by Fran Baker
Her blood swam when he deepened the kiss, sending little crackles of excitement surging up her spine. His tongue stroked and pressed, searching out the shapes and spaces of her mouth. Her fingers lifted to his head and threaded themselves through the thick hair that fell like wild black rain over his forehead.
She parted her thighs and felt his fierce passion graze their sensitive insides. Her tummy quickened when the heat of him nudged the heart of her. A shudder seized her then, sponsored as much by his tender torment as by the fact that there could be no future for them. And though it pained her to acknowledge it, she seized the moment with a smile.
“Love me, Cain,” she murmured, raising her hips and moving against him.
The hell of it was, he did. He loved her, but he couldn’t afford to tell her. Couldn’t risk cracking the shell of numbness that kept him going. So he showed her. He rose above her and slowly buried himself within her snug, moist sheath. Ecstasy shimmied through him when she said his name, then whispered it again against his lips.
His body was starved; hers was the feast. But even as the need for release clawed at him, he was mindful that this was all he could offer her. His strokes were long and smooth, which only heightened the eroticism and prolonged the pleasure.
“Cain.” Her breath burned her lungs. “It’s never . . . Not like this. Cain.”
“Look at me, Cat.” He sipped at the glad tear that slipped down her glowing cheek.
Their gazes met in the moonlight. Their mouths melded with a fervor that kissed their souls. Their bodies moved in an age-old rhythm that felt miraculously new as the love which neither dared voice culminated in a brilliant, shimmering climax.
* * * *
A soft, mewling sound woke her. She opened one eye, saw that it was still dark, and wondered what on earth that—
The baby!
Cat opened both eyes and blinked rapidly, trying to orient herself in the strange room. Then she slipped carefully out of bed, not wanting to disturb Cain, and tiptoed out of her bedroom and into John Lee’s.
The crib was empty!
Her breath slicing at her throat and her heart thundering fearfully against her eardrums, Cat spun and started back to her bedroom to wake Cain.
Another voice, this one deeper than the first, drew her toward the living room. She stopped in the doorway, her eyes misting over with high emotion when she saw the huge, naked man walking the floor with her baby draped over his broad shoulder.
Cain was singing to John Lee in a soft undertone. The tune was vaguely familiar to Cat but she couldn’t make out the words. She cocked her head and listened closely. Then she clapped her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud when she recognized the mellow rendition of “The Purple People Eater.”
He turned, his raven hair disheveled upon his brow, and held a silencing finger against his lips when he saw her standing there. She trailed him into the temporary nursery and watched him lay John Lee on his tummy in the crib. The baby gave one little squeak of protest at being put down before falling into the innocent sleep of a child.
“You’ve got a real mother’s ear,” Cat said when they were back in her room.
Cain shrugged nonchalantly. “A man who lives on the edge learns to sleep light.”
She looked up at him, startled by the reminder that he was returning to the war while she was going back to the world. It was all she could do not to beg him to come with her. Her father would be glad to help him with his legal problems, she was sure of it. Especially after everything he’d done for her and the baby.
But he would never willingly leave the nuns and the orphans. She was as certain of that as she was of her own name. And if he did agree to desert them, she knew, he wouldn’t be the man she loved.
“That was some lullaby,” she said in a wry tone.
His smile shone whitely in the moonlight. “John Lee enjoyed it.”
“Well, a one-eyed, one-eared flying purple people eater is liable to give him nightmares.”
“You’re right. Maybe I should’ve started him out on the Big Bopper.”
“He’s a little young for ‘Chantilly Lace’.”
“All right, you think of someone.”
She pursed her lips. “The Beatles.”
“Catherine, ma belle’,” he crooned in a nasally French accent.
Laughter tickled her throat. “Fats Domino.”
“Now you’re talking.” He pulled her tight against him, placed his mouth next to her ear and began singing, “I found my thrill . . . boom-boom-boom-boom, boom-boom-boom-boom . . .”
She tipped her head back. “‘Blueberry Hill’ hardly qualifies as a cradlesong.”
“This isn’t for John Lee.” His breath blew warm against her face. “It’s for me.”
“Oh, well, in that case . . .” Caught up in his inspired silliness in spite of herself, Cat wrapped her arms around his neck, laid her head in the curve of his shoulder, and let Cain draw her into his rhythm.
“The moon stood still . . . boom-boom-boom-boom, boom-boom-boom-boom . . .”
It was the craziest thing she’d ever done, dancing naked in the dark with a man who was supplying both the words and the music. It was also the most sensual. His body, solid against hers, made her heart flutter. The hair on his chest teased her breasts, and his hard thighs slid along hers. His hand, pressed to the small of her back, marked her as his for all time.
At song’s end, he touched his lips to her forehead in a brief kiss and asked huskily, “Any other requests?”
“Yes.” Smiling up into his lean face, she reached down and gave him a gentle squeeze. “Encore.”
* * * *
Cat took one last look around the guest house to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything. In her bedroom, she smiled gently with remembrance. Cain had left sometime before dawn, while she was sleeping, but they had already said goodbye.
It was easier this way, she acknowledged as she pressed a soft kiss into John Lee’s downy black hair. She wasn’t sure where he’d gone, but she remembered him telling Sister Simone that he needed to go north. And she thought it was smart of him to leave Saigon before Colonel Howard could set another trap for him. But how she’d hated waking up this morning without him!
They’d had more than one encore, as it turned out. Their passions had been quick to ignite each time one touched the other, and the heat of their movements had echoed the heat of the night. They had dozed in between, lying indolently among the tangled sheets.
Cat had been married, but she’d never experienced anything like the intimacies she’d shared with Cain. There’d been no rules, no restraints as they’d plumbed the depths of a more voluptuous sensuality than she’d ever dreamed possible. He’d touched her with astonishing familiarity, his hands and tongue taking liberties that had had left her weak and spent. Shy at first, and then emboldened by his encouraging murmurs, she’d kissed her way down his stomach, and then lower, delighting in both his ragged breathing and the knowledge that she could leave him as drained and relaxed as she.
She’d been awakened from a deep, dreamless sleep by a knock on the front door a little after six. It was Ngo, carrying a tray full of traditional breakfast foods—small meat dumplings to dip in that hot fish sauce, fried pork sausage, and a shrimp paste that looked like a paté. Everything was artfully arranged and smelled heavenly, but she hadn’t had much of an appetite. Not wanting to insult her lovely hostess, however, she had thrown on a floral-printed skirt and plain white blouse and eaten few bites of each dish before going to dress and feed the baby.
“I’m ready,” she told Loc now as she returned to the living room.
Nodding briskly, he handed her a package wrapped in several layers of tissue paper before he picked up her suitcases. “For you.”
“What is it?” she asked him.
“The teapot.” At the front door, he turned back and gave her a rare smile. “It’s my wife’s and my hope that you will teach your son to honor his Vietnamese as
well as his American ancestors. We are an ancient and proud people, a peaceful people at heart, but we are fighting to be free of the communists just as your forebears fought to be free of the English.”
“I’ll learn all I can,” she promised him in a quavering voice. “And then I’ll teach John Lee.”
Before she left the house, she took a moment to tuck the painted china teapot into the carry-on bag holding John Lee’s things so she would have it with her at all times during her long trip home. The heat and humidity slapped at her face like wet hands as she stepped outside. She could still hear shooting in the distance as she settled into the back seat of the car with the baby.
Cat had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t look back. What good would it do? Cain was well on his way north by now, and her plane was leaving in less than an hour. But as Loc put the Tempest in gear and pulled away from the curb, she glanced over her shoulder and said a spiritual goodbye to the small house where she had spent the most wonderful night of her life.
Then, telling herself that what was past was past, she turned her stinging eyes to the front and, hugging the baby tightly, began focusing on the future.
Pandemonium reigned outside the terminal at Tan Son Nhut, with taxis and trucks carrying everything from humans to crates of chickens rattling past. Loc parked behind an old school bus, and got out to unload her luggage from the trunk. A skycap of sorts with a brown face and the last of her piasters in his pocket carried the suitcases inside.
“Thank you.” With her arms full of baby and purse and diaper bag, Cat couldn’t give Loc a hug. So she leaned over kissed his leathery cheek. “For everything.”
His face worked with emotion, and for a moment she was afraid he was going to cry. Then he pulled himself together, bowing his head and closing his eyes just as he had the first time she’d met him. “Be proud that you are an American.”
“I am,” she said, and blinked away tears.
“And know that no matter what others say, your husband died for a noble cause.”
The thudding of harassment and interdiction fire sounded beyond the chain link fence that surrounded the airport.
“Be careful,” she managed to choke out, then turned and hurried into the busy terminal.
As Colonel Howard had promised, Kim met her at the ticket counter with John Lee’s passport and exit permit. She also had a certified copy of the baby’s birth certificate that she had already filed with the American Embassy on her way to the airport. Cat checked it over, then lifted her confused gaze to the girl’s pretty face.
“The birth certificate lists me as the mother,” she pointed out.
Kim’s lips curved in a complacent smile. “Colonel Howard said it would be easier for you to take him into the United States that way.”
Concern crimped Cat’s brow. “But I haven’t adopted him yet.”
“Adoption in Vietnam by an alien could take months,” Kim explained. “Maybe even a year.”
The word “alien” left a bitter taste in Cat’s mouth. As did the knowledge that a certain officer was once again manipulating the law to suit his own purposes. “So Colonel Howard decided to smooth the way.”
“The plane to Hong Kong is boarding, Mrs. Brown,” the ticket agent said then.
Kim extended her arms. “May I hold him?”
“Of course,” Cat said, and passed a blanket-bundled John Lee over.
But she had to look away when an emotional Kim partially unwrapped the baby and kissed his elbow in parting. Then she whispered something to him in Vietnamese—goodbye, perhaps—before she rewrapped him and handed him back. She lowered her head then, her hair falling like a black velvet curtain across her sweet-sad face. “You see what I meant when I said that Cain was an honorable man.”
“Will you do something for me?” Cat asked quietly.
The girl raised her head and looked at her quizzically.
“Love him twice as much for me.”
Kim’s dark, almond-shaped eyes shimmered with tears as she nodded in understanding. Then, murmuring something about having to get to the office, she straightened her narrow shoulders, turned on her spiky high heel and ran toward the door.
The ticket agent pointed in the opposite direction. “That way, Mrs. Brown.”
Her vision growing misty at the edges, Cat followed the crowd to her gate. As she crossed the tarmac, a planeload of American replacements marched past her, double-timing their way toward the military buses that would take them to the in-country processing station. Each of them was wearing khaki and carrying a duffel bag on his shoulder. And all of them looked so young, so innocent—more like boys playing soldier than men going to war—that she felt fear clutch at her heart. How many of these cherub warriors would survive to return home?
Numb with grief for those unknown mothers and wives still to receive a chaplain’s call and a curtly worded telegram, she climbed the steps of the plane. In the front were the officers, all creased and pressed and playing gin rummy with each other or with their aides; in the rear were the enlisted men, smelling of hair tonic and after-shave and making plans for R & R in Hong Kong; in the middle were the civilians.
The flight was only half full, which meant that Cat had no seatmates. And that suited her just fine. She was no mood for company or idle chitchat, either one.
A stewardess with teased blond hair and a full makeup job offered to hold John Lee while she slid into her window seat, stowed his diaper bag under the seat in front of her and buckled up.
“What is it?” she asked as she handed him back.
Cat tensed at the question, thinking of how Cain had been treated because of his heritage. “A baby.”
The stewardess rolled eyes as blue as the shadow that decorated their lids. “I mean is it a boy or a girl?”
“Oh.” Cat’s lips relaxed into a smile. “A boy.”
“It’s kind of hard to tell when they’re so little.”
“Let’s get this show on the road!” an enlisted man two rows back hollered.
“We’ll be airborne in a few minutes,” the stewardess told Cat. “If you need me for something—”
“I need you for something,” that same GI chimed in.
Hoots and catcalls rewarded his clever statement.
“You sure you wouldn’t rather trade that boy for a girl?” the stewardess asked, sotto voce, before she left to finish her pre-flight duties.
“I’m sure,” Cat said softly but firmly.
Once the doors were closed, the captain’s voice came over the intercom to inform the passengers that they were ready to take off.
At the stewardess’s suggestion, she gave the baby a bottle he really didn’t want to help keep his ears clear when the cabin pressure changed. Then she laid her head back and swallowed thickly as the plane taxied along the runway. Within minutes, they were airborne.
She was going home, but she was leaving her heart in Saigon.
When she removed the bottle from a sleeping John Lee’s mouth, Cat saw a silvery tear glistening on his little cheek. She used her thumb to brush it away. Only to realize that it wasn’t his, but hers.
Unbeknownst to her, it matched the single tear trickling down the lean, darkly bewhiskered cheek of the man who was sitting astride his motorcycle in the shadows of the hangar, watching her fly away from him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Kansas City, Missouri; 1973
“In your opinion, Mrs. Brown,” the reporter queried, “what should the government do about all the Amerasian children our troops have so cavalierly abandoned over three-plus decades?”
Cat folded her hands on the table in front of her, casting a surreptitious glance at her watch as she did so. The statement she’d prepared for the press conference was still in her purse. Instead of reading it, as she’d originally planned, she had instead spoken from the heart, giving a capsulized rendition of the plight of America’s forgotten progeny of war. She had even quoted Cain, though not by name, as she described the lifetime of dis
crimination and poverty they faced in ethnically pure societies that considered such children less than dirt. Then she had opened the floor to questions.
Which might have been a mistake.
The reception room was thronged with reporters, cameras and recording equipment. Politicians from the city to the federal level, figuring this was an opportunity to do a little glad-handing and maybe garner some favorable publicity in the process, were strategically scattered throughout the audience. There were also representatives from several veterans’ groups as well as a number of interested citizens who had read about today’s event in the newspaper.
Normally Cat would have been delighted to draw a crowd of this size. But the air-conditioning in the room that had been provided by the Alameda Plaza Hotel was on the fritz and the early June heat was so stifling that peoples’ tongues—hers included—were practically hanging out. Plus, this was taking longer than she had expected it would. She needed to pick up John Lee shortly at the YMCA, where he was practicing with his T-ball team, then swing by the grocery store on their way home. And after dinner, she wanted to run by her parents’ house to see her mother, who’d had her first radiation treatment today following her radical mastectomy four weeks ago.
She looked down either side of the conference table—first at the frowning military men who sat to her right, and then at the beaming civilians on her left. Finally, she gave the television reporter who’d posed the question a cool smile and spoke into the microphone that sat in front of her. “To be honest, I wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as cavalier.”
“But—”
“On the other hand,” she continued firmly, “I do think that we as a nation have a responsibility toward these children. They are, after all, the living legacy of our presence in Asia. The real victims, if you will, of our three wars on that continent. And I believe we owe them at least as much as we do the thousands of political refugees from Indochina on whom we’re now spending millions of dollars.”
