Frowning, she dug through reports gathered from all sources for the past month. Caught up in numbers, she nodded her thanks when another officer brought her a glass of eggnog so heavily spike that the first sip set her throat on fire. She barely heard the strains of White Christmas coming over the Armed Forces radio network.
It was after ten when she finally glanced at the clock. Damn! Gabe had been down for well over two hours. Shoving the recon photos she'd been studying into their Top Secret jacket, she returned the folder to the safe. A quick spin of the lock secured the safe. Wishing those stuck on the late shift a hurried "Merry Christmas," she hurried into the night.
Soft, balmy air surrounded her. With the end of the monsoon season up north, the humidity had dropped to less tortuous levels during the day. The nights were almost pleasant. A large, bright moon hung low in the sky. Its glow glinted on tin roofs weighted down with sandbags.
The three-wheeled hop-tacs disappeared from the base at curfew but Claire was able to hitch a ride across base with the combat support group's exec. The captain was agonizingly homesick, she soon discovered. His jaw worked as he described his last Christmas Eve. He and his wife had stayed up all night putting together their daughter's first two-wheeled bike, then slept right through her squeals of delight the next morning.
"Christ, I hate this place," he said fiercely, gripping the wheel with white-knuckled fists. "Forty-two days and a wake up to DEROS."
DEROS. Date Eligible to Return from Overseas Service. The Holy Grail. The magic date.
Claire murmured something appropriate, secretly ashamed of the fact that she didn't feel the same burning desire to return to the States or finish her air force commitment. She loved her parents. She did! They were good, God-fearing people. They'd cherished Claire and her younger sister all through their childhood.
Julia saw it differently. They'd smothered her, she'd declared in one of their late night gabfests. Rigidly moralistic and unforgiving, they'd infused her with more than her fair share of good old-fashioned guilt. Otherwise, she wouldn't be so ashamed of her body or constantly try to hide it under those baggy fatigues. Nor would she be so damned grateful to Gabe Hunter for every careless bit of affection he bestowed on her.
She was more than grateful to Gabe, Claire acknowledged silently as the Jeep rattled through the darkened streets. Every time he looped a casual arm around her shoulders and staked a claim, she shivered with delight. Every time he unbuttoned her fatigue shirt and played with the heavy mounds of her breasts, she grew a little less embarrassed by her overripe body. And when they made love... Sweet heaven above, when they made love she ignored the crushing guilt wrought by twenty-two years of daily scripture reading and lost herself in his arms.
The thought sent a thrill shimmying through her. She barely heard the captain's on-going commentary about Christmases past.
Gabe would take her in his arms tonight. He'd still be on a high from his mission. So high he would drive into her again and again, until she lost every shred of pride and or control and sobbed for release.
Sometimes he would oblige her, teasing and tormenting her to a fever pitch until he took her over the edge. Sometimes he would pull out and leave her writhing in an agony of need. He would roll her over then, or have her take him in her mouth. He didn't want her too satisfied, he'd tell her with a glinting, heavy-lidded grin. He wanted her edgy and unfulfilled and thinking about him. Only him.
As if she could think of anyone else!
A rat the size of a small dog scurried out of the benjo ditch beside the road and froze in the glare of the Jeep's headlights. Instinctively, the exec swerved to miss it. Then cursed and swerved back again. Claire clutched frantically at the windshield to keep from getting tossed out as the vehicle humped over the creature.
"Sorry," the captain ground out. "Christ, I hate this place."
By the time the exec braked outside the single story structure known as the Zoo, the rat was forgotten and anticipation coursed through Claire's veins like heated wine. She clambered out and hurried toward the long, low building housing the aircrews. Sandbags reached almost to its roof. Air conditioners propped on plywood platforms rattled and wheezed at two windows. More plywood covered the remaining windows, turning day into constant night for the fliers who had to snatch the required hours of crew rest between missions.
None of the occupants of the Zoo were resting tonight, though. A chorus of raucous male voices belted out a rendition of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer that made Claire's eyes widen and the exec break into a grin. When she opened the door, chilled air scented with mildewed boots and the sticky sweet odor of grass greeted her.
"Hey, Simmons!"
A tall, gangly man with a shock of prematurely gray hair waved at her from an open door halfway down the jam-packed hall.
"Hey, Gator," she shouted, waving back.
"'Bout time you got here, woman."
Claire threaded her way through the crowd spilling from the rooms lining the hall. She recognized a good many of the men and most of the women, including the nurses from the medivac staging facility. Although the nurses occupied quarters across base, closer to the flight line, there were so few American women on Tan Son Nhut that they pretty well knew each other by sight, if not by name. Claire didn't spot Julia among the scattering of females, though.
Darn it! She'd promised to make it to the Zoo tonight. She knew how much Claire wanted her and Gabe to get past the prickly antagonism that filled the air like static whenever they were in the same general vicinity.
"Where's Gabe?" she asked when she finally made it to his hootch mate's side.
"First things first," Gator announced. The lanky Floridian grinned and jerked a thumb at the door jam above her head. "That's honest-to-goodness mistletoe, compliments of Military Airlift Command. They brought us a whole damned plane full. Better watch out. It's all over the place. Now pucker up, Lieutenant."
Ignoring Claire's half-hearted protest, he swept an arm around her waist and hauled her against him. Half laughing, wholly embarrassed, she accepted the sloppy kiss he planted on her mouth before easing out of his hold.
"Gabe?" she demanded, raising her voice to be heard over the final, X-rated chorus of Rudolph.
"Last time I saw him, he was heading for the latrine. The beer's on ice in the urinals."
Claire wedged the rest of the way down the hall. She'd almost reached the end when a pure, clear soprano drifted through the noise and laughter. She stopped in her tracks. Transfixed by the crystalline notes, she and everyone else in the hall twisted around to listen to the strains of Silent Night.
The singer was one of the nurses, she saw. A small, fragile looking girl with a pixie cut and huge, dark smudges under her eyes. She seemed to be singing for herself at first. Then her head went back, her lids fluttered down, and she sang for them all.
After the second verse, she sang the first stanza again. One by one the rest of the crowd joined in. Their voices lifted and slowly carried them to a different world. For a few precious moments, all was calm, all was bright.
When the last chorus died away, Claire turned to find Julia standing in the door to the latrine. Red flags rode high in her cheeks and her green eyes glittered with feverish intensity. Her normally smooth Dutch-boy cut was a tangle of silvery gold, as though she'd raked it with both hands.
Concerned, Claire started for her. She'd taken only a few steps when she caught sight of Gabe standing just behind Julia. His mouth was twisted into a sardonic, mocking grin that Claire knew all too well. Her heart sank, and her hopes of making peace between her friends took a steep dive.
They crashed and burned completely when Julia pushed past her with a muttered comment about oversexed sky jocks and what they could do with their mistletoe.
Chapter Six
Richmond, VA
“It was only a kiss,” Julia got out, her voice ragged. “One kiss.”
A fresh wave of pain rippled across Claire's face as she leaned back in
her chair. Her dark lashes swept her cheeks. In the silence that followed, Julia could only watch her and ache for the hurt behind the closed eyes and thin, trembling mouth.
Physically, the years had been kind to her. Her hair was a lighter shade of toffee now, incorporating her scattered silver strands instead of trying to hide them. Her soft, wide-spaced brown eyes still dominated the perfect oval of her face. She was too thin, though. Far too thin.
With the birth of her son, Claire’s breasts had ballooned so painfully that she’d been forced to resort to reduction surgery. Julia had been there with her, caring for Davey during the day, holding Claire’s hand at night while she wept with the pain and the loss. Gabe had loved the lush mounds of her breasts, she’d sobbed. That much of her he’d loved.
As if in echo of that agonizing night, Claire moaned. “He loved me. In his way. I know he loved me.”
Julia lifted a hand, let it drop. “He did. That Christmas. The singing. The mistletoe. It was only a kiss.”
A desperate need to believe flickered in Claire’s eyes. Seeing it, Julia wanted to cry. This was how it had been in Vietnam. How it had been all the years since. Claire wanting to believe. Needing to believe. Then, as now, Julia allowing her to.
“It was just a kiss,” she whispered again. “That’s all it was.”
Her friend leaned forward, hands locked together in her lap. Her throat worked, as though she had to prime it before it would release the hoarse, inevitable question.
“And after Christmas? After the singing and the mistletoe?”
Julia searched for the words to frame her answer. What was left of her future, perhaps of her life, rode on the next few moments.
“What happened, Jules? What happened when you...?” She stopped abruptly, her face going paper white. “Never mind! I don’t want to know.”
“Claire...”
“Don’t tell me.” She pushed out of her chair, swaying a little. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
Alarmed by her deathly pallor, Julia sprang up. “You have to believe me. Whatever happened between Gabe and me had nothing to do with what he felt for you.”
“No! I don’t want to hear it!”
“You’ve got to. You have to know...”
“Don’t you understand? The more I know, the more I’ll have to tell them. The investigators. They’re coming back, Julia. To talk to me. After I...” She wrapped her arms around her waist. “After I recover from the shock and have had time to remember more details. So don’t tell me any more. Please, Julia! Please!”
“All right, Claire. Calm down. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay. We both know it’s a hell of a long way from okay.” Tears brimmed in her dark eyes. “But I can’t handle any more.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Just leave, Jules. Now.”
Feeling infinitely weary, Julia picked up her belted all-weather coat. “Maybe, when the investigation is over, we can talk through this.”
Claire put a hand over her eyes. “Maybe.”
One kiss.
A single kiss.
How could it change three people’s lives forever?
The question haunted Julia during the long drive back to her townhouse in Alexandria, a few miles south of the Pentagon. The light snow that had fallen earlier had disintegrated into a wet, sloppy slush. Heavy sprays hit her windshield whenever another car whipped past, which wasn’t often in these dark hours before dawn. Weary beyond words, she exited the Interstate and drove through Old Town’s deserted, lamp-lit streets.
One kiss.
It had happened so long ago. In another life. Yet Julia was sure that if she closed her eyes and opened her numbed mind, she’d feel again the hard, hot pressure of Gabe’s mouth on hers. Taste his greedy hunger. Lose herself in the press of his body pinning hers against the latrine wall.
Gabe Hunter kissed the same way he did everything else, Julia had discovered that long ago Christmas Eve...with a single-minded passion that overwhelmed her initial protests and consumed her with its white hot heat.
Aching at the memory, Julia turned into the alleyway behind the row of restored townhouses on Queen Anne Street and lifted an arm to press the garage door opener attached to the visor. The garage yawned open. Like a sleek, well-trained Thoroughbred, the Mercedes glided into its stall.
Unconscious, mechanical instincts pulled at Julia. Dimly, she understood that she should shut off the engine. Close the garage door. Gather her purse and go inside. She managed to twist the key in the ignition and cut the headlights but couldn’t seem to find the strength or the will to move.
She knew what waited for her inside. Darkness. Elegant emptiness. A bad tempered cat. More memories.
The automatic garage light went out, plunging her into blackness. With a small sigh, Julia pressed the remote control once more. The overhead light came on again. The door rumbled downward.
Weariness and a numbing despair clawed at her as she slid out of the Mercedes and climbed the stairs. She couldn’t believe she’d left this house only this morning, secure in her work and her busy life. Now, she had neither. Only a past that wouldn’t let go of her.
She punched in the security code without conscious thought and let herself into the tiled utility room just off the airy, high-ceilinged kitchen. Kicking off her black leather heels, Julia dropped her purse on the island that served as cooking center and gathering spot during the informal parties she often hosted, then peeled off the all-weather coat. She tossed the overcoat at one of the cane-backed chairs pulled up to the island, and missed. The silver eagles pinned to the epaulets clinked as they hit the floor tiles.
Immediately, Henry the Cat let her know his displeasure. The disreputable-looking feline jumped onto the island counter. Holding his broken tail at a 90˚ angle, he marched across the green tiles and let loose with one of the yowls that lifted the hairs on the back of Julia’s neck.
“Okay, okay! I know you’re hungry.”
She reached into the cabinets under the island for the bag of cat food and poured the dry pellets into his dish. Henry’s tail flicked once, disdainfully.
With an irritated sigh, Julia went to the fridge and pulled out the container of sardines she’d opened last night. When she lifted the Saran Wrap, the stench almost made her gag.
She hated sardines, and she cordially disliked the animal she fed them to.
For the thousandth time, she asked herself why in the hell she’d let this tiger-striped fiend into her life. So he’d prowled through the open door when her townhouse was undergoing the basement-to-rooftop repairs necessary to make it livable? So he’d moved into the renovated structure before she had? That didn’t mean he had squatter’s rights. She could have called animal control. She could have lured him into a box with a single sardine and whisked him off to the Humane Society. Instead, she’d ended up sharing her quarters with a wretched excuse for a pet and regretted it ever since.
Averting her head, she dumped the sardines on top of the dry food, stirred the mess together, and dropped the dish on the tiles.
“Go for it."
Henry condescended to leap off the counter and plant his squat, muscled body in front of the dish. His bent tail flicked right, left, then right again. Julia had satisfied his immediate need. He had no further use for her.
Wearily, she accepted her dismissal. Leaving the overcoat where it lay on the tiles, she yanked off the Velcro tab tie to her blouse and opened the top buttons. She felt as though she was suffocating. As though the air had been sucked out of her lungs, along with every ounce of her usual energy.
It was after two a.m., she reminded herself. She’d been up since five this morning. No, yesterday morning. In that unbroken stretch of time, her once secure world had splintered like a sheet of glass hit with a sledgehammer. In another few hours, she’d have to shower and dress and meet Special Agent Marsh at the small conference room where he’d continue his probe into her past. She had until then to try to
tape over the splinters and keep the glass from shattering completely.
It didn’t occur to her to go upstairs and crawl into bed. She couldn’t have slept, even if she’d wanted to. Instead, she walked into flowing dining/living area that took up the rest of this floor. Her stocking feet made no noise on the polished hardwood floors. As she crossed to the wet bar built into floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the sharp, piney scent of the Douglas fir she’d decorated for Christmas just a few days ago assaulted her senses. Blindly, Julia reached for a stoppered decanter and splashed its contents into a heavy, cut crystal tumbler.
Lifting the tumbler, she took a long swallow. Blended whiskey burned its way down her throat. She choked and blinked away the tears that stung her eyes, then emptied the glass. Fire leaped in her stomach as she refilled the tumbler. A wine and occasional margarita sipper, Julia kept the potent liquor on hand for her guests. Tonight, she needed something stronger than wine.
Glass in hand, she crossed to the white leather sofa facing the fireplace. Sinking into its buttery soft depths, she propped her feet on the brassbound Korean trunk that served as a coffee table and stared at the shadowy pine tree in the corner.
Her mouth twisted. How ironic, how bitingly, bitterly ironic that Gabe had come back to haunt her now, a few days before Christmas.
As Claire had guessed, the last macabre dance between her and Gabe had begun, really begun, on Christmas Eve. In a latrine, yet. With one kiss under that damned mistletoe.
Her hands tightened around the tumbler of scotch. Until that kiss, she’d believed that she could control the confused, contradictory emotions Gabe Hunter roused in her. Until that Christmas Eve, she’d been able to deny his hold over her. Then he’d trapped her against the latrine wall and taken her mouth with his.
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