Читать книгу Once a Hero - Lisa Childs, Lisa Childs, Livia Reasoner - Страница 10

Erin’s hand trembled as she closed it around the door handle of the editor-in-chief’s office. When she had come into the Chronicle—late again—she had found a note on her desk ordering her to see Mr. Stein immediately. He stood in front of the windows looking out over the rain-slicked city of Lakewood, his back to her. Quaint brick buildings lined the cobblestone streets, and in the distance whitecaps rose on Lake Michigan, slapping against the shoreline.

She cleared the nervousness from her voice. “Sir? You wanted to see me?”

“You finally made it in?” he asked, without turning toward her.

“I was working from home, sir,” she said, hoping to pacify him with the partial truth. “I do some of my best work from home.”

The heavyset man finally left the windows and dropped into the leather chair behind his desk. On his blotter was a printout of the article she had turned in the day before: Public Information Officer Admits Cushy Job a Made-Up Position. “The reason I wanted to talk to you is because I’ve been getting complaints about you.”

So she wasn’t being called on the carpet over her tardiness this time. She winced as if she could feel the dart between her eyes. “Let me guess—Sergeant Terlecki?”

“No, surprisingly,” Herb Stein said as he leaned back, his chair creaking in protest due to his substantial weight. “I think he’s the only one who hasn’t complained.”

Erin’s face heated. “Then…who?”

“Just about everyone else down at the department, and quite a lot of the general public.”

She wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t been welcomed very warmly by anyone at the class or the bar afterward a few days before. But still it stung, having people dislike her. Yet she hadn’t joined the CPA to make friends; she was after the truth.

“I had some serious doubts about hiring you,” Herb admitted. “You didn’t have much experience, going from college directly into the Peace Corps.”

“I was a journalist with the college paper,” she reminded him. “And I wrote several freelance articles while I was in the Corps.” She’d been in South America, teaching in a remote village school and helping out at the local clinic and wherever else she had been needed. She hadn’t known then how much she’d been needed back home.

“That bleeding heart stuff.” He dismissed the work of which she was the proudest. “I didn’t think you had it in you to be a real journalist. That’s why I’ve kept you on probation.”

Dread filled her, but she had to know. “Are you firing me now?”

Her boss laughed. “Hell, no. At least people are reading your byline. That’s more than I can say about some of the other staff. I hired you because I thought that even for a bleeding heart, you had potential. That you had some drive.”

Jason was her drive. Jason and Mitchell. She had to help them. “I do.”

“You’ve proved me right.”

Erin uttered a sigh of relief. “You had me worried that I was losing my job.”

“No, in fact, I like this new angle—you attending the Citizen’s Police Academy.”

“Uh, that’s great.” She actually wasn’t that certain she’d made the right choice in joining. Terlecki wouldn’t let anyone but him answer her queries, and he never answered the most important question. Then again, she couldn’t ask him outright if he’d framed her brother to pad his arrest record. He was too smart to make any incriminating admissions.

She was also worried about Jason. While the class met only one night a week, he hated being separated from her. Dropping the six-year-old at school every morning had become an ordeal. He claimed to be sick, and since he did have asthma and allergies, she was never certain if he was telling the truth. Her stomach tightened now with guilt over leaving him with his first-grade teacher. While the older woman had assured her that he was always fine the moment Erin left, she was concerned.

“Did you hear me?” Herb asked, his voice sharp with impatience.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Erin said, face heating. “What were you saying?”

Her lack of attention apparently forgiven, he grinned. “I’m going to give you your own column to report on what happens while you’re in the academy.”

Her own column? If she truly were the ambitious reporter Kent thought her, she would be thrilled. Instead, nervous tension coursed through her. Could she handle a column, in addition to her regular coverage of the police beat and taking care of her nephew?

“Thank you, sir,” she finally murmured, “I hope I don’t disappoint you.”

“Just keep writing like this,” he said, slapping his hand on the copy of her last article. He chuckled with glee. “I love it.”

“I HATE IT.”

The chief chuckled as he settled onto the chair behind his desk. “I think the feeling’s mutual.”

“I said I hate it,” Kent clarified as he paced the small space between the chief’s desk and the paneled office walls. “I hate the article, not her.”

But it wasn’t just an article anymore—she had been given her own column: Powell on Patrol, which was to be like a weekly journal of her adventures in the Citizen’s Police Academy.

“I suspect her boss and my friend the mayor had something to do with this,” the chief admitted. He and the mayor were hardly friends, more like barely civil enemies.

Kent suspected their animosity had something to do with the chief’s wife, since the mayor had pretty much dropped any civility since her death a year ago. “Joel Standish does own the Chronicle and control Herb Stein.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think they’re twisting her arm to write this stuff. She really seems to hate you.” The chief slapped the paper against his desk. “I’d hate her, too, if I were you.” Anger flushed the older man’s face.

Kent laughed at his even-mannered boss expressing such a sentiment. Maybe Kent didn’t have the loving family his roommate had, but the department was his family, and there was no one more loyal than a fellow officer. “That’s you.”

“C’mon, you have to hate her,” Frank Archer insisted. “Look at how she twisted your words.”

Kent took the proffered paper from his boss’s outstretched hand. “I read it.” He didn’t even glance at the column as he recited from memory, “‘Public information officer Sergeant Terlecki admits his cushy job at the Lakewood Police Department is a made-up position.’”

“She did twist your words, right?” The chief leaned forward. “Because I remember you saying something pretty similar when I offered you the job.”

“We hadn’t had a public information officer before,” Kent reminded him. The chief—and his predecessor—had always handled the press themselves. If he’d been too busy, his secretary had claimed he wasn’t available for comment.

“But other departments that aren’t even as big as ours have public information officers to deal with the media, and we should, too,” Frank insisted. “We needed one. We needed you.”

Kent stopped his pacing and held the man’s pale blue gaze. “You didn’t create the job because…”

“Because you took a bullet for me?” The chief shook his head. “Son, I’d take it back if I could.”

“The job?” He deliberately misunderstood, his lips twitching into a smile.

“The bullet.”

“Nobody can take the bullet out.” Not without a seventy-five percent chance of leaving him paralyzed. Those weren’t odds Kent was willing to take a risk on; as Billy had said, he wasn’t lucky.

“Have you checked with a surgeon recently?” Chief Archer asked. “There are new medical advances all the time. You could go to the University of Michigan or the Mayo—”

“I’m fine, really,” he assured his boss, whom he also thought of as a friend. Despite Kent’s insistence, he knew that Frank Archer would always feel guilty that Kent had gotten hurt while protecting him.

“You’re bored out of your mind in this job,” the chief stated.

Apparently Kent hadn’t done very well hiding his dissatisfaction. He tapped a finger against the newspaper he held. “Erin Powell keeps things interesting.”

The chief’s pale eyes narrowed. “Not interesting enough, I suspect. I know you, Kent. I know you’d rather be back in the field.”

“So put me back in the field,” Kent snapped, tired of hiding his feelings to spare others’ guilt.

Betraying his inner torment, the chief closed his eyes and shook his head. “God, I wish I could, Kent, but I can’t, not without medical clearance.”

“I’m sorry,” Kent said, as his own guilt coursed through him. He hadn’t wanted to make the chief feel worse than he already did. “I know you can’t.” With the bullet so close to his spine, he was too much of a liability.

Even without surgery, there was a risk of paralysis from scar tissue pressing on nerves or the bullet moving and irrevocably damaging his spinal cord. It wouldn’t be fair to his fellow officers—the ones he might need to back up—or to the civilians he might need to protect if he was on the job. Erin had been exactly right the other night when she’d claimed that his badge was just for show.

The chief sighed, then forced a smile. “At least Erin Powell keeps you from being bored senseless in your cushy job.”

“That she does.” Kent gripped the paper tighter and glanced down at the picture of her next to the byline of her new column. While he didn’t betray it to his boss, anger gripped him. He wanted to wring her pretty little neck. She had deliberately twisted every damn word he’d spoken to her the other night.

“You should tell her,” the chief advised.

“How I came by my nickname?” Kent shook his head. “No, we agreed to keep that from the public.”

“Back then. Three years ago. Keeping it secret was your first decision as public information officer.” The chief’s eyes filled with pride. “You were on your way to surgery at the time.”

The surgery hadn’t removed the bullet, though the doctors still claimed they had saved his life. But Kent couldn’t do his job anymore, so he had no life. At least not the life he used to have—the one he wanted.

“It was a good decision,” Kent insisted. Keeping the attempt on the chief’s life quiet had been a good decision, but maybe he should have had the bullet taken out, and risked paralysis.

“You really don’t want the public to make you a hero,” the chief mused, shaking his head.

“Not when someone else has to be the villain.”

“But the woman shot you!” The older man’s voice shook with emotion.

“She was trying to shoot you,” Kent reminded him. “I think we both agree that Mrs. Ludlowe paid for what she did. It wouldn’t be fair to open up all that pain again.” And reporters like Erin Powell would be only too happy to do that. He tossed the paper onto the chief’s cluttered desk.

Frank leaned back in his chair and sighed, then grabbed the paper and crumpled it up. “This is not fair to you. You’re taking another bullet that isn’t meant for you.”

Kent grinned. “Oh, I have a feeling this bullet is meant only for me.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. It’s past time I learned.” He was going to take Billy’s advice, polish up his rusty investigative skills and finally figure out what Erin Powell’s problem was with him.

“Be careful, Kent,” the chief advised. “You haven’t been out in the field for a while.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He waved dismissively and headed for the door. “I’ve been dodging Erin Powell’s bullets for a year now.”

“You haven’t dodged them all, Bullet,” the chief reminded him. “Be careful.”

ERIN JOLTED, and her computer slid from her lap onto the floor in front of the couch. “Da—” She swallowed the curse as the door rattled again under a hammering fist. She scrambled toward it, pulling it open with a “Shh…!”

Her heart pounded harder at the sight of the man leaning against the jamb. Instead of his black uniform, he wore faded jeans and a black leather jacket over a T-shirt that had molded to the impressive muscles of his chest. His hair was a darker blond, damp from a shower.

She swallowed a traitorous sigh. “Oh, it’s you….”

“You shouldn’t open your door before you know who’s on the other side,” Sergeant Terlecki chastised her.

“You’re lucky I didn’t know who was pounding down my door,” she pointed out. “What do you want, Sergeant?” She noted the wrinkled newspaper he clutched. “Are you here to congratulate me on my new column?”

He crumpled the paper in his fist. “What I want is a retraction.”

She shook her head, then tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I can’t.”

“What do you have against me, Erin? What have I ever done to you? I’m too old to have gone to school with you and ignored you.”

Just. He was only five years older than she was, but she refrained from mentioning that.

He leaned closer until his handsome face was mere inches from hers. “And if I’d gone to school with you, I know I would never have ignored you.”

She couldn’t fight the smile curving her lips. So his new method for handling her was to turn on his infamous charm, which served him so well with the network reporters. “You’re flirting with me now?”

“Don’t act so surprised,” he admonished with a grin of his own. “I’ve flirted with you before.”

“You have?” She widened her eyes in disbelief. “When was that? When you dragged me into an empty room? When you pinned my picture to a dartboard?”

“You didn’t know I was flirting?” He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I must have gotten rusty.”

“No, I can’t believe…” She lifted her hand to push back her hair again, but this time her fingers trembled, so she propped her hand on her hip. She couldn’t let him get to her. “Why—why would you flirt with me? You must hate me.”

That steely gaze of his focused on her. “You want me to hate you.”

No, she wanted to hate him. How could she not, after what he’d done?

“I should,” he said. “It’s pretty clear you have it in for me.” He tossed the torn newspaper atop the cluttered table just inside her foyer. “I want to know why.”

“I thought you knew.”

He grinned. “That you’re ambitious, that you’ll do anything to get ahead? Yeah, I know that. But I think there’s more to you, Erin Powell—more to us.”

She started to swing the door shut on his handsome face. “There is no us.”

He pressed his palm against the panel, holding it open. “Oh, there’s something here.”

“Hatred, remember?” She levered her weight against the door, but it still didn’t move, his hand holding it effortlessly.

He shook his head. “I don’t hate you.”

“Give me time.”

His brow furrowed with confusion. “So you are out to destroy me?”

“I think it’s only fair.” Since he had destroyed her brother’s life and a little boy’s whole world.

“Why, Erin?” Kent asked, as if it bothered him, as if he cared what she thought, what she felt. “What did I ever do to you?”

Maybe she should tell him, so he would understand that flirting with her was a waste of his time and hers. She only wanted one thing from him—the truth. “You—”

A cry caught Erin’s attention. The fear in it had her whirling away and racing down the hall, calling out, “It’s okay. I’m here….”

Stunned, Kent stepped inside the open door. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might not live alone. She didn’t wear a wedding band or even an engagement ring. He had checked the first time he’d met the beauty at a press conference—before she’d started with her impertinent questions.

Curious, and concerned about the cry, he followed her. He stumbled over toys in the hall outside the doorway where she’d disappeared. Inside the room she knelt beside a twin bed, her arms wrapped tight around a small, trembling body.

Kent slipped quietly into the bedroom. She was totally unaware of his presence as she focused on the boy, who must have been about five or six. Since speaking at school assemblies was part of his duties as public information officer, Kent spent a lot of time around kids now. Before he’d been injured, the thought of doing so would have scared him more than getting shot, but talking to schoolkids had actually become one of the high points of his new job. The children sometimes asked tougher questions than reporters, though. Well, all reporters besides Erin Powell.

He never would have imagined that aggressive journalist was the same woman who cuddled the crying child, soothing him with a calming voice and a tender touch. A part of Kent had suspected there was more to Erin Powell, something softer and more vulnerable—something that had attracted his interest in spite of her animosity toward him.

She pressed her lips to the boy’s forehead. “Shh…”

Now Kent understood her shushing him at the door. She hadn’t wanted to disturb the boy. Was he her son?

“Go back to sleep, Jason,” she urged the whimpering child. “Everything’s okay.”

The boy sniffled. “I heard somebody yelling.”

“It was nothing, honey,” Erin said, her voice filled with a gentleness Kent would not have considered her capable of. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

“But I heard a guy,” Jason said, as if having a man in Erin’s apartment was unusual. “He was yelling at you.”

“I’m sorry about that.” Kent spoke up from the shadows of the room.

Both the child and Erin tensed and turned toward him. “You shouldn’t have followed me,” she told him. “You shouldn’t have just walked in.”

“I’m sorry,” Kent repeated to the boy, ignoring her irritation that he had let himself inside her apartment. He would not argue with her in front of the child.

She opened her mouth, then closed it, as if coming to the same realization.

“I wasn’t yelling. Really,” Kent assured the child. “I was just talking loud. I didn’t know you were sleeping.” He hadn’t known about the kid at all.

“Who are you?” the little boy asked, staring up at Kent with wide eyes that were the same shade of chocolate-brown as Erin’s.

“I’m Serge—”

“He’s a friend,” Erin interrupted. “Now you have to go back to sleep, honey. You have school in the morning.” She pulled the covers up to the boy’s chin and kissed his forehead. With his dark hair and those eyes and delicate features, he looked very much like Erin.

A pressure shifted in Kent’s chest, releasing some of his resentment toward her. He’d been right—there was much more to Erin Powell than she was willing to reveal.

She rose from her knees and reached out, grasping Kent’s arm to pull him from the room. He could have resisted her effort to give him the bum’s rush, but he followed, admiring the swing of her narrow hips beneath her cotton pajama bottoms. Instead of a matching top, she wore an old gray sweatshirt.

She didn’t speak until they’d left the hall and returned to the living room. “You need to leave,” she told him. Although she kept it low, her voice vibrated with anger. “You shouldn’t have come here. You have no right to barge into my home.”

“You just called me a friend,” he reminded her with a grin.

Her eyes narrowed with irritation. “I lied.”

“To your son?” Kent had to know—was the boy hers? With the similarity between them, he had to be.

“You have no right to interfere in my life,” she protested as she headed straight to the door and opened it. “Where I live, who I live with is none of your business.”

“You made it mine with every venomous word you wrote about me.” He closed his hand over hers and pressed the door closed. “You’re my business now, Erin, so I’m going to find out everything there is to know about you.”

She turned toward him, her eyes wide. “You can’t—”

“I can,” he assured her. “Despite what you think, I’m still a real cop.”

“Have you forgotten a little thing called freedom of the press?” she asked. “I won’t stop writing about you. You can’t intimidate me.”

“No, I can’t,” he agreed. “Unless you have something to hide, something you don’t want me to find out.”