My Hero

by Mary McBride

  Tucker grumbled, “Well, now how the hell was I supposed to know that,” as he slid his beer and then himself several stools away. He glared at Holly in the mirror, but didn't utter another word.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “You're welcome. I've got a table in the back.” Cal picked up her paper plate. “Come on. You can finish your sandwich back there.”

  This was one time Cal didn't mind having the reputation of one mean son of a bitch. Tucker Bascom, if he'd half tried, could probably have wiped the floor with him this afternoon.

  “Thanks again,” Holly said, settling in her chair across from him. “What a jerk.”

  “It wasn't that I didn't think you could handle him yourself. I just got tired of his mouth.” He pointed to her glass of melted ice. “Do you want another one of those?”

  “Actually…” Her green eyes twinkled even in this dim light and she angled her head toward his beer. “I wouldn't mind having one of those.”

  “Rick,” he called out.

  “Yessir?”

  He held up two fingers.

  “Coming right up, Mr. Griffin.”

  Cal settled back in his chair, content just to sit there and to gaze at Holly's face. Still, he'd taken her away from Tucker, hadn't he? A little follow up was necessary. He used to be pretty good at this kind of thing. Hell. He used to be good at everything.

  “So, how'd you and Ellie get along?” he asked. “Did she talk your ear off?”

  She smiled as she lifted her hands to hook a myriad of curls back on both sides. “Nope. I've still got two of them. See?”

  What he was seeing were two perfectly formed, delicate shells, two pale and complicated whorls, and he couldn't remember when a woman's ear had struck him as so erotic, so absolutely sexual. He shifted in his chair, glancing over his shoulder to see if the kid was on his way yet with the liquid reinforcements.

  “I enjoyed talking to Ellie,” Holly said. “My room is incredible. The bed and breakfast was a good choice, Cal. Thanks.”

  She picked up her sandwich and bit off a dainty corner, which wasn't all that sensual, but then her pink tongue peeked out in search of a dab of yellow mustard in the corner of her mouth, and Cal's throat almost closed at the sight. He turned his chair sideways, parallel to the table, thinking it might help if he wasn't looking at her head on.

  “Have you come up with any interesting answers for my questions yet?” she asked.

  “Depends on the questions.” He drained what was left in his bottle, then handed the empty to Rick, who had just arrived with the new one.

  “Sorry about what happened up there, ma'am,” the kid said to Holly.

  “That's okay,” she told him. “It's not your fault. You make a great ham sandwich, by the way.”

  “Yeah?” The kid's face nearly glowed in the dark. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  Cal sampled the fresh, cold brew. The first swallow out of a full bottle was always the best. Probably comparable to the first pull on a lit cigarette. Good thing he'd never smoked.

  Young Rick headed back for the bar, and Holly asked, in her half Eastern seaboard, half chili pepper voice, “So, are you ready for my first question?”

  He wasn't, but what the hell. This was what the White House wanted. “Shoot,” he told her affably. “Gimme your best shot.”

  “Where's your wife?”

  Cal gritted his teeth as he dragged his thumbnail through the center of the label. Hell. If he'd known she was going to ask about Diana, he wouldn't have been such a willing volunteer.

  “My wife? Right this minute?” He consulted his watch. “Well, let's see. She's probably just putting on her earrings before leaving for dinner at the Bombay Club with her divorce lawyer.”

  He thought he'd sounded relatively casual, even carefree, but from the look on Holly Hicks' face, he decided his devil-may-care tone may have fallen a bit short.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed, blinking, apparently as startled by his answer as he had been by her question.

  “You probably ought to scratch Diana off your list of possible interviewees,” he said, wishing he hadn't answered her in the first place. He should've just said no comment. Even the White House wouldn't fault him for that.

  “What happened?” She shook her head and then waved her hand in the air between them as if to erase the question. “No, I didn't mean that the way it sounded. It's too personal. This must be a fairly recent development.”

  “Not exactly.” He turned his chair back in order to face his inquisitor directly. “Look, Holly. Damn. I shouldn't have said anything about her, and I'd really appreciate if you didn't put any of this in the program. You're right. It's too personal. Way too personal. I don't need my dirty laundry hung out for a million people to see on cable TV.”

  “Sixteen million,” she mumbled, her eyes downcast.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said we have a viewing audience of about sixteen million households. Give or take a million.”

  “Great. That's just great.” Cal took another swig from his bottle, wondering if it was too late to call Janet Adcock to renege on this whole deal. He'd been happy, sinking into helpless oblivion these past few months. Well, no, he hadn't been happy, but…

  “You need to keep in mind, Cal, that this piece is going to be featured on Hero Week,” Holly said. “Naturally we'll be highlighting that aspect of your character.”

  He responded with a snort.

  “Really,” she said in an effort to convince him. “And I am sorry. Sincerely. About your wife, I mean. I think I saw her on Larry King or Geraldo or somewhere not long after the assassination attempt. She's beautiful.”

  “She has a beautiful face. That's all.” He wished he'd never seen it. Actually he couldn't remember Diana's face all that well at the moment, not while he was looking at a headful of blond curls that almost jingled and a pair of green eyes that fairly crackled with intelligence and curiosity even in the dim and dingy lighting of Ramon's. Now that was a beautiful face. He couldn't help but grin.

  “So, how'd a non-believer such as yourself get roped into Hero Week in the first place?” he asked her.

  Her lips slid into a smile as luscious as it was inscrutable. “Just lucky, I guess.”

  Holly Hicks turned her full attention to her sandwich then, allowing Cal to drink his beer in the relative silence of a bar gearing up for a Friday night. Ordinarily he enjoyed watching the pick-ups, the put-downs, and the near explosions at the pool table from a secluded corner. Watching others' troubles helped take his mind off his own. But he wasn't in the mood for barroom drama tonight. Not other people's anyway.

  He found himself gazing across the table and wondering what it would be like to hold this Holly in his arms. To kiss her. Just once. A slow, deep, Saturday night to Sunday morning kiss. She'd probably taste like…

  Like a ham sandwich, he told himself, forcing his libido back underground where it belonged.

  “When you're finished,” he said, “I'll walk you back to Ellie's.”

  “Thanks.” She cast an apprehensive glance toward the bar where Tucker sat sullenly nursing a beer. “I'd appreciate that.”

  “No problem.” Cal grinned as he tilted his bottle in her direction. “Hell. What good's a hero if he can't help a damsel in distress?”

  It was a shock, stepping out into bright daylight, after sitting so long in the near dark of the bar. Holly had to stare at her watch a minute before she could even read the time. Five-forty. Six-forty in New York. She took a few steps, only to feel Cal Griffin's hand curve around her upper arm.

  “You're going the wrong way,” he said.

  She pivoted, smiling, hoping he didn't take her for a complete dolt. She never got lost in New York. She just detoured a lot.

  Releasing his grip on her arm, he set off down the sidewalk at a comfortable pace. Most men, the taller ones anyway, walked too fast for Holly. She always felt like a dachshund trotting along beside its master. But Cal Griffin's str
ide was just right. Even better, this Texan didn't mosey or amble or sashay. He just walked. That was nice. Holly almost wished they had farther to go than down the street and around the corner to Ellie's.

  “How long are you planning to be in town?” he asked.

  “It depends,” she said.

  “On what?”

  “On how quickly I can convince people to talk to me about you. So far, nobody's been willing.”

  His pace slowed a bit. “Who've you talked to?”

  She pulled her list from her handbag. “Well, let's see. The first was the way-too-busy Bobby Brueckner at the bank.”

  “Bobby,” he said with a chuckle. “He'll probably tell you I could've been a world-class pool hustler if I hadn't been diverted into an inferior career. Who else?”

  “Um.” She squinted at her list. Ellie's handwriting wasn't all that easy to read. “Nita Mendes.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “What?” Holly glanced up at his face. Well, at his jaw-line, actually. It seemed a bit tense. For a hero. She almost giggled. “What's Nita Mendes going to tell me?”

  “If that's who I think it is, she used to be Nita Padilla. We, uh, had a thing for each other for a couple months in high school. Nothing heroic, I guarantee.”

  “Ah. The old drive-in movie scenario.”

  He came to an abrupt halt. “She told you about that?”

  Now Holly did giggle. “No. She didn't tell me anything. She was too busy doing hair and nails. But just about everybody in South Texas has some sort of drive-in movie scenario, don't they?”

  Cal started walking again. “I guess. I'll tell you mine if you'll tell me yours.”

  “Oh, no. I'm the interviewer here. And why do you keep insisting I'm from South Texas?”

  “Aren't you?”

  “Yes, dammit. But it's not supposed to show anymore.”

  He slanted a little grin her way. “I won't tell anybody.” His hand covered his heart. “I swear. Who else wouldn't talk to you?”

  “Hec Garcia, who said his mama told him if he couldn't say something nice, not to say anything at all.”

  “Ah.”

  “You don't sound surprised,” she said.

  “I'm not. There was some bad blood for a while between the Anglos and the Hispanics when I was in school. We're all probably carrying a few scars to this day.” He held out his arm, turning it over to disclose a jagged, pearly line that extended five or six inches between his wrist and his elbow. “Not too heroic either, is it?”

  Holly wasn't even thinking about that. She had witnessed a knife fight once in Sandy Springs, of the same sort Cal had described, between a white boy and a Latino. She could still picture the way the sun had glinted off the blades, the shocking brightness of the blood when one of those blades had found its mark, how her classmates had urged the combatants on. There hadn't been any heroes then, either. Of all the teachers who witnessed the fight, none had been brave enough to step forward and stop it. They had called the cops instead, and the shrill of the sirens stopped the fight before the officers even arrived.

  Holly hadn't exactly been a hero either, as she recalled. She'd stood there, shocked by the violence, but calmly registering details while composing an editorial for the school paper in her head.

  “No, not too heroic,” she murmured.

  “Well, here you go,” he said, turning up Ellie's drive, gesturing toward the front door.

  “Thanks. I'll be fine the rest of the way. I'm going around to use the fire escape on the side.”

  “Okay.” Without another word, he continued across the lawn and around the side of the house, only stopping when he reached the narrow, rusty stairs that rose to the little door on the second floor.

  It hadn't looked quite so precarious when Holly had gazed down on it from above. And she hadn't realized that the damn thing didn't go all the way to the ground. The first step was a good three feet high. While she stood deciding how she was going to tackle it, Cal grasped her waist with both hands and lifted her up.

  “There you go, Holly Hicks,” he said. “I'll stay here to catch you if you fall.”

  “Thanks.”

  The iron stairway kind of groaned beneath her feet, and she wondered if anybody had done this in the past fifty or sixty years. She tested each step before she put her full hundred and fifteen pounds on it, all the while not daring to look down, either at the ground below or the man standing there, presumably with his arms out, just in case.

  “It's okay,” he called up to her. “You're doing great.”

  “Yeah. Yeah,” she muttered. She could hear bits of rusty stair breaking off, hitting the ground like sleet. The same rust clung like dried blood to the damp palms of her hands. Holly sucked in a deep breath and mounted the remaining stairs.

  The doorknob was rusty, too. She twisted it, but nothing happened. She twisted it again, this time pushing against the door with her other hand. Nada. She pushed harder. The door wouldn't budge.

  “It won't open,” she said, maintaining a pretty level tone under the circumstances.

  “What?”

  “It's stuck.”

  “Hang on.”

  The iron staircase groaned again and trembled beneath her as Cal climbed up. There was barely enough room for both of them on the top stair, and Holly experienced another one of those visceral jolts at the physical nearness of him. For a second she forgot to be nervous about the rickety fire escape. But only for a second.

  “Are you sure this will support us both?” she asked, her voice not exactly hysterical, but full of obvious and justified concern.

  “No. So we'd best not stay on it too long, huh? Move.” He elbowed her aside, grabbed the knob and rammed his shoulder into the door, once, twice, before it opened.

  “Oh, thank God.” Holly scrambled inside, as thrilled to get off the rusty stairs as she was to put some distance between herself and the sensual vibes emanating from Calvin Griffin.

  But when he didn't follow immediately, she stuck her head back out the door. Cal was brushing his hands on the legs of his jeans, then all of a sudden he stopped and grabbed onto the railing. His knuckles turned white as pearls. So did his face.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah. No. I…uh…dizzy. I shouldn't have looked down.”

  She reached out. “Here. Take my hand. It's just two little steps and you'll be inside.”

  He didn't respond. Holly wasn't even sure if he had heard her. His lips were compressed so tightly that the corners of his mouth were white as chalk.

  “Cal,” she said sharply, truly alarmed for him now. “Take my hand. That's it. Come on.” She had to pull him the final foot or so. “There.” She sighed and closed the door behind him.

  Making his way a bit unsteadily toward the bed, he grasped one of the fat, carved posts, then stood there a moment with his eyes closed.

  “Better?” she asked.

  He nodded. After a minute, he opened his eyes and gazed slowly around the room. “That's some wallpaper,” he said with a weak chuckle.

  “You're obviously not a man with Victorian sensibilities,” she said, relieved that he felt well enough to criticize the flowery pattern. “Why don't you sit for a minute. I'm going to the bathroom just down the hall to get you a glass of water.”

  She was gone for more than the minute she promised. First she had to rid herself of the cola and the beer. Then, while she washed her hands, she noticed what a mess her hair was, so she finger-combed it back into submission. Then she had to hunt for a glass or a cup, and finally found some dinky paper ones in the cabinet next to the sink. She filled two and carried them back to her room, where Calvin Griffin, hero, was stretched out on her bed, apparently sound asleep.

  Or dead.

  Chapter Six

  Dooley.”

  Aw, damn.

  Dooley Reese battened down his eyelids and dug his head deeper into the pillow. Seemed like he'd only just fallen asleep.

  “Dooley!”
>
  Ruthie was shaking his shoulder now and tugging at the covers. God bless it.

  “What?” Dooley sat up, struggling awake, his heart beginning to gather speed. “What's wrong? What the hell time is it?” It was still pitch black in their bedroom.

  “It's a little after five. Cal didn't come home last night.” Cripes. He thought the barn was on fire or one of the bulls had leapt a fence. He rubbed his eyes and sighed. “So?”

  “So?” Ruthie's voice climbed to a higher register, one that was almost painful this early in the morning. “So, I'm worried sick.”

  “Your brother's thirty-eight years old, honey. He hasn't had a curfew in over twenty years. And even when he did, I don't remember him ever abiding by it.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed. “This isn't about any curfew, Dooley, and you know it.”

  “Honey…”

  His wife brushed away his well-meaning hand. “And don't tell me I'm overreacting, either,” she snapped.

  Dooley knew better than to tell her that.

  He'd loved this woman, with her sharp tongue and her good heart, since the first day he saw her in first grade, and nearly twenty-four years of marriage hadn't diminished his affection a bit, but Ruthie had been hell on wheels for the past couple years. What was it about the Griffins, anyway? They tended to get mired in their difficulties.

  Ruthie's personal blues set in when their son, Colby, went off to college. But then, once she got accustomed to her empty nest, she started feathering it with new carpets, new drapes, a whole new set of dishes—godawful yellow ones, although she insisted they were “saffron”—and a slew of brand-new pots and pans.

  Along with the new utensils, she started taking her cooking seriously. Always a good cook, she was suddenly determined to be a great cook. She gave up her soap operas for cooking shows on television, and she quit reading mysteries in favor of cookbooks. The word “cuisine” infected her vocabulary. She planted an enormous herb garden, and she cooked up a storm, which sounded good in theory, but often left Dooley craving meat and potatoes after long stretches of soufflés and quiches and way-too-small portions of veal or salmon.