His Very Own Girl

by Carrie Lofty

  Lulu couldn’t help but feel drawn into Dixon’s story. His demeanor had changed, growing more serious and subdued. He wasn’t simply telling tales.

  “Joe started running off when Plank came by for Sunday dinner. He would steal alcohol and go joyriding with a couple of hoodlums fresh out of lockup.”

  “Is that why he was sent to prison?”

  The moment stretched into that of a dream, where time dripped past with all the speed of cold treacle. She wanted to believe it had been no more than a couple of lads making stupid mistakes. But even as she asked, Lulu knew the truth would be more difficult to hear.

  The song ended. Dixon stopped dancing and released Lulu’s hands. “He was sent to prison for beating Sheriff Plank until the man stopped breathing.”

  His words struck like a whip. Lulu held perfectly still, arms straight at her sides.

  “But he didn’t die,” Dixon said. “Some neighbor kids pulled Weber off the sheriff before he could finish the job.”

  “He didn’t die?”

  “No, ma’am. But he hasn’t walked or left his bed or taken a piss on his own ever since. The man’s a cripple, paralyzed from the waist up.”

  I was hoping to hear he was rotting in the ground.

  Lulu remembered the words Joe had growled with such anger and contempt. She heard them in her mind, pinging around like ricocheting bullets, and she knew Dixon spoke the truth. It was heartbreaking and hideous, but it was the truth.

  The lights and smoke in the club became too much to bear, congealing her senses. She grounded herself in the pain of her nails digging into her palms.

  “You do believe me, don’t you?” Dixon said.

  His odd seriousness hadn’t ebbed, but a tense anger bunched the muscles of his shoulders. Whatever unresolved conflict lingered between Harry Dixon and Joe Weber, it extended beyond Joe’s assault on the sheriff. Lulu wanted no part of it.

  “I appreciate your taking the time to reveal these events to me, Lieutenant.” She couldn’t hear her own voice, only the reverberations, as if speaking with her hands clamped over her ears. “And now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  She staggered away, exhaling when Dixon made no motion to escort her. It was bad enough to hear his words, words that would’ve been easier to dismiss had he taken any apparent joy in delivering them. But she didn’t want his attention, and she didn’t want to be followed.

  At the bar, holding on to the polished wooden surface as if to a life raft, Lulu ordered a gin and tonic. That’s where Betsy found her. “I thought you’d be with Joe,” she said.

  “He didn’t come tonight.”

  “No, he did.” Betsy nodded to a far corner where Joe sat with Smitty.

  Lulu’s panic felt as if someone had set fire to her uniform, flaring over her body with the burning, restless tingle. Had he seen the whole exchange, watching and waiting?

  “Oh, Lord.”

  Betsy touched Lulu’s arm. “What happened?”

  Suddenly too thirsty to bear, Lulu finished her gin. “I learned what I should’ve asked a long time ago. My fault, really. I’m not generally one to live in the clouds unless I’m flying.”

  Her halfhearted attempt at a joke only deepened Betsy’s frown. “Why he was in prison?”

  “That’s right. That officer of Paulie’s, the one Joe fought with—he told me.”

  He told me when I should’ve asked. I should’ve asked Joe.

  And now it was too late—too late, even, to leave without him noticing. What sort of explanation had she been expecting from Dixon? She remembered her flare of hope, eager to believe that Joe’d been guilty of nothing worse than bootlegging. Then she would’ve been able to take Joe’s hand and absolve him with the platitude that boys will be boys.

  But that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Well, this may be my father’s legal background speaking,” Betsy said, “but I’d recommend additional inquiries. Perhaps with the suspect in question.”

  Lulu’s head throbbed. The shame of how she’d conducted this whole affair was almost as difficult to bear as Dixon’s revelation. “I couldn’t possibly. What would I say?”

  “What we’ve all learned to say during the last few years—what’s on your mind. If you hold back, Lulu, you’ll regret it. Don’t let this be how it ends between you, whatever it was.”

  “I can’t. I just want to go.” Lulu knotted her fingers with those of her friend. “Please, Betts, just let’s go home.”

  The thin, neat orchestra leader stepped up to the microphone. “And this here’s our last number for the evening, ladies and gents. I hope you have a good night together. Keep safe.”

  Last dance.

  Lulu’s gaze darted to the table. Joe was walking her way.

  chapter ten

  One minute Lulu was dancing or flirting. The next minute she was in Joe’s arms.

  That’s how Saturday nights had gone since their bet. It had been working as mysteriously as grace and as surely as midnight’s arrival. Harder to admit was that Joe depended on their unspoken promise like the drawing of his next breath.

  Until that night. When Harry Dixon brought it to an end.

  Joe read it on her face and in the unbending stiffness in her backbone. Dixon had told her.

  The orchestra began to play “I Don’t Want to Walk Without You.” A sound like a quiet sigh multiplied a hundred times over eased upward from the crowd. Joe worked his way across the club and didn’t stop until he was standing before her.

  “Last dance, Lulu.” He laid his hands between them, palms up, and held them there. Waiting. He sensed Betsy’s curiosity and unease, but he had eyes for Lulu alone.

  “Go home, Joe. I was just about to do the same.”

  Fed up with everything, angered but unable—unwilling—to expel that toxic rage from his body, he let his hands drop. How many years would he be punished for what he’d done? Long after the last day of his sentence, that was certain. He was on the verge of the Allied invasion of Europe, yet his past dogged him across the Atlantic. Short of traveling through time or peeling away his own skin, he’d never be able to escape it. A clean break was all he’d wanted when he’d volunteered for the army, but even that remained out of reach.

  He might as well lock his dreams in a metal box and throw them down a well. At least then he’d be a better soldier, one without any delusions of a good life after war.

  “I’ll go.” He didn’t know if she’d be able to hear his quiet words. “Unless you’d like to know my side of it now.”

  Her lips twisted and she ducked her eyes, like a child caught misbehaving. “Dixon was telling the truth, I’d hazard. You beat that sheriff until he couldn’t walk anymore.”

  “I did.”

  And there it was: the disappointment on her face. He knew it would be hard to take from Lulu, but the actual pain surprised him. His guts shriveled up and the old, old shame clamped a stranglehold on his throat. She wouldn’t believe him even if he told her. No one ever had.

  The last song of the night ended.

  “Why?” she asked quietly.

  Her eyes glittered, overly bright as the club’s lights turned up to full power. Servicemen and their dates filed toward the exits, slowly, like sleepwalkers reluctant to abandon a sweet dream.

  Betsy slipped away. A quick glance found her joining Paulie near the entryway, with Smitty and a pair of sergeants mingling nearby.

  Lulu appeared to make a decision. “Betts? Paulie?” she called to her friends. “You go on. I’ll get home all right.”

  They lingered a few moments more, then departed. Joe and Lulu were alone in the Henley, which seemed cavernous now. The club was nearly empty except for the musicians packing up their instruments near the stage. Brighter now, and with the cigarette smoke dissipating, the ceiling appeared much higher.

  “So? Tell me. Why did you do it?”

  Joe tamped down his reflexive fear of being deemed a liar. He couldn’t take that from Lulu. But her expression had ch
anged. She looked at him with a hope that made his heart ache. Tears pressed at the backs of his eyelids—tears he hadn’t ever shed, no matter how bad things had gotten during the trial and that long first year. Her expression said that she was wishing against wishes for a rational explanation, one that could justify beating a man to the point of paralysis.

  He had such an explanation, but no one had ever believed him. Not even his own mother. Suzie had been so afraid and mortified, and then her life had been ruined anyway. So why would this impulsive Englishwoman believe him when no one else had?

  But with the clarity of a bright morning, Joe realized he had nothing to lose.

  “I caught him raping my sister.”

  Lulu’s face went white. She whispered his name and touched two fingers to her lower lip. A heavy swallow contorted the smooth length of her throat.

  Her vulnerability didn’t ease his temper. He still felt injured—vindictive, even, when she wasn’t the cause. What he wouldn’t give to have Dixon back under his fists. But that sort of mean temper had been to blame once before. He focused on Lulu’s dark eyes and struggled for calm.

  “Did Dixon mention that part?” he asked. “Did he mention how his testimony blackened Suzie’s name? He took the stand and called her loose, right there in court, as if she’d wanted what Plank did. Did he tell you about how she left town because of all the talk—or how our own mother didn’t even believe Sheriff Plank capable of that much evil?”

  “Joe, please—”

  “Did he?”

  “Joe, stop!”

  He found himself as near to Lulu as her own scent. His hands grasped her upper arms. He stepped back and spiked his hair with agitated fingers, heart slamming against his ribs. “Sorry,” he muttered. “But, God, Lulu—I wish you’d asked me first.”

  “Me, too,” she said, her voice clouded with emotion.

  “A little late now.” His sarcasm was made of pure hurt, but he didn’t feel ready to behave like a grown-up.

  “Don’t lay this entirely at my door, Joe. You asked if I needed to know. I didn’t—not then, not when I never expected to see you again. You could’ve been the one to press the issue had you really wanted to.”

  Lulu touched his arm, then reached up and smoothed his hair. Joe let his eyelids roll shut as he absorbed her touch. Part of him hated the control he’d given to her, the way she could jerk him this way and that. His life was little more his own in the service than it had been in prison. And now Lulu called the shots. All he could do was sit back and wait for her decisions. Would it be scraps or a whole damn banquet?

  But she was right. He hadn’t wanted to tell her, not when they’d happily spent weeks living in a bubble of good times and laughter.

  “We missed our dance,” she said softly. “I was so looking forward to it.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. It’s been weeks.” Her fingers curled around the back of his neck, and Joe let his forehead fall forward, gently, until it met hers. “We can talk about this, yes?”

  “Talk?”

  “About everything. About . . .” Her gaze darted to the side. “About us.”

  Now his heart was hammering for another reason altogether. He’d never seen her so flustered. It gave him hope when he should’ve been long past the capacity for such a childish feeling. Hope that she believed him. Hope that she’d be his.

  Idiot.

  But that same blunt truth remained: he had nothing to lose. No one waited for him back home in Indiana, and falling for her was no more dangerous than jumping out of a C-47.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I’d like that.”

  Kicked out of the Henley by a pair of dour-faced cleaning women, Lulu walked in silence toward the train station with her arm looped through Joe’s. He was so strong—tall and strong and wounded in ways she’d never imagined. She didn’t dare believe his version of events, but how could she not? She’d spent too many nights with him to entirely trust Dixon’s tell-all.

  Joe could be riled; she’d seen it. And what man didn’t have his limits? But to beat a lawman to the point of paralysis required either the hideous temper of a maniac or a bloody good reason. Had Joe caught the sheriff raping his sister . . . ? Lulu could imagine that.

  Or it was just what she wanted to believe.

  No, she knew it. She knew the unclean feeling that had crawled along her skin when surrounded by Dixon and his cronies. She knew the difference between men she could trust to know limits and boundaries and truth. Joe wasn’t an animal and he wasn’t a liar. He was as dangerous as a sky full of bombs, but not to her physical well-being. Lulu was very close to not caring a bit.

  The train station seemed a ghostly place. Conductors carrying electric torches lined with blue filters directed the way, and overhead, every fourth fixture glowed with that same eerie blue aura. Sometimes Lulu didn’t even notice, but that night, when circumstances had come together to make her needful of sure things, the gloominess and somber voices only added to her despondency. She and Joe certainly didn’t matter, not when the world was ripping itself apart.

  The train to Sileby whistled in the distance, far to the south.

  “Everything’s a dream here,” he said, his words hushed. “Does that make sense?”

  His eyes had taken on a pained darkness. What must it have been like for him in prison? And now, to be in England on the verge of combat? What would it take to make that pain disappear?

  Not much. She knew how, if only she were brave enough.

  She was brave every time she climbed into an airplane and dodged barrage balloons and monstrous weather systems. That was her job. She loved it. But she’d never felt braver than when she reached up, right then, and kissed Joe.

  He caught her in his arms, enfolding her, offering the tall trunk of his body as her anchor. Moving with slow, patient strokes and sweet nips, his mouth was eager but respectful. Still he held back, his upper body rigid and his kiss achingly polite. No matter the hellish petulance she’d inflicted on him, he still welcomed her back. She’d known he would, and a guilty flicker of regret made her desperate—desperate to make it up to him.

  It’s all right, Joe.

  She was the one to slip her tongue past his smooth lips and delve into the warm hollow of his mouth. She was the one to slide her hands down his biceps and squeeze the muscle that waited, hard and tense, beneath his olive drabs. She was the one who moaned first, then basked in his answering sounds of passion. While she was tasting and gripping, testing his nerve and her own, Lulu’s mind was a hundred steps ahead. She was taking off his tunic and tugging down his suspenders, dipping her fingers into his trousers.

  Wanting this hard, implacable man open to her—open and revealed—spun Lulu’s head with dizzying possibilities. The power of her erotic visions as she kissed him, bending into him, left her gasping. He nuzzled her neck and licked the spot just behind her earlobe. Not kissing Joe could be nearly as exciting as kissing him, so long as he kept using his mouth somewhere, anywhere on her skin.

  She breathed his name, a rasping whisper. The train puffed toward the station and exhaled a shriek of steam.

  “Lulu,” he said, as winded as she was. “Lulu, I can’t—”

  “I thought that I could hold fast to those rules of mine and block out all of this, but I don’t know if I want to anymore.” She gripped his hair down to the scalp; wincing first, he let his mouth ease into a wide grin. “This is dreamtime. And I want to have the good along with the bad. And this, Joe—this is good.”

  He placed a whisper-soft kiss across her knuckles, then held her hand close to his heart. Lulu felt its strong, measured pulse through the layers of his uniform.

  An air-raid siren ripped to life.

  The ominous roar of approaching bombers followed.

  Lulu cocked her ear toward the sky. The aircraft were distinctly German, their unsynchronized engines creating that dreaded whir-whir drone. “Junkers—Ju 88s. A lot of them.”

  Only a moment earlier
she’d been warm and wanted and lavished with a long-denied passion. Now they had to get safe. Lulu’s thoughts narrowed to that one impulse. Safe. Find shelter. Don’t get caught out.

  But there was no panic in her blood. Like a marathon runner asked to finish another two miles, her senses were already on alert after kissing Joe. The jump from aroused to alarmed wasn’t a far one. Joe’s expression of calm intensity hadn’t altered. As when he’d fought Dixon, he simply seemed a more potent version of himself, with no haste or flustered movements.

  “The underground walkway,” she said. “It connects the platforms.”

  The other would-be travelers and the nearest conductor had the same idea. Fear streaked late-night faces, where the talcum powder and lipstick and hair tonic had been mussed, made sweaty and imperfect by an evening of fun. Four years, however, had eroded whatever alarm might have otherwise blossomed. The train screeched to a halt, its brakes like the squeal of a gutted pig. Some of the forward passengers disembarked and joined the jittery queue to the underground walkway. The others, farther out in the rear carriages, would just have to huddle and pray.

  Joe grabbed Lulu’s hand, his grip saying without words that he wouldn’t let go. Bodies to the back of them and bodies in front of them, Lulu swallowed a rush of claustrophobic fear. People had been crushed to death in London, dead from suffocation long before the bombs fell. But she tightened her fingers around Joe’s and let the heady, terrible rush of horror seep away. She’d need all of her wits and calm to get them through what was coming on a roar of German engines.

  The stream of people descending to safety produced a clatter of feet down two flights of concrete stairs. No one shouted or even talked. The humming drone of the bombers was more distinct now, gathering force, preparing to do their worst.

  With her lungs working hard, her blood and brain on high alert, she pushed after Joe along the corridor. Cold, damp basement air whipped against her face and seized her legs. Sweat gathered under her arms while goose bumps jumped to life beneath her prickling stockings. The bombers would be in sight now, over the eastern horizon, their dark shapes as ominous as a murder of crows to a dying animal.