Wounded Heroes Boxed Set

by Judith Arnold

  He took an unnecessary step closer to her and rested his hand against the table, his fingers curled. Bonnie glanced at the thick ridge of his knuckles. She resented him for being able, without any effort, to stir awake desires that had been lying dormant in her for years. Her resentment directed her thoughts back to the issue of the memorial, and she said, "Look, Paul, the reason I came here is—"

  "Because we left things hanging last Saturday," he completed.

  She shot him a nervous look. "What things?"

  He mulled over his words. "Well, you were crying and everything—"

  "Crying?" Don’t, she silently implored him. Don’t say anything too personal.

  "—When I was at your house," he pressed on, disregarding the frantic message in her eyes. "I probably shouldn’t say anything—I probably shouldn’t even think about it. But I felt, maybe there was a possibility..." He shook his head. "I should just forget it. There are too many hang-ups..." He turned to stare through one of the sun-filled panes of glass.

  It dawned on Bonnie that he was as tense as she was, as sensitive to the undercurrent pulsing between them. She wanted to warn him away, to steer them both back to solid ground before either of them said or did something they’d regret. But her gaze fell to his hand again, taking note of the scar on his pinkie, the masculine bones and sinews of his wrist. She watched him with a strange, almost detached fascination as he lifted his hand, bringing it to the soft skin of her throat and then around, beneath the heavy blond fall of her hair to the nape of her neck. She felt his thumb stroke along the delicate protrusion of her vertebrae, felt the compelling pressure of him drawing her to himself, felt his breath dance across her upper lip an instant before his mouth covered hers.

  His kiss unleashed a deluge of sensation through her body, hot and fluid. She moaned slightly, knowing she ought to pull away at once yet not wanting to. Not wanting the tender friction of his lips on hers to end, not wanting his fingers to stop twining through the silken locks of her hair, not wanting to lose the contact of his firm, lean chest against hers, and his knees, and his hips. Not wanting to deny him—or herself.

  With a tiny sigh, partly in resignation and partly in pleasure, she opened her mouth to welcome the gentle invasion of his tongue. The irrationality of this kiss didn’t matter; the fact that, as Paul himself had just said, there were too many hang-ups between them was irrelevant. What counted right now was that Bonnie was being kissed more passionately than she’d been kissed in a long time, and that her entire body was throbbing with life. She yearned for Paul as she’d yearned for no other man since Gary’s death.

  Gary . Merely thinking about him brought her up short. With a gasp, she broke their kiss and jerked her head away. "We shouldn’t," she whispered.

  Although the kiss had ended—because it had ended, perhaps—Paul tightened his hold on her. He splayed the long fingers of one hand over the back of her head and molded the other around the flare of her hip, refusing her the chance to escape. Reading her panic-stricken expression, he offered a crooked smile. "Glass houses aren’t exactly private, are they," he muttered.

  It hadn’t even occurred to Bonnie that she and Paul might have been putting on a show for people outside the greenhouse. Glimpsing the transparent wall just beyond the shelf of seedlings to her left, she shuddered.

  Paul refused to relax his embrace. "Can we go out for dinner?" he asked.

  "What?"

  His smile softened as he took in her muddled state. "Dinner," he explained, brushing his lips lightly against her forehead. "A date."

  Say no! her brain shrieked at her. "When?" she responded aloud.

  "Whenever you say." He slid his hand forward to explore the hoop of her earring with his thumb.

  She gazed into the smoky depths of his eyes. "This isn’t why I came here," she mumbled.

  "I know."

  His thumb wandered into the crease behind her earlobe and she shuddered again, closing her eyes to savor the sudden spasm of desire that racked her body. "Don’t, Paul—don’t do that."

  He traced a line down the side of her neck to the edge of her cardigan, then let both hands fall. Inhaling deeply, he turned away. "I like you, Bonnie," he murmured, more to the fragile infant shrubs than to her. "I like you."

  She was touched by his artless words. I like you. If only it were that simple.

  "The reason I came here," she said slowly, struggling to suppress the tremor in her voice, "was to convince you not to go forward with your memorial."

  He turned back to her. As her words sank in, the longing in his eyes faded and his gaze grew hard. "And that’s why you won’t go out for dinner with me?" he asked, his tone laced with disbelief.

  "No. I mean, yes," she stammered.

  "You mean no." He rapped his fingers against the table in frustration. "We can disagree on the memorial and still have dinner together. We did it last Saturday at your house. It wasn’t so difficult."

  "Paul—"

  "Tell me the truth, Bonnie," he demanded. The muted tone of his voice only heightened her awareness of his anger and doubt.

  "I just did tell you the truth," she mumbled, averting her gaze.

  He assessed her for a long minute, contemplating whether it was worth goading her into giving him an honest answer. Apparently he thought it was—which flattered her, even though she didn’t care to be interrogated by him. "What is it? You think I’m not good enough for you?"

  "Why on earth would I think that?"

  "Beats me," he asked, imprisoning her with his gaze. "Maybe because I’m not a highbrow from Cambridge. Maybe because I work with my hands."

  "Don’t be ridiculous." If anything, Bonnie had found watching him at work a serious turn-on.

  "If it makes you feel any better, I did graduate from college."

  "It doesn’t make me feel better," she snapped, exasperated. She forced herself to meet his stare. "You don’t have to prove how smart you are to me, Paul. I’m aware that you’re an intelligent man."

  "Well, thanks," he drawled with spurious gratitude.

  She fell silent, lowering her eyes again, gazing at the dainty green leaves sprouting from a dainty baby azalea at her elbow.

  "What is it, then? You’re involved with someone else?" he asked.

  "No."

  He scrutinized her, then let out a long, weary breath and bent to gather up the hose. "Liar," he muttered.

  Her heart began a slow, loud pounding, echoing inside her skull in a dirge-like tempo. "I’m not lying," she said, hating the defensiveness that filtered through her voice. "Unless it’s Shane you’re referring to—"

  "It’s not Shane," Paul said quietly. He methodically looped the hose into a circular coil and hung it on a wall hook near the door. Then he twisted off the spigot to which the hose was attached. "I’m referring to Shane’s father."

  "Gary’s dead," Bonnie said tersely, resenting Paul’s implication even though she couldn’t deny its truth.

  "Gone but not forgotten," Paul charged, his voice still restrained but simmering with anger. "The amazing man, right? The genius. You live with all his pictures staring down at you from the fireplace—"

  "Paul." She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want Paul to do anything that would make her stop liking him.

  "Saint Gary," he went on, his fury rising, spilling over. "Saint Gary of the Cambridge Manifesto, with books being written about him. I don’t measure up to him, right? I didn’t burn enough draft cards for your taste."

  "Paul, please—"

  "I’ve got blood on my hands, right? Tell me about it, Bonnie. Your amazing genius husband Gary was safe and sound in Boston, helping his followers dodge the draft, while I was overseas bayonetting babies and hurling grenades into crowded grocery stalls and having one hell of a good time. Is that it?"

  "Don’t!" She wanted to squeeze her eyes shut and jam her hands against her ears, to block out the vile things he was saying. She listened for a minute to the sound of her own respiration, ragged wi
th fury. Why was Paul doing this? How could he speak so cruelly about Gary? What did he want from her?

  "Gary is dead!" she erupted, wishing she could hurt Paul as much as his words had hurt her. "He’s dead, Paul. Don’t you ever, ever talk about him that way again."

  Paul pressed his lips together and turned from her. She saw the tension in his shoulders, in his fingers as they clenched into fists. He let out a long, uneven breath, then muttered, "I’ve had a lot more contact with death than you, Bonnie. Don’t patronize me."

  "And don’t you insult my husband."

  A bitter laugh escaped him. "Your husband, present tense. He’s still alive for you, sweetheart. I’m not going to compete with that."

  So what if Gary still was alive in her heart? So what if Paul couldn’t compete? That was his problem; she wasn’t going to apologize for who she was or what she felt or whom she loved. She wasn’t going to let Paul put her on the defensive again.

  "I came here to discuss the war memorial with you," she said, sounding infinitely more composed than she felt, "but obviously this isn’t a good time." Gathering what shreds of dignity she could find within herself, she straightened her shoulders and walked out of the greenhouse.

  ***

  "DID I EVER TELL YOU ‘ bout Jolene?" asked Swann.

  They were seated at the side of a rutted dirt road, about a kilometer northwest of camp. A clammy drizzle was falling and the low-hanging clouds gave off eerie purple reflections of moonlight. Once the patrol got close to the village, maybe another kilometer north, they would have to cut the chatter. But here in the middle of nowhere, as they took five minutes for a rest and a smoke, Swann’s bright, cheerful voice was a welcome sound in the night’s misty gloom.

  "Yeah, you told us about her." Rigucci took a sip from his canteen. "The one with the beaucoup big boobs."

  "She sent me this love letter today," Swann boasted, leaning his head back against the trunk of the tree under which he was sitting. "She says she just about can’t live without me. Says no man can satisfy her like I do."

  "I take it she’s speaking from experience," Paul teased.

  Swann gave him a sharp glance, then threw back his head and guffawed. "I don’t care how many men she experiences, so long as I’m the one she comes home to. I ain’t one of you jealous white boys, Tremaine. I know I’m good. I’d just as soon she played the field a little. That way, she’ll appreciate me more."

  "You let that head of yours swell any bigger," Macon warned, pausing to relight his soggy cigarette, "and your helmet’s not going to fit."

  "She can fool around all she wants," Swann insisted, "so long as I’m over here. What’s a hungry little girl like her gonna do, you know? Let her snack around. Soon as I’m stateside, she’s gonna enjoy the main course."

  "You’re making me hungry," Rigucci complained. "You bring along any food, Macon?"

  "When I get off that big silver bird in San Diego," Swann went on, "I expect Jolene is gonna be standing right there on the tarmac, just waving those great big—" he paused for effect "— hands at me. And then we’re gonna go to the nearest motel and not come out for three days."

  "Unless she finds herself another main course somewhere," Rigucci taunted.

  "Don’t be so negatory, man," Swann chided him. "She’ll be waiting for me. I’m waiting for her. Ain’t I, Tremaine?"

  Paul smiled reflexively, but his mind was elsewhere. For some reason, he no longer felt like joking with the others. In the distance he heard the cawing of a crow, and it made him envious. The crow was free, soaring through the sky, flying away, away from this place. He wished he could be that free, could spread his wings and rise up above the twisted branches of the trees, above the rain, above the monsoon clouds and into the ozone. He wished he could smell air that didn’t reek of wetness and death.

  Listening to Swann brag about his girl back home only made it worse. Paul didn’t dare to say what he was thinking—not that Swann’s girl might not wait for him to come home, but that Swann might not make it home himself. He hated getting into that kind of head—it made for bad days and worse nights—but he couldn’t help himself. He’d cut his girlfriend loose when he’d left Northford for basic last fall. He didn’t want anyone waiting for him. He didn’t want any torches burning. Hoping for too much could be dangerous.

  The way he figured it, he’d be lucky to survive, to get himself back home in one piece. Once there, he’d start all over. No loose ends from the past, no memories of who he used to be.

  "Let’s move," Macon said, glimpsing his watch and then snubbing out his cigarette in the soggy soil at his feet. "We’ve got another couple of klicks to cover before we call it a night."

  "We going north of the village?" Swann asked.

  "That’s the plan."

  Paul felt something twist tight inside him, momentarily blinding him, depriving him of breath. Rigucci might be satisfied by food, Macon by a smoke, Swann by dreams of sex. But for him, for Paul... The only thing that would satisfy him would be a crow’s broad black wings, something to carry him away from this, something to keep him from losing whatever was left of his soul.

  A part of him had died a long time ago—the day he’d seen a woman and her baby lying dead at the side of the road, the day he’d seen body bags being loaded into a cargo transport, the day he’d heard a grown man scream in pain, the day he’d carried a wounded comrade to a medic at the rear and then discovered the poor bastard had died sometime between when Paul had picked him up and when he’d laid him down. A vital part of Paul had vanished the day he’d set foot inside this God-forsaken country.

  He didn’t want some lover from the past throwing that up to him, reminding him of the man he once was and would never be again. He didn’t want to go home to find the people he used to know and love staring at him in confusion, wondering who the hell he’d become.

  The only thing worse than that, as far as Paul could imagine, was not going home at all.

  Chapter Five

  * * *

  BONNIE BRAKED TO a halt in the middle of her driveway and gaped at the dark-haired, mustachioed man lounging in one of the porch rockers, his feet propped up on the railing and his arms folded behind his head. Despite his dapper attire—khaki trousers, a crisp oxford shirt, tasseled leather loafers—and his short, well-tailored hair-do, she recognized him at once. The mustache, though less shaggy than she’d remembered it, still drew attention to his smirking smile, and his eyes still reminded her of a hound’s, moist and beseeching.

  "Tom?" she called, climbing out of her car and using her hand to shield her eyes against the sun’s early-evening slant. "Tom Schuyler? Is that you?"

  He grinned, swung his legs down from the railing and stood. "In the flesh," he said, spreading his arms as if to display himself to her. "I hope you don’t mind my dropping in on you like this."

  Bonnie did mind. Even under the best of circumstances she would mind. Now, when she hadn’t yet had a chance to recover from her emotional encounter with Paul, was hardly the best of circumstances.

  Needing time to compose herself, she turned her back on her visitor and busied herself with the garage door, jiggling her key in the lock until the latch gave and then heaving the door up along its tracks. She got back into her car, coasted into the garage, and remained seated behind the wheel, cocooned within the garage’s shadowed interior, taking deep, regular breaths and trying to regain her composure.

  During the entire trip home from the nursery she’d tormented herself with thoughts about how glorious it had been to kiss Paul, and how much better it would have been if she hadn’t enjoyed his kiss so much. She’d felt guilty for losing track of her purpose in visiting him, for abandoning the cause she’d gone to the nursery to fight for...and most of all, for allowing him, during those few heated moments when his mouth had united with hers, to obliterate every thought of Gary.

  Then she’d felt guilty for flying off the handle when Paul had accused her of still being in love with her late hus
band. What he’d said had cut close to the truth, and she shouldn’t have blown up at him. But she’d lost her temper because she’d been ashamed that, for those few heavenly seconds when she’d stood in the circle of Paul’s arms and let his kiss transport her, she’d stopped being in love with Gary.

  Guilty, ashamed and frightened. That about summed it up.

  And then, to drive home and discover Tom Schuyler, Gary’s old cohort from the Cambridge Manifesto days, his closest friend and political ally, the man who’d knelt beside him as he lay dying in a parking lot in California... To find Tom, whom she hadn’t seen in five years, making himself right at home on her front porch was unsettling, to say the least.

  Letting out a small, tremulous sigh, she shut off the ignition, gathered her tote from the seat beside her, and climbed out of the car. She scanned the garage briefly, noticed that Shane’s bike was missing—which confirmed that he wasn’t home—and braced herself to face Tom Schuyler alone. Emerging from the garage, she closed the door and then turned to confront her uninvited guest.

  "You’re wondering what I’m doing here," he guessed.

  She kept her eyes on him as she walked across the lawn to the porch. She supposed it had been simple enough for him to find her. Her address and telephone number were listed in the phone book, and as far as she knew Tom still lived in the Boston area. The last she’d heard, he was teaching mathematics at Boston University; when she and Shane were living in Cambridge her path had occasionally intersected with Tom’s. But for all Gary’s reliance on Tom and rapport with him, Bonnie had always felt uncomfortable around the man. She’d never been able to shake the suspicion that, even after she’d become Gary’s lawful wife, Tom was checking her out as a possible sexual conquest.

  He made no effort to hide the fact that he was checking her out now, as she warily approached the porch. "You look fantastic, Bonnie," he declared. "You still have the figure of a college girl."