Free An Accidental Hero by Loree Lough Page B

night so many years ago! Reid swallowed, hard. Maybe he’d be lucky and there were two Lamont Londons in Amarillo, because if this one was—
    “I don’t have all day,” the man griped. “Who is this?”
    He’d recognize that angry Texas drawl in a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd at New York’s Penn Station. And why wouldn’t he, when he’d been hearing it in his nightmares for years. “I, uh, I’m calling about your daughter, sir,” he said. “Cammi wants you to know she’s fine, but she needs you to—”
    “Cammi? Where is she? And if she’s fine, why can’t she talk to me herself?” Lamont demanded.
    Reid could almost picture him, big and broad as a grizzly and every bit as threatening. “She’s kinda groggy right now.”
    “Groggy?” Concern hardened his tone even more. “Groggy from what? Confound it, boy, I want some answers, and I want ’em now! ”
    “Then, you’d best get yourself over here and talk to her doctor.” Reid told Lamont the name of the hospital, rattled off Cammi’s room number and snapped the phone shut. He felt a mite guilty, endingthe conversation so abruptly. After what Lamont had gone through on the night of his wife’s death, being summoned to a hospital this way would surely awaken bad memories.
    It awakened a few haunting memories for Reid, too, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention as he remembered that night—Lamont’s menacing glare, the hostile accusations he’d hurled outside the O.R.
    Even at fourteen, Reid understood why Lamont blamed him for the accident that had clearly been Rose’s fault. Grief and sorrow had stolen the man’s ability to reason things out, erased rational thought from his mind. Years later, Reid understood it all even better. If he had spent years sharing life, love and children with the girl of his dreams, and a pickup-driving boy had ended it all, well, in Lamont’s boots, Reid would have been a hundred times harder on that knock-kneed young’un!
    Images of the scene shook him more than he cared to admit. But Cammi needed his calm reassurances now, so he shoved the black thoughts to the back of his mind. He pocketed the phone.
    “I expect your dad will be here in…” He searched for a phrase, something that would convince Cammi her father would soon be here for her. Martina was fond of saying “quick as a bunny,” so he tried it on for size. The moment the silly, feminine-sounding words were out of his mouth, Reid cringed.
    It was so good to see her smile that he couldn’t help mirroring her expression. “What’re you grinning about?”
    “You’re a very sweet man, Reid Alexander.”
    Sweet? He’d been called a lot of things in his day, but “sweet” wasn’t one of them.
    “Because something tells me ‘quick as a bunny’ isn’t part of your usual cowboy vocabulary.” She paused to lick her dry lips, then added a sleepy “So, thanks.”
    Thanks? For what? he wondered, holding a straw to her mouth. “Slow an’ easy, now,” he said as she sipped. After returning the mint-green cup to the night table, he finger-combed dark bangs from her forehead. “What-say you close your eyes, try and catch a few winks before your dad gets here.”
    She tilted her head, making him want to gather her close, hold her so long and so tight that nothing could ever get close enough to hurt her again.
    “Thanks,” she repeated.
    This time he asked his question aloud. “Thanks for what?”
    “Oh, just…” Cammi shrugged. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been there for me today, that’s what.”
    Her voice still hadn’t regained its lyrical quality and her lower lip trembled when she spoke, he noticed. Had she overheard the doctors and nurses discussing her case? Did she already know she’d lost the baby, or merely sense it?
    “I have a lot of explaining to do once my dad gets here,” she said on the heels of a ragged sigh.
    He continued stroking her hair, amazed by its silky texture,