Once a Warrior

by Fran Baker

  * * * *

  The door opened into her fantasy boudoir. Subtly striped moiré papered the walls, cut velvet draped the windows, and a simply patterned Savonnerie carpeted the floor. A carved bed, its white satin comforter already turned down, dominated the suite.

  “It is to your liking, m’sieur?” asked the anxious concierge who’d ridden up in the hotel lift with them.

  Mike tilted his head consideringly at Anne-Marie. “What do you think, madamoiselle?”

  “C’est magnifique!” Peeking into the luxurious, mable-mosaicked bathroom, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the gilted mirror above the sink, seeing a woman who had been liberated by love . . . and, standing behind her, the man who had set her free.

  Coming here with Mike might have been a mistake, Anne-Marie knew, because she would surely end up weeping when it was time for him to go. But as she’d changed out of the chemise and into her white crepe suit—a prewar Chanel she’d found in a secondhand shop—she’d felt ridiculously happy. And in the taxi on the way to the hotel, where he’d already arranged for them to stay, she’d renewed her vow to enjoy what time they had together.

  We deserve this, she told herself now. After all we’ve suffered, everything we’ve survived, we deserve this.

  She squared her shoulders and started to turn back to him. Then stopped, her eyebrows shooting up in surprise when she saw the bottle of Mumm Cordon Rouge chilling in a silver cooler beside the small brocade sofa.

  “Champagne!” she said on a laugh.

  The concierge lifted the bottle from the bucket, expertly removed the foil, then popped the cork and poured.

  As she accepted the flute, Anne-Marie noticed a tray of hors d’oeuvres—crackly disks of thin crust daubed with briny black drifts of caviar or cool crème frâche—sitting on the sofa table.

  She smiled coyly at Mike. “Now I see why you didn’t want to stop for dinner.”

  “No turnips, m’sieur.” The concierge’s tone said he didn’t quite understand the reasoning behind that particular request but that he’d fulfilled it precisely.

  Seeing the puzzled expression on the man’s face, Anne-Marie choked back her laughter and sipped champagne. It was delicious. But the fizz in her throat was nothing compared to the bubbling of her blood when she looked at Mike and saw the naked want on his face.

  His eyes never left hers as he reached into his pants pocket and produced an American ten-dollar bill. “That’ll be all, thank you.”

  Clutching the precious paper money that would probably buy him more than he earned in a month, the concierge backed out of the open door, then executed a courtly bow before he closed it.

  “We need to talk, Anne-Marie,” Mike said in a grave tone that sent a shiver of premonition down her spine. “I have a lot of things to tell you, and something I want to ask—”

  “No.” Not yet ready to hear him say that he was going back to America, she set down her flute and started toward the bed. “No talking tonight.”

  Determined to have his say, he followed close on her heels. “But I want—”

  She spun and silenced him the only way she knew how, with a desperate kiss that left them both shivering with desire. Then, before he could utter another word, she kicked off her shoes, unbuttoned her suit jacket and stepped out of her skirt. Clad only in her lacy brassiere, garter belt and the silken stockings she’d been saving for a special occasion, she took hold of his tie and towed him down to the mattress with her.

  “A feather bed!” she squealed in delight.

  “How does it feel?”

  “It’s so soft.”

  And he was so hard and ready lying between her thighs that Anne-Marie simply couldn’t resist. All seductress snow, she reached down between them and undid his fly. Her eager fingers circled him and stroked him until he made a noise in his throat, part moan but mostly growl. Then she let him go and lifted her hand to caress his cheek with melting tenderness.

  Mike’s blood pounded a drumbeat in his ears as he looked down at the wanton picture she made with her tawny hair fanning across the potpourri-scented sheet, her amber eyes so soft and shiny, and her skin gleaming like satin in the golden light from the bedside lamp. Talking be damned, he decided. Right now, he had more pressing needs to tend to.

  His mouth captured hers and moved over it greedily. She twined her arms around his neck, parting her lips to receive the thrilling thrust of his tongue as she opened her thighs to accept his hot, pulsing hardness. He gripped her hips and drove his body into hers. In response, she locked her legs around him and arched her back like a bow. His hoarse gasps mingled with her glad cries as they found release where they’d left it . . . with each other.

  * * * *

  The pale light of dawn outlined the velvet drapes when Anne-Marie awakened. She lay unmoving for a moment, staring at the elaborately worked plaster ceiling. Then she turned her gaze to Mike, sleeping soundly beside her.

  He’d had a bad dream in the middle of the night. She hadn’t known what to think when his shouts first pierced her ears. But when he’d sat bolt upright in bed with his eyes closed and his fists clenched and sweat beading on his skin, she’d realized that he was reliving some unspeakable horror of war. Remembering her own harrowing nightmares when she didn’t know where he was or whether he was even alive, she’d wrapped her arms around him and held him, simply held him, until his muscles relaxed and he drifted off peacefully again.

  Now, being careful not to disturb him, Anne-Marie slid out of bed and began putting on her clothes. Mike’s seventy-two hours were up today, and it was time for her to go. She hated the thought of leaving him like this, with no note of explanation and no kiss goodbye, but she was taking with her a lifetime’s worth of wonderful memories.

  The days had passed in a blur as she’d given him the grand tour of the “City of Light.” She’d taken him from the top of the Eiffel Tower, where they’d clung dizzily to each other as they’d looked straight down, to the underground tunnels of the métro, where they’d necked like teenagers in a darkened car. From the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe, from a religious service at Nôtre Dame to a risqué show at the Casino de Paris, he’d seen them all.

  But at night, he took the lead. Time and again, he celebrated her body with a tender skill that had left her limp and sated and more in love than ever. Later, she would lie cradled in the curve of his shoulder, listening to the receding thunder of his heart and the relentless ticking of his watch.

  Finished dressing, Anne-Marie found her purse on the sofa table, where she’d dropped it the night before while being carried to bed. Tucked inside her bag were the franc notes she would use to buy a round-trip train ticket to Ste. Genviève. She was sure her aunt would be happy to see her. And she hoped she could be of some help to Henriette, who was due to give birth any day and whose husband Guy was working to reconstruct the very railroad tracks that he and the other Résistance members had destroyed. Mostly, though, she needed to get away from Paris for a little while so she could begin learning to live with the pain of Mike’s absence.

  She stooped to pick up her shoes, then straightened to study his beloved face one last time. It was then that her tears came—silent sobs that began somewhere in her soul and shook her chest. She had to get out of here. Now. Before her heart shattered and the sound of it breaking into a million irreparable shards awakened him.

  Carrying her things, she tiptoed to the door and reached for the knob. Two hands suddenly snaked around from behind her and kept her from opening it. She sagged against the wood, knowing she was caught.

  “Where are you going?” Mike demanded, his voice rough with sleep and his breath warm against her neck.

  Anne-Marie spun and faced him squarely. “I’m leaving you before you can leave me.”

  He fisted his hands on his naked hips and frowned down at her. “What makes you think I’m leaving you?”

  “You said you only had seventy-two—”

  “I also said I had a surprise for y
ou.”

  Still holding her purse and her shoes, Anne-Marie waved her arms to encompass the suite. “I thought you meant this.”

  Mike grinned and shook his head. “That’s only part of the surprise.”

  “And the rest?” Her voice reflected her anxiety.

  “I’ve been given a choice.” His expression turned somber. “I can use the points I’ve earned in combat to go back to Kansas City next week. Or I can accept a promotion to Captain and stay in Paris another six months with the Army of Occupation.”

  She was almost afraid to ask. “Which are you going to do?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Not what, but who.”

  “Who?” she parroted.

  “Or is it whom? I can never remember—”

  “Whom?”

  He bent his head and brushed his lips over hers. “You.”

  “Me?” she all but squeaked.

  “I love you, Anne-Marie.”

  On finally hearing the words, she bumped her forehead against his chin to hide her tears. “I love you too, Mike.”

  He looped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer. “You’re brave and you’re beautiful and you gave me a reason to go on living when it seemed like everyone I knew was dying.”

  “That’s why you didn’t write to me,” she said with sudden insight.

  “I was afraid of putting my feelings on paper,” he admitted. “Afraid that I’d tell you I loved you one day and then jinx it by getting myself killed the next.” His self-deprecating laugh rumbled deep in his chest. “I was even afraid that, after the way I’d built you up in my mind, you’d find someone else you loved more and wind up jilting me.”

  She snorted indelicately at that last. “So you waited to tell me in person.”

  “I had to come to you whole.”

  Anne-Marie thought of all the soldiers she’d seen who were missing an arm or a leg or an eye. Or burned so badly that their own families would have trouble recognizing them. And then there were the men who looked physically fine but whose minds had been permanently scarred. In a way, their wounds were the deepest and most devastating of all.

  She said a small, silent prayer of thanksgiving that Mike had been spared before tipping her head back and smiling up at him tremulously. “And now that you’re here?”

  He tightened his hold. “Now I’m asking you to marry me. And to go home with me when I’m—”

  “But—” Reeling at how fast this was all happening, she said the first thing that popped into her head. “America has such bad laws about the strangers!”

  “Strangers?” Now it was his turn to play the parrot.

  “People from other countries.” Before he could correct her erroneous impression by telling her that America was the greatest melting pot on earth, she bombarded him with her other concerns. “What would I be? French or American? Would I be able to go to school? I want to become a history teacher, like my mother. And what about your mother?”

  “My mother?”

  She dropped her gaze. “How would she feel about her son marrying a French girl?”

  “If I love you, so will she.” That settled, he tried to answer her other questions in the order she’d asked them. “You’ll always be French by birth, but as my wife you’ll have the opportunity to become an American citizen. And yes, you can ago to school. I’m planning to go too, on the GI Bill that our Congress has passed, because I want to be a lawyer.”

  He felt his heart swell as she lifted her eyes, her beautiful amber-brown eyes, and said haltingly, “My father was a lawyer.”

  “If I could bring even one of them back for you, I would.”

  She coughed rustily to clear her throat. “I know.”

  “But all I can do is offer you a new family. The family we’ll make together.” He gently cupped the sides of her face. “So, what do you say? Will you marry me?”

  “Oui,” she whispered. And then, just so there would be no mistaking what her answer was, she practically shouted, “Oui, oui, oui!”

  Mike didn’t need an interpreter to tell him that Anne-Marie had just said “yes.” He understood her perfectly. And when she dropped her shoes and her purse and flung her arms around his neck, he knew that the war was truly over and that their life together was about to begin.

  PART TWO

  PASSION FLOWER

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Kansas City, Missouri; 1968

  “Good evening, my fellow Americans.” President Lyndon Baines Johnson looked earnestly into the camera as he began his televised address to the nation.

  Catherine Brown hated coming home to an empty house. Especially on Sunday—the loneliest day of the week if one was leading the “single married life” of a soldier’s wife. So she’d turned on her portable TV when she got back from that student teacher’s weekend seminar, more to keep her company while she went through her mail and scrounged up something to eat than because she was interested in the news. After all, the news never changed. If the networks weren’t showing “peaceniks” like her younger brother burning their draft cards in public or marching on the White House chanting “Hey, hey, L.B.J., how many kids did you kill today?” they were broadcasting footage of soldiers fighting and dying in Vietnam.

  But now, still in shock, she was sitting on the sofa with Johnny’s letter in her hand, staring vacantly at the black-and-white screen.

  “Tonight,” the President said in his slow Texas drawl, “I want to speak to you of peace in Vietnam and Southeast Asia . . .”

  Peace? Cat frowned as the word penetrated the fog of despair that surrounded her. She blinked her eyes and looked around her, noting almost absently that the late March sun had set and the living room of her two-bedroom rental house had grown dark. The only light came from the television that sat on the four-wheeled stand in the corner.

  “We are prepared to move immediately toward peace through negotiations . . .”

  She needed to move too, Cat realized numbly, but she was so tired, so confused, so sad, that she couldn’t make herself do it. Her legs felt like lead and her arm was so heavy that she couldn’t raise it to turn on the lamp. Even her tears seemed to be dammed up in her eyes.

  “With America’s sons in the fields far away . . .”

  Johnny! Cat sucked in a sharp breath and curled her hands into fists, crumpling his one-page letter. Because he wasn’t much of a writer, they usually exchanged cassettes to play on their matching recorders. It felt awkward at times, speaking of her love for him and her dreams for their future into a machine, and she absolutely hated the way her voice sounded on tape. But it was always comforting to listen to her husband’s deep voice expressing his own feelings and emotions in return. She hadn’t heard from him in a couple of weeks, though, so finding a letter from him when she got home had come as a pleasant surprise.

  Certainly more pleasant than the shock that had followed it.

  As the memory lanced through her, Cat finally moved, folding her arms across her stomach and doubling over until her head almost touched her knees. She had just finished reading Johnny’s letter and was wondering what to make of it when the knock came. Thinking it was probably one of the neighborhood kids selling tickets for the school carnival or candy bars for their baseball team, she had instead opened the door to a man in uniform who had solemnly introduced himself before saying those awful words, “It is my duty to inform you . . .”

  “ . . . with America’s future under challenge right here at home . . .” the President continued.

  Cat shut her eyes against the wave of guilt that swept over her. She was supposed to see Johnny in Hawaii next month for his R & R, and it was a trip she had really been looking forward to. Partly because they’d never had a honeymoon to speak of—only an overnight stay at the Phillips Hotel, courtesy of her parents, before he’d helped her move into the house and then left her to arrange their furniture on her own. And partly because final exams had kept her from meeting him
in Hong Kong during his first tour of duty. But mostly because she’d hoped they could start all over again after their bitter arguments during his thirty-day leave home about his volunteering for a second tour in Vietnam.

  “ . . . with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day . . .”

  Three days ago, the Air Force chaplain had said. Now she wondered what she’d been doing at the time. It almost killed her to realize that, three days ago, while she was either giving a spelling test to her second-graders at Hale Cook School or working part time as a sales clerk at Harzfeld’s to help defray her college expenses, Johnny may well have been dying in some faraway jungle.

  Sitting up, Cat opened her tear-blurred eyes and looked at their wedding picture, which she proudly displayed on the wicker end table for all the world to see.

  Images of the past filled her mind as she studied the smiling bride in white satin and lace and the square-jawed groom resplendent in his dress blues. Johnny and she had married a year-and-a-half ago, after he’d graduated from pilot training and before he’d shipped out to Vietnam the first time. He’d wanted them to wait until he finished his stint—just in case something happened, she was sure—but she simply wouldn’t hear of it. She had known him all her life, had loved him since she was a little girl in pigtails, and she believed with fairy-tale certainty that he was her Prince Charming.

  As she reached out to touch his likeness behind the cool, unyielding glass, it suddenly seemed impossible that his heart could have stopped beating without her own breaking in half. But in retrospect, she realized that she had felt nothing. Neither a falter nor a fissure. Which told her that one of two things had happened. Either the ties that bound them had been sundered by their physical distance and differences that seemed almost petty at the moment. Or, he was still alive.

  She retracted her hand and drew a shuddering breath, clinging like a drowning woman to that hope.