by Mary McBride
As long as her face was properly tilted and just a few convenient inches from his face, Holly lifted on tiptoe and pressed her lips to Cal's. “Mmm. I've been wanting to do that ever since breakfast,” she said. “I've been wanting to do that ever since I left here last month, actually. I missed you. Oh, God, I missed you, Cal, even when I was mad as hell at you.”
Cal took her face in both his hands and looked deeply into her eyes. “I missed you, too, babe. I had myself convinced that you, well…” He lifted an eyebrow. “So there's nobody in New York I need to beat to a pulp or put out a hit on?”
“Nobody,” she said, planting little kisses from one edge of his smile to the other. “Well, except maybe the people in charge at work. The ones who keep cutting back on my budget for the piece about you on Hero Week. I'm half tempted to beat them to a pulp myself.”
“Holly, this hero business…” His expression turned from sexily sweet to almost grim. He swore harshly, then reached for her hand, led her to the big walnut bed, and sat her down. “As long as we're being so honest, there are some things you really ought to know.”
“Wait!” she exclaimed, feigning a look of horror. “Oh, God. Oh, no! You're not about to tell me you don't have a Superman costume on under your clothes, are you?”
“I'm serious here.”
“So am I,” she said, unable to stop laughing even as he glared at her.
When he sat on the bed beside her, Holly reached for the top button of his shirt. “Well, I guess I'll have to look for myself. Just think of me as Lois Lane, checking out her facts.”
He caught her hand in his, pressed her palm flat against his chest where Holly could feel the strong and solid beat of his heart. “Be serious for a minute and listen to me, will you?” he said. “This is important.”
“All right.”
Holly sucked in a breath. It wasn't easy, sobering up her expression. She was just so damned happy to be with Cal that it was all she could do not to skip around the room, stripping off her clothes, piece by piece, while whistling “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
“There.” She exhaled slowly. “Okay. What is it that's so important?”
Cal brought her hand to his lips, kissing her fingertips. “It's about this hero business. I haven't lied to you, exactly, but…Well, I haven't given you the whole truth, either.”
“Which is…?” Holly knew a lot of things about Cal that he hadn't told her himself, but she didn't have a clue what he was about to confess, and his serious demeanor was starting to make her nervous. Very nervous.
“I've probably given you the impression that, once my medical leave is over in September, I'll be resuming my duties with the President right where I left off last year.” He paused to clear his throat. “That…uh…that might not be the case.”
Now that she knew exactly what he was going to say, Holly didn't want to hear it. She'd heard it before from just about everyone in town, most notably Cal's brother-in-law, Dooley Reese.
About the only one who thinks he's got a chance to get back is Cal himself.
“Holly, listen…”
She touched a finger to his lips. “No, you listen to me. I don't think I've ever told you about my daddy, did I?”
He shook his head, blinking, as if to say What the hell does your daddy have to do with any of this?
Holly scooted back on the bed and patted the place beside her. “Come here. Just stretch out and close your eyes and listen to me.”
“All right.” There was a note of skepticism in his voice, but he settled beside her, taking her hand in his. “I'm listening.”
“My daddy lost a foot in Viet Nam. His platoon wandered right into an ambush one afternoon. Their point man, Harris—he was a Private first class and only with the unit a few days—was hit first, a terrible wound I guess because he lay there screaming while the others dived for cover wherever they could find it.”
Holly paused for a moment to gather her thoughts. She hadn't revisited her father's war story in such a long time. He'd never told it to her himself. Not one word. She'd spent years uncovering the story herself, combing through the papers her mother had saved, tracking down and interviewing the men who'd been in Corporal Bobby Ray Hicks' outfit.
“As I understand it, they were caught in a crossfire with the bullets coming so fast and furiously that nobody could even raise up on an elbow to fire back. This went on for two or three hours, and all the while Private Harris was screaming.”
“Jesus,” Cal breathed.
“Their lieutenant radioed for a helicopter, and told everybody to hold their positions until it came, which was probably a wise call since he didn't want to lose any more men. Well, to make a long story short, when the chopper landed a few hundred yards south of them, everybody started running for it. Except my daddy, who started running north to where Harris was.”
Holly sighed. “The reports from the men who made it to the helicopter were all identical to the last detail. Daddy came crashing out of the underbrush with Private Harris slung over his shoulder. He took three steps, and then a land mine exploded and blew off his foot right there.”
Cal muttered a quiet curse and held her hand more tightly.
“If he'd been six inches either side of it, everything would've been different, and I don't think he ever got over that,” Holly said. “He survived, of course. Harris survived, and apparently tried half a dozen times to express his gratitude but my father wouldn't listen. Daddy got a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star and a bitterness in his heart that ruined his life more than the loss of his foot.”
“So, that's why his daughter doesn't believe in heroes.”
“He didn't believe in them. He thought of himself as a fool. A loser. Not that he ever said so. At least not to me. But when he came home to Sandy Springs, he ripped down the bunting hung to greet him, he threw his medals in the trash, and pretty much quit living. Loving, too, for that matter.”
Holly turned toward Cal, levered up on her elbow. “And the point of that long digression is what I'm focusing on in my piece about you. It's not about the heroic deed itself. It's not about what somebody does in the blink of an eye. It's about what he does with his life afterwards.”
Cal reached up to twist one of her curls around his finger. “How'd a self-pitying bastard like that ever have such a smart and thoughtful little girl?”
Ignoring his question, Holly continued. “The point isn't whether or not you take up at the White House right where you left off in September. The point is that you're fighting so hard to do it. If there is such a thing as heroism, then that's the essence of it.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I don't know.”
“Well, I know. I've seen you out there on the track when you didn't know anyone was watching. I've seen you fall and get back up. Again and again. That's what it's all about.”
“Yeah, well, I'll tell you a little secret, Miss Holly Hicks.” Cal levered up on his elbow now so their faces were nearly touching. “All that work I've been doing…making it back to the level where I used to function doesn't seem as crucial to me as it did a month or two ago. Back then I didn't have anything else in my life but the job.”
“And now?” she whispered, thinking she knew what he was going to say. Hoping she knew what he was going to say.
“And now there's you.” The fingers just toying with her curls slid more deeply into her hair and he brought her face even closer to his. “Holly, I'm half in love with you.”
Oh. Her heart felt as if it were opening like a rose within her chest. An entire bouquet of roses. A million blossoms crowding out the air in her lungs. For a moment she couldn't even speak, but only gaze at her own reflection in Cal's bluer-than-blue eyes…
…which suddenly began to look worried.
“Did you hear me?” he asked, sounding as worried and uncertain as he looked. “I said I'm half in love with you, Miss Holly Hicks.”
God. She was so happy, so ridiculously joyous, so incredibly over the moon that all she could do was burst
out laughing and ask, “Which half?”
Cal would've been content to spend the next twenty-four hours in the big bed on Ellie's second floor. Hell, he wouldn't have minded spending the next twenty-four years there as long as Holly was with him. They'd missed lunch and dinner, and Cal found himself wishing they could dial up room service so they didn't have to leave the bed, or get dressed, or even loosen their embrace.
“Are you awake?” he whispered, sliding his hand along Holly's smooth, warm flank.
“Mmm. I'm basking in the throes of afterglow here.”
He raised his wrist to check his watch. “The fireworks are going to start in about ninety minutes.”
She moaned into her pillow melodramatically. “Oh, God. More fireworks?”
Cal smiled, wondering what could be better than loving a smart woman who held back nothing in bed, a beautiful woman who was as greedy for his body as she was generous with her own. They had set off their own fireworks, no doubt about that. Sparklers and Roman candles and climaxes that were almost blinding in their intensity. They'd nearly scorched the roses on the wall.
He wished she could have known him when he was at his best. He wished he could be at his best again. Then he realized he was thinking too much—his new curse!—because the butterflies made their presence known in his gut.
It was time to get his body out of bed and his head in a place where he was ready to focus on work. Agents Reed and McGovern would be arriving soon to meet him about half a mile east of town. After that, if all went well, he and his Holly ought to be back here, neck deep in roses, before the Fourth of July turned into the Fifth.
Chapter Twenty
By eight-thirty that evening the grandstand at Honeycomb High School was so crowded that people sat shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. Holly wouldn't have minded so much if it had been Cal's muscular shoulder and lean hip on her right, but it was Ellie's soft shoulder and ample denim-covered hip. On Holly's left was the far slimmer Ruth Reese in a pretty summer dress, who looked happier and more at ease tonight than Holly had ever seen her.
Gazing around her through the lens of her camcorder, she almost had to laugh because the crowd looked more like one gathered for a rodeo than for Independence Day fireworks. There were more Stetsons and plaid western cut shirts and string ties than she'd seen in any one place in the past decade. There was enough hair spray on the women to shellac every building in town. Funny thing was though, that instead of being repelled by the Texas couture and coiffures as she had been a month ago, Holly found it all almost comforting now in its predictability and reassuring somehow in its down-to-earth casualness.
It amazed her, too, how many faces she recognized as she panned the crowd. There was Coral sitting next to a good-looking guy in a white shirt and bolo tie, probably Mr. Coral. Not far away, there was Bobby from the bank. Holly smiled, wondering if the fireworks would reflect off his bald head. There was Ramon, who must've left Rick in charge at the bar. There was Nita Mendes, and Cal's classmates Jen and Carol whom she'd met at Ellie's. Good grief. There was gun-toting Kin Presley and his run-around wife, smooching in the top row of the stands.
It suddenly occurred to Holly that she knew more people in Honeycomb after a few days than she did in New York after three years. There, outside of work, she hardly knew anyone. She didn't even know who lived across the hall from her in 12-B.
She never thought she'd use the words Texas and happy in the same sentence, but that was exactly what she was thinking right now. She was happy being back in Texas. Who knew? Maybe she'd have been happy in Sandy Springs all those years ago if she hadn't spent all her time trying to get out of it.
Her piece for Hero Week, she sensed, was going to be kinder and gentler than originally planned now that Texas no longer felt like a giant pool of quicksand.
She wanted to tell Cal, but not long after they'd all sat down, he had disappeared, claiming he needed to move his car so that no errant fireworks made the convertible top catch fire.
Still, even in his absence, Holly was having a grand time. A good ol' time. For a brief moment, she and Ruth and Ellie had huddled like the witches in Macbeth, raking Diana over a bed of hot coals. The impromptu roasting of Cal's ex surprised Holly, especially considering the company—the mature and rather matronly Ellie, and the heretofore cool-natured Ruth. But the three of them had sat cackling and hooting and rubbing their hands with glee until Dooley, sitting beside Ruth, had finally leaned over and shushed them with a stern, “All right, ladies. That's enough.”
“How's your restaurant planning coming along?” Holly asked Ruth. “Are you still trying to sell the ranch?”
Cal's sister looked surprised. In truth, Holly had been prepared for a scathing reprimand over the titanium incident, but Ruth's voice was quite pleasant when she asked, “Didn't Cal tell you?”
“Uh, no.” Holly thought it prudent not to tell her that she and Cal had mostly confined their recent conversations—their intercourse, actually!—to Yes, Yes, Oh God, More and quite a few Mmms and Ahs. And then there was Cal's “half in love” confession which Holly had laughed off because it was just too scary to even think about at the time.
“We're not selling the place,” Ruth said. “We're going in with some of our neighbors and starting up a hunting preserve. A pretty fancy one, actually. It was Cal's idea.”
“Really.”
“Yep. Next week we're meeting with an architect about building a first-rate lodge where we can accommodate about two dozen guests at a time.”
Dooley leaned into the conversation, grinning beneath his droopy mustache. “Where Ruthie can cook up a first-rate storm for about two dozen guests at a time.”
“That's terrific,” Holly said. “It all worked out perfectly for you, didn't it?”
“Sure did,” Dooley said, draping an arm around his wife and pulling her against him.
“I guess it did at that,” Ruth said, turning to smile at her husband.
Holly sighed. Well, at least one of the little dramas she'd been following in Honeycomb had come to a happy ending. That was nice. As a journalist, Holly liked closure. It remained to be seen how her own little drama would conclude.
She turned off her camcorder and returned it to its case. It was getting too dark to film now, anyway. The fireworks ought to be starting soon. Where in the world was Cal?
Agents Reed and McGovern were late, so late that Cal looked again at the little spiral notebook in which he'd written their names and the time and location of their meeting. The fact that he was parked east of town in the right place at the proper time wasn't much consolation. Where the hell were the agents from Houston? The fireworks would be starting at the high school in a matter of minutes, and all that noise and hoopla was supposed to serve as the distraction when they—Griffin, Reed, and McGovern—broke into the print shop.
He pulled his cell phone from the glove box and punched in the number of the office in Houston only to get a recording that informed him that no one was currently in the office and that if this was an emergency, he ought to call his local 911 number.
Oh, sure. Now there was a good idea. That would put him through to Deputy Jimmy Lee Terrell, who was currently prowling around town in his big cruiser, looking to bust kids with firecrackers and cherry bombs.
The only good thing at the moment, Cal decided, was that the butterflies in his stomach had packed up their fluttery little wings and flown elsewhere. He held out his hand, just to reassure himself of the steadiness there. Good deal. Steady as a rock. Cool as the proverbial cucumber. Special Agent Calvin Griffin was back…
…and wondered what the hell he ought to do. This hit on Hec Garcia's shop had to take place tonight at the designated time when all the other sites in the Southwest were being hit, or else the opportunity for a clean sweep by the Secret Service would be lost. No way was Cal going to be responsible for that, especially when his current status with the service was questionable at best, if not downright shaky.
At the moment,
without further word from Houston, he didn't see that he had much choice but to proceed with the operation as planned.
He got out of the T-bird, opened the trunk, and put on the Kevlar vest he hadn't worn in nearly a year. He slipped his pistol into the waistband of his jeans. Then he slid back behind the wheel and headed toward town, where the first of the fireworks—a patriotic red, white, and blue dazzler—was lighting up the sky.
Holly sat oohing and aahing right along with the rest of Honeycomb's population when the sky overhead burst into an amazing display of red, white, and blue. But even as she oohed and aahed, she kept wondering why Cal wasn't back. How far away did he think he had to move his car to keep it safe from sparks, for heaven's sake? The next county?
She reached down to give a reassuring pat to poor old Bee, who'd been slinking around the grandstand all evening and then had finally worked his way under Ellie's long denim skirt, as if he'd been through this before, knew just what was coming, and wanted to be somewhere dark and safe when the heavens above exploded. The old dog gave a quiet little woof when Holly touched his head, as if to say he was doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances and thanks for your concern.
The sky had barely cleared of the red, white, and blue when another firework shot up and flared out in a pulsing shower of brilliant white. Holly almost laughed because the burst of intense light suddenly reminded her of an orgasm. A fairly recent one, in fact. God. She must really have it bad, she thought, if she was seeing orgasms exploding in the sky over Honeycomb, Texas.
That train of thought led directly back to Cal for obvious reasons, and Holly looked to her left, past Ruth and Dooley, toward town, to see if she could see him anywhere. Hard as she tried, she couldn't discern his now oh-so-familiar form. But over on Main Street something caught her attention. She was certain that she saw the reflection of blinking lights on a police car or a fire engine or some sort of emergency vehicle.
Everybody else was looking skyward, so she was apparently the only one to notice that something was going on in town.