by Janet Dailey
Hearing her name called, Rachel turned to glance around the luxurious club. When she spied Eden, she appeared to hesitate before she finally approached their table. Hamilton politely stood up, self-conscious as Rachel towered over him with her six-foot height.
Eden glossed over the introductions, then cloaked her curiosity with an idle remark. “I never expected to run into you. I guess it proves New York is just a small town after all.”
“I was visiting some friends backstage.” Rachel was aloof and defensive under Eden’s prying look. “I used to dance in the floor show here.”
“Would you care to join us for a drink?” Hamilton gestured toward the empty chair.
“I’m with someone.” As if on cue, a man wound his way through the crowd of tables to Rachel’s side. He had jet-black hair and piercing blue eyes; though he was shorter than Rachel by two inches, his stature was oddly not diminished by her.
“More friends of yours?” he said, prompting Rachel to introduce them.
She did so with reluctance. “Eden, Zach Jordan, a friend of mine.” She seemed none too certain of that.
“Eden van Valkenburg. Rachel and I flew together at Sweet-water,” Eden informed him while she appreciatively eyed the darkly handsome man in the Army uniform, a little surprised by his enlisted status since theoretically WASPs weren’t supposed to fraternize with enlisted men. “This is Hamilton Steele.”
“A pleasure.” With a certain arrogance in his style, Zach Jordan shook hands with Hamilton, bowing slightly.
Hamilton began to repeat his earlier invitation. “I was just suggesting we all have drinks—”
“I explained we were leaving,” Rachel pointedly interrupted him, while Zach Jordan appeared amused by the assertion.
“Another time, perhaps,” he suggested to temper the curt-ness of Rachel’s refusal.
Thoughtfully, Eden watched them work their way through the packed house to the club’s exit. When they disappeared from her sight, she took an absent sip of her drink and noticed the way Hamilton was eyeing her.
“Is something wrong?” she wondered.
He lifted a shoulder in a dismissive shrug, then commented, “He is a handsome soldier.”
A smile spread slowly across her scarlet lips. “Ham, I do believe you’re jealous.”
“Jealous.” He seemed to consider the possibility. “Perhaps. But I know the day will come when you’ll discover you can love me.”
For a long minute, she simply looked at him, at a loss for a reply that wouldn’t hurt his feelings. She was fond of him, but it was the kind of attachment one had for a pet. The kind thing would have been to end their relationship years ago, but she selfishly wanted his friendship.
Behind a diaphanous curtain a big band struck the opening note of a song, signaling the start of the flashy costumed floor show, and the need for a response was eliminated.
Outside, it was a warm, summer’s night in Manhattan. An occasional breeze found its way amid the canyons of tall concrete structures. With the lithe stride of a dancer, Rachel walked along the sidewalk, ignoring the soldier who effortlessly kept pace with her. People were sitting on building stoops, young and old alike, enjoying the night air.
With a turn of his head, Zach Jordan inspected the rare beauty of her profile. “Why are you ignoring me?”
Rachel stopped and swung around to challenge him. “Look, I didn’t ask you to come along with me tonight. You invited yourself. All you do is talk about Palestine. And all my father does is pray.”
She had an immediate image of her father with his black-and-white prayer shawl about his shoulders while he rocked and talked with his God. As more stories about Hitler’s persecution of fellow Jews filtered through to the United States, her father seemed to become that much more religious. For Rachel, the little knot of fear in her heart for her grandmother’s safety grew tighter.
“No lectures.” A smile etched itself into the corners of his mouth, deepening them. “You and I are alike, Rachel. The things that drive your father to prayer fill us with the need to fight.”
The man bothered her, irritating her with his arrogance, that glitter in his eyes stirring up a restlessness which contradicted all her dislike. She’d met Zach Jordan two days after she’d returned. Homeless, he was spending his leave with a Jewish family whose son was a friend of his in the Army.
They lived in the same neighborhood as Rachel’s parents. In that first accidental meeting, their chemistries had mixed with instant results.
“I don’t fight. I fly planes.” She seized on the small detail to deny any common calling. “The Army doesn’t believe a woman can fight.”
“They have never heard of Deborah,” he replied smoothly.
“What does it matter?” Impatiently, she would have turned away and resumed walking, but his hands caught her shoulders. His touch was warm against her skin, firm without being hard. That crazy ambivalence kept her motionless, struggling between two conflicting emotional responses.
“It matters,” Zach said. “After the war is over, you and I are going to marry.”
“No!” The shocked denial rushed from her at the preposterous suggestion she would marry a virtual stranger.
But he continued as if she had said nothing. “We will go to Palestine. No more will we be wandering Jews without a homeland.” His hand cupped the side of her face, his thumb stroking the point of her chin in an idle caress while his gaze roamed her features and came to a stop on her lips. “Our children will be born there, true sabras.”
With fingertip pressure, he urged her to him. Before their lips met, Rachel caught the warmth of his breath and the male scent that drifted from his lean cheeks. Then her senses were engrossed in the persuasion of his mouth as it moved against her. She liked the taste and feel of the kiss, the confident ardor that solicited her response.
When he drew away, his gaze ran over her face to gauge her reaction. A small smile of satisfaction appeared on his mouth, that intense light in his blue eyes darkening a little. Zach Jordan was so damned sure of himself Rachel wished she hadn’t found so much pleasure in his kiss.
The hard shell snapped back in place to cover up her vulnerability as she turned away and began walking down the street again, looking straight ahead. “You presume an awful lot, Zach Jordan,” she said mockingly. “What makes you think I care about any of those things?”
He matched pace with her, eyes to the front as well, with that smile still etched in the corners of his mouth. “Because we are alike, you and I. We want the same things—including the freedom to be a Jew, and we are willing to fight for it.”
“Such idealism.” But her tone of voice scorned him. “Am I supposed to believe all this nonsense?”
“I mean every word of it,” he insisted smoothly.
“In other words”—Rachel threw him a sidelong glance—“you are asking me to marry you?”
Blandly he met her skeptical gaze, taking note of its challenge, and answered simply, “Yes.”
Startled by his easy reply when she had expected to catch him out, Rachel stared wildly straight ahead once again. “Do you feel safe in saying that because you know I’ll refuse?” Her voice accused him.
“Partly. But believe this, we will marry and you will have my sons,” Zach said with calm assurance.
Rachel was shaken by how much she wanted to believe him. A door opened as they passed, momentarily throwing light onto the sidewalk. Her side vision caught the tan color of his Army uniform.
“You’re a soldier going off to war,” she tersely reminded him.
He caught her hand as his smile deepened. “I promise you I’m not going to die.”
It irritated her that he should treat the possibility with amusement. “You joke,” Rachel accused.
“You care,” Zach replied, that arrogantly pleased look spreading across his darkly good-looking features. His claim was suddenly impossible to deny. “Rachel, Rachel.” He murmured her name with such longing and tested patience.
“My leave will be up soon, and I’ll have to be reporting back to my company. Let’s spend what time I have left together.”
The windows of the darkened hotel room stood open, letting in any vagrant breeze that happened by. Bedsheets rustled as their bodies moved, their heads turning on pillows to gaze at one another through the dimness of night. The sounds of the city street below—the blare of a horn or the shout of a reveler—intruded not at all.
Studying his face, its thick black brows and unbelievably blue eyes, Rachel felt all warm and loose, blissfully spent. The moment had an intimacy to it that exceeded the sexual closeness they had enjoyed only moments ago.
“Didn’t I tell you it would be good?” Zach boasted. He leaned over to kiss the rounded point of her shoulder, then stayed close, his hand sliding around to rub the smooth ridges of her lower spine.
“Do you know I don’t remember agreeing to any of this?” she countered, the bemused smile of satisfaction never once leaving her mouth.
“That’s because I didn’t ask.”
In this present whipped-cream mood, it was impossible for Rachel to take offense at that very male remark. Especially when Zach followed it with a nibble of her sensitive shoulder ridge, a sensual foray that eventually lowered to nuzzle a small breast. Her fingers curled through his black hair and dug into his scalp as she arched her body forward. That darting tongue encircling her erect nipple was arousing her again.
The weight of his hard, muscled body pressed her backwards while his hair-roughened legs entwined with her long limbs. Talk was unnecessary, but they murmured to each other, meaningless love words, as hands roamed and caressed all the intimate places. Soon the spiral of desire had them straining for an even tighter embrace, bodies moist, tongues tangling and mating.
The looming shadows of the war lent an urgency to everything. Each moment of happiness had to be snatched and savored. If she was letting herself in for a big hurt, Rachel didn’t care. For all his promises, Zach couldn’t guarantee he would survive the war. It was only a matter of days before he would be leaving—possibly never to return. This time together had no right or wrong to it. Its very impermanence made it all the more cherished.
As dawn’s first light was tinting a gray sky, Zach walked Rachel to the front steps of her parents’ home. “I’ll speak to your father about us.”
“No.” Rachel wasn’t going to pretend there was a future for them. “Do you think the Army will send you to the Pacific?”
“The Seventh is fighting in Sicily,” he replied after a small pause, then went on. “The beachheads of the Pacific belong to the Navy and the Marines. Artillery fighting is a war of nerves. The big stuff will be sent to Europe.” He angled his body closer to her, his hand gliding down her arm in an absent caress that seemed to say he couldn’t get enough of her. “We only have two days left.”
So little time, Rachel wanted to cry, but there was a war on. In her heart of hearts, she wished only that she could go with Zach and fight at his side. She looked at the door of her parents’ house, then suggested, “Let’s go eat somewhere.”
Everything was crowded in Washington, D.C. The plush Mayflower Hotel on Connecticut Avenue was no different. The patrons in the dining room were elbow to elbow; tables and chairs were jammed to fill every available inch of space, leaving little room for walking. Military uniforms of every style and branch colored a room otherwise populated with dark-suited men, an assorted collection of government officials, “dollar-a-year” men, and “five percenters.” The latter were so called because that was their cut of the government contracts they negotiated for a business. The dollar-a-year men received that amount as their government salary, supplemented by their own companies while they held down government jobs and used their influence on behalf of their company whenever they could. Spicing the dining-room atmosphere were the foreign accents of visiting dignitaries and their resident diplomatic corps.
Exhaling the last drag of smoke, Cappy crushed the cigarette in the ashtray and glanced across the table at her mother. “I can be as stubborn as he is,” she said, regretting that her mother was caught in this tug of war between her father and herself. “I’m not coming home until he invites me.”
“He’s a proud man.” She pleaded with Cappy to be reasonable.
“He doesn’t own a monopoly on pride,” she countered stiffly. Then she signed the check, charging it to her room. With the restaurant check and her purse in hand, Cappy pushed away from the table. “Shall we leave?”
Without waiting for her mother’s nod of agreement, she rose to wend her way through the labyrinth of tables and chairs to the cashier. After she’d shown her room key to the cashier and left the check, Cappy continued into the richly appointed hotel lobby, typically packed with people. Once there, she paused to let her mother join her.
“I don’t see how you can afford to stay here.” Sue Hayward looked about her surroundings with a dubious expression.
Actually she couldn’t, but Cappy didn’t admit that to her mother. She had been lucky the first two weeks of her leave, staying at the apartment of a friend who was between roommates. But no one in Washington could afford the rent being charged. Cappy had contributed her share during her stay at Annie’s, but when her friend had a chance for a permanent roommate, she had to take it. And Cappy had checked into the Mayflower.
“It’s only temporary,” she reminded her mother. “I have to report to my new assignment in two days.”
Her stay at the hotel was more temporary than her mother knew, since hotel policy limited an individual’s stay to three days. Cappy had just used the last night. If she couldn’t persuade the management to bend the rules a little, she’d have to find a room at another hotel.
“I’m so glad you’re going to be stationed close by,” her mother said. “I was afraid they’d send you to California or some other place far away.”
“I know.” Despite an earlier denial by her mother, Cappy suspected that her father had pulled some strings to arrange this assignment for her, stationed at an air base just outside of Washington. It sounded like something he’d do to keep an eye on her.
A minor stir was created in the lobby as a tall, gorgeous redhead swept into the hotel, followed by a small entourage consisting of a well-dressed but self-effacing man, a maid carrying hatboxes, and three porters with an equal number of trunks. A smile of recognition flashed into Cappy’s expression.
“Eden!” She hailed her friend and dragged her mother across the lobby to meet the woman chicly suited in blue linen. “Talk about making an entrance,” Cappy chided after they had clasped arms in a laughing embrace of surprise. She glanced at the steamer trunks. “You didn’t learn a thing at Sweetwater, did you?”
“Oh, no, I’m not about to make that mistake again,” Eden assured her. “Two of these trunks will be shipped right back to New York before I report. Ham and I decided to come down a couple of days early, and I wanted to be sure I had plenty of clothes to wear,” she explained with a sly smile at her extravagance. “Who knows when I’ll get another chance to wear all of them again.”
A moment was taken for introductions. After Cappy presented her mother, she was introduced to the older man accompanying Eden. She recognized Hamilton Steele’s name and curiously eyed the man who, Eden had said, wanted to marry her. Cappy wondered if there was any significance to their traveling together—if perhaps absence had made the heart beat faster. But Eden seemed to treat her companion very casually.
“Excuse me while I make certain our reservations are in order.” Hamilton Steele smiled politely to Cappy and her mother, then withdrew.
“He seems nice.” But Cappy’s glance at Eden was quietly speculating.
One shoulder lifted in an elegant shrug. “They’re either too young or too old,” she said wryly. “I decided old was better.”
“That’s not very kind.” She was surprised by Eden’s apparently callous attitude.
“No,” she agreed. “But then I’m not very kind
to Ham.”
The significance of these remarks seemed to escape Mrs. Hayward, whose interest was focused on her daughter. “Are you going to be assigned to the same base with Cappy, Miss van Valkenburg? After flying together at Sweetwater, it would be wonderful if you could continue together.”
“I don’t know anything about my assignment,” Eden replied. “It’s all very secret and mysterious. My orders simply said to report to Jacqueline Cochran, room 4D957, the Pentagon. As a matter of fact, everyone in our bay—except Cappy—received the same instructions.”
“How strange,” Mrs. Hayward murmured.
“Yes. Have you had lunch?” Eden inquired, changing the subject.
“Yes, we have,” Cappy replied as her mother glanced at her watch.
“It’s time I was catching the bus home if I want to avoid being caught in the late afternoon crush. It was a pleasure meeting you, Miss van Valkenburg. Cappy.” She kissed her daughter’s cheek.
As she left them, Eden surmised, “You still haven’t patched things up with your father?”
“No,” Cappy admitted without remorse.
“Where are you staying?”
“I had a room here.” Cappy explained her predicament, the hotel’s policy, and the uncertainty about where tonight’s lodging might be.
Despite considerable persuasion on Eden’s part, and that of her friend Hamilton Steele, the management wouldn’t budge, insisting they didn’t dare make exceptions. In the end, Cappy packed her suitcases and had the bellboy carry them down to the lobby for her.
“I know some of the staff at the Carleton,” Hamilton Steele volunteered when Cappy rejoined them. “If you would like, I—”
“Cappy!” The anger and exasperation in the male voice calling her name was evident in its explosive quality. Cappy turned to see Mitch Ryan in his major’s uniform pushing through the lobby crowd to get to her. Along the way he was forced to pause now and then to perfunctorily salute a superior officer. The irritated snap stayed in his voice when he reached her. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for the last three days. What are you doing here? You were supposed to be staying at Annie Kramer’s apartment. I finally went over to where she works and she tells me you’re staying here.”
