Holding Out For A Hero Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  Dear Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  Tanner Jones had arrived.

  His eyes were even bluer than in his picture, Dori noticed. When she’d first seen his ad in Texas Men, she’d thought he was gorgeous. Now she realized the ad hadn’t done him justice. Six feet tall, with unruly sun-streaked hair and a whipcord-lean body, Tanner was the hero Dori had been waiting for…

  He turned his gaze in her direction and heat filtered through her. She imagined candlelit evenings and rumpled bedsheets…and the two of them in each other’s arms.

  Tanner didn’t say a word, but seemed to know what she was thinking. A bold grin split his handsome face.

  “As I live and breathe, if it ain’t the famous Tanner Jones.”

  The comment was a rude awakening. Dori turned and saw her exhusband sitting on a stool by the counter. It was great while it lasted. Well, now she knew how her relationship with Tanner would work out. Jimmy Jr., would scare him away, as surely as he had all the others.

  So much for her hero…

  Dear Reader,

  In one of my favorite “Cathy” cartoons, Cathy claims to be ready for marriage, so her friend Andrea offers to set her up with a blind date. Cathy replies, “Ack! I’m ready for marriage, not dating!”

  I think Cathy would love the concept of a mail-order catalog filled with men ready to commit. It takes all the guesswork out of it. What could be more of a turn-on than pages of gorgeous hunks, each one searching for that special someone? Talk about your ultimate home shopping guide!

  When my heroine, Dori Fitzpatrick, opens a copy of Texas Men and glimpses a picture of Tanner Jones clad in a muscle shirt and a hard hat, she melts like a pat of butter on an Abilene sidewalk. The confidence in those intense blue eyes convinces her that at last she’s found her hero, the man who will put her life back to rights again. Best of all, he’s looking for someone just like her.

  I suspect you’ll fall in love with Tanner right along with Dori. I certainly did.

  Happy reading!

  Vicki Lewis Thompson

  Holding Out For A Hero

  Vicki Lewis Thompson

  For Ralfanita Overton Forman, a belated thank-you for

  befriending this city girl thirty-five years ago.

  1

  FOR THE HUNDREDTH TIME, Dori Fitzpatrick checked the wall clock. Twenty minutes to go. At exactly 9:00 p.m., Tanner Jones would walk through the door of the Double Nickel Truck Stop and Café with the power to change her life.

  Nearly all Dori’s customers knew about her date with Tanner and understood the significance of it. But nobody had brought up the subject, which only increased her nervousness. Maybe if she brought it up, her system would settle down a little.

  “The best thing about Tanner is that he’s not rich,” she announced as she moved down the red Formica counter, topping off coffee cups. She’d known most of these truckers for years and they expected a bottomless cup when they sat at her counter. It didn’t matter to them that she was about to have her life transformed on this Sunday evening in the West Texas town of Los Lobos.

  Heck Tyrrell adjusted his Peterbilt gimme cap. “Just sayin’ he ain’t rich ain’t sayin’ much, Dori.”

  “It most certainly is.” Dori emptied the pot and measured fragrant grounds into the basket for a fresh brew. “I wouldn’t marry a rich man again if he made love like an angel and looked like Mel Gibson.”

  “Not everybody with money is like Jimmy Jr.,” said the man sitting next to Heck. Travis Neff, a veteran trucker, had given Dori her first tip years ago when she’d started working at the café as a teenager.

  Dori started the coffee trickling into the pot, then turned back to Heck and Travis. “Maybe not, but I don’t care to take the chance. No rich man will run my life ever again.”

  Heck set down his cup. “But I sure think you’re making a big mistake, taking up with some ol’ boy who put his picture in a magazine just to attract women. What kinda person would do that?”

  Dori opened her mouth to reply.

  “Number five’s up,” called the cook as he shoved an order of pork chops, mashed potatoes and gravy onto the pass-through from the kitchen.

  “That’d be mine,” said Travis. He loved to eat and it showed. “For once I agree with Heck,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of you setting up a date with some stranger from East Texas.”

  “We’ve written several letters back and forth.” Dori set the steaming plate in front of Travis along with side dishes of applesauce, coleslaw and a basket of rolls. “I don’t think of him as a stranger.”

  “Letters,” Travis said with a dismissive shrug as he picked up his fork. “Anybody can write letters. Isn’t he from around Dallas somewhere? Those big-city boys are slick as hog fat, Dori. He could have a police record or be one of them left-wingers. He could be—” Travis paused and his round face turned pink “—one of them kinky types…you know what I mean.”

  Dori took a box from underneath the counter and started restocking sugar packets. “He’s a construction worker, and his letters don’t sound kinky at all. Besides, I’ve told y’all why I wrote in to the magazine. Nobody in this town will ask me out, let alone consider something more serious, and that’s the plain fact of it, Travis.”

  “Bunch of lily-livered pansies,” Travis muttered into his plate.

  “Easy for you to say. You’re married,” Heck replied in a low voice, glancing around to see who might be listening. Almost every one of the men sitting on counter stools was intent on the conversation, not to mention several others gathered in the café’s four booths. A good portion of them drove for Devaney Trucking, the town’s chief industry.

  “Aw, hell,” Heck said in a more normal voice. “Might as well get it out in the open. There’s lots of guys in this room who would take you out in a heartbeat, if they didn’t think they’d suffer the consequences.” He gave a half turn on his stool to survey the room. “Am I right?” The room was silent except for Waylon Jennings crooning from the jukebox.

  Dori didn’t need to look into the faces of the single men in the restaurant to see every man jack of them was embarrassed by the truth of what Heck had said. She cleared an empty plate from the counter and swept up crumbs with a damp rag as she talked. “Hey, I don’t expect anybody to risk his job by crossing the Devaneys. I know good and well Jimmy Jr. has threatened to fire or blackball any driver who so much as buys me an ice-cream cone. I wouldn’t let any of y’all take that chance. That’s why I decided to try this magazine thing.”

  Travis put down his fork. “Let me take a look at that magazine one more time.”

  Dori rinsed her cleaning rag in the sink and dried her hands before reaching under the counter for her copy of Texas Men, which she’d folded back permanently to the picture of Tanner Jones, East Texas construction worker. Beneath his hard hat shone the bluest eyes she’d ever seen. Tanner Jones wouldn’t be so tough to sit across from at the breakfast table every morning, she thought, her heartbeat quickening.

  “Don’t be getting any gravy on it,” she warned as she handed it to Travis. “This picture may turn out to be an heirloom for my children and grandchildren.”

  The whole counter full of men snorted at that, but she faced them down. “Y’all know that nine
is my lucky number. Tanner’s bachelor number nine in the magazine. And as if that’s not enough, that’s the September issue, and I picked it up on September the ninth.”

  “And you asked him to meet you here at nine tonight.” Travis sounded pleased with himself that he’d made the connection. “How come you didn’t make it for October ninth?”

  “I wanted to, but it didn’t fall right, with my day off being Monday. I didn’t want to have to come in to work the first day he’s m town.”

  Heck shook his head. “You’re way too superstitious, Dori Mae Fitzpatrick.”

  “Ha.” She took a piece of pie out of a clear plastic display case and brought it to one of the truckers who’d signaled to her. She remembered his favorite was apple and he smiled when she brought the right flavor. “I happen to know, Heck Tyrrell, that you have a rabbit’s foot dangling from the rearview mirror of your cab. Don’t go telling me who’s superstitious.”

  A trucker spoke up from the end of the counter. “I’ve got a lucky silver dollar from Vegas. I take that dang thing pretty near everywhere I go. Leave Dori alone about her lucky number, Heck. Everybody’s got something like that.”

  “Yeah,” Heck grumbled, “but Dori’s fixing to spend her life with some ol’ boy because he happened to be the ninth bachelor in a matchmaking magazine.”

  “I am not!” Dori moved around the counter as she added up a ticket for booth number three and placed it facedown on the table. “This first date is just a look-see,” she continued, glancing at the clock again. Ten minutes to go. “Don’t worry, I’ll put Tanner Jones through his paces. And of course, he has to be good with kids, so I’m trying him out right away on Little Jim. Tomorrow the three of us are going into Abilene.”

  “How’s that little cowpoke doing?” Travis asked, munching a roll.

  “I just picked up some new pictures.” Dori scanned her customers and made sure everyone had what they needed before she reached beneath the counter again and came up with a packet of snapshots. “Last Monday I took him to Abilene Lake. We got a little sunburned, but it was great.” She handed the packet to Travis and noticed the men from booth three coming up to the cash register. “Excuse me a minute, Travis.”

  Dori rang up the bill and delivered her standard, “Y’all come back,” before returning to where Travis and Heck were going through her twenty-four snapshots. “Isn’t he the handsomest boy in the world?”

  “Good-lookin’ tadpole,” Heck agreed. “Where’d all that red hair come from?”

  “My side.” Dori touched her brunette hair that was caught back in a net for work. “I have some red highlights, but my grandmother was a flaming redhead. And Little Jim has the spirit to go with that hair!” Dori laughed. Just thinking about her son put her in a good mood. “He has a mind of his own, all right. Those kindergarten teachers better be ready for some surprises when he shows up next fall.”

  “He’ll be in school already?” Travis handed the pictures back to her. “Seems like he was born just last month.”

  “That’s how it is with kids,” Dori said. “I’m sure your two were like that. Babies one day, all grown up the next. I just wish…” She didn’t finish the sentence. Travis, Heck and many of the men at the counter knew what Dori wished. Jimmy Jr. had taken Dori to court soon after the divorce and obtained custody on the grounds that Dori had to work and put the toddler in day care.

  If she’d insisted on a bigger settlement at the time of the divorce, she wouldn’t have had to hire someone to watch Little Jim. Her pride had essentially robbed her of her beloved son. Friends had advised her that one reasonable way to get him back was to remarry and prove to the judge that a two-parent household was a healthier environment for Little Jim. Tanner Jones was due in six minutes.

  “Say, Dori, sweetheart, what’s the chance of getting a cup of coffee down at this end of the counter?”

  Dori tensed at the sound of the familiar voice and looked down the length of the counter straight into Jimmy Jr.’s green eyes.

  Jimmy lounged on a stool, his Stetson at a rakish angle. His blond good looks were the sort to turn women’s heads, and they’d turned hers at the age of eighteen. But she’d outgrown Jimmy Jr. Her hands balled into fists. She should have guessed he’d show up tonight.

  “Heard you had some East Texas stud coming in at nine,” Jimmy said. “Thought I’d take a look at him.”

  AS HE CRUISED WEST on Interstate 20 past cotton fields and bobbing oil rigs, Tanner Jones caught the fragrance of the single rose he’d picked up in Abilene. The scent cut through a slight gas smell that told him the engine needed tuning. Considering the odometer read more than a hundred and fifty thousand miles, he was lucky the truck hadn’t broken down between here and Dallas. He hadn’t thought of that when he’d borrowed one of his employees’ pickups to make this trip. There were a lot of things he probably hadn’t thought of.

  Clothes hadn’t been a problem. He’d packed his most worn, comfortable jeans and Western shirts and left the custom-made suits in the closet. He preferred the old clothes, anyway. Sometimes he wondered if he’d be happier living the life of a construction worker. But then he’d have to work for someone else, and he’d never been very good at that.

  His independence had paid off, and he’d become one of the richest home builders in East Texas. But recently, it seemed that every woman he’d dated was only attracted to his money. Now that he’d achieved financial security he longed for the basics his parents enjoyed—a cheerful home, a loving mate, children. Ironically, money seemed to be getting in his way.

  So here he was driving an old truck to Los Lobos while his shiny new Dodge Ram sat in the garage. The man Dori Fitzpatrick would meet tonight was the real Tanner Jones, he told himself. There was nothing wrong with disguising his wealth to see if a woman could fall in love with him for himself alone. That had been his plan from the moment he’d agreed to appear in Texas Men. Nothing in the profile was untrue—just incomplete—and the picture could have been taken on any day he visited one of his construction sites.

  But when creating his plan he hadn’t figured on battling his honest streak, which ran through him a mile wide, apparently. He pacified his conscience by thinking about how thrilled Dori would be when she eventually found out he was rich. No doubt she’d forgive the white lie.

  As the miles ticked off, Tanner looked for the Los Lobos exit. Dori had instructed him to drive through town to the far side until he saw the Double Nickel Truck Stop and Café. She said he could come in on the second exit and miss the town’s main street, but she thought he should get a look at where she lived. He was willing to follow her lead, so he flipped on his turn signal at the first exit for Los Lobos, marked Business Loop.

  The town limit sign recorded a population of 8,857. Just beyond that, Tanner noticed a huge sign at the fenced entryway to a large lot full of identically painted eighteen-wheeler cabs. The sign read Devaney Trucking. Must be a gold mine, he thought. Positioned on I-20 not far from the intersection of Highway 84, the company was well placed in Texas and nearly dead center between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Tanner bet the Devaneys pretty much ran the town of Los Lobos.

  He drove past the Prairie Schooner Motel and RV Park where he had reservations for the next week, then on down the main street. The shopping basics were represented—hardware store, bank, post office, clothing store, hair salon—but Tanner figured most people drove to Abilene for major purchases. That’s where he’d take Dori for a nice dinner one night, and maybe even some live theater. If nothing looked good to him in Abilene, he could always charter a plane and…Tanner blinked and cursed softly in the darkness. He had to stop thinking like a rich man. The first time he forgot and pulled out a gold card, the ruse would be over.

  Then he began to wonder if he remembered how to court a woman without expensive dinners and extravagant gifts. Maybe this wouldn’t be quite as easy as he’d imagined. He glanced at his watch and realized it looked far too expensive for the image he was trying to giv
e. After checking the time he took it off and shoved it in the glove compartment.

  Dori had agreed to meet him at nine—no sooner and no later. She’d been very specific about that and had even confessed she’d written to him in the first place because he was the ninth bachelor in the September issue of the magazine. He hoped she wasn’t too hung up on superstition.

  Hell, this whole thing was crazy. They’d probably hate each other on sight. Maybe she’d been entranced by the hard hat and wouldn’t care for the way he looked in a worn black Stetson. And what would he talk about? He couldn’t describe his work without getting into trouble, and work had been his whole life for the past ten years. He didn’t know if he could make conversation about much else.

  As for Dori, she might have all sorts of irritating habits. She might not look anything like her picture, and he was basing a lot on that photograph. Her beauty had captured his attention first, but he’d received lots of pictures of good-looking women in the past few weeks. He’d had no way of knowing if the photos were recent or even legitimate. One woman had sent in a magazine clipping of a rising movie star and had claimed to look “just like her.”

  But Dori’s picture had seemed right to him. Especially her eyes, which were a vulnerable soft brown with a touch of sadness and a hint of smoky passion lurking in their depths.

  Tanner chuckled and shook his head. What a romantic he was. The expression he’d read as a mixture of sorrow and passion was probably nearsightedness. And all those letters she’d written about loving sunsets more than diamonds, and moonlight more than pearls, might be something she’d copied from a book, not something she truly believed.

  Neon glowed up ahead on the right side of the road, and he made out the words Double Nickel. Rows of canopied gas pumps dwarfed the small building housing the café. Several big rigs were parked nearby, along with a few cowboy Cadillacs—fancy pickups with plenty of chrome gleaming in the lights from the parking lot. Tanner’s stomach clenched as he realized Dori was inside that cozy little building waiting for him. He could still turn around and forget the whole thing. But he flipped on the right-turn signal. He’d come this far. He might as well see it through.