My Hero (13 page)
“Here you go. One club soda with a lime twist. And no umbrella.” Ramon slid a cocktail napkin in front of him and centered the clear, sparkling drink upon it. “Hey, man. As long as you're here, you mind taking a look at a fifty-dollar bill for me? Some guy asked Rick for change last night, and this fifty just doesn't look right to me.”
“Sure. Let me see it.” Cal took a sip of the club soda while Ramon pulled the bill from beneath the change drawer in the cash register.
“See what I mean,” the barman said, handing the bill to Cal. “It's a phoney, right?”
Cal handled the limp, bleached paper with its frayed edges and taped tear. Bleaching and damage were often good ways to disguise a counterfeit, but in this case the defects were simply because the bill was old. As far as he could see without a magnifying glass the edges on this one were crisp enough and there was still a little life in ol' Ulysses' eyes.
“It's fine,” he said, handing it back.
Ramon didn't look convinced. “You sure?” He glared at the currency and kept turning it over in his hands.
“Well, if you want a second opinion, take it over to Bobby at the bank and have him check it out. He's probably got a UV light or an iodine pen.”
“Yeah. I just might do that.”
While Ramon tended to other customers, Cal sipped his seltzer, vaguely enjoying its sharp bite on the back of his tongue, but wishing it were a beer. The neon clock told him he had another forty-five minutes before it was time to pick up Holly. At the moment it felt more like forty-five years. He was about to go through a day stone cold sober, something he hadn't done since coming home almost six months ago.
That thought alone was enough to make a man want a drink.
Even a hero.
I
thought Cal would be home by now,” Ruth said, frowning at her good watch while she paced from one end of her kitchen to the other. “Dooley, are you sure you told him we wanted to leave for Corpus around noon?”
Her husband was half-standing, half-sitting, with one hip slanted on her marble-topped island. He looked so good in his western-cut gray tweed jacket and dark gray slacks. He'd even put on a regular tie, one of the dozens she'd given him over the years, silk Repps and paisleys and pin dots that rarely saw daylight and didn't do much but flap on his closet door whenever he opened it. She knew he'd put on the tie to please her, and she was trying hard not to slide into a foul mood that would sour the rest of the day.
“I told him twelve-thirty, babe.” Dooley checked his watch. “It's just a few minutes past twelve. He'll be here.”
She snapped on the cold water at the sink and filled a glass. Her throat was so dry and tight she could hear herself swallow. “I don't know why I let these things upset me,” she said. “I never used to.”
“Worst that can happen, honey, is that the real estate fella will bring his client back some other time.”
“You're right.”
She said it, but she didn't believe it somehow. The worst that could happen was she'd never have her restaurant. There would always be something—Cal being late, a no-show realtor, Dooley not getting the price he wanted for a particular bull, Colby totaling his truck and asking for a loan, her own doubts and hesitations—coming between herself and her dream.
None of her friends had dreams. At least none that required such a substantial investment of capital. Ardith Voss had just gotten herself a web site to sell her patchwork totes and purses, but what was that? A couple hundred dollars at the most? Julie Caldwell, inspired by Oprah's book club, was working on a Master's degree in literature and trying to write a novel of her own.
Ruth had considered a smaller dream. Writing a cookbook perhaps or marketing her balsamic beans. But it struck her as settling. And she didn't want to be an author or an entrepreneur. She wanted to be a restaurateur.
The therapist she'd seen in Kingsville a few months ago hadn't helped at all. Ruth had made the appointment without telling Dooley, and she'd driven up there hardly even knowing why she was doing it except that it seemed to be the thing to do when things just weren't working out. The woman seemed nice enough. They'd talked for a while, sitting in matching flame-stitched wing chairs, sipping Earl Grey tea, and then the psychologist had asked, “What do you want?”
“My own restaurant,” Ruth had replied.
The woman put her cup and saucer down, closed her eyes a moment, then leaned forward and whispered, “What is it you
really
want?”
That was when Ruth was pretty sure she needed a financial planner more than a therapist.
God bless it. She wasn't depressed. She wasn't in the throes of a mid-life crisis or suffering from some peri-menopausal hormone imbalance or empty nest syndrome or anything else. She wanted her own restaurant. Just a little place with crisp white linens on the tables, substantial silverware, fine crystal, and comfortable chairs.
She wanted to prepare Trout Meuniere and risotto alla Milanese, have it served by competent, if not elegant, waiters, and watch her customers close their eyes with pleasure as they ate. She longed for her skills to be enjoyed and appreciated by gourmets instead of people who were polite but would've preferred an eight-ounce rib eye, a baked potato, and tossed salad with creamy Italian dressing.
It wasn't as if she wanted the moon. Not a full moon, anyway. Just a sliver. It was such a tiny dream when all was said and done. Except not for a woman living in Hell and Gone, Texas, where, even if she could afford to set herself up in competition with the Longhorn Café, she couldn't turn a profit what with the cost of trucking in fresh vegetables and seafood.
All she wanted was a chance. Before it was too late. Before ill fate or bad luck or a bullet struck her down and took her dream away, the way it had with Cal. Well, she didn't know if he'd ever actually dreamed of being in the Secret Service, but she was convinced he wasn't going back.
“We'll have a good time in Corpus,” Dooley said, straightening up, his head just missing her eight-inch omelette pan hanging from the rack above him. “We'll get a room with a Gulf view.” The slight, suggestive lift of his eyebrows and sexy slant of his mustache made her smile. Even after all these years.
“I love you, Dooley Reese. Have I told you that today?” He opened his arms to her. “Seems to me you did, but it'd be nice to hear it again, darlin'.”
Even Holly had to admit it was a gorgeous day with a sky that was nearly sapphire and big white clouds billowing across it. Okay. Maybe she did miss Texas skies. She was willing to concede that much. And maybe blasting down the road at sixty miles an hour in a convertible with Santana streaming from the radio and the wind whipping her hair did have all the overtones of a date, including the easy smile of the guy at the wheel and the way his right arm was draped over the seatback in her direction as if anticipating a “slide over, baby” turn. But this wasn't a date.
It wasn't.
Well, even if it was, she refused to let it distract her from her purpose.
The story.
“Tell me why you don't want your sister to sell the ranch,” she yelled over Santana and the wind.
Cal disengaged his arm from the seatback to turn the radio down. “You mean other than the obvious?”
“Which is…?”
“Me winding up homeless.”
“Don't you have a place in Washington?”
“I had a place. A condo in Bethesda. Now it's my ex-wife's.”
Holly wasn't sure about the propriety of a follow-up question, but she was insanely curious about his divorce, or more exactly about the brief marriage that had preceded it.
Why had they even bothered?
she wondered.
“I'm not so much trying to prevent her from selling it,” he said. “I'm just buying a little time for myself. Who knows? I might wind up retiring here someday and buying out her share.”
Retiring? Just as Holly was fashioning a follow up to that, something a bit more professional than “What do you mean, retiring?”, a car appeared in the distance. The large green SUV was pulled over on the side of the road and two men stood beside it, one with his arms crossed while the other gestured west over miles of mesquite.
Cal's foot came off the accelerator. “Looks like a real estate agent to me,” he said. “What do you think?”
Judging from his malicious little grin, Holly thought Cal Griffin was about to send another prospective buyer on a wild goose chase. This was going to be good. And much as she despised Texas herself, who was she to stand in his way if he wanted to retire here? More power to him.
“I'd say you're right,” she answered with an evil little grin of her own. “He strikes me as moderately aggressive and fairly confident at the moment.”
His expression turned positively devilish. “Not for long,” he said as he slowed and brought the T-bird to a dusty stop a few feet behind the SUV.
“I'll be right back,” he said, opening the door and swinging his legs out of the car.
“Need some backup?” Holly asked.
He cocked his head and those blue eyes fairly twinkled. “Sure. How good a liar are you?”
“On a scale of one to ten?”
He nodded.
“A fifteen,” she said. “I'll just follow your lead.”
She joined him at the front of the car. He clasped her hand in his, and together they moseyed up to their unsuspecting victims.
“Afternoon,” Cal drawled. “You fellas taking a look at the Griffin place?”
The taller of the two stuck out his hand. “We sure are. Chuck Bingham of Bingham Properties. And you are…?”
“Tucker Bascom,” Cal said without missing a beat. “And this is my wife, Charlene.”
“Howdy, ma'am.” Chuck gave the brim of his hat a snap before he reached for Holly's hand.
“Howdy,” she said in return, managing not to choke on the word.
The realtor gestured to the shorter man who was wearing a pair of pleated khaki Dockers, a navy Polo shirt, and not boots, but Docksiders on his feet. “This is Gordon Brown, my client.”
After another little round of howdy's and pleased-to-meet-you's, Cal casually inquired, “You raise cattle, Gordon?”
“Me? Oh, no. I'm from Chicago. I represent a group of investors who hope to put together a ten thousand-acre parcel for a hunting lodge.”
“Ah.” Cal nodded. Rather sagely, Holly thought.
“Y'all live around here?” Chuck asked.
“Down the road a ways,” Cal said.
“We run a goat ranch,” Holly said, figuring it was her turn, and then, when Gordon appeared intrigued, she elaborated. “Actually we raise dairy goats. Angoras. We milk them by hand in order to make Feta cheese.”
“Fascinating,” Gordon said.
“I had no idea,” Chuck added.
Cal simply gazed at her, clearly awarding her the floor, or the pavement in this case.
“Feta,” Gordon murmured. “Isn't that the Greek cheese?”
“That's right. My father's Greek. He started the ranch forty years ago right after he married my mama. She's Creek.”
Gordon blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Creek,” Holly said. “Native American?”
“Oh, yes.”
“It's too bad about the titanium here,” she said, apropos of nothing, letting her gaze wander westward.
The realtor cleared his throat. “The what?”
Holly curled her arm through Cal's and leaned against him. “Why don't you tell them, hon?”
Without a second's hesitation, he clasped the baton, so to speak. He didn't even blink. The man was magnificent.
“Well, the Air Force
said
they cleaned up after that canister got loose in '96. They
said
nothing would leach into the soil. They
said..
.”
“Wait.” Chuck held up a hand. “What canister?”
“The titanium,” Cal said. “From when the hatch blew on the C-130 making that emergency landing at the Naval Air Station in Kingsville.”
“When was this?” Chuck asked. Behind him, Gordon said, “Titanium? Isn't that radioactive?”
“'96, wasn't it, Charlene?”
“Thereabouts. It was '97 when the goats lost all their hair.”
Actually, Chuck was doing a pretty good job controlling his hysteria, she thought. She, on the other hand, was almost drawing blood from the insides of her cheeks not to mention the mounting urge to pee in her pants.
“Your goats lost all their hair?” Gordon exclaimed.
“Sure did,” Cal drawled. “The ones who lived, anyway.”
Hearing that, Gordon glanced off warily at the surrounding landscape.
“Well, speaking of goats,” Holly chirped, “we'd best get back to ours, sugar.” She pulled Cal by the arm. “Pretty close to milking time.”
“I'd like to find out more about this incident,” Chuck said with some urgency. “You mentioned the Naval Air Station in Kingsville?”
They were almost back to the T-bird. Cal called back, “Yep. But you won't find out squat. They'll only tell you it never happened. Same for the plutonium canister that came through the skylight at the high school in Honeycomb. That never happened either. Well, so long. Nice meetin' you gents.”
He opened the door for Holly. Under his breath he said, “Get in. Jesus, woman. Greek and Creek. I'm going to lose it in about two seconds.”
Five minutes later back in Ruth's cathedral of a kitchen, Cal poured two tall glasses of orange juice, then drank half of his while Holly was in the bathroom. He hadn't laughed like that in nine months. Maybe not in his entire life. Ruthie, if she ever found out about this afternoon's incident with the realtor, would kill him, slice and dice him and put him in a blender, but it would be worth every painful second. Even now he couldn't stop grinning.
She was something else, this little Holly Hicks. Texas in a martini glass with a twist of Manhattan. A margarita in a goblet from Tiffany & Co. A chili pepper in silken skin. Smart as a whip and playful as a kitten.
He felt goofy, wearing this grin. Like a kid, instead of a man who should've known better. Like a man who once again had a semblance of control over events in his life. When she walked into the kitchen, his heart kicked in a couple of extra beats.
“That was fun,” she said, taking the glass he offered her. “We make a pretty good team.”