To Love a Man

by Karen Robards

  He talked a great deal, most of it incomprehensible to Lisa. From the few words she could understand, she thought he imagined himself caught up in some long-distant war. Once or twice he called again for Beth, sounding so unhappy that the pain she felt was overlaid with pity for him. Beth was a very lucky woman, Lisa thought bleakly, and tried not to let herself be too moved by the way Sam seemed desperately to want her own presence. It was more than likely that he thought she was the absent Beth.

  But at least once, when she tried to wriggle free of his grip, he knew precisely who she was. As she pried gently at his imprisoning hands, those blue eyes opened and looked directly into hers. She held her breath, not knowing if he was rambling or coherent.

  “Don’t leave me,” he muttered. “Lisa, don’t leave me. Let me hold you. You’re so warm, and soft. . . . Please don’t leave me.”

  He was begging—begging her, Lisa, not to leave him. Lisa smiled shakily down at him, feeling a tremendous warmth steal over her.

  “I won’t leave you,” darling, she almost added, but managed to bite back the word in time. Her arms curled around the back of his head, her fingers stroking the rough silk of his hair as she held him.

  “Promise?” he demanded, his eyes still fixed on her. He seemed to know what he was saying. . . .

  “I promise,” she affirmed softly. This seemed to satisfy him, for he sighed deeply and closed his eyes.

  The next day he was much better, never once lapsing into delirium. He no longer kept Lisa chained to his side, and she managed to feed and wash herself and help him do the same. Toward afternoon, he once again made the trip outside, but when he came back in he didn’t return at once to his pallet. Instead he chose to sit up, his uninjured shoulder propped against the wall. He was naked, as he had been for the last three days, but it seemed not to concern him in the least. His eyes were fastened on her, but she wasn’t sure if he really saw her. He seemed to be thinking deeply about something.

  “Here,” she said after he had sat there for perhaps five minutes, apparently oblivious to the chill bumps that were breaking out in ridges along his arms and legs. Scooping the blanket from the floor, she wrapped it around him. He accepted her gesture without a word, but when she would have moved away he caught her by the wrist, pulling at her. Hunkering down beside him, she looked at him with a question in her eyes. He regarded her with a brooding look of his own.

  “Thank you for taking care of me,” he said finally. “I owe you one.”

  Lisa returned his look with cooling eyes. Whatever she wanted from him—and she was not even sure that she wanted anything—it certainly wasn’t gratitude.

  “I owed you,” she countered brusquely. “Now we’re even.” And she pulled her wrist away and stood up.

  By the time another twenty-four hours had passed, he was so much better that his healing shoulder wound caused him more discomfort than the remnants of the fever. It was still raining, but the torrent was beginning to slacken. In another day or so they would have to move on, whether or not Sam was well enough to go. Lisa thought of the miles they would have to trudge to safety with danger and possible death lurking all around, and felt dread run along her veins like droplets of ice. Biting her lip resolutely, she did her best to banish it, although it refused to disappear completely. Still, she told herself that she would face whatever happened when it happened. In the meantime, she had to concentrate all her energy on getting Sam well again.

  He had put on his shorts and pants, the first time he had gotten dressed since he had become ill. The clothes made him seem almost like a stranger. Lisa felt faintly ill at ease, cooped up in such close quarters with him. To pass the time, they took to playing tic-tac-toe and hangman in the dirt floor. Sam was clearly superior at tic-tac-toe—he played with a devilish strategy she couldn’t quite get the knack of—but she beat him five times out of six at hangman. After all, words, as she informed him with a superior grin, were her stock in trade.

  They talked, but not about anything important. Sprawled on their stomachs in the dirt like two kids, not caring that they were getting filthy, they kidded and played like children barely out of nursery school. When Sam finally won at hangman—on “incendiary,” as in “bomb,” for God’s sake!—he practically crowed with triumph. Lisa laughed at him, accusing him teasingly of cheating because he had put too many spaces in the game. Watching him as he grinned at her, his black hair falling carelessly over his forehead and his blue eyes sparkling, she wondered once again how she had ever thought he wasn’t handsome. Unshaven, dirty, still pale and weak with fever, he was so good-looking that he stopped her breath. His raffish, rakish look, accentuated by that broad, bare chest and the faint scar bisecting his cheek, only added to his wicked attraction. Lisa was conscious of a sudden, almost irresistible impulse to kiss him. . . .

  “Tell me something,” she said casually, her eyes on the new game they were just starting.

  “Ummm?” he answered absently, clearly engrossed in trying to figure out what an eight-letter word with a g in the middle could be.

  “Who’s Beth?”

  XII

  SAM felt all his muscles tighten warily.

  “How did you hear about Beth?” If Frank, the only person in whom he’d ever confided, had told her about Beth, he’d wring his damned neck for him if ever he saw him again. That part of his life was behind him forever. He saw no point in remembering it.

  Lisa’s green eyes met his. “You called for her. When you were delirious.”

  “Oh.” Inwardly, Sam was cursing himself. He remembered dreaming that he was back in ’Nam, in the days after he’d first been sent into combat. He’d been wounded, his face blown to hell, temporarily blinded—although he hadn’t known it was temporary at the time—by a grenade that had come out of nowhere while he was sleeping. All through that awful time he’d called repeatedly for Beth, had even had the chaplain write to her and tell her what had happened to him, for God’s sake. She hadn’t even bothered to reply, as he should have known she wouldn’t. Especially since the chaplain had included the news that he had been blinded. Beth would want no part of a man who wasn’t whole.

  “Who is she?” Lisa persisted.

  Sam looked at her, as she lay on her belly on the floor, her chin propped up in both hands, her lovely hair curling wildly around her perfect face. God, she was beautiful, he thought irrelevantly. Then a wry smile curved his lips. Her emerald eyes were fastened on him for all the world like she was a kid waiting for a bedtime story.

  “She—was—my wife.” Gracing Beth with the title of “wife” was doing her too much honor, Sam thought. She’d never been his wife, not even at the beginning when he’d loved her as madly as only a young boy can love. She’d been more like his live-in whore, sleeping with him and letting him feed and clothe her while she waited for something better to come along.

  “You’re married?” Lisa’s voice sounded odd, almost hoarse. He slanted an inquiring look at her while he jerked his head in the negative.

  “I was married,” he corrected. Then, seeing her exasperated look, he amplified that a little. “We got a divorce.”

  “Why?”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed. He hated talking to anyone about his past. It was like giving them a little piece of himself, something they could use to bind him to them. He especially hated talking to women about his past. In fact, he never had. His fiasco with Beth had turned him off females for every purpose but one for the rest of his life. He wanted no part of the faithless creatures.

  “If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”

  Her hasty disclaimer, oddly enough, had the effect of making him want to talk about it for almost the first time in his life. Something about this girl, young and spoiled and quick-tempered though she was, made him feel like he could confide in her. The ghost of a grin twitched up one corner of his mouth. One thing he sure couldn’t accuse her of was having mercenary designs on his earnings. Compared to what she was no doubt used to, even the
money he would get for this job—the half that failure entitled him to seemed like an enormous sum to him—would be a drop in the bucket to her.

  “I don’t mind,” he answered, surprised that he really didn’t. “What do you want to know?”

  Lisa looked up at him, her face very pale and earnest. Sam felt like grinning again. Dressed as she was, with those absurd, too-big fatigues swamping the delectable curves of her body, her face clean of even the smallest scrap of makeup, and those huge, jewellike eyes fixed eagerly on his face, she looked ridiculously young. Younger than Jay. Maybe fifteen . . .

  “How long have you been divorced? What went wrong? Did you—do you—have any children?”

  Sam shot her a wry look and closed his eyes briefly in mock dismay.

  “You want to know all about it, huh?” he murmured, and had to muffle a chuckle at her sudden self-conscious look. He felt suddenly very lighthearted, despite his pain and their predicament and the damned depressing rain and everything else. “Care to tell me why you’re so interested?”

  She immediately looked defensive. “I just thought it would give us something to talk about,” she said repressively, transferring her eyes back down to the game scratched in the dirt.

  Sam studied the top of that blond head for a moment. She was looking at the game as if her life depended on solving it.

  “I’ve been divorced for nearly fifteen years. She decided I didn’t suit her requirements. And, yes, I have a son. His name’s Jay—Jason, really—and he’s seventeen. Almost as old as you,” he added with a sardonic look.

  “I’m twenty-five.” She looked up as she said it.

  Sam cocked an eyebrow at her mockingly. The sure sign of the young, he thought, was that they were always so defensive about their age, or lack of it.

  “And you—unlike me—are married.” It came out flatly. He hadn’t meant to say it, and certainly not in that tone. Hearing himself, he thought that he sounded almost jealous. Which was the stupidest thing he had ever thought of! He hadn’t been jealous of a woman in years. Beth had cured him of that forever with her shenanigans—or so he had always thought.

  “We’re separated,” Lisa answered, her eyes flickering down for just an instant. Then they came back up to meet his. “But we were talking about you. What went wrong with your marriage?”

  Sam sighed and maneuvered himself up so that he was sitting cross-legged, his hands resting lightly on his thighs.

  “I told you. She decided I didn’t suit her requirements.”

  “Why not?”

  “Do you really want to hear all this? It’s pretty boring.”

  “Yes. Please.”

  The wistful note in her voice did it. Sam grimaced, more at himself than at her, and began.

  “She was two years older than me, for one thing, and she’d been around. I was only twenty when I asked her to marry me, and I was as young and dumb as they come. She was working as a waitress in a bar near base—I was in the marines then—and, like the credulous fool I was, I thought I would take her away from all that. What I didn’t know was that she didn’t want to be taken too far away from it, thank you very much. She wanted respectability, and money for clothes and things, but she also wanted to have a good time. When she found somebody who could give her a better time than I could, she left me. And that was that.”

  “How long were you married?” The question was quiet.

  Sam looked at her suspiciously, afraid from her tone that she might be feeling sorry for him. The very thought made the back of his neck burn. But she seemed to be absorbed in studying the game. . . .

  “Two years.”

  “And you never married again?”

  “No.” It was said with conviction, and earned him a slanting look from her green eyes.

  “What about your son? Jay, you said his name was? Does he live with your w—with Beth?

  Sam gave a rude snort of laughter. “Not hardly. She decided when he was about five that she didn’t want him hanging around, cramping her style. We haven’t either one of us heard from her for the last ten years. Which suits me just fine, although sometimes I think that Jay regrets it. Most kids kind of want a mother. I tell him that he’s better off without her—which is true, believe me—but still I think he hankers after her every once in a while. With me gone so much.”

  Sam was surprised at himself. He had never discussed his worries about Jay’s unspoken feelings for his mother with anyone before. But it had bothered him for years—although he had never admitted it even to himself—that Jay might somehow blame him for separating him from his mother. If there was one human being in the world he loved, it was his kid; he didn’t know how he’d take it if Jay started hating him over Beth.

  “Where is he now? With your family?” Lisa asked, her eyes compassionate as they moved over his face. Sam recognized the compassion, but was surprised to find that he didn’t really mind it after all. In fact, he kind of liked it—coming from her.

  “He’s in school. Boarding school. He stays there during the year while I’m out of the country, and then I try to keep summers and holidays free and we spend them together.”

  “What about your parents? Are they living?”

  “I have no idea,” he answered shortly.

  “What do you mean, you have no idea?” She reared back her head to look at him questioningly. “How can you not know if your parents are . . .”

  “I never knew my parents,” he cut in, tracing patterns in the dirt with his forefinger. He had never talked about this with anyone; it hurt almost more than Beth’s defection had. At least he was over Beth, had been for years. He didn’t think he’d ever get over the shame and pain of knowing that his parents had just abandoned him like a stray puppy they’d found and had no use for.

  “Who brought you up? There had to be someone.” Her voice was soft, and looking up Sam saw that her eyes were soft, too.

  “The state of North Carolina very kindly made itself responsible for me when I was about two years old. Before that, I suppose I lived with one or the other of my parents. I don’t remember, and nobody ever bothered to enlighten me. Not that it makes any difference. From the time I was two, I was shifted from one foster home to another. About the time I started feeling secure somewhere, something would happen, the woman would get pregnant or have to go back to work or something, and they’d move me somewhere else. Finally I got so I wouldn’t let myself like any of them, because it hurt too much when they took me away.”

  “Poor little boy,” Lisa said softly, and her hand came out to pat the hard muscles of his thigh comfortingly. Sam looked down at those pale slender fingers for a moment, then covered them with his hand. Her skin was so soft. . . . She twisted her hand in his grasp so that her fingers were entwined with his.

  “Don’t feel too sorry for me,” he warned with a faint grin, even while he retained his grip on her hand. “By the time I was ten years old, I was the closest thing to a hoodlum Greenville ever had. I cut school every chance I got, drank, smoked, and was so wild in general that most of the good people who took me in soon threw me out again. Finally, I learned to hot-wire cars.” His lips twitched as Lisa looked up at him, wide-eyed. He was willing to bet that the closest she’d ever gotten before to the kind of people who did things like that was the television set in her living room. “You might say that was what got me into the marines.”

  “Hot-wiring cars?” She blinked with incomprehension.

  Sam chuckled. “Yup. I hot-wired one too many, and got caught. Not that we meant to actually steal it, just drive it around until we got tired or it ran out of gas. But the sheriff didn’t see it that way. My buddies got off with probation. Because I was driving, they gave me a choice—the service or two years in prison. I joined the marines, but sometimes, especially in boot camp, I wished I’d opted for prison instead. I kept thinking, how much worse could it be?”

  “You’re making that up!” Lisa accused, sitting up to study his face intently. Her hand was still hold
ing his, and she made no move to free it. Sam stroked her fingers with the blunt fingertips of his free hand, absently noting how dark and coarse his skin looked next to the creamy pale gold of hers.

  “What part? About cutting school, or drinking, or hot-wiring cars, or . . .” He was teasing her. Clearly, she’d never been exposed to the kind of life he’d led. She’d always been sheltered, cared for, and protected.

  “About almost being sent to prison. Aren’t you?”

  “Nope. It’s the truth, I swear to God.”

  “But how old were you?”

  “Seventeen. I had to lie about my age to get the marines to take me.”

  “But what about school? You couldn’t already have graduated!”

  “I never did graduate. I was in the eleventh grade when that happened, and I never went back. Later, while I was in ’Nam, I took up reading, and sort of educated myself. Unlike some people,” this was accompanied by a teasing look, “I didn’t have a doting granddaddy to send me to college.”

  “And then you married Beth,” Lisa said softly.

  Sam could tell that she was struggling to envision the kind of life he had led, which must sound as foreign to her as her pampered existence did to him.

  “That was three years later. My enlistment was almost up, and she persuaded me to reenlist. Then she married me. After she made sure that she’d have a steady source of income.”

  “You must have loved her very much.” The words were almost a whisper.

  Sam looked over at her wryly. “Oh, I did—at the time. But she soon cured me of that. If it wasn’t for Jay being her son, she’d never even cross my mind now.”

  “But you called for her—when you were sick.”

  Sam’s mouth tightened. “Whenever I get that fever, I imagine I’m back in ’Nam, where I was the first time I got it. My mind just goes back. I guess I called for Beth because I wanted her—then. Anymore, I probably wouldn’t recognize her if she crossed the street in front of me. I saw her for what she was years ago. If I hadn’t taken Jay, he probably would have ended up the way I did—going from one foster home to another until he got into trouble so deep he couldn’t get out. Beth sure didn’t want him.”