His Very Own Girl (21 page)

Smitty scowled. “What the hell?”

Second platoon was retreating.

Riflemen pounded down the hill, passing Joe, Smitty, and their patient. Smitty managed to grab a corporal’s trouser leg. “What’s going on, sir?”

“The 90th Infantry took our position, God bless ’em. We’re falling back to the reserves.”

Joe’s grin felt like it would crack his face open. “Let those fool-ass doggies take this monster hill. Smitty, we gotta get out of here.”

The telltale whine of an artillery shell screamed toward them. They were stuck. All Joe could do was hunch over their patient and pray.
This is it. Poof. No more.

A blast rocked his body to the side. Heat scalded him. Hot shrapnel hissed as it hit puddles gouged by boots. A piece landed on his hand; he shook it and cursed, then pulled that vulnerable skin into his cuffs.

But he didn’t die. The bombardment quieted.

Joe poked his head out and found Smitty sprawled on the ground in a puddle of blood.

“Smitty!” But he couldn’t let up the pressure on the fallen man’s chest. “Goddamn it, talk to me!”

“Shut up, Web,” Smitty said, his voice a wet gargle. “I hear ya.”

The litter bearers finally arrived, the first of whom looked no older than eighteen. Across his chest and that of his partner were Red Cross bibs.

“Take Smitty first,” Joe said.

“Forget it, Web. Get that man out of here.”

“Where are you hit?”

“My back. Can’t move my legs.”

“Paralyzed?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe they’re just scared shitless. Go. I’ll hold on for ya.”

His heart pounding, Joe swore long and loud. He couldn’t tell anything about Smitty’s condition, lying as he was on his back, concealing his injury. Joe had to make a choice.

“Help me get this man out of here.” He and the litter bearers wrangled the limp soldier onto the stretcher. Joe didn’t release pressure from that gaping chest cavity. “Smitty, you stay put.”

“Ain’t goin’ nowhere, Doc.”

Smitty had never called him “Doc” before. But then, he’d never needed a medic before. Leaving his friend went against every instinct he possessed save one: if he let go now, a man would die.

“Okay, let’s go. Go!”

Joe ran alongside the stretcher with his hands laced one on top of the other over the rifleman’s wound. The first man he saw at the base of the hill was Capt. Banks, who was waving like a madman to urge his troops to safety.

“Sir! Smitty’s up the hill. Shrapnel wound.”

“You two,” he said, pointing at the nearest two privates. “Back for Smitty. Hustle!” But then the screaming, ear-splitting mortar blasts started up again and kept coming. “They got us zeroed!”

Earth shot into the sky where Smitty had lain. Bursts of fire lit the low clouds with flares of red and orange. His hand cramping, his heart breaking, Joe ran down the hill and didn’t look back.

Lulu rolled the dice and burst into smiles. “Sorry, Nicky,” she said, claiming her third victory in a row. “Backgammon just isn’t your game tonight.”

His expression still amiable despite the loss, Nicky fished a pair of pound notes out of his billfold and handed them over. “You never used to be this good.”

“Because I can play during layovers while you do paperwork.”

“Whatever the reason, it’s good to see you smiling again.”

She waited for the panicked feeling that always came with recognizing her happiness, but nothing changed. Because the sweet, warm giddiness that stayed with her morning and night was her only shield against worry, she basked in it. She’d finally told Joe what she felt. Other than becoming preternaturally obsessed with waiting for the mail, she was satisfied with the risk she’d taken.

But rudding hell, it’d be a relief to hear from him. Joe had been on the front line for exactly forty days. The three months since they’d made love in her room—the last time she’d seen him—were dragging on like a sluggish nightmare. But to dwell on that would drive her batty.

She tucked Nicky’s two purloined pounds into her trouser pocket. “You’ve been rather morose of late, though. What gives, Nicky? Something you’re not telling me?”

He began to sort the pieces, light from dark, to put the game away. The air between them had never exactly cleared, not since he’d realized the extent of her feelings for Joe. It was hardly very English to talk about such matters, but she felt the loss quite keenly—the loss of his uncomplicated acceptance and friendship.

Rather than pry, she settled back and watched as he fussed with the pieces. He was a fusser. Maybe that’s why she’d never experienced a true snap of attraction. Nothing beyond fond regard. He managed everyone so well, from the pilots to the ground staff to the top brass, that his spontaneity suffered. She knew it wasn’t fair to make such a judgment. But there it was. She cared for Nicky because of the motherly attention he showered on everyone at Mersley, and particularly his unwavering faith in her abilities.

Yet she wanted more. She wanted something strong and special and all her own.

Lulu closed her eyes. She tipped her head against the worn leather cushion. Joe didn’t fuss. He was quite possibly the most direct man she’d ever met, and that included the parade of American pilots who’d come and gone over the last five years. His bluntness, his doggedness—that was Joe. That’s how he’d won her over.

“White Waltham.”

“Sorry, what?”

“I said I’ve been transferred to White Waltham.”

“Oh, Nicky, no.” She sat up, fully focused on him now. “You can’t leave us. Whatever would we do without you?”

He smiled softly, seemingly embarrassed. “You’ll get by, I reckon. Unless . . .”

“Unless?”

“You could always request a transfer and come with me.”

She wasn’t often taken by surprise, but his suggestion was as bold as when he’d first kissed her hand. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t look so shocked, my dear. I’m not proposing anything untoward.” He pulled a cigar out of a case, his lone nod to the black market. He and Todd saved for weeks, then went in together to buy a box from long-distance pilots inbound from the Caribbean. While fiddling with his lighter, he said, “I’ll make no bones about it—you’re my best pilot. We both know that. And if you want to fly to the Continent in the next few months, you’re less likely to get the chance from here.”

“The Continent?” She laced her hands around her knees. It was either that or fidget. “I didn’t know that was a possibility.”

He puffed on his cigar, his expression thoughtful. “It’s already happening, although in limited capacity. The Allies have been calling on the ATA to make supply drops, transport VIPs, and even extract the wounded. Until now they’ve all been men.”

“And they’ll give those assignments to women, too?”

“They let you fly Spitfires after, what, a year? Then bombers. Now even the Gloster Meteor—jets, for goodness’ sake. Good sense hits these fools like a grenade, all delayed reaction. But they’ll come around.”

“My chances of securing more interesting assignments will increase if I’m posted at White Waltham, won’t they?”

“Yes, and the variety of heavy bombers will be greater.” His broad Yorkshire accent always thickened toward evening, when fatigue set in. “How many Class Five flights away are you from qualifying on a Liberator or a Skymaster?”

“More than I’d like.” In the two months since departing Marston Moor with her four-engine certification, she had slavered over each chance. But in the Midlands, they were few and far between. “Twelve, plus two deliveries as second pilot.”

He laughed. “You have the count down exactly.”

“I want them, Nicky. They’re the biggest birds in the sky. And when the war’s over, I’ll have more than enough experience to earn my living flying. No one will be able to claim otherwise.”

“And trips to the Continent? What appeal does that hold?”

The fact he’d mustered the stomach to ask such a personal question meant he deserved an honest answer.
Mostly
honest. To say that the Continent wasn’t the limit of her ambition might be too much to admit. Ultimately, she sought even more distant destinations, harboring the morbid desire to look upon the beastly places that had stolen her family. Robbie at Dunkirk. Her parents over Egypt. But that was too personal, even when speaking with dear Nicky.

“Because it’s there?” She gave a little laugh. “Does that ring for you? I know these changes won’t last after the men come home. I want to make the most of it, see places I might never have the chance to see again.”

“Then you need to come with me.” No equivocating. Nicky could be blunt in his own very English way.

Lulu grinned. “When do we leave?”

“Should be a few weeks for you.” He exhaled steel-blue smoke. “I have to get the paperwork together, you see. But I leave on Tuesday.”

“Have you told the others?”

“Not yet. I wanted to discuss it with you first.”

That would be the most difficult part: saying good-bye to her best friends, her surrogate family. Doubt gave her pause. She’d been posted to Mersley since ’42. To start over again at a new pool, and to do so by returning to London . . .

No, she was being childish. She needed to do this. Betsy and Paulie and Lee would understand. They’d even encourage her, just as Nicky did.

“Thanks awfully. You’ve allowed me to turn myself into quite the oddity.”

He brushed an invisible fleck off his trouser leg. “Not odd, my dear. Just remarkable.”

The telephone rang out in the main hallway. High heels clicked down the parquet floor, followed by Paulie’s greeting. The break in their silence seemed an appropriate time for Lulu to turn in. She was about to bid Nicky good night when Paulie poked her head into the study.

“Lou, honey, it’s for you.”

Lulu’s stomach clenched. “Me?” she squeaked.

Paulie’s face lit up bright as a November bonfire. “It’s Joe.”

chapter nineteen

Lulu stepped off the train and into the dense flow of passengers at Charing Cross station. She clutched the handle of her small suitcase, the contents of which she’d agonized over for the twelve hours between her talk with Joe and her departure from Mersley. In the end she hadn’t held anything back: her three best dresses, her least knackered pumps, and an array of black market underwear joined two bottles of red wine, her stack of Cadbury bars, and all the makeup and bath products she could scrounge from Betsy and Paulie. She’d just have to rely on Joe for the hotel room.

“Meet me tomorrow, Lulu,” he’d said, his voice sounding unbearably rough and distant. “Meet me at four and we’ll spend the weekend together. You will come, won’t you?”

“Of course,” she’d said, breathless.

“Good.”

He’d paused then, while Lulu listened to the hissing static on the telephone line—the line that had connected her to whatever coastal English city he’d arrived home to.

“Joe?”

“Good,” he’d said again. “God, Lulu, I need to see you.”

Glancing around, she was convinced that every man in the station could read what was on her mind, that they knew her destination and how she would spend the night. She wouldn’t put it past the hard-up soldiers to notice her fast, uneven breathing, her goose bumps, her bobbing knees, and the slide of slick skin at the apex of her thighs. Like a pack of dogs driven by instinct, they’d be able to smell the arousal in her sweat and beneath the sweetness of her perfume.

But half the women at Charing Cross appeared to be waiting on a serviceman, or holding tight to one’s arm, or testing conductors’ tempers as they lingered over sad good-byes. Some of the women carried young babies—perhaps babies who had yet to meet their fathers. Older siblings would be out in the countryside with host families, or at home with benevolent friends or grandparents, those hasty arrangements made to provide a little privacy. Lulu imagined her own harried, anxious preparations echoed a thousand times over as her sisters-at-arms rushed to make the most of a few priceless hours with their men.

More potent than the clubs and bars, the station was a kernel of overwrought emotion. Sex and hope and grief came together in such a powerful mélange that Lulu could almost see the colorful aura of it all, rainbows of what it was for people to need one another. She was only a little part of it, standing there, blinking up at the sun streaming in from the window glazing and the huge bombed-out hole along one corner of the roof.

Her own emotions bubbled so close to the surface. Excitement, nerves, and a heavy dose of unexpected dread.
He’s Joe. Nothing to dread.
But after untold horrors on the front lines, just who was Joe Weber now?

The loud tannoy announced the departure of a train bound for Gillingham, and the arrival of another from Tonbridge. Lulu snapped out of her amazement and set off at a quick clip toward the exit leading to the Strand, and back around toward the Thames. She’d instructed Joe to wait for her on the south side of the Hungerford Bridge.

After getting over the shock of simply listening to him and talking to him, then making promises to be with him on the morrow, she’d transformed into a bundle of raw, quivering nerves and endless anticipation. They had forty-eight hours until he’d rejoin his unit and head back north to Rothley. Forty-eight hours together in London. Lulu could think of no better homecoming to the city where she’d been raised.

The suitcase was heavier than she’d expected, and she wasn’t used to walking such distances in heels. Her only concession to being out in the world, rather than on an air base, was to wear her uniform skirt rather than trousers. Paulie had spent hours arranging Lulu’s hair, making sure every wave and roll sat perfectly atop her head. She only hoped that it remained so. Two flights had landed her at RAF Biggin Hill. Then she’d used a bottle of wine to convince a jeep driver to take her the five miles to Chelsfield station. Boarding the train to Charing Cross had been a relief, no matter that it had been brimming with passengers.

She felt frazzled, but with a bit of luck she wouldn’t look it. Or Joe wouldn’t notice.

Joe.

She walked faster. His name became a promise. How had she come this far? How had she gone from being a determined single to a woman who couldn’t wait to hold one particular soldier? She had so much to tell him—and oh, so much to do to him. She clenched her damp palm more tightly around the suitcase handle, imagining the resilient flesh of his upper arms, his chest, his buttocks.

The July air outside the station was thick and wet as that unusually rainy summer wore on. Rather than finding relief from the bunched-up crowds, poor ventilation, and her own heated thoughts, Lulu only hit upon more pedestrians and temperatures that had taken a turn toward nasty. Up the steps, over an incline, and across an intersection manned by British MPs, she came to the bridge. A glance at her wristwatch said it was coming up on four o’clock. The weather had cooperated. The trains had cooperated. Now she was only a few minutes away from holding him.

As evening neared, that area around Charing Cross teemed with people. Last-minute shopping, perhaps. She imagined handbags carrying lists that would far outstrip rationing coupons. Such had become their lives. But the war revealed opportunities, too. Even five years ago, she never would’ve been allowed to walk down the street with the intention of rendezvousing with a military man—and a Yank to boot. Let alone fly. Now that she’d tasted those freedoms, she wasn’t giving them up for anyone.

Yet peace would mean just that. Women would give up most of the concessions mobilization had provided. Lulu couldn’t wish for her own continued fulfillment without wishing to prolong the war.

No. She was a pilot, and a bloody good one. She would find a way to stay airborne.

The Thames was dark blue, nearly black. Sunlight glanced off its surface and glanced off the clustered buildings along Victoria Embankment, some whole, but most in various states of disrepair. Giant silver barrage balloons hovered upriver, from Westminster Bridge and beyond.

Lulu was almost twenty-four years old, but even she found it difficult to remember how the city once looked. Neither could she imagine it whole and thriving in a distant, rosy era to come. The war stripped every moment of past and future, leaving only the present. Maybe that’s why she’d given up fighting her need for Joe. This was her moment.
Their
moment.

And there he was.

She stopped. Ten feet farther along the walkway, Joe looked toward the Houses of Parliament. She was struck anew by the unexpected shock of him. So fine. So very handsome. He bent at the waist, one hip kicked out and his forearms braced against a guardrail, fingers laced together. His garrison cap sat at a jaunty angle over hair that had been recently cut.

The uniform he wore was new and crisp, a contrast to his nonchalant pose—although Lulu noticed the stiffness in his shoulders, how they hunched up around his neck. His mouth was a tight line. Below a fresh white medic’s brassard, he sported an extra chevron on his upper arm. He’d been promoted.

Conscious of the wine bottles it contained, Lulu lowered her suitcase to the pavement. “Well, hullo there, Cpl. Weber.”

Joe turned. Recognition and something akin to relief made him seem younger. He stood away from the guardrail, unfurling to his full height. The aura of dark melancholy that shimmered around him disappeared. His dress uniform accentuated the V of his upper body, his wide shoulders tucking in toward a trim waist and narrow hips.

But as much as the sight of his body invigorated her own, a primal call and response, she watched his face in fascination. He was oddly expressionless now, which only accentuated the bluntness of his features: serious brow, straight nose, and hard, high cheekbones. His mouth was set midway between a man at attention and one fighting back a smile. Beautiful, dynamic eyes of green and gray never left her face. The last time she’d seen them in full sunlight had been when he’d stretched out naked in her bed.

Perhaps she’d expected him to offer some trite greeting. But this was a man only just back from the front. There would be no small talk now. She saw it in the set of his jaw as he approached. It was the jump boots, she thought, that made paratroopers so blasted toplofty—a point of pride shared by no one else in the U.S. Army, a hallmark of their elite training. He didn’t just walk as he closed the ten feet between them.

He strode.

Lulu only had time to inhale before she was in his arms—strong, determined arms that pulled her like a magnet. His kiss came as a sweet rush of heat and taste. Mouth to mouth, tongue pressing to find tongue, he blocked out the light of that July afternoon. Fingers splayed, he gripped her at the waist and between her shoulder blades. She crisscrossed her forearms behind his neck, wanting him close, then even closer. Slipping her hands into his hair, she burrowed her fingertips down to his scalp. The garrison cap slid off. Joe moaned into her mouth, firing her blood with the power of being able to arouse him. She was sweetly imprisoned by his strength and emboldened by the fierceness of his need.

“Not here,” he ground out. “You’re killing me.”

Lulu smiled against his neck, her lips brushing his skin as she spoke. “I think you have that wrong, love. You’re very much alive.”

She angled her head to claim another quick taste. Joe responded, briefly taking the kiss to a wilder, more primitive place, before breaking it off with a shudder. She stroked both hands up and down his back, but his tension didn’t ease. Muscles and ligaments still stretched taut, like the cables supporting the bridge.

When Lulu peeked out from the cave of his body, people were walking past them on the bridge as trains shuttled back and forth over the Thames. It was all too much. She couldn’t be honest about her reaction to him and maintain a semblance of decency—not when she wanted them both stripped bare, mouths everywhere. She settled for his neck, where she licked the salty flesh just above the starched collar of his uniform shirt. Another shudder worked through his big body.

“You told me you’d find a hotel room,” she said. “Any luck?”

When he pulled back, his nostrils flared on a strong inhale. The muscles where his jaw met his neck were bunched; he was biting his back molars together, fighting like she was.

“About three blocks from here,” he said, his words low and hoarse.

“Too far.”

He made a tight sound, a truncated laugh. “I’m sorry.”

“Whatever for?”

“Mauling you. I’d wanted to keep my cool.” He shrugged. That boyish happiness crept back across his face. Lulu’s heart flip-flopped.

“I don’t want you to keep your cool, Joe.” She brushed the sweat-damp hair off his forehead.

“No?”

“No. I want to have my wicked way with you. And I want you to reciprocate. Repeatedly.”

His nostrils flared again. When he stared at her with such intensity, Lulu could only think of sex. “Then three blocks really is too far.”

He retrieved his garrison cap from the ground, dusted it off, and tugged it onto his head. The lower edge rested at a regulation two inches above his eyebrows, seemingly without effort or thought. Only long practice. Then he picked up her suitcase and offered his arm.

“Nice to see you in heels,” he said, “but I almost wish you’d worn flight boots and slacks.”

Lulu threaded her arm through his. “Oh, really?”

“Because then we could run.”