by Polly Becks
“No,” Lucy said quickly. The word came out stronger and harsher than she meant it to. “That’s not what I meant. When I talk about my dad, my mom, it’s like, for a moment, they’re—well—they’re—”
“Like they’re alive again, at least a little?”
“Yes,” she said, relief breaking over her like a thunderstorm passing. “It’s so good to be able to talk about it with someone who understands.” She swallowed as a knot rose in her throat. “I haven’t had anyone like that to talk to in—well, in years. I obviously can’t tell my students. My friends, my colleagues, that are my age, most of them haven’t lost their parents yet. No one comes to stay in my guest room anymore since my Gram died. You’re the first person I’ve told, really, in years.”
When she looked back up, Ace was watching her, his eyes gleaming.
“Two years after he died, my mom married again,” he said, his voice hollow, the warmth from the moment before gone. “I knew, long before she did, what a mistake she was making, because the man she married was not a gentleman. By my father’s definition, I don’t think he could even have been described as a man. He was a worm; he talked to my mother very disrespectfully, mostly when he was lit. But no one cared what I thought—I was thirteen, my sister was eleven. We didn’t have a vote. The saddest part is that I think she believed she was doing it for us.”
Lucy exhaled, her eyes gleaming as brightly as his were now.
“The first time I saw him hit her, I was fourteen,” Ace said. His voice sounded as if he were being strangled. “I went right after the bastard—and he took me apart. He had a hundred pounds on me easily, and had been in the service—I was a gangly kid. He broke this wrist by stomping on it—” Ace held up his left hand—“and told me if I ever so much as breathed on him again he would break every other bone in my body, turn me inside out and leave my organs for the crows.”
“Sweet Lord,” Lucy whispered.
“All the—rage—I felt, I couldn’t show,” Ace went on, his eyes dropping again to the helmet. “I had to bide my time, make a plan. I didn’t have anyone I could tell, not a coach, not a teacher, because everyone in Newcomb knew him and loved him, because, on the surface, he was a great guy—the guy who always had your back, who could make anything go away for you.
“So my plan was sports. It was the only thing I had that could make me strong without anyone suspecting I was doing it for a specific reason. Newcomb was a little school, so the training wasn’t great, but it allowed me access to the weight room and the track—and I spent every spare moment I had making myself as strong, and as agile, and as fast as I could. There was a guy named Lee Duvall that used to teach kickboxing and capoeira, a Brazilian martial art, at the elementary school gym twice a week at night, and I learned everything I could from him. I was especially interested in capoeria, because I knew that my stepfather had never even heard of it, and therefore would be unable to defend against it.
“So I bided my time. I never said a word, sucked up the rude treatment of my mom, the insulting comments about me—I learned to communicate only as little as I needed to in order to keep a low profile. And it worked—he almost forgot that I was there after a while.
“And finally, one day when I was seventeen, captain of the football and track teams, co-captain of basketball, dabbling when I could in baseball in the summer, and, in my senior year, All-American in two sports, it happened again.”
Lucy saw the edges of the helmet beginning to crumble and tear in his hands.
Ace closed his eyes.
“He had started to watch my fourteen-year-old sister the year before,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “He would make snide and inappropriate—ungentlemanly—comments to and about her, would sidle up to her and pat her cheek, then run a finger down her blouse, or drop his napkin when she was clearing the table, just to make her bend over to get it. And, in a perfect storm of awful, everything came together after dinner one night.”
“My sister was late coming home—we both did everything we could not to be in the house, but he had been waiting for her, and was angry that she wasn’t around. He was being hostile and demeaning to my mother before my sister got there, but once she was home, he turned his anger on her. I had already left the table, not knowing any of this was coming, so by the time I heard the raised voices, I was already upstairs lifting weights. I heard the shouts, the blows, the screams downstairs—and something inside of me snapped.”
Ace took a breath and swallowed. He looked up to see Lucy locked in the gleam of his eyes.
The look on her face not one of fear, or worry, or disgust.
But of complete and total understanding.
“Sometimes at night I have glimpses of what happened, in dreams that cause me to sweat and mutter, or so I’ve been told by guys in my barracks,” he went on. “But I don’t have a single clear memory of it. I only remember his back was to me as I tore down the stairs. He was kneeling astride my mom, who was on her back, trying to cover her face; his arm was back, getting ready to backhand her again. My sister was cowering in a corner, her nose bleeding—so I went for his kidneys. That’s all I remember—the rest is a total blur.”
Lucy exhaled, her mouth open slightly.
“Good for you,” she said when she could speak again.
“End of the story—he was arrested, I was almost arrested, but there were witnesses, not just in my family but out in the street, where I dragged his sorry ass at one point. Apparently whatever I did to him was sufficient to keep him in a hospital prison ward for three months, and for him not to return to New York State when he got out.”
Ace looked down at the helmet in his hands and flinched in surprise at the damage he had done to the edges. He looked back up, and the fire in his eyes dimmed a little, but the intense gleam remained.
“So that’s why I endeavor, in all things, to be a gentleman. Because my father’s big laugh is inside me, even though no one has ever heard it. My mother, who has an ability to love anyone back from the brink of anything—literally, I’m not exaggerating—I think I may have that inside me somewhere, too. I may seem laid-back and low-key to you, but there’s an inferno in here. Usually it’s on a low, steady burn; I feel genuinely calm and easy most of the time. But things that are important to me—good and bad—are really important to me.
“So, if I had a girlfriend, I would never even look at, let alone flirt with, another woman—not even as a joke. If I had a girlfriend, whenever I spoke her name, it would be with as much respect and awe as if I were uttering a prayer. If I had a girlfriend, I might dance in the middle of the street from time to time, when I was feeling happy thinking about her, not giving a rat’s ass what the other engineers or soldiers thought about it. If I had a girlfriend, I would walk or run or swim to the end of the Earth to find something she needed, or wanted, or that would just amuse her. If I had a girlfriend, I would learn stupid ballroom dances if she wanted me to, and learn them to a point of being good at them. If I had a girlfriend, I would paint her name on forty-six different rocks and carry them up to each of the High Peaks and leave one there, where the sky could always see her name. If I had a girlfriend, the very thought of her would be enough to keep me happy anywhere in the world—in a war zone, in a flood, at the bottom of a canyon, orbiting around the Earth in a tin can—at the brink of impending death—I would be happy, just at the thought of her. If I had a girlfriend, I would wrap my body and my life around her, so that anyone, anything that even dared think of harming her would have to come through me first. If I had a girlfriend, I would spend time every day, somewhere, giving thanks for her—probably most of the time at daybreak, and under the stars at night. If I had a girlfriend, I would worship her with my body, never touch her in anything but love, so that she would always be able to feel how beautiful she was. If I had a girlfriend, and she consented to be my wife, I would thank her every day for doing so, where our sons could hear me, so that they might decide to continue the tradition themselve
s one day. Because she would be important to me. Really important.”
The room felt a sudden void and cold when his words came to an abrupt end.
Ace’s gleaming eyes broke contact with Lucy’s, and his gaze returned to the helmet.
He inhaled slowly, then let his breath go, and swallowed.
Then he looked up. In his eyes was a soft glow now, absent the burning intensity that had been there the moment before.
“So, Lucy, if I had a girlfriend, I suspect it would be obvious.”
For a long time Lucy didn’t move, barely breathing.
Struggling to keep from weeping.
Then she blinked, and her eyebrows drew together.
“Lucy? Did—did you just call me ‘Lucy’?”
“Yes,” Ace said, hiding his smile. “Did you hear the church bells ringing in the distance a few moments ago?”
Lucy nodded, unable to speak.
“It’s midnight. I’m finally off duty.”
Deep within her, at a place in the core of her body and soul, Lucy felt a deep warmth blossom and begin to spread, running through her like the river of raging water had run through Obergrande, surging through long-established paths that had been limited with levies she had built herself, flooding over the barriers, a river of heat and desire and need, until she felt like she was burning from the inside out.
Leaving her skin tingling, her ears buzzing, her breasts aching.
Her mouth burning, looking at the Cupid’s bow lips across from her.
She rose slowly, as steadily as she could, and, their eyes still locked, stepped over her clothing and walked across the room to the bed where he was sitting.
And knelt down in front of him, so that they were on eye level, and looked deeply into the dark pools that had caught her notice from the first time she saw him.
“Sergeant,” she said slowly, her voice husky with unspent tears, “request permission to be your girlfriend.”
Ace smiled as broadly as she had ever seen him.
“Copy that,” he said.
He put the fire helmet on the floor, then reached out with both hands and gently entwined them in her curls, running his calloused fingers down the golden strands, touching and looking at her with what could only be described as awe.
The unspent tears in Lucy’s eyes spilled over and slipped down her face, where they hung for a moment at the edge of her jaw, then fell onto his hands.
She closed her eyes and leaned in until she was resting her nose against his.
“I’m getting you all wet,” she said quietly as she felt his fingers dampen. “Which is only fair, since that’s what you’re doing to me.”
“We’d both be dry if you hadn’t pulled me back into the school—”
Lucy opened her mouth to retort again, only to find the most sumptuous lips she had ever tasted pressed against it, gently at first, then with more insistence as her own lips clung to them.
The fire coursing through her veins exploded.
Lost in swirling passion, she wrapped her arms around his wide neck, pulling him closer as he continued to cradle her face, kissing her progressively more ardently with each passing second.
Until she gasped in pain, winced, and pulled away.
Ace sat up straight, looking around him in shock.
“What? Wha—”
“Ow! Ow! OW!”
Lucy looked down at the tatters of the skirt she had chosen to wear with her flat-heeled shoes today, sodden and torn.
And being torn even worse by cat claws running down it.
Just as her thigh was.
Her eyes, weepy with growing desire, popped open in shock.
“Sadie!” she screeched, unable to contain herself. “Sadie, omigod!”
As she pulled the bedraggled kitten into her arms up against her chest, hugging her with unbridled joy, Ace inhaled slowly, then exhaled deliberately.
“Note to self,” he said aloud, continuing to breathe regularly to try to offset the arousal that had flared intensely and was now turning painful, “cats, especially those belonging to girlfriends, have the worst timing in the world.”
Chapter 24
‡
GINGERLY ACE STOOD up, stepping away from the purring cat. “I guess that’s our signal to go. Do you have everything you came for?”
Lucy rose as well, nuzzling Sadie. “Everything I need for now, I guess. Except maybe a do-over.”
“The whole day, starting from this morning? I would vote for that.”
She grinned at him. “I don’t think you rank high enough to make that happen, Sergeant. But Sadie seems to have interrupted a very promising conversation.”
The National Guardsman chuckled. “Is that what you call it? Conversation?”
“When I tell Mildred Caulfield what happened? Absolutely. We were having a nice conversation and suddenly Sadie appeared. That’s my story.”
“Who is Mildred Caulfield?”
“The very nice lady I’m supposed to spend the night with. She lives up on High Street and doesn’t mind cats, according to Eleanor Preston, who made the arrangements. I think Eleanor’s got a Rolodex in her brain. She seems to have placed herself in charge of finding accommodations for everyone who’s displaced, and no one ever says no to Eleanor.”
Ace sighed. “Well, then I guess we’d better get you two there. Cat carrier?”
Lucy winced. “Basement.”
“Of course.” Ace shrugged. “You can’t just carry her in the car. Have you got another pillowcase?”
“You want to put my cat in a pillowcase?”
“Not particularly. She already doesn’t like me, and I don’t think stuffing her in a pillowcase is likely to make us friends. Do you have a leash?”
“I keep it in the cat carrier.”
“Hmm. Then pillowcase it is. I’ll take your other stuff out to the car, so we can minimize her discomfort.” He hoisted the packed pillowcases. “Maybe you can put the things from downstairs into a garbage bag. Unless you have more sheets?”
Lucy sighed. “Yep. Super-high thread count I bought with my first paycheck. In the dryer. In the basement.”
“OK. Back in a minute.”
When Ace came back inside, Lucy was in the living room, loading the second of two garbage bags with the non-clothing items she had gathered from her house. “It doesn’t seem like much, does it?” she said wistfully.
“There’ll be more, Lucy. Tell me about this do-over.”
Lucy’s fair skin turned rosy in the light from the dimming lantern. “Maybe we could meet back here tomorrow? After you get off duty? Unless you get a kick out of calling me ‘ma’am’ .”
Ace laughed. “No, ma’am.”
She turned away, crestfallen.
“No to the ma’am, not no to the idea of seeing you in better circumstances,” Ace added quickly. “But what about the cat?” He looked around. “Where is the cat?”
“She’s locked in the bathroom with her dinner. Getting her into a pillowcase is going to be a two-person job. And tomorrow she can stay with Mildred.”
“I’ll take this out, and then we’ll get Sadie. And tomorrow? It’s a date.”
Lucy smiled. “Copy that.”
Sadie was reluctant to go in the pillowcase, and Ace held it at arm’s length as he escorted Lucy to the car, keeping clear of the screeching, squirming bag. “Are you sure you want her on your lap? I can put her in the back.”
“No, I think she’ll be calmer in my arms, even if she is tied in the pillowcase. Can you help me with the seatbelt?”
Ace handed the bag over doubtfully and fastened it for her as the pillowcase prison squalled and thumped. “Seatbelt. Cat. Anything else?”
“Dinner? I don’t think I ate anything today. Just drank a lot of coffee. And I had breakfast, but it was a really long time ago.” She looked off into the darkness down by the river. “Another lifetime.”
“I have trail mix in the glove compartment,” Ace offered. “There’s no electric
ity in town, so I doubt any of the restaurants are open. And it’s after one in the morning.”
Jokingly Lucy turned to the bag in her arms.
“So, Sadie, what do ya think: on our first date, he grabbed my caboose, stared down my shirt at my boobs, made it into my bedroom, and all I got for dinner is oatmeal. Should we keep him?”
“There are chocolate chips, too,” Ace said defensively. “And mini-marshmallows.”
Lucy caressed the cat through the pillowcase. “Sadie says I should stop being obnoxious and thank you for saving her—both of us, actually.”
“I didn’t save either of you. I just followed you into a flooded building and escorted you into another one. And now I’m driving you to somewhere dry, somewhere you can have pleasant dreams. Where exactly?”
“High Street. Number 18. It’s yellow.”
“Not in the dark it’s not.”
“Maybe you can see which one it is in the light of all the emergency vehicles?” Lucy said hopefully.
“You get me to High Street and I’ll find you the house.”
Lucy directed him out of the riverside neighborhood and up the steep hill, away from the flooding and the flashing lights. As they turned onto High Street, one of the houses with the slanted walkways and stone steps carved into the face of the mountain itself had candles burning in the lower windows, and a very dim spotlight aimed at the house number.
“I like this lady already,” Ace said, pulling into the driveway. “We think a lot alike.”
He escorted Lucy and Sadie to the front door and pushed the button for the doorbell.
Nothing happened.
“Knock,” Lucy said. “There’s no electricity.”
“Right. I must be tired or something—wait—there’s exterior light. They must have power up here. The doorbell must just be broken.”
The door opened, and Mildred Caulfield, a sweet-faced woman with graying-black hair, welcomed them into the house with a smile.
“Hello, Lucy, and, er—”
“Ace,” the National Guardsman said, offering his hand to her, which she shook pleasantly. “I’m just the delivery man, ma’am.”