Nobody's Hero

by Liz Lee

  It wasn’t the one he expected.

  “You’re an alcoholic?”

  Je-sus. Had she even heard him?

  “Honey, I’m an everything a-holic. But for the record, I’ve been sober two years. Why? You scared?”

  She swallowed, met his eyes with the most even, most sincere look he’d seen in…well, maybe forever. “Yeah, Riley, I’m scared. But I’m not afraid of you. You just might be the most honest person I’ve ever met in my life. You always have been.”

  Well, crap. He wasn’t going to fool her. Not now. Not ever. She’d probably hate him by the end of the day.

  “Princess, there’s nothing honest about a man like me. Even when we’re telling you the truth, it’s a lie. It all boils down to one thing. It’s the same one thing it’s been since the beginning of time. Don’t you forget it.”

  With that he turned away, picked up the phone and made a call that just might get them out of this mess. He pushed auto dial, waited for the message and keyed in the seven-digit code to let his secret agent hero-boy brother know he’d be calling back. Then he dialed the office.

  Two rings later his boss and mentor picked up. “Yo, Mack. I’ve got a major lead on that story we were discussing. Any visitors stop by?”

  “Hey. Listen, we’re in the middle of a legal situation. I’ll have to get back to you.” The phone clicked in his ear, and Riley’s adrenaline started pumping again.

  Okay. Question answered. Law enforcement visitors were on the scene. He’d better get a move on before they showed up on his front doorstep.

  While he was at it, he’d get that frown off Callah’s face. That ought to be fun.

  Callah needed comfort food in a big, big way. Cherries Garcia. Dove extra dark chocolate. She’d even settle for a fat-free Chips-A-Hoy.

  A deranged lunatic had chased her out of her home. And she’d left with a deranged lunatic of a different kind. That was the only thing that explained the food in his pantry.

  She grabbed the box of plain, crunchy granola bars he shoved toward her and threw them in a blue travel bag.

  “You don’t have chocolate?”

  He looked at her like she was the crazy one. “Listen, Princess, it’s close to a hundred degrees out there. The last thing in the world you want is messy chocolate. Here, throw some of this water in there, too.”

  She grabbed the six-pack of water he’d pointed to and watched him walk away. All these years and his butt still looked too good to be real. He was right. This sucked. He disappeared around the corner, and she breathed deeply for the first time since jumping in his truck.

  “Yo, Princess, come in here a minute.”

  No way. Huh uh. He sounded far too big bad wolf.

  He peered back around the corner, this time shirtless, and her breath fell away as if she’d never caught it.

  “Come on, Callah. You can’t wear that dress where we’re going.”

  Callah looked down at her sundress and back at him. Oh yes, she could. She was not following him into that bedroom. Not after what she’d felt when he put his hands on her shoulders. No way.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  He met her eyes for a silent five seconds before finally shrugging. “Suit yourself. Bring the bag in here, though. I’ve got a few things to add.”

  He undid the top button on his pants before turning, and she thought she might just dissolve into a puddle right there on the spot.

  Nope. She wasn’t following him. No way. Too bad she’d eaten the last Hershey’s miniature she kept as emergency backup in her purse.

  God, this was crazy. What was she doing lusting after Riley Sorenson? Her entire life could possibly be built on a lie, a strange man with a gun had chased them out of her house, her father wasn’t answering his phone. Lust should be the last thing on her mind.

  Shaking her head, she brushed her hand across the file that now sat on Riley’s cabinet, taunting her with the secrets inside.

  The danger.

  Fear was nothing new in her life, but this felt bigger than the times her father had shipped out to war, than her mother’s death, than the day she’d discovered Charlie was not only a no good lying bastard but also a cheating thief.

  She wished she could just take a nap and have it all disappear, including Riley. But she’d learned sleeping didn’t make things go away. Life went on all around you until one day you woke up and discovered somehow you’d lost yourself.

  “Callah, you bringing that bag?”

  She bit her lip to keep from saying the impossibly rude thing she was thinking, and his laugh grated over her skin like the sound of weights crashing together in a stuffy gym.

  “Oh, I get it. You’re still scared, huh?” His voice was silky soft and full of something she couldn’t quite name.

  She narrowed her eyes. He wasn’t talking about now. He was talking about twelve years ago. Figured he’d go and bring that up. Why wouldn’t he? What an obnoxious….

  “Hey, I don’t blame you. Sweet little Callah Crenshaw, afraid of mean ol’ me. I seem to remember you getting over that fear.”

  That was it. She didn’t want to hear another word because man, oh man, she remembered too.

  She grabbed the bag and stalked into the bedroom behind him. When she held it out as if there was nothing in the world wrong, he sent her that evil glint that curled her insides in all the right ways.

  “Knew I could get you in here.”

  She tried to keep her face impassive. Tried to block all thoughts of naked Riley from her mind. He was just a reporter. Nothing else.

  Well, okay, so for now he was her superhero savior reporter, but still, he was nothing special. Nothing…She dropped her eyes.

  Big mistake.

  All that naked skin, the hard muscled plane of a stomach that definitely understood the meaning of sit ups, the line of soft blond hair leading right down to….She forced her eyes back up, and he winked.

  Oh. Her face heated immediately, and she held out the bag as if she hadn’t been ogling him. At least he didn’t tease her. He took the bag, threw a couple pairs of sweats in it and some sunscreen before opening the top drawer of his desk and throwing…

  “What are those?”

  Callah hated the way her voice squeaked as she pointed to the box of condoms on the top of the bag.

  “Honey, if I have to tell you that….”

  “I know what they are, Riley. Take them out. Now.”

  Riley turned to take in her heated face, her arms crossed over her chest, her face set in an oh-so prim school-marm frown. Completely at odds with her Hollywood-licious body.

  She needed some serious soothing, but she wasn’t going to take that from him. So he’d have to tease her instead. Anything to wipe the worry from her face. At least until they got out on the boat.

  “Don’t think so, Callah. You’ve been eating me up with your pretty green eyes since we walked in this place. I might not be a Boy Scout, but I still believe in being prepared.”

  She wasn’t shaking anymore. At least not from fear.

  Her mouth opened, closed, then opened again before she finally spoke. “I have not…Oh!” She practically ran out of the room without another word and Riley smiled.

  Mission Accomplished. This being one of the good guys sure was fun. Hopefully he lived to laugh about it.

  Chapter Three

  Riley grabbed his laptop bag and walked out to the dock.

  Callah followed in her ridiculous dress and sandals. She’d obviously missed all the horror flicks when they were growing up. Women on the run wore sensible shoes and clothes or they got dead fast. Dead fast was what they were trying to avoid.

  He stepped onto his boat and held out his hand to help her. Callah bit her lip, looking every bit as unsure as she had when he’d found her walking home from the prom on a pitch black night in a virginal white dress like some sort of ghost story come to life.

  “Come on, Callah. We’re wasting time.”

  She looked over her shoulder as
if sensing the very real danger they were in, then placed her soft, small hand in his and stepped. When her feet hit the boat’s floor, the blue skirt wrapped itself around her legs.

  Lucky skirt.

  He shook his head and dropped his hand from hers even though he didn’t want to. She was Callah Crenshaw, the princess. The china doll. The perfection of womankind.

  He liked his women hot and bothered. A sure thing. Someone who wasn’t afraid to get down and dirty but understood the realities of a good time. He didn’t want or need perfection. He’d made that clear all those years before. Of course, back then they’d been kids and neither of them were kids now. He allowed himself one more glance at her body and then stepped away.

  “You might think about a hat. You don’t want to get burned.”

  He stepped away, started the engine and turned back to see her still standing. The sun glinted off her hair making her look even more angelic. The boat bobbed gently in the water. A gust of wind blew her skirt away from her legs and her skirt served as a shadowbox encasing a pair of strong, long legs.

  He should look away. Really, he should. But he was a connoisseur of fine women, and his eyes had been well trained. They wandered up her body until they caught a barely there shadow.

  She cleared her throat as heat infused her face once again, and for just a moment he felt like a creep of magnificent proportions. But then she narrowed her eyes and shot him a look that promised retribution and all he could think was life was good. Retribution from the woman she was now promised to be the kind of fun a guy like him could definitely get into.

  Callah sat on one of the cracked leather seats on deck and tried not to care about the way her breath caught when he looked at her like that.

  “Don’t you think we should do some kind of problem solving here, Riley?”

  He shrugged and pulled the boat away from the dock. They rocked on the wake of a passing jet ski.

  “Whatever gets you going, Princess. We’ve got about an hour’s ride.”

  Whatever gets you going. He was doing this on purpose. All this flirting crap he didn’t really mean.

  “You have no idea what the papers in that envelope mean?” His voice interrupted her thoughts.

  Oh, she had an idea all right. “Sure. Some crazy person out there wants to scare me.”

  “And said crazy person arranged for our friendly neighborhood hit man to stake himself outside your door. Don’t think so, Sweetheart.”

  She hated that word. Hated it. It’s what Charlie called her when he wanted her to go work out.

  “Don’t call me sweetheart. And who says he was a hit man?”

  “You’ve got a point. Maybe he was out walking his dog after all. That gun was just for show.”

  God save her from sarcastic men!

  “Obviously that’s not the case.” The warm wind blew the hair off her forehead and she lifted the ponytail off her neck. “Maybe it has something to do with Charlie. No telling what kind of crap he’d gotten himself involved in.”

  Riley seemed to ponder that for a moment. “Maybe it does. It still doesn’t explain the whole birth certificate issue.”

  Callah opened the folder and studied the photos once more. Not that she needed to. The writing on the back of the birth certificate scared the crap out of her. She closed her eyes, but even then all she could see was the woman who looked just like her.

  She closed the folder in frustration because she couldn’t stand all the questions bombarding her brain. All the suspicions about her family, her past. Him.

  “Swear to me this isn’t some crazy ploy you’re a part of, Riley.”

  “Dammit, Callah, look around. Do you really think I’d go to all this trouble?”

  “No. I don’t know. Maybe. I just don’t understand. Why are you doing all this? We don’t owe each other anything. We don’t even know each other.”

  “Now that’s not exactly true is it?” His sexy voice sent chill bumps skittering across her arms, and she sighed in frustration.

  “That’s what I’m talking about. You keep referencing the past when we both know….”

  “You really want to take that trip down memory lane right now?”

  How could he say that so clearly when everything about him said he definitely wanted to take that trip? Well, too bad. She wasn’t interested. She couldn’t be. “No. No, I don’t want that. But you’re not making any sense here. One minute you’re flirting like crazy, the next you’re I don’t know, all serious reporter. I don’t get this. I don’t get you. And…” she swallowed hard and told herself under no circumstances was she to cry. “And, I’m scared. Okay. I’m scared.”

  Dammit she was going to cry. He needed to talk fast. “Look, I know you’re under stress and I’m not even going to pretend I know how you feel.”

  In the back of his mind he could hear Mack talking. Share a little, Sorenson, and you never know what your sources might tell you. You’re such a cold son of a bitch. People tell you facts. But facts aren’t enough anymore. Today’s readers want emotion.

  Yeah. Blah, blah, blah. Like emotion made one bit of difference. What Callah needed now were facts. Cold hard facts.

  Ignoring him, she tried the cell phone, and he let her even though he knew it wouldn’t work yet. They were still a good twenty minutes from cell service.

  Her hair blew in the gentle wind. Out on the lake people skied and played. Another typical summer afternoon. Only there was nothing typical about it.

  She closed the phone and looked behind them. Her shoulders tense with worry.

  “They’re not following us.”

  She whipped her head back to face him. “They?”

  He shrugged. “I figure he’s not working alone. But I’ve been watching. No one’s following. Right now we’re just one of several boats out on a hot summer afternoon. And no one knows about the house we’re headed to. We’ll be safe until I can reach my brother in D.C. He should be able to help us figure something out.”

  If Rand couldn’t help them, Riley wasn’t sure what they were going to do because based on what they knew so far, they weren’t going to be able to depend on Callah’s father for help.

  “I really appreciate this, Riley, but you’re a reporter, not some sort of bodyguard. And I’m no Xena Warrior Princess. I think we might be in over our heads here.”

  Riley tried not to be offended by her assessment. After all, it was true. He was no knight in shining armor and Superman was way out of his realm. But someone had sent him to her rescue. Someone who felt he was the man for the job.

  “Don’t you worry, Princess. We’ll get out of this somehow.”

  She closed her eyes and the sun beat down on her face as she stretched her hands above her head causing her dress to cup her breasts perfectly.

  She looked like a goddess. She looked like a woman who knew how to please a man. She looked like a fantasy come true. Ah damn.

  “Sweetheart, if you’re going to sit here acting like a temptress, I better warn you I’m not the same man I was before.”

  Her eyes flew open in shock at his words as her arms slapped to her sides, and he called himself a fool. No way was he going to get her in bed if he kept harassing her like this.

  But it was too damn fun not to.

  Especially with the way her eyes widened so innocently. She might have been married to Mr. Hollywood Charlie Benson, but she was still the same good girl she’d always been.

  “I’m not trying to flirt with you, Riley.”

  He laughed at the color on her cheeks. “Sure you aren’t.”

  “You really are full of yourself.”

  “I know it, Darlin’. I just can’t help it. I see you and it makes me a little crazy like that.”

  He hadn’t had fun like this in…he frowned as he realized the truth. He hadn’t had fun like this in forever.

  She stood and walked carefully to his side. Her eyes spit fire, promised he was going to get burned. He relished the thought. Wondered what kind of
comeback Miss Priss was going to throw in his face this time.

  She stared into his eyes, meeting him look for look. Her sweet lips looking entirely too kissable, just as they always had, and he thought about brushing his thumb just there under her bottom lip to see if it would tremble, to see if she would hold her own.

  But she ruined it all with a naughty smile that seemed completely at odds with the woman in front of him.

  “Here’s the deal, Riley. I’m not the same girl I was twelve years ago. My boyfriend didn’t leave me at the prom because I wouldn’t sleep with him. You’re doing everything in your power to make me believe you’re still the baddest bad boy in town. Well, guess what? I never believed you were a bad boy. A real bad boy wouldn’t have thrown me out of his bed all those years ago and he sure as hell wouldn’t have been as tender as you were later. And honestly, a real bad man wouldn’t be doing everything in his power to scare me away now. Can we please move past this?”

  Speechless. She’d struck him speechless.

  Thank God. Because no way could she survive a full-on onslaught courtesy of Riley Sorenson. No way. She couldn’t even meet his eyes without falling into their deep blue depths. It would probably take a direct infusion of Godiva to cure this problem.

  She stepped back and tried desperately to mask the way her body reacted to him.

  “Sweetheart, don’t make the mistake of putting me in the hero’s category.”

  She sighed. To think she’d called him the most honest person she knew. “Don’t call me sweetheart. And have no fear. I won’t be calling you hero. Unless of course you can find me some real chocolate out here. Then there’s no telling what I’ll call you.”

  He laughed. The sound rippled across her skin and she couldn’t take her eyes away from his face as he threw his head back, completely at ease, completely in his element. Like a pirate come to life with his blonde hair blowing in the wind, his sun-kissed skin soft brown with a tint of red, the vein on the side of his neck so enticing. She wanted to…

  Lord help.

  His laughter stopped and he looked at her, appreciation obvious in the way his eyes danced along her skin slowly, taking in everything about her. Awareness shot through her swift and powerful and all consuming. She met his eyes, bit her bottom lip and wondered just how much this man could see.