The Unsung Hero (9 page)
Cybele took a deep breath and nodded. “I can try. I’m going to need help holding him down, though, in case he wakes.”
They had no morphine, and removing bullets without the numbing effects of the drug would be screamingly painful. Joe himself could attest to that. Maybe, just maybe, Charles Ashton would remain blessedly unconscious until she was done.
Of course, he chose that instant to rouse. His eyelids fluttered and he groaned. And then he gazed directly up at Cybele with eyes that were the color of a summer sky.
As Joe watched, Cybele stared back at him, transfixed. He was her first real American. Joe himself didn’t truly count since he’d grown up in an apartment with an Italian father and French mother in a part of New York City that was more European than American.
Even naked, it was obvious Ashton was an American. He could have stepped right from the pages of a Hollywood magazine. Even injured, he was golden and gleaming, with chiseled features that provided a perfect frame for those unearthly blue eyes.
He stared back at Cybele, reaching up to touch her cheek. “Angel,” he whispered.
Cybele jerked her gaze away from him, stepped back to avoid his touch. “Tell him he’s wrong.” She spoke only a small amount of English, but she’d understood his single word. She glanced at Joe again. “Tell him that after I’m done he’s going to swear I’m the devil.”
But Joe didn’t get a chance to translate, because Ashton lifted his head, painfully trying to raise himself up. “French,” he rasped. “You’re French, angel. Sister! What happened to . . . Oo et luh sare?” He could barely speak, but he struggled to sit up. “You know, sare. Big hat, black dress? Mon Dieu, Jesus—luh sare?”
Whatever it was he wanted to know, it was vitally important to him. His eyes were all but rolling back in his head as he struggled to stay conscious.
Cybele shook her head, looking to Joe for help.
He stepped forward, but Ashton’s head lolled back against the table.
“Quickly,” Cybele said to Marie and Luc Prieaux. “Hold him for me.”
As she dug for the first bullet, Ashton groaned but didn’t awaken.
“What was he asking?” she questioned Joe as she worked, sweat beading on her brow and upper lip as the man continued to make those small sounds of pain.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head, uncertain himself what the American soldier had meant with his atrocious, unintelligible, first-year schoolbook French. “I’m sorry.”
“I won’t be able to go with you tonight,” Cybele told him. “I’ll need to stay here to care for him. These first few hours are always critical.”
Joe was disappointed, but he hid it, as always. “Of course.”
She looked up at him and gave him one of those sweet, sad smiles he’d come to know so well. “You’ll probably be safer without me.”
That much was true. She was fearless in her work against the Nazis. It wasn’t enough for her simply to count numbers of troops and note stockpiles of ammunition. She had to get closer, close enough to overhear conversations, close enough to find out which warehouses held ammunition that her small army of freedom fighters could steal and use against the occupying forces. Close enough to guarantee a bullet in the head were they ever discovered.
Joe looked down at the bundle of clothing he still held in his hands. He’d have to rush to dig a hole deep enough for this, or he’d be late to the rendezvous point.
“Go,” Cybele said, well aware of the time.
Joe looked from her to the wounded American and tried his damnedest not to be jealous of a man who was probably going to die.
He caught Cybele’s gaze one last time, losing himself just a little in the midnight darkness of her eyes. Then he turned, slipping out the door into the night, following her rule.
Since the occupation, Cybele had had only three rules. She’d told him about them once when they’d shared several bottles of wine. It was after a night spent making life a little less comfortable for the Nazis who controlled Ste.-Hélène.
Never turn down a chance to strike back at the Germans was one, she’d said. Never promise to meet again was two. And three was never, ever fall in love. Because love and war were a terrible combination.
That night as she’d gone up the stairs to her bedroom, alone as always, she’d made him promise to follow her rules, too.
As Joe silently took a shovel from the shed and began to dig in the postage stamp–size garden behind Cybele’s house, inwardly he sighed.
Two out of three wasn’t bad.
Cybele, he suspected, wouldn’t agree.
“Thank you so much,” Kelly said to Tom as she closed the door to her father’s bedroom. “Again.”
The long hallway was only dimly lit. A lamp from down in the living room cast just enough light to throw exotic shadows across her face and body. It was alarmingly romantic.
But Tom’s head was pounding, he was wearing only his boxers—his very thin cotton boxers—and this was Kelly Ashton standing next to him, not some bar bunny he’d fool around with for a few weeks and then cut free.
Although, the way the shadows fell across her face made her eyes seem almost hot. It seemed as if she was checking him out, as if she was running her gaze across his near-naked body appreciatively.
He looked good. Tom knew he looked good even though he was a little too skinny from those weeks in the hospital. The truth was, a man couldn’t do as much PT as he and his SEAL team did and not look good.
Still, this was Kelly Ashton throwing those glances. Kelly class valedictorian, Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard Med School Ashton. Kelly Girl Scout, nursing home volunteer, church choir soloist Ashton.
Who had once kissed him as if the world were coming to an end. Kissed him and made it clear that she was his—if he wanted her.
Of course, that had been years ago. When she was fifteen.
“I’m glad I could help,” he told her now, remembering the way she’d looked at him right before she’d kissed him. Or maybe he was the one who’d kissed her. He didn’t know—he hadn’t known even at the time. All he’d known was it was late, they’d been together for nearly twelve hours, and he still wasn’t ready to take her home.
They’d been sitting in Joe’s station wagon—the same one that was out in the driveway—stopped at a red light down by the marina. Their conversation had lulled, and he figured she was probably tired. It was definitely time to call it a night. But when he’d glanced over at her, she didn’t look tired. In fact, the look in her eyes had made his mouth go dry.
Now, he cleared his throat. “You know, Kel, I owe you an apology.”
He saw from her eyes that she knew exactly what he was talking about. She turned away. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do. That night before I left town—”
“It was just one of those impulsive things,” she said, still not meeting his gaze. “We were both so young.”
She had been young. He’d been nearly nineteen. And maybe that first kiss had been impulsive, but what he’d done after, pulling into the darkness of the bank parking lot and turning off the engine . . . It had been the wrong thing to do, but if he were given a chance to do it over, he still wasn’t certain he’d be able to resist her. “Nevertheless, I’ve always wanted to apologize to you. I took advantage—”
“Oh, please!” She moved briskly down the hall toward the kitchen, clearly embarrassed. “Don’t turn it into something that it wasn’t.”
“Still, I shouldn’t have let it go as far as it—”
“Three kisses?” she said. “Or was it four? For someone who had the reputation for deflowering most of the girls in town, I’ve always thought you showed remarkable restraint.”
“That reputation . . . I didn’t really . . . We were friends and . . . Besides, you were way too young. I’m just . . . I’m sorry.” God, he was smooth. He tried again. “I’ve missed having you as a friend, and now that we’re both back here for a while, I didn’t want that night hanging over us, making things awkward.”
“Apology completely unnecessary but accepted.” Kelly snapped on the glaringly bright kitchen light. “Tell Joe he’s not fired, will you? Tell him Dad didn’t mean it.”
“I think he probably already knows that,” Tom said. “But I’ll tell him.”
“I keep thinking how awful it’ll be if my father dies before he and Joe resolve this. This is hard enough on Joe as it is.”
The door was right behind him, and Tom knew he should move toward it. He should say good night and go. He’d apologized and it was obvious she didn’t want to talk about it anymore.
The dead last thing he should do was put his arms around her, no matter how lost and alone she seemed, no matter how amazing she looked in those barely there workout clothes.
He cleared his throat. “I really should check on Joe. I’ll try talking to him.”
Kelly nodded. She held out her hand to him. “Thank you again,” she said. “And please don’t worry about . . . you know. That was a long time ago.”
Tom was afraid to touch her, but to not take her hand would’ve been rude. He braced himself and reached for her.
Her hand was small and cool but her grip was strong. No wet-fish handshake from Kelly Ashton, no sir. That was no surprise.
But then she did surprise him by lifting the back of his hand to her lips and kissing him softly.
“You have always been a good friend,” she said. “I’m really glad that you’re here.”
Tom was flustered. Funny, he’d pretty much considered himself fluster-proof prior to this very moment in time. But here he was. Completely uncertain what to do, what to say, what to think. She’d kissed his hand.
It was the perfect opportunity to pull her into his arms, yet he hesitated. Emotion hung in the air so thick he could feel it warm against his skin. He could kiss her, and maybe she’d be so caught up in the moment, she’d let him pull her with him into her room, into her bed.
Yeah, right—maybe he could take advantage of her. Again. After he’d apologized for doing just that.
If anyone else tried to take advantage of Kelly, he’d beat the shit out of the bastard.
Tom forced himself to back away from her. To pull his hand free. To smile at her as he pushed open the screen door.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, and escaped with her virtue still intact.
Mallory regretted throwing away her lighter almost instantly.
It had been a perfectly good lighter after all, and she had only sixty-five cents in her pocket. Not including the three hundred dollars Tom had given her for groceries.
But spending that money on a lighter—after she’d just thrown hers away—seemed like a really wrong thing to do.
Matchbooks, however, were free. But the Honey Farms convenience store was a solid, ten minute, extremely inconvenient walk away.
Mallory spun in a slow circle, cigarette held in her fingers, searching for someone, anyone she knew even remotely, who might have a match.
“I’d offer to light it, but even if I did have a match, you’d probably just put it out right away anyway. Why not save yourself the effort, skip lighting it, and just step on it now?”
Hey, ho. Geek alert! Motionless and mouth-breathing at two o’clock.
He was average height and skinny, with dark, painfully straight hair that he’d attempted to comb back behind his ears in a style that defied description. His wire-rimmed glasses were circa 1987 and too big for his face, giving him that scuba-diver look so popular among dorks. They were held together by both clear tape in the middle and a safety pin at the earpiece. She wondered if she should congratulate him for that major antifashion accomplishment.
He was wearing jeans, and Mallory wasn’t sure which was worse, the fact that they were straight legged, or the fact that they were about a million inches too short, ending high above his shoes. Shoes. Who the hell wore shoes with their jeans?
“Hello!” she said. “I see your socks.”
He blinked at her through his windshield. He needed wipers for those things. The breeze was wet, coming in off the ocean the way it was, and he was about to lose all visibility.
His shirt was a button-down short-sleeved plaid event that was made out of some kind of unnatural blend of completely synthetic fabrics. It fit him about as well as a cardboard box, and—just in case that wasn’t awful enough—his collar was up on one side.
He had geek complexion type B. In Mallory’s experience, geeks either had pizza face—type A for acne—or baby skin, type B, smooth and pale and perfect from all those years of building Star Trek models in the basement, away from the damaging rays of the sun.
Her new little friend’s skin was smooth, but not quite alabaster—no doubt on account that he was at least part Asian-American.
He had that reverent look in his brown eyes as he gazed at her—that look that said he’d found paradise. However, unlike most of the other rejects who ogled her, he managed to keep his eyes on her face instead of glued to her megabreasts.
He held out his hand. “Hi, I’m David Sullivan.”
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