The Unsung Hero (25 page)
For a while she even dared to hope he had a crush on her, too.
But one day he just stopped coming out to the swing—about the time she heard from her friends that “that wild Tom Paoletti” was dating Darci Thompkins. Darci was a senior who owned a red convertible and had a reputation for taking her own top down as well on the deserted beach over by Sandy Hook.
It hadn’t been until later that summer, that, once again, Tom had come to Kelly’s rescue. That had been one of Kelly’s precious, golden days.
She’d fallen off her bike and skinned her elbow miles away from her house, up by Lennelman’s Orchards, coming home from a party at Ellen Fritz’s.
Tom had come by on his motorcycle—probably on his way to Ellen’s. But he stopped when he saw her sitting on the side of the road, her front wheel irreparably bent.
It was awkward at first, but it didn’t take long for them to fall into their old, familiar, easy conversation. They drove around for hours that afternoon and evening, first on his Harley, her arms tightly wrapped around him. God, that had been paradise.
Later, they rode around in Joe’s station wagon, after going back to pick up her bike. They’d stopped to walk through an antiques fair that filled the streets of nearby Salem, and they’d shared a large order of fried clams and French fries from the Gray Gull Grill down by the water.
And they’d talked and laughed for hours and hours.
It had been a wonderful, magical day.
And when it was nearly midnight, they’d been down by the marina, stopped at a traffic light. Kelly could remember gazing at Tom, her heart in her throat, wanting him to kiss her so badly. And when he’d turned to look at her . . .
She didn’t remember moving, but she must have. Both of his hands were on the steering wheel. Still, somehow, it happened. She was kissing him—finally, finally kissing him.
He made a low, desperate sound in the back of his throat as he pulled her closer, as he swept his tongue into her mouth.
Kelly had never been kissed like that before, and in the back of her mind she thought she should probably be shocked, but she wasn’t. It was too perfect, too right.
He tasted like the chocolate ice cream they’d shared, like the salty ocean air, like freedom.
Kissing Tom was everything she’d imagined and more.
Someone honked behind them, and Kelly looked up to see that the light had turned green. Tom hit the gas and with a squeal of tires pulled the station wagon into the bank parking lot, skidding to a stop. He killed the engine and pulled her back to him, kissing her again and again.
It was paradise.
“Oh, God,” he breathed, leaning back to look into her eyes. “Make me stop. I shouldn’t be doing this.”
His hands were in her hair and he was breathing hard.
She didn’t want him to stop, so she kissed him the way he’d kissed her, deeply, fiercely, stroking his tongue with hers, sucking him with her lips.
He made that same low sound, and she knew despite her inexperience, she’d kissed him the way he liked to be kissed.
Still, he pulled away. “My God, you’re dangerous.”
She was instantly uncertain. “Don’t you . . . ? But that was how you kissed me.”
He made a noise that wasn’t quite a groan, wasn’t quite laughter. “How many boys have you kissed, Kelly?”
She couldn’t meet his gaze. “I don’t know exactly. I don’t keep track.”
He didn’t say anything. He just watched her.
“One,” she whispered, “and it wasn’t anything like this.” She melted into the beautiful hazel green of his eyes. “Nothing’s ever felt like this. I want to kiss you forever.”
“You’re so sweet,” he murmured, and this time when he kissed her, he was gentle, his mouth soft, almost delicate against her lips. It was the most wonderful sensation she’d ever known.
“I really have to take you home now,” he told her quietly.
“It’s not that late,” she dared to say. “We could go down to the beach.”
That was where the high school lovers went to park, steaming up the windows of their cars. The bolder ones took a blanket and a dinghy out past Sandy Hook to Fayne’s Island.
She’d never been there.
“You really want to?” His voice sounded funny, tight.
“Yes.” She dared to glance at him again.
The muscle was jumping in the side of his jaw. She slowly reached out and put her hand on his knee.
“God help me,” he said. “Lord Jesus, save me.” He started to laugh.
At her. Kelly jerked her hand back, mortified.
But he somehow knew what she was thinking and was instantly contrite. “Kel, no—I’m not . . . I’m laughing at me.”
She didn’t get it.
“As much as I want to, I can’t take you to the beach,” he explained. “You have no idea what goes on down there.”
“Yes, I do.” He wanted to. His words made her bold again, and she kissed him, as sweetly as he’d kissed her. “And what I don’t know, you could teach me.”
She heard Tom groan again.
And then he pushed her back onto the passenger’s side, fastening the seat belt around her, and started the car. And for several heart-stopping moments, she was both terrified and elated.
But instead of taking the road to the beach, he sped up the hill. Toward home.
“Tom—”
“Don’t,” he cut her off, his voice rough as he took the turn onto their street. “Don’t say anything else.”
“But—”
“Please,” he said.
I love you. Kelly clamped her teeth tightly over the words.
Joe came out of his cottage as soon as Tom pulled into the driveway.
Her mother came from the main house, looking suspiciously from Kelly to Tom. “Where have you been? Do you know it’s almost midnight?”
“Meet me later tonight,” Kelly whispered to Tom. “In the tree house.”
Her mother had swept her inside, but before the door closed, Kelly looked back at Tom. He was lifting her bike out of the back of the station wagon, but he looked up and directly into her eyes, and she knew from the heat she saw there that he’d meet her. She knew it.
But by two A.M., she was finally ready to believe the scribbled note he’d left for her. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”
Still, hope won out over doubt, and she went to sleep believing that he couldn’t have kissed her the way he had unless he loved her, too.
But the next day, Tom had left town for good. To Kelly’s complete shock, he’d gotten a buzz cut. He’d joined the Navy and was shipping out. She didn’t even get a chance to speak to him without Joe and her parents overhearing.
“I’m sorry,” he told her quietly, as he shook her hand—shook her hand—and she knew it was true. He was sorry. He didn’t love her.
She had been a fool even to think that he might.
Kelly had kept her distance from him the few times he came home on leave that first year he was in the service. She pretended not even to notice he was in town, hoping desperately all the while that he’d approach her. But he never did. And then, a few weeks before she turned seventeen, her parents separated, and she and her mom moved out of Baldwin’s Bridge.
Kelly’s visits to her father had never lined up with Tom’s visits home to Joe.
Until now.
Tomorrow night she was having dinner with him.
With wild Tom Paoletti.
And this time she was playing his game, by his rules.
Charles drifted, dreaming about ice.
Dreaming about frozen daiquiris, in big, wide-mouthed glasses filled with crushed ice. He and Jenny’d gone to Cuba for their honeymoon. The trip had been exorbitantly expensive—the entire week had probably cost more than Cybele’s house in Ste.-Hélène. The irony hadn’t escaped him, even back then—he’d paid big money to travel by plane from the ice and snow to a place that was hot, and then he’d paid still more for a glass of that very same ice that had probably been shipped on the plane with him.
Not just ice. Ice and Cuban rum. It went down like sugar candy. And after a few glasses, even the idea of spending the rest of his life with the childishly selfish Jenny had seemed positively grand.
Charles awoke with a start, with Luc Un’s foot jabbing him sharply in the side as the Frenchman muttered something dark he didn’t quite catch. The meaning was unmistakable, though—you bum.
The two Lucs and Henri and Jean-Whoever—Claude or Pierre or maybe even another Luc, who could keep them straight?—were all still darkly unhappy with Charles for making them learn how to darn socks. In truth, Charles had done nothing. He’d merely made sure he was busy and working every chance he got. It was the only way he had to fight the Nazis—by freeing up Cybele and the other women so that they could do more dangerous work. Which, he told himself, was fine with him. If he had a choice, if he couldn’t be shipped safely back home, then he’d stay here in this kitchen, thanks, right until the end of the war.
He was much faster with his needle now—not as fast as Cybele or Dominique, true, but certainly the fastest among the men.
Joe had been next. Charles hadn’t been at it for more than a day before Joe had picked up a needle and joined him.
Trying to earn points with Cybele, no doubt.
As far as Charles could tell, Joe had earned only one of Cybele’s luminous smiles.
No kisses.
Charles was the only one who’d received that particular prize.
Of course, Cybele had been careful not to be alone with him since then. And that was a good thing, he reminded himself.
He’d entertained her with stories about Baldwin’s Bridge—but only when Joe was around to act as interpreter. And chaperon.
Now Joe, he was a piece of work. He was so quiet, you’d almost forget he was there. But the beans and fresh greens on the table at dinner were courtesy of Joe. And whenever there was an uproar in town, whenever the Germans had a truckload of supplies stolen out from under their noses or a train was derailed in the night, whenever downed American pilots mysteriously escaped Nazi capture, well, chances were that was courtesy of Joe, too.
For all their differences, Charles liked Joe. He respected Joe.
And he didn’t need his degree from Harvard to know that Joe was in love with Cybele.
It was a wondrously pure, worshipful love. The kind that a woman like Cybele Desjardins deserved. A saintly love. An honest, respectful, humble, and true love.
There was no doubt about it—Joe would do anything, anything for her if she so much as asked. Yeah, he would lay down his life for Cybele.
Who had kissed Charles a week ago.
Now, Charles had kissed a lot of women in his relatively short life, and on a scale from one to five, with five being that greatest number of inches an enthusiastic woman’s tongue could go down his throat, that tiny little kiss had been a solid zero.
Not a single tongue had been involved. It was nothing. Zilch. It was the kind of dry, dutiful kiss he might bestow upon his elderly maiden aunt. It was completely platonic. It was . . .
Christ, who was he kidding? That kiss had been anything but platonic. It had trembled with emotion and barely contained passion. It had been a promise—the very slightest whisper of a promise, true, but a promise of paradise, for sure.
He’d thought about that single, tiny kiss for hours, days. He’d spent more time dreaming about it than any other kiss he’d ever partaken of in his entire life.
And when he wasn’t thinking about that kiss, he was thinking about Cybele’s eyes. Eyes that a man could lose himself in for an eternity. Eyes that saw so much, that knew so much. Impossibly beautiful eyes.
And her mouth. Graceful lips, full and moist. Slightly, charmingly crooked teeth she didn’t try to hide when she smiled.
And yes, he’d thought about her body plenty, too. The slight curve of her hips beneath her skirt, the oversized dresses that both concealed and revealed her less than ample breasts. Compared to Jenny, she had the body of a boy. Or at least he’d imagined she did. He’d spent a hell of a lot of time imagining.
God help him, but he wanted her. He ached for her, he burned for her—Jenny and Joe be damned.
“Guiseppe!” Dominique burst through the kitchen door. She lunged for the man sitting across from Charles at the kitchen table, crumpling to her knees in front of him, erupting in a whispered explosion of undecipherable French.
Undecipherable to Charles, that is. Joe seemed to get what she was saying, his face tightening, his eyes suddenly hard.
He stood up, issuing orders rapid-fire. Charles could only make out some of the words. Market basket. Egg money.
Luc Un was the only other man in the house. The others had strayed too far the night before and hadn’t been able to get back before dawn. But now Luc went one way, Dominique the other, gathering the market basket and the carefully hoarded egg money Cybele kept hidden in her wooden gardening shoes.
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