Hometown Hero

by Anders, Robyn

Spring had arrived, seemingly overnight. Shoots poked their way out of the dark brown alluvial Missouri River soil, their newborn green so vivid it was practically neon. The river, swollen with melting snow from the Dakotas and Nebraska, threatened its banks, its chocolate-brown flow reminding Cynthia why it was known as Ole’ Muddy.

  “I’ve been thinking about the wedding.”

  Heather’s words came so abruptly that Cynthia nearly ran into a tree that grew just off the trail.

  “Huh?”

  “I know my usual sidekicks will be disappointed, but I’d like you to stand up for me.”

  Cynthia stopped abruptly. “What?”

  Heather braked to a halt. “I'll understand if you have to say no but I hope you'll at least think about it. I know I’m sometimes shallow, but you’ve been there for me, and for Russell. I’d really be honored to have you in the wedding, Cyn.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” That much was true, all right. “I’ll have to think about it. I don’t know that I could manage that.”

  “Do think about it. I want us to be friends. Real friends.”

  Life would be so much easier if she could just hate the tramp who had stolen her boyfriend. But Cynthia was going to have to play the cards she’d been dealt—even if this particular hand sucked big time.

  “I’ll try.”

  A black nose stuck out of the blanket-covered basket on Heather’s bike. An adorable puppy face followed.

  “You brought Gomer?”

  “Russell hasn’t asked for him back. So I figured I’d keep him for another day.”

  “Russell doesn’t know he has a dog,” Cynthia reminded her. “We gave him to Russ, not Russell.”

  All of a sudden, she wanted that dog. She knew now that she would never have a baby. No man could ever replace Russ in her life and he was gone, as dead as if he’d been killed by that roadside bomb. But the puppy could be a continued connection, physical evidence that they had shared something real and precious. If Heather didn’t tell Russell, he might never now that she had this living reminder of the time she and Russ had shared.

  “Can I hold him?”

  Heather nodded. “Sure. Better let him run around for a minute first, though. If you know what I mean.”

  * * *

  Russell had only taken two swallows of the Old Fashioned his father had made for him, but when he’d wakened the next morning, his head felt as if he’d swallowed an entire bottle of rotgut whiskey.

  He tried to blame it on that Russ guy who had used and abused his body. What had he been thinking, running a 15-kilometer race? Things like that were better left for the teenage crowd.

  Still, he’d dragged himself out of bed and hit the trail. The sun had barely cleared the horizon and he was already heading back toward home after a six-mile jog.

  He inhaled deeply, sucking oxygen into his lungs. Maybe that Russ part of himself hadn’t been crazy after all. Running in the cool of a Missouri morning, watching green things grow and the small mammals and birds wake up and go about their daily routines as if humans were a passing phase, was a joyful experience. It was nothing like running through the oven-like heat of the foreign desert where he and his buddies had taken up the sport.

  He turned a corner—and tripped over a bike that someone had parked in the middle of the trail.

  “What the—“

  He pinwheeled his arms but it was too late. He was going down.

  Russell had taken enough tackles during his football days to know how to break his fall. Still he was surprised, and upset that someone would carelessly leave a bike in the middle of a trail. Anyone less prepared than he could have been hurt.

  “Are you all right?”

  The question came in stereo.

  He shook the cobwebs out of his head and struggled to his feet.

  Sure enough, the two women who had haunted his dreams were both staring at him as if he was the one to blame for putting the hazard in the middle of the trail.

  “I’m fine. What are the two of you doing here?”

  From the guilty look they exchanged, it was obvious that the two women had been up to something. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember Heather ever mentioning Cynthia before. Had the two of them gotten close while he’d been stationed overseas?

  “We’re just out getting some exercise,” Heather explained. “You have a problem with that?”

  He’d definitely spent too long in the Middle East where the men kept their women hidden from the American soldiers and where, even if you did spot a woman, she was generally covered from head to toe. Still, he didn’t have any personal complaints about seeing the two sexiest women in Shermann dressed in body-fitting clothing that covered little and enhanced what it did cover. What he wasn’t so sure about was the idea that other men might be checking them out.

  He raised his hands in a no problem gesture.

  “You’re hurt.” Cynthia tucked a little black something under an arm and grabbed one of his hands.

  “Really?” He looked. Sure enough, he’d abraded his hand and lower arm when he’d fallen. A few drops of blood gathered where he’d scraped skin away.

  Compared to the scars he wore from his stint in the service, this was definitely minor stuff.

  It didn’t feel minor, though, when Cynthia held his hand and blew softly on the wound.

  He didn’t remember anything about the time he’d spent with Cynthia, but his body had memories of its own. The gentle pressure her hands exerted on his arm thrilled him. The warmth of her breath mixed with the cool air of a spring morning heightening every sensation in his body. Her body heat radiated toward him, sent his heart into a faster beat, his own body magnifying and reflecting that heat back toward her.

  All too obviously given the skimpy nylon shorts he wore, the part of his body that had a mind of its own responded as well, hardening despite his efforts to control himself.

  “Looks like he’ll live,” Heather observed.

  “Oh.” Cynthia backed away as if touching him had burned her. “I’m sorry. I forgot myself for just a moment.”

  She was forgetting something else, too. Whatever she’d tucked under her arm wiggled.

  He’d thought it was a sweater or something, but when it moved, he adjusted his thoughts.

  It was a puppy.

  He’d had a wonderful dog as a child, given it the childish name of Gomer, and loved that animal more than he’d loved anything—at least until he’d discovered the female of the species.

  “You've got a puppy. Hey, cute. What’s his name?” Without conscious thought, he reached out his hands, grasped the puppy from her, brought it, him, into his own arms.

  The puppy seemed unafraid. His eyes, a dark molten brown, gazed at him with complete trust and, could it be love?

  “He’s Gomer,” Heather told him.

  “Gomer?” He repeated the name stupidly, feeling as if his brain had turned to mush. This puppy had the same name as the dog he’d loved as a child? How was that possible?

  The puppy seemed to nod, then licked him deliberately in the nose.

  He figured his grin made him look like an idiot, but he didn’t care. “Which of you does he belong to?”

  “He belongs to you, Russ,” Cynthia said.

  He didn’t miss her use of that name, the name his other self had used while Russell had been away. But he didn’t have the energy to think about what it might mean. He had a puppy. He was a dad.

  He’d always believed he would marry Heather one day and he knew enough about the birds and bees to know that family responsibilities frequently come from marriage. But while he’d envisioned the two of them continuing to brainstorm investment ideas, happily accumulating more millions of dollars while they dragged Shermann from the Stone Age into something approximating the twenty-first century, he had never really thought about having children with her. In fact, he’d never really thought about parenting at all.

  But now he was a father. Admittedly, his child was a four-le
gged, black-furred, long-tongued birddog, but Gomer was his. It was an awesome responsibility.

  “How come neither of you told me about him? Why isn't he living with me?"

  The two women stared at him like he’d grown horns. He wasn’t going to get any answers from them.

  “Okay. I'll just take my dog, then."

  Neither of them objected.

  "See you two around.”

  The little lab came with a string collar and Russell let Gomer walk for a little while before picking him up and carrying him back to his loft.

  Russell was confused about a lot of things—most especially the strange way his body and mind seemed to have diverged on their reactions to the two women he’d just met—but he wasn’t at all concerned about one thing. He was going to make a good home for Gomer. He suddenly wondered why he'd never gotten a dog before.

  * * *

  Cynthia finished the phone-interview with the star hitter from the Shermann High girls’ volleyball team and turned to her computer to bang out the story of the girl’s amazing eighteen-hit match. She did her best to ignore Andrew, who had been in a foul mood all morning and was muttering something about living in a post-literate society and needing to dumb their stories down.

  Unfortunately, ignoring him was impossible. He kept walking into her cubicle, sitting down at the little table she kept stacked with research materials, then popping up again.

  Cynthia tried not to laugh at him, but was only partially successful. When he got depressed, Andrew always went on like this. But he was no more capable of dumbing down his stories than he was of flapping his arms and flying. The man liked to write, enjoyed his use of words, delighted in surprising his readers with new insights, thoughts that would stretch their minds. America might be moving toward a post-literate society, but the Advertiser-Gazette’s customers weren’t there yet. She hoped they wouldn’t get there for a long time, either. Who knew? If she and Andrew kept writing as best they could, maybe at least this part of Missouri might never become post-literate, whatever post-literate might mean.

  “You have anything else in the pipeline once I finish this volleyball article?” she asked as she banged out the end of the first draft.

  “Want to cover the Chamber of Commerce meeting this afternoon?”

  “If I really wanted to have that much fun, I’d have all of my teeth extracted.”

  “Very funny.”

  She was about to tell him he could cover it himself, but she caught herself in time. He probably didn’t want to see Heather. At least Russell rarely came to COC meetings. She could put up with a bit of boredom to spare her friend the kind of pain she was going through right now.

  “Okay, I'll go. I’ve been needing to catch up on my sleep anyway.”

  “This might be a big one. They’re talking about putting their weight behind a new zoning ordinance.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  He laughed—the first time she’d seen him even smile since she and Russ had left him alone with Heather at the race two days earlier.

  “Do I have to get dressed?”

  He considered, checked her out.

  “You’ve already got some makeup on, don’t you? Just put on a dress or something. We don’t want to give the impression that the Advertiser-Gazette staff is a bunch of slobs.”

  She nodded, halfway surprised she’d even asked. Before Russ had come into her life and changed everything, she’d wanted to fit in with the women who shaped Shermann, and the COC was exactly that kind of group. Now that Russ had passed through her life like a fleeting comet, she needed to summon her strength to reclaim her old goals, grasp some vestige of purpose in her life.

  She checked her e-mail, gave the volleyball article a quick polish, followed up on a couple of phone calls, then headed home for a change and a bite of lunch before driving over to the Brew-Pub where the COC held their monthly meeting.

  Heather had already called the meeting to order when Cynthia arrived, so she slid to the back of the room to watch without disturbing the meeting.

  She shoved a chair out of the way and stepped into what she thought was an open space—until she ran into something warm, hard, and very much alive.

  “Ouch.”

  That intensely male voice sent shivers down her spine.

  Together with being slightly off balance from running into Russell where he’d hidden beneath a table, the shock of hearing him and the impact it had on her knees made her wobble.

  His hands grasped her naked legs, stopping her collapse, but bringing his face much to close to her center. This wasn’t fair. She’d agreed to the meeting to protect Andrew’s heart and ended up running into the man who continually smashed her own into smaller and smaller fragments.

  “What are you doing down there?”

  He held a finger to his lips. “Shhh. He’s sleeping.”

  Sure enough, what she had thought was just another shadow under the table resolved itself to the slumbering form of a puppy. Gomer.

  She knelt down next to the dog and he opened one eye, then struggled to his feet, shook himself, and flopped down into her.

  Gomer didn’t weigh much, but she was enough off-balance in her dress and pumps that the surprise and puppy’s momentum pushed her directly into Russell.

  The man caught her as easily as he’d once caught infield flies for the Shermann baseball team, lifting her up before she cracked her head on the floor, held her in his arms.

  * * *

  This was a very bad idea.

  Russell managed go keep Heather from falling, but now that he had caught her, he didn’t want to let go.

  “Sorry.”

  He was too. He needed to get on with his life, but some sort of body-memory apparently remained from the time Cynthia and his alternate Russ person had spent together. Every time she was near him, every time he touched her, sensual desire surged so strongly in him that he was tempted to throw everything away, discard his future and his plans, and retreat into a purely physical bliss that he knew Cynthia wouldn’t want, Heather wouldn’t stand for, and that would make everyone miserable.

  “I’ve never understood why women wear shoes like that," he whispered. "They’re completely impractical.”

  “You really don’t understand?” Her brown eyes teased at him.

  Well, yes, he sort of understood. Shoes with heels made women’s legs look even longer, even sexier. The little toes poking out drove him to distraction and made him think about starting to nibble there and work his way up.

  What he didn’t understand is why women who were already as sinfully sexy as Cynthia thought they needed artificial enhancement. Just the thought of her body in that slinky running outfit was enough to bring his shaft to rampant attention.

  “Never mind.”

  “And maybe you’d better set me down.”

  Oh, hell. He was just standing there holding onto Cynthia while Heather and the rest of the Chamber of Commerce watched.

  Still, letting her down was more difficult than it should have been. Partly because he needed to hold her away from a certain swollen part of his body—but only partly.

  “We were discussing the COC position on the proposed zoning variance,” Heather reminded the group. Her strong soprano had a bit of a whip to it and the other members of the chamber responded instantly to their master’s voice.

  “We’re trying to preserve Shermann’s unique German-American architecture, but we also need to move with the times. The outside café that we’d like to see in the winery would be suitable for Octoberfest as well as other festive occasions that are fully in keeping with Shermann’s past. And Cynthia, if you don’t get your hands off my fiancé, I’m going to tear your eyes out.”

  Cynthia froze. This was her ultimate nightmare. Being called on something like this, in front of everyone who mattered in the city would destroy her effectiveness as a reporter and result in her being ostracized from everything that happened in the city.

  "We were just--"

&n
bsp; Heather interrupted her. "I'm not blind. Please don't try to tell me my eyes are lying to me."

  Cynthia froze for a fraction of a second, then dashed from the Brew-Pub. Gomer waddled after her, catching up just as she reached the door and the two of them vanished.

  Russell watched them go, wondering why a part of him wanted to follow.

  “Does anyone have any questions?”

  Heather sounded completely in control but she didn’t fool Russell. He’d seen that look—the same look she’d had when Miss Texas had cut her off on the Miss America competition set. She was mad and someone was going to pay the price.

  Russell was no saint. He was every bit as self-absorbed as the next guy, but he wasn’t going to let Cynthia take the fall for what was his fault. He’d pay whatever price Heather demanded.

  Whipped into shape by Heather’s presentation and assurance, the chamber voted to support her on the zoning without objection. No other new business presented itself. Obviously the other chamber members were more interested in seeing what was going to happen next in the Heather/Russell soap-opera than they were in dealing with issues like who was going to donate what for the annual Mayday raffle.

  “That’s it, then. See you next month.” Heather opened the door, ushered the members out, and grabbed Russell when he tried to follow them.

  “Don’t worry, I’m coming back. I just need to see about my dog.”

  “Cynthia will take good care of him. Now, we need to talk.” She shut the door.

  “Let's go to my place. Somehow I don’t think we’ll get a lot of privacy here.” He opened the door to the Brew-Pub meeting room and looked out. Sure enough, the other members of the chamber were doing their best to look innocent, but none of them had left. A couple had ordered beers, but most of them were just sitting, their ears close to the thin wall that separated the meeting room from the rest of the restaurant.

  Heather immediately grasped the problem. “I’ll drive myself.”

  * * *

  Heather was waiting inside by the time Russell made it home. Naturally she had a key. Just as he had a key to her place. He hadn’t really thought about that since his memory returned.

  “I think it’s time for you to decide what you want,” Heather said as he shut the door behind himself.