Ride the Tiger (9 page)

Sheer anger, hatred and frustration thrummed through Dany. “Duc promised to be neutral!”

Wanting to ease the anguish in Dany's eyes and strangled voice, Gib eased one of her hands from her lap and placed it on the table. Gently, he squeezed her small, knotted fist. “Listen, Dany, as much as I wish you could maintain neutrality, it just isn't going to be possible. From what I can deduce about Duc, he must have known about your mother's relationship with the general. Duc probably saw it as consorting with the enemy and set up the land mine.” Gib saw Dany tuck her lower lip between her teeth. “I'm sorry,” he said as tears glimmered in her eyes. Searching for and finding his handkerchief in his back pocket, Gib drew it out and pressed it into her hand. “Here,” he whispered.

“Th-thank you.” Dany blotted her eyes, unable to meet Gib's concerned gaze for a long time.

“Maybe it would help if you talked to someone about your mother,” Gib suggested. “It might ease the hurt and grief you're carrying.”

Dany shook her head.

Searching for some way to assuage her grief, Gib said softly, “When my mama died, I felt just like you. She died unexpectedly, too. I'd just graduated and gotten my pilot's wings. I came home on leave. You have to understand that celebrations in Texas are a big deal. Mama had been slaving away for a week in advance of my coming home. She was fixing the biggest Texas barbecue the state had ever seen.”

“I came home wearing my new marine uniform and silver wings.” His voice lowered with a wealth of memories. “Mama was at the station waiting for me when I got off the bus. So were my brothers and sister. I stepped off, and Mama threw her arms around me and started to cry, she was so proud.”

Self-consciously, Gib added, “Mama never cried, so it really shook me up. I remember her crying only once before in all those years, and that's when Daddy died. No matter how bad things got for us around the ranch after that, she never broke down.” He smiled fondly. “I started crying, too, right there in the middle of the bus station. In fact, when I looked up, there wasn't a dry eye in the whole family. Mama told me she was crying for happiness this time, not sadness. My Daddy had been a marine during World War II—she'd been a nurse when she met him—so it meant a lot to her that I'd become a marine.”

Gib saw Dany's expression soften, some of her grief dissolving with his admission. He'd never shared this painful part of his life with anyone, but he forged on. “We started celebrating as soon as I got home to the ranch. Mama had invited half the town of Midland to the barbecue the next day. It was quite an affair. I was helping put the meat on the platters when I saw Mama faint at the back door of the kitchen. Tess saw it, too, because she was in the kitchen helping Mama with the serving chores, but I was the first to reach her.”

Closing his eyes, the pain suddenly as sharp as the day it happened, Gib whispered, “She died of a heart attack right in my arms. When the ambulance arrived, Tess and I rode with her to the hospital. In the emergency room, the nurses made us wait in the visitor's lounge. We all stood around knowing Mama was gone.”

“How awful,” Dany choked.

“Yeah,” Gib agreed rawly. “The doc came out later and told us what we already knew. Mama was dead. We stood there and cried in one another's arms. At least,” Gib said, holding Dany's tear-filled gaze, “we had one another. You had no one—even while your parents were alive, judging from those photos on the walls of your house. It didn't look like you were a part of your parents' life.”

The truth hurt. Dany bowed her head, her painful past boiling up at Gib's admission. “
Maman
was...well...her career meant everything to her.”

Gently, Gib reached over and cradled her hand in his. “Tell me about it.”

Dany hadn't cried since the funeral, but now tears dribbled down her cheeks. They touched her lips, and she tasted the salt. “The truth was,” she said, the tears belying her seeming calm, “my mother was a B-movie starlet. She had two small roles, exactly five minutes on the screen for each, before my father `discovered' her. He fell in love with the image my mother projected.” Rubbing her brow, Dany muttered, “I'm sure this sounds terrible because she's dead now.”

“No,” Gib answered softly, “I'd rather know the truth. It doesn't mean you loved your mother any less, Dany.”

Dany squeezed her eyes shut, a wall of pain pushing up through her chest. The urge to throw herself into Gib's arms and be held—just for a little while—was nearly overpowering. “I wish,” she began hoarsely, “that
Maman
loved me as much as I loved her.” And then she opened her eyes and met Gib's heart-meltingly warm gaze. “It doesn't matter anymore, does it?”

“Sure it does.”

“You're the first person who ever noticed that I'm not in any of those photos.”

“It tells me you've led a pretty lonely life.”

With a weak shrug, Dany said, “I didn't figure into my parents' marriage, or their fantasy world. They lived a wonderful life of glamour, and the fantasy didn't include a baby. My mother told me when I was twelve that she'd had three abortions in the first four years of their marriage because they didn't want children for a while. I remember thinking at that time I wasn't really wanted either, that I was just a shadow, an addendum, to their life.”

“Not a part of it,” Gib agreed, absorbing the cutting edge of her pain at her parents' abandonment.

Dany wiped the tears away with his handkerchief and gave him a wobbly smile. “I was born in that house, up on the second floor. Ma Ling was my mother's maid. Our homeopathic doctor, Dr. Perot, delivered me. My mother refused to breast-feed me because she was afraid it would hurt her figure. Ma Ling had just had a daughter of her own, so she wet-nursed me.”

Gib held on to his unraveling feelings. His desire to protect Dany, to give her a haven where she could get some rest and lean on someone for just a little while, was an ache within him.

“Ma Ling was my real mother in many ways,” Dany admitted, turning the wineglass around between his fingers. “She was the one person who really loved me. I spent more time with her family in the village in back of the plantation than in my own home. When I was old enough to be weaned, I ate all my meals with them. By the time I was four, I spoke fluent Vietnamese and very little French. My mother rectified that situation by hiring a French teacher. She was horrified that I might turn into a little barefoot Viet brat.”

“She wanted to keep up family appearances,” Gib agreed. The truth was, Amy Lou Villard hadn't wanted a child at all, but Gib kept that painful observation to himself. Dany had suffered enough without him adding to her pain.

Sadly, Dany said, “Yes... I don't blame
Maman,
though. I understand my mother as few ever did. She never made it to fame in Hollywood, so my father brought here here to an `exotic' fairy-tale land and made her queen of all she could see. Here,” Dany murmured, “my mother
was
a famous Hollywood actress. She and my father lived that fantasy together. They were the toast of Saigon, Bangkok and Singapore. The Far East believes my mother really was a Hollywood star.”

“More importantly, what do you think?”

“I grew up believing the same thing until I was old enough to realize the truth. My father collected things, Gib. He went to Hollywood to find himself a star for a wife, a bauble to boast about and parade around on his arm. Then he came to Vietnam, a poor, destitute French colony where family money bought him a bankrupt plantation. Using my mother's `famous' career and the influence it brought from the gullible Vietnamese, he parlayed and wagered the plantation into working order. Eventually, the plantation's rubber trees paid off handsomely.

“Of course, my father used every opportunity to increase his power over the Saigon officials. He was as good at bribing as any Vietnamese politician and bribery is a way of life in this country. So my mother was happy because she was receiving the acclaim she never had in Hollywood. My father was equally happy because his baubles were producing more than he'd ever dreamed. Back in France, my father's relatives worshipped the ground he walked on. In their eyes, he was not only very rich, but very famous because of his American-actress wife.”

Gib saw the tortured look in Dany's eyes. His voice was off-key when he spoke. “It must have been hell on you.”

Dany shrugged. “Ma Ling knew the score from the beginning. She worked very hard to see that I was not only loved, but genuinely made to feel a part of a family—her family.” Looking down at her calloused hands, Dany smiled. “
Maman
disowned me in many ways over the years. She often scolded Ma Ling because she'd find me barefoot and wearing ragged clothes like the rest of the village children.” She lifted her hands and spread them before her. “
Maman
could never understand my love of the land or the people. She never did.”

The lump in his throat thickened, and Gib wanted to cry for Dany. He knew there was nothing he could do to change her past. He wanted to sweep her into his arms and hold her tightly for a long, long time. Every nuance in her vulnerable features shouted her need to be held. She was a woman very much alone. Gently, he squeezed her hand.

“That's why Vinh means so much to you.”

With a nod, Dany said, “He's my family, like a baby brother...”

That you never had.
Gib bit back the words. He stroked her work-worn hand. “He's a lucky little kid, but I think he knows that.” Wanting to lighten the somber mood, he teased, “Who's the lucky man in your life right now?” He held his breath, afraid of her possible answer.

Wrinkling her nose, Dany said, “There isn't one. A few close calls over the years, but nothing serious. Frankly, I've found very few men who understand the hard work and time it takes to run a plantation. If they love me, they must love the land. It's not a negotiable thing.”

Inwardly, Gib relaxed at hearing there was no man in Dany's life. God help him, but
he
wanted to be a part of her life.

Dany didn't want their time together to end, but she always felt the invisible pressure of Binh Duc's spies, who were everywhere, she knew. Their salads had somehow been eaten, their wine drunk as they'd talked. “As much as I wish we could spend more time talking, I think we ought to go,” Dany said, suddenly becoming fully and tensely conscious of her surroundings.

“You're worried about us being seen together?”

“Yes. I'm sorry....” And she was. She had been given a glimpse of the man beneath the uniform, unashamedly an American, a rancher who loved the soil with a fierceness equal to her own. Dany realized she could no longer hold her instinctive feelings for Gib at bay with her original wall of reasons. The gentle curve of his mouth, the warmth in his eyes—all conspired against her, and she ached to know much more about the man who sat opposite her. She found herself wondering what it would be like to kiss Gib. His mouth was strong, yet promised a tenderness she longed to explore.

Shaken by her wishful side—that side that went unfulfilled except in the dark passion of her sometimes torrid dreams—Dany knew with a bittersweet acceptance that she would never experience Gib's kiss. He was one of thousands of GIs over here to do a job, and then leave—forever. She tried to convince her heart that in time she, too, would be left behind, nothing better than perhaps a fleeting, fond memory.

Gib paid the waiter in piasters and rose to his feet. He saw the emotions coursing over Dany's readable features. Longing and desire burned in her green eyes, yet a sadness lingered there, too. What was she thinking? God help him, but every cell of his being wanted to hold her, to kiss her exquisite mouth. As he moved behind her to help her with her chair, the lily-of-the-valley scent of her perfume enveloped him. Dizzied by her closeness, Gib inhaled the perfume and her warm body scent. A man denied far too long the gentler, womanly side of life, he hungered to explore Dany as only a man could explore the woman he needed at his side.

“Did you take a taxi into Da Nang?” he asked as he drew her chair back.

Shaken by Gib's nearness, Dany stood, clenching her straw purse. “Yes.”

“Good. I'll drive you back in my friend's Citroën, and then we'll find Vinh, so I can take him to the base for a close look at the helo he drew for me.”

* * *

At the plantation, Gib sauntered into the room where the Hollywood pictures hung. Dany had called for Ma Ling, but the old Vietnamese maid had gone to Da Nang to shop.

“Where's Vinh?” Dany asked the young girl who had answered her call.

“He's out back with the gardener, removing weeds from the flower garden at the property line.”

“Could you go get him?” Dany asked.

The girl nodded, looked at Gib with big eyes and left.

When they were alone, Gib turned and moved to Dany. Without thinking, he reached out and laid his hand on her small shoulder. He felt the clean silk of her hair. Wonderment flared in Dany's eyes at his touch, and Gib saw longing in them, not revulsion or denial. She welcomed his touch, he realized. No, she desired it.

“I liked our time together,” he said huskily. “Sharing even one afternoon with you is like some crazy, wonderful dream come true.” A corner of his mouth lifted in a crooked smile. Dany turned toward him and stepped closer. Much closer. Her special fragrance teased him again, and Gib groaned inwardly as her lips parted. Whatever words he'd been about to utter died in his tightened throat. He caressed the line of her shoulder with his fingertips, feeling the sleek silk of her aquamarine
ao dai.
The sensation that pounded through him was as startling as it was heated and alive.

The sea green of her eyes darkened and grew lustrous as he continued the searching caress. Gib moved closer until only inches separated them, a powerful, swirling sensation gripping him until only Dany existed in his narrowed world of fire, need and hunger—all wrapped into an aching storm building rapidly within him.