My Hero

by Mary McBride

  Dammit. She wished she had a camera. The most exciting drama in her life, and she was in it instead of all over it like a proper journalist. She wished she had grabbed her tape recorder or a notebook. She wished she could see something other than the damp gray spot on Cal's back.

  “How many hostages are inside?” she asked.

  “Dunno,” he snapped, still moving forward.

  “Any idea?”

  “Ssh,” he hissed.

  Holly was attempting to curb her curiosity when the deputy's bullhorn boomed. “Step out of the street, Cal. I repeat, step out of the street.”

  That wasn't such a bad idea, actually. Cal obviously didn't think so, though. He just kept walking toward the Longhorn Café.

  Then he stopped, and Holly ran right into him.

  “Kin,” he called out. “It's Cal Griffin. You can take my car. Let all those people walk out the door, and then I'll hand over the keys.”

  To their right, the bullhorn squawked. “You don't have the authority to—”

  “Put a sock in it, Jimmy Lee,” Cal growled.

  Directly ahead, from behind the door of the café, a voice called out. “The Thunderbird?”

  “That's right. It's parked right out here.”

  Holly didn't see it, but neither could Kin.

  Now she heard the door creak open and the hostage-taker ask in a sort of baffled tone, “You're letting me take your T-bird?”

  Cal reached slowly into the pocket of his sweatpants and came up with a set of keys, which he jingled. “Yep. Let those people all come out and I'll give you these. The tank's three-quarters full and the last time I had it on the highway, I had the needle up to one-twenty.”

  “I'm taking Trisha with me,” the man said.

  “Trisha comes out with the rest,” Cal responded calmly. “Otherwise, no deal.”

  “Lemme think about it.”

  “You've got two minutes,” Cal told him.

  “Two minutes,” the deputy croaked on the bullhorn.

  Silence descended upon Main Street. Holly could almost hear herself sweat. The sun was throwing knives at the top of her head, so she leaned forward, pressing her forehead against Cal's back.

  “How're you doing back there?” he asked quietly.

  “Fine,” she said, “for an imbecile.”

  He felt him chuckle. “This'll all be over in another minute.”

  “One way or another,” she groaned.

  No sooner had she said those words than Holly heard the door of the café open. She recognized Kin Presley's voice when he called, “They're comin' out, Cal. All of 'em. Just like you said.”

  “Here we go,” Cal murmured.

  “Oh, thank God,” Holly breathed. “Should I…?”

  “Stay behind me, just like you are.”

  Then she could hear the quick footsteps of the newly released hostages as they hastened out the door, and their voices tumbling over one another.

  Hurry up now, sugar.

  Thank you, Jesus.

  That durn fool.

  Watch the door now.

  “Let's go, folks,” the deputy ordered via the now thoroughly unnecessary amplifier. “Keep moving. Let's go. Let's go.”

  Holly leaned a little to her right and glimpsed them around Cal's upper arm. She recognized Coral, the waitress with the blond beehive. If this were New York, there would be a slew of reporters waiting to pounce on these people. She only hoped, since she couldn't play journalist herself, that some enterprising young scribe from the Honeycomb Gazette was appropriately positioned with notebook and pen in hand.

  “That's all of 'em, Cal,” Kin Presley called. “Gimme those keys. And tell that idiot Jimmy Lee to keep back.”

  “Stay with me now,” Cal told Holly under his breath as he started forward again. “Stay close.”

  “Oh, God,” Holly gulped. “What now?”

  “Shove the rifle out on the sidewalk, Kin,” Cal called to the man still inside, “and I'll turn over the keys.”

  “You said the hostages, Cal. You didn't say anything about the rifle,” the man yelled.

  “No rifle, no T-bird,” Cal said.

  “Aw, hell. Okay.”

  A moment later she heard the rough clatter of a firearm on the sidewalk. Then, with Holly still plastered to his back, Cal stepped forward to kick the weapon out of reach.

  Kin Presley stomped out the door muttering, “You ain't really gonna give me those keys, are you?”

  “Nope,” Cal drawled.

  “I didn't think so. Well, hell. Just tell Deputy Dawg over there to keep his pistol packed, will you? I don't trust Jimmy Lee any farther than I can throw him.”

  Holly, feeling relatively safe now, peeked out from behind Cal's back in time to see the erstwhile hostage-taker and T-bird driver hold out his arms, hanging his head and proferring his wrists for handcuffs, as if he'd been down this road before.

  “Jimmy Lee,” Cal said to the approaching deputy. “Kin's turning himself in and he wants to make a call to his attorney. You make sure he has access to a phone, you hear?”

  “I believe I know the law, Cal,” the deputy said with a sneer as he slapped a pair of cuffs on Kin, and then gave his prisoner a shove toward the cruiser. “Get in the car, you lame brain.”

  It was at that point that half the town surged forward in their Sunday best and bathrobes, to shake Cal Griffin's hand and pat him on the back, gradually but effectively moving Holly farther and farther away from him, the way a strong tide moves a swimmer farther and farther from the beach. She didn't really mind. It gave her a moment to catch her breath, to think about what had just happened.

  Her knees had begun to tremble a bit in a delayed reaction to events, so she sat down on the curb in front of the barber shop.

  Rufus panned the street, and the tape in Holly's head started rolling.

  On a Sunday morning in Honeycomb, Texas, rifle shots rang out along with church bells. What could have been a tragedy was averted when a tall man in gray sweats…

  No. Wait.

  …when a hero in gray sweats…

  Taking his cue from her script, Rufus zoomed in on Cal, who at that precise moment turned, head and shoulders above the crowd, and found Holly with his heavenly blue eyes.

  Her heart did a sort of half gainer within her chest. Then all of a sudden she was dizzy. She was hot as hell, melting, and she could hardly breathe. The tape in her head started thwap thwapping and her vision blurred.

  Chapter Ten

  It was the damnedest wallpaper Cal had ever seen. When he'd first looked at it on Friday in a blur of vertigo, he thought he'd never see it again. But then he'd awakened to the big, white, man-eating roses yesterday morning, and now here he was again, back in the nineteenth-century floral nightmare on Ellie's second floor.

  When the dust had settled on Main Street a while ago, Holly had passed out cold. Whether it was from the heat of the day or residual terror, he wasn't sure. She'd been pale as a fish and her skin had felt clammy so, over her weak protests, he'd carried her back to this godawful room, laid her on the big four-poster bed, and put cool washcloths on her forehead and neck.

  While she rested, Cal sat on the hardwood floor rather than ruin Ellie's little flowered armchair with his damp sweatclothes. He sat, stared at the white-petals-on-bubble-gum wallpaper, and wished this whole hero business would just go away.

  In spite of the non-violent outcome, the drama at the Longhorn Café had been a debacle in Cal's eyes. The cardinal rule of law enforcement may have been take control of the situation, but there was nothing in the rule book about being a hot dog. Which was what he'd been this morning. A real, prize-winning, ballpark frank. In hindsight, he knew he could have hustled Holly down the street to safety, well out of harm's way. Why the hell hadn't he done that?

  He'd already come up with one reason, which was that he'd wanted to keep the little producer close to him, as close as his own skin. It wasn't such a strange reaction from someone trained to be a prote
ctor. It might have been egotistical, but it wasn't out of bounds.

  The other reason, though…the one that kept cropping up, only to be shunted aside. The one that kept knocking on his consciousness like a very unwelcome guest. The reason he didn't want to think about had something to do with this hero business. And someplace in the back of his brain Cal was ashamed to think he'd handled the situation the way he had this morning in order to impress the producer of Hero Week, to show her he wasn't some useless, washed-up Fed, some has-been who'd be collecting a pension pretty soon.

  Someplace deep inside him, Cal suspected that he'd wanted to be Holly's hero, and he'd kept her in harm's way longer than necessary to accomplish his objective. That was why all the kudos and congratulations out on the street this morning had just about turned his stomach.

  Just as he was coming to this less-than-heroic conclusion, Holly sat up on the bed, still holding the compress to her forehead. He was glad to see her color had come back.

  “You must think I'm the biggest wimp in all creation,” she moaned.

  “No, I don't. Are you feeling a little better now?”

  She nodded, tentatively at first as if she were testing her head, and then with guarded enthusiasm. “A lot better, actually. Thanks for playing white knight to my dumb damsel in distress.”

  “Aw, shucks, ma'am. It was nothin'.” That was the right response, wasn't it? That's how John Wayne would've responded, his eyes downcast, lifting his beefy shoulders in a shrug and toeing the ground with sincere humility. Then The Duke would've promptly changed the subject, which is what Cal proceeded to do.

  “Do you like Latin music?” he asked.

  Holly, intelligent woman that she was, seemed to sense a diversion. She set the compress aside, then shifted so she was sitting cross-legged on the big bed like a curious little girl not about to be denied. She cocked her head to one side, jutting out her chin. “You don't want to talk about what happened this morning?”

  “Not particularly.” Attempting to rise from the floor like a guy who didn't have a bad leg and bum knee and hit-and-miss balance, Cal thought he probably looked like his own grandfather. He tried not to sound like him when he said, “I'd rather talk about tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah. Tonight. A little salsa, a little mariachi, a little whatever it is they're playing around here these days. What do you say? There's a roadhouse not too far from here. Are you game?”

  Uh-oh. Apparently not, he thought, watching her lips thin and her forehead furrow. Well, hell. He wished now he'd never asked her. He wished he were dead. He'd rather face a firing squad than this woman's polite, well-meant, articulate rejection.

  “Sure,” she said as her frown transformed itself into a smile. “Why not?”

  Why not? All of a sudden, Cal could think of about a hundred and twenty reasons, beginning and ending with the powerful physical attraction he felt toward her. And somewhere on the list was the minor, but nevertheless significant detail that he was still a married man, even if he did have divorce looming in his future, along with possible unemployment.

  Her grin turned sassy as hell and utterly delicious. “This would be an official date, right?”

  “Right.” He couldn't help but grin back. “Our second, technically. Does that make a difference?”

  “No. Just checking.” She unwound her legs and scooted off the bed. “It's always good to clarify these things up front. Plus…” Now she was sauntering toward him, a devilish glint in her green eyes. “I'll be glad to get all this dating out of the way so I can get my head back to business.”

  Despite the fact that his heart was ramming his ribcage, Cal managed to sound cool. “Distracting you a little bit, am I?”

  “A lot.”

  By now she was standing less than a foot away from him, her hands on her hips and her pretty face tilted up to his. For all intents and purposes, she looked like a woman who wanted to be kissed. But Cal, former D.C. Don Juan and West Wing Lothario, didn't trust his instincts anymore.

  He took a cowardly step back, in the direction of the door. “How 'bout if I pick you up at seven o'clock?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Okay then.” He reached out his hand and connected with the doorknob. “See you at seven.”

  He left the rose-papered room so fast it wouldn't have surprised him if his Reeboks had laid rubber on Ellie's polished oak floor. After that, he detoured around the central block of Main just in case some Sunday morning stragglers felt compelled to congratulate him again. When he reached the T-bird at the high school, it wasn't even noon yet. That gave him a little more than seven hours to recover his once legendary cool and to sharpen whatever remained of his instincts where women were concerned.

  Holly lay back down and draped the damp compress over her entire face, not because her head hurt, but because she'd just behaved like…like…a lap dancer or something. She certainly hadn't acted like herself. Cal had looked at her as if he no longer even recognized her just before he beat a path down the hallway and the big staircase and out of Ellie's house.

  It must've been temporary insanity, Holly thought. She'd been lying here, recovering from heat prostration or hero fever or whatever it was that had struck her down, when suddenly she'd decided the only way she was going to get her mind off Cal Griffin was to surrender to this overwhelming attraction she had for the man. Trying not to think about him was a little like visiting the observation deck of the Empire State Building and trying not to think about jumping. It was like a dieter trying not to think about Pringles and Sara Lee and M&Ms.

  So, when he'd suggested the date, Holly had leapt on the invitation. It just seemed so logical, so brilliant, practically inspired. She'd immerse herself in Cal Griffin tonight. She'd think about him, focus exclusively on him, breathe him, savor him, maybe even kiss him. She'd pig out on the man, and then she wouldn't be hungry anymore, and she could get her mind back on business, where it belonged.

  Otherwise…

  Her cell phone gave a little chirp in the depths of her handbag. Holly flung the damp compress aside. Now who in the world was calling her on a Sunday?

  The word “hello” had hardly cleared her lips when she heard Mel Klein's gruff voice.

  “We've got a problem, kid.”

  Mel often worked on Sundays when there was no one in the office to disturb him or, as he put it, to get in what was left of his hair, so the timing of the call didn't really surprise Holly. But a problem?

  “Oh. What?” she groaned, climbing back onto the big bed. If there was a problem, it could only be one thing. “They've decided to give the piece to somebody else, right? They hired another producer. I knew it. Damn. I knew it was…”

  “No. Whoa. Slow down. Where'd you get that idea? You're still producing it, Holly.”

  Thank God. “Well, then, what's the problem?” she asked. Or maybe she should have specified the problem in New York, because she already knew the problem in Texas. At the moment, her hero story was all hero and no story.

  She could hear the springs in Mel's chair squeal as he leaned back and growled, “We just found out late Friday that the History Channel is putting together something similar and planning to run it the first week in October.”

  “A biography of Cal Griffin?” she asked.

  “No. A hero series.”

  “Featuring Cal Griffin?”

  “No,” he said. “I don't even know who they're featuring, but it doesn't make any difference. Hero, schmero. Bottom line is we're moving our series up a full three weeks in order to…” He chuckled. “Well, we're gonna head 'em off at the pass, to use your language, kiddo.”

  “That's not my language, Mel.” Holly rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I've never said that in my life.”

  “I was just twitting you, kid. Listen. Here's the deal. I need you back here no later than Thursday afternoon with all your production notes. We've lined up Wesley Cope to host Griffin's segment…”

  “The Country and
Western singer?”

  “Yup,” he said while another chuckle rumbled in his sarcastic, city-slicker throat.

  Holly hardly knew which bit of information to react to first—the sudden three-day deadline or the fact that a man notoriously long on looks and hair but short on brains would be hosting her piece. The deadline. Definitely, the deadline.

  “Thursday afternoon! Mel, that doesn't even give me three whole days to wrap things up,” she exclaimed, as if wrapping up were all that was left to do, as if she had anything to wrap other than her arms around her hero.

  “Sorry, kid. That's the deadline I'm working with on this end. We'll need the polished shooting script by the end of the following week, and then you'll go back for the actual shooting with Wesley Cope over the Fourth of July. You might want to go ahead and pin down your interviews with that in mind. Will Griffin be there over the Fourth? Do they have anything special going on in town? A parade? Fireworks?”

  “I haven't the vaguest idea.” Holly thought about the events of that morning, wondering if that was enough fireworks for Mel. She wouldn't be able to use any of that in her piece, unfortunately, because of her own involvement.

  “Have you managed to spend much time with him?” Mel asked.

  “Griffin? Oh…yeah. A few hours here and there.”

  “Have you nailed him yet?”

  Holly sat up, blinking. Had she nailed him? “Excuse me?”

  “Have you got a decent hook for your story?”

  “Oh. Sure.” That kind of nail. Not that there was anything hanging on it yet. “It's coming right along.”

  “Good. Okay. Well, I'll see you Thursday afternoon, kid. Cheryl will get your ticket. You might want to check back with her tomorrow or Tuesday.”

  “Okay. See you Thursday.”

  Holly broke the connection, then sat there envisioning her career as a small skiff being captained by the Tid-E-Bol guy, going around and around in ever-decreasing circles, about to disappear in one gigantic flush.

  Ruth and Dooley got back from Corpus Christi at two o'clock Sunday afternoon. The new restaurant—Ma Maison—where they'd dined the night before hadn't been any great shakes in Ruth's opinion. The upholstered chairs and the quilted tablecloths had been an interesting touch, but overall the décor, the excellent service and a fine wine list hadn't made up for the fact that the chef, Paul somebody, supposedly from Paris by way of New Orleans, was a disaster.