Once a Warrior

by Fran Baker

  He’d risked his life to save hers—not once, but twice in less than twenty-four hours—and she had repaid him by calling him one of the vilest names in the English language.

  True, she had incriminated herself as well. And deservedly so. She was still married. Still didn’t know for sure if her husband was dead or alive. Still wondering if he might be lying wounded in a prisoner of war camp somewhere, so delirious with malnutrition or disease that he was unable to contact her.

  Yet she had kissed another man. Gloried in his heat and passion and hunger. Tasted the violent urgency of his need. And then she had pointed the finger at him because he’d aroused that same need in her.

  Now her conscience prodded her to go to that man and apologize, to beg his forgiveness, but her throat was so thick with guilt and with grief that she wasn’t sure she could get the words out.

  Cain was cursing himself up one side and down the other. He’d been called a lot of names in his twenty-seven years. Some he’d cultivated because they’d suited his purpose at the time. Still others he’d shrugged off, chalking them up to peoples’ ignorance. But there was one name that he couldn’t tolerate. One slur that could set him off like a SAM. The hell of it was, it was the same name that suited him to a T right now.

  He was a bastard.

  Not in the literal sense of the word, of course. His parents had met in the eye of another storm in another country, had married over both their families’ and their societies’ objections, and had welcomed him, their only child, into the world on a day that lived in infamy yet. The years that had been allotted to them had been painfully short but poignantly sweet. His father had died first, a fallen hero in a forgotten war. Then his mother, who’d suffered so many slings and arrows and indignities that it was a miracle she could function, had succumbed less than a year later to a broken heart.

  But the fact that his parents still lived in his memory didn’t make him any less of a bastard. He’d violated the sanctity of another soldier’s marriage. It didn’t matter that the soldier had been a philandering SOB. That was water under the bridge. Or that his wife’s loyalty to the vows she had taken was about to be put to the ultimate test. That was her problem, not his.

  His problem was with what James Lee Cain had done. And what he’d done had been inexcusable. He could only hope that what he was going to do next might right that grievous wrong.

  Because from this moment on, he was keeping his mitts off Mrs. Johnny Brown.

  He’d been standing at the rail, staring vacantly at the grassy bank. Now he blinked and scrubbed his hands over his face. And saw that the Viet Cong guerrillas who’d been there only moments ago had retreated back into the rice paddy from whence they’d first appeared.

  “Guess we fooled them, huh?” he asked Cat over his shoulder.

  When she didn’t answer, he turned away from the rail and saw that she too was gone.

  * * * *

  “You’d better put on a hat,” he said when she came topside a couple of hours later, “or you’ll be fried to a crisp.”

  Cat paused just outside the wheelhouse, surprised by his cordial tone. She’d never felt so humiliated or so furious in all her life as she had after their argument. She’d gone below, intending to throw herself on the bunk and sob her heart out. Instead, too agitated to lie still, she’d wound up pacing the cabin, cursing herself for a colossal fool. Cursing Cain, too, for making her feel like one. When she’d finally gotten her act together, she’d come back up to apologize and to take her lumps. Only to hear that he was concerned about her getting sunburned.

  “I don’t have a hat.” She didn’t even have dry underwear yet, though she wasn’t about to mention that.

  “Pop the lid on the portside bench.” He lit a cigarillo. “There ought to be some in the storage area underneath it.”

  There were at least a half dozen conical straw hats stacked on top of each other.

  Cat plopped one on her head and carried another into the wheelhouse for Cain. “You’ve gotten a little sun yourself.”

  “I was roasting in here, so I took off my T-shirt,” he said as he pulled the hat low over his brow.

  She’d noticed. In fact, her mouth had gone dry at the sight of the sweat-slicked, sun-baked muscles rippling in his lean back. To avoid staring temptation in the face, she focused on the river, which flowed by them like a giant spill of chocolate milk.

  “Would you like something cold to drink? A beer? Some water? We’ve still got ice cubes in the—”

  “You know what I really want right now?”

  Baffled, she looked back at him and cocked her head. “What?”

  He flicked her a glance. “I want you to quit beating up on yourself.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Yes, you are.”

  She frowned at him, hating the fact that he could read her so clearly. “Yes. I am.”

  He blew out a stream of smoke, pleased that he was finally one up on her. “Now, how about that cold drink?”

  Nodding, she turned to leave the wheelhouse. Then turned back in confusion. “What just happened here?”

  His eye glinted like pewter under the brim of his hat. “You don’t know?”

  “I know that I came up here to apologize for calling you a—”

  “I’ve been called a whole lot worse.”

  “By who?” Or was it whom, Cat wondered. Like her father, she could never remember—

  “By myself.”

  Her mouth opened in a small O.

  Cain was tempted to chuck it closed, but kept his hands firmly on the wheel. “I think I’ll have a glass of milk.”

  “Milk?” she echoed blankly.

  “And one of those chocolate cupcakes,” he decided.

  “Cupcakes?”

  “You eat the other one so it doesn’t go moldy.”

  Amazed, she went below to get milk and cupcakes for two and brought them back up.

  “Your arm looks better.” But she still winced at the sight of the red gash from which he’d removed the binding.

  He grinned. “Nothing like a little beer to chase the germs.”

  “Drink your milk,” she said primly.

  “Yes, mother.”

  She gave him a look that told him he was pushing his luck.

  “Chin, chin.” Cain raised his glass and, seeing her blink in confusion, explained, “That’s the Vietnamese version of ‘bottoms up.’”

  Cat went him one better, lifting her glass to touch his and toasting his health in French. “À votre santé.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” he agreed, and did.

  “So,” she said, sensibly averting her gaze from the frothy milk mustache on his upper lip to peer out the plexiglass window from under the brim of her straw hat, “where are we?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  They were in the Mekong Delta, which was as rich in people as in rice. It was also rife with Viet Cong. They generally played their lethal game of hide-and-seek by night, and they always played by their own rules. Mines could lurk under innocuous-looking water weeds. Vertical bamboo triggers could be concealed in swatches of tall grass. The soft ground of the jungle could hide punjy spikes—booby traps made of a rusty nail dipped in excrement, which could penetrate rubber boot soles, go right up through the foot and cause a nasty case of gangrene.

  There was death in the delta. Swift and vicious and tragic, it bided its time on a maze of rivers and streams and canals. But now, late in the golden afternoon, there was a simple joy in survival.

  Small villages, where people lived in shacks-on-stilts to protect themselves from the flooding that accompanied the monsoon rains, dotted the river’s banks. A smell of charcoal drifted from a nearby bamboo fishing boat. Those food-bearing trees that hadn’t been defoliated by napalm bombs were heavy with coconuts and mangoes and bananas.

  “It’s funny.”

  “What’s funny?”

  Cat was watching a group of laughing children who were taking turns sliding down the b
ack of a big gray water buffalo soaking itself in the shallows of the river. There were three boys and two girls, none of whom appeared to be older than nine or ten, and they were having a ball. Sitting in wooden lawn chairs on the bank, out of reach of the sun’s last glaring rays, their recently bathed mothers kept a careful eye on their offspring as they gossiped and giggled amongst themselves.

  She turned back to Cain and saw by the smile that curved his lips that he’d been observing the pastoral scene as well. “To look at those children playing, you’d never know they were living in a war zone.”

  He frowned as it suddenly struck him that there were no male villagers in sight. This was, after all, the time of day when entire families—fathers included—came down to the river from the rice paddies to wash off the sweat and the grime of their day’s labors before taking their evening meal. But seeing not a single man among the bathers told him they were either sleeping off their killing spree from the night before or getting rested up to launch a new one tonight.

  “By this time next year,” he cautioned her, “those kids will probably be killing Americans.”

  “Maybe the war will be over by then,” she said optimistically, and went back to watching them at play.

  “Yeah, right. And maybe General George Armstrong Custer will come back to share a peace pipe with Ho Chi Minh.”

  Ignoring his sarcastic comeback, Cat smiled yet again when a young Vietnamese woman lifted her baby out of a basket to carry him into the river. Then she wanted to cry when she saw that the baby had no legs. She turned her head away, wondering if her heart could stand any more of these terrible blows.

  “My parents rarely talked about their war.” She looked down at her feet, which were bare. They’d swollen in the heat and humidity, so she’d kicked off her sandals. Her pantyhose were riddled with runs—which would have made them fodder for the trash had she been at home—but she didn’t even consider removing them now. “They both told me at separate times, though, that what bothered them most was seeing children hurt.”

  Cain heard the sadness in her voice and wanted to reach over and put his arm around her shoulders. But he kept his mind on the mission, his eye on the river and his hands to himself. “Children always suffer the worst in a war—whether it’s from food shortages or disease or the loss of a parent.”

  “My mother’s grandfather was a doctor, and she told me about helping him treat a little boy whose house had been bombed by the Germans.” As she spoke, Cat watched a stork with about a six-foot wingspan swooping along the riverbank looking for a place to land.

  “He was burned?” Cain knew that, as painful as it was for her, she needed to talk about the baby she’d just seen. Otherwise, it would fester inside her like an infected wound. The hell of it was, he thought, she was going to be seeing a lot worse before this was over.

  “Yes, terribly.”

  “Did he live?”

  “He lived, but . . .” She sighed and shook her head.

  “But what?”

  “Poor baby, he’d lost his sight.”

  Cat didn’t even stop to think about what she was saying. She just blurted it out. Embarrassment, hot as the sun, climbed her cheeks as she looked over at Cain, trying to gauge his reaction. She wished the deck would open up and swallow her when she saw the defensive set of his jaw.

  “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings,” she murmured, with a catch of undiluted emotion in the words.

  “You didn’t.” But his voice sliced through hers like a razor.

  She reached over and laid her hand on his forearm, ignoring the way his muscles knotted beneath her touch. “Were you in an accident?”

  He couldn’t tell her how high he’d been flying when he’d lost his eye, so he nodded curtly and said, “Yes.”

  Cat got the message. Subject closed. Over and out. Move on to something else. Before she could make another stupid blunder, she retracted her hand and searched for a more suitable topic of conversation. She finally latched onto food, which seemed like neutral territory.

  “What shall we have for dinner?” she asked. “Bologna and cheese or . . . bologna and cheese?”

  Cain relaxed his tense posture when she pulled back. Her gentle touch had gotten to him as nothing else could. She was the cleanest, most decent thing that had come into his life in longer than he could remember. And for just a minute there, he’d been tempted to let her see the man behind the mask.

  “How about grilled shrimp?” he suggested.

  She gaped at him. “Grilled—”

  “With fried rice, of course.”

  “Fried—”

  “And for dessert”—he kissed his fingers like a gourmand—“grapefruit sorbet.”

  “It sounds wonderful.” Her stomach growled in agreement. “But just where, pray tell, are we going to find a feast like that?”

  He cut the boat’s engine and pointed. “A couple of klicks that way.”

  Cat looked around them then and saw that Cain had put into a small, peaceful cove. Behind her was a lush peninsula that appeared oddly untouched by war. Grapefruit trees reached for the sunset-red sky and velvety green plants that she couldn’t even begin to name grew in their shade. Orange firecracker flowers flourished in rich soil cooled by the river.

  “Where are we?” she asked him.

  He doffed his hat and wiped the sweat off his brow. “Put your shoes back on and I’ll show you.”

  Fear feathered down her spine as she stared into the dense growth behind the lovely plants. The longer she looked, the darker and more dangerous it appeared. It was a jungle out there. A jungle full of the kinds of creepy, crawly things that gave people nightmares.

  “What’s a klick?”

  “A kilometer.”

  “Two klicks . . .” She did the math in her head. “That’s a little over a mile.”

  “Maybe it’s only one,” he temporized as she began backing away from him.

  “You go eat shrimp,” she encouraged him in a high, strained voice. “I’ll stay here and have a sandwich.”

  He started to tease her about chickening out on him, until he saw the distress signals flickering in her eyes. Then he hastened to assure her, “There’s nothing in there that will hurt you.”

  “No leeches?”

  “You’re wearing pantyhose.”

  “Bugs?”

  “A few mosquitoes, maybe, but you’ve got on repellent.”

  “Snakes?”

  “I have a gun and a knife.”

  She paled drastically as her imagination began running wild. “I can’t go into that jungle, Cain.”

  “Listen to me, Cat,” he began, his gaze softening.

  “No!” She all but sobbed the word. “I hate bugs! I hate snakes! I hate—”

  He caught her shoulders and shook her gently. “Stop that.”

  But terror had her in its clutches now. “I hate you!”

  “I can handle that.”

  “I mean it!”

  His face was grim as he looked at her. She’d stood up to so much without turning a hair that he hadn’t expected her to fall apart like this. But she was becoming more frantic by the minute, and they were running out of daylight. “Cat, please—”

  “I despise you!” Tears dripped down her cheeks as she jerked free of him. Panic rose in her at the thought of what could be waiting out there in the wilderness. She tore off her hat and sent it sailing across the deck. “And I hate this horrible place!”

  Since reason wasn’t working, Cain weighed his other options. He could slap her. Not real hard, but hard enough to bring her back to her senses. Or he could break his vow and take her in his arms.

  He decided on the latter, pulling her close and hugging her tight. “We’ve come this far together,” he whispered into the fiery curtain of her hair. “Now let’s get off this goddamn boat and go the rest of the way.”

  “I hate the dark,” she said hoarsely. “I don’t know why, but I always have.”

  “It’s sunny on th
e other side.”

  She let out a shaky breath. “And I hate being alone.”

  He gave in for an instant and pressed his lips into her hair. “I’m here.”

  Cat buried her face against his broad chest and burrowed in. He smelled of sweat and man and strength, and she wanted him to hold her forever. She wanted him to keep her safe. To protect her from the dangers that lurked in the jungle and the awful surprise that she suddenly sensed lay just beyond the—

  She stiffened in his arms and asked achingly, “This has something to do with Johnny, doesn’t it?”

  Cain would have given his good eye at that moment to be able to reply with an unqualified “No.” But that would be a lie. And after all the hell she’d gone through to get here, she deserved the truth.

  “Yes.” His throat felt like raw meat when he answered her. “This has everything to do with Johnny.”

  “Is his”—she couldn’t bring herself to say the word body—“Is he there?”

  He tightened his embrace, knowing what it had cost her to ask. “No.”

  “Then why should I—”

  “Because”—it came to Cain like a bolt out of the blue, the answer that had been eluding him ever since she’d showed him that letter—“Johnny wanted you to.”

  She swallowed hard. “You think so?”

  “I know so.” He didn’t have time to explain it to her, not yet, but it made perfect sense to him now.

  She stepped back on legs that felt as brittle as sticks and clenched her hands together to keep them from shaking. As hard as she willed it, though, she couldn’t stop her chin from trembling. “Okay, I’m”—when her voice threatened to break, she drew in a fortifying breath—“ready.”

  He didn’t smile, but there was a faint softening of his hard features. “Let’s do it.”

  While she went down to get her purse and the can of mosquito repellent, he pulled his T-shirt back on and tucked a couple of cigarillos behind his ear. He locked the hatch doors when she came back up and pocketed the keys. Then he flipped a rope ladder over the rail.