My Hero Page 5

  For the moment, though, her professional frustration took a back seat to her growling stomach, which was probably why she noticed all of a sudden that she wasn't standing in an ordinary kitchen. This place was a culinary palace with its six-burner stainless-steel stove, monstrous exhaust hood, double wide glass-fronted refrigerator, and marble-topped island with a canopy of hanging pots and pans, none of which appeared purely decorative.

  “What a fabulous kitchen,” Holly said.

  Ruth Reese's mouth defrosted just a bit. “Thank you. This was my fortieth birthday gift from my husband. He did most of it himself.”

  “It looks professional.” Actually it looked like a glossy spread in Better Homes and Gardens.

  “We had a consultant come down from Dallas for the design work, but Dooley did all the installation.” The woman's eyes warmed a few degrees. “Do you cook?”

  “Sure,” Holly said, then tempered her answer with “Well, not exactly. I would if I had the time, though. And a kitchen like this.” She pictured her own cramped galley kitchen in the sublet with its harvest gold stove and dinky refrigerator that usually contained little more than a bottle of ketchup, a squeeze mustard, and a couple yogurts that always expired a few days before she got around to them. “I subscribe to Bon Appétit,” she added almost wistfully.

  Cal's sister offered a tight smile that seemed to indicate that she was a longtime subscriber if not a frequent contributor to the magazine. “I envy you living in New York,” she said, picking up a large pottery bowl, curling her arm around it and wedging it against her hip as she began to stir its contents with a wooden spoon. “With so many wonderful restaurants, how do you ever choose?”

  Holly, in her honesty, was about to say she merely flipped a coin. Heads for McDonald's. Tails for KFC. Then she reminded herself that she was here not as a lowly, underpaid production assistant but as a big deal, hot-shot, full-fledged producer who could presumably afford to eat out. “It isn't easy,” she said, which wasn't a total lie.

  Her gaze strayed to the glass-fronted refrigerator and a prominently displayed half-gallon of orange juice. “I wonder if I could have a glass of juice,” she said.

  “Sure. Help yourself.” Ruth pointed her spoon across the room. “The glasses are in the cabinet over the wine rack. Cal said he'd be taking you to Ellie Young's this morning, so I'm making some zucchini and walnut muffins for you to take along.”

  Holly's stomach vocalized again at the mere mention of the muffins, but this time the sound was closer to a purr than a growl. Maybe it wasn't so bad being back in Texas, after all. Maybe the state had changed in the twelve or so years she'd been away. The not-so-great state she had left behind was choked with dust most of the time. Its kitchens were full of chipped metal cabinets and pearly gray Formica with cigarette burns and linoleum floors that never came clean beneath a thousand coats of wax. There were no zucchini muffins in her Texas. There were soggy pancakes, white bread with clots of margarine, greasy bacon with translucent waves of fat, fried Spam, and people always yelling at each other or at her.

  As if on cue, she heard a heated exchange of male voices outside the open kitchen door. Suddenly the screen door was wrenched open, a vaguely familiar voice yelled, “Yeah, and you can tell the son of a bitch I said that, too,” and her hero appeared in the doorway. When he saw Holly, his scowl immediately flared into a smile.

  “Morning,” he said. “How'd you sleep last night?”

  “Pretty well, thanks.”

  It occurred to Holly that she must've been more tired than she realized the night before because she didn't remember that Calvin Griffin was so damned good looking. She recalled the beautiful blue eyes, but had somehow completely missed the finely carved nose just beneath them. He even seemed taller this morning. Ah-ha! She spied the tan toes of a pair of boots peeking from the worn hems of his jeans. He was taller.

  And she was standing there taking him in like a judge at a beauty pageant. Good grief. Her eyes snapped up to his face. If he realized he'd been under such intense scrutiny, his expression didn't betray it.

  “Have you met my sister?” He gestured toward the sink. “Ruthie, this is Holly…uh…uh…”

  “We've met,” his sister said. Holly couldn't help but notice the change in the woman's demeanor. She stood stiffly, and suddenly looked as if she'd been sucking lemons all morning. “What time is Ellie expecting you, Cal?”

  “Whenever we get there,” he said.

  Ruth Reese made a little clucking sound of disapproval with her tongue and her mouth got lemony again.

  The exchange struck Holly as closer to one between a much-put-upon mother and a shiftless son than an exchange between siblings, both of whom were well within reach of forty. Interesting. Her “hill of beans” theory surged ahead by half a length.

  “I'll bet you're hungry,” he said to Holly over his shoulder as he opened the refrigerator door.

  “Well…”

  “I'm making my zucchini and walnut muffins for you to take to Ellie's,” Ruth said, using punishing strokes now with her wooden spoon. “They'll be done in about half an hour. I really don't have time to be fixing anything else for breakfast. Dooley will be wanting his lunch pretty soon.”

  “Orange juice will do for me,” Holly said, opening an overhead cabinet and standing on tiptoe to reach for a small glass.

  “Here.” Cal was right behind her. Actually he was right against her behind. His body heat radiated into her as he reached past Holly's fingertips to snag two glasses, and she swore she could feel a distinct warmth from his belt buckle on her spine.

  The orange juice was a necessity now because her throat had suddenly gone dry. Cal poured them each a glass, and Holly drank hers without stopping to take a breath, telling herself that she'd only reacted to the nearness of the man because it had been so long since a member of that species had been that close to her. It hadn't been personal. Just visceral. Hoo, boy, had it been visceral.

  “More?” He was looking at her as if she'd just wolfed down an entire gallon. His own glass was still half full. Or half empty, depending on whether or not he was a born hero or a hill of beans kind of guy.

  “No, thanks.” She carried her glass to the sink, where Ruth took it, rinsed it thoroughly, then popped it into her state-of-the-art, stainless-steel dishwasher.

  “Cal, there's time to show the lady around outside,” his sister said as if she wanted to get rid of them both. “I'll call you when the muffins are done and then you can head on into town.”

  He shrugged. “She probably doesn't want—”

  “No, I'd love to,” Holly said. If Calvin Griffin couldn't take a hint, at least she could.

  He gestured toward the door. “After you.”

  Outside, it wasn't just the heat that sent Holly reeling, but a combination of both extreme heat and brutal light. It was like being pounced on by a big yellow animal. For a moment, she almost couldn't breathe. When Cal drawled, “It's gonna be a scorcher,” she could only give him a weak smile in reply.

  Texas. She was deep in the heart of it now. The hot, relentless heart she'd struggled so hard to escape.

  Their stroll to the barn and corral was a distance of several hundred yards, but Holly felt as if she were being sucked back in time to the ragged little ranch where she'd grown up. The same harsh sun beat down on her. The same dust covered her shoes. The mesquite and the prickly pear and the occasional live oak could have been the same as the ones that made up the tattered landscape at her parents' place in Sandy Springs.

  A man's voice floated out from the depths of the barn, and Holly could have sworn it was her father's voice.

  Hollis Mae, you get back in here and muck this stall out right. I don't care if you are reading. Reading'll keep. This shit won't.

  Her father had lost his right foot to a land mine in Viet Nam a few years before Holly was born, and although he could get around well enough on the prosthetic foot, he had used it—oh, how he had used it—as an excuse for everyth
ing from his inability to run the ranch properly to his black moods and his general lack of success. He had hoped for brawny sons to do what he couldn't or wouldn't do around the place, and all he got was a wisp of a girl whose nose was always buried in a book. He let her know, over and over, in a million ways, that he counted her among his disappointments.

  Dashed dreams. That was what her father had been all about. Bobby Ray Hicks had left Sandy Springs in 1968 with a big grin on his face. Holly had actually seen that grin in the clipping from The Spectator that her mother kept in a shoebox along with the letters he'd written her, his brand-new bride, from Viet Nam. In his cramped penmanship that was half cursive and half print, Corporal Hicks talked about his future in the Army. They'd get the hell out of Texas, he wrote, and they'd see the whole damned world.

  It hadn't happened. What they'd seen was a succession of VA hospitals and then it was back to Sandy Springs, where Bobby Ray Hicks promptly got drunk and ripped down the red-white-and-blue banner across Main Street that welcomed him home a hero.

  Maybe, Holly thought, that's where she'd gotten her atheism, hero-wise.

  A voice that wasn't anything like her father's sounded close beside her. Holly turned and had to shade her eyes to bring Cal Griffin into focus. “I'm sorry. Did you say something?”

  “I was introducing you to Lucifer.” He pointed toward a holding pen where an enormous black bull was scratching an ear against a post. “I said if anybody deserves to be on Hero Week, it's that big guy. Four years on the rodeo circuit and nobody ever stayed on his back longer than a couple seconds.”

  “I'm impressed,” she said. The mention of Hero Week reminded her that she'd been here nearly twelve hours and had yet to begin her job. At this rate, she wouldn't get home for a month. “So, you grew up here?”

  “Well, I was born and raised here.” He chuckled softly. “I guess you could say I grew up in the Marine Corps.”

  “Was that always a dream of yours? Being a Marine?”

  Holly was making a mental check in the Born a Hero column when Cal said quite simply, “Nope.”

  “Oh.” Back to the hill of beans.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Did you always dream of being a producer?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  He leaned against a fence post and crossed his arms. If he'd been wearing a Stetson, this would have been the moment when he would have nudged up the brim. “I thought most little girls dreamed of being movie stars or ballerinas or brides.”

  Holly clucked her tongue. Where was this guy from? Mars? Oh, wait. It was Texas. “I guess you don't know very many little girls, Mr. Griffin.”

  “Cal,” he corrected. “I was just trying to rile you a little. How long have you been a producer?”

  She honestly would have liked to see the look on his face if she answered truthfully oh, about two days. But before she could reply with some variation of the truth, he broadsided her with another, far more personal question.

  Reaching out to touch a lock of her hair, he asked, “Was your hair this color when you were a little girl? God, it's pretty.”

  Holly wasn't sure if it was the delicate touch of his fingertips or the soft sound of his voice or the way his incredibly blue eyes were searching her face, but suddenly something had her heart moving up into her throat and then bungee jumping down to her stomach. Her hair? She couldn't have said just then whether it was blond or brunette.

  Whoa. Talk about up close and personal.

  She cleared her throat. It was all she could do not to fan herself when she said, “You know, I'm the one who's supposed to be asking the questions here.”

  “Okay. Ask away. But you're going to be pretty disappointed in the answers.”

  “So, you don't think of yourself as a hero?”

  He laughed so loud it startled her. Even Lucifer the bull stopped scratching his ear and turned his head their way. But before Cal Griffin had a chance to tell her just how he did think of himself, his sister yelled to him out the back door.

  “Cal, the muffins are done. I just called Ellie and told her to be expecting you in about ten or fifteen minutes, so you'd best get a move on.”

  Cal tried to imagine what his hometown must look like to a stranger. Honeycomb was basically a wide spot on the blacktop that supplied the needs of ranchers and farmers within a thirty- or forty-mile radius. Not much had changed since he'd left two decades ago.

  The false-fronted buildings still needed paint. The pickups parked in front of them all sported rifles across their windows and American flags on their bumpers. The Long-horn Café was still serving their heart attack special, a sixteen-ounce rib eye with hash browns and biscuits and gravy on the side. Ramon's had been called Desert Pete's when Cal was in high school, but it had still been home to Honeycomb's wretched refuse, including one Calvin Griffin, Sr. And now it looked as if Junior just might be taking the ol' man's place.

  After he dropped his passenger off at Ellie's, his duty to the White House would be done. He was going to take his little gold star for cooperation, slog through another lousy workout on the track, and then settle in at Ramon's for a long, liquid afternoon. It was the only sure way he knew to make his troubles disappear.

  He glanced to his right at the trouble in the passenger seat, and once again felt a discernible jolt, a pronounced quickening south of the border. It had been a long nine months since his libido had run underground, then all of a sudden last night—bam!—it had surfaced at Gate 44 at the Houston International Airport. The good news was it was back. The bad news was the woman who was responsible for its improbable return.

  Last night, at first glance, he had this Holly figured for a type he was pretty familiar with—early thirties, single, on a fast upward track. A highly motivated woman two thousand miles from home who probably wouldn't decline a brief encounter of the sexual kind, especially considering there was little else to do in Honeycomb since the movie theater closed in 1984.

  But then she'd declared her disbelief in heroes, obliterating any notion that Cal might have had about brief, unencumbered sexual encounters. This Holly was as complicated as her hair was curly, as candid as her clear green eyes, as unexpected as any slug fired from an M16, and nearly as unsettling.

  Like so many of his colleagues, he'd gotten used to easy pickings. Some women would do anything for a guy wearing a gun. Most women, at least in Cal's experience, maintained an almost desperate belief in heroes. And, although he never pretended to understand the qualifications, he didn't exactly turn his back on the benefits. Even with Diana, there hadn't been much of a challenge. Of course, her belief in heroes hadn't extended to fallen ones.

  If this Holly had come along at a different time in his life, he'd have relished the chase. But at the moment his own personal challenges were foremost on his agenda. And if he was completely honest with himself, he wasn't up to the challenge of a beautiful, hard-won woman right now or willing to risk rejection.

  Holly Hicks was off limits now. He'd just have to take his newly discovered libido elsewhere.

  “You'll like Ellie,” he said as he turned off Main Street onto Washington Avenue. The founding fathers of Honeycomb named the cross streets for American presidents, but only got as far as Jefferson before they ran out of roads. “That's her house over there on the right.”

  “It's huge,” Holly said. “It must be over a hundred years old.”

  “Probably.” The house sat, as it had forever, under the cool shade of its surrounding oaks. It looked just the same as it had when Cal was a boy. Hell, probably the same as when his grandfather was a boy. “Ellie's great-grandfather had all those limestone blocks hauled overland by mules from Missouri or someplace. He didn't trust ships. Or so the story goes.”

  “Interesting,” she murmured.

  “I'm sure she'll tell you all about it. She's the town historian, or something like that.” He swung into the driveway and pulled up in front of the wide steps that led to the big wraparound porch just as
the door opened and three-hundred-pound Ellie Young stepped out. Cal killed the engine.

  “Welcome!” Ellie called. “Howdy, y'all. Welcome!”

  For such a big woman, she came down the porch steps with surprising agility and grace in her long denim skirt and tan, hand-tooled boots. Ellie was Cal's age, but the extra weight and her graying hair made her appear much older. Well, at least it had before Cal had aged quite a bit himself in the past few months.

  “Hi, darlin'.” He stepped around the T-bird and wrapped his arms around her soft bulk. “I've brought you warm muffins and a real, live, paying guest. Sorry we're late.”

  Her gray head snapped back. “You're not late. For Lord's sake. Ruth always wants everybody to travel on her itinerary. Any time you got here was fine by me. Now introduce me to this little television lady from New York.”

  Cal gestured to his passenger. “Miss Ellie Young, meet Holly Hicks.”

  While the two of them chatted, he retrieved the suitcase and the laptop and her other luggage from the backseat, and carried them up to the front door. For a minute he was almost tempted to ask Ellie if she had another room available. That way he could avoid most of Ruthie's tongue lashings, plus just walk the long block to the high school track and Ramon's. Then he looked at Holly Hicks' lithe little body and her pretty face, and decided he really didn't need to spend any more long nights with just a wall or two and his newly awakened longings between them. One night had been quite enough.

  “Holly, I'm leaving you in good hands,” he said, stretching out his own to say good-bye.

  Her hand was tiny, but strong in his. Her nails were on the short side, unpainted, unglossed. Sexy in their natural state. So different from Diana's acrylic talons.

  “Thank you, Cal. I'll be in touch with you in a couple of days with those questions.”

  “Fine.” He didn't want to let her go, but he did. “That ought to give me plenty of time to come up with some interesting answers.”