The Top Gun's Return

by Kathleen Creighton

  "The graves? Members of the families, mostly, I'd guess."

  "But you don't have any family left here."

  "I seem to remember Dad telling me he sends money to the church. They have somebody who takes care of it." His voice sounded faraway. He propped his cane against the headstone and took a throw-away camera out of his jacket pocket, snapped a picture, then dropped the camera back in his pocket. He picked up the cane, plainly ready to move on.

  Jessie scrambled to her feet, brushing bits of gravel from the knees of her best gray wool slacks. "Where's your grandfather's grave? Is he buried here too?"

  He shook his head. "He was killed in the war. I don't think Dad even knows where he's buried."

  "You could probably find out. The government must know. Wouldn't they have some kind of record?" In her enthusiasm she didn't notice how distant he'd become.

  "Unless they were destroyed. You have to remember, this country lost the war. Things were pretty chaotic toward the end and for a long time afterward. Anything to do with government or the military was in ruins."

  Jessie nodded somberly, but it was a glorious spring day with cotton clouds drifting in a cobalt sky, the scent of new grass and hyacinths perfuming the air. Her head was pleasantly fogged with wine; the horrors of war-all wars-seemed far away.

  They got back in the car and, once again following Sigfrid's directions, easily found the road that led to the ruins of the Kloster, which they could see now, rising out of a wooded knoll above the gently sloping vineyards. For most of the way the wide, paved road ran arrow straight between fields of well-groomed vines that were just beginning to send new tendrils curling along their wire supports. Past the vineyards, pavement gave way to dirt and gravel that had been washed and rutted by winter rains, and then that, too, ended at a heavy rope barrier looped between two low posts. Beyond the barrier a grassy track angled upward along the hillside and disappeared into the woods.

  Jessie stopped the car with its bumper nudging the rope barricade and peered through the windshield. "Oops-far as we go," she said, but Tristan had his door open and was already maneuvering himself out of the car. She hastily shut off the motor and scrambled after him. "You want to walk up there?"

  He paused to look at her. "You want to see it, don't you?"

  "Well, sure I do, but-"

  "Then it looks like we're gonna have to walk."

  "But what about-I mean, are you sure you're up to it?"

  "Jessie." His voice was gentle and very soft. "I'm fine."

  "But, your knee-"

  No longer gentle, he snapped, "Dammit, I said I'm fine."

  But there were no clouds in her sky this morning. She hooked her arm around his and gave it a quick hug, flashed him a grin and in a voice that was pure Georgia, said, "Darlin', am I motherin' you?"

  Thoroughly ashamed, Tristan let out his breath in a whispering chuckle, and with it went a little of the tension that had been building in him since the cemetery. Something about seeing his grandmother's name carved in cold gray stone, with pansies and hyacinths clustered all around…He didn't begin to understand the tension, and what's more, he didn't intend to try.

  "Yeah, you are," he said, and gave her his poor excuse for a smile.

  The fact that it seemed to be enough for her humbled him. She smiled back at him, her nose crinkling across the bridge in that way he loved, and he felt her body snuggle close to him, her breast nudging full and soft against his arm. His heart thumped and his belly warmed, and he eased himself out of her embrace as gently as he could and took her hand instead.

  She's more than a little bit buzzed, he thought. And happy. After the fear and tension of the past few days, her happiness-the sparkle in her amber eyes, the glow in her cheeks-made his throat ache. She reminded him of warm, sunshiny things. She was full-blown roses and ripe peaches and hot sand beaches. And he…he was still darkness. He was rain clouds and 2:00 a.m. nightmares and cold empty rooms. Please God, he prayed, don't let me do anything to spoil this for her. Not today.

  The ruins of the cloister, blunt gray fingers of stone thrusting into view above the emerald-draped shoulder of the hill, reminded her, she said, of a fairy-tale castle. A hedgehog playing dead in the grass beside the path thrilled her-she'd never seen one before, and it was just like the one in Disney's Alice in Wonderland. She cried out in surprise and delight, like a little kid finding packages on Christmas morning, over the spires of pink foxgloves rising out of the slate shale hillside on the edge of a vineyard. And when they reached the top of the hill and she saw the blue ribbon of the river far below them, curving and looping between mountain slopes covered in a pale-green quilt of vineyards, fairy-tale villages nestled along its banks, she leaned against a thick stone wall and gave a soft and, he thought, rather wistful sigh.

  "It's so beautiful," she murmured, as the wind picked up the sides of her hair and made them flutter like the wings of a butterfly. The chilly air had turned the tip of her nose pink and made her eyes glisten…but looking at her made his own eyes sting and burn, and after a moment he had to look away. "I don't know how your father could stand to leave it."

  "There wasn't much of a future for him here," Tristan said, more harshly than he meant to. "Unless he wanted to work in the vineyards."

  She threw him a quick, abashed look that jolted him with a reminder of his vow not to blight her happiness. "Oh-right. I suppose not. Your dad worked for Boeing, didn't he? He was a mechanic-for airplanes."

  Wanting to make amends, Tristan levered himself onto the low stone wall she was leaning against and propped his cane beside him. "Dad always did love airplanes. The only thing he ever really wanted to do was fly, and when he got to Canada that was the first thing he did-joined the Canadian Air Force. He was going to be a bush pilot after that, but then he met my mother. She had other ideas-far as she was concerned, flying the Canadian bush was way too dangerous for the father of her child." He'd told her the story before, of course, many times-about how his dad had gotten the job with Boeing, and his parents had moved to Seattle, where Tristan was born. He told it to her again now, and she listened with held breath and avid eyes, as if she were hearing it for the first time.

  "Dad told me," he said, gazing at the thickly wooded hillside below the ruin, "that when he was a kid, right after the war, he and some of his buddies found the wreckage of a plane in these woods-he thinks it was an American fighter plane, but he couldn't swear to that. He said they used to go there to play. And look for souvenirs, I guess. Dad said from that moment on he dreamed of flying fighters someday."

  "Did he ever regret it?" Jessie asked. And there was a thickness in her voice that told him he'd already failed somehow to keep his secret vow to her. He glanced at her, and though her head was turned away from him and he couldn't see her face, he knew his cloud had covered her sun. "Not being a pilot, I mean."

  "He says not," he said. "He always said Mom was right, and that he probably wouldn't have lived to be my father if she hadn't made him quit when she did."

  "And then, he had you to fulfill his dream for him, didn't he." She tried to say it lightly, but that was a mistake. With no gentleness to soften them, the words sounded sharp and edgy. As if to deny them, or-who knows?-maybe trying to recapture the joy she could feel slipping away from her, like reaching for a butterfly that was floating off into the sky beyond her reach, she pushed away from the wall he was sitting on and went dancing across the rubble-strewn grass.

  "Hey, you have a camera, you should take a picture of this-the ruins, the view. Sammi June would love it. It's incredible…" And she was scrambling up a tumbled spill of stone to where a lonely section of wall still stood, framing an arched window opening. "Look here, you can see everything-the town, the river-and there's a boat, one of those big white ones. Tris-let me have the camera-quick, before it goes around the bend."

  He got up slowly, not wanting to remind her that towering stone walls had grim associations for him, but not wanting to dim the brightness of her moo
d more than he already had, either. Though the fatigue he couldn't seem to shake was catching up with him and his knee had begun to ache, he couldn't help but smile as he watched her pick her way over the stones, searching for hand-and footholds until she'd managed to climb into the window opening. Sitting there in grinning triumph, she waved at him, then held out her hand and wiggled her fingers, demanding that he hand her his throw-away camera. He felt a curious lifting, as if, he thought, there was a new and different Tristan inside him somewhere trying to break out.

  He took the camera out of his coat pocket and snapped a picture of her, framed in the window opening with the sun shining through her hair. She said, "Oh, Tris," and laughed in an embarrassed way, and he remembered that she never had understood how beautiful she was.

  He went over to the wall and reached up to give her the camera. She took it from his hand, and at the same time tried to stand up on the wide, uneven window ledge. He managed to get the word "Careful-" out of his mouth before her foot slipped on a mossy stone and instead of standing up she gave a startled squawk and came sliding down the wall practically on top of him.

  He didn't have time to brace himself, but even if he had, Jess was not exactly a tiny woman, and his strength wasn't even close to what it once had been. She hit him full in the chest. His arms went around her and they went down together-fortunately missing any significant stones-and he was flat on his back in the soft spring grass and she was lying on top of him, from her chest all the way down to the tips of her toes.

  There was a moment of shocked silence, and then she gasped, "Oh…oh my God. Tris, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Are you all right? Did I hurt you?"

  Brown eyes, so well remembered, now dark pools of dismay, gazed down into his. Flushed cheeks dusted with a sheen of gold hovered above him, so close he could feel their warmth on his own face. Even through several layers of clothing he could feel her heart thumping-or was that his?

  He felt the lifting sensation again, more powerful this time. And then something inside him seemed to burst and heat flooded his body like a fever.

  "I'm fairly sure I'll survive," he drawled, and she had barely begun to laugh when he lifted up his head and kissed her.

  Chapter 6

  It had been so many years. His body had forgotten the sensations of desire…of lust. He was like a wild thing set free, dazed at first, into frozen stillness…then all at once leaping blindly toward his freedom. The warm tumescence of her lips shocked him; his breath stilled as he lightly skimmed them as if in awe of a miracle.

  He felt her breathing catch, and the smallest pulling back…a tiny hesitation. He felt his fingers sink into the sun-warmed pool of her hair, and the pressure of her mouth on his increase. Her lips softened…and opened, like a gift.

  He felt thought and reason leave him and go soaring beyond his reach, and it was like watching an eagle rise toward the sun. All he knew was brightness and warmth…then blinding light and burning heat. Shuddering, like a man consumed by fever, he wasn't even aware of where and how his hands touched her. Like a starving man, he filled his mouth and arms and his very soul with her, and despaired because it couldn't possibly be enough.

  He didn't know what brought him back. Her soft moan, perhaps, flowing like a whispered promise from her mouth into his. He became aware of small things-the crisp cool feel of her raincoat in his hands…the winey taste of her mouth and the smell of crushed grass. He realized that she was no longer lying on top of him, that he'd rolled her over, half under him, and that one of his legs was wedged between hers, tightly pressed against her soft feminine places. She moaned again, and he withdrew from her slowly, clawing his way toward reason like a drowning man swimming toward the light.

  Lying back in the grass, he covered his eyes with his forearm and whispered, "God…Jess. I'm sorry. I didn't mean…I don't know what-"

  "You better not be apologizing," she said, choked and breathless. Her fist poked him in the chest. "It was about damn time you kissed me."

  He lifted his arm just far enough so he could see her. She'd raised herself on one elbow in order to look down at him, and though her words were brave, even defiant, even with the light sky behind her it was impossible to miss the evidence of his mishandling…the fear and uncertainty in her eyes…the glistening, crushed look of her mouth.

  He lifted his hand and touched her lower lip with his thumb, stroking the glaze his own mouth had left there across the soft, swollen pillow. His jaws cramped and his mouth watered, and newly awakened desire coiled in his belly like a captive beast raging against fragile tethers. He took a deep breath and sat up, drawing in his feet and resting his arms on his knees as he pivoted away from her. Words fought their way through the chaos in his mind.

  "That's not…the way," he said, his voice constricted and hoarse. "That's sure as hell not the way I wanted to kiss you. God help me, Jess, I-" he waved a helpless hand, intensely conscious of her, crouched there in wounded silence behind him "-I tried to warn you. I don't have the judgment…the control…the strength-I don't know what to call it. I just know I don't know myself…the way I am. I can't…trust myself. Neither should you."

  "You'd never hurt me." Her voice sounded shocked…appalled. He could feel her shaking. "You'd never do that. Never."

  He swiveled back to her, and after a long moment's silence, lifted a hand and laid it gently along her jaw. His thumb again stroked back and forth, just once and ever so lightly-a feather's touch-across her lips. "I just did," he said softly, and saw a tear quiver on the edge of her eyelid. Her throat moved convulsively against his hand. Cold with exhaustion, he went on gently. "I won't ever do that to you again, I can promise you that."

  "But what-" she licked her lips and tried again "-what if I want you to?"

  He gazed at her for a long silent moment before he took his hand away, shaking his head. "You don't know," he mumbled indistinctly as he turned.

  Rebuffed, outraged and vulnerable, Jessie thought, I don't know? And you think you do? She wanted to shout at him, Look, Mr. Rip Van Winkle, you've been dead for eight years, and you're calling all the shots? What is this?

  What was that? He'd never kissed her like that before-never. Not even in the first dizzy days of courtship when his slightest touch could turn her into a mindless bundle of simmering heat and thumping desire. It had scared her, sure it had. First, because it had made her feel things she'd never felt before. But-to be honest-mostly because she'd known instantly that the man kissing her wasn't the man she'd known, the husband she'd loved, the lover she remembered. It had been the most powerful, mind-blowing kiss she'd ever received in her life…from a stranger. What the hell was she supposed to do with that? How was she supposed to feel?

  "We'd better be getting back," Tris said. He was standing over her, one hand extended to help her up.

  Angry, confused and bewildered, she gave him her hand and let him pull her to her feet, then stared, hot-eyed, at his back as he bent down to retrieve the camera. He dropped it into his pocket and reached for his cane, and her heart turned over when she saw his face. How gaunt and drawn he looked…there were hollows in his cheeks and deep shadows around his eyes.

  Remorse and misery flooded her; she sniffed desperately and pivoted away from him before he could see her face. She felt his eyes on her but he didn't say anything, and they walked side by side down the trail to the car in shimmering, electric silence.

  When they reached the car, Jessie asked Tristan in a choked voice if he wanted another sandwich. He shook his head and instead held out his hand.

  "Give me the keys."

  "What?" Her head was still fuzzy-with suppressed tears, not wine-and it was a moment before she understood. Then her mouth dropped open and she stared at him. "The car keys? No. No way. Tris, you're not driving."

  "Yes, I am." His tone was stern, his jaw implacable; very much the old Tristan.

  "But-you don't have a license. And you haven't-"

  "Driving isn't something you forget," he said grimly. "
I'm in better shape to drive than you are. You've had too much to drink. Come on-hand 'em over."

  She gave an outraged gasp. "Too much to-I have not. What, a couple glasses of wine? Besides, I already drove-"

  "Half a bottle. And you never could handle wine, remember?" His voice had gentled; his eyes caught and held hers with an unrelenting gaze that somehow both demanded and implored.

  She drew a shuddering breath and said tightly, "What about your license? And your knee?"

  "My knee's fine-it's my left one, anyway. The license won't be a problem unless somebody stops us, and I've no intention of that happening. Come on, Jess." He grinned crookedly. "I'm gonna have to drive again sometime. Might as well be now."

  It's that grin, she told herself as she reluctantly handed him the keys to the Ford. I never could resist him smilin' at me; old behavior patterns are just damn hard to break. Anyway, I probably have had too much to drink. It's better this way.

  But she didn't feel the slightest bit buzzed, pleasantly or otherwise, as she settled into the passenger seat and buckled her seat belt. She felt battered and emotionally frail.

  Her misgivings began to fade, though, as they made their way slowly back along the river. Since they were backtracking and very little was required from her in the way of directions, she was free to watch Tristan-though surreptitiously under the pretense of sight-seeing so as not to annoy him-as he familiarized himself with the car and the process of driving. All signs of tiredness had magically disappeared; he sat straight and alert in the driver's seat, and his hands lingered over the controls with an almost caressing touch. He handled the steering wheel with the gentle assurance of an experienced mother bathing a new baby, while his eyes held a joyful light she hadn't seen in them since his release. How must it feel, she wondered as tears sprang to her own eyes, to be in control of your personal self again, after so many years?

  They stopped to eat in one of the larger river towns, in a restaurant that no doubt catered to tourists during the summer and autumn harvest season. They ate on an enclosed deck overlooking the river where they were the only diners at that hour, far too late for lunch, yet early for dinner. Jessie ordered Wiener schnitzel, which was the only thing on the menu she was sure she recognized. Tristan chose something that turned out to be pork chops-huge, thick and smothered in sauerkraut and browned potatoes. He ate every bite, and part of Jessie's dinner besides, while he told her what he knew of his father's boyhood in the vineyards and on the river.