An Accidental Hero (19 page)

Another moment passed, with nothing but the
blip
and
bleep
of the monitors and Billy’s labored breathing to disturb the absolute silence.

The older man lifted his head again, found Cammi’s eyes. “Be good to him, girl.” And then Billy slept.

Cammi stood silently by Reid’s side, knowing that when words were necessary, God would tell her what he needed to hear. Meanwhile, she moved a little closer.

He pulled away from her long enough to press a kiss to Billy’s forehead. “Rest well, y’old bear of a man,” he said, voice thick with a pent-up sob.

Then he turned to Cammi and said, “Come to the chapel with me?”

I
f Reid had ever doubted the power of prayer before, he didn’t doubt it now! The congregation started a prayer chain for Billy’s healing, and even the doctors couldn’t explain his miraculous recovery.

Nearly a month after Billy got home from the hospital, Martina packed up, intent on moving them into her widowed sister’s house, permanently.

Grateful as he was to have his old friend back, hale and hearty, Reid’s heart ached. “I can’t believe you’re doing this,” he said, staring at his hands.

Billy and Martina flanked him in black bucket seats at the airport’s departure gate. “Billy and I discussed this long before he got sick,” she explained. “We want you to have the Rockin’ C, because we’ve always thought of you as our son. Besides, you worked it as if it was your own.”

He wanted to ask how they’d get along, down in Acapulco, so far from church friends.

“We saved up for years, just for a day like this.
We’re thinking of it as an adventure, so stop looking so sad! We’re not rocketing to another planet, you know.” She pinched his cheek. “We’ll come visit every chance we get, and so will you.”

The ticket agent’s nasal monotone voice announced their flight.

She wrapped Reid in a long, motherly hug. “I’ll miss you, too.” Standing, Billy grabbed their carry-on bag. “Well, I guess this is it,” he said. “We’ll call every week.”

Wagging a maternal finger under his nose, Martina added, “The phone works both ways, don’t forget!”

Reid nodded.

“Now go on home.” Billy gave Reid’s shoulder a fatherly squeeze.

He watched them move up in the line, and grinned when they turned to wave a final goodbye before disappearing into the tunnel that would lead them to the Mexico-bound 747.

Home
she’d said. The Rockin’ C wouldn’t be the same without her and Billy and Martina, and neither would the big old house. Reid doubted he’d ever think of it as home, or the ranch as his.

He’d always been a loner, so it surprised Reid to learn he’d developed a dislike for being alone. That first week without Billy, without Martina, seemed longer than a lifetime.

Much as he’d wanted to, he hadn’t called Cammi. When he saw her again, Reid wanted to be certain he was feeling more like himself.

It had been nearly three weeks since he’d set eyes on her. She had her car back, and his truck hadn’t
been damaged as badly as they’d both assumed. But she hadn’t driven to the Rockin’ C, and he hadn’t made the trip to River Valley Ranch. It had been three of the longest weeks he’d ever spent. If anyone had told him it was possible to miss anyone this much, he would have said they’d gone haywire. Finally, he gave in to the never-ending yearning and dialed her number.

“So how’s school?” he asked when she answered.

“It’s just what the doctor ordered.”

Hearing her voice was just what he needed. “Why’s that?”

“Kids are so energetic, so enthusiastic, so full of life.” She paused. “Puts things in perspective, you know?”

He took it to mean she missed the baby less, thanks to the distractions of being a busy teacher. Reid could almost picture her, smiling thoughtfully as she played with the phone cord. “So you like kids?”

“Like ’em?” Cammi laughed. “I absolutely
love
them.”

With a personality like hers, she had to be great with kids. The elementary schoolers who called her Mrs. Carlisle probably gathered ’round her as if she were the Pied Piper. Then, from out of nowhere, the image of her sitting in a big wooden rocker with a baby at her breast flit through his mind. With a heart like hers, she’d be a terrific mother, he knew.

Suddenly, an overwhelming desire to tell her so filled him to overflowing. “I know it’s last minute, but how ’bout letting me buy you dinner tonight?” He’d take her someplace where the lights were low and the waiters slung white towels over their tuxedo
sleeves, where the music wafted quietly, and reflected candlelight would glitter in her big doe eyes.

She didn’t answer soon enough to suit him. He hoped it was because she had papers to grade, a lesson plan to adjust. He didn’t know if he could stand to hear anything else.

“I can’t have dinner,” she said at last, “but I’d like to see you.”

There was a certain hesitancy, and the music he’d come to recognize as her voice, well, it wasn’t quite as melodic as he remembered. Reid hoped it was temporary, that once she fully adjusted to being a widow, to losing her baby…

“I can pick you up in half an hour.”

Another pause. If he didn’t know better, Reid would’ve thought he’d dialed the wrong number.

“How about if I meet you in the park across from Georgia’s Diner? I can be there in, oh, forty-five minutes.”

The park? At this hour? “You’re sure I can’t treat you to dinner.”

“No, really.” She sighed. “I appreciate it, but I have thirty-odd book reports and math quizzes to grade before I turn in tonight.”

He breathed a sigh of relief. “Still, it’s kinda chilly to be meeting in the park, don’t you think?”

A second ticked by, then two, before she said, “Maybe. But we won’t be there for very long. See you in a little while, then.”

Reid stared at the buzzing receiver for a full second after she hung up, wondering why he had the sneaking suspicion he was about to walk into a trap.

It was almost dark by the time she pulled into the parking space beside Reid’s truck. Streetlights re-flected eerily from slides and seesaws, and the wind shoved leather-seated swings, clanking their thick chains against hollow A-frame supports. She and Reid were the only two who’d braved the cold on this blustery November night.

He’d swapped his Stetson for a baseball cap, his denim jacket for one of thick down. When he walked toward her, she saw that he’d traded his pointy-toed cowboy boots for well-worn running shoes that left waffled footprints in the sand beneath the jungle gym.

“It’s good to see you,” he said when he reached her.

“Same here.” And it was true. Which would only make what she had to say all the harder.

He stuffed his hands into his pockets and smiled nervously. If she didn’t know better, Cammi would have said someone had tipped him off, because it seemed he sensed why she’d asked him to meet her here.

“How’re you holding up?”

Reid stared at the toes of his sneakers, nodding. “Fine, fine.” He looked up. “House seems strange without them. I didn’t realize how quiet the place could be until…” He went back to staring at his feet. “How ’bout you?” he said. “Is everything okay?”

He referred to the miscarriage, of course. “Fine, fine,” she echoed. How sad that it had come to this awkward perfunctory conversation, like they were strangers who’d ended up in the same line at the grocery store. Especially sad when she considered how
warm things had been between them before Billy’s ordeal.

She saw him lift his shoulders and pull his coat collar up around his ears. “Let’s sit in my car,” she suggested. “At least we’ll be out of the wind.”

His eyes locked on hers. “I—”

Reid clamped his lips together, a hint that he’d decided against saying whatever had been on his mind. Cammi got into her car and sat behind the wheel. Almost immediately, Reid slid into the passenger seat.

“All right, so let’s have it,” he said, his voice flat and emotionless.

“Have what?”

He turned slightly to face her, one brow up, one side of his mouth down. “I think it’s safe to say you didn’t ask me here on a night like this to invite me to the prom.”

Blinking, Cammi bit her lower lip. “You’re right. I asked you here to say…” But she couldn’t say. Not just yet, anyway.

“…that you missed me?” he finished on a bitter chuckle.

Cammi sighed. “Reid.”

He looked at the car’s ceiling. “I’ve thought about you almost nonstop since Billy and Martina left.” Eyes on her again, he said, “I know it sounds crazy, considering we’ve only known one another a few weeks, but I want—”

It wouldn’t be fair to let him say it, considering what she’d have to say next. To protect his feelings, his ego, she held up a hand to stop him. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I agree with you, about how
fast things have progressed between us—I mean, because I feel the same way.”

The sadness lifted like a curtain of smoke, and his face brightened, his eyes glittered. Smiling, Reid said, “I was hoping you’d say that.” He took her hand in his. “Whew,” he said on a laugh. “You really had me going there for a minute!”

He’d misunderstood her, completely. The point she’d been trying to make was that
despite
how she felt about him after such a short time—or maybe
because
it had been such a short time—she’d done some serious thinking. And it wasn’t just that. It was the dreams and images, the pictures that flashed in her mind every time she saw him.

She hadn’t made her decision in haste, the way she’d made so many others. Because this time, she needed to be right, for Reid’s sake more than her own.

“You deserve so much better than the likes of me, Reid. You ought to have a woman in your life who will love and cherish—”

“Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me.”

His voice was hard, his eyes mere slits. He was hurting, and it showed, in the taut line of his mouth, in the furrows on his brow. She couldn’t tell him she didn’t love him, though she’d rehearsed it a hundred times. Couldn’t say the words because…because she
did
love him, more than life itself!

Unfortunately, that didn’t change the ugly facts.

“This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life,” she admitted, slowly, deliberately, “because in all honesty…” Yes, she loved him. Loved him with all her heart. Because he was the kind of
man she’d been dreaming about since junior high school, the kind who was strong and capable, yet tender at the same time. If only
that
image overshadowed the others….

“You deserve better than a woman who sees what I see when I’m with you.” She shook her head. “It just wouldn’t be fair.”

He sat quietly for some moments, shaking his head, shrugging, as if replaying the whole scene over and over in his head. “So what you’re saying, then, is that when you look at me, you see your poor mama, the way she was that night. And since it’s my fault she’s dead, you’re telling me we’re over before we began…but it’s all for
my
sake.”

There was no mistaking the sarcasm in his voice, and frankly, Cammi couldn’t blame him. Because it did sound ridiculous when he put it that way. Unfortunately, that didn’t change things. He’d carried the burden of guilt for her mother’s death all these many years. She wouldn’t add to it now by letting him think such a thing.

She laid a hand on his forearm, felt him stiffen when she touched him, as if trying to prevent himself from recoiling. But she ignored it, gave his forearm a gentle squeeze. “It isn’t you, Reid, it’s me. Call me a fickle female, an overly sensitive idiot, a weak-kneed little brat. But I need time, that’s all—time to sort things out.” She shrugged. “So much has happened, to both of us, in these past few weeks. If only you’d give me some time.”

He faced forward, staring through the windshield, nodding. “Time,” he told the darkness enshrouding them. “She needs time.”

Cammi could fix it all, could straighten out this misunderstanding by telling the truth, by saying three little words. But
if
she said them, he’d never let her go, because he believed he loved her. But did he? Or had he confused being her hero for the real thing?

Reid was a good man, a decent man, and he deserved the chance to find out for sure. Deserved a chance to share his life with a woman who’d saved herself just for him, who’d never been married or carried another man’s child, who wasn’t forever letting her “act first, think later” mind-set get her into trouble!

“Guess I’d better go, then,” he said. He started to get out of the car, then got back in and closed the door again. “Will you do me one favor before I leave?”

“Sure,” she said. “Anything.”

Smiling a sad little smile, he said, “One more for the road?”

It’s what he’d said that night in her kitchen, before taking her in his arms. Cammi’s heart fluttered, just remembering it.

Reid leaned forward, tenderly held her face in his hands, studying her eyes, her cheeks, her forehead. He stroked her hair, then buried his face in it, as if trying to imprint every detail in his memory. Then he shifted and, closing his own eyes, he kissed her. Soft. Sweet. Filled with so much tenderness and meaning that she almost forgot the message she’d come here to deliver.

“Take care, Cammi.”

Before she could object, or change her mind, or
agree, he was gone, and she knew the chilly wind wasn’t the only reason she shivered.

Cammi leaned her forehead on the steering wheel, and prayed she hadn’t just made the biggest mistake of her life.

Reid paced the darkened ranch house till long past midnight, reliving those moments in the front seat of Cammi’s car. When he had taken her face in his hands and looked into her eyes, and challenged her to say she didn’t love him, he had expected her to bend like a cheap spoon.
Good thing you’re not a betting man,
he thought, frowning.

He’d stayed away these past weeks more for her sake than his own. Saying goodbye to Martina and Billy had taken a lot out of him, but his distress paled by comparison to what Cammi had gone through these past few months.

She sure had him convinced she loved him, looking at him with those soulful eyes, sighing each time their lips met—and standing beside him at the hospital when Billy struggled to live. Then, with no warning or explanation, she’d backed away, emotionally and physically.

She’d been straightforward about her reasons, he had to give her that. She’d been hurt and humiliated by Rusty—added to the pain of losing a baby, well, was it any wonder she wanted to be careful this time, to protect herself from repeating the same mistakes?

She needed time, he’d decided, to salt things out, to figure out this…what was happening between them. Knowing she was too big-hearted to ask for it, Reid gave her time, and plenty of space, too. Which
hadn’t been easy, what with the phone always in easy reach and River Valley on the way to or from just about every place he’d driven these long, tormenting weeks.