The Reluctant Hero

“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.”

“Investments?” Miss Nadine’s tiny head came up. “Mr. Hamilton, rest his soul, would have been thrilled to help you out there. He was one of Atlanta’s top brokers in his day, you know. Did I ever tell you that?”

Relieved that she’d found something other than his own personal life to focus on, Derek encouraged her with a smile. “You’ve mentioned it a time or two. I guess he was pretty successful, huh?”

“Successful enough to leave me quite comfortable in my old age,” she stated with all the dignity and discretion that befitted her stature in life. “That is, if my yardman doesn’t rob me blind buying fertilizer and landscaping timbers.”

Derek saw the smile curving her feathery lips, then grinned over at her. “Can’t take it with us, can we now, Miss Nadine?”

“I reckon we can’t,” she replied, chuckling. Reaching over to pat him on the arm, she added, “You sure do fine work, Mr. Kane. I can’t fault you there.”

“Thank you.” Derek couldn’t help but feel a bit of pride. Miss Nadine rarely gave out compliments. “It’s coming along just fine. We’ll have it in tip-top shape for the reception to kick off the Azalea Pilgrimage, I promise.”

Miss Nadine turned to head back to the house. “I know I can count on you. About a week—the azaleas will peak in early April, according to my calculations.” She waved over her shoulder. “I’ve got committee work to attend to. Come by the kitchen before you leave. Cook will have you a bite to eat prepared, and a treat for that mutt.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Derek watched as the old lady walked with straight-backed precision across the wide veranda. She really was a sweetheart, always feeding him and fussing at him and telling him he needed “to settle down with a good Christian woman and have a passel of babies.”

Derek appreciated Miss Nadine’s well-meaning intentions, but he’d long ago given up on being a family man. What woman would want to get involved with the likes of him, anyway?

That thought brought him back to Stephanie Maguire. Of all the women in the world, why did she have to be the one he’d run into last night? And why had he stopped to get involved in the first place?

“I should have kept on walking,” he mumbled to himself as he picked up his shovel and started slinging dirt with a fast, furious pace. “I knew better. I knew.”

But Derek also knew that he couldn’t have just walked away from the scene spread out before him on the shadowed street last night.

He’d left his lawyer’s office, discouraged but still determined to get his life back in order, only to discover two kids—teenagers at that—attacking a helpless old man. And…a beautiful, slender woman, with nothing to protect her but a cell phone and a purse, screaming at them to let the man alone.

Anyone else would have done the same thing, Derek reminded himself.

Or would they?

He’d seen the darker side of life; he’d seen the worst the world had to offer. For the most part, there was good in the world. But when the evil crept in, it devoured everything in its path.

Derek had seen that kind of evil, that kind of despair. He’d witnessed it down to his very soul, and, soul weary, he’d walked away and found a safe haven amid trees, flowers and earth. He’d needed to find his soul again, to find his faith again, to find God again, and becoming a landscaper had helped him with that.

It had been a natural transition. He’d grown up on a farm in south Georgia, had worked the land before he’d headed off to greener pastures, before he’d taken on a job that had almost brought him to the brink of madness.

Derek stopped shoveling and looked out over the vista of Miss Nadine’s tranquil garden. The azaleas stood in thick clusters underneath the tall pines, some of the bushes reaching six or seven feet in the air, their satiny green leaves bowing gently in the morning breeze, their colorful fuchsia-and salmon-tipped buds just beginning to crest open.

The grass, polished and clipped, spread like a velvet blanket out over the rolling terrain. The sun played across an ancient rose garden where bees hummed greedily over the feathery red and yellow blossoms. Way down a sloping hillside, a stark white gazebo filled with wicker furniture fat with floral cushions stood covered by dainty trailing purple wisteria vines and delicate white-tipped Cherokee roses.

The air was filled with the sweetness of hundreds of blossoming flowers, mixed with the rich smell of fresh earth and the softer, more subtle scent of still-moist dew.

Such a peaceful, gentle spot. Such a beautiful retreat. And Derek was its caretaker.

He couldn’t, wouldn’t lose any of this. Not the fragile peace he’d found, not the respect of his clients, not the contentment of a good day’s work—he wouldn’t allow anything or anyone to take that from him.

And that included Stephanie Maguire.

Derek looked up at the billowing white clouds floating by like puffs of cotton. “Lord, I’ve tried so hard to make a new life for myself. I’ve prayed and I’ve asked for forgiveness and I believe You have heard my prayers. Don’t let it end now, Lord. Don’t let them find me.” Thinking of Stephanie Maguire again, he added, “Don’t let her find me.”

He didn’t need a reporter snooping around, nosing into his life. Even if that reporter was lovely to look at, intriguing and definitely a woman who could make him come out of his self-imposed exile.

He was safe here, in this world of earth and sky.

He didn’t want to be found, because Derek Kane knew in his heart he was nobody’s hero.

And he surely didn’t want the whole world to come to that same conclusion. But if Stephanie Maguire pursued her story, if she tracked him down and insisted on putting him on the evening news, that’s exactly what would happen.

And his life would be destroyed all over again.

“We’ll just have to start all over again, from the bottom up.”

A long, low moan followed Stephanie Maguire’s statement.

“Alonzo, are you complaining?” Stephanie asked, her hand pulling through her mushed hair as she leaned forward on her cluttered desk. “You know how I feel about whining, now, don’t you, Alonzo? And especially from a Georgia Tech journalism student.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Alonzo Sullivan scratched his nose, then tossed back his short dreadlocks, his brown eyes opening wide at the woman who sat staring over at him. “I’m not complaining, Stef. Not one bit.”

Stephanie sent the intern a bleary-eyed stare. “Funny, I sure thought I heard a loud moan coming from your direction.”

“Just stretching my throat muscles,” Alonzo replied, a huge grin cresting on his face. “But…do we really have to do all this research again? We’ve checked on every Derek Kane in Atlanta, haven’t we? And…it is almost midnight.”

Stephanie nodded her head slowly, exercising tired shoulder muscles in the process. “Do you have early classes tomorrow?”

Alonzo lifted a brow, as if debating whether to tell her the truth or not. “No, I don’t have any classes in the morning, but—”

“So, you can stay and help me go back over all these printouts from the DMV and compare them to the names we’ve gathered, right?”

Alonzo slowly nodded. “Yeah, sure. Who needs sleep.”

“I’ve told you a hundred times,” Stephanie replied, playfully slapping the twenty-year-old on the shoulder, “reporters never sleep.”

“Why did I have to major in journalism, anyway?” Alonzo mumbled. Reaching for the phone book, he shot her a steady brown gaze. “And why is it so important that you find this man? You already did the main story—without him.”

“I want to interview him,” Stephanie told her confused helper. “I was involved in this…mugging and Derek Kane…well, he saved a man’s life. He’s a hero, and I think he should be recognized as such. I think people need to know that there are still some heroes left in the world.”

Stephanie watched as Alonzo started organizing all the Derek Kanes, Derek Canes and Derek Cains they’d found on the Internet and in the phone book. After comparing those to the records they’d found through the Department of Motor Vehicles, they’d called most of them, but so far, no one fit the bill of the Derek Stephanie remembered from two nights ago. But she wasn’t ready to give up yet.

“This isn’t your usual type of story,” Alonzo pointed out as he once again went down the list. “You usually go for the more hard-hitting news.”

Stephanie scanned her own list. “Yeah, well, I guess I want to interview Mr. Kane because he…he seemed so reluctant. Here’s a man who risked his own life to come to the aid of someone else, yet he doesn’t want anyone to know about his good deed.”

“That is strange.”

“Yes, and it got me curious. Plus, I just think it would make a good human interest piece.”

Alonzo rolled his eyes, then pointed a finger at her. “You think there’s more to this, right?”

Stephanie had to laugh. “Alonzo, you’re getting too good at this job. Yes, I certainly think there’s more to this. I can’t get this man out of my mind.”

“How about the police?” Alonzo suggested. “The officer who arrested the youths? Have you talked to him?”

“Several times,” Stephanie replied. “For some reason, the arresting officer is staying mum on the subject of Mr. Kane—which makes me even more suspicious. Of course, if we have to testify as witnesses, I’ll see Kane at the hearing, I’m sure. But I don’t want to wait that long. This story is fresh and I want to interview him now. But the police haven’t really been any help.” She grinned then. “Although I do have a copy of the police report, of course. The teenagers are being held as juveniles, so they’ll be arraigned in a couple of days. I don’t want to wait until then, because I have a feeling our Mr. Kane might not even show up for the hearing.”

“So we have to dig through all these names again?”

“Yes, we do. And call them.”

“Now?”

Stephanie glanced at the clock. “It is late. Okay, we’ll go back over the list and eliminate the ones we know are definitely not our man.”

“Like the seventy-year-old Derek Cain who proposed to you over the phone?”

“Yes. Nice, sweet man, but not my type.”

“Well, out of the twenty-two we’ve called, seven have asked for your hand in marriage, and about three wanted to know if you’d live in sin with them.”

“None of them would be our man,” Stephanie replied, ignoring the sometimes flattering, sometimes disturbing adulation she received from a lot of her male viewers. “This particular Derek Kane acted as if he loathed the ground I walked upon.”

“So naturally he’s the one you’re going after, right?”

Stephanie grinned again as Alonzo fell back into his assigned task with no more complaints. He was a good kid, and a hard worker. He’d make a good reporter one day. Right now, Alonzo and the other interns got stuck with the grunt work, but then, reporting was ninety percent grunt work, anyway.

And she should know. She’d taken some pretty big risks just to get to a story. So going after a man who didn’t want to be found was nothing new for her. Only, this man was different.

She was attracted to this man. Which was silly. She didn’t know him, had barely seen his face. Yet…it was there, staring her in the face, keeping her edgy and impatient. She wanted to know more about Derek Kane, because she was interested in him.

Putting that thought out of her mind, Stephanie helped Alonzo reorganize the list, then sent him home.

Sitting there in the almost empty press room, Stephanie once again went down the list. They’d called all the Kanes in the metro Atlanta area, and several in the outlying areas. He had to be out there, somewhere.

Thinking back over that night, she tried to remember everything Derek Kane had said or done. The clues were there. She had to put them together.

“Where are you?” she asked now, her gaze moving down the list. “Maybe that’s not even your real name.”

She was about to call it a night when her gaze hit on one address in particular. They’d called that number earlier, but no one had answered, and there hadn’t been an answering machine either, so she hadn’t been able to listen to the voice. Call it a hunch, call it woman’s intuition, but this address stood out in Stephanie’s mind for some reason.

“Flowery Branch, GA.”

Flowers? Flowers. Then she remembered—he’d said something about landscaping. Was he a landscaper?

“Think, Stephanie.” Then it hit her. She’d been eavesdropping when Derek had given personal information to the officer. Now two details of that conversation stood out in her mind. Landscaper…and lake.

“Would a reclusive man who claims he’s a landscaper live at a place called Flowery Branch?”

He possibly could, if that place happened to be near a lake.

Flowery Branch was a little town near Lake Lanier, about forty miles northeast of Atlanta.

“The landscaper who lives on the lake.”

As she sat there, her heart picked up its tempo. One of the DMV printouts matched this address. And the physical description matched perfectly, too. “This could be him.”

But she needed to be sure.

Picking up the phone, Stephanie called the Atlanta Police Department and waited as the operator connected her to one of her most reliable sources on the night shift. If the arresting officer didn’t want to divulge anything about Derek Kane, she’d just have to resort to other tactics.

“I need a favor,” she explained, then after giving her friend the details, she said, “just verify this for me. Just verify that his occupation is landscaper and that his address is Flowery Branch, Georgia. That’s all I need.”

Stephanie hung up, then waited. If this hunch panned out, she’d save herself and Alonzo a whole lot of trouble in the morning.

The phone rang five minutes later, jarring Stephanie out of her erratic musings.

“Derek Kane—that’s K-a-n-e. Thirty-two years old, owns his own landscaping business in Flowery Branch. Gave a complete statement at scene and then again at headquarters, and has requested to remain anonymous.” There was a pause, then the voice said, “So you never heard this from me.”

“Of course,” Stephanie replied. “Thanks.”

She ignored the little twinge of guilt she felt at having forced her friend to delve into police files.

“I only asked for verification,” she reminded herself as she grabbed her suit jacket and headed to the elevator.

“And now I have it.”

And now, why bother calling ahead? The element of surprise always worked best in these situations.

First thing in the morning, Stephanie intended to take a little road trip up to Lake Lanier.

To a place called Flowery Branch.

Where she hoped she’d come face-to-face with a man named Derek Kane.

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