The Unsung Hero (14 page)
More often than not, it was the common folk, like Cybele and the Lucs and Dominique—and Joe—who were refusing to sit by and let Hitler and his vile SS have free run of Europe.
As he turned away in disgust, Cybele let loose a stream of French that nearly went too fast even for Joe to understand. But he managed to get most of it, and when she was done, he looked at Charles with new respect. He wouldn’t have believed it coming from anyone but Cybele.
“She says you saved the lives of twenty-five children and two nuns,” Joe translated. This was not the act of a man interested only in keeping his head down and protecting his own skin. “She said the sisters were hiding with the children in the basement of the Church of the Ascension, up north, believing it was far enough from the fighting. But the Allies—the men in your battalion—pushed through the Germans’ defense, and the battle line moved. Because of that, the church became a target. You and three other American soldiers risked your lives to go to the children’s aid.”
For a moment, Joe thought Charles was about to deny it all. But then he shook his head, his mouth a thin line. “It was a stupid move. Like walking onto a shooting range.”
“I am so sorry your friends were killed,” Cybele murmured, her attempt at English solid but atrociously accented.
Charles understood her nonetheless. “They weren’t my friends. They were just some poor suckers I ordered to come with me. I didn’t even give them a choice.” He looked up at Joe, his eyes hard. “Tell her that. Parlay voo en Fran-sez and make sure she understands that.”
Joe quietly translated, aware that he was merely an interpreter in this highly charged conversation between Cybele and this American.
“Tell him all the children lived,” Cybele ordered. “Even that one little boy he went back for.”
Joe could see her heart in her eyes, and he knew she was thinking of Michel, her own son. No one had gone back for Michel when the two-year-old had been caught in the cross fire during one of the few shows of resistance when the Germans first invaded France. His father, Cybele’s husband, had been killed first. The poor child had surely been alone and terrified before the explosion that had ended his too short, so precious life.
Joe couldn’t read the look that came into Charles Ashton’s eyes as he repeated Cybele’s words to him in English.
“Tell her not to look at me that way,” the American said grimly, still gazing at Cybele. “I’m not a goddamned hero. Tell her I don’t know what came over me that morning, that I wouldn’t do it again, not for a million dollars.”
As Joe translated, Cybele laughed softly. She turned away. “Don’t tell him,” she said to Joe, “but I don’t believe him.”
“I understood that,” Charles called after her as she left the room. “Je comprende—but you’re wrong. I’m not like you.”
She called to the others to come downstairs and let the American rest, and as usual, the room seemed much less bright without her in it. The very air seemed hotter and heavier. Silently, Dominique and both Lucs followed her out the door. Joe turned to go, too, but Charles stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“I’m not like you,” he said again. “What are you, anyway? OSS?”
“The less you know about any of us, the better,” Joe told him. “For you and for us.”
“Whoops, and I overheard Cybele call you Guiseppe. Hope you don’t have to kill me now, Joe.”
“As long as this war’s on and I’m here, I’m Italian, not American. Don’t get in the habit of calling me Joe. If you do, that could get me killed.”
“You’re definitely OSS.” Charles squinted from behind the smoke as he lit another cigarette. “I’ve heard of you guys, living behind enemy lines, sometimes right next door to the Nazis. You’re nuts. You wouldn’t catch me doing that.”
“And yet here you are.”
“Not by choice. Maybe I got her wrong, but the girl—Cybele—she seemed to imply that as soon as I’m strong enough, your men’ll help me get back to my unit.”
“This girl,” Joe said to Charles, “owns this house that we’re both guests in. And these men—and women—look to her for leadership. She’s the ‘boss,’ not me. They work with me, not for me.”
The American lieutenant gazed out the bedroom door, into the hallway where Cybele had vanished. “That’s incredible. She’s the general of this motley army? She’s so . . .”
Beautiful. Feminine. Slight of stature. Yet beneath Cybele’s captivatingly dark eyes lay determination that was harder than steel, surrounded by tireless strength.
“Some of the best saboteurs I know are women,” Joe told him. “Cybele and her friends have helped us fight the Nazis by setting bombs that bend railroad tracks, by providing information about munitions dumps and troop movements. Even just by painting one of Churchill’s Vs for Victory on the wall of the commandant’s house to keep the Germans on edge.”
“It’s a strange world we find ourselves in,” Charles said. He shook his head. “I can’t begin to imagine my wife, Jenny, blowing up train tracks. I can’t even picture her able to open a can of paint.”
“You’d be surprised what people can do if they have to,” Joe countered. Charles had a wife. The knowledge relieved him a little too much. As if he really thought he himself had a shot with Cybele, provided Charles was out of the picture. It was ridiculous. She was unattainable, untouchable. She was Joan of Arc, burning with passion but married to her cause. She was an angel to admire from afar, floating high above base human desires, always out of reach.
“Will you talk to Cybele for me?” Charles asked. “Tell her I don’t want to wait. I want to get back to the Allied side of the line as soon as possible.”
“It’s not going to be that simple. The line’s way up to the north and west,” Joe informed him. “Miles away. The fighting’s intense—the Germans aren’t letting go easily. Getting you across, at least right now, could be pretty difficult.”
“Damn.” Charles glanced up at Joe, his elegant lips twisting into a smile. “If I don’t get back there soon, I’m not going to be considered wounded enough to be sent home.”
Joe looked down at the other man’s bandaged leg. “Until you can walk on your own—and quickly—moving you would be too much of a risk.”
Cybele flowed back into the room then, bringing in a tray with Charles’s lunch. Two precious eggs, a slab of dark bread, a bit of cheese, some of the ever-present turnips. “Risk,” she said, having caught the word as she set down the tray on the bed beside Charles. She looked at Joe expectantly. “What are you planning now?” she asked him, switching into her native tongue.
“Our guest is impatient. He wants to return to his unit as soon as possible.”
“He’s too weak still,” she said, then spoke in her stilted English directly to Charles. “You are not yet strong enough to go anywhere.”
The lieutenant grinned at her. “Can’t bear the thought of my leaving, can you? I do seem to have that power over the girls. And you are a pretty one, especially for a four star. Your wish is my command, General.”
Cybele looked at Joe, but this time he took liberties with the translation. He told Cybele, “He’ll go when you say he’s ready to go.”
Kelly sat behind her desk, completely overwhelmed. She knew she had to prioritize. She had to set up an administrative triage. But it was hard to get excited about paperwork when she’d just spent over two hours talking to Betsy McKenna’s parents.
God, what a nightmare. Brenda and Robert McKenna had crumpled at the news that six-year-old Betsy’s tests had come back positive. It was leukemia. And the fact that the survival rate was better than ever before didn’t change the very real possibility that the McKennas could lose their precious child.
They’d finally left, but the dazed look in their eyes haunted Kelly. Dr. Martin, the head of oncology at Children’s Hospital, wouldn’t be able to meet with them until six. Technically, Kelly didn’t really have to be there, but Brenda had asked her to come.
That wasn’t going to be fun—getting into the technical details of the treatment and its risks.
As Kelly sat at her desk, the paperwork in front of her seemed stupid and unimportant.
She rested her head on a pile of files. Yes, that was definitely a far better use for them.
Her phone rang, and she jerked upright. It was her private line. She picked it up apprehensively. “Dad?”
“Uh, no, actually, it’s Tom.”
“Oh, God, what happened? Is my father—”
“Whoa, wait, everything’s okay . . . Jeez, I’m sorry, Kel, it didn’t even occur to me that you’d assume there was some kind of trouble if I called.”
Kelly had been holding her breath but now exhaled in a burst. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry. My fault for overreacting.”
It was Tom Paoletti. He’d called her on the phone—but not because her father was ill and needed her. Her pulse began to race for an entirely new reason.
“Actually,” he said with a soft laugh, “now I feel really stupid because this is not an important phone call. I mean, it really could have waited until after you got home. I just wanted to find out . . .”
Time hung for a split second as countless possibilities spun out enticingly around her.
“. . . if I could use your computer to sign on to the Internet,” Tom finished.
“Oh,” Kelly said, as disappointment settled down around her like a damp blanket. He only wanted to use her computer. He didn’t want to take her dancing, to see a movie, to go to dinner. To have wild sex all night long. “Well, sure. Yeah. That’s no problem.”
“I’ll sign on as a guest, use my own account, of course.”
“Of course,” she echoed. “Use it for as long as you like, whenever you like.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I really appreciate it.”
“Actually,” she said, “I’m not sure when I’m going to be home. I’ve got a meeting at six that could run for a while. I can call Mrs. Lerner and see if—”
“Don’t sweat it. I’ll hang with your father for as long as you need me to.”
Kelly closed her eyes. “Thanks.”
There was the slightest of pauses, and then he said, “Well, I won’t keep you. . . .” at the exact same moment that she opened her mouth and said, “You know, Tom, I was wondering . . .”
This was it. She was going to do it. She was going to ask him to have dinner with her. She was going to ask him out on a date.
“Whoops,” he said with a laugh. “Sorry. What’s up?”
Ice. Her entire cardiovascular system was suddenly filled with ice.
“Um, I was wondering if you knew that my computer’s in my bedroom,” she told him. Chicken. God, she was such a chicken. “I figured I better tell you where it is so you don’t have to search the whole house.” She closed her eyes, wincing silently. Not only was she a chicken, but she sounded like an idiot. An idiot chicken. “My room’s on the second floor, west wing. White walls, blue curtains . . .” Big sign on the wall saying IDIOT LIVES HERE.
It was the same bedroom she’d used as a child—a spacious room with a private bath and French doors connecting to a balcony that looked out over the backyard and the pool. From her second-floor vantage point, she’d been able to see Tom wherever he was working in the yard. Between the balcony and her tree house, she’d pretty much had him covered.
Perverted idiot chicken.
“Oops,” he said. “I didn’t realize you kept your computer in your bedroom. I don’t want to invade your privacy or—”
“Do you smoke?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then no problem,” she said. “It’s just a room I happen to sleep in. Brace yourself, though. It’s a mess. Just kick aside the dirty laundry and ignore the fact that the bed’s not made.”
He laughed again at that. He had an incredibly sexy laugh, low and husky and intimate. He could have made a fortune on one of those 900-number phone sex lines. “I thought the cleaning lady was just in.”
“Mrs. Lerner’s under strict orders to stay out of my room,” Kelly told him. “I happen to like my mess.”
“And you’re sure you want me going in there?”
He didn’t know the half of it. “It’s really okay.” Kelly flipped through her calendar, searching for the next evening she was available and . . . “You wouldn’t happen to be free Thursday—tomorrow—night?”
Dear God. She did it. She’d actually said the words.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Why? You need me to stay with your father again? No problem. I’m there.”
Words he’d completely misunderstood. How on earth did men live through this time and time again? It was a wonder more of them hadn’t simply given up and become monks.
“No.” She closed her eyes, braced herself. “I was hoping you’d have dinner with me.”
There was complete silence for at least a solid second. But it was a very, very long second.
“Well,” he said. “Wow. Yeah, that would be . . .”
Kelly waited.
“Nice,” he finished.
It wasn’t quite the word she was hoping for. But it was far better than a lot of words he might’ve come up with.
“Okay, good,” she said. God, that had been easier than she’d imagined.
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