Read My Hero for Free Online

handed him the laptop case. “And this?” She set her carry-on bag at his feet. “Thanks. I appreciate it. I'll be right back.”
    “I'll be right here,” he said.
    She was so tiny that Cal lost sight of her once she edged into the flow of passengers making their way toward the main terminal. He located an empty chair and sat, laptop on lap, carry-on bag beside him, hero turned baggage handler.
    In a stall in the ladies' room, Holly stomped on the flush handle so hard she nearly broke it off. Of all the chicken-hearted things she'd ever done in her life, rushing away from Calvin Griffin the way she just had probably topped the list.
    After the near miracle of actually finding the man who matched the photograph in the crowd at the gate, she'd drawn in a calming breath, walked up to greet him, and then promptly panicked.
    She pummeled the soap dispenser at the sink now, trying to figure out what had just happened to her, deciding it had nothing whatsoever to do with Calvin Griffin, and everything to do with her native state. Airports all looked pretty much the same, but one glance at the people milling around the gate had proven without a doubt that this airport was in Texas where the Stetson still ruled, where shirts tended to snap instead of button, where “Howdy” was the greeting of choice.
    For one unsettling moment, it seemed as if she'd never left at all. She was almost afraid to speak to Calvin Griffin for fear the first word out of her mouth would be Howdy. She was reluctant to look into the mirror over the sink right now for fear of seeing herself at seventeen. God. She was half afraid to turn around for fear that Rod Serling would be standing back by the handicapped stall.
    Producer Holly Hicks boarded a plane in Newark believing she would safely arrive in Houston in a matter of two and a half hours. What she didn't know, however, was that the destination on her ticket was clearly marked
The Twilight Zone.
    Do do do do, do do do do.
    After punching the knob on the hand dryer, Holly stood there telling herself she was being stupid and really, really overreacting. She was back in Texas, sure, but she wasn't going to
stay,
for heaven's sake. This wasn't a permanent assignment. She'd get her story, set up potential interviews, scout out a few locations for film—it would take a week if she was lucky, two weeks tops—and then she'd be on her way back to New York.
    Texas, after all, wasn't a giant pool of quicksand that was going to suck her back in. It wasn't flypaper, for God's sake. It was just a state. A big piece of geography. Okay, maybe it was also a state of mind. But more than anything, it was the past. Her future was in New York.
    When the dryer cut off, she headed out of the rest room, realizing she wouldn't need a picture to find Calvin Griffin this time. The black and white photo didn't do him justice. It didn't capture the incredible blue of his eyes. She'd noticed that the moment he had taken off his shades. Those eyes, set deep within a nest of sexy crinkles, were an astonishing hue, somewhere between periwinkle and cornflower. They were truly beautiful.
    The rest of him wasn't so bad either. For somebody still recuperating from a serious injury, the Secret Service agent looked extremely fit. Even his gray suit couldn't conceal the fact that he was muscular and required no extra padding in the shoulders. Rather than pale and sickly, his face was burnished from the sun. His hair was sun-tipped, too, a lovely light brown, just a shade or two removed from blond, and a tad longer than in the photograph.
    Her professional eye told her that Calvin Griffin's athletic good looks would be a boon to her piece. They could shoot him up close, really tight, to get the full effect of those marvelous eyes and the deep creases that parenthesized his finely shaped mouth, assuming of course that her “hero” would agree to go on camera.
    Holly caught sight of him then, sitting just about where she'd left him with