My Hero

by Mary McBride

  It was about two years ago, after a scare with a lump in her breast, that she started talking about her own restaurant. Dooley never knew it had been her dream since childhood. How could he have known? She never told him. He couldn't read her mind, something he considered both a blessing and a curse. But the lump that turned out to be merely a cyst had scared him even more than it had scared her. And if it was going to take a restaurant to make her happy, well, then, they'd figure out a way.

  She wasn't just talking about opening a nice little place in Honeycomb to compete with the Longhorn Café, but Ruthie was thinking along the lines of a nice little place in Houston or Dallas. Lord help him. Dooley had put in the new kitchen for her last year, hoping maybe that would satisfy her, but it had only fueled her dreams.

  When Cal got shot, everything went on a back burner for a while. But now that her brother seemed better, Ruthie was antsy again. Now Cal had apparently stayed out all night and she was fit to be tied. The more she loved a person, the madder she got at them.

  “I just don't think you ought to worry about him so much,” Dooley told her now.

  “Well, if I don't worry about him, who will? Not that la-di-da wife of his, that's for certain.”

  “Cal's well rid of her,” he said softly. He and Ruth had driven all the way to Dallas last year in order to meet the woman Cal seemed so smitten by. Diana acted like they'd just tumbled off a turnip truck. When she asked him what he did for a living and he told her he raised the best rodeo stock in the country, all she'd said was, “I went to a rodeo once during my Urban Cowboy phase. That brought it to an end, needless to say.”

  Needless to say, Ruth and Dooley both thought Cal could do a whole lot better, but he'd married the woman anyway for reasons of his own.

  “What if he wrecked his car?” Ruthie was a worst-case-scenario kind of woman. “What if he's lying in a ditch somewhere bleeding to death?”

  “We'd have heard, honey.”

  “What if he got in a fight with one of those no-good ranch hands who hang out at Ramon's?”

  “We'd have heard about that, too.”

  “That brother of mine is killing me with worry.” She groaned. “I swear. I'm almost sorry I ever said he could come home.”

  Dooley bit his tongue in order not to remind her that half of “home” belonged to Cal. Their mother had left Rancho Allegro to them both in equal shares. Ruthie tended to forget that most of the time since she was the one who lived here, or as she sometimes put it, “the one who got stuck here while he went off and followed his dream.”

  Ruthie could be difficult, especially lately when it came to her dreams. But Dooley loved her dearly. And he had a natural patience. It probably had something to do with the fact that he'd worked with big, ill-tempered animals most of his life. Not that his wife was big and ill-tempered. She was small. Petite, you might even say. But lately she'd been damned moody.

  “Let me take a shower, honey,” he said, “then we'll make a couple calls. You got any of those good muffins left over from yesterday?”

  A tiny smile cracked her somber face. “Did you like those muffins?”

  “Best I ever had.” He leaned forward and kissed the top of her head. “You go put the coffee on, sweetheart, and then we'll decide what to do about Cal.”

  When Holly opened her eyes, the first surprise was that she wasn't in her own bedroom in New York. The second surprise was the big white roses on the bubble gum pink wallpaper. And the third surprise—the real lulu—was that she wasn't alone in bed.

  Oh, God. Cal Griffin had looked so peaceful last night that she hadn't had the heart to wake him up. She'd sat in a chair with Mel's laptop balanced on her knees, making notes about interviews and possible shooting locations, until the light from the computer was the only illumination in the room. For a little while, she'd put her head back and closed her eyes, but the chair was way too uncomfortable for sleep.

  She'd looked longingly at the bed. Her bed. It was queen-sized, big enough for two, she decided. Besides, the way Cal Griffin was sleeping, chances were good that Holly would wake up long before he did, so he'd never know she'd been there. And so what if he did? It was her bed. And a comfortable one, it was, since she must've slept right through the night.

  She turned her head to the right now in order to read the time on the little clock on the nightstand. Six-thirty. Then she turned her head to the left.

  When she'd first glimpsed him at the airport, behind his dark glasses, Cal Griffin had looked every bit the stern, stone-faced Secret Service agent. He'd matched her expectations perfectly. But on closer inspection, that wariness of his had turned to a kind of weariness. Well, the man had been shot, for heaven's sake, and his wife had apparently left him. Little wonder he looked weary.

  At the moment, though, he looked merely peaceful. The downward curve of his lips had relaxed to a smooth, neutral line. His complexion seemed darker than the day before, but Holly ascribed the change to the faint whiskers that shadowed his cheeks and jaw. His hair was a bit rumpled, too. Kind of sweet. How odd to be so intimate with someone she didn't really know at all. In a week or so, though, she'd probably know this man inside out, and then she'd never see him again, asleep or otherwise.

  Somewhere in the house a phone began to ring. She wondered if Ellie was home to answer it. After a moment the ringing stopped only to be replaced by the sound of Ellie's voice. It was indistinct at first, but then as it grew more and more clear, Holly realized that the woman was approaching the door to her room.

  “No,” she was saying. “Last time I saw him was yesterday when he dropped off the little television gal. He said he had an appointment.”

  Ellie sounded increasingly irritated. “Well, I don't know about that, Ruth. It's what he told me. Just that he had an appointment. It wasn't my business to ask him where or who with. No, I don't know if Miz Hicks saw him later. If you want to wait a minute, I can knock on her door and ask her. It's awful early, you know, Ruth. All right. All right. Just a minute.”

  When the phone had begun ringing, Holly had turned toward the door, but now she turned back to the man on the other side of the bed.

  His eyes were open and suddenly he didn't look so peaceful anymore. Just the opposite, in fact. Tension shaped his mouth again. His jawline was taut, almost grim. A muscle ticked in his cheek.

  Ellie knocked. “Miz Hicks? Holly? Are you awake? I hate like the devil to disturb you, but I've got Ruth Reese on the phone trying to locate her brother.”

  “Busted,” Cal muttered.

  “Are you here?” Holly whispered.

  He shook his head, then pressed a finger to her lips. “Give me two seconds before you answer,” he said. “And thanks for the best night's sleep I've had in months.”

  He leaned forward, reached out his hand to skim her cheek with his fingertips and then to hook a few curls behind her ear. It felt just like the prelude to a kiss.

  Holly's breath stalled in her throat. A kiss? She closed her eyes. Cal Griffin was going to kiss her? She was going to let him do it? That certainly seemed to be the case. But when she opened her eyes a moment later, Cal Griffin was already halfway down the rusty fire escape.

  Ellie knocked again. “Miz Hicks? Holly?”

  “Yes.” Holly remembered how to breathe, thank God. Now if she could only do something about her rampaging heartbeat. “Yes, I'm awake. Just a moment, please.”

  From the bottom rung of the fire escape, Cal hit the ground running. In ten seconds he had rounded the corner of Ellie's house, jumped the boxwood hedge that bordered her drive, taken the porch steps in two's, and then pounded on her front door hard enough to be heard halfway down the block.

  He wasn't dizzy. His knee hadn't locked up on him. He wasn't even breathing hard, which was nothing short of a miracle since he'd barely moved this fast since pushing Randolph Jennings through the hotel door and out of harm's way. Just why he was moving so fast wasn't exactly clear to him, but it had something to do with an instinctive ne
ed to protect Holly Hicks' reputation. Whether or not the woman deserved such a chivalrous gesture didn't seem to matter.

  If nothing else, he owed her for the first good night's sleep he'd had since he'd been shot. Not only that, but this morning he felt better than he had in a long, long time. Hell, it was the first morning in months he hadn't been hung over.

  Ellie opened the door, the phone still in her hand. “Well, speak of the devil,” she exclaimed. “Morning, Cal. Here. Ruthie's looking for you.” She thrust the handset at him, then rolled her eyes. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks,” he murmured before offering a cheerful, if somewhat defensive “Hey, Sis” into the phone.

  He followed Ellie into the house while Ruthie gave him a thousand lashes with her razor-sharp tongue. Where had he been all night? Why hadn't he called? Didn't he realize she'd be worried sick, imagining him dead in a ditch somewhere? Was he doing this on purpose just to make her miserable? When he could get a word in edgewise, Cal told her that he'd slept in his car rather than drive home after one too many beers.

  “Well, that's a first,” she said, segueing smoothly into a tirade on the derelicts who frequented Ramon's, himself included.

  Ellie tapped him on the shoulder. “Coffee?” she whispered.

  Cal nodded.

  “What are you doing at Ellie's so early?” Ruth asked.

  Good question. He hadn't framed an alibi yet, so he responded with the first excuse that came into his head. “I'm taking Holly Hicks out for breakfast.”

  “I hear she's been asking a lot of people a lot of questions,” his sister said in the same tone she might have used if she'd said I hear the woman murdered both her parents with an axe.

  “Yeah. I guess that's part of her job. Asking questions.”

  “Well, I just hope she doesn't get answers that are going to embarrass us.”

  He mumbled noncommittally. As far as he was concerned, embarrassment was pretty much a given with this Hero Week deal. For him, anyway.

  Ellie put a steaming mug of coffee in his hand and he sipped it while Ruthie went through a litany of Griffin embarrassments, including their father's penchant for alcohol and loose women, Cal's hell raising in high school, his brief, misguided marriage and his current state of limbo. He was getting like Dooley, he thought. Allowing her complaints to go in one ear and out the other without having much effect in the middle other than to induce a dull throb. When she finally hung up, Cal had a full-fledged headache.

  While Ellie poured a topper into his mug, she shook her head. “That sister of yours has a terrible tongue,” she said, “but she means well, Cal. She worries about you.”

  “That she does,” he said with a beleaguered sigh. It was what he'd come home for, after all. Somebody to worry about him. Somebody who loved him enough to worry.

  “So you're taking Holly to breakfast?” Ellie asked.

  He nodded. “That was the plan. Is she up yet?”

  “She's up.” That unique blend of East Coast cool and hot chili peppers sounded just behind him.

  Cal turned slowly, forestalling an attack of vertigo, but the sight of Holly Hicks alone almost made him dizzy. Her snug jeans and tee of yesterday had been replaced by a soft pink bathrobe that clung in all the right places. Until this moment he'd merely thought of her as tiny. Now the word “luscious” came to mind. With her face scrubbed clean of makeup and her hair damp from the shower, she was the very definition of “natural beauty.” Unlike him, he thought, as he ran a couple fingertips across his unshaven jaw.

  “Morning,” he said as if he hadn't seen her in hours, as if he hadn't almost kissed her just a few minutes ago. Right now he wished he had. “If seven's too early, I can come back.”

  “Seven's perfect,” she said. “I'm starving. It'll just take me two minutes to get dressed. Where are we going?”

  Ellie laughed. “Take your pick. The Longhorn Café or the Longhorn Café.”

  The Longhorn Café lived up to its name. It was quintessential Texas with horns and antlers decorating its shellacked knotty pine walls, along with horseshoes, branding irons, and Lone Star flags. The branding iron motif was repeated on the brown and beige curtains and on the greasy laminated menu.

  Cal had been strangely quiet on their walk from Ellie's, leading Holly to suppose that he wasn't a morning person.

  “What do you recommend?” she asked him, peering over the top of the menu.

  “Anything but the biscuits and gravy,” he said, “unless you enjoy walking around all morning feeling like you've just eaten wet concrete.”

  She gave a little shudder. That was how she'd felt every morning for her first sixteen years after eating her mother's biscuits and gravy. “Maybe I'll just have a bagel and coffee.”

  A blond waitress in a brown and beige uniform that matched the curtains stopped at their table. “Coffee, y'all?” she asked, holding out a full glass pot.

  “Please,” Holly said.

  “You're up bright and early, Cal,” the woman said while she poured the hot brew. “How're you feeling these days, hon?”

  “Great,” he answered without much enthusiasm.

  His expression seemed neutral enough, but Holly sensed it was just a mask, not so different from the one he wore professionally. The waitress, whose nametag read CORAL, appeared to accept his answer as gospel, however.

  “Glad to hear it,” she said. “I'll be right back for your order. We've got some real nice-looking cherry Danish today.”

  When she was gone, Holly took a sip of her coffee, then asked, “How are you feeling these days?” She dispensed with the “hon.”

  “Great,” he said again, this time a bit more defensively.

  Holly wasn't buying it, not in her capacity as a journalist nor as the woman who'd watched this man slumber so peacefully the night before only to have worry return once he opened his blue eyes. “You haven't been sleeping well, I gather.”

  Those eyes fixed firmly on her face. “I did last night.”

  “So I noticed.” She couldn't fight off a foolish grin or the slight flush she felt burning across her cheeks.

  God, what a juvenile reaction for a thirty-one-year-old woman. She needed to start thinking like a producer instead of some silly, starry-eyed kid. She reached for her water glass and took several cooling gulps. And anyway the man had fallen asleep on her, hadn't he? How flattering was that?

  “You should have kicked me out last night,” Cal said, “but I'm grateful that you didn't.”

  Holly shrugged. “No big deal.” Well, it wasn't, after all. “I didn't have the heart to wake you. But I'm grateful you made such a dashing exit this morning.”

  “I figured you would be.”

  Holly got lost for a second in the crinkles at the corners of his eyes just before Coral re-appeared, plucking a pencil from her blond beehive. “Okay, what'll it be, folks?” she asked.

  “I'll have a bagel and orange juice,” Holly said.

  “Sorry, hon. No bagels. We used to have them on the menu, but nobody ever ordered them. How 'bout if I bring you one of those nice cherry Danishes before they're all gone?”

  “That'll be fine,” Holly said, all of a sudden craving a golden-toasted, butter-dripping bagel more than anything in the world. Or one with lox and cream cheese like the ones Mel brought to work every once in a while. Her stomach twisted with hunger and homesickness.

  Cal ordered the Danish, too, and after Coral sashayed back to the kitchen he grinned across the table and said, “You're not in New York anymore, Dorothy.”

  She laughed. “Do I look that disappointed?”

  “Well, your face fell an inch or two. It's still a really pretty face, though.”

  Cal Griffin thought she was pretty! The unprofessional part of her began to melt like ice cream down the side of a cone, while the professional in her went all stiff and thin-lipped. What did pretty have to do with anything? The two attitudes clashed with a little cluck of her tongue as she reached into her handbag for her noteb
ook and a pen.

  “I had intended to do a few collateral interviews before officially interviewing you, but I guess it doesn't matter all that much,” she said, pushing aside her cup and saucer, then flipping open the notebook to a clean page.

  Now who looked disappointed? Ha! Now whose face fell several inches but still managed to look really, really handsome?

  “I didn't realize this was an interview,” he said.

  “Well, why waste time?”

  She sat up a little straighter, and with her pen poised above the blank page, Holly wracked her brain for a good opening question, one that wouldn't make Cal Griffin uncomfortable, one that would lead innocently and irrevocably to meatier questions and astonishing replies. A Barbara Walters kind of question. God help her, she couldn't think of anything at the moment except the way those soft whiskers darkened his strong jaw and the way that little muscle jerked in his cheek and how the color of his eyes reminded her of a Siamese cat she once had named Murrow in honor of Edward R.

  “If you could be any kind of vegetable,” she blurted out, “what would you be?”

  He laughed, then rolled those deep blue eyes toward the ceiling. “What kind of dumb question is that?”

  “It's not a dumb question.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Holly gripped her pen and stared at him belligerently. This never happened to Barbara Walters. “There are no dumb questions,” she said. “Only dumb answers.”

  “Right,” he said, just as Coral approached their table. “Well, let's get one.”

  “Here's your Danish, hon,” the waitress said, sliding a plate in front of Cal.

  “Coral, darlin',” Cal said, “I've got a question for you. If you could be any kind of vegetable, what would you be?”

  “Broccoli,” the woman said without missing a beat while she set the other Danish on the table.

  “See!” Holly yelped.

  Cal glowered at her. “What do you mean ‘See’?” He looked up at Coral and snarled, “Why the hell would you want to be broccoli?”