The topmost buttons on her dress had come undone, allowing him a glimpse of her breasts curving in toward each other, held back only by a sheer white fabric. Her nipples jutted out, firm, erect, and Rip felt his own privates follow suit. She must have felt it too, because she rocked back and pressed into him.
And they connected. Through three layers of clothing, but still, they connected—oh, how gloriously they connected.
He grew harder still and desperately wanted to unfasten the remaining buttons that shielded Deborah’s supple, pale skin from view, wanted to lay her down on the soft grass outside and take everything she had to offer, a gift to cherish if ever there were one.
But it wasn’t right, not like this. Deborah had so much more to offer than a beautiful face. Everything about her turned Rip on—his body, his mind, his heart—and he knew disrespecting her like this would be wrong, whether or not she seemed to want it too. Besides, hadn’t she turned the cold shoulder on him last night?
“Are you hungry?” he asked, grasping at any change of topic he could find. But now that he mentioned it, his stomach did rumble, though certain other parts of his body were less difficult to ignore.
“Yeah, but…” She laughed and leaned forward to kiss him once again.
“Let’s go find a nice little diner and get some flapjacks and eggs. We have another long drive ahead of us today. We’ll need our strength.”
Deborah reluctantly climbed off his lap and slid to the passenger’s side of the cab. Was she upset? Did she feel slighted? Whatever the case, she didn’t let on. Maybe she, too, was relieved he’d put a stop to what they’d started.
“Are you looking forward to New Orleans?” he ventured.
“I am,” she responded pertly. “But there’s something else I’m looking forward to even more.” She reached over and clasped his free hand in both of hers. “I have a surprise for you!” And there was that joy again, the same unbridled happiness she had shown when introducing him to the cliff.
“A surprise, huh? What it is?”
She laughed and wagged a finger in his direction. “Oh no, you kept your surprise until the bitter end. I get to keep mine too.”
He chuckled along with her. “The bitter end? I would have thought you liked my surprise a bit more than that.”
She playfully hit his arm, and—just like that—the brush-off she’d given him the night before receded to a distant memory.
Over breakfast, he asked, “Tell me about your work, where you go during the day.”
And she told him about the nursing home and all its colorful residents, how she had started volunteering there at her father’s insistence as a way to pass time over the summers, but had fallen so in love with it, she now assisted the staff full-time. She talked about the old folks who lived there, how each had such a vivid story to tell, how it really was a writer’s paradise and one day she’d make sure to tell all their amazing stories for posterity.
“I never would have pictured myself at an old folks’ home of all places,” she admitted after taking a long gulp of orange juice. “But now that I’m there, I can’t much picture myself anywhere else.”
Rip poured more maple syrup over his pancakes and began to cut them into squares. He, for one, could picture Deborah in all kinds of places—his arms, his bed, his future—but he decided not to say anything so brazenly forward.
“What about you?” She picked up her fork and readied a bite of hash browns. “What do you do for work?”
“The Army,” he answered bluntly.
She shook her head and put a hand over her mouth to cover the chewed up food inside. “No,” she mumbled. “I mean, now that you’re out of the Army. What will you do?”
“That’s the thing, I’m not out. My leave is only temporary. I fully intend to go back and finish my term of service, to see my duty through.”
“Oh, I see.” She took another long swig from her juice cup. “Well, should we be off then?”
Rip agreed even though he hadn’t eaten his fill yet. He hoped he hadn’t ruined whatever this–amazing thing—was between them.
* * *
Deborah’s mind and heart continued to war with one another as she and Rip finished their drive to New Orleans, enjoyed their concert, and then took the long drive home to their tiny Texas town.
Rip would leave, perhaps soon. He could die, he could disappear, he could forget about her. She’d never bought that ridiculous absence makes the heart grow fonder bit. In her experience, absence made the heart grow distant, cold. As it was, she could barely picture James’s handsome face any longer, and it had hardly been more than a year since they last met. Since they’d first met too.
And she really didn’t feel like being a war widow twice over, but she also didn’t want to let go of what she and Rip had, especially if everything turned out okay in the end, if the war ended before he could return, or if he came back unharmed and as in love with her as ever.
Of course, she didn’t know exactly what Rip’s heart held, but she knew hers—and she had fallen hopelessly, irrevocably in love. She’d known in that very moment when the fireflies danced their slow waltz through the night sky. She’d known, and it had terrified her. And had she not impulsively suggested they take this little road trip together, she’d have been able to feign illness, request to be taken home, to ignore Rip whenever he came calling for another date. But they had taken their trip, which meant her heart and her head had no choice but to battle it out as they drove across the country roads that led from one state to the next.
And now her time with Rip had amounted to approximately one hundred times more than what she’d ever had with James. And she freely admitted her love for him. So why couldn’t she put her fears aside and give herself fully to Rip?
These questions continued to float about her mind as she and Rip pulled up to her house’s darkened doorstep, as she gave him a quick kiss goodnight, and crept in through the front door. The tableside lamp in the living room snapped on, casting an elongated shadow across the floor.
There her father sat in his favorite armchair, a scowl set onto his normally friendly face. “Where have you been?” he rumbled.
Deborah froze, a deer in lamplight. “Daddy, I called from the payphone. I said I’d be—”
“You said? You said? What happened to asking permission first? Your mother and I would never have agreed to, to this overnight—” His voice stuck on overnight. “… affair.”
“No, it wasn’t like that. Nothing happened, I swear.”
Just then, Deborah’s mother padded into the room, her hair fixed in neat little rows of pink foam curlers. She yawned and wiped the residue from her eyes. “Deborah?” she croaked. “Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been?” She perched on the arm of her husband’s chair and waited.
Deborah felt tears begin to well behind her eyes. “Mama, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to worry. It’s just we were having such a good time, and we—I…I wasn’t thinking. But nothing improper happened between Rip and me, I promise.”
Her father let out a low guttural sound, but her mother stood and took Deborah into her arms.
“If she says nothing happened, then nothing happened. But, Deborah…” She held Deborah at arm’s length and looked straight into her eyes as she spoke. “This can never happen again, do you hear? It isn’t proper for an unmarried woman to…well, you know.”
“Yes, Mama.”
Her father sighed but made no move to rise from his chair. “We’re very disappointed in you.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“And, of course, we will no longer allow you to see that, that, boy without a chaperone present.”
Deborah nodded, though she didn’t at all agree.
“Now go get some sleep.”
Deborah fell into bed, allowing her tears to flow freely in the privacy of her own room. Yes, she was having a hard time deciding what to do about her affection toward Rip, but that didn’t mean she wanted her father to make t
he decision for her. It hadn’t been Rip’s fault she’d insisted on staying out all evening and the next day too, hadn’t been his fault they’d almost…In fact, he’d been the one to take a step back and slow things down like the true gentleman he’d proven himself to be. Not as if she could make that argument to her father.
With time, she fell asleep, memories of her grand adventure with Rip playing on loop within her dreams.
Chapter 10
Crash! Bang! Boom!
Angry chunks of shrapnel catapulted through the air. He tried to run, but he was stuck in place, lying on the ground with useless legs that refused to carry him to safety. George was down, and the enemy was drawing closer.
More blistering metal flew toward him. He watched helplessly as bits of the debris singed his shirt and melted into his chest.
The pain was like nothing he’d felt before and nothing he’d felt since—the sensation of a handful of fiery worms burrowing toward his heart, consuming him from the inside out. Hurt like hell.
He prayed for it to end once and for all, for his agony to cease. But the shrapnel and gunfire kept tearing through the sky, the pain kept progressing toward his heart.
Crash! Bang! Boom!
He struggled into a sitting position, and the pain fell away—but the sounds continued. Confused, Rip searched the dark room. Home. Safe.
Then what was all that ruckus?
He listened closely. The bangs gave way to gently pings. His window.
He rushed across the room and peered out into the nightscape. A cloaked figure ran forward, and for a moment terror groped his heart. The commies, they had found him. They had come to finish the job.
But, no, that didn’t make any sense.
“Pssst!” a voice called, and then Deborah’s mess of blond curls appeared on the other side of the glass.
Rip immediately pulled up the window and let the cool air rush into his room. “What are you doing here?” he asked, though he was ecstatic she had come.
“No time for questions. Come with me.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him through the window. If she was surprised at his attire—pajama pants only—she didn’t show it.
“Where are we going?” he asked, trying to keep up as she sprinted down the street.
“Your surprise, it’s ready. And I wanted to give it to you right away.”
He fell into step beside her, wracking his brain as to what the surprise may be. And moments later they’d arrived at the same lake where they had first become more intimately acquainted.
Deborah didn’t hesitate. She pulled her nightgown right over her head, then stepped out of her undergarments as well. Her alabaster skin shone in the moonlight, and Rip wanted nothing more than to run over to her, take hold, and never, ever let go. But Deborah simply stretched her arms high over her head and ran giggling into the water.
“Come on in! The water’s, well, cold, but you could help warm it up.” He suspected a wink had accompanied her invitation, but couldn’t be certain. Was Deborah’s surprise…? No, it couldn’t be.
He stepped out of his flannel pants, and a chill worked its way across his flesh. The scars on his chest reflected the moonlight just like her beautiful unblemished skin. He trotted into the water after Deborah, who had disappeared in the brief moment he had managed to tear his eyes away from her.
“Deborah?” he ventured, sweeping the lake in search of her.
A second later she popped up in front of him and dragged him down beneath the surface. The moment they were both immersed, she brought her lips to his and pulled him tight to her breast. Only a brief sheen of lake water separated their naked bodies, and despite the odd setting, their odd predicament, being there with Deborah felt so right.
They broke into the air to pull some oxygen into their hungry lungs, then continued to kiss, to embrace, to take of each other.
And that was when he knew.
He needed to marry this girl so he could come home to her each and every evening, so he could wake from his nightmares in the comfort of her calming presence, so they could take their love to the next level, so he could, at last, be with her fully without worrying about disgracing her reputation or filling her belly with an unwanted child. Because he wanted it all with Deborah, the children, the picket fence, the whole shebang.
He pulled away from his beautiful lake goddess and swam back to shore. She followed close behind.
“That wasn’t the surprise,” she said.
He laughed. “No? I have a hard time imagining what could be better.”
She slipped her nightgown back over her head and motioned for him to join her on the grass. “Then let me show you.”
He sat beside her and waited. For a moment, she seemed shy, but then he wrapped an arm around her and she turned to him with a smile.
With no preamble, Deborah began to recite the most beautiful words Rip had ever heard:
“Once I was a lonely jailbird
Not knowing I couldn’t fly
Then you chanced a smile my way
And the whole world came alive
Now that we’re here together
Everything feels so right
And I feel compelled to tell you
You are my guiding light
Let me love you as you have loved me
Because, darling, your love has set me free.”
She stopped and smiled a sad, sweet smile.
“I wanted to tell you how I feel, and it’s always been easier for me to write it down first, so—”
He stopped her with a kiss. “Deborah.”
“Yeah?” She glanced up at him from beneath wet lashes.
“I love you, too.”
* * *
The crickets’ chirps filled the early morning air, the only sound save for Deborah’s and Rip’s slow breaths as they sat in the wake of this giant admission.
She loved him. And he loved her back. It was that simple, and that enormously difficult.
“Did you like it? Did you like my poem?” she asked at last, jostling them from the serenity of the moment.
“I loved it.” He squeezed her hand, a smile shooting across his handsome face. “Teach it to me. Let me turn it into a song, our song.”
And so they sat together in the approaching dawn, Deborah saying a line, and Rip repeating it until he’d learned the entire thing. Then he was singing her own words back to her, sweet and melodic. She listened in awe as her words took on new life in Rip’s mouth.
“Wow,” she whispered when he’d finished. “That was so beautiful.”
He raised his hand to her cheek and held her gaze, her heart, her everything. “Seems we’re better together than either of us ever was apart,” he said.
Deborah couldn’t help but agree. How was it that love always crashed into her so suddenly and so wholly? Rip’s eyes twinkled, reflecting the few remaining stars above, and she felt perfectly blissful wrapped in the faint morning light. Until…
“Marry me.”
At first she couldn’t be certain she’d heard him correctly. They’d only just declared their love for one another. Only made each other’s acquaintance—what?—less than a week ago. But that couldn’t be right. Another part of her felt she had known Rip all along or perhaps in another life, in a distant dream.
Then he said it again. “Marry me.”
She watched the light leave his eyes, his strong form weaken as she answered, “Oh, Rip, I don’t know.”
Yet he persisted. “What’s not to know? I love you. You love me. We’re both young, our whole lives ahead of us. What could possibly be simpler? We belong together, Deborah. We belong together, you and me.”
But what about James? Saying yes to Rip means saying goodbye to him forever, and I’m just not sure I’m ready to let him go, to admit he’s…
She pulled away from him, stood, turned her back, tried not to cry as she gave him her answer. “I—I’ll have to think about it, about us. I’m sorry.”
And then she ran away,
ran home without even a second glance in his direction. All that was perfect faded away, and she was left only with an overwhelming sense of dread. For all the times she’d imagined receiving a marriage proposal, she’d never expected she’d want to say no every bit as much as she longed to say yes.
Chapter 11
Rip returned to his lonely suburban home more shaken up than ever. Nothing lasted. Not life, not happiness, not even home, he thought as he looked around the rented house that held so little of him within its walls.
What had he done to anger the Almighty so? Why did an unrelenting streak of misfortune follow him wherever he tried to hide? He always—always—tried to do what was just and good. He had tried to save George, he really had. He’d rejected Deborah’s advances although he’d have liked very much to turn their affections physical.
He fell to the carpeted floor and hugged his knees to his chest, rocking back and forth, back and forth, willing the motion to shake loose all the troubling thoughts from his mind. When that didn’t work, he tried to take slow measured breaths, but they came out short as his throat constricted and he struggled to pull enough air into his tired lungs. The room spun around him, and he felt as though he were tumbling down an infinite spiral staircase.
Nothing was home. Nothing was safe. Nothing was good.
He needed to get back to the front lines, and soon. Because he’d already been used up, he’d already been broken inside. If he could take out a couple commies before going down, then perhaps he could save the life of another soldier, the life of some young buck with his entire life before him. Without Deborah, Rip’s life had no meaning.
It had come to that now, hadn’t it?
Deborah had managed to cure what the very best VA doctors could not. She had mended his broken heart, only to yank off the bandage that had held it all together, breaking him even worse than before. He pictured her face as she told him no, the fear in her eyes. He’d assumed she was lifting him up, but maybe he was pulling her down. He loved her; he had no doubt of that, so maybe it was best to let her go free—just as their song had stated: Your love has set me free.
Cupid's Bow: The First Generation Boxed Set Page 6
