The Reluctant Hero

Chapter Two

Dawn was coming over Lake Lanier.

The sight never ceased to amaze Derek Kane, which was why, he supposed, he automatically woke up at this time every morning. He liked to see that golden sun coming up through the trees, its rays spreading out over the water. It reaffirmed that at least for a few precious minutes everything was right in God’s world.

Maybe that was why rainy days got to him so much. That and the fact that if it rained, he didn’t get much work done.

But today Derek didn’t have to worry about rain. From the looks of that sunrise, there wouldn’t be a cloud in the sky and he’d be able to get his landscaping and yard work assignments completed.

Taking another sip of the strong coffee he’d brewed earlier, Derek closed his Bible and reached down past the deck chair to rub the nose of his faithful companion, a German shepherd aptly named Lazarus because Derek had literally saved the dog from being put to sleep a few years ago.

“Ready for our run, boy?”

The black-and-tan animal jumped to attention, his big tongue hanging out in a drooling acknowledgment. When that didn’t bring his master to his feet, Lazarus barked and wagged his tail in the air.

“Okay, okay. Sorry I’m moving kinda slow this morning. I had a late night, you know.”

Lazarus tried one more trick. He flopped down on the planks of the big deck, then rolled over for a belly rub, his black eyes filled with what he obviously hoped was sadness and despair.

“You’re pathetic,” Derek said, grinning as he, too, plopped down on the deck next to the dog, then proceeded to rub Lazarus for all he was worth. “How’s that?”

The dog seemed content to stay that way all day.

“Now look who’s lazy,” Derek replied. Bringing his hand up to the dog’s long neck, he absently continued scratching and rubbing the coarse fur.

“I met a woman last night, Laz,” he said, knowing he could tell the dog anything and it wouldn’t get repeated. “A woman I see every night on the evening news.” He shrugged against the deck planks. “Actually, she’s all over the place, everywhere in Atlanta, on billboards, on the sides of buses, in ads in the newspaper, a well-known face. And unfortunately, I had to run upon her near a dark alleyway while she tried to fend off two thugs twice her size.”

To save a helpless, homeless man, Derek silently reminded himself. Stephanie Maguire had been trying to help a stranger. And because of that one brave act, he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind.

Not through the long, tiring wait in the emergency room of Grady Hospital, not through the endless paperwork and the necessary questions later at the police station, and certainly not through the long trip back home a couple of hours ago.

She was beautiful. Every man in metro Atlanta and the surrounding counties could see that. And they all got to view her lovely face each night as she reported the news across the airwaves. Her hair was long and wavy, fluffed out around her face and shoulders in a feminine style that somehow didn’t match her hard-hitting attitude when she delivered the news each night. Stephanie Maguire always looked a little windblown, as if she’d just come rushing in off the street to deliver her piece. Which she probably had. But she delivered with precision and accuracy, her stories in-depth, her eyes wide open.

And about those eyes.

Derek knew all about those eyes. Blue green and big, as mysterious as the lake waters, and just as rich and full of depth. As the old saying went, a man could drown in those eyes.

But not this man. No, sir.

Derek pushed himself up off the deck, then whistled to Lazarus. “C’mon, boy. Let’s get that run started. We’ve got lots of work ahead of us today.”

And lots of turmoil to work off on a long, tough jog.

Derek just hoped that Stephanie Maguire would heed his warning and keep him and his so-called heroic deed off the evening news. He didn’t need or want the publicity. He didn’t want people nosing into his life, or second-guessing his motives.

He’d had that once, but never again.

Not even for beautiful, popular newshound Stephanie Maguire.

As usual, the World Network Television newsroom was buzzing like a well-oiled machine. Stephanie glanced around at the action—people busy talking on the phone, busy arguing with leads and checking out sources, or arguing with editors and producers—her adrenaline kicking in with each screech of the newswire, with each beep of the humming computers, with each beat of her heart.

She loved her work. Loved it with a passion that bordered on obsession, loved it because it brought her life and hope and a sense of accomplishment.

But this morning she had to admit she was tired. It had been a late night last night. Hours after she’d left the scene of the mugging, she’d lain awake in her downtown efficiency apartment, the sounds of never-ending traffic soothing and steady way down below, wondering if that old man was all right. Wondering who Derek Kane was and why he refused to be acknowledged as a hero.

And wondering why Derek Kane had gotten to her so much.

The homeless man’s name was Walter Griffin. He sometimes stayed in a shelter not too far from where he’d been attacked, but with spring just around the corner, Walter had ventured back out onto the street to sleep. And he’d been almost beaten to death because of it.

She’d already interviewed him early this morning from his hospital bed, a camera crew taping his every word. Even though Mr. Griffin could barely remember what had actually happened, he’d be all right. But he’d have to stay in the hospital for a few days due to a concussion, two cracked ribs and several lacerations to his face and hands.

Stephanie had promised to check back with him, but in the meantime, she also wanted to find Derek Kane. She needed his comments to finish out the story. And she needed to know more about him.

“You look like you’re onto something,” Claire Cook said as she leaned over Stephanie’s cluttered desk to hand her a bagel and a latte from the coffee shop downstairs. “Your eyes are positively sparkling.” Pushing lightly at Stephanie’s navy wool jacket, she said, “C’mon, give it up, Maguire. What are you working on?”

“Nothing,” Stephanie admitted as she tore the plastic lid off her double latte, then poured the frothy mocha contents into her favorite Do It Now coffee mug. She refused to drink out of foam cups. “Exactly nothing.”

“Exactly something,” Claire retorted. Scooting into a nearby rolling desk chair, she pulled up beside Stephanie, her green eyes bright with anticipation and her short red hair standing on end across her head. “I know that look.”

Stephanie tore off a hunk of blueberry bagel, then sighed before popping it into her mouth. Between bites she said, “I thought I had a story—I was involved in a mugging last night—”

“Oh? Are you all right?” Claire scanned her face, obviously checking for bumps and bruises.

“I wasn’t mugged, but I saw it happening. An old homeless man named Walter Griffin—these two young boys, juveniles with previous truancy and vandalism records, according to the police report, were beating him to a pulp right there off Peachtree.”

“And you intervened.” It was a statement, based, Stephanie guessed, on the fact that the veteran news producer knew her reporters well.

“I had to,” Stephanie said, shrugging her shoulders by way of defense. “Nobody else would—including your wonder boy, Jonathan Delmore.”

Claire perked up considerably, her head coming up so fast her multifaceted turquoise-and-silver earrings jingled against her slender neck. “You were with Jonathan last night?”

“For two excruciating hours,” Stephanie said on a wail of exaggerated pain. “Where did you find that overblown egomaniac, anyway?”

Grimacing, Claire said, “I take it, it wasn’t love at first sight.”

“Not at all. The man is so stuck on himself, he could be patented as the new wonder glue. Anyway, we’d just left the restaurant, thankfully, and I was looking for a cab, when we saw these two overgrown adolescents mugging and beating this old man. I tried to get Jonathan to go with me to help them, but he refused! He went back into the restaurant, he later said to get help, while I called the police and screamed for them to stop.”

“And then you waited from a safe distance?” The question was full of hope, but Claire’s expression said she already knew the answer.

“No, I ran toward them, shouting at them. They were kicking him and pounding him—I had to make them quit.”

Claire took one of Stephanie’s hands in hers. “You’ve got to stop trying to be a hero, honey. You can’t save all of them, you know that.”

Stephanie looked down at Claire’s dainty little wrinkled hand, covering hers. Claire wore several rings of various shapes and sizes. Stephanie focused on a bright topaz pinkie ring, unable to look at her friend’s face. “But I could see it in my mind, Claire. I could see my father all over again.”

“What happened to your father was a tragedy, Stef, but that doesn’t mean you have to throw yourself into every crime that’s committed on the streets of Atlanta. One day, something terrible might happen to you, and then what would your mother do?”

“I know, I know,” Stephanie said, her bagel cold in her hand. “And I’m careful—you know that. I did call the police last night, but I just couldn’t let it happen again. Not to that helpless old man.”

Claire patted her hand, then let go. “Okay, so what happened? Did you stop it, or did the police get there in time?”

Stephanie chewed another bit of bagel, then sipped her lukewarm latte. “That’s when he came out of the shadows, like some caped avenger.” Shaking her head, she looked up at Claire at last. “I tell you, Claire, I’d never seen anything like it. He reminded me of my father—Daddy would have done exactly the same thing.”

“Who? Who helped you last night?”

Stephanie threw down the leftover half of her bagel, then pushed both hands through her unruly hair. “His name is Derek Kane. He’s a man—”

“I gathered that much,” Claire said, a wry smile moving across her freckled face. “And apparently he came to your rescue?”

“He did,” Stephanie admitted, bobbing her head again. “He just stepped out of the shadows and told the muggers he was going to stop them and then…well, after talking to them didn’t work, he rushed one of them and sent him flying. Then he turned around and kicked the other one right in the stomach. The whole exchange lasted less than a minute, and then he had them up against the wall.”

Claire blew a breath up on her spiky bangs, causing them to flutter across her forehead. “Okay, so you two played Starsky and Hutch? So why aren’t you writing the story for the noon news?”

“Because Mr. Kane refused to be interviewed.”

“That’s never stopped you before.”

“He made it very clear. The man doesn’t want to be bothered.”

“Like I said, that’s never stopped you before.”

Stephanie shot her friend a grin then. “No, it hasn’t. That’s why I’m putting together the story, with an anonymous hero as my focus. I hope we can run it tonight at six and eleven. And in the meantime, I’ve got research digging to find all the Derek Kanes listed in Atlanta and the surrounding vicinity. I intend to track him down and find out why he doesn’t want to be in the limelight.”

“Intriguing,” Claire said, maneuvering her chair back to the desk across from Stephanie’s. “A man with something to hide is forced into the role of a Good Samaritan, huh?”

“I’m beginning to think that,” Stephanie replied. “And if Derek Kane is hiding something, I intend to be the one to find out what it is.”

“Tell me something, kid,” Claire said, leaning a hip against the corner of Stephanie’s desk. “Was this Derek Kane young and attractive, or old and feeble?”

“He was…gorgeous,” Stephanie blurted out before she could catch herself. Quickly she added, “Of course, it was dark and he stayed in the shadows for the most part, but—”

“But you’re interested?”

“No, no. Not in him as a man. He was too snarly, too…” She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something awfully familiar about Derek Kane, besides the way his actions had reminded her of her sweet father. And that something had been eluding her all night and morning. Maybe that was why she had such an incredible urge to find the man and get to the bottom of his story.

“So what did he look like?”

Stephanie crossed a long navy-stockinged leg, then watched the wide pleats of her matching skirt settle over her knee. “Dark hair—kind of shaggy, leather jacket, cowboy boots, jeans…and from what I could tell…the most incredible gray eyes—deep gray.”

“Wow.” Claire stared down at her, her green eyes shifting like a cursor on a computer screen. “Our man Kane does sound intriguing. Maybe he’s a movie extra or stunt man, or maybe even a movie star. Hollywood is always making films on the streets of Atlanta.”

Stephanie shook her head. “Oh, no. This man definitely shuns the spotlight. I doubt he has anything to do with Hollywood. Maybe…maybe he’s a detective! He did say he’d been to a lawyer’s office nearby.”

“Honey, from your description, I’d say he’s dangerous, at any rate.”

“Yes, you can be sure of that,” Stephanie told her boss as she uncrossed her legs and pushed her chair back from her desk.

“Too dangerous?” Claire asked, rising to get on with her busy day. “I mean, too dangerous to consider getting to know on a personal level, of course.”

“Yes. Tall, dark and definitely dangerous. And not my type.”

“Sounds exactly like your type.” Claire threw the comment over her shoulder as she waved. “Keep me posted—on the story, that is.”

“I will,” Stephanie promised, ignoring Claire’s suggestive look. And I will find Derek Kane and I will find out what he’s hiding.

She told herself it was all about getting the story. That was her goal, after all. To get the story, find out the truth, expose corruption, save the day.

But you couldn’t save your father, could you, Stef?

No, because she’d been too young to understand how to save him, to even to begin to understand his death.

Putting those thoughts out of her mind, Stephanie looked at the Bible verse her mother, Vanessa, had cross-stitched for her the Christmas after her father had died.

“The just shall live by faith.”

Romans, chapter one, verse seventeen.

Stephanie read that verse each time she sat down at her desk, but she remembered that justice didn’t always seem fair. But, as Vanessa would remind her time and time again, she didn’t have to depend on justice alone, as long as she had her faith, too.

“My father lived by faith,” she whispered now. “And he died trying to bring about justice.”

Where was the fairness in that? Stephanie had to wonder. Her mother believed faith and justice could work hand in hand. Stephanie still had her doubts.

But it had worked last night. She’d tried to save Walter Griffin. And she’d asked God to send her a hero, someone strong and true, as her father, Donald, had always been.

But then along came Derek Kane.

A reluctant hero.

And a man she couldn’t seem to get out of her mind.

Because of the story.

Or because as Claire had sensed, there was more to the story. Much more. Stephanie had to admit she was intrigued by much more than just the facts. She wanted to know what had made Derek Kane so bitter, so antisocial, so unwilling to be recognized for his good deed.

“And I won’t stop until I find out what it is,” Stephanie told herself as she booted up her computer. “There can’t be that many men in Atlanta named Derek Kane. He should be easy to track down.”

Chapter Three

Derek slowly tracked the shovel through the rich, moist loam of the flower bed he was building for Miss Nadine Hamilton. Miss Nadine, as she had graciously suggested he address her the first time they’d met years ago, was eighty years old, petite and so loaded with old Atlanta money that Derek doubted the woman even knew how much she was really worth. She came from a lineage that dated back to well before the Civil War, and her hair was a silvery blue, as blue as her blue blood, Derek guessed.

On second thought, Miss Nadine probably knew down to the penny how much money she had, since she scrutinized each and every flower, shrub and bag of manure Derek had ordered to finish her spring garden in time for the annual Azalea Pilgrimage her church group had organized many, many years ago as a means of “helping those less fortunate.”

Derek liked working for Miss Nadine. She was one of his favorite clients. She kept him busy, kept him on his toes and always managed to lighten his day with her words of advice or her analysis of life in general. She could quote whole passages of Shakespeare, and whole books of the Bible, but she spoke only when she felt the need to get her message across.

Derek heard one of the tall French doors of the house opening and looked up to find Miss Nadine coming toward him. Her morning inspection of his work, no doubt.

“Land sakes, Mr. Kane—” she insisted on calling him Mr. Kane “—when did the price of fertilizer go up so high?” she called out, her tiny veined hands on her hips, her wrinkled pink face twisted in a frown of disapproval.

Derek dropped his shovel, then, to peek up at her, lifted a cluster of the ageless Confederate jasmine trailing along a pretty latticework arbor. She was standing above him on the elaborate circular brick veranda that bordered the back of her twenty-room mansion in one of the oldest, most prestigious neighborhoods in Atlanta—Buckhead.

As she petted Lazarus on the head, she pointed with the other hand to the nearby bags of fertilizer he’d picked up at the local nursery earlier. “I can’t afford much more of this stuff, and still be able to pay you, too, you hear me now?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Derek called, waving a hand. “I’ll try to keep things under budget.”

“Well, see that you do.” Cooing to Lazarus, she added in a huffy voice, “And don’t let this overgrown mutt mess up any of your handiwork, you hear?”

Derek had to grin. Miss Nadine knew his one stipulation—Lazarus came to work with Derek, and that was that. The dog was trained to stay where he was told. Besides, he was too lazy to go digging for bones. He wouldn’t dare venture into any flower beds.

And both Derek and Miss Nadine knew that.

Even though Miss Nadine looked as stern as a schoolmarm standing there in her crepe floral dress and immaculate bone-colored pumps, he could see the twinkle in her blue eyes even from this distance. Miss Nadine liked to complain about everything from the weather to the state of the world to how broke she was, but Derek had been her landscaper for over four years now, and he knew that when he was finished, Miss Nadine would not only pay him, but she would give him a big tip to boot.

“How’s life treating you, Miss Nadine?” he asked, if for no other reason than simply to hear her cultured, ladylike voice carrying out over the cool spring morning.

“Life is a constant mystery, Mr. Kane,” she replied as she carefully made her way down the circular steps leading out to the sprawling backyard of her estate. “I suppose, however, that I can’t complain on such a lovely day as this. The good Lord truly saved this one up for us, didn’t he?”

“I believe so, yes, ma’am,” Derek replied as he plucked and pruned the yellow buds of the fragrant jasmine. “I needed a pretty day, too. He sent it right on time.”

Miss Nadine pinned him with her big baby blues. “Did you go gallivanting last night, young man?”

“Gallivanting?” Derek gave her a wry smile. “I think I’m too old for gallivanting, don’t you?”

“Hmmph. Thirty-two and already calling yourself old? Wait until you get to be my age. And you didn’t answer my question.”

Derek didn’t want to explain to Miss Nadine Hamilton, of the Atlanta Hamiltons, that he’d spent the better part of last night in a hospital waiting room, taking care of a homeless man who’d been beaten on the street. And he especially didn’t want to explain how he’d made a special trip to the police station in the middle of the night to give a complete statement, in private and with the understanding that Derek’s identity would not be made public. He had enough to worry about with Stephanie Maguire hot on the story.

It wouldn’t do to tell Miss Nadine—she’d repeat the entire story to the whole garden club before noon. “And yes, it was my yardman, my yardman, I’m telling you, who helped the poor, lost soul.”

Derek didn’t mind being referred to as a yardman. That was his job, after all, and one he took very seriously. He just didn’t want Miss Nadine or any of his other clients to get wind of what had happened in downtown Atlanta last night. Because then they might find out the truth; then he might have to give up his safe, secure, anonymous life here in Atlanta and move on. And he couldn’t do that.

“I had a long night, that’s for sure,” he told the tiny lady now. “Didn’t get much sleep, but I wasn’t misbehaving. Just had some things to sort through.”

“Personal things, I reckon.” She reached up to help him pluck the faded jasmine blossoms, her lips pursed, her expression devoid of the acute interest Derek could see in her eyes.

“Yes, ma’am. Just business. I had a meeting with my lawyer—getting some finances in order, seeing about investments and such. Left me pretty tired.”