Not2Nite
Page 11
Molly loved watching Angela playing in the sunshine and making up ridiculous stories about the rabbits and hedgehogs she frequently encountered in her meanderings about the grounds of the small estate. At first the stories had all entailed hiding from bombs that ruthlessly blasted warrens and dens to smithereens. Lately they had become gentler, concerning themselves with schoolroom antics and cricket matches. Children healed so quickly, Molly thought.
Not like hearts.
“Look,” Angela said. “There’s someone coming up the drive.”
Molly sighed. An hour’s worth of polite chitchat before sending whoever it was on his way wouldn’t kill her, but she wasn’t looking forward to it.
“I think it’s the Yank,” Angela exclaimed excitedly after peering intently.
Molly sighed again. “No it isn’t, poppet,” she said automatically. Angela had started watching for Guy almost as fervently as she watched for her father.
“It is,” Angela insisted. “I know it is.” She started to run down the drive, and Molly jumped up to stop her, forgetting her own condition in her haste to prevent the child from hurdling herself into the arms of a stranger. Before she could stop herself, she had fallen to the ground.
“Angela,” she called. “Stop!”
But it was too late. The child had already run into the man’s arms. The man’s willing arms. He swung her up in the air.
“Hi, Sweetie,” he said to the laughing child. Guy said to the laughing child.
Molly knew him at once. It didn’t matter that she’d only spent a few hours with him. It didn’t matter that most of those hours had been in the dark. It certainly didn’t matter that those hours in the dark had been months ago.
How foolish she had been to insist that she would forget him. That what they had wasn’t real. Seeing him now, she realized that to deny what they had together was as futile as willing the sun to set before its appointed hour. She had always known it, she acknowledged for the first time.
As though he could feel her acceptance of the inevitable in his very being, Guy’s attention left the child and focused on her. She saw him flinch and realized that in the shock of seeing him again, she hadn’t risen from where she had fallen. She wasn’t at all sure her legs would hold her. She didn’t get the opportunity to find out.
Guy put Angela down gently but firmly and dashed to where Molly was trying to retrieve some dignity and look as if she meant to be sitting on the ground. When he reached her, he dropped to his knees.
“It’s really you,” he said, taking her hands and clutching them tightly, as though he feared she was just an illusion and would disappear otherwise.
“It’s really me,” she said. “What are you doing here? I tried to find you, but you were gone.”
“I thought you were dead.” She could see the bleakness in his eyes when he spoke.
“I’m not,” was all she could think of to say. “I’m so sorry.” She felt like an idiot.
And then he smiled. Smiled like Guy always smiled in her daydreams. Only he did it for real this time.
“Don’t say that. It sounds like you’re sorry because you’re not dead.”
And suddenly she was smiling back at him.
“Never.” She could feel her heart lift. Somehow the world was back on its axis. “How did you discover I’m alive? How did you find me?”
He sat back on his heels, but didn’t release the firm grip on her hands.”Believe it or not, your cousin Charlotte, who will always be my second favorite person in the entire world from now on, delivered my plane and figured out who I was.”
“Your plane?” Molly tilted her head, puzzled.
“When I thought I’d lost you, I joined the air force.”
“Guy…” she began, but he placed one finger on her lips.
“I’ve got a forty-eight hour leave with just over forty hours of it left. I can answer as many questions as you want. Later. Right now if I don’t kiss you I think I’ll go crazy.”
He stood up and pulled her up with him.
“Charlotte told me how badly you were injured. Can you stand alone?”
“I don’t know.” She didn’t know anything except that Guy was here and she was in his arms.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m not letting go.”
And then he kissed her. And he was right. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that they were together and his lips were on hers. His arms were around her. And his body was pressed against hers.
“I don’t give a damn whether you believe in love at first sight or not.” He pulled away from her to exclaim raggedly. “I love you and I did from the first moment we met when you knocked the light out of my hand and the wind out of my sails. And I’m not letting you leave me again.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised and kissed him again.
Molly came back to earth when she felt an impatient tugging on her skirt.
“Stop kissing,” She heard as with a superhuman effort she broke the kiss and looked down.
Angela was standing beside them, holding out her hand, palm raised.
“You dropped this when you fell down,” she said. “I guess it was in your pocket.”
It was the candy that Guy had given her.
“Not2Nite,” she said as took it. “Thank you. Now go and see if Mrs. Milton can put the kettle on. We have a guest.”
The child ran off and was forgotten long before she reached the kitchen.
“I can’t believe you kept this,” Guy said wonderingly as he helped her back onto the bench and sat down beside her, his arm around her shoulder as she tucked herself into his embrace.
“It’s all I had to remember you by. I tried to get rid of it a dozen times, but somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. It became my good luck charm, stopping me from falling into despair.” She held it out to him. “Now I want you to have it.”
“Why?” he asked, startled.
“Every time you fly a mission, it will remind you that you’re coming safely back to me. That nothing bad will happen to you. Not2Nite.”
Guy smiled and carefully put it in his pocket. “It’s a deal,” he said. “And when we’re together…” He kissed her again. “…Nothing can go wrong.”
“Not2Nite or any of the nights to come,” Molly promised as she kissed him back.
A word about the author…
Barbara Burke’s peripatetic life means she’s lived everywhere from a suburban house in a small town to a funky apartment in a big city, and from an architecturally designed estate deep in the forest to a cedar shack on the edge of the ocean. Everywhere she’s gone, she’s been accompanied by her husband, her animals, and her books.
For the last several years, she’s worked as a freelance journalist and has won numerous awards. She was a fan of Jane Austen long before that lady was discovered by revisionists and zombie lovers and thinks Georgette Heyer was one of the great writers of the twentieth century.
She lives by the philosophy that one should never turn down the opportunity to get on a plane no matter where it’s going, but deep down inside wishes she could travel everywhere by train.
~*~
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