by Carrie Lofty
“Hoarding food?” he asked.
Lulu was playing with the hair trailing down toward his navel. Her own hair, so long and thick, trailed down the side of her face and bare shoulder, making her seem younger. “I always take a tin of food with me in my overnight bag,” she said. “No telling what accommodations an airfield will have if I get caught out and have to spend the night.”
“And the chocolate? Sweet tooth?”
“We’re allocated one bar daily. Less expensive than a full lunch ration, I suppose. Sometimes I’m too busy to eat them.”
That she worked so hard as to forget to eat a single chocolate bar niggled in his brain. Again he felt a camaraderie of purpose that he’d never expected to feel with a woman.
Next to the sad old mattress sat a leaning stack of flight manuals and logbooks. Even from where he lounged, he could see that each book was well worn, dog-eared, and marked with scraps of paper. He could’ve admitted those were the tools of her trade, just like the field medical guide he carried in his bag, but he didn’t want to. Admitting such a thing still rubbed against every notion of chivalry he possessed.
“You awake?”
He wouldn’t have thought it possible to drift off, with Lulu lying next to him like a banquet ready for his pleasure. But he felt ready to. His body was content, his mind exhausted.
“I’m awake,” he said slowly.
“So you don’t need to go back to the barracks?”
“I don’t need to be anywhere until 1800 hours.”
“Good.” Lulu dragged herself up just enough to plant a kiss on his shoulder. “I’m leaving tomorrow and I don’t want anything left undone before I go. We have hours to keep playing.”
“Where are you going tomorrow?”
“To Marston Moor,” she said, smiling. “Nicky gave me the news this evening. I’ve been approved to train on four-engine aircraft, like I’d hoped.”
Again he felt a prickle of unease at the preferential mention of her commanding officer. Joe stretched naked beside her, but the man’s admiration for her skill obviously meant a great deal to her. On that score, Joe would never be able to compete—especially when he shipped out. The Englishman would stay behind, sleeping within yards of Lulu.
Joe let his head fall back. His joints felt tight, stiff, uncooperative. It had been bad enough having her there with him in the bombed-out streets of Leicester, in as much danger as a soldier under a barrage of artillery fire. But this . . . He couldn’t wrap his mind around this. Images of her Hurricane barreling toward the earth played in a loop behind closed eyes.
Damn the war. Would it ever be worth all of this? He’d give up everything—even being there in her room at all hours, her fingers swirling his chest hair—in order to keep her from flying another plane.
Joe didn’t want to spoil the truce they’d achieved. But he was a man and he said what a man needed to say. “Lulu, I don’t want you to go.”
chapter fifteen
His words hit like bricks inside Lulu’s brain. The aftershocks rippled through her body: her heart stuttered, the back of her neck prickled, and she shivered, as if he’d tossed open the window. Hands that had been happily mapping the masculine beauty of his long, relaxed body stopped cold. She sat up and grabbed her wrap from the foot of the bed, quickly pushing her arms into the sleeves. Her blood swirled beneath her skin, skin that still needed Joe’s touch, but she couldn’t escape his expression of disapproval.
Tugging the flannel folds to cover her chest, she took a deep breath. “You don’t want me to go?”
“No, I don’t.” That flat American accent was thick with fatigue. “It’s not worth it, Lulu. It’s too dangerous.”
“Not worth it? How can you say that? I can half understand your concerns about the danger. I had the same reaction earlier this evening when my CO told me the news. But danger is everywhere now.”
“Your CO allowed you to do this?”
So sudden, her transition from happiness to defensiveness. The sweet thrill of contentment was a balloon filled with helium, rising up and away as she clutched after it. Lulu was left trembling, angry and disappointed, when she’d been ready to give herself over to Joe once again, to his kisses and to his body over hers.
“He did, in fact,” she said. “Nicky appreciates my skill and how hard I’ve worked for the ATA, for this country—rot and bother, Joe, for the whole war effort.”
“I appreciate your skill. That doesn’t mean I want you in the cockpit of a bomber.”
She sat sideways on the bed and pushed the bones of her spine against the wall. There in her room, surrounded by familiar possessions, Joe seemed all the more foreign and potent. He was a toughened man amid embroidered throw pillows, slightly yellowed lace curtains, and perfumed air. His breathing filled the quiet. Walls that were ordinarily quite snug now threatened her with a claustrophobia she’d never experienced, even in the smallest cockpit. It was him. He filled that space and made it something other than hers.
She had power over this man, yes, but he’d wrested an equal amount of influence back from her. Maybe that’s why his lack of support stung so badly.
“You’d rather I pine for you?” she asked. “Become a shut-in and await your return?”
“You’d have that fellow Nicky here with you.”
Her head snapped back in surprise. “What?”
“You heard me. Tell me the score on that one.”
“Yes, he and I are very close. And yes, it might have matured into something more. I met you instead. Do you think I’d be here with you if I were serious about him?”
A casual shrug only increased her outrage even as she recognized it as a defensive reaction. Men.
“I’ve proven myself a certain kind of dame,” she said with a glance toward her disheveled sheets. “But I refuse to let you believe I’d two-time any man. Do you believe me?”
She’d expected more sharp words, but Joe only sighed. “I believe you. Only . . . God, no one else is waiting for me.”
Her urge to fight drained away. “What about your mother and sister?”
“My mother hasn’t talked to me since before the trial. And Suzie just wanted to put the whole thing behind her. Changed her name. Moved. I don’t think she even knows I joined the army.” He slashed his jaw to one side. “No one outside of my regiment cares if I live or die.”
Despite the aching pain Joe’s words caused, Lulu suddenly understood his behavior. He’d latched on to her like a rock climber to a piton—not in a pushy manner, not invasively, but insistently. He was a man bound for combat, and he needed at least one soul under heaven to care whether he lived or died.
No wonder he wanted her to stay safe. Where would he be if she died? Would he have anything or anyone to cling to?
The responsibility made her skin go cold.
There were so many girls in England who wanted a soldier to call their own, to write to and worry after. They didn’t know the terrible strain of it, not truly, but they would’ve been perfectly amenable to having a man as strong and worthy as Joe. His prison record aside, no matter what he’d done, Lulu knew he was just that: strong and worthy.
Why did it have to be her? She’d never wanted this sort of heartache again, fighting like the devil to keep from caring. Yet how could she fling him away? He sat beside her, watching her. His gaze flicked over her hands, her face, her tangled hair. He needed her in a way that no man ever had—not even Robbie, whose desolation had put him well beyond her influence and love. She couldn’t help but respond to that special regard.
He twisted to crush his cigarette butt on the plate she’d used for his toast. She watched his averted face, the tense line of his throat, and the way his muscled abdomen rippled with each subtle movement. Her chin trembled and she knew the truth of what she felt.
“I care, Joe,” she whispered.
He flinched. His eyes were distant, as if he expected ridicule from her.
“I don’t know what we are,” she said, her vo
ice gaining strength. “Friends? Certainly lovers. But I care for you. I’ll be waiting every day for word that you’re safe.”
The suspicion marring his handsome features didn’t ebb. “I don’t want your pity, Lulu.”
“Well, you have it.” She pointed a finger at his chest. “And you have my respect and affection. You get all of it if you want any of it. Because what you’ve endured is simply too much. How can I not feel pity for you—sympathy for your youth, your lost family? How can I keep that from coloring how I feel about you?”
Like a man rousing from sleep, he blinked and shook his head once. “What you feel for me. What is that . . . exactly?”
“Oh, bully if I know. It’s more than I’ve wanted to, that’s for certain. But I care, Joe. I care what happens to you, and I want you to come back safe and whole.” Her nerves were shredded and raw, aching like her throat ached. “Can’t that be enough for now?”
He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth. Then he patted the scant inches of mattress at his side. She relinquished her place against the wall and scampered toward the head of the bed. His arms eased around her waist, as easily as if they’d done it a thousand times. Yet his touch sparked a tingle along her arms. Every time. The sweet shock of being held by this man left her dizzy.
His breath hitched and he squeezed tighter.
A quiet assurance. I feel it, too.
And a quiet demand. Show me more.
The desire that she’d forced into a corner—for safekeeping, to revisit after they’d talked through these land mines—surged to life. She nibbled the inside of her cheek.
“That’s enough,” he whispered. “For now.” He met her eyes, appearing bone weary. “There were so many wounded last night.”
Lulu had wanted to lean into him, to draw from his strength, but she became the shoulder he needed. She pulled him into a tender embrace, one that belied the electrical current racing up and down her body. She alternated between noticing every feather-soft caress and feeling slightly numb, needing rougher touches.
“You did amazing work last night, Joe. You know that, don’t you?”
“I’m beginning to,” he said slowly, as if taking his time to navigate his feelings. “I haven’t wanted this responsibility. But it’s mine. I joined up with the paratroopers to be with the best and do my part. This is how I will.”
“The men of Baker are lucky to have you,” Lulu said with a smile.
“Jury’s still out on that. I feel like a complete fraud.”
“But you’re not. You should’ve seen how that boy, James, looked at you, like he’d seen an angel of mercy.”
“I’ll never know what happens to his foot,” he said, his words thick. “That’s the worst part, I think. I only do what I can to keep them from dying on the spot. Other men, doctors—they do the rest. But I’ll never know.”
Lulu’s smile turned sad, her heart lurching in sympathy for this man who cared so deeply. How could anyone believe the worst of him? “Then you can do what I do when the letters stop coming,” she said, nodding toward the stack of letters on her desk. “Just assume the best for them.”
His expression closed off briefly. “The other soldiers you write to?”
“Jealous?”
“Yes, frankly.”
“Well, at least you’re honest. But Joe, that isn’t negotiable. Twenty-two pen pals depend on my words to keep their spirits up. But that’s all they have. My words.”
“Your thoughts, the details of your day, your hopes for after the war,” he said, the list like an accusation. “They have all of that.”
“Yes, but who’s here in my bedroom? Only you. You have to take me for what I’ve been from the start. I write to boys I’ve met, I dance with them, and that’s where it ends.” She slid her thumb from the center of his chin to his earlobe. “And I’m going to Marston Moor. I will fly those four-engine airplanes.”
“That’s an awful lot of conditions.”
“Not conditions. I’m bending like an acrobat just to go this far with you. All I can offer is my fidelity, if you want it.”
He caressed her shoulder. “I’d like that. And I’ll try to understand all of this . . . if you tell me who he was.”
“Who?”
“The man you lost. It wasn’t your CO. That’s obvious enough. Lulu, tell me who hurt you so bad.”
Joe watched as Lulu shrank away. It wasn’t the hasty retreat of an outnumbered force. Nothing so dramatic. Instead she reclaimed the openness that had been a gift. Her pupils were wide, so wide in the morning brightness of her room. The body that had invited his touch became as unwelcoming as that of a stranger. But he couldn’t hold back any longer. If she insisted on this assignment to Marston Moor, if he was sequestered tomorrow—so many events promised to come between them. He wanted to know more about the woman he was coming to need so desperately.
“Who was he?”
A shuddering breath worked out of her chest. Her nipples had tightened to hard points beneath the worn softness of her robe. Joe focused on her distressed, distant expression lest he imagine making love to her again.
He cleared his throat. “Lulu?”
“His name was Robert Bachman.” The rich, melodic timbre of her voice had gone flat, like a poor phonographic recording. “He was my fiancé.”
Joe took ice-cold hands in his. “And he was killed?”
“No, he killed himself.” Her eyes were clouded over with memories. “We met in the summer, six years ago. It was just after my parents opened their flight school in Kent. I wasn’t yet eighteen but was already a qualified pilot. I’d logged hundreds of hours on all manner of aircraft. Robbie was an avid flyer. He loved it as much as I did.”
Needling jealousy spiked to life as she talked about this man, this long-dead man. When had he become so damn possessive? Perhaps when she’d opened the door and welcomed him into her room.
Yet the simple fact that Lulu was trusting him with such a confession spread a layer of pride over the protective fear that always came when she spoke of flying. She was trusting him again, and Joe knew enough about his daredevil girl to appreciate that.
“So he was in the RAF?”
“No, he was tall like you. Too tall, actually, to fly most single-engine fighters. So when he couldn’t fight the Nazis by air, he joined the army instead. He fought in France. Survived the evacuation from Dunkirk. But he . . . he came back so broken.”
Wide brown eyes pleaded with him, as if he could offer words to make it right again. Joe had no explanation to give. No one did.
“I thought he simply needed time,” she continued. “But he broke off our engagement. My parents were dead by then. I had nothing to lose. I kept with him. I was there for him. But when I went to his flat one afternoon, I found him dead. He’d hanged himself.”
Joe closed his eyes and nodded, as if affirming what he’d already known to be true. He hadn’t, of course, but the pieces formed a picture that finally made sense. He’d thought her crazy and reckless after her plane crash. Learning the truth about her fiancé’s death realigned her behavior. She was strong but also very, very vulnerable.
Lulu reached out a hand and cupped her palm against Joe’s cheek. “I didn’t want this.” Her voice was like glass grating beneath the soles of a boot. “Endure it—that’s all I wanted. No more heartache while men were going off to fight. Because you can make me all manner of promises, and I can be completely daft and make promises in return, but we have no say in the matter. I thought he’d come home to me, that we’d start a life together. He simply wanted no more part of life at all.”
Joe pressed her palm firmly against his face and kept it there. Her skin was still icy. “I’m not him. If I’d wanted to do myself in, I could’ve a long time ago. I had plenty of chances and plenty of reasons. Now that I’m past all of that—hell, Lulu, now that I’m here with you—I have so much to fight for. To live for.”
“And you wouldn’t let your fellow soldiers down.”
<
br /> “Of course not,” he said, relieved to see her pulling free of her past. There was nothing for either of them back there. “They depend on me. I don’t think I realized how much until recently.”
“And by doing your duty, you can get through this whole ordeal.”
He grinned. “Sure I can.”
“Then you have to see why I still need to fly. And why I can’t let those boys down. They need my letters, Joe.”
Ah, so that was her reasoning. Even now she was trying to bring him round to her way of thinking. Joe flicked his eyes to the stack of letters he resented.
When he hadn’t been able to see Lulu for those few weeks in a row, he’d written to her. He hadn’t mailed the letters, feeling foolish and self-conscious, but he’d written. Into those letters he’d poured all manner of personal feelings, from his desire for a little auto shop of his own to the sense of betrayal he’d felt during his trial. Letter after letter, now stuffed in his footlocker. To think some other soldier or seaman was out there penning similarly emotional letters for her to read . . .
And her flying. He’d be stuck in a foxhole, wondering if she was belly flopping another Hurricane. But next time the outcome wouldn’t be in her favor. Damn, he just knew it.
“See?” she said quietly.
“See what?”
“It’s on your face. You worry about me.”
“Sure I do.”
“Maybe now you can understand my reluctance to know you better.” She placed both hands on muscles sloping from his neck to his shoulders. As if she knew that’s where he kept mountains of tension, she worked those stiff muscles with patient, firm strokes. Joe exhaled slowly. “You wanted someone to care for you when you go,” she said. “That caring goes both ways. You’ll wonder how I am, while I do the same for you.”
“But you don’t need to go out of your way to court trouble.”
Her hands were snatching his thoughts and jumbling them together. “No, what I need to do is whatever it takes to bring this war to an end. Now. Tomorrow. Next week. As soon as possible.” She leaned over him so their noses nearly touched. “Then you and every other fighting man can come back. That means flying. And if I happen to enjoy my job and want to challenge myself with new, more difficult aircraft—I’m sorry, Joe, but that’s still my decision. I’m a grown woman and a qualified pilot. They wouldn’t have granted me the opportunity otherwise.”
