The Unsung Hero (46 page)
He should have made love to her when she’d come to his room.
And then it happened. Charles still didn’t know what went wrong. All he knew was one second he was scanning the nearby woods for Germans, and the next he was on his face, spitting dirt out of his mouth, with the roar of an explosion ringing in his ears, and the heat and flames from the blast still singeing the back of his head.
Cybele!
He pushed himself onto his feet, only to go back down, hard. Christ, he’d somehow twisted—or broken, God help him—his ankle. Same goddamned leg he’d hobbled around on for weeks.
It hurt like hell, but he could do little more than grit his teeth as he crawled toward the spot where he’d last seen Cybele.
She was there, and she was alive, thank God. But in the light of the fire dancing up from the flaming railroad car, he could see that she’d been stunned, a trickle of blood escaping from her ear.
He had to get her out of there. He could already hear shouting in harsh German and the sound of barking dogs. The two sounded remarkably similar and equally terrifying.
Cursing steadily to fight the pain, he pushed himself to his feet, scooping Cybele up in his arms.
Joe materialized through the smoke. And Charles saw from his face as he looked at Cybele that he feared the worst.
“She’s alive,” he told the other man.
Joe closed his eyes briefly. “Thank God.” He drew in a deep breath, looking back through the smoke, toward the flames. “Take her to safety,” he ordered. “Henri’s already scattered. I’m going back to look for Luc.”
Charles felt the heat, even from this distance. “There’s no way he could have survived that. Why risk your own life for—”
“If he’s not dead, he’s badly burned and probably dying. But if the Germans find him . . .” Joe’s face was grim as he checked that his gun was loaded. “There’s only so much pain a man can take, and too many secrets to let escape.”
And Charles understood. Joe was going back out of more than loyalty to Luc. He was going back to protect them all. If Luc lived long enough for the SS to get their hands on him, Cybele’s entire operation was in dire danger.
“You take Cybele.” Charles tried to pass her to Joe. “I’ll find Luc.”
But Joe moved back. “Luc’s my friend,” he said quietly. “Keep Cybele safe.” Just like that, he was gone.
“Wait,” Charles said desperately. “I don’t even know which way to go, which way to take her. . . .”
But the German voices were getting louder, approaching swiftly from along the tracks.
Charles faded back into the woods, limping into the darkness. Exactly where, he didn’t know. Praying he wasn’t heading directly toward more Germans, he moved as quickly as he could on his injured ankle, trying to protect Cybele’s face from the branches whipping past them.
He hadn’t gone far when he heard it.
A single gunshot.
Either Joe was dead or . . .
Or Joe had found Luc, still alive but beyond saving, and he’d . . .
Both thoughts were unthinkable. But it was hard to believe a patrol of German soldiers would have taken Joe down without a volley of machine-gun fire.
And then the bomb Henri had planted on the tracks blew, and Charles knew Joe was still alive.
Charles heard the tearing sound of the German guns, the shouting as Joe surely led the soldiers in the opposite direction from Charles and Cybele.
Joe was still alive. At least for the moment.
Charles pushed on, farther into the countryside, the night a blur of pain and fear. He was hopelessly lost, and even when he tried to chart his direction from the night sky, he wasn’t sure which way to go. West and north to the fighting? Or away from it?
After what seemed like hours, he found a deserted farmhouse, its roof torn open to the sky. He’d found a tattered blanket, spread it on the dirt floor. And he’d held Cybele in his arms through the night, praying she wasn’t injured more seriously than he’d thought, praying for Joe. Praying Joe had gotten away, praying for his soul, praying that he, Charles, would never have to do what he suspected Joe had done—fire that single shot and put an end to a good friend’s suffering.
Tom was home.
He’d been home for an hour.
Kelly had been on the balcony when he’d pulled the van into the driveway. She’d watched as he’d parked alongside the garage, watched as he’d climbed out.
She’d watched as he went into Joe’s cottage without even a glance up toward her windows.
She’d watched the light go on in his bedroom, watched it go out.
And still he didn’t come.
He didn’t want to talk to her. He’d rather stay away.
Kelly turned off her own light and climbed into bed.
She refused to be so pathetic as to cry herself to sleep.
So she didn’t go to sleep.
They were supposed to be taking pictures.
But David couldn’t bring himself to stop kissing Mallory.
They were standing in his apartment, both nearly naked, and the sensation of her fabulous body pressed so tightly against his was mind-blowing. Her breasts against his chest, her thighs against his, the softness of her stomach against his arousal, the silkiness of her skin beneath his hands.
Breathing hard, he pulled back from her. Or at least he meant to pull back from her. Somehow his hand got tangled in the string of her bathing suit top.
It was completely, entirely unintentional, but as he pulled, the string untied, and . . .
It had been tied so tightly that, with the bow gone, the knot slipped free. One second she was wearing the top of the bikini, and the next she wasn’t. The next she was standing in front of him, completely bare breasted.
As a twenty-year-old heterosexual man, David had a natural affinity for breasts. He enjoyed them immensely, whether covered by a T-shirt or a sweater or a bathing suit. Breasts were like a happy, pleasurable living party. They were a blast of loud, pulse-racing salsa music in the otherwise too-solemn dirge of life.
Mallory’s breasts were all that and more. So much more. She was beyond beautiful, with large rosy pink tips and milky white skin.
“Oh, God,” David said. “I’m sorry, I’m—”
“I’m not.” She didn’t move to cover herself. In fact, she reached up and untied the second string that was around her back. “This suit’s too small. It’s really uncomfortable.”
She wasn’t as matter-of-fact about this as she was pretending to be. David saw uncertainty and a trace of something else—fear, maybe—in her eyes. As if she wasn’t sure he’d like what he saw.
Was she nuts? “How could you not know how beautiful you are?” he whispered. He touched her. He couldn’t stop himself from filling his hands with her, from leaning down and tasting her. “Don’t you know what you do to me?”
He suckled harder, and she gasped, pulling him closer, her arms around him, her legs opening to him, the soft, sweet inside of her thigh against his.
He couldn’t believe this was real, that this was truly happening. Slow down, he warned himself. Don’t push her too far. Don’t assume this means she wants to go all the way. Don’t make that choice for her. Be ready for her to change her mind.
But she put her mouth close to his ear. “You know, I do know.”
He lifted his head. “What?”
“I know what I do to you.” Mallory smiled at him wickedly. She pulled apart from him slightly and pointed down between them and . . .
His skimpy bathing suit no longer covered him. There he was, in all his dubious glory, emerging from the top of the suit. He quickly reached down to tug up the suit, but that didn’t help. The suit was too little and he was too aroused. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, I’m—”
“Can I touch you?”
She was serious. She was actually asking if she could . . .
David nodded. He couldn’t speak.
She reached out with one finger. One finger. Yet it was almost enough to make him lose it as she lightly ran it down his entire length.
“Whoa,” she said. She did it again. “You ever, um, used this thing before?”
He found his voice at that. “If you’re asking if I’m a virgin, the answer is no. Believe it or not, I’ve done this before.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean to imply that you hadn’t or insult you in any way.” She touched him again.
David couldn’t stand it. He kissed her, pulling her close, pressing her hand fully against him as he filled his own hand with her breast. Filled to overflow . . . He remembered the first time he’d spoken to her. If someone had told him then that he’d be doing this now . . . He laughed aloud.
She wasn’t done with her questions. “So who was she?”
“No one.” He kissed her again. This was so not what he wanted to discuss right now.
Mallory pulled her mouth away from his again. “She had to have a name.”
“It was Janice.” David looked down at her and knew she wasn’t going to stop asking until she got the entire story. So he told her. “She was Brandon’s girlfriend back in high school. The summer after freshman year of college, she used me to try to make him jealous. It didn’t work.” The only one who ended up getting hurt was him.
And Mallory somehow knew. “That really must’ve sucked. Did you love her?”
He looked into the softness of her eyes and told her the truth that he’d never told Bran, never told Janice. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.” She nodded, so serious. “Yeah, I didn’t think you’d do it with someone you didn’t, you know, love.”
He had to be honest with her. “Mal, I’m a guy. There’ve been times when if I could have—”
“But did you?”
“No. I didn’t exactly have the opportunity.”
“So how do you know,” she asked, “if you really would’ve done it?”
That was a good point.
“This Janice bitch,” she said. “You know, honestly, I’m not sorry she didn’t love you, too. Because then where would I be? In love with some guy who’s already got a girlfriend.”
David couldn’t breathe. Did she just say in love with? . . .
Mal tried to hold his gaze, her chin at a challenging angle, but she couldn’t do it. She looked away from him, briefly closing her eyes. “Say something, David. Don’t leave me hanging here like this.”
He pulled her chin up so she had to look at him. “You love me?” His voice cracked, but he didn’t give a damn.
She shrugged, her movement pure Mallory. “What? You didn’t think I’d want to do it with someone I didn’t love, did you?”
Do it. She wanted to do it. Desire crashed into him, making his bathing suit even more ridiculously useless.
He was speechless again for just a little too long, and uncertainty crept back into her eyes. “I mean,” she said, “that’s assuming we’re going to . . . you know. Do it.”
And David knew. His entire life had been leading up to this very moment, this one night. Mallory loved him. She wanted him. He wanted to cry.
Instead, he took her hand and pulled her toward his bed. “I love you, too,” he told her, fighting to get the words past the emotion that clogged his throat.
She kissed him, slowing them down. “I know,” she said. “I mean, I hoped you did. . . .”
“I fell in love with you that day I first came to the Ice Cream Shoppe,” he admitted. “I remember the moment I knew. It was when you told me to fuck off.”
She laughed. “What?”
“You didn’t really mean it. Well, maybe you did, but you said it to be funny, and I realized right at that moment that you had a wicked sense of humor and I . . . I fell in love with you.”
He couldn’t wait another second, and he picked her up to take her the last few steps to his bed.
“Oh, my God,” she said, clinging to him, “we’re going to get oil on the sheets!”
“Do I look like I care?”
She looked down at his bathing suit and laughed again. “Um, no?”
He kissed her as he sank back with her on the bed, ready to take his time. He wanted to worship her, make love to her reverently, explore every inch of her body with his eyes and his mouth and his fingers.
But she was in a hurry, tugging at his swimsuit, freeing him from its elastic confines. She struggled to get her own suit down her legs.
He helped her, and then they were naked. Both of them. In his bed. David laughed. He couldn’t help himself. This was too good, too amazing, too damned wonderful.
“Do you have a condom?”
He stopped laughing. Oh, doom. He didn’t. He wasn’t at all prepared for this. “No. Mal, I never dreamed—”
“I did,” she told him. “I dreamed. And I stopped at the drugstore on my way over tonight.” She pointed to her bag, over by the kitchen table. “Would you mind? They should be on the top.”
No, he so didn’t mind. He pushed himself off the bed and found a box—an entire box!—of condoms. He tore the outer plastic, tore the little foil wrapper.
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