by Ann Major
"Despite everything, you look pretty as ever," he said, meaning it.
Gale touched her cheek, feeling the heat of a blush sweeping onto her face. "Thank you."
"Going to say the same for me?" he asked, beginning to grin.
"You look more mature." The war had carved and etched deeper lines into his face. She saw the pain he carried in those lines.
"Have I changed that much?"
Managing a wobbly smile, Gale shook her head. You look wonderful. She longed to reach out and touch the hand that rested on the counter. A long, spare hand like the rest of him. Kyle was built whipcord lean, with a deep, broad chest and shoulders. His face was narrow, his smile warm with welcome, his eyes hooded by some undefinable emotion.
"Whew, that was close."
"You're such a clown, Anderson," she joked weakly, trying to get a handle on her escaping emotions and to pick up on his effort to lighten the mood of their vigil. Tears had come, but just the way Kyle was behaving helped her to stabilize. The tears went away and in their place, Gale felt an overwhelming lightness sweep through her. "You haven't changed a bit."
His boyish grin broadened. "The same? Usually, at my age, people say I look a bit more suave or some such thing."
She laughed, a terrible burden sliding off her shoulders. "All pilots know they're handsome devils. You don't need me to add to that confident ego you already own." If anything, Kyle had grown more handsome with age. The crow's feet at the corners of his eyes were deeply embedded, and the laugh lines around his mouth were pronounced. A few errant strands of black hair dipped over his wrinkled brow and Gale yearned to push them back into place.
"Touché, Major Taylor." He forced himself to look around because if he didn't, he was going to stare deeply into her eyes, bare his soul and then destroy the fragile truce between them. "Got a cup of coffee for this tired old jet jock? "
"I'm forgetting my manners. You bet I do. Come on around the end of the counter."
"I'm allowed to tread on sacred meteorology territory?"
"Of course. While I get you coffee, why don't you call the B.O.Q. and tell them you've arrived. I made reservations and they've got a room ready. They'll send over a driver to pick you up whenever you want to hit the rack. The number is 920."
With a nod, Kyle rounded the counter. "Thanks, I'll do that." His eyes narrowed when she turned away and went to the Teletype room, where the coffee pot was kept. Gale was terribly thin. Damn! The uniform hung on her. A deep, startling anger coursed through him. War did terrible things to all people, not just the people who fought it, but the wives and family left at home were equally injured by it. No one was left untouched or unscarred. But surely Gale had suffered more than most.
Gale tried not to let her hand tremble when she placed the mug in front of Kyle, but it did. Tucking her lip between her teeth, she looked away, aware of his sharpened gaze. She leaned against the counter, opposite him, listening to the rich timbre of his voice, a healing balm across her taut, screaming nerves. He automatically allowed her to relax, to feel as if everything would be fine.
Kyle hung up the phone. "Thanks for making the reservations," he said, picking up the mug.
"At Christmastime, the B.O.Q. is empty."
"All the bases are deserted. Only the poor schmuck stuck with the duty is around." Kyle glanced at her critically. "Which reminds me, why are you on duty at a time like this?"
Gale shrugged, crossing her arms against her chest. "Why shouldn't I be? If I wasn't, I'd be going stir crazy over at the house. I couldn't just wait, Kyle. I have to be doing something-anything-to keep my mind off the what ifs."
The coffee was hot and strong. Kyle nodded, understanding. "When do you get off duty?"
"Christmas morning at 0700. Then, I come back at 1900 tomorrow evening for twelve hours and then get the next seventy-two hours off."
He glanced around. "So you're here holding down the fort by yourself?"
"Do you see a crowd of pilots standing around needing weather?"
"Not a one."
Gale smiled. "In about half an hour, I've got to plot a weather map, is all."
"And you have to take a weather observation from the roof of Ops once an hour?" Kyle guessed. He watch her nod, thinking how the lights gave her hair a golden cast, like a halo around her head. "How long is your hair?" Damn! He hadn't meant to get so personal.
"Believe it or not, almost halfway down my back. Isn't that something?"
Swallowing hard, Kyle agreed. The very thought of sifting his fingers through that thick brown mass was too much. He forced himself to think of Mike and his ordeal.
Mustering a smile, Kyle said, "In three days or less, we'll know Mike's fine and coming home to you."
"I wish I had your optimism."
"My stock and trade."
It felt good to laugh-freely and with happiness. Gale shook her head. "You're good medicine, Kyle. You take away my pain and make me laugh when I never thought I would again. Thanks."
You takeaway my pain. Kyle looked away from her green eyes which were sparkling with life once again. When he'd arrived, Gale's eyes had been flat with pain, dull with fear. Her words tormented him. Well, maybe he could take some of her worry and anxiety away-if only for the next few days. Sitting up, he took a good look around the office.
"What, no Christmas tree? What kind of place do you run here, Major?"
Gale grimaced. "Want to know the worst of it?"
"What?"
"I don't have a Christmas tree at home, either."
He studied her, hearing the underlying strain in her voice. "Probably haven't had one in years, right?"
"How did you know? Never mind, don't answer that." Gale gave him an exasperated look. "Do you know how disconcerting it is to have someone know me that well?"
Kyle grinned and stood up, stretching fully. Flying in a cramped combat jet from New York to California wasn't his idea of pleasure. "I promise, your secrets are safe with me."
With a smile, Gale reached for his emptied mug. "I don't know how you've put up with me through the years, Major Anderson. I've been a royal pain at times." Some of the depressing letters she'd written to him, in which she'd let her fear for Mike and the real possibility he was dead surface, weren't her idea of chatty letters to a friend. Kyle had fielded her tough, hard questions and issues addressing her trepidation for Mike. He'd counseled her on how to stay sane and try to lead a normal life while she remained in a painful limbo of not knowing.
"Never a pain," Kyle told her, working at keeping his tone light and teasing when it was the last thing he wanted to be with her.
"More coffee?"
"Yeah, please. Hey, you got an old cardboard box sitting around here somewhere?"
She gave him a strange look. "Yes. Why?"
With a shrug, Kyle pointed to the main desk. "I think we ought to put a Christmas tree up, don't you?"
Kyle's enthusiasm was contagious and just what Gale needed. "I think you're right. But cardboard…?"
"Sure." He followed her back to the Teletype room. "When Mike and I were kids in Arizona, we had this tree house in this huge old sycamore in his backyard. A couple of days before Christmas, we'd go up there and make a Christmas tree and leave it in the tree house. You must have seen it when you stayed with the Taylors."
"Mmm. Mike's mother told me how you two used to spend hours playing in that old tree. The view from their home is breathtaking." The surrounding country-the wide, flowing creek and pine forest-was a salve to her spirit when she visited there. Smiling wistfully, Gale straightened, handing him the mug. "That sycamore is still standing out back, you know."
"It must be at least a hundred and fifty years old." Thoughts of the tree brought back a wealth of good memories.
"What did you two do out there with that sycamore?"
Brightening, Kyle spotted an empty Teletype-paper box in the corner. "As I said, Mike and I would make a cardboard Christmas tree for our tree house every year. We'd sit up there
with crayons, paper, glue and string for hours putting it together." With a grin, he walked over and picked up the box. "And we're going to do that tonight. A good-luck charm to get Mike back home alive. Ready?"
Gale didn't have time to protest. With a small laugh, she nodded, walking back to the forecaster's desk with him. She watched as Kyle searched through several drawers until he found some colored felt-tip markers.
"Perfect," he muttered, pulling up another swivel chair and motioning for her to sit beside him. "Come on, we've got a lot to do. Normally, this takes a whole day to do up right, and we only have seven hours left before your watch ends."
Sitting down, Gale watched as he placed the markers and white paper in front of her. "You mean, you're planning on staying up all night with me?" Kyle had to be tired from the flight. She saw dark shadows beginning to form beneath his eyes.
"You've got to stay up all night," he pointed out blandly.
"Well… that's different, I have the duty. Kyle, you've got to be dead on your feet. Don't you think you ought to go over to the B.O.Q. and get some rest?"
He shook his head. "No way. I want to be here when you get that phone call telling you Mike's alive. I wouldn't miss that for the world, lady."
Fighting the urge to throw her arms around his shoulders and hug him for his thoughtfulness, Gale didn't do anything. Instead, she muttered, "You're such a glutton for punishment."
Kyle grinned lopsidedly. "Yeah, I know. Now, come on, you've got to help me here."
"Do what?"
"Well," Kyle murmured, picking up the box, "we used to make Christmas decorations of things we liked. You know, planes, cars and stuff like that. Whatever we made had to mean something important to us. Usually we made decorations of toys we wanted to get for Christmas."
Laughing, Gale drowned in his amused look. "So, if I wanted Mike, I draw him-"
"And cut him out and put a string at the top of him and then hang him on the cardboard tree I'm going to make for us. Yeah, you've got the idea."
Touched, Gale felt the intensity of Kyle's happiness. Suddenly, they were like two children rediscovering the joy of simple things like playing. "Okay," she whispered, "that's my first decoration, Mike coining home safely to me. To us."
Giving her a wink, Kyle said, "I've never given up on him being alive."
"I-I haven't been as positive as you," Gale hesitantly admitted. She began to make an outline of a man, her husband, on the white paper. As much as she wanted Mike to be alive, she just couldn't shake the awful feeling she was a widow. Still, for the Taylors' and Kyle's sakes, she fought her pessimism.
"No one is going to go through five years without having a few bad days," Kyle said gently. Whistling softly, he tussled with the box and cut off the top and bottom of it. Next, he opened it out and laid it flat on the desk. Glancing down at Gale, he saw her completely immersed in her first decoration.
"Hey, you ought to have been an artist. That really does look like Mike."
Blushing, she managed a quirked smile. "Thank you."
Taking a black pen, Kyle drew the main trunk of their "tree," and then four smaller cardboard branches. "I can remember Mike and I laying on our bellies for hours up there in that tree house, making these decorations. Our moms used to call us down for dinner, but we never came, so they ended up bringing it up the ladder to us."
"Mike mentioned that you two spent a lot of time up there."
"Yeah, we used to talk for hours about what we were going to be and do."
Gale sat back, examining her handiwork. She had drawn Mike in his blue officer's uniform.
She sat back, watching Kyle fashion their tree. He took some tape and fastened the four branches to the trunk. With some extra cardboard, he shored up the bottom so the tree would stand-at a bit of an angle.
"There," Kyle said proudly, studying his creation. "It looks a little naked right now, but when we start hanging the stuff on it, it'll look great."
Stifling a giggle, Gale looked at the tree and then at Kyle. "Doesn't it look a little… scrawny?" As a matter of fact, it looked like a multiarmed scarecrow.
"Nah." Kyle sat down, grabbing some paper and a red marker. "Come on, Major, quit laughing at my artistic efforts and get to work."
Giggling, Gale carefully cut out the drawing. "Now what?"
"You got any string around this place?"
Rummaging around in one of the lower desk drawers, she drew out a small ball of it. "Here you go."
Taking the string, Kyle cut off a small piece. "Just take a bit of tape and put it on the back of Mike, and then hang him."
"Hang him? Do you think Mike would like your choice of words?" She burst out laughing.
"He was always hanging around," Kyle muttered good naturedly as he showed Gale how to make a loop that could be slipped onto the branch of the tree.
"Mike said you were always on his heels," Gale parried.
"It was the other way around."
"You two were inseparable."
"Yeah, we were shadows to one another, that's for sure."
She surveyed Kyle's handiwork. "Nice. Now what?"
"Well," Kyle said with great seriousness, "we always put what we wanted the most on the top limb, and then we'd put other decorations in descending order of importance. The lowest branch represented what we wanted least."
Getting up, Gale gently put Mike on the uppermost limb on the right. "There," she whispered, staring at it.
"Looks good," Kyle said, giving her a game smile. He saw the tears in her eyes. "Come on, what's your second wish for Christmas? A fur coat? A new car?"
She smiled and sat down. "I'm not telling. I'm going to watch you for a minute. What's your first choice?"
Kyle saw flecks of gold in the depths of her green eyes. Swallowing hard, he tore himself away from his own need of her. These next few days were for Mike and for her, not for himself.
"Kyle?"
Damn, he was staring at her, something he hadn't meant to do. "Uh… oh, I was going to draw Bell Rock, a red sandstone butte that sits out in the village of Oak Creek, near Sedona." He got to work, carefully making an outline of the butte.
"You need to go home for a while."
He shrugged. "Well, sometime."
Gale read between the lines. "Sooner rather than later. Right?" She saw his mouth quirk. "Kyle Anderson…?"
"Sometime," he hedged. If Mike was dead, he wanted to remain here with Gale, to help her adjust.
She would need someone, since she had no close family. "I'll get there soon enough. Maybe in the spring. It's no big deal, Gale." He looked at her serious features. "And quit looking like you're the Grinch that stole my Christmas. You didn't. I don't want to be anywhere else but here right now. Understand?"
She sat there for several minutes without saying anything and watched him painstakingly draw the red-orange butte. He'd cancelled his own holiday leave to be with her. There was so much sentimentality to Kyle, and so much he was sensitive about. Compressing her lips, Gale still refrained from saying anything, not wanting to spoil the liveliness of the mood he'd created for them. But someday, after Mike returned home, she was going to sit down and have a long, searching talk with Kyle, telling him how much she appreciated his care, his love, as a friend.
"Mike and I used to climb all over Bell Rock," Kyle said quietly. "It's got skirts around it, kind of like a layer cake, smooth and easy to climb over."
Gale relaxed in the chair, watching him begin to color the formation. "So, you were rock climbers, too."
"Well now, Red Rock County is really hiking country. Bell is a hiking butte, not a true rock-climbing experience."
Gale pulled another sheet of paper to her. "I did a little hiking when I was out there last year. I really liked it."
Kyle picked up the scissors and cut out the butte. "So, what's your next decoration?"
"I'm going to draw my home in Medford, Oregon. I'll use a pear tree to symbolize it, though, because it's a huge valley with nothing bu
t fruit orchards throughout it."
His grin broadened. "Want me to draw the partridge for it?"
She laughed long and deeply, wiping the tears from her eyes. "You have a great sense of humor."
"Thanks. I like the fact you have the good taste to appreciate it." Kyle pointed to the tree she was drawing. "Is that what you want to do? Go back home?" He knew her parents were dead, but that the house was still there, empty and in her name.
Hesitating, Gale looked at the tree with white blossoms. "My enlistment's up in four months. I-I've given a lot of thought to it, Kyle. I'm going to leave the service."
He frowned. "But you've go a lot of time built up toward a twenty-year retirement pension. Why blow it now?"
She shrugged. "I guess I want to have a home… a family."
"Oh."
She met his dark blue eyes. "I'm tired, Kyle. Tired in a way I can't even begin to describe. I need time to get back to basics, back to things that give to me, not take."
"A home and children?" In his opinion, Gale would make a wonderful mother, a spectacular wife.
"Yes. What about you?"
"Me?"
"Sure. Haven't you thought about having a family and kids someday?"
He nodded, trying to contain the pain that mushroomed unexpectedly in his chest. His dreams had been of Gale, of what might have been but would never be. "Yeah… I suppose." And then he made light of it. "You know me, career-oriented all the way. I'll wait until I get my mandatory twenty in, and then hog-tie some good-looking woman who's willing put up with me and my eccentricities."
Gale looked at the clock. It was time to plot the weather map. Rising, she gave him a serious look. "You're far better marriage material than you think you are, Anderson."
Laughing, Kyle sat there, watching her move to the plotting desk. Pulling another piece of paper to him, he glanced at his watch. Time was moving slowly. Didn't it always when something important was about to take place?
December 26, 1978
"How much longer?" Gale asked in a whisper, the question breaking the strained silence. She stood at the window of her base-housing home and stared out at the rainy morning. It was nearly 1000, and still no word from the Pentagon. In the distance, she could hear a bomber taking off, the jet engines creating man-made thunder that reverberated through the overcast sky. Her fingers tightened against the kitchen sink.