First to Burn (12 page)

“Chiesa means church. Nothing like extra pressure in Catholic school.”

They sipped wine until the shadows receded from his eyes. Drinking alcohol with enlisted personnel at unit functions wasn’t fraternization, but this restaurant, with its dim lighting and tiny tables, wasn’t a hail and farewell at Club Hood.

Stay focused on questions
, she chided herself.
That’s the purpose of this dinner.

“Your mother’s a wonderful baker.” Again, he changed the subject. “And an excellent judge of clothing. Do you have other family?”

“Some.” She reached for her wineglass to cover her pause. She didn’t talk about her stepfather Carl or her stepbrother. Twenty years ago, when her mother had married her third husband, she’d drilled her daughter never to talk about her new family.
Never tell our name to people who don’t know it.
Never tell anyone where we’re going or where we went or who we went with.
Not ever.
As an adult the dictum had been easy to follow, because she’d tired of boyfriends who either dropped her when they suspected the nature of Carl’s business or made constant clichéd jokes about the mob. “You?”

“About the same.”

“Be careful. We shouldn’t get too personal. Anything you tell me might be a security breach.” She started laughing and had to set the blue cut-glass goblet down abruptly to avoid spilling wine. This was June in a lovely restaurant in Rome, and she’d already reminded him they were thousands of miles from everyone who knew them. Perhaps tonight she should enjoy a sample of what life for women outside the army was like. No deployments, no rank, no archaic rules—only dinner. Dress rehearsal for next year in the civilian dating scene.

“Can you say all that again, slowly? I like watching the way your lips move.”

“Then watch closely.” She leaned forward until the tabletop pressed into the space under her ribs. It brought her very near to him. “You’re. A. Big. Liar.”

“Once more? I didn’t quite hear—”

“Gladly. Biii—”

He popped a tiny pickled gherkin into her mouth.

She chewed. “Ohh, that’s good. Vinegary and salty and sweet.”

“Thought you’d like it.” After the waiter refilled their wineglasses, he continued. “So why’d you decide to be a doctor?”

“I drew a quartermaster assignment graduating from ROTC.” Her turn to shrug. “With my luck, I’d have ended up commanding a laundry, so I opted for med school. Fewer suds.”

“Now who’s not being honest?” Their first course arrived, interrupting him, but he kept his gaze fixed on her face. “I thought I asked a fair question.”

She looked down first, and studied her spoon and fork as if it mattered which she used for risotto. Talking about her father wasn’t like talking about Carl. It wasn’t betrayal. It was just...personal.

“When I was five, my father died. He had stomach cancer, but no one knew until the end. Everyone thought he had ulcers, and some people said he drank too much, but he barely touched alcohol. He was a big Italian guy who delivered vegetables, you know. Strong. So he couldn’t be sick. And then he was gone. My first stepfather died after only a few years too.” What had made her share that? She tried not to revisit her past, but Wulf’s story about his name had seemed so personal. “Guess I want other kids to have their dads longer.”

“Then you’re in the right job.” His voice was very soft.

He didn’t know she was a short-timer with less than a year to go, so he couldn’t have intended to make her squirm, but she drew a furrow in the saffron-colored rice and stared at her food instead of him anyway.

“Why not an E.R. somewhere? Why the army?”

The emotions bottled in her chest shattered, leaving one: anger. “People ask women that all the time. They ever ask you?” Dammit, they’d been doing so well. “Who says, ‘Hey, badass guy, why are you in the army?’” Part of her registered his head shake, but she couldn’t stop. “Nobody gives your career choice a second thought unless you’re a woman, then they’re always asking why, why, as if it’s a mystery why a woman would want to serve her country. Well, I do. I’m an officer in the army. They paid every penny of my Princeton tuition and now I’m giving back. And I love it.” Her speech hung over the table, a sharp and angry contrast to the soft pink peonies, as she dropped her hands to her lap. Nothing short of traction could stop Italian hand-talking. And nothing, not even how much she believed in her mission for the army, was going to keep her from achieving her dream of a nine-to-five life.

“Wow,” he said, staring at her with raised brows.

“Oh, geez.” She wanted to slip under the table, but all she could do was cover her eyes with her palm. “You didn’t deserve that rant. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m more sorry. I never realized how...sexist?...that question sounded. You’re right that no one ever asks me why I’m in the army. I deserved to be set straight.”

Had he said she was right? She lowered her hand and looked into his face. She had heard him correctly. Instead of thinking she was a nutcase, he’d apologized for making chauvinist assumptions. Why was this paragon of a man still single?

Jazz began at the piano across the room. Candlelight flickered in the wineglass facets and reflected off the silverware as they ate, and talked, and laughed about music and travel and food. When she imagined dancing with him, his gaze connected with hers, and he stared like he too imagined where they might go next. Just as well that the music stopped and after-dinner espressos appeared alongside their empty bottle. It was their second, wasn’t it?

A tendril of sobriety returned, enough to prod her into one more try for answers. “You promished—promised—if I came to dinner, you’d tell me the truth.”

“I promised I wouldn’t lie.”

“That’s—”

“Different.” He softened his refusal with a smile.

She rolled her eyes. Semantics. But a night of wine and music made it impossible to be annoyed about anything except how little the two bottles affected him.

“While the hemoglobin comment was a juvenile effort, and I deserved to be caught out, the rest of what I said about security breaches stands.”

“You’re so...” Next to her empty glass, her fingers clenched into a fist. “Frustrating.”

“I know.” He ran a finger down her knuckles, the first touch since she’d locked eyes with him at the Spanish Steps. He took his time circling each bump and into the dips, back and forth in an intricate tracery on her hand.

Her fist unfurled as her fingers sought his. While he limited his touch to her hand, she wanted to stretch like a cat, even wiggled her spine in her chair.

“You’re afflicted with a powerful case of curiosity, aren’t you?”

With her voice trapped in her throat, she answered by nodding. She couldn’t look away from where his hand stroked hers against the white tablecloth. Darkness had shrouded their connection at Caddie during the movie, but tonight she could see every caress as his fingers entwined with hers and his thumb circled on her palm.

“Are you curious about...” His voice deepened as if he too were affected. “Us?”

She nodded, speechless with the desire that flowed from the brush of his hands. She imagined his hands moving over her body, looking as strong and golden while unbuttoning her shirt as they did against the candlelit tablecloth. Her chest swelled with each breath as if he were already touching her breasts.

He stood and helped her to her feet. “I look forward to satisfying that curiosity.”

Her daze continued as they walked to her hotel with her hand tucked between his elbow and side, close enough to bump hips or shoulders every third or fourth step. She drifted across the lobby to the elevator. She hadn’t needed to tell him which hotel; he’d admitted his captain had asked her roommate for details under pretext of an anniversary vacation. As if that would’ve fooled Jennifer. It only guaranteed a bucket of questions she’d have to answer back at Caddie.

“Which floor?” he asked.

“Three.” Reality intruded with the ding of the elevator’s antique bell. Reality bit. “I can find my room.” She stepped over the threshold into the old-fashioned metal cage. “Alone.”

“Nevertheless, as a gentleman I shall escort you.” The metal grille rattled closed, locking them in the tiny space.

“Nevertheless?” The elevator jolted to a start, knocking her into his shoulder. “Who replaced Sergeant Wardsen with an English major?” At dinner she’d avoided using his name, but as each ding marked another floor, she had a deadline to remind him of their different ranks.

“What time shall I come tomorrow?” His arm circled her shoulders while his other hand slid the cage door open.

“You’re coming back? What are you, a con-she-, I mean, con-see-erge?” The plastic key card flexed in her grip.

“Your mood for the last five minutes hasn’t changed my mind.” As he steered her along the hall, his grip was firm but not grabby. He wouldn’t
be
grabby. “I like smart mouths even more than beautiful women who can’t hold their wine.”

His meaning temporarily eluded her, but he’d said beautiful and he’d smiled, so it must have been fine.

Although she didn’t care if he liked her. He couldn’t like her. She was a superior officer. She couldn’t like him. Not
that
way.

She tried to slip the key card in the slot but couldn’t make the pieces connect. Sounding remarkably like her roommate, a voice in her head buzzed that he’d be able to connect the right parts. When his hand wrapped around her fingers, her knees wobbled from the urge to rest against him, but instead she jerked to the side.

“Whoa, gotcha.” His forearm supported her as he eased the card out of her fingers.

The electronic lock clicked and flashed green.
Enter.
He couldn’t. She couldn’t.

“Shall we say oh-nine-hundred?” Pushing the door open, he shepherded her past his body. His hand, above the rise of her butt, seared through her clothes like an electrocauterization.

“I’ll bring aspirin,” he said. “Sleep well.”

She turned too slowly to see him before the door shut, but she thought he’d murmured
domani ci baciare.
What the...he didn’t want to...
why not?

She glared, but the closed door didn’t offer an explanation.

And didn’t that Italian bit mean something about tomorrow and kissing?

Chapter Eleven

Theresa perched on the edge of the blue-velvet fainting couch and leafed through her guidebook for the third time. Two glasses of water and twenty push-ups had tied off the slight hangover threading through her head, so she could decline any aspirin Wulf might bring.

If he showed up.

Her book extolled restaurants, nighttime strolls and ideas for
la dolce vita
, as if every tourist had a partner. So what if these photos of the Roman Forum at night made it harder to turn Wulf away and go forth unaccompanied? To follow the rules, she had to. She’d thank him for last night’s dinner and then politely refuse today’s invitation. No waffling, no sinking in his eyes.

The knock jolted her to her feet. She settled the wide belt of her safari dress, then crossed to the door.

“Good morning.” The standard greeting covered her awkwardness as she drank in the contrast of his square shoulders against the hallway’s cream-patterned wallpaper.

“Good morning to you too.” His deep voice, not the simple words, sent tingles racing from her chest to her fingertips.

She retreated, but he mistook it as an invitation and followed. Knowing he’d pass too close, she abandoned the dim entry for safety in the middle of the well-lit room.

“You picked a good hotel.” His gaze traveled her curves.

“How can you tell?” Until he’d invaded, her room had felt spacious. Now it felt as tight as the littlest two-seat cars that roamed the city. “You haven’t looked at
the room.
”

He glanced past her to the bed. She’d smoothed the duvet and fluffed all six pillows, but his eyelids lowered as if he could see through her effort to the sheets where she slept.

“It has everything that matters.” His nostrils flared and he closed his eyes. When he opened them, it was as if he’d forced himself away from a ledge. “Ready?”

“Um, no.” Somehow she had to ask him to leave. At the bureau, she fiddled with a lip gloss tube and caught a glimpse of her face in the mirror.
You need color
, her mother would chide. “You don’t really want to sightsee.”

“No.” He stalked closer as she unscrewed the plastic cap. “But I’ll sacrifice for you.”

Sounding like a bigger promise than a few hours of his day, his words recalled the helicopter crash aftermath. Her hand trembled as she brought the squeeze tube to her lips without looking away from his reflection. Automatically, she stroked the shimmering wine color across the bottom curve while she watched him. The nerves and muscles connected to her quivering thighs urged her to pivot into his arms, but her brain rejected risking her career. “Don’t—”

Outside, metal grated on metal, as if a car scraped a steel post.

Wulf spun in a blur, hands up and forward of his body, to face the window.

The metallic rasping stopped.

The speed and intensity of his startle reflex reminded her that he was a Special Forces soldier, trained to be fast and alert. He was also a mystery, and the only way to find answers was to spend time together.

In a few seconds the low hum of the room’s electronics and muted street noises released him from his defensive position. He stared into her eyes, his gaze heated by what she guessed was a mix of adrenaline and embarrassment spiking his system like a potent drug.

Her hands braced on the vanity behind her hips. The starched edges of her dress sleeves rubbed the underside of her arms where she supported herself. He was six feet away, but it was almost as if he stroked her body, because she could feel every seam of her clothing where it touched her skin. She swallowed, at a loss for her next words as he continued to stare. She wanted to ask if he was fine. She wanted to tell him to stop staring. She wanted to lay her palm on his cheek and whisper that he was allowed to relax because this was a vacation. But his gaze pinned her into unmoving, unthinking, unbreathing silence.

Then he turned away. By the time she exhaled, a chasm separated them.

“Unless you put out a Do Not Disturb sign, we’re leaving.” He spoke from the entry, his back to her. His head hung low, and his hands gripped the door frame above his shoulders, as if he waited for a whip to descend.

She, the good girl, the smart jock, the girl picked first in intramurals but not for house parties, had reduced him to a penitent. Gathering her self-control along with her purse, she decided they both needed fresh air.

He must’ve heard her footfalls on the carpet, because he opened the door and held it. Without exchanging a word, they let the elevator deliver them from temptation. Each ding as they passed a floor unwound her tension another notch. In the populated safety of the lobby, she found her voice. “You’ve visited Rome before, haven’t you?”

“I lived here for a while.”

“Lucky you. When?”

“Before I joined the army.”

He couldn’t have been more than thirty, and to be a staff sergeant he would have been in the army at least eight years. “An exchange program? Or with your family?” She preceded him through the outside door.

“Exactly. Last night you mentioned the double-decker bus tour, so I bought tickets.”

“That sure of me, were you?” She turned and caught him staring at her butt.

“Hopeful.” The oversized paper stubs in his hand and the crinkles around his eyes mollified her into a smile. “Rome’s the Eternal City. I’m eternally hopeful.”

“Well, I’m hopeful about some espresso, if you pick up the pace back there.” She whipped forward, her take-charge voice damping her desire to let her hips sway.

“Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

“Our next stop is Bocca della Verità,” Theresa read from the guidebook as the bus rolled through narrow streets. “After we visit the Mouth of Truth we can lunch across the river.” The past three hours with Wulf had been perfect. Following breakfast, they’d strolled to the Ara Pacis Museum, where he’d touched her back to alert her to stairs or ramps while she immersed herself in the audio tour. He didn’t roll his eyes or interrupt while she absorbed the art. As they left, he’d plucked a straw hat from a street vendor and settled it on her head. He’d been right about the sun on the uncovered top deck.

“Shall we de-bus?” she asked, the part of her that struggled to maintain an appropriate distance restraining her hand from touching his shoulder.

“You’re in charge.” He folded the tourist map with a soldier’s ease.

Perhaps he didn’t notice when his trousers brushed the bare skin between her knee and her hem, but she did, because she wanted to stroke her palm across the fabric. She imagined it would be warm from his leg, and smooth under her fingers, but she ordered herself to sit like the frieze of Octavia until the shuffling of other tourists released them to exit.

In the shade of the front portico at the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, they waited their turn to approach the giant stone face. The parents of a boy, four or five years old, urged him to poke his fingers in the carving’s mouth while they took a picture, but he crossed his arms and tucked both hands securely in his armpits.

“He has the right idea,” Wulf whispered. “Don’t reach in farther than you can see.” Then his body tightened like a tourniquet, and he dropped his sunglasses from the top of his head to his nose while he slid behind her.

“Surely you don’t believe in the Mouth of Truth?” She twisted to see him.

“Do you?” His stance altered, as if he poised on the balls of his feet, while he tugged her hat across her forehead until it tipped awkwardly toward the floor. The line inched forward as the family left, replaced by Japanese tourists.

“It wouldn’t matter if I did. I don’t lie so it won’t bite.” She pushed the brim out of her eyes. His stance and his face reminded her of his reaction to the noise this morning.

“I don’t intend to stick my hand in.” On the way up, his palm passed hers coming down and again he jammed the hat to her eyebrows. “Leave it.” His voice sounded lower and uninflected, like a command instead of a request.

“You don’t lie that much, do you?” She’d intended to pat his arm and reassure him that for right now she wasn’t dwelling on his lies, but he must have thought she wanted to remove her hat because he intercepted her hand. His clenched fingers revealed his tension, although he knew how to check his strength so his grip didn’t crush her. If she could’ve seen behind his mirrored lenses, she suspected she’d have recognized his on guard squint. Was it the crowd that had tightened his screws? Being in Rome, in civvies, and away from their duty station didn’t sanction holding his hand, but he seemed to need reassurance—justification enough to twine her fingers with his. “The story about liars is only a legend.”

“I lie to everyone. To you, to the army.” The corner of his mouth drooped, and his voice grated across his vocal chords, its smooth cadences replaced with sandpaper. “Even to my team.” Her fingers fluttered in empty air as he abandoned her and made a fist against his thigh. “My whole life is a lie.”

She didn’t know how to respond, so she rested her hand on his upper arm. His muscles quivered, tense and on guard like his fist and jaw. “We can go.”

“No, you want to do this.” He gestured her forward. “Be quick.”

The blank eyes and raised brows carved on the ancient stone resembled a face frozen by fear more than a truth-seeking river spirit. She cradled her right arm across her torso. He had a point about sticking hands into dark holes.

“You don’t have to do it either,” he whispered in her ear. His shoulders walled off the sunlight. “But the line is waiting.”

She couldn’t recall the last time she’d told a lie. This was a silly myth, so she closed her eyes and shoved her hand in the opening.

Nothing happened. She started to turn, but he gripped her upper arms and kept her facing the stone.

“I’ll snap a picture of both y’all,” an American voice offered.

“No thanks.” Wulf’s voice sounded muffled, as if he’d tucked his chin to his chest. He lifted her nearly to her tiptoes and shifted her along the wall so fast she had to crab step to keep her feet in line with her hips.

“What are you—”

Without turning their bodies from the wall, Wulf hauled her over Santa Maria’s threshold and kicked the door closed.

“Hey—” She wiggled and tried to peer at the door behind them, but his shoulders and chest blocked her sightlines, as if he’d doubled in size. “Why—”

“Move.” Locking her wrist in an iron grip, he dropped her flat-footed and hustled her across the sanctuary.