His Very Own Girl (18 page)

Joe watched as Lulu shrank away. It wasn’t the hasty retreat of an outnumbered force. Nothing so dramatic. Instead she reclaimed the openness that had been a gift. Her pupils were wide, so wide in the morning brightness of her room. The body that had invited his touch became as unwelcoming as that of a stranger. But he couldn’t hold back any longer. If she insisted on this assignment to Marston Moor, if he was sequestered tomorrow—so many events promised to come between them. He wanted to know more about the woman he was coming to need so desperately.

“Who was he?”

A shuddering breath worked out of her chest. Her nipples had tightened to hard points beneath the worn softness of her robe. Joe focused on her distressed, distant expression lest he imagine making love to her again.

He cleared his throat. “Lulu?”

“His name was Robert Bachman.” The rich, melodic timbre of her voice had gone flat, like a poor phonographic recording. “He was my fiancé.”

Joe took ice-cold hands in his. “And he was killed?”

“No, he killed himself.” Her eyes were clouded over with memories. “We met in the summer, six years ago. It was just after my parents opened their flight school in Kent. I wasn’t yet eighteen but was already a qualified pilot. I’d logged hundreds of hours on all manner of aircraft. Robbie was an avid flyer. He loved it as much as I did.”

Needling jealousy spiked to life as she talked about this man, this long-dead man. When had he become so damn possessive? Perhaps when she’d opened the door and welcomed him into her room.

Yet the simple fact that Lulu was trusting him with such a confession spread a layer of pride over the protective fear that always came when she spoke of flying. She was trusting him again, and Joe knew enough about his daredevil girl to appreciate that.

“So he was in the RAF?”

“No, he was tall like you. Too tall, actually, to fly most single-engine fighters. So when he couldn’t fight the Nazis by air, he joined the army instead. He fought in France. Survived the evacuation from Dunkirk. But he . . . he came back so broken.”

Wide brown eyes pleaded with him, as if he could offer words to make it right again. Joe had no explanation to give. No one did.

“I thought he simply needed time,” she continued. “But he broke off our engagement. My parents were dead by then. I had nothing to lose. I kept with him. I was there for him. But when I went to his flat one afternoon, I found him dead. He’d hanged himself.”

Joe closed his eyes and nodded, as if affirming what he’d already known to be true. He hadn’t, of course, but the pieces formed a picture that finally made sense. He’d thought her crazy and reckless after her plane crash. Learning the truth about her fiancé’s death realigned her behavior. She was strong but also very, very vulnerable.

Lulu reached out a hand and cupped her palm against Joe’s cheek. “I didn’t want this.” Her voice was like glass grating beneath the soles of a boot. “Endure it—that’s all I wanted. No more heartache while men were going off to fight. Because you can make me all manner of promises, and I can be completely daft and make promises in return, but we have no say in the matter. I thought he’d come home to me, that we’d start a life together. He simply wanted no more part of life at all.”

Joe pressed her palm firmly against his face and kept it there. Her skin was still icy. “I’m not him. If I’d wanted to do myself in, I could’ve a long time ago. I had plenty of chances and plenty of reasons. Now that I’m past all of that—hell, Lulu, now that I’m here with you—I have so much to fight for. To live for.”

“And you wouldn’t let your fellow soldiers down.”

“Of course not,” he said, relieved to see her pulling free of her past. There was nothing for either of them back there. “They depend on me. I don’t think I realized how much until recently.”

“And by doing your duty, you can get through this whole ordeal.”

He grinned. “Sure I can.”

“Then you have to see why I still need to fly. And why I can’t let those boys down. They need my letters, Joe.”

Ah, so that was her reasoning. Even now she was trying to bring him round to her way of thinking. Joe flicked his eyes to the stack of letters he resented.

When he hadn’t been able to see Lulu for those few weeks in a row, he’d written to her. He hadn’t mailed the letters, feeling foolish and self-conscious, but he’d written. Into those letters he’d poured all manner of personal feelings, from his desire for a little auto shop of his own to the sense of betrayal he’d felt during his trial. Letter after letter, now stuffed in his footlocker. To think some other soldier or seaman was out there penning similarly emotional letters for her to read . . .

And her flying. He’d be stuck in a foxhole, wondering if she was belly flopping another Hurricane. But next time the outcome wouldn’t be in her favor. Damn, he just knew it.

“See?” she said quietly.

“See what?”

“It’s on your face. You worry about me.”

“Sure I do.”

“Maybe now you can understand my reluctance to know you better.” She placed both hands on muscles sloping from his neck to his shoulders. As if she knew that’s where he kept mountains of tension, she worked those stiff muscles with patient, firm strokes. Joe exhaled slowly. “You wanted someone to care for you when you go,” she said. “That caring goes both ways. You’ll wonder how I am, while I do the same for you.”

“But you don’t need to go out of your way to court trouble.”

Her hands were snatching his thoughts and jumbling them together. “No, what I need to do is whatever it takes to bring this war to an end. Now. Tomorrow. Next week. As soon as possible.” She leaned over him so their noses nearly touched. “Then you and every other fighting man can come back. That means flying. And if I happen to enjoy my job and want to challenge myself with new, more difficult aircraft—I’m sorry, Joe, but that’s still my decision. I’m a grown woman and a qualified pilot. They wouldn’t have granted me the opportunity otherwise.”

Joe was caught. He knew he was damn lucky to be there, with her mouth only an inch from his and with a clear view down the front of her robe. He knew she was driven by a need to fly that he wouldn’t understand. Not ever. And he knew that he had roughly seven more hours before he had to report back to the barracks at Rothley.

All of this talking and doubt was a useless waste of time.

He touched the collar of her robe. “You’re wearing too much.”

Lulu canted her head. Dark hair slipped over one narrow shoulder. Her face was mercifully free of those ghosts he’d felt compelled to drag out of her. “I am?”

Joe tugged on the tie and inhaled as the fabric parted, revealing her glorious naked body. He swallowed. “You’ll be careful? There at Marston Moor?”

She smiled, a quick flash of pleasure. Almost relief. “I’m good, Joe. I don’t take chances. You must understand that. I’m not a throttle jockey like those RAF boys in their Spitfires. My job is to get the plane to its destination. Up and down, safe as houses.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“And you’ll write to me?” she asked.

Joe looked away, wondering if he’d ever be able to share those letters in his footlocker, or future ones containing more vulnerable fears once he was in combat. But he needed Lulu to remember him, maybe even to wait for him.

Those other boys and their letters wouldn’t stand a chance.

“I’ll write.”

“I can read your mind, Joe. And honestly, they’re not you. They’re not
us.
” She sat up, kneeling over him, and slipped the robe off her shoulders. Late morning gold bathed her skin. Joe had never seen anything more breathtaking.

“So that promise of fidelity . . . ?”

“Like I said, it’s yours if you want it. The cost is one in return.”

“Promise.”

“Good.” Her sly smile asked him to come out and play. “And now, my dear Doc Web, your duty is to give me a very thorough examination. That is, if you don’t mind.”

His throat had gone dry and the scuffed tips of his fingers were deadened. A stunning woman knelt over him, offering her body and her company. Sweat beaded along his brow. His erection jumped to life.

In a few weeks he’d be on a C-47 flying over occupied territory, but he’d carry with him a fortifying batch of memories to sustain him—and the healing knowledge that she believed him, that she cared for him despite his past, despite those crippling memories of her fiancé. He told himself that it didn’t matter if he was her first pen pal or her hundredth, or whether she was a pilot or a theater checker.

In wartime, everything could be neatly justified.

“Ma’am, I don’t mind at all.”

chapter sixteen

Joe stood in the fat belly of his C-47, the seventeenth man in the center aisle. The plane churned and groaned. Whatever the pilots were doing to keep it in the air amid deafening artillery fire was beginning to fail. Where Lt. Banks stood awaiting the green light, silhouetted in the open forward hatch, explosions like a Fourth of July display blossomed silver and scarlet against the midnight black.

Zero Hour. D-Day. But dawn was a hell of a long way off.

Medics jumped last in case anyone sustained injuries before exiting. But damn, Joe wanted out.
Now.

“Hook up!” The lieutenant was shouting, but Joe could see only the movement of his lips.

Joe did as he was instructed, latching his rigging clip onto the static line. Another explosion buffeted the plane, nearly knocking him to his knees. He readjusted his helmet and braced his legs wider, keeping his knees loose.

Get us out of here!

“Equipment check!” Lt. Banks pantomimed his command, fingertips to shoulders.

Joe focused on the man in front of him. What was his name? Peterson? Gutierrez? Holy Christ, he should remember. He’d followed the skinny, black-haired kid from Iowa on every practice jump for the last two months, but the part of his brain that stored names and other niceties was a black hole. He did the only thing he could do: he looked over the soldier’s equipment, found it all in order, and smacked him on the shoulder. “Sixteen okay!”

The call echoed down the plane toward the cockpit and the open doorway—twelve okay, eleven okay, ten okay—until only first platoon’s leader remained.

Jump. C’mon, Banks, goddamn it!

Joe was swallowing convulsively. Inside his gloves, boots, and jumpsuit, his skin was awash with sweat, leaking like the English sky in springtime. The plane rocked to the port side. This time Joe was ready and caught his balance, then he snaked out a hand to steady number sixteen. Montag. That was his name.

The doorway light turned green. Lt. Banks was out like a shot. The rest of the stick shuffled down the aisle and out the door, like newly hatched spiders sending lines of web into the wind and flying away. Joe shambled closer to the gaping mouth of the exit. Man number eight, nine, ten . . . out they went. Against an asphalt sky perforated with shell bursts, the contorted shapes of their bodies were briefly defined before disappearing.

Montag jumped.

Then Joe.

Wind hit him in the face. The rip cord pulled. The chute deployed above him, cutting his free fall short almost before it began. His body jackknifed. His lungs rocketed into his throat.

Through it all Joe remembered his training and counted aloud, “One one thousand.”

Tracer fire dotted the air with pinpricks of light; each bright streak marked one bullet for every five fired. The tracers arced closer to the C-47 that had just delivered Joe to France.

“Two one thousand.”

Bullets ripped through the starboard wing. A billowing puff of fire touched off the engine and consumed it. Flames engulfed the empty doorway where Joe had just been.

“Three one thousand.”

The plane listed to port. Its massive fuselage groaned as it plummeted earthward. Fire clawed toward the cockpit.

Joe reached “four one thousand” before the plane disappeared behind a line of trees. When his feet touched the earth, he rolled into a crumpled position and allowed his body to absorb the impact. Disoriented, he still expected to be able to see his plane once he stood. But it was gone. Another few seconds and he would’ve still been aboard that fiery hunk of metal.

Forget it.

He punched the release on his chest and fought free of the rigging. Balling the silk, he stashed it beneath a clump of bushes.

He was in France. And he had no idea where the rest of his stick—hell, the rest of his regiment—had landed.

A noise roughly five yards to his left had him crouching low. He pushed his back against prickling branches. Soldiers had been trained to identify one another by a call and response, but Joe held no weapon. He had no means of replying with gunfire should the man turn out to be German. So he waited. His respiration was like the shallow, quick puffs of a racing dog.

“Flash,” came a voice.

“Thunder,” Joe whispered back.

From out of the hedges came the familiar face of Cpl. Henry Norton. He was also from Baker Company, from Smitty’s second platoon. As a medic Smitty would’ve been last out of his plane, too. What had happened to him? Had he made it out?

Norton’s expression relaxed. “Doc Web, I’ll be damned. Glad to see you.”

“You, too.” Joe nodded to the man’s M1 rifle. “Now I don’t feel so naked.”

“I’m not your ODs, Doc, but I will be your point man.”

“You all right?”

With a genuine Southern shit-eating grin, the Virginian shook his head. “Nah, I’m fine. Looking for someone to patch up already?”

“Not until I have to.”

“That idiot leg bag sheared off though. Had all my reserve ammo in it.”

“Shit.”

“Shit’s right.” Norton nudged his chin toward the gully running alongside the massive eight-foot hedgerow. “That probably runs parallel to a road or a lane. Let’s find some All-Americans.”

“Hell, any Americans.”

“I hear ya.”

They crouched low as they advanced, rifle fire sounding to their left and right. Joe’s skin felt like it was crawling with ants. He didn’t like the hedgerows, how they narrowed his view to a claustrophobic swathe of ground—the piss-poor visibility of jungle fighting in the middle of the French countryside. Only the full moon offered glimpses of fields and orchards and ditches, all color washed to a shining slate gray. Artillery spewed into the sky and planes roared overhead but seemed disconnected from this world of hedges and silent steps.

“Any sign of a marker?” he whispered.

“Not a thing.”

Joe curled his fingers compulsively around the straps of his aid bags. Breathing evenly through his nose, blinking, trying to see through shadows, he let his mind and body fall back on old training. This was no simulation, no exercise in the Midlands of England or the back hills of rural Georgia. This was Normandy—the very reason he’d trained for all those endless months.

Smitty had been over the moon when the officers at Spanhoe had handed out maps and sand tables detailing every detail of the Cherbourg Peninsula. He’d finally made up his mind and bet a corporal in Able Company half a month’s pay—fifty fat simoleons—that their destination would be France. Last Joe had seen, he’d climbed into his transport smiling.

Again Joe hoped his pal was still up and kicking.

“There,” Norton said, his voice sounding as loud as a bullhorn. “That sign: Beauvais.”

“That’s on our map.”

“Boy howdy, we missed the drop zone by, what, three miles?”

“Looks that way.” For the first time in hours, maybe days, Joe relaxed. “Where to, Corporal?”

Norton’s jaw dropped. Rarely was a corporal in charge of anything, but he had a leg up on Joe’s lowly rank. Barely. And Norton was a rifleman. Joe’s mood had unexpectedly leavened. Give him a wounded man and he knew what to do. He wasn’t touching command decisions with a ten-foot pole.

“Where to?” Norton echoed, rubbing his chin. “We’re closest to the 507th’s DZ. Let’s head that way, hope we find some noncoms and officers. Hell, I don’t want to be in charge any more than I have to.”

“Amen to that. Let’s go.”

Norton bent low and set a quick pace. Hours passed. The skies grew quieter. Joe figured it must be on toward three in the morning. The beach landings would begin soon. Having dropped behind enemy fortifications along the Normandy coastline, every paratrooper regiment had objectives to clear before that happened. If those missions failed, the infantry units would face worse opposition as they moved inland. Urgency kept Joe’s feet moving and his brain sharp, even when his adrenaline waned and fatigue and hunger made inroads on his focus.

Sounds—just beyond the patch of high beech trees.

Norton held up a fist to indicate they should stop. He pulled his rifle into firing position. Joe pushed into a shadow as Norton called out in a harsh whisper, “Flash.”

C’mon. “Thunder,” damn it!

“Flash,” Norton whispered again, cocking his M1.

“Thunder.”

Joe exhaled. Norton dropped his chin to his chest and lowered his rifle. Three GIs crept from behind their cover, their backs to one another in a defensive triangle. The point man kept his rifle primed.

“Lower your weapon,” Norton said. Joe forgave the tremor in his voice.

“What unit you with?” came the man’s question.

“Baker, 512th. You?”

“Hell, we’re from all over. I’m Sgt. Saunders—Able Company, 506th.”

Norton glanced back to Joe, who just shrugged. “At least he’s a sergeant,” Joe said.

“But Jesus,” Norton said, “you’re in a whole other division. You kidding me?”

The sergeant shouldered his rifle. “Nah, not kidding. Pvt. Marley here is with the 508th, and him—wait, what was your name?”

“Gorzinski,” replied the man on his left.

“Yeah, and that Polack is a corporal from the 307th.”

Norton snorted, rolling his shoulders. “The 307th, huh? Aren’t you supposed to be blowing up a bridge or building a bridge? There’s always a bridge involved with engineers.”

Gorzinski grimaced at the sky, as if the planes might still be there. “It was all we could do to get out of that flaming bucket of bolts. I was second out the door. Don’t know what happened to the rest of my stick.”

“Mine went down, too.” Joe shook his head as if trying to dislodge the buzzing of angered wasps. The image of that plane burning, falling, wouldn’t leave him. “But I was the last one out, so that’s something.”

Sgt. Saunders turned serious, nodding to Joe’s brassard. “You’re a medic?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank God. C’mon.”