade it to a more efficient level.

  Kirry worried him, though. She’d been very cautious in her movements for a few days after Erikson was fired, but she’d suddenly grown careless. Today she was working late, and it was already dark. Lang knew for a fact that her parking lot would be deserted. He decided that in the interest of keeping her safe, he’d better check on her.

  Sure enough, the parking lot was deserted, except for an older-model blue sedan with a familiar face in it.

  Confrontation, Lang had found, was the best way to avoid real trouble. He pulled up beside the blue sedan and got out of his security car. He was wearing an automatic under his arm, a necessity in his new line of work. He hoped he wouldn’t have to pull it.

  “What are you doing here, Erikson?” Lang asked. “You’re on private property.”

  Erikson, a thin, cold-eyed man, looked vaguely disconcerted by Lang’s direct approach. “I’m enjoying the view.”

  “Enjoy it from another perspective,” Lang suggested to him with a dangerous smile. “And in case you have any ideas about retribution, you’d do better to forget them. You may have had a few years experience in the army and as a security guard, but I was CIA for five years. I’ve forgotten tricks you never even learned.”

  The implied threat seemed to be enough. Without a reply, Erikson started his car and pulled out of the parking lot, giving Lang a resentful glare on the way.

  Lang watched him drive out of sight before he turned and went into the building.

  Kirry was at her desk, talking on the phone to someone who was obviously a client.

  “You have nothing to worry about!” she was reassuring the party at the end of the line. “Honestly, it’s all under control. That’s right. We’ll take care of everything. All you have to do is just show up, okay? Okay. We’ll take good care of you. Yes. Yes. Certainly. Thank you! Goodbye.”

  She hung up with an audible sigh of relief and leaned back in her chair. Her green eyes found Lang in the doorway and she jumped, but not with fear. The impact of his presence had always caused that reaction, although she was usually able to hide it. Tonight, she was tired. Ten things had gone wrong since she walked in the door, and she’d spent the day untying tangles.

  “I didn’t think anyone was still in the building,” she said, sitting up.

  “I came by to check the parking lot,” he said, shrugging his big shoulders. The soft fabric of his gray-and-tan sport coat moved with the action, and the bulge under his arm was visible.

  “You’re wearing a gun,” she accused involuntarily.

  His expression was unfamiliar as he looked at her. “I’ve worn a gun for a long time. You never used to pay any attention to it.”

  “That was before you signed on with the Company and went off to see how many bullets you could collect and still live,” she said with a sweet smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Don’t tell me you cared, cupcake.”

  She lowered her eyes. She was wearing a neat gray suit with a pale pink knit blouse, and she looked fragile and very pretty. Lang couldn’t drag his eyes away from her.

  “I thought I did,” she replied. “But you cured me.”

  He moved forward, cleared a corner of her cluttered desk and perched himself there. The movement pulled his slacks taut across his powerful thighs. Kirry had to fight not to look at them. She’d touched him there, once. She could still remember the impact of it, his hand guiding hers in the heat of passion, his hoarse moan when she began to caress him….

  “Why are you still here?” he asked, breaking into her embarrassing thoughts.

  “Business,” she said, clearing her throat. “I’m a vice president. I’m in charge of arrangements when we have our clients make personal appearances. Sometimes things go wrong, like today.”

  “And you have to clean them up.”

  She smiled. “That’s right.”

  “It’s dark outside.”

  “Yes, I know. I have this, though.” She produced a key chain with a small container of Mace.

  He sighed gently. “Kirry, what if the wind’s in the wrong direction when you use it? And do you realize how close you have to be?”

  She flushed. “Well, I have this, too.” She held up a canned “screamer.”

  “Great. What if there’s nobody within hearing range?”

  She began to feel nervous. If there was one thing Lang did know about, it was personal protection. “I don’t like guns,” she began.

  “A gun is the last thing you need. Have you taken any self-defense courses at all?”

  “No. I don’t have time.”

  “Make time,” he said bluntly.

  He looked concerned. That disturbed her. She began to make connections. His presence here, his insistence on protection for her…

  “Somebody was in the parking lot,” she said astutely, her green eyes narrowed and intent on his hard face. “Erikson?”

  He nodded. “I threatened him and ran him out of the parking lot. But I can’t run him off a public street, you understand? There’s no law against it.”

  “But that’s called stalking,” she said uneasily.

  “And right now, it isn’t against the law,” he replied grimly.

  She recalled cases she’d seen on television, mostly of angry ex-boyfriends or ex-husbands who stalked and finally killed women. The police could do nothing bec
ause a crime had to be committed before the police could act. And by the time that happened, usually it was too late for the victim.

  “He wouldn’t kill me,” she stammered.

  “There are other things he could do,” Lang said distastefully.

  Her lips parted as she let out a quick breath. “I don’t believe this,” she said. “I was only defending myself against an impossible situation. I never meant…”

  “Do you think it would have gotten better if you’d ignored it?” he asked gently. “Men like that don’t stop. They get worse. You know that.”

  She pushed back her wavy blond hair. “I know, but I never expected this.” Her wide eyes sought his. “He’ll quit, won’t he? He’ll get tired of it and go away?”

  He picked up a paper clip on her desk and twisted it between his long, broad fingers. “I don’t think so.”

  Her hands felt cold. She clasped them together, with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach making her uncomfortable. “What can I do?”

  “I’ll try to keep an eye on you as much as I can,” he began.

  “Lang, that won’t do,” she said. “You can’t watch me all the time. It wouldn’t be fair to ask you to. I have to be able to take care of myself.” She looked down at her slender body, remembering that Erikson was much taller and outweighed her by about sixty pounds. She smiled ruefully. “I can’t believe I’ll ever frighten anyone with self-defense, but I guess I’ll see if I can find a class to join.”

  “Most of them are at night,” he said. “Very few karate instructors can afford to operate a martial arts studio full-time.”

  “Surely there are Saturday classes,” she said.

  “Maybe.” He smiled tenderly. “But nobody can teach you self-defense better than I can. And I can keep an eye on you in the process.”

  She averted her eyes. “That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  He studied her down-bent head with faint guilt. “We were friends once. More than friends,” he reminded her softly. “Can’t you pretend that nothing happened between us, just for a few weeks, until we can solve the problem of Erikson?”

  Her eyes were wary, distrustful. “I don’t know, Lang.”