Homefront Hero

by Allie Pleiter

  She had brought her Bible, hoping to find comfort in the words, but found herself lost in fervent prayer instead. I fear his leaving, Lord. I fear he means too much to me. I fear he’ll never know You and that means we must never be together. Thoughts and surges of concern washed up over her, disjointed as they were heartfelt. Guard his leg from pain. Send strength to those wounded muscles. Send him calm, Lord. You know his fear won’t serve him well today. The prayer that barely formed itself into words, the one that covered all the others, was simply, Do what’s best for him. Save him from going if he ought to stay. Send him if he needs to go. He can’t yet see what You want for him—spare his life until he sees You at work in it. Spare him. Spare me this storm I’ve tried so hard not let into my heart.

  Leanne hadn’t even realized how much time had gone by—she’d been watching the lights in the tiny corner of the gymnasium she could see, foolishly thinking they’d shut off when John was finished. A tap on the bench back startled her, and she jumped in fright only to see the tip of John’s cane resting on the seat beside her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “You’d make a poor spy.”

  John, on the other hand, would make a very good spy, for while his voice sounded tired, nothing of the day’s outcome showed on his face. There was no hope of hiding what she was doing, and she found she didn’t really want to keep her concern a secret. “How was the testing?”

  He eased himself down beside her, slowly, the way he did when his leg pained him most. “I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t know. It could go either way, I suppose. I met some of the standards, came close enough in three more that Madison could sign the orders today—if he chose to.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?” She noticed his fist was clenched around the arm of the bench.

  “I would rather have left him no room to choose.”

  That was John, always needing the world to turn on his own terms. No wonder his brush with mortality had rattled him so. “How do you feel about the results?”

  “You mean other than the wrenching pain and the frustration?” He attempted a smile—the false one he applied to make light of his pain—and tapped his cane against the boot of his good leg. “I think Madison will send me off.”

  He said it so easily, as if he’d been asked to take the hallway on the left instead of the right. The part of her that tried to trust God with today’s outcome fell prey to a surge of panic. He might really go back. “You do?” She nearly gulped it.

  “Mostly because I told him I’d make his life a living nightmare if he kept me. It isn’t wise to cross a Gallows, you know.” The momentary dark flash in his eyes showed John for the warrior he was. It was probably a very dangerous thing indeed to wake the ire of such a man. Just as quickly, the darkness receded and he raised an amused eyebrow. “And you know I asked you not to come here.”

  “You asked me not to attend your testing and I did not. And, well, I thought I’d placed myself where you couldn’t see me.”

  John looked as pleased to hear this as she was embarrassed to admit she couldn’t stay away. “Had Dr. Madison not asked me to bend to the left, I wouldn’t have. As it was, I happened to look up at just the right moment to see where you were…and what you were doing.”

  He knew! Leanne felt as if she were glass, her emotions laid plain to his insistent eyes.

  “Isn’t God everywhere? Still you had to be here, watching over me in the gymnasium?” His eyes fairly glowed. It wasn’t fair that he was so handsome at this moment when she felt so vulnerable.

  She wouldn’t answer his question. He wasn’t really seeking an answer in any case. Leanne knew exactly what he was doing, peeling away her excuses for needing to be here, forcing her to admit what they both already knew. What they’d brushed up against the night of the ball.

  John moved one hand to touch her arm. “I was angry at first. You’re a terrible distraction, and I did miss one lift simply because you threw my concentration.”

  She looked down, but John ducked his head to catch her eyes and return her gaze to him. “Then during the laps, those horrid, endless laps when my leg was screaming and I needed to walk faster, I thought of you. Out here, doing…what I knew you were doing. And…”

  She could see he was deciding how far to step out, what to believe about the test he’d just endured. Had God shown His face to John in those laps? Could it be that simple? “And what?”

  “And I gritted my teeth and walked faster than I’ve ever walked before for longer than I thought possible. Because I felt…pulled along. By you. Or by…well, I don’t know just yet, but I suspect you have several theories.”

  It was the closest thing to a consideration of faith she might ever get from him. A smile bubbled up from the part of her heart she’d tried so hard to ignore. “No, only one. I prayed exactly that. I prayed that God would pull you mightily toward the outcome He had planned, even if it wasn’t what you or I wanted.”

  John stared at her, deeply, his eyes a mighty pull of their own. “What is it you or I want?”

  “Captain Gallows, you’ve never drawn a single breath not knowing exactly what you wanted.” She’d meant it as a snappy retort, a way to stave off the warmth in his steady gaze, but they were the wrong words. He’d turn them on her, most certainly.

  He did. “You’re right. I do know exactly what I want.” He reached for her hand. “If you didn’t want it, you’d have been able to stay away from here.”

  What would be the point of denying it? It was so clear, so strong, resonating between them even now. She ought to pull her hand away, to resume her insistence that they couldn’t be together. She couldn’t draw the breath to do it. The heat of his hand on hers, the way his thumb followed the shape of her wrist dashed every sensible thought from her grasp. When he feathered one finger down the side of her cheek, Leanne felt as if she’d dissolved into thin air, mere breath and yearning. When he took her face in his hand and gazed at her as if the whole world were found in her eyes, everything else fell from existence. “You’ve undone me, Leanne. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, I don’t even know what to do about it, except this.”

  His kiss was careful, reverent, unlike anything she’d expect from the dashing Captain Gallows. It wasn’t Captain Gallows’s kiss, she realized; it was John’s kiss. A kiss filled with one young man’s wonder, as though it were the first honest thing this hero had ever done. She’d read novels where men “claimed” their women with powerful kisses, but this wasn’t anything like that. He’d surrendered to her in this kiss, surrendered to the pull between them neither of them seemed able to stop or control. He inhaled as though the scent of her could heal his pain, clung to her as though her touch flooded him with peace. It was as if the whole world shimmered, as if the war itself paused at the sudden gush of grace.

  * * *

  Every inch of John’s body, every corner of his being burst out of some dull fog he’d not even realized was there. Leanne was the opposite of everything he sought in a woman and yet, that was just the point—he hadn’t sought her. He hadn’t set out to win her; rather, they’d been pulled steadily toward each other since that first day.

  “Did you know,” he said as he let his forehead fall against hers—a hopelessly romantic gesture he’d vowed never to do—“how easily I picked you out of the audience that day? Oh, I cast my eyes over the full crowd because that’s what I’ve been trained to do, but it was as if all I could do was crave the sight of your wide eyes.”

  She made a little gasp that wrapped itself around his heart. “Then it wasn’t just me? You really were staring right at me? I thought it just a trick of presentation, the acclaimed Gallows oratory technique.”

  It felt important—poetic, even—that their eyes had so locked in a crowd of hundreds of people. It lit a glow in his chest to know his gaze had affected her so strongly. “So you felt it, as well?”

  She cast her eyes up to the tree limbs that shaded the bench. “Oh, I must admit it made
you terribly intimidating. Had I not seen you bend over in the stage wings, I might never have thought you a mere mortal.”

  John liked to think no one caught him with his guard down. Not especially at an event like that. “You saw me in the wings?”

  “Don’t be upset. It was my first glimpse of the person you really were. I think that’s when I first began to…”

  She couldn’t even bring herself to finish that sentence. Were her feelings that strong? Or was she that much of an innocent? “I can’t even tell you when or how I first ‘began to.’ Like I said, you snuck up on me.” He kissed her forehead, finding the flutter of her lashes against his chin a most exquisite sensation. He moved to kiss her mouth again, wanting to cover her in a dozen tender touches.

  Leanne pulled away slightly. “You are too persuasive, John.”

  He moved back in, grinning with a pure happiness he hadn’t expected. “It is one of my many gifts.”

  She pulled farther away. “No, truly, John, I must ask you not to take advantage of how I feel. I’m…I’m not used to such strong attentions. In fact, I should never have let you kiss me.”

  She had an analytical look in her eyes, as if solving a thorny problem. Certainly not like any woman he’d just kissed so soundly ought to look. “I’m rather glad you did. I’d like to think you were glad I did, as well.”

  “That’s just it. I can’t think clearly with you so close, looking at me like that.”

  “It is a classic symptom, you know. I’m having a bit of trouble thinking myself.”

  She took a deep breath. “John, please. There are so many complications. How am I to deal with the truth that we ought not to be together? Not now. Not when…you’re…leaving, perhaps.”

  How like Leanne to look straight at the thing he was trying to deny. “But it is not also truth that I’m here, now, and feel what you feel?”

  “Life is more than ‘here, now,’ John, even in wartime. And while it is true that I…feel what you feel, there’s another truth. You don’t share my faith, and even what I feel can’t change what I believe about the match of hearts and souls. How can it be right to consider a future when we don’t share the God who holds that future?”

  He placed his hand over hers, and while she tried to pull it away, he wouldn’t let her. “I don’t believe that has to come between us.”

  “I do.”

  Her voice wavered. She turned to look at him, and he saw how he’d unraveled her resistance. The honorable part of him admired her all the more for clinging to her convictions, while a darker part of him wanted to pull them down one dishonorable kiss at a time. It stung the conscience he wasn’t sure he still had. Where was the grace and mercy Leanne attributed to God in a tangle like this?

  “You feel something for me, and I for you. If God creates us, then He surely creates what we feel. He must have known this would happen. He must know what you feel, what I felt when I kissed you.”

  “John, the choice is neither yours nor mine. I am under orders, just as you are. I am no more free to ignore God’s instructions simply because I wish differently than you are to ignore the general’s.”

  “But you do wish differently. That must matter for something.”

  “It makes little difference. Faith means I surrender to God’s will in my life, trusting He knows better than my foolish heart.”

  Her sad smile was a torturous enticement. She was velvet and porcelain and tenderness, and she was stealing his heart even now by refusing it. He couldn’t recall wanting a woman more ever in his life. “What if I don’t want to surrender you?”

  She stood up, putting distance between them. “Please don’t press me beyond my strength, John. If you do care for me, grant me that.”

  He hated the idea of her thinking of him like some advancing foe, something God must protect her from, something she must flee. Still, Leanne was right; he never stopped pushing until he got what he wanted, and now that he’d realized what—who—he wanted, he knew his own nature. Dark as it was to admit, John knew himself perfectly capable of charming her beyond her resistance, unforgivable as it was. “I can’t not be near you. You can do no better, today’s already proven that.”

  Leanne covered her face in her hands. “Perhaps it is God’s wise kindness, then, that you do leave.”

  She’d done it. She’d found the one way to cause him greater pain than any of his wounds.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “What on earth happened to you?”

  Leanne had barely made it through the door of her bedroom before she sank to the bed and gave in to the tears. Everything was so mixed up inside, crying seemed like the only response she could manage.

  Ida sat down beside her, putting an arm around Leanne’s heaving shoulders. “John failed the exam?”

  “No.”

  “He passed?”

  “We don’t know anything yet.” Leanne let her head fall onto Ida’s shoulder. She was so weary all of a sudden.

  “Y’all do not look like someone who doesn’t know anything. Y’all look like someone who knows too much. What is going on?”

  “Oh, Ida, I do know too much. I’ve gone and lost my heart to John Gallows. It’s awful. It’s wonderful and terrible all at the same time.” She took the handkerchief Ida produced from a pocket and sighed as more tears came. “He’s the wrong kind of man and the timing couldn’t be worse. Still, when he kissed me it felt like I’d fallen off the end of the earth. I can’t think when he’s around, and yet I can see some things so very clearly. He cannot be the one for me, I know that, but…”

  “Hold on there, he kissed you?”

  Leanne felt her cheeks burn at the memory of the way John had touched her face, the things she saw in those eyes before his tender kiss. “He did.” New tears stole down her cheeks. “Why did it have to be so wonderful, Ida? Why couldn’t it have been awful and easy to refuse instead of leaving me with the horrid way I feel right now?”

  Ida’s smile was nearer a smirk. “You’ve not been in love before, have you?”

  “No.” Leanne dabbed at her nose. “But I am not in love.”

  Ida chuckled. “I don’t have loads of experience in this department, but once is enough to let you know it feels like…well, just like you’re feeling now. And he kissed you, did he?”

  “Wonderfully.” Leanne fell back against the coverlet. “It made it so much worse.”

  “So we can assume the captain feels the same way about you?” Ida leaned back on one elbow.

  “He said as much, and more. He said the dearest things to me, I thought my heart would pound right out of my chest.” Leanne rolled to her side to face Ida. “I almost couldn’t do it. I nearly couldn’t tell him not to kiss me again. My thoughts were so tumbled, when he said the timing and our faith didn’t need to come between us, an enormous part of me wanted to believe him. It still does.” She covered her eyes with her hands, frustration mixed with her still-pounding pulse. “I know better than this, Ida. I know he’s most likely leaving—I’ve known that from the first. And I know what I believe. Why must he test it so?”

  Ida pulled her feet up to hug her knees. “Let me see. Two people who don’t belong together but can’t keep their hearts from locking on to each other. I ought to sketch you right now—you could illustrate two hundred novels. This story is as old as time.”

  Leanne moaned. Sometimes Ida’s humor was a blessed light. Other times her wit was too sharp not to sting.

  “I’m not making light of you how feel. A breaking heart is the worst pain there is. My mama told me love is the most awful wonderfulness a person can feel. Loving the wrong man—especially one that loves you back—is just about the most pain a soul can bear. But it begs the question—are you sure he’s the wrong man?”

  Leanne did not care to tangle the matter further. “What do you mean? Look at where we are, who he is. How could he not be the wrong man?”

  “Well, what if he is the right man at the wrong time?”

  “Ida, I
don’t…”

  Ida put up a silencing hand. “I’m not saying you should deny your convictions—I don’t think the Good Lord ever wants one of His daughters to do that for a man—but here and now can’t be the whole story, can it?”

  “That’s just it. We’ve no future together, not unless lots of things change. It already hurts just to be near him. I cannot endure more of it on such a thin hope. I’ve asked God over and over to show Himself to John, to do something about this whole muddle. I prayed so hard over his test and how he strives beyond what’s wise, but I don’t see anything coming of it at all.” She let out an enormous breath, feeling as if she could sleep a week and not lose this weariness pressing down on her. “In fact, it’s all only gotten worse.” Leanne looked up at Ida. “I want to wish he’d never kissed me. I ought to wish he’d never kissed me, but…” She knew no matter how much it hurt, she’d never regret John’s kiss. It’s what made it so “awfully wonderful” as Ida said.

  “That, my dear friend, is a most hopeless cause. When will you know if he is shipping out?”

  “Tomorrow, I suppose.” Leanne pulled herself upright. “I can’t imagine he’ll let Dr. Madison and the general rest until they give him their decision.”

  “Well, then, our task is to get you through tomorrow. We’ll deal with the outcome when we know what it is.”

  Leanne managed a weak smile. “Remind me—over and over—that God already knows what it is, will you?”

  “Absolutely.” Ida pulled her into a hug. “Over and over.”

  * * *

  One of the great truths of military life was that morning came quickly—whether it was welcome or feared. John dressed for his 0900 meeting with General Barnes with a weary anxiety. There had been nothing to do after Leanne’s declaration except walk away. He almost turned when he heard a small sound from her—a cry?—but did not trust himself to behave with any restraint if he went back to her at that moment. Still, he felt certain she’d slept no more last night than he had. Had his leg not been so sore, he might have gotten up in the middle of the night and walked over to the Red Cross House just to see if there was a light on in her window. More like some love-struck schoolboy than the decorated war hero who was about to win his return to the front.