Once a Warrior Page 9

  Anne-Marie was moved for a different reason. She saw the regret in the depths of his dark eyes and wanted, somehow, to reach out to him. She wheeled her bicycle a little closer and laid her hand on his forearm. “To make an omelet, you have to break eggs.”

  “You’re not bitter about the damage then?” He balled his own hands into fists in his pockets, wondering if she knew that everything about her, from the way she rolled her r’s to the reassurance of his touch, was tying him in knots.

  “We’ve waited a long time for you.” Feeling his muscles tense beneath her fingers, she withdrew them and grabbed hold of the handlebar again, surprised to discover she needed the support because her knees were unsteady.

  Her simple words warmed him as the sun could not, and he suddenly felt like he was awakening from the long, violent nightmare of war.

  For this moment, he was a man at peace with himself and with his surroundings. He could hear the birds caroling in the trees. Smell the purple and the yellow wildflowers growing at his feet. For this moment, he could see blue sky overhead and the beautiful young woman standing in front of him.

  And for this moment, this brief, shining moment, he wanted that woman as he’d never wanted a woman before.

  “You said your grandfather is a doctor,” he reminded her gruffly.

  “He needs sulfanilamide powder to treat our wounded, and I . . .” Still a little squeamish about what she was asking, she squared her shoulders and forged ahead. “I thought that if your group had some to spare, I could take it to him.”

  He willed himself not to look at the soft swell of her breasts beneath her blue cotton bodice. “I could write you a note to give to the battalion surgeon.”

  “A surgeon—oui!” She hoped her voice didn’t betray her nervousness as she thought about walking through the noisy bivouac area. “And where would I find him?”

  Mike knew what he had to do. He’d wanted some privacy after spending the better part of two months cooped up in a tank with four other men, so he’d pitched his tent near the lake and away from the crowd. But sending Anne-Marie into a field full of sex-starved soldiers, he acknowledged now, would be like sending a lamb to the slaughter.

  “Why don’t I go get it for you?” he offered.

  Relief swelled through her. “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “I need to talk to my tank crew.” Most of whom, he suspected, were busy “liberating” the tall bottles of wine and the squat bottles of cognac they’d been given by the grateful French who’d lined the roads as they’d rolled through their newly-liberated villages. He took three steps away from her before he stopped and did an about-face. “Wait here, I’ll—”

  “Be right back,” she finished for him.

  “Count on it.” When she smiled at him again, Mike suddenly had the sensation of all the world slipping away so that only he and she were alone in it together in this place and at this time.

  As she watched him walk away, Anne-Marie pressed a hand to her jittery stomach. For some reason, it felt as if she had just swallowed one of the butterflies fluttering about the bird-foot violets and the genet blooming in the field. Her heart was behaving erratically, as well. It seemed to be thundering at a thousand pulses a minute.

  She attributed her strange reaction to the heat. Either that, or to the excitement of knowing that she would soon have the life-saving medicine her grandfather needed. She refused to even consider that it might be the man now carrying the wooden box back from the bivouac area who excited her so.

  How could she repay his kindness? That was what she should be concentrating on, she chided herself. Yet her unruly mind kept recapturing the memory of the taut, well-muscled torso beneath the uniform.

  Determined not to be caught staring at him, she studied the small chicken still roosting in her bicycle basket. Ordinarily, it would feed only two people. Now she decided that extra vegetables and wine would stretch it enough for three.

  * * * *

  “Tell me the name of that dish again.”

  “Coq au vin.”

  Mike didn’t even attempt to repeat it for fear of making a fool of himself. He just hopped into the jeep he’d parked at the curb and nodded his appreciation. “It was delicious.”

  “Even the turnips?” Standing on the step in front of her house, Anne-Marie wore a floral-patterned skirt, a simple white blouse and a mischievous smile.

  He grinned, remembering the surprise he’d received when he’d forked what he’d thought were mashed potatoes into his mouth and discovered they were puréed turnips. He must have made a grotesque face, because she’d flashed him a concerned glance. But then, as the turnips’ sweet, buttery taste had melted over his tongue, both his facial and his throat muscles had relaxed, and they’d gone down with surprising smoothness.

  “Even the turnips,” he admitted on a laugh.

  “And the coffee—”she splayed her slender fingers at the open collar of her blouse—“it wasn’t too bitter for you?”

  It had tasted like something out of a test tube, but he couldn’t tell her that. “No, it was fine.”

  She saw through his lie. “We can’t get good coffee yet, but soon—”

  “It was fine,” he repeated. “Really, everything was just great.”

  Dinner had been a convivial, bi-lingual affair, but now the sun had disappeared below the horizon and GIs in combat boots either sat in groups at the sidewalk café in the square or walked arm in arm with local girls along the dusky streets of the village.

  “I’m sorry the room was so dim,” Anne-Marie apologized for at least the third time since Mike had arrived. “But our electrical wires are still being repaired.”

  “The candles gave us enough light.” And he’d enjoyed watching their soft flames flicker across her face as she’d sat between him at one end of the table and her grandfather at the other, serving as their interpreter through the meal.

  She stepped down, onto the narrow sidewalk that ran past the house. “The girandole belonged to my grandmother.”

  “The what?”

  At his puzzled expression, she searched for the appropriate English word to describe the silvered bronze and crystal table accessory. “Candelabra.”

  He cocked her a grin. “Gotcha.”

  “It was a wedding present from her parents.”

  “Very pretty.” But not nearly as pretty as she was right now, Mike thought. She’d brushed out her hair, and the evening breeze was sending the honeycomb strands dancing around her face and along her neck and throat. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands to keep himself from doing something he was sure he’d later regret. Like reaching over to grab her and kiss her senseless.

  Anne-Marie clasped her own hands together in front of her and twisted her fingers together nervously, wondering if she had said or done something to offend him. What else could make his eyes go so dark and his expression so grim? Or him so obviously anxious to leave?

  “My grandfather asked me to thank you again for the medicine,” she said on a rush of breath.

  “I’m glad I could help.” But recalling the way the candlelight had thrown the bones of Dr. Gérard’s face into sharp, almost skeletal relief, he wondered if she knew the old guy was dying.

  “And for the cigarettes, too.”

  He’d gotten his hair cut and picked up his clean uniform. Then, remembering his manners, he’d stopped by the Red Cross Clubmobile to see if there was something he could take as a sort of hostess gift. At a loss, he’d bought a carton of Lucky Strikes.

  “I didn’t know if either one of you smoked—”

  “No, we don’t. But American cigarettes are more valuable than francs. Especially for bartering.”

  “Maybe you can trade them for more turnips,” he said, deadpan.

  She raised one of those dark brows that provided such a striking contrast to her pale skin. “I’ll call you when they’re ready to eat.”

  The two wits smiled at each other in the lavender twilight.

  �
�Well,” he said with a philosophic shrug, “it’s getting late.”

  Disappointment swamped her as the silver bars on his broad shoulders winked goodbye to her. “When does your battalion have to leave?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged again. “Our equipment is in better shape than anyone expected, so March Order could come any day.”

  “Do you think you’ll still be here tomorrow?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say yes.” But in the skewed reality that was war, he’d learned, yesterday was always long ago and tomorrow was always far away.

  “Then we have time,” she said when he reached to start the jeep’s motor.

  He retracted his hand and tilted his head at her. “Time for what?”

  Anne-Marie felt her face flame as she gazed into his eyes. She’d never been one to flirt, not even before the Occupation, and she had always spurned the advances of the male Résistance members who became enamored of her. Now here she was, all but throwing herself at an American soldier who would probably forget her as soon as he was gone. And praying he wouldn’t say no.

  Or notice how shaky her smile was. “Time to go on a picnic.”

  Because she’d pronounced it “peek-neek,” it took him a few seconds to translate. Even then, he stared at her blankly for another heartbeat or two. “A picnic?”

  “Yes.” She took a deep breath. “Tomorrow.”

  Actually, Mike had been thinking about swinging by that little French inn tomorrow, the one his tank crew had discovered today, and seeing for himself if the barmaid really was as easy as they claimed. They’d come back to camp reeking of cheap wine and even cheaper perfume just as he was getting ready to leave to have dinner with the Gérards. Only the memory of honey-blonde hair and amber-brown eyes had kept him from taking a detour.

  Talk about a rock and a hard place, he thought now. Here he sat, torn between a broad who was rumored to have round heels and a beautiful woman who’d stood up to the Nazis at every turn. And surprising the hell out of himself when he nodded and said, “Yeah, a picnic sounds like fun.”

  * * * *

  “Le nez.”

  “You don’t pronounce the z?”

  “Non.”

  “Luh nay.” Feeling clumsy and foolish, Mike repeated phonetically the French words for nose.

  Anne-Marie rewarded his latest effort with an enthusiastic, “Bravo!”

  These past two days had been short, but sweeter than anything either of them had ever known before.

  Over yesterday’s picnic of pungent Camembert cheese, accompanied by slices of soft bread and crisp apple and topped off with a bottle of vintage vin rouge that she’d found in her grandfather’s cellar, they’d told each other their whole lives.

  Mike had felt her sorrow, as keen as a knife’s edge, and his own slow-burning rage as she’d described the Stuka attack on Rouen that she’d survived and her parents and younger brother had not. And the story of how her cousin Maurice had died at the hands of the Nazis had poured kerosene on the fires of his fury.

  Anne-Marie, in turn, had murmured regrets over the death of his father, expressed her deepest admiration for his mother’s determination to keep her family together and sighed with envy when he showed her the small black-and-white picture of his sister and brother that he carried in his soldier’s Bible. She would give anything, she’d said, to see even one of her deceased relatives again.

  “My grandfather is dying,” she’d whispered then.

  “I wasn’t sure you knew.” He’d thought she might cry, providing him with the perfect excuse to take her in his arms, but she had remained in control of her emotions.

  She’d raised her chin, her eyes shining like liquid amber, and said, “He misses my grandmother.”

  A skylark’s song, as melancholy as it was melodious, had accompanied their accounts of John Brown and Miriam Blum. Had he reached for her hand first, or she his? Neither remembered but both became increasingly aware that they were sharing more than just a sense of loss.

  Their war stories had fallen on the lighter side. And deliberately so. Each of them had seen enough of its horror in their young lives without having to revisit it.

  So she’d laughed until her stomach ached when he recounted bedding down in a barn in the dark of night on what he thought was a haystack and waking up the next morning to discover he’d been sleeping atop a pile of manure. And he’d shaken his head in utter astonishment when she told him about the German patrolman, unaware that she carried sabotage plans in her bicycle spokes, who’d helped her patch the front tire.

  Finally, he’d revealed his artillery call sign and she her Résistance code name.

  “’Ello, One-Fox,” she’d said saucily.

  He’d gazed at her in a steady, serious way that made her uncomfortably warm. “Hello, Tiger Lily.”

  Embarrassed, she’d glanced away. “I have to go home now.”

  Mike hadn’t kissed her goodbye. Though Lord knew he’d wanted to. Instead, he’d filled her bicycle basket with packets of Nescafé and made her promise to come back first thing tomorrow.

  So this morning, wearing her summer-white Sunday dress and a straw boater hat that had belonged to her grandmother, Anne-Marie had ridden out to the field to attend Mass with him. Accustomed to the pomp and ceremony of her village priest, she’d been amazed when his battalion’s chaplain simply spread a snowy white altar cloth across the hood of a jeep and called his flock to worship. She’d never felt closer to God or more afraid for a man than when she’d knelt in the lush green grass beside the American soldier who would be leaving her soon.

  The gathering storm clouds had scuttled their plans to go swimming after Mass, so she’d hung her hat from her bicycle handlebars, he’d bought them each a bottle of Coca-Cola from the Clubmobile, and they’d taken a long, leisurely walk around the lake. When the wind picked up, raising gooseflesh on her bare arms, he’d loaned her his field jacket to wear over her light cotton dress and helped her roll back the too-long sleeves. In return, she’d offered to give him a French lesson.

  Mike had spread his sleeping bag on the same secluded patch of the small beach where they’d picnicked the day before, then dropped down on it, Indian-style. Anne-Marie had tucked her skirt beneath her and folded her legs in ladylike fashion to sit beside him on its cushiony surface. He’d proved to be an apt pupil as she’d taught him the words for head and eyes and nose.

  But now, ready to move lower, he looked at her soldier’s dream of a mouth that had kept him awake for two nights running and asked, “Lips?”

  “Les lèvres,” she answered, moistening her own with her tongue in a way that made the skin on the back of his neck prickle.

  Thunder grumbled in the distance. Or was it gunfire? They both looked in the direction it had come from; they both felt time rushing away like grains of sand in an hourglass; they both looked back with the terrible knowledge that this might well be their last day together.

  Mike got to his knees and brushed a finger down her cheek. Then he coiled a windblown strand of her soft, silky hair around that same finger and gently drew her up until they were kneeling face to face. He wanted to see, just once before he left, if she tasted as good as she looked.

  “How do you say, ‘I want to kiss you’?”

  Anne-Marie stared into his intent brown eyes for a breathless moment. She’d been raised to believe that the sin of the flesh started with a kiss, and had always been careful to stop any boy who tried to go beyond a chaste peck. Yet even knowing that this was a man who would take everything she had to give, she couldn’t refuse him.

  “Je veux t’embrasser.”

  He didn’t try to repeat the strangely pretty words. He just slid one hand into her hair, tilting her head back, then slipped an arm beneath the field jacket she was wearing and clamped it around her waist. Slowly then, he lowered his mouth to hers.

  Anne-Marie had been kissed before, but never like this. He touched the corner of her lips with his tongue. Took soft, plucking
bites with his teeth and applied a gentle suction that generated a moan, low and deep, in her throat. On and on he went, teasing her and tempting her until her head buzzed, her blood raced and her breathing rasped as if she’d been bicycling uphill.

  A jagged streak of lightning divided the sky as she wrapped her arms around him and parted her lips for more.

  Mike was no longer thinking “just once.” No longer thinking, period. She was soft and supple and as sweet as a feast after a long fast. Craving more, he sampled and savored her mouth. Used his tongue to trace the provocative curves that had been driving him stark, staring crazy. And then he plunged deeper, knowing he could never get enough of her.

  Thunder clapped as the kiss turned ravenous, slanting this way, then that.

  He wouldn’t give her promises he couldn’t keep. Couldn’t give her permanence when he didn’t even know where he would be this time tomorrow. So with hands that were as strong as they were sensitive to a woman’s needs, he gave her pleasure.

  And what pleasure it was . . .

  She shivered with it when he cupped her breast. Quivered with it when he shaped the soft flesh to fit his palm. Then thought she would die from it when he flicked his thumb over her nipple and brought it to full, aching bloom.

  Desire zipped up her spine when his other hand moved down to her derrière and pressed her closer. She felt the steely evidence of his arousal through the thin material of her dress. And was amazed that she found no shame in letting him fondle her so intimately.

  Two days ago they’d been complete strangers. Yesterday they’d become friends. Today, if nature took its course, they would be lovers.

  Mike knew the French phrase for asking a woman to go to bed with him. Hell, the whole damn battalion had been practicing it since well before the landing. But Anne-Marie was so classy and “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” suddenly sounded so crass.

  He nuzzled his way to her ear. Nosed her silky hair out of the way and sketched the sensitive shell with the tip of his tongue. Then he left his lips there to whisper, “How do you say ‘I want to make love with you’?”