Midway Between You and Me (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Rogenna Brewer

  Dearest Daughter,

  I’m so very sorry I missed your phone call the other night. Mr. O’Connor and I were out to dinner. He’s such a dear man. Did I mention he and I met in Saigon all those years ago? He served at the American Embassy as a young marine corporal and I only saw him that one time, so I guess we never actually met. However, to see him again is like going home, not to the war I remember, but to the place in my heart that is Vietnam.

  Which brings me to the point of this letter. When are you coming home for a visit? You’re much harder to reach by phone than I am. You should memorize all my numbers or at the very least keep them handy. What happened to the cell phone I gave you for your birthday? Do you even carry it with you? I always have mine. And you really should, for your own protection. But I know you, you like your isolation and your island. It’s not good for such a young woman to be so out of touch, not just from her mother, but from people her own age. From young men, especially.

  Since I don’t think I can wait until your next call or visit to break the news, I’ll tell you now. Mr. O’Connor and I are making plans for a trip back to Vietnam in the fall. He’s helping me look for your father. He’s the one. I know it in my heart.

  All my love,

  Mother

  The one, what? Tam puzzled over the question that had been bothering her since last night. Her mother hadn’t even mentioned Tam’s father except to say that Mr. O’Connor was helping her look for him. She’d mentioned O’Connor eight or nine times.

  Could O’Connor be the one to finally help her mother forget? This could be a good thing, and Tam would keep telling herself that until she believed it. But he was a Marine.

  A former Marine corporal.

  That didn’t make him career military. Probably an enlistee or draftee, and when he’d arrived home from the war he’d gone back to being a regular Joe with a regular job.

  Tam had about a million questions. Like who was this O’Connor? What were his motives? Money or something more?

  “Let it be something more.” Her mother deserved that at least. Tam drank tea to wash down the lump forming in her throat. Folding the letter, she tried to think of it as a new beginning rather than an ending.

  She’d call her mother later, but decided right then and there if O’Connor checked out, she’d do everything she could to encourage this budding friendship. She’d have to discourage the trip to Vietnam, though. That was insanity.

  She slid the letter under the paperweight on the desk and picked up the knife from the cluttered desktop. Careful of the blade, she studied the polished handle that seemed to cast a spell over her like the country that still called her name.

  O’Connor couldn’t possibly know the danger that awaited her mother there—unless Lan had told him everything, and Tam doubted that.

  Even the lieutenant had assumed she was able to visit Vietnam. It was true. Americans were free to come and go, but she had other reasons for not being able to return to the country of her birth.

  Had the lieutenant ever been there?

  And who was he, really? A tall blond stranger who moved constantly, west ahead of the sunset and east ahead of the sunrise. Tam traced the words etched into the silver end cap of the handle. “The Pirate.”

  Like the owner?

  She didn’t approve of ivory, killing an animal for its tusks went beyond criminal to inhumane. Small consolation the man wasn’t an ivory hunter. Or even an importer-exporter.

  So why had he left such a valuable treasure with her? It wasn’t like she’d wrestled it out of his hands. And as long as she had possession of his property, it meant they had unfinished business between them.

  A connection.

  Perhaps it was just an occupational hazard, but she couldn’t help but make the comparison to courting penguins. When a male wanted a female he brought her a shiny stone and dropped it at her webbed feet.

  If she accepted him as a mate she picked it up.

  Tam dropped the knife into the open bottom drawer of her desk and slammed it shut. Penguins, like all her favorite birds, mated for life. She couldn’t even see this guy settling down for a moment.

  Even if he didn’t go around killing for sport, he was still very much a hunter. Maybe the worst kind of hunter. And she had no intention of being his game.

  Mug in hand, she stared down the closed desk drawer. She’d deal with the legalities and, if it was possible, figure out a way to return it. The sooner the better. He’d given her enough information about himself that she’d be able to track him down easily enough….

  Double bars.

  Breast insignia. Unit patches.

  Identifies me…

  But what if he hadn’t been wearing any of those things?

  Tam slammed down her mug and ran for the bedroom. The dresser. She yanked the top drawer off its runners, barely skipping back a step before it crashed at her feet.

  Dropping to her knees, she tossed underwear to the floor until she found what she searched for.

  The Polaroid taken thirty years ago.

  Sitting back on her heels, she stared at the photograph. Her mother had given it to her when Tam had turned twenty-one, wanting Tam to have some sort of remembrance of the man.

  She pushed to her feet and hurried to her desk. Picking up the magnifying paperweight, she took a closer look at the eight men crowded into the small frame.

  They could have been Lieutenant Prince’s men. They wore the same kind of uniform, except there wasn’t anything to identify them, no bees or lightning bolts. She’d noticed the absence of dog tags and insignia before, but this was the first time she’d ever thought of it as a clue.

  And the first time she’d ever considered the possibility that her father wasn’t a soldier, but a sailor.

  Their face paint concealed more than mere features, it hid a truth that had been right in front of her eyes. As she studied the photo of her father, she began to really see it. The red bandanna wrapped around his head. The sleeves ripped from a uniform shirt that hung open. This wasn’t the uniform of a man who operated within the ranks of conventional warfare.

  He carried many weapons, an automatic rifle over his shoulder, an ammo pack and knife belted to his waist. But the only identifying mark was that skull-and-crossbones tattoo with the evil red eyes on his right biceps.

  She played with the magnifying glass to get a better look at the faces of the other men standing in the haphazard rows. To the far left a man stood out from the rest, dark hair, light eyes, and beneath the grease paint smeared on his face he had what appeared to be a very pronounced scar.

  With shaking hands she set down the paperweight and the picture before she acknowledged what she saw. She was fairly certain the man standing shoulder to shoulder with her father was the father of the man she’d met yesterday morning.

  “No, it can’t be.” She reached for the paperweight to disprove her theory and knocked over the mug. Tea poured onto the Polaroid. “No!” she cursed her own carelessness and the irony of fate. Lan Nguyen had managed to preserve that photo for decades. While Tam had managed to ruin it in an instant.

  She bit down on her bottom lip, holding back her tears. Nothing could make up for thirty lost years, certainly not a photograph. So why did she feel like mourning the father she’d never found?

  Or did she mourn something else?

  She’d met the one man who held the key to her past. Did she dare let him unlock the door to her future?

  That question unnerved her. He unnerved her.

  And now she had to do the unthinkable—ask for his help. “Lieutenant Bowie Prince, don’t make me regret we ever met.”

  Fall 1972

  Quang Tri Province, Vietnam

  MUCH TIME HAD COME AND gone since Skully had left Quang Tri Province.

  Three months to the day he’d left, a fortune-teller had come to the village. Lan’s mother had requested a reading, and the soothsayer had taken one look at Lan and predicted what she’d already known, her belly w
ould swell before the month was out.

  Lan stopped the oxen and pressed a hand to her aching back. The plow harness weighed heavily on her neck and shoulders as she tilled the soil for a small garden that would be planted in the only section of their land that was still workable.

  Skully had been gone for seven months now. She didn’t think a baby was what he meant by “big trouble.” But if she’d still had the means to run away to Da Nang, she would have.

  For now she had no choice but to play the dutiful daughter. She could see the smoke on the horizon, hear the explosions in the distance, and still she kept working.

  Because she had no choice.

  She only had today to live for. There was no tomorrow in Vietnam.

  After the fortune-teller left, her mother had admonished her for not taking precautions. And as she had done once before, she’d brewed a special tea and tried to force Lan to drink it, but this time Lan had refused the abortifacient.

  Then her father had got involved. He’d demanded the name of her lover. Still she’d resisted, not sure how her parents would react when they found out he was an American G.I. and not some village boy as they suspected.

  So they’d searched the house, her person, everywhere until they found the evidence they’d been looking for.

  The photograph. The money. The letter.

  Lan had watched in tears as her father tore up her husband’s words and threw them into the cooking fire. She’d tried to explain. But he wouldn’t listen. And he couldn’t read English.

  Her father had called her a stupid girl for believing the soldier’s lies. Lan couldn’t read English, either, but she knew in her heart Skully hadn’t lied to her.

  Her father had been too superstitious to burn the photograph. And too smart to burn American dollars. So he’d kept both. When things had settled down, her younger brother Bay had shown her where their father had buried the picture behind their hooch.

  She’d dug it up and kept it in a hidey-hole in the root cellar. Every once in a while, when no one was around, she’d take out the photo and look at that ugly mug, which was oh, so very handsome.

  She’d never seen eyes like his before she’d met him. They were as blue as the South China Sea.

  And he said beyond that sea there was a place where they could be together. A place without war. A place where she wouldn’t have to go to bed hungry at night because soldiers extorted crops for protection. Or stole them for food. Or destroyed them for no reason.

  She missed the little cans of peaches Skully used to bring her almost as much as she missed him. But she could live without the peaches, she couldn’t live without Skully.

  Lan wiped away her tears. If she and her baby were to eat she needed to get the ox moving again.

  She heard the heavy sound of a tank company approaching before she completed the row. Quickly she unharnessed the ox, then slapped it on its flank, knowing the beast would find its own way home.

  Quang Tri Province had seen heavy fighting in recent months. Like brothers in a tug-of-war, one day it belonged to the North, the next day to the South. With the villagers caught in the middle.

  Tanks meant Americans, since the VC and NVA didn’t have any. She could go to her special place, the old barn, and wait for Skully. Just in case he’d returned for her as promised.

  Her father owned many fields and many barns, all abandoned now. She’d stumbled on the old barn by chance, having forgotten it was there. Now it was a place she would never forget.

  Aside from predicting babies, fortune-tellers also carried news from village to village. Which is how she knew both her older brothers were still alive and fighting.

  She’d also heard either the Chinese or Russians had supplied tanks to the North. And that the NVA and VC were once again staging in Parrot’s Beak, Laos, to attack Saigon from the southwest. If this was true, the North would soon have control of Vietnam.

  With an instinct toward self-preservation, Lan hid in the tall grass as the tank passed by.

  This wasn’t an American company, but a ragtag band of Viet Cong. Her heart pounded until she thought it would explode. This was the same group of men that had raided her village before. The same group of men that had raped her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  0610 Friday

  BACHELOR OFFICERS’ QUARTERS

  Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

  BOWIE’S EARS WERE RINGING.

  Head buried beneath the pillow, Bowie groped for the telephone on the nightstand. “This better be good,” he grumbled into the receiver, expecting McCain’s over-cheery greeting, but all he heard in return was the stutter tone that indicated he had messages.

  The ringing persisted.

  Tossing the pillow aside, he sat up and stared at the instrument in his hand as if he couldn’t quite believe it wasn’t making the racket. Then he realized the persistent noise came from the floor.

  He hung up the room phone and reached for his cell phone without getting out of bed. “Yeah?” he answered in time to hear a click and a dial tone.

  Who the hell was playing phone tag this early in the morning? According to the alarm clock it was only 0610. He wasn’t expecting a wake-up call until 0800, an hour before his meeting with Harris.

  But if it was already Friday, he’d slept for the past twenty-seven hours. He remembered waking up briefly with a hangover, but only long enough to grope his way to the bathroom for a couple of Alka-Seltzer before crawling back into bed. “No more Ba Muoi Lam.”

  Wiping the sleep from his eyes, Bowie checked his calls. There were several from an area code he didn’t recognize, a couple local, one from the base, and one from his mother.

  He dropped his cell phone back to the pile of clothes on the floor. On the room phone he punched in his temporary retrieval number and checked his voice mail messages.

  “You have twelve new messages,” the prerecorded voice informed him. The first several were hang-ups…his mother wanted him to call home…more hang ups…

  His pants started to ring again.

  “Yo?” He answered his cell phone with an ear to the relaying messages. Harris had moved back their meeting to 1400…his godfather wanted him on the links at 0700….

  “I need to see you,” a female voice said without preamble. The word need registered first, then the fact her voice wasn’t recorded. He juggled the receivers, hanging up on his messages.

  “Yeah,” he said, giving her his complete attention. He would have recognized her voice anywhere. He’d just never expected to hear it again. “I mean…I need to see you, too, Tam.” Kicking his feet over the side of the mattress, he adjusted the sheet for modesty.

  “Are you free for breakfast?” she asked.

  Was he dreaming?

  “Uh,” he stuttered with an eye on the clock. “Where are you?”

  “The Hawaiian Hilton. I realize this is short notice, but I flew in late last night, and I’ve been trying to reach you ever since…”

  That would explain all those hang-ups.

  He made a grab for the wrinkled heap of khaki on the floor and stepped into his pants before he remembered he was supposed to be mad at her.

  “What’s up?”

  She hesitated. “I’d rather not say over the phone.”

  His heart started to beat a little faster.

  Something serious. The kind of response guaranteed to scare him off in any relationship. But they weren’t in a relationship. So he was more curious than anything else. A breakfast date signaled caution, unless of course it followed a night out. Now, there was a thought.

  “How about dinner?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t. I’m only here for the weekend and my schedule’s pretty tight. Breakfast tomorrow? Or brunch, perhaps?”

  She seemed sincere enough, but as an excuse it sounded too vague. It wouldn’t hurt for him to play a little hard to get. After all, she needed him. And he wanted…his knife back. “Did you bring my knife?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant, I brought your knife,”
she responded in clipped tones.

  He made a victory fist. But the battle wasn’t over yet. “I can’t make any promises about tomorrow, Tam. I may have shipped out by then.” He counted down the seconds it took for her to rearrange her tight schedule. One, two—

  “It would have to be a late dinner, eight or even nine?”

  She needed him. And he wanted to be needed. “Perfect. The Hilton, right? What’s your room number?” He reached for pen and paper from the nightstand.

  “There’s a lounge off the lobby. I’ll meet you there.”

  Okay, he’d give her that one. “I’ll be there, 2000 sharp.”

  “I might not get there until nine,” she repeated.

  “Not a problem. I’ll wait.”

  “I guess I’ll see you tonight, then.”

  She sounded nervous. He tried to picture her fidgeting with the phone cord, wearing the only outfit he’d ever seen her in. The image didn’t fit. Take away the gun and the wildlife logo. Better.

  He wasn’t the kind of guy who had the time to take things slow. Or make things permanent. Maybe she needed to. “Tam, about breakfast. I have this thing with an admiral, but nothing I can’t get out of—”

  “No, don’t do that. Tonight’s better, anyway. We’ll have more time,” she reassured him.

  Good sign, bad sign? He ran a hand across his flat stomach and felt the churning inside. Now which of them was nervous? It was nice to be needed, but he couldn’t help but think it would be nicer to be wanted. Or loved.

  “Okay,” he said, reluctant to break the connection.

  “I’ll see you tonight, then.”

  But neither of them hung up right away—dead air followed. He decided to do something to make her hang up first, otherwise she’d think he was a heavy breather. “Don’t forget my knife.”

  “How can I? You won’t let me.” Then she hung up.

  Bowie smiled into the receiver as he disconnected.

  He looked down at his uniform pants. Since he didn’t have anything to wear except one wrinkled khaki uniform and a bunch of dirty battle-dress uniforms stuffed into his seabag, he had to do the one thing he hated above all else, go shopping. But first he’d better get out the iron or he wouldn’t be going anywhere.