One Man's War (14 page)

He sat on the floor of the hut with her for half an hour with the sunlight spilling like gold into the darkness, chasing it away—and Pete discovered something else. Tess was
his
sunlight chasing away the shadows. Savoring the closeness, the intimacy of holding her in the aftermath of her grief made him feel humble and good about himself in a way he'd never before experienced.

“I—I'm all right,” Tess whispered brokenly as she finally eased away from Pete. Touching her bedraggled hair with her trembling fingers, she wiped the last of the tears off her face.

Looking around, Pete found a brush and comb on top of a small wooden chest. “Yeah, I know you are,” he said wryly. “Come here. Turn around and just sit here for a minute.”

Tess allowed him to maneuver her around between his thighs so that her back was to him. “What are you doing?”

“Cleaning you up. You look like hell, Tess.” He gently eased the bobby pins out of the messy bun of red hair. The strands, curled slightly by the constant humidity, tumbled into his awaiting hands. There was something incredibly beautiful about the moment, and Pete absorbed it like a starving man. “I haven't brushed a woman's hair before, but yours needs it. Sit still. I hope I don't hurt you more than help you,” he joked weakly as he began to run the brush through the disheveled copper strands.

Sniffing, Tess relaxed as Pete gently brushed her hair. “I am a mess,” she admitted, her voice strained.

“In more ways than one.” Pete grimaced. “Honey, you need to get away from here for a while.”

With a shrug, Tess closed her eyes. “I don't want to be anywhere else.” Each hesitant stroke of the brush through her hair seemed to take away a little layer of pain. Pete's hands were healing, whether he realized it or not.

“Yeah, I know advisors who have been over here two or three times who say the same thing. It's an obsession, Tess. It grabs you by the throat and it doesn't let go.”

She looked out the door of her hut and heard the cries of grief echoing through the village. “These people are worth caring about, Pete. Forget about the damned government and politics.”

“I understand,” he soothed. The luxury of skimming his hands across her tamed, shining hair was sensual and exciting. The gleaming strands curled across her slumped shoulders. “There,” he said with smug satisfaction, “now you're looking better.”

Tess turned around and took the brush from his hands. “Thank you. It's the first time a man has brushed my hair for me.”

He grinned shyly. “For me, too. It was different...good.”

She placed the tortoiseshell brush on the chest. “This is what I was talking about before: intimacy, Pete. The small things, meaningful things shared between a man and woman.”

Leaning over, he stroked her waxen cheek with his finger. “I like sharing with you.”

“The good and the bad?”

“Yeah. All of it.”

Tess gave him a wary look. “It can get rough between two people, Pete. That's when you dig in for the duration and you don't quit.”

His smile deepened as he held her reddened eyes. “Honey, I just did two things I've never done with a woman before, and it felt kinda nice. In the past, every time a woman would start to cry, I'd leave in a hurry. And I never held anyone who was in trouble before, either.”

“I'm just glad you were here, Pete. It was nice to be held. Usually, I'm the one doing the holding and soothing.” Turning around on the rice mat, Tess brought over a small bowl of clean water and retrieved her washcloth from the chest. Her face felt hot and gritty with dust. She hadn't bathed last night as she usually did.

In the quiet of the hut, Pete watched Tess bathe her face, arms and hands. Her graceful gestures sent a building ache through him. In his mind, he pictured her in a hotel room with him, taking a shower together after making wild, heated love. Just the way the sunlight caressed her hair and brought out the living fire of it suggested she was a passionate woman. But Pete knew his thoughts and feelings weren't appropriate for the moment, and he forced himself to address the reality.

“I'm sorry the baby died before I could get here, Tess,” he told her in a low voice.

“You tried, that's what counts,” she whispered softly as she folded the washcloth and set the bowl aside.

“The kid was too far gone.”

“I—I know. I just didn't want to accept it. I thought maybe I'd start to get used to it somehow.” Tess pressed her hand against her heart. “But each death gets harder to take.”

Pete reached over and captured her hand. “Listen to me, Tess, you need a break from this place. How long has it been since you've had any R and R?”

“I went Stateside between my two tours.” And then she shrugged. “Well...actually, I went home to our Texas ranch, went out of my mind with worry about my villages and flew back to Saigon a week later.”

“Foolish woman,” he taunted gently and lifted her hand to press a kiss to it. “You need time off. Even a thick-headed guy like me can see that. I've got that line I told you about on a portable electric generator in Saigon. How about taking a trip down there with me on a C-130, and we'll see what can be done? I've got to go down for the squadron, anyway. We're not getting certain spare parts for our choppers, and Gib wants me to requisition them right out of the warehouse. They store parts there, then send them to the units through a paper jungle. When the parts finally do make their way north to us, half of them have disappeared. It's tough to keep the birds flying without them.”

Tess rallied beneath his cajoling and care. This was the real Pete Mallory, the man who felt deeply, and was able to share his heart with her. For once, Tess had to admit to herself that she
was
exhausted. She couldn't continue. She needed a reprieve from her highly emotional world. She nodded. “Okay, I'll go. Maybe you're right—I need a break.”

Rolling his eyes, Pete said dramatically, “Look out, Saigon. Here we come!”

“When's the plane leave?”

“Eighteen hundred from Marble Mountain.” Pete didn't want to let go of her hand because intuitively he felt she needed the human contact right now. There wasn't anything sexual about it, but it made him feel warm inside just to hold her hand. Maybe Tess was right, and there
was
more than sex in the world.

“That's so soon,” Tess protested.

“Yeah, but we might be able to get that generator you need,” he baited. Her features were distraught and pale. “If you want a well for these people, we've got to move fast, Tess. Generators don't grow on trees.”

“Okay...”

“Don't worry, I've made all the plans. We've got a reservation at the Caravelle. All I need is you, honey.”

Tess was too mired in her grief to rally much beneath Pete's sunlit smile and good-natured teasing. She didn't even question whether the reservation was for two rooms or one. She'd find out soon enough.

* * *

“This is pure, unadulterated luxury,” Tess said with awe as she stepped into her hotel room at the Caravelle. Next door was Pete's room—connected by an interior door, he'd already informed her, a gleam in his eye.

They'd flown for several hours and landed at Tan Son Nhut air base just in time for a late dinner. Pete had the porter put her suitcase down and paid him in piasters. “Yeah, it's not a bad joint,” he said, after the porter had left. He motioned to the large double bed covered with a gold silk spread. “Most important piece of furniture in the place.”

Pete's teasing had lifted so much of her darkness. Tess gave him a sideways glance. “You never give up, do you?”

“With someone as pretty and nice as you?” Pete whispered conspiratorially, placing a small kiss on her cheek. “No way.” He saw her eyes widen beautifully at the stolen kiss.

“Pete!”

“Tess!” He laughed. “Get a hot shower, honey, change and meet me in the lobby in an hour. I plan to wine and dine you proper.”

After Pete had sauntered confidently through the door that led to his room, Tess shook her head. Everything was dreamlike, from the carpeted floors to the glass-enclosed shower to the fragrant lilac-scented French milled soap. She was so used to taking a quick bath in the stream that ran behind the village and using a scratchy cotton cloth for a washcloth. Here, the hot water alone was a sensual luxury. Wrapped in a soft, thick towel after her shower, she padded out to her small suitcase. Inside was her only decent dress: a sleeveless white cotton concoction with an empire waist. She put it on and stared at herself in the floor-length mirror.

With her recently washed hair up in a French twist, a few tendrils softly touching her flushed cheeks, she didn't even recognize herself. The woman staring back from the mirror was another Tess, she thought with a wry smile. Placing small white-and-gold clip earrings on her earlobes and sliding her nylon-clad feet into a pair of white sandals, she was ready to meet Pete. Miraculously, she was looking forward to this night with him, her heart silencing her head, which warned that he was still on the make trying to woo her into bed.

* * *

Pete's eyes widened in appreciation when Tess stepped out of the elevator. She looked demure, slightly flushed and shy as she walked over to him.

“Honey, you're knockout material. I hope you know that.” He grinned.

“I'm uncomfortable enough, Pete. Don't rub it in.” She looked down at herself. “Look at me—in nylons of all things! Nobody wears nylons here, it's too hot and humid.”

“This place is air-conditioned, so it's a moot point.” He gazed appreciatively down at her long, slender legs. “What a set you've got,” he said, and whistled softly.

“You're not exactly bad-looking, either,” Tess teased, a fierce sense of longing catching her off guard. Just the way Pete's mouth moved, the hunterlike look in his intense blue eyes, stole the breath from her. He was so very male in the navy sport coat, white silk shirt and paisley tie with ivory chino slacks.

“Thank you.” He cupped her elbow. “Come on, I've got the best seat in the house reserved for us. We're going to do some heavy celebrating tonight.”

* * *

The coffee after dinner warmed Tess. As the waiter cleared away the dessert dishes, leaving a pristine white linen tablecloth between them, she smiled at Pete. “This has been wonderful. You were right. This is exactly what I needed.”

Pleasantly full, Pete leaned forward and captured her work-worn fingers. “What I needed was a good dose of you to cure me of my Vietnam blues.”

His hand was strong without hurting her fingers. In the candlelight, Pete's handsome features took on a craggy, shadowed appearance. Tess wondered if he still saw her as a shadow on his life.

“Tell me about tomorrow morning. Where are we going to get this generator?”

“I'd rather talk about tonight.”

“I wouldn't.”

He grinned. “I had to try.”

“No, you didn't.”

Squeezing Tess's hand, Pete released it and sat back. “We're going down into a district where they stash items for resale.”

“Black market?”

“Yeah.” He scowled. “I'd rather you stay here at the hotel, get your beauty sleep and let me go. It gets kinda dangerous down there at certain times...Vietnamese gangs and all that.”

“Won't you need someone who speaks Vietnamese?”

With a grin, Pete said, “Honey, these guys get along just fine with pidgin English, lots of hand gestures and real greenbacks instead of piasters. They know how to count in every language, believe me.”

Tess could believe it. Vietnam, for good or bad, ran on greed, corruption and a very active black market.

“What about the rabies vaccine?”

“I got a supply sergeant at another depot that has what we need. The vaccine will be easy to get. After that, I've got to drive over to a third district and make sure our helicopter supply parts get loaded on that C-130 we're taking back tomorrow evening. I'll be gone most of the day. Why don't you rest, maybe do a little shopping, and I'll meet you for lunch?”

The idea was tempting. Tess discovered how tired she was beginning to feel, from accumulated stress, lack of sleep for weeks on end and the trauma of the war. “Okay. I'm falling asleep, Pete. All of a sudden, I feel like somebody poleaxed me.”

Pete stood up, swallowing his disappointment. Tess looked luscious in her dress, and he hadn't been able to help but entertain thoughts of making slow, beautiful love to her. But he could see the darkness in her eyes, and the exhaustion in her face. “Come on,” he urged. “I'll walk you back to your room.”

“Thanks,” Tess said wearily. “I'm sorry to be a wet blanket, but I'm ready to sleep.”

“Combat stress,” Pete assured her as they walked out of the restaurant. And before she could protest over his choice of words, he added, “What you do
is
combat oriented, Tess, so don't argue with me. A VC sniper is just as capable of blowing you away as one of the marines. You're an American, even if you keep forgetting it.”

“Well, all arguments aside,” Tess told him in the elevator, “that generator is going to make a world of difference at Le My. I can hardly wait to see it working.”

* * *

Sometime after midnight, Tess awoke screaming. The nightmare that suffocated her had to do with a young boy and water buffalo stepping on a mine in one of the flooded rice paddies. As Tess sat up in bed, trembling, her hands pressed against her face, she could see it all over again. The shorty cotton pajamas she wore were damp with perspiration. Oh, why wouldn't these nightmares leave her alone? Sobs tore from her.

Rubbing his eyes sleepily, Pete opened the inner door to Tess's room and staggered toward her. She was sitting up in bed crying. He'd heard her scream, a haunting cry that had shaken him out of his light, restless sleep. Clad only in a pair of drawstring pajama bottoms, he moved to her side.