Cherish the Dream

by Jodi Thomas

  The only snag in the plan lay in the waiting. And waiting seemed to be what they’d done all year. Pilots were never long on patience. Asking them to all sit around together was like throwing ammo into a fire. They were a mixture of dreamers and drifters, each of whom had joined for a unique reason. For hours they played cards and told stories of flights they’d made. Finally the conversation turned to women.

  As his men argued over who was the most beautiful woman they’d ever seen, Cody leaned back in his chair half asleep. He had his own memories, and the fact that his mail hadn’t caught up to him in six months only made Katherine’s last letter more valuable. She’d been careful to write nothing personal in her note, but Cody knew what was left unsaid, for he’d always left it out in his letters also.

  One American named Hall, who’d been driving a cab in Paris when the war broke out, insisted that the most gorgeous woman in France was an American nurse he’d seen in a small Red Cross station near the Somme River. “She’s got hair that teeters between red and auburn, and her green eyes make you want to lay down your pension at her feet. But she’s fiery. Got a tongue that’ll cut a man in half if he steps out of line.”

  Cody pulled out of his daydream to listen as Hall continued, “I was just trying to get acquainted, and she about took my head off for interfering with her work.”

  Cody opened one eye and stared at Hall. “Did you get her name?” He knew it couldn’t be Katherine and almost resented Hall for interfering with his dream.

  “Nope,” the man answered. “Not even when I told her I was a pilot. If that won’t soften a lassie’s heart, nothing will.” He laughed as everyone nodded. “The beauty just looked at me and told me she’d been up in a plane once herself back in Dayton.”

  Cody was out of his chair and to the door before anyone noticed he’d moved. “Katherine,” he whispered as he grabbed his jacket and headed for the field. It couldn’t be possible. She couldn’t be only a few hundred miles away without him feeling her nearness. She’d been so much a part of every dream he’d had for so long, he’d begun to think of her as someone he’d made up to help him pass the lonely hours. He’d never been homesick in his life, but his arms ached to hold her.

  It took him over an hour to talk someone into letting him use a plane. He had to lie his way through three officers and several clerks, but finally he was on his way, with a drudge of a plane and a twenty-four-hour pass. Even if this turned out to be a wild-goose chase, at least he was doing something.

  He flew northwest, staying well behind the lines. Troops were everywhere. The Allies had built a road toward Bar-le-Duc they called the Sacred Way. Thousands of men and tons of supplies were rolling toward Verdun. Cody couldn’t help but watch the sky, daring a German plane to cross the line. Katherine might be in his mind, but he was always ready for a fight. The young German pilots weren’t much of a challenge for him with their few hours of flight time and unsteady hand on the controls. Someday he hoped to meet the one named Baron von Richthofen, who’d painted his plane bright red as though he thought this was a game.

  War hadn’t been a game for Cody. He’d felt every loss until sometimes he thought there was no more feeling left. Even at meals, he’d find himself looking around and wondering who would be next to die. Finally he avoided meeting the new pilots because he didn’t want to think about them not returning. He didn’t even like shaking hands, for he felt he’d just touched the doomed. In the end, though, a part of him died whether they’d been his friends or men he’d refused to know.

  The sun was almost out of sight by the time Cody spotted the Somme River. He landed on a small airstrip well behind the lines. The tents of the Red Cross hospital were on his left when he jumped down from his plane, He gave the canvas a heavy pat, thinking the horse was old, but she’d run the race. He would have flown the same plane the Wright Brothers used at Kitty Hawk to get here.

  A tall man with one crippled leg hurried toward Cody and offered him a hand in pushing the plane off the runway. Cody hid his surprise at the powerful strength of the frail-looking man whose clothes hung on him as though he were no wider than a clothespole.

  Cody tried to talk to the man, who was covered with oil and dirt, but the Frenchman didn’t seem to understand his accent. He simply nodded when Cody asked if the plane could be ready to fly again tomorrow afternoon.

  Hurrying toward the hospital tents, Cody felt a sudden need to dust a bad feeling off his shoulders. Something about the mechanic made him uneasy. Never one to put a great deal of faith in luck, Cody still had a feeling bad luck would follow him if he ever let the man touch him. Mechanics were an even stranger lot than pilots, but this one bordered on frightening. He was missing the easy smile Wheeler DeJon always offered pilots when they landed.

  Cody broke into a run toward the hospital. Suddenly all he could think about was the hope of seeing Katherine. He had to hold her. It didn’t matter how many times he left her, she always seemed to go with him in his thoughts.

  “Don’t say something stupid,” he reminded himself. This time all the words he said to her would come from his heart, not his past.

  “You’ve got to make her realize how important she is to you,” he continued talking to himself, not caring that soldiers he passed were staring at him. “You’ve got to let her know that you couldn’t help breaking your promise to be back in three months. She’s got to understand you had no choice but to stay and help. This time, you have to get it right!” he whispered as he opened the tent hospital flap. “You may not get another chance.” He smiled, knowing if his men could hear him talking to himself they’d have him grounded.

  The lights were low inside the tent, giving those moving among the cots long ghostly shadows on the canvas walls. Several beds were empty, but stacks of supplies along each wall helped to keep the warmth in as well as to prepare for the next onslaught of wounded.

  An older man in white walked slowly toward Cody. He paused every few cots to check the patient there as though he considered Cody’s problem of little importance since no blood was leaking from him.

  “Evening, sir,” Cody said when the man finally raised his gaze to look at him.

  “Evening, son. What can I do for you?” The older man’s eyes looked as if he’d stared a moment too long in death’s face.

  “I am looking for a friend.”

  The doctor started shaking his head. “Sorry, son. I don’t know most of these boys’ names.” He glanced at the flight helmet hanging out of Cody’s pocket. “’Course if he’s a pilot, you might ask the mechanic who works out on the airfield. He knows everyone who flies into here. Don’t let his looks scare you. Last week he crawled under the wire and hauled out a pilot who’d crashed in the middle of no-man’s-land. Both sides were firing over him, but he somehow made it to safety with the man on his back.”

  Cody felt suddenly a little guilty for misjudging the crippled mechanic. In wartime people weren’t always what they seemed. He’d known men who talked brave on the ground, then froze at the controls in the air. Cody made a mental note to take a few minutes to talk to the Frenchman as he directed the doctor’s attention to his reason for coming. “I’m not looking for a pilot, or for any soldier. I’m looking for a nurse who might be here. Her name’s Katherine McMiller.”

  The doctor shook his head and Cody’s hopes fell. “Wouldn’t do you any good to talk to her,” he said, with a look of feeling sorry for Cody in his eyes. “She’s been here four months and hasn’t given a healthy man the time of day.”

  “She’s here!” Cody fought the urge to grab the doctor and shake all the information out of him at once.

  “Sure.” The doctor shrugged. “But she won’t have anything to do with any man who isn’t bleeding.”

  Cody wanted to scream that his heart had been bleeding for her since the day he looked into those emerald eyes, but he simply asked, “Could you tell me where she is?”

  The doctor nodded. “Over there with the worst of them, I’d guess. She al
ways ends her shift by sitting with those who are dying, just to hold their hands one last time before they pass on.”

  Cody barely heard the last words, as he moved in the direction the doctor indicated. The far section of the tent had been draped off from the others. He pulled one of the thin curtains aside and froze at the sight before him. Katherine knelt beside a cot, slowly pulling the sheet up over a soldier’s head. When she looked up at the slight sound of Cody’s movement, he saw tears in her eyes, and all his resistance against falling totally in love seemed to collapse.

  Silently she stood and straightened her uniform. He could see the tired lines around her eyes and the blood on her apron, but she’d never looked more wonderful to him. He opened his arms to her, and she walked toward him, moving faster and faster until she was running.

  He lifted her into his hug and twirled her around, loving the way she buried her head against his throat and held on to him as if to life itself.

  He couldn’t stop holding her. There were probably a million things he needed to say, but all he could think of was that she was here with him. Katherine, the foundation of his every dream and desire, was in his arms and hugging him just as tightly as he held her.

  “You folks know each other?” the doctor interrupted with almost a laugh.

  Katherine turned her head slightly, but didn’t let go of Cody. “Dr. Wells, I’d like you to meet Cody Masters, a very dear friend.”

  The doctor stretched out his hand. “Pleased to meet you, young man. Katherine’s the finest nurse in this outfit. If she says you’re a friend, then a friend you must be.” He had seen and understood the way they clung to each other. “And if you’re her friend, you’ll take this lady out of here and get her some food before they close up the mess tent for the night. Go on.”

  Cody didn’t need to be told twice. He pulled Katherine with him through the flap doors and out into the night.

  When they stepped outside, he looked around. “Which way to the mess tent?”

  In the moonlight her eyes were the color of evergreen. She stared at him without moving or showing any indication she’d heard a word he’d said. He knew food was something neither of them needed.

  A smile slowly spread across her lips as she stepped into the shadows of the tent hospital. “Cody,” she whispered before he joined her in the darkness.

  All the months of doing without her touch exploded within him. He pulled her against him and found her mouth as a dying man might find the last breath of air. He wanted to tell her all the things he’d never told anyone in his life. He wanted to hold her silently for hours, just hearing her heartbeat next to his, but first he had to taste her.

  His demand parted her lips with the violence of a love too long held at bay. Without slowing, he swallowed her cry of delight and felt her arms tighten around his neck. He could taste blood on her lip, but he couldn’t slow the pace. His need for her was too great to allow anything to stop him, and he wasn’t sure she’d allow him to pull away even if he tried.

  As the kiss deepened, she melted against him and moaned her pleasure softly against his lips. She tasted of peace to his troubled mind, and she felt like love and home. A home Cody had never known. A home where he was loved for what he was and not for what he did.

  He wanted to carry her away from the war and the world and hold her to him all the days of their lives. “I was wrong,” he whispered as he planted little kisses across her face. “I told you we should go slow. I was wrong. The only way to make it through this life is to take big gulps and never look back.”

  “No,” Katherine answered. “I’m the one who was wrong. I thought I had to have forever. In the last few months I’ve learned there is no forever.”

  Katherine dug her fingers into his hair and pulled his lips back to hers, silencing him with her demands. When she’d driven him mad with her mouth, she moved her hands underneath his jacket and shirt and clawed his chest.

  “I need to feel you next to me,” she pleaded as she leaned her head back to allow him to brush kisses along her neck. “Cody, don’t leave me until you’ve loved me.”

  Her words were a cry that answered all the longing within him.

  Cody’s words brushed her ear. “Where?”

  He didn’t need to say more. She knew what he was asking, and she had no thought of denying his request.

  She laughed softly and buried her face in his chest. “I can’t believe you’re here. I knew you were in France, but I’d almost given up hope of finding you. I thought you’d only be a part of my dreams forever.”

  “I’m real, Kat,” he whispered as he hugged her. “Here and now is as real as life will probably ever be again.”

  “Here and now,” she whispered as a promise.

  A shadow moved between the tents in front of them, and Cody pulled Katherine suddenly to his side. He’d thought they were on safe ground, but they were too close to the front line to drop their guard. Silently Cody slipped the safety strap off his revolver.

  “Pardon.” The shadow advanced with a limp. Then in slow, broken English a man said, “Thought you and the lady…would like dinner.”

  The mechanic handed Cody a basket and retreated into the shadows before Cody could even thank him.

  “Who is that man?” He looked down at Katherine.

  She shrugged. “Folks around here call him Hoot because he’s like an owl, moving only at night. He takes care of the planes, I think. He looks scary, but he’s harmless. I’ve found him a lot of nights sleeping out behind the hospital tent. Guess he doesn’t want to bunk in with the others any more than they probably want him. He smells worse than your mechanic, DeJon, and I hadn’t thought that possible.”

  Cody pulled Katherine toward the tents. “Do you sleep in one of those tents?” He nibbled at her ear, already wishing her hair was loose and free.

  Katherine put her arm around his waist and guided his path. “No, I’m the head nurse. My room is behind my office tent in a little place all by itself.”

  Cody let everything fade from his mind as Katherine drew him toward the fulfillment of all his dreams.

  Twenty-two

  KATHERINE WATCHED CODY in the tiny mirror mounted on a pole in the center of her office. Removing her cap, she allowed her hair to tumble, wishing suddenly it were brushed and shiny as it had been the day they met. That girl who’d promised anything in return for a ride in a plane seemed like a stranger to her now.

  Cody looked out of place in her little office. The top of the tent almost touched his sun-bleached hair. He seemed too wild and free to ever be closed into the small canvas shelter. His leather jacket battered but clean, his tall boots were polished and his white scarf spotless. With his handsome looks, he looked more like a poster pilot than a real man. Only his eyes reflected imperfections in his life. They told of a loneliness that went all the way to his soul.

  “What’s in the basket?” she asked, not really caring but not knowing what else to say. A part of her wanted to admit that she’d never entertained a man in her quarters and had no idea what to do. But somehow she managed to talk of ordinary things while in her mind she dreamed of possibilities. “The mess kitchen is quite good at making up late snacks,” she said as she remembered the way his chest felt pressed against her own.

  He gave her a glance that said he had no idea what she was talking about, then he opened the basket. “Sandwiches and cookies. You hungry?” As he watched her every move,

  his warm brown eyes told her of his hunger, a starvation that no amount of food could satisfy.

  Katherine removed her apron and washed her hands in the small portable sink. “Not really.” She doubted she could eat anything. All she could think about was wanting to be in Cody’s arms again, but somehow, now that they were alone and in the light, it was hard to know where to start. She smiled, wondering if he’d follow her if she suggested they step outside into the darkness.

  “How are Sarah and the baby?” Cody moved around the office restlessly. His hand
traced first one thing then another as if only something with warmth would satisfy his touch. “Matthew must be four by now.”

  “They’re both fine. She writes that Matthew grows every day and looks more and more like Bart,” Katherine answered, trying not to stare at his hands as they brushed along the familiar belongings in her world. “I mailed a letter yesterday asking Sarah to consider coming for six months. We need trained nurses badly, and she has an entire dorm full of girls to take care of Matthew.”

  As if suddenly aware of what he was doing, Cody locked his hands behind him and widened his stance. “I’ve looked for Bart but never found him. The few clues I have only hint that he’s still alive, nothing more. It’s not easy to find a man who wants to disappear.”

  Katherine didn’t want to talk of Bart or Sarah. For once in her life she wanted to be selfish with the precious little time she and Cody had together.

  Cody seemed to sense her feelings, for he resumed his pacing. He lifted the flap that separated her sleeping area from the rest of the office and Katherine cringed. She remembered how neat his room had looked. Hers was a disaster, with clothes, boxes, and books strung everywhere. There never seemed to be enough time to pick up. Besides, until tonight no one had ever been beyond her neat office to discover the mess.

  Cody glanced at her and raised one eyebrow. “Lucky you can afford a maid. I’d hate to think of what this place would look like without one.”

  She was almost to him when she realized he was joking, but it was too late to stop her playful attack. Her fist struck his chest more in a release of tension than in insult. He lost his balance and tumbled backward onto her bed. When she felt him pull on her hand, Katherine realized he was taking her down with him in the fall.

  Carelessly be shoved the covers aside and pulled her on top of him. “I surrender.” He couldn’t stop smiling as she wiggled above him. “Just don’t hit me again or smother me with all these clothes.”