His Very Own Girl (25 page)

“Swell.”

“What is this about, really? Talk to me!”

“Shut it, Davies, or you’ll bring the air-raid warden down on us.”

“Oh, sod off.”

They didn’t say anything else on the walk to the hotel. Their drab little room, so full of possibilities and already crammed with memories, became unbearably confining. Joe strode to the window and flung it open. He lit a cigarette. His gut ached, like it’d been scooped out and cauterized. That same feeling always crept over him when he knew he was losing a patient. He’d never given up, even when he’d known it was impossible, but the knowledge—the searing failure of it—burned inside him like a physical thing.

He was losing now, losing what had been him and Lulu. He’d been asking too much of their time. The future he’d been ready to imagine was seeping away like blood.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered from across the room.

Joe jerked.

With quiet, slow steps she joined him at the open window. The city outside moved and writhed in darkness. Lulu touched his hand. Without thought he folded her against his body and held her tightly.

“Me, too.”

It wouldn’t change anything, he knew. But he had sixteen hours left and he wasn’t going to let her go. Not yet.

He’d save that for tomorrow.

chapter twenty-two

Lulu watched as the sun painted the colors of dawn along the ceiling. They hadn’t bothered to shut the window last night; now the sounds of the awakening city floated up to their third-storey room. Despite petrol rationing, she had to strain to hear anything other than motor buses and heavy military trucks, punctuated by the distinctive horn blast of a black cab. Bing Crosby’s “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams” kept playing in her head, like an intentional counterpoint to her sunken mood.

Joe had made love to her again. With slow kisses and the patience of lovers who had a lifetime ahead of them, he’d eased her back to bed, touched her until she’d shuddered and cried out with helpless need.

There had been no joy in their joining, only a deep, real mourning that Lulu still couldn’t fathom. When Joe had collapsed, snoring softly, his bare chest lifting and falling in a peaceful rhythm, she hadn’t been able to contain her tears. They’d rolled silently down her cheeks, wetting the hair at her temples and drying there. Sleep hadn’t found her.

What had happened?

She felt rotten for dancing with those other chaps. Why she’d done it, she couldn’t say. Upon reaching the warehouse Joe’s demeanor had threatened her as surely as the sound of Stuka bombers on the eastern horizon. He’d appeared on the verge of saying something all night, only to think better of it with a somber shake of his head.

His darkness reminded Lulu of the time before she’d got to know him better. He’d seemed a different person then, his prison years like a curtain separating him from the rest of the world. Only after days and weeks had she understood his defensive front. In truth he had a sly sense of humor and a strong core of honor. And despite his doubts about his role in the army, he was a bloody good medic. Lulu had seen it.

She’d also seen his cautious optimism as they’d grown closer. That optimism was gone now, and she couldn’t help the hideous feeling that combat and Smitty’s death weren’t the only causes. She’d done something wrong. She’d said something to deflate him like a barrage balloon riddled with bullets.

Joe bellowed and sat up.

Lulu clasped her hands over her heart. A second passed before she recognized that he was dreaming. Body tight, eyes pinched shut, he wouldn’t stop crying out—wordless sounds at first, and then chilling echoes of the battlefield.

“Get out of there!” He flailed with his hands. “Jesus, get down!”

Lulu threw her arms around his shoulders. “Joe! Joe, wake up.”

The heel of his hand caught her on the ear. Pain shot through to her brain. He thrust her back into the mattress, his forearm pressed across her breastbone. Scared and panicked, she grabbed his elbow and his wrist and bit the steely, tense flesh in between.

“Ow!”

“Joe, stop! It’s me! Joe, it’s Lulu.”

He blinked. The wildness—that frightening absence—disappeared. The light came back into his eyes. Tension and fight dropped away as if he’d thrown them down a well. He sagged across her torso. His chest heaved. He coughed once, then again.

Lulu lay pinned beneath his slack weight. Her head ached and her heart pounded. All she could do was stroke the glossy skin between his shoulder blades. The nonsense words she murmured came without thought, as much a comfort to herself as she hoped they’d be for him.

“It’s all right, Joe. It’s going to be all right.”

When she felt the hot length of his erection against her hip, Lulu shifted. She opened to him. She moved with him, fighting back another onslaught of tears. His orgasm overtook him so quickly that it might as well have been a continuation of his dreamtime.

Only after he lay panting beside her, his arm slung over her stomach, did Lulu cringe. They hadn’t used protection.

After that cold slosh of panic, she let herself indulge in the possibility. So . . . what if she was to conceive? A baby with Joe? Start a family with him?

Her heart ached when she thought about the sort of father he would be, strong and honorable, patient and generous. They’d never talked about a future together, and it wasn’t so hard to reckon why. Yet to do so on that morning, holding his exhausted, fraught body and feeling a low ache in her womb, Lulu did just that. Could they be happy? Maybe the details didn’t matter—where they’d live, what they’d do. All she counted on was the love and safety they’d offer each other. She ached for it like she’d never ached for anything.

But fear swiftly overwhelmed her golden picture of days to come. A baby. Dear God, what would she do with a baby? Once, so long ago, she and Robbie had talked about a future full of little ones. They’d been barely more than kids themselves and the war hadn’t yet swelled to become an all-consuming blight.

Since then she’d watched families ripped apart by evacuation, injury, and death. She’d seen hollow-eyed children roaming the streets after dark, searching for food to fill their hollow stomachs. Some had even submitted to prostitution in the shadows and corners of Aldwych station, desperate for the basics of survival. At least at Mersley the agony of those ordinary tragedies hadn’t followed her around day and night.

And the women at the station, the ones carrying babies as they hurried to meet their soldiers—fathers who hadn’t yet been introduced to their tiniest loved ones. Lulu gulped in air. She couldn’t do that. She couldn’t be that.

Shrugging from beneath Joe’s arm, she donned her summer dressing gown. After a quick trip to the loo to wash up—and to calm the rattled flutter of her heart—she returned to the room.

Joe was awake. He sat on the bed, propped against the headboard. The impact of seeing him shirtless hadn’t lost its power. Lulu found herself looking him up and down as if for the first time, never finding her fill. No matter what they were together, her primal physical attraction to his long, strong body never failed.

But she’d be a fool to think that was enough to build a life on. What if she’d got all of this terribly wrong?

A lit cigarette burned in the ashtray on the bedside table. His aid bag was on the bed with him, his duffel open on the floor. With deft movements he applied a sticking plaster to where she’d bit his forearm. Her gut twisted at the realization that she’d broken the skin.

He glanced up.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Me, too. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“I just wanted to wake you up. Your nightmare—”

“It’s nothing, really.” He paused. “And I didn’t mean, well . . . afterward. We didn’t use anything.”

Lulu’s face burned in a blush that slunk all the way down to her cleavage. She waved a dismissive hand. “No need to apologize. I took care of it as best I could.”

His mouth tightened. His gaze dropped back to the aid bag as he packed away his supplies. Sunlight tipped his hair with gold and made the thatch of curls on his chest glow. For such a big, blunt man he handled the tools of his trade with a delicate precision. Every piece had its place, from a strap filled with six vials of pills to an array of bandages and dressings.

An unfamiliar silence filled the room. They’d never been so withdrawn from each other. Lulu busied herself, too, dressing, sweeping the hair back from her face. She became conscious of his eyes on her. The tip of his cigarette crackled softly as he inhaled.

Soon she had no unfinished business left to occupy her—none that didn’t involve Joe.

The day was turning muggy and warm. Sweat gathered at the collar of her uniform. He still hadn’t risen from the bed to wash and dress.

“You can go home if you want,” Joe said quietly.

“No!” They both flinched. “I mean—do you want me to go?”

“Of course not.” He snubbed out his cigarette. “But you look ready to scram.”

She sat on the bed and couldn’t keep her shoulders from sagging. “I just don’t know what to do. This feels different.”

“I know,” he said at last.

Lulu took advantage of that scant concession, like pushing through a door that had once been locked. She scooted toward the head of the bed and pressed her face to Joe’s chest. The tickle of his chest hair against her cheek was unbearably intimate. His arms folded across her back with such tenderness that she feared her tears would start again.

They were saying good-bye already. What she didn’t know was for how long, and she couldn’t even blame the war for that. This was a good-bye of their own making.

“Hey, don’t cry,” he said.

Lulu wiped her eyes, angry with herself for acting such a fool. She’d stop if she could.

He rubbed her lower back. “Tell me what your week will be like. Help me picture it.”

His heart beat loud and strong just beneath her ear, making her words echo distractingly. “Beg for Class Five flights.” He tensed, but she ignored it and pressed on. “Only a handful more before I qualify on Libs and Skymasters. I probably won’t make it until I get to White Waltham.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve requested a transfer. Nicky’s going, and he invited me to come with him.”

“Nicky, your boss.” His voice had turned frosty.

“That’s right.” She sat up and braved his thundercloud expression. It was now or never. “He said I’d have a better chance of making runs to the Continent when the time came.”

“Making runs to—?” Joe frowned. “Are you off your nut?”

He pushed her aside and climbed out of bed. His movements were stiff, jerky, dripping with anger. He hauled on a change of underwear, then punched one leg after the other into his trousers. Clean T-shirt, uniform blouse, suspenders—he was a soldier again. Just another Yank.

He turned to her, his features contorted. “Flights to the Continent? Jesus, Lulu, you just can’t leave well enough alone, can you?”

“What are you talking about? This is my job!”

“Bull!” He poked the air with his index finger. “You’ve gone beyond just doing your bit. This is some obsession for you. Forgive me if I can’t compete.”

“Compete? I’m not asking you to!”

“Oh, yeah?”

She watched him move as if at half speed. He retrieved a tiny box made of cardboard and tossed it into the lap of her skirt. She let it stay there, eyeing it with fear and a surprising amount of joy.

It made sense now.
He
made sense. She’d felt his hesitation all weekend long. Had he been trying to give her a ring? Ask her to marry him?

Why had he waited?

“Open it,” he commanded, which scared the joy away.

The answer to her own question came. He hadn’t asked because not even Lulu could’ve predicted her answer. No wonder he’d been reluctant.

She opened the box. The ring was delicate, fashioned of swirling gold filaments around a tiny glimmering stone. Her heart shoved into her throat. “Oh, Joe.”

“So tell me I’m not in competition. It’s me or flying.”

“That’s hardly fair.”

“There’s a hell of a lot unfair in the world right now, sweetheart.”

“I cannot do this.” She clapped the lid shut and laid the ring box on the bed. “You don’t mean it.”

“Oh, I do. Believe me. I’m not going back out there just to sit in a foxhole and think about you taking enemy fire. If you insist on being that stark raving bats, then it’s best I don’t think about you at all.”

“Joe—”

“Stop it. Just stop.” He scraped the back of his skull with his fingernails. “Christ, Lulu, you have no idea what it’s like. It’s bloody and disgusting, something unholy. And you want to be a part of it? You’re like a green recruit who can’t wait to see action. Do you know what happens to them?”

She sat still and let his anger flow over her, oddly disembodied. But her heart was breaking. “What happens to them, Joe?”

“They get blown to bits, that’s what. They lie there writhing in pain and crying for their mamas as I patch them up, like trying to sew a butchered cow back together.” He began shoving his possessions in his duffel, pointedly leaving the ring on the bed. He kept talking as if railing at God instead of Lulu. “Or else they survive. Job well done, boys. Now you get to pass through hell with the other fellas who’ve made it this far. Good luck reaching the other side. No promises on what you’ll be or how you’ll feel. Just remember to sign your will and tell the family back home to buy more war bonds.”