Once a Hero

“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.”