The Unsung Hero

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He stepped forward, but Ashton’s head lolled back against the table.

  “Quickly,” Cybele said to Marie and Luc Prieaux. “Hold him for me.”

  As she dug for the first bullet, Ashton groaned but didn’t awaken.

  “What was he asking?” she questioned Joe as she worked, sweat beading on her brow and upper lip as the man continued to make those small sounds of pain.

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head, uncertain himself what the American soldier had meant with his atrocious, unintelligible, first-year schoolbook French. “I’m sorry.”

  “I won’t be able to go with you tonight,” Cybele told him. “I’ll need to stay here to care for him. These first few hours are always critical.”

  Joe was disappointed, but he hid it, as always. “Of course.”

  She looked up at him and gave him one of those sweet, sad smiles he’d come to know so well. “You’ll probably be safer without me.”

  That much was true. She was fearless in her work against the Nazis. It wasn’t enough for her simply to count numbers of troops and note stockpiles of ammunition. She had to get closer, close enough to overhear conversations, close enough to find out which warehouses held ammunition that her small army of freedom fighters could steal and use against the occupying forces. Close enough to guarantee a bullet in the head were they ever discovered.

  Joe looked down at the bundle of clothing he still held in his hands. He’d have to rush to dig a hole deep enough for this, or he’d be late to the rendezvous point.

  “Go,” Cybele said, well aware of the time.

  Joe looked from her to the wounded American and tried his damnedest not to be jealous of a man who was probably going to die.

  He caught Cybele’s gaze one last time, losing himself just a little in the midnight darkness of her eyes. Then he turned, slipping out the door into the night, following her rule.

  Since the occupation, Cybele had had only three rules. She’d told him about them once when they’d shared several bottles of wine. It was after a night spent making life a little less comfortable for the Nazis who controlled Ste.-Hélène.

  Never turn down a chance to strike back at the Germans was one, she’d said. Never promise to meet again was two. And three was never, ever fall in love. Because love and war were a terrible combination.

  That night as she’d gone up the stairs to her bedroom, alone as always, she’d made him promise to follow her rules, too.

  As Joe silently took a shovel from the shed and began to dig in the postage stamp–size garden behind Cybele’s house, inwardly he sighed.

  Two out of three wasn’t bad.

  Cybele, he suspected, wouldn’t agree.

  “Thank you so much,” Kelly said to Tom as she closed the door to her father’s bedroom. “Again.”

  The long hallway was only dimly lit. A lamp from down in the living room cast just enough light to throw exotic shadows across her face and body. It was alarmingly romantic.

  But Tom’s head was pounding, he was wearing only his boxers—his very thin cotton boxers—and this was Kelly Ashton standing next to him, not some bar bunny he’d fool around with for a few weeks and then cut free.

  Although, the way the shadows fell across her face made her eyes seem almost hot. It seemed as if she was checking him out, as if she was running her gaze across his near-naked body appreciatively.

  He looked good. Tom knew he looked good even though he was a little too skinny from those weeks in the hospital. The truth was, a man couldn’t do as much PT as he and his SEAL team did and not look good.

  Still, this was Kelly Ashton throwing those glances. Kelly class valedictorian, Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard Med School Ashton. Kelly Girl Scout, nursing home volunteer, church choir soloist Ashton.

  Who had once kissed him as if the world were coming to an end. Kissed him and made it clear that she was his—if he wanted her.

  Of course, that had been years ago. When she was fifteen.

  “I’m glad I could help,” he told her now, remembering the way she’d looked at him right before she’d kissed him. Or maybe he was the one who’d kissed her. He didn’t know—he hadn’t known even at the time. All he’d known was it was late, they’d been together for nearly twelve hours, and he still wasn’t ready to take her home.

  They’d been sitting in Joe’s station wagon—the same one that was out in the driveway—stopped at a red light down by the marina. Their conversation had lulled, and he figured she was probably tired. It was definitely time to call it a night. But when he’d glanced over at her, she didn’t look tired. In fact, the look in her eyes had made his mouth go dry.

  Now, he cleared his throat. “You know, Kel, I owe you an apology.”

  He saw from her eyes that she knew exactly what he was talking about. She turned away. “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes, I do. That night before I left town—”

  “It was just one of those impulsive things,” she said, still not meeting his gaze. “We were both so young.”

  She had been young. He’d been nearly nineteen. And maybe that first kiss had been impulsive, but what he’d done after, pulling into the darkness of the bank parking lot and turning off the engine . . . It had been the wrong thing to do, but if he were given a chance to do it over, he still wasn’t certain he’d be able to resist her. “Nevertheless, I’ve always wanted to apologize to you. I took advantage—”

  “Oh, please!” She moved briskly down the hall toward the kitchen, clearly embarrassed. “Don’t turn it into something that it wasn’t.”

  “Still, I shouldn’t have let it go as far as it—”

  “Three kisses?” she said. “Or was it four? For someone who had the reputation for deflowering most of the girls in town, I’ve always thought you showed remarkable restraint.”

  “That reputation . . . I didn’t really . . . We were friends and . . . Besides, you were way too young. I’m just . . . I’m sorry.” God, he was smooth. He tried again. “I’ve missed having you as a friend, and now that we’re both back here for a while, I didn’t want that night hanging over us, making things awkward.”

  “Apology completely unnecessary but accepted.” Kelly snapped on the glaringly bright kitchen light. “Tell Joe he’s not fired, will you? Tell him Dad didn’t mean it.”

  “I think he probably already knows that,” Tom said. “But I’ll tell him.”

  “I keep thinking how awful it’ll be if my father dies before he and Joe resolve this. This is hard enough on Joe as it is.”

  The door was right behind him, and Tom knew he should move toward it. He should say good night and go. He’d apologized and it was obvious she didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

  The dead last thing he should do was put his arms around her, no matter how lost and alone she seemed, no matter how amazing she looked in those barely there workout clothes.

  He cleared his throat. “I really should check on Joe. I’ll try talking to him.”

  Kelly nodded. She held out her hand to him. “Thank you again,” she said. “And please don’t worry about . . . you know. That was a long time ago.”

  Tom was afraid to touch her, but to not take her hand would’ve been rude. He braced himself and reached for her.

  Her hand was small and cool but her grip was strong. No wet-fish handshake from Kelly Ashton, no sir. That was no surprise.

  But then she did surprise him by lifting the back of his hand to her lips and kissing him softly.

  “You have always been a good friend,” she said. “I’m really glad that you’re here.”

  Tom was flustered. Funny, he’d pretty much considered himself fluster-proof prior to this very moment in time. But here he was. Completely uncertain what to do, what to say, what to think. She’d kissed his hand.

  It was the perfect opportunity to pull her into his arms, yet he hesitated. Emotion hung in the air so thick he could feel it warm against his skin. He could kiss her, and maybe she’d be so caught up in the moment, s
he’d let him pull her with him into her room, into her bed.

  Yeah, right—maybe he could take advantage of her. Again. After he’d apologized for doing just that.

  If anyone else tried to take advantage of Kelly, he’d beat the shit out of the bastard.

  Tom forced himself to back away from her. To pull his hand free. To smile at her as he pushed open the screen door.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, and escaped with her virtue still intact.

  Mallory regretted throwing away her lighter almost instantly.

  It had been a perfectly good lighter after all, and she had only sixty-five cents in her pocket. Not including the three hundred dollars Tom had given her for groceries.

  But spending that money on a lighter—after she’d just thrown hers away—seemed like a really wrong thing to do.

  Matchbooks, however, were free. But the Honey Farms convenience store was a solid, ten minute, extremely inconvenient walk away.

  Mallory spun in a slow circle, cigarette held in her fingers, searching for someone, anyone she knew even remotely, who might have a match.

  “I’d offer to light it, but even if I did have a match, you’d probably just put it out right away anyway. Why not save yourself the effort, skip lighting it, and just step on it now?”

  Hey, ho. Geek alert! Motionless and mouth-breathing at two o’clock.

  He was average height and skinny, with dark, painfully straight hair that he’d attempted to comb back behind his ears in a style that defied description. His wire-rimmed glasses were circa 1987 and too big for his face, giving him that scuba-diver look so popular among dorks. They were held together by both clear tape in the middle and a safety pin at the earpiece. She wondered if she should congratulate him for that major antifashion accomplishment.

  He was wearing jeans, and Mallory wasn’t sure which was worse, the fact that they were straight legged, or the fact that they were about a million inches too short, ending high above his shoes. Shoes. Who the hell wore shoes with their jeans?

  “Hello!” she said. “I see your socks.”

  He blinked at her through his windshield. He needed wipers for those things. The breeze was wet, coming in off the ocean the way it was, and he was about to lose all visibility.

  His shirt was a button-down short-sleeved plaid event that was made out of some kind of unnatural blend of completely synthetic fabrics. It fit him about as well as a cardboard box, and—just in case that wasn’t awful enough—his collar was up on one side.

  He had geek complexion type B. In Mallory’s experience, geeks either had pizza face—type A for acne—or baby skin, type B, smooth and pale and perfect from all those years of building Star Trek models in the basement, away from the damaging rays of the sun.

  Her new little friend’s skin was smooth, but not quite alabaster—no doubt on account that he was at least part Asian-American.

  He had that reverent look in his brown eyes as he gazed at her—that look that said he’d found paradise. However, unlike most of the other rejects who ogled her, he managed to keep his eyes on her face instead of glued to her megabreasts.

  He held out his hand. “Hi, I’m David Sullivan.”

  She crossed her arms, leaving him dangling. “Sullivan?” she repeated skeptically. “Of the Tokyo Sullivans?”

  “Adopted.” He smiled then, revealing straight, white teeth—no doubt the result of years of expensive orthodontics. Mallory couldn’t keep herself from running her tongue over her own slightly crooked front teeth. God, it so wasn’t fair. She hated him, and hated herself for being envious of an effing geek.

  She lifted one eyebrow. “Was there something you wanted?” she asked pointedly, omitting the word loser at the end. It was there, however, in her tone and attitude.

  The geek didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he was just used to it. “Yeah, actually,” he said, juggling his Day-Glo yellow backpack and opening the front zipper. “I was watching you for a while, and I’m wondering if you might be interested in . . .”

  Here it came. The disgusting proposition of the day.

  He triumphantly pulled a rather worn-looking business card from his pack, but Mallory didn’t let him finish.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “You’ll give me twenty whole dollars if I put something else in my mouth besides this cigarette. Is that what you want, junior?”

  David-the-geek actually looked surprised, and then embarrassed. In fact he even blushed. His baby-soft cheeks actually turned pink.

  “Oh,” he said. “Well, no, um.” He laughed. “As, uh, lovely as that sounds that’s not what I . . .” He cleared his throat and held out the business card. “I’m an artist, and I was wondering if you might be interested in posing for me.”

  Mallory didn’t take the card. “Posing. I suppose this is where you tell me I would do this posing back in your apartment. Oh, and by the way, you want me to pose naked, right?”

  “Well, as much as I’d like that, it might make it hard for me to concentrate, so if you could wear a bikini—”

  “What, do I look like some kind of fool to you?” She glared at him. “I’ve heard a shitload of lines before, Einstein, but yours wins the stupid award. No way am I going anywhere with you. Not in this lifetime.”

  She swiped the card out of his hand, pointedly tearing it in half and dropping it onto the puddled sidewalk as she walked away.

  “Hey,” he called after her. “I didn’t get your name.”

  Yeah, right. Mallory didn’t even bother to look back.

  Joe opened the bathroom door at Tommy’s gentle knock. He made a show of drying his face with his towel so he didn’t have to look the younger man in the eye.

  “You all right?” Tom asked.

  “No,” Joe admitted, feeling stupid. Charles was eighty years old. It was a miracle he’d lived this long. The fact that he was going to die shouldn’t have been so distressing.

  “You want to talk?”

  “No.” Joe had his back to Tommy as he hung up his towel on the rack by the sink, but he heard the kid laugh.

  “Now what made me guess that’s what you’d say?” Tom asked. He sighed. “Needless to say, I’m here. You know where to find me if you change your mind.”

  Joe gave the kid an uh-huh sound as he made sure his towel was spread out to dry, cut precisely in half by the rack, the corners neatly lined up.

  “I figured I’d go pick up some paint tomorrow.” Tom deftly changed the subject. “The kitchen’s looking pretty gray. Between the two of us, we can slap on a few coats, have it done by Sunday, piece of cake. That is—if the Hero of Baldwin’s Bridge deigns to do such menial labor as painting.”

  Joe didn’t answer. A comment like that didn’t deserve any kind of response.

  But Tom blocked his way out of the bathroom. “You know, you could’ve at least told me that much,” he said mildly.

  Joe couldn’t have loved Tommy more if he’d been his own son. He looked at him for several good long seconds. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I couldn’t have.”

  Five

  9 August

  “IT’S HIM, ISN’T it? It’s Joe.”

  Kelly was gazing up at the statue that was on the Baldwin’s Bridge common—the picture-perfect lawn between the world-famous hotel and the town marina. But now she turned to find Tom standing behind her.

  She wasn’t one bit surprised that he should be here this morning, too. No doubt he had been as eager as she to take another look at the statue that was boldly labeled “The Hero of Baldwin’s Bridge.”

  “Hey,” she said in greeting, trying not to blush, thinking of the way she’d kissed his hand last night. The way he’d run away afterward. Good thing she hadn’t gotten close enough to kiss him on the lips.

  “Taking the day off?” He didn’t sound as if he were thinking about anything but here and now. He sounded . . . like Tom. Casual and friendly, with an undercurrent of sexuality he couldn’t lose even when he was being casual and friendly. />
  “Hah. There’s no such thing.” She tried to sound just as casual, hoping he couldn’t tell that every time she so much as saw him she started flashing hot and cold and having fantasies of him kissing her, right here, in public, on the Baldwin’s Bridge common. “I mean, yeah, this is supposed to be one of my stay home days, but odds are I’ll be paged and end up going into Boston.”

  Tom was wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap. Much of his face was hidden, but what she could see looked tired, as if he hadn’t slept well or the headache he’d mentioned last night was still bothering him. He smelled great, though, like sunblock and coffee and fresh laundry. She resisted her urge to press her nose against the clean cotton sleeve of his muscle-hugging T-shirt and breathe in deeply.

  “Check this out.” Kelly dug through her purse for the copies she’d made at the library from the microfiche machine. “It’s from The Baldwin’s Bridge Trumpet.”

  He laughed. “We think alike. I was going to the library next.”

  “I was there for over two hours and this was all I found,” she told him. “Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

  “May 8, 1946,” he read as she handed him the copies. “That’s nearly a year after the end of the war.”

  “Yeah, it was a year after V-E Day. The town had a special statue unveiling. For this statue,” she explained, glancing up at it again. “It was commissioned and paid for by Mrs. Harper Baldwin to remember a son and a nephew who’d died in the war. According to what it says in the article, she had two other sons. Both served with the Fifty-fifth, and both survived, thanks at least in part to Joe, who risked his life to warn the division of a coming attack. Mrs. Baldwin had the artist use a photo of Joe as the model for this statue, but honored Joe’s quote unquote most humble request to leave his name off the statue.”

  Kelly watched as Tom silently skimmed through the three pages of news articles and looked at the pictures. Joe, looking uncomfortable, standing stiffly next to Mrs. Harper Baldwin, surrounded by a crowd of well-dressed townfolk. Joe in his uniform, impossibly young. He was twenty-two in 1946, after the war. When he’d first been shot down in France, he’d been only eighteen. Eighteen.