My Hero (21 page)

“Oh, God,” Holly muttered. “What is that guy's problem?”

“You, I guess.” Cal turned the key in the ignition and the T-bird's engine growled to life, while Holly's immediate instinct was to turn to her right and lock her door, a pretty futile act considering that she was sitting in an open convertible.

“Wait up,” Tucker bellowed, advancing toward them.

“Buckle your seat belt,” Cal told Holly at the same moment he rammed the gearshift into drive and hit the gas. For a second the wheels merely spun, spitting gravel at the fast-approaching cowboy, but then the tires bit into the ground and the T-bird shot forward, leaving Tucker Bascom flapping his Stetson and choking in a cloud of dust.

The sudden acceleration thrust Holly back into her seat, and she held her breath while the speedometer climbed to ninety and the wind knifed through her hair. Just a minute ago, if she'd had to predict the course of events, she'd have bet any amount of money that Special Agent Calvin Griffin would have sprung from the driver's seat as if he'd been ejected, after which he'd have promptly beat the shit out of Tucker Bascom with a few, select, government-approved moves.

Instead—surprise!—he'd fled.

Of course, she reminded herself that this was the guy who got knifed, not while fighting, but while breaking up an altercation. Her hero. The same guy who hadn't gone all the way with a young Nita Mendes.

And then it occurred to Holly that the reason she had just sneaked out the back door of the roadhouse with Cal was probably for the same reason Nita had sneaked out with him all those years ago. She glanced to her left. At ninety miles an hour, Cal's focus was on the narrow two-lane road, right where it should have been.

Any woman with half a brain and a normal flow of adrenaline would've felt scared to death right now, but amazingly all Holly felt was safe and well-protected. Maybe it had something to do with his gray suit and serious tie. Maybe it was just the way he'd held her on the dance floor, as if she belonged to him.

“You don't think he'll follow us, do you?” she asked over the sound of the wind.

Cal's gaze cut briefly to the rearview mirror. “He already is.”

Holly turned to see the flare of two headlights punctuating the darkness behind them. Her sense of safety faltered. “Oh, God. This isn't good at all. What are we going to do?”

Cal didn't answer. He probably thought her question was rhetorical. It wasn't. She wanted to know what the plan was here.

“What are we going to do, Cal, just keep driving? Is that the plan?” she asked, and then when he still didn't respond she started thinking out loud while looking over her shoulder every few seconds. “You know, if I were writing this scene for a movie, it would definitely be set in a city where we could make a sharp right, nearly hit a woman with a shopping cart, just miss a pushcart, then take a quick left at the end of the block. It might even be fun if it were San Francisco and we were leapfrogging at ninety miles an hour on those steep hills. But this…”

She waved her hands in the air for emphasis. “This is Texas, for God's sake, where the roads just go straight and flat for miles, forever. The guy who wins is the one who doesn't run out of gas, right?”

He still didn't answer.

Squinting at the dashboard, Holly was relieved to see that the T-bird had over half a tank. But the lights behind them were coming on fast. Too fast.

“Cal? Seriously. What
are
we going to do?”

“This,” he said. “Hang on.”

She dug her fingertips into the dashboard. “This” turned out to be some combination of decelerating, braking, and steering that had the T-bird screeching and squealing as it turned 180 degrees at a force of about three Gs. The maneuver practically knocked the breath out of Holly's chest, and the next thing she knew they were going ninety again, but in the opposite direction. With Tucker Bascom's headlights coming right at them.

Before she could let go of a scream of protest, the two vehicles passed with a giant whoosh, the blare of horns, and Tucker's curses blowing back on the wind.

And then Cal hit the brakes and turned the wheel again, and the T-bird went careening off the road—backwards!—thumped over some rough ground, angled behind a huge mesquite bush, and stopped. Dead.

The only sound then was the whine of the roof as it rose from behind the back seat and came forward over their heads. Cal reached up to latch it on his side, then leaned across Holly to secure the latch on the passenger side and crank the window closed.

“There,” he said, settling back behind the wheel.

“There?” Holly's breath had come back. “There what?”

Cal angled his head toward the road, barely visible now through the tangled branches of the mesquite bush. Holly looked in that direction in time to see Tucker Bascom's pickup flying past, back toward El Mariachi. She watched until the truck's red taillights disappeared in the dark.

“He won't be back,” Cal said as he reached across the console for her hand. “Don't worry.”

“Right.”

“You're shaking.” He drew her hand to his mouth, softly kissed her fingers.

“Nah. That's just my normal metabolism.” Holly was amazed that Cal's palm wasn't the least bit sweaty after their harrowing ride. His hand was steady as a rock.

“Don't worry. Really.” He chuckled. “By the time that ol' boy realizes he's not chasing us anymore, he'll be in the next county.”

Holly couldn't help but laugh, weakly at first, but then managing an all-out giggle. “That was some pretty aspiffy driving, Agent Griffin.”

He laughed. “Yeah. And it'll be even spiffier if I can get this vehicle back on the road.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean the reason I turned off here was because the ground looked wet and I figured we wouldn't raise any dust.”

“That was pretty quick thinking. I'm impressed.”

“Yeah?” He lofted an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” she said.

“How impressed?” His voice was low, but even so there was a note of amused challenge in it, and despite the dark confines of the car, she was sure she could detect a sexy little gleam in his blue eyes.

He was waiting for her to initiate a kiss! Her heart sort of levitated into her throat at the realization, and then it dropped to her stomach as she leaned to her left to put an end to the wait.

“Baby,” he whispered as his mouth met hers and his arms moved around her, pulling her closer.

It wasn't a kiss at all, Holly thought. It was more like a match stick meeting tinder. Which was she? The tinder or the match? Not that it made any difference. She was burning all the same. Completely engulfed by Cal's hot mouth, his strong arms, his warm hands, the golden beery taste of him, the hot Texas night smell of him.

Holy shit.

She didn't realize she'd spoken out loud until he groaned against her lips, “No kidding. Let's get out of here. I don't know about you, but I'm too old and battered to make love in the back seat of a car.”

Holly extricated herself from his embrace so he could reach for the ignition. The engine sparked to life. He slipped the gearshift into drive and stepped on the gas.

The rear wheels spun.

Cal eased off the accelerator and swore.

“Here we go,” he said. “Nice and easy.”

The tires spun. And spun. And spit wet, sandy soil out behind the car that sank, little by little, deeper and deeper, into the ground.

He snapped the ignition off and slapped the palms of both hands against the wheel before he leaned his head back on the seat and closed his eyes with a sigh that seemed to come up from the soles of his feet.

“We're stuck, huh?” Holly offered not so helpfully.

“Yep.”

Chapter Thirteen

B
y the time Ruth realized it was the actual telephone that was ringing on her side of the bed, and not some dream phone in the dream kitchen where she was supervising a Jamaican sous-chef with a ten-inch blade and the world's longest dreadlocks, Dooley had already reached across her to fumble with the receiver.

He had dropped back down on his own side of the bed then, responding to the caller with muted
yeps
and
nopes,
while the black coil of phone cord that stretched across Ruth's neck was threatening to strangle her.

God bless it. She lifted up the cord and slid out from beneath it. Theirs was probably the only black rotary phone left in the whole state of Texas, but Dooley wouldn't have anything else beside their bed, where he demanded “a real phone,” to use his expression. “Not one of those flimsy plastic toys.”

As long as she was up, Ruth padded into the bathroom across the hall. What was it she'd been dreaming? Oh, yeah. The Jamaican sous-chef. He had the prettiest caramel skin, hazel eyes with long, long lashes, and the most lovely, melodic voice. She must've seen him on TV, she thought. In a commercial or something. To her knowledge, she'd never seen or heard a real live Jamaican. Not in Texas, certainly. Never in Honeycomb.

How such an exotic young man had gotten into her dream, Ruth didn't have the least notion, but she could only conclude that his unlikely presence was a measure of her frustration over her restaurant. Was her dream ever going to come true?

She studied her reflection in the mirror over the sink, adjusting her mouth slightly to diminish the downward pull at the corners. So this was what forty-two looked like. It wasn't so bad really. Dooley didn't seem to mind the silver that was creeping into her hair or the inevitable sagging fore and aft. Just as she didn't mind that his hairline was sneaking up under his Resistol and the dentist was lobbying hard for extracting a slew of upper teeth.

She'd been Ruth Reese now more years than she'd been Ruth Griffin. A life with Dooley was all she'd wanted at the age of eighteen, when she didn't know how to dream. She'd been a good wife, and together they'd raised a fine boy in Colby. They'd kept the family ranch, no mean feat. Only now…Well, it just wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.

By the time she walked back into the bedroom, Dooley had hung up the phone and turned on the lamp on his side of the bed.

“Trouble?” she asked, sliding back under the covers. “What time is it?”

“A little after one,” he said. “That was Cal.”

Ruth sat straight up, her heart surging, her stomach tightening. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” he grumbled. “He got his car stuck in the mud off the Springtown Road. I'm gonna pick him up at Ellie Young's and then we'll go pull the car out.”

“At Ellie's? At this time of night? Well, what was he doing…?” Ruth answered her own question. “He's with that TV woman from New York again. What do you want to bet?”

“Good for him.” Dooley stood and snagged his jeans from the arm of the chair. “Where's my damned shirt?”

She pointed to the spot on the floor where he'd flung it only a few hours before.

“Why can't it wait till morning?” she asked.

Dooley shrugged into his shirt. “He said there are weapons locked in the trunk he doesn't want anybody fooling with.”

“Well, I still don't see…”

“Go back to sleep, honey.” He came around to her side of the bed and kissed the top of her head. “I'll be back in an hour. Probably less.”

Ruth didn't reply, but lay back down and pulled the covers up to her chin, wondering why everything made her angry these days. Why every
one
pissed her off, even by being nice to her. Especially then. And Dooley most of all.

Cal broke the connection and handed the cell phone back to Holly.

“Thanks. My brother-in-law's going to pick me up in a little bit. I'll wait outside so you can get some sleep.”

“That's okay. I'm wide awake.”

“Yeah,” he murmured a little sheepishly.

Who wouldn't be wide awake after spending twenty minutes behind the wheel of a stuck Thunderbird, hitting the gas and shifting gears to no avail, while Cal pushed from behind, further wrenching his bad knee and getting splattered with mud all the while.

They'd finally given up, trudged a quarter mile toward town before Bobby Brueckner gave them a ride back to Ellie's in the bed of his pickup. Some ride. Some hero.

And not only was Miss Holly Hicks wide awake, but for the past hour or so she'd seemed exceptionally cheerful. Happy as hell, as far as Cal could tell, even while her strawberry blonde hair looked wind-tossed and wild.

“I guess the evening didn't turn out exactly the way we planned, huh?” Holly was perched on the edge of the bed, talking as much to herself as to him while she gingerly eased off her mud-crusted shoes. “But you know what, Cal?”

Cal shook his head. He wasn't sure he wanted to know what. In fact, he was pretty sure he didn't. This was one of those evenings better left to bury without a eulogy.

“I'm glad it turned out the way it did,” she said. “I really am.”

“Really.”

“Uh-huh. I'm sorry about your car, but if it hadn't been for that asshole Tucker and the car getting stuck and all, I think we probably would have made love.” She tilted her head, which put her sudden little grin on an adorable slant. “What do you think?”

He shrugged, preferring not to think about it. Where would they have gone, anyway, since they couldn't go to Ruth and Dooley's, or back here? He couldn't see making love to Holly in the back seat of his car or in some sleazy motel. And then there was the whole matter of protection, or in his case, the sad lack of it.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I'm glad we didn't. It's just that…oh, I don't know. I'm just grateful for the reprieve.”

“Reprieve,” he echoed mournfully. He'd admired her openness and honesty from the very first moment he met her, but sometimes he almost wished she'd lie a little bit. “Sounds like something you get when you're on death row.”

“I don't think you truly appreciate the situation,” she said, sounding miffed and misunderstood all of a sudden, her green eyes wide and her oh-so-kissable mouth not grinning anymore, but starting to look unpleasantly prim and self-righteous. “We aren't just any old couple, you know. We're not just any two people who can hit the sack without blinking an eye or thinking twice. This is different. There are certain ethical questions involved here.”