Once a Warrior (11 page)

“Sorry about that.”  He was relieved to see that she was still there. Even more relieved when she smiled her forgiveness of his rude behavior. He jammed his hands in his pockets, where they would be safe, and introduced himself. “I’m Mike Scanlon.”

Anne-Marie had heard the rumors about the Americans GIs’ preoccupation with sex. And about the Frenchwomen, many of them younger than she, who sold their bodies for a bar of soap or a pack of cigarettes. She didn’t purport to judge any of them because she didn’t know their circumstances. Just so there was no mistaking
her
intentions, however, she had deliberately kept some distance between herself and the soldier she had spotted from the road.

She’d spent last night at the farm comforting Henriette, who was still in mourning for her oldest brother, Maurice. Then this morning, after putting the chicken that her grieving aunt had given her to cook for her grandfather’s dinner this evening in the wire basket, she’d started back to the village. It was a clear, calm day, but it was hot enough to make her wonder if anyone she knew was swimming in the lake. Riding past the field, she’d almost driven her bicycle into the ditch when she saw the vehicles with white stars instead of swastikas parked there and the small tents sitting among the trees.

But the task she had impetuously set for herself at that moment would have been easier if this tall American weren’t so . . . so dangerously attractive.

Damp brown hair as dark as his eyes had been raked back from a strong face made lean by war. Except for the pale line of demarcation across his forehead, where she presumed his helmet had perched, his skin was bronzed from exposure to the summer sun. His nose was straight, his cheekbones seemingly molded from steel, his chin a monument to both decency and daring. And that smiling mouth, with the dimple beside it, definitely drew her eye.

As did the breadth of his shoulders beneath the drab, olive-green jacket. There were muscles there; she’d seen them. And that memory, coupled with the remembrance of long, bare legs liberally dusted with dark hair, almost made her forget the reason she had approached him in the first place.

Searching for something less distracting to focus on, she looked at the silver bars, one each, pinned to his epaulets. “You are an officer?”

“A first lieutenant, yes.”  Mike had received a battlefield promotion last month, after the all-night pyrotechnics he’d sent crashing down on Cerisy-la-Salle.

“Then I should call you ‛sir’!”

“Only if you want me to call you ‛ma’am’.”

The chicken in her handlebar basket cackled at his comeback and they laughed together, their eyes clinging even after their smiles had faded.

“Mike,” she agreed shyly.

His dimple reappeared. “Anne-Marie.”

“Is Mike your . . .” She faltered, trying to think of the right word. “Knickknack?”

He took a wild guess. “Nickname?”

“
Oui
!”

“Yes.”

She bristled at his teasing smile but stood her ground. “You’re making fun with me.”

“No,” he said, genuinely contrite. But he wished . . . God, how he wished!

A burst of raucous laughter erupted from the far side of the bivouac area, where the enlisted men had pitched their tents. Somebody bellowed, “
Vin
!”  Someone else bawled, “
Cherchez la femme
!”  A chorus of lusty voices, closer by, began singing, “
Roll me o-ver
. . .
Roll me o-ver
! 
Roll me over, lay me down and do it again
!”

She stole a glance in that direction, and he felt his gut tightening when the wariness returned like a shadow to her expressive amber eyes.

“Michael.”  He stepped sideways, blocking her view of the bivouac area, and succeeded in drawing her worried gaze back to him. “My full name is Michael.”       

“In French we say
Michel
.”  Her smoky voice breathed such exotic new meaning into his name that his mouth watered for more.

He swallowed before he started drooling all over her. “What can I do for you?”

Anne-Marie hesitated only because she didn’t want Mike to see her as a beggar. Then she reminded herself that pride was a small price to pay when peoples’ lives were at stake. So she resolved to do what she had come to do, even if it made her look bad in his eyes, and then go home.

“My grandfather is a doctor,” she began, “and so many of our villagers have been wounded by bombs or bullets—“

“Collateral damage,” he muttered under his breath.

“
Comment
?” she asked in confusion.

“That’s the military term for civilian casualties.”  But Mike would have been the first to admit that it took a tougher nut than he not to be moved by the sight of a small child who’d lost a leg and now used a crutch. Or a mother cradling a crying baby swathed in bandages from head to toes.

Anne-Marie was moved for a different reason. She saw the regret in the depths of his dark eyes and wanted, somehow, to reach out to him. She wheeled her bicycle a little closer and laid her hand on his forearm. “To make an omelet, you have to break eggs.”

“You’re not bitter about the damage then?”  He balled his own hands into fists in his pockets, wondering if she knew that everything about her, from the way she rolled her
r
’s to the reassurance of his touch, was tying him in knots.

“We’ve waited a long time for you.”  Feeling his muscles tense beneath her fingers, she withdrew them and grabbed hold of the handlebar again, surprised to discover she needed the support because her knees were unsteady.

Her simple words warmed him as the sun could not, and he suddenly felt like he was awakening from the long, violent nightmare of war.

For this moment, he was a man at peace with himself and with his surroundings. He could hear the birds caroling in the trees. Smell the purple and the yellow wildflowers growing at his feet. For this moment, he could see blue sky overhead and the beautiful young woman standing in front of him.

And for this moment, this brief, shining moment, he wanted that woman as he’d never wanted a woman before.

“You said your grandfather is a doctor,” he reminded her gruffly.

“He needs sulfanilamide powder to treat our wounded, and I . . .” Still a little squeamish about what she was asking, she squared her shoulders and forged ahead. “I thought that if your group had some to spare, I could take it to him.”

He willed himself not to look at the soft swell of her breasts beneath her blue cotton bodice. “I could write you a note to give to the battalion surgeon.”

“A surgeon—
oui
!”  She hoped her voice didn’t betray her nervousness as she thought about walking through the noisy bivouac area. “And where would I find him?”

Mike knew what he had to do. He’d wanted some privacy after spending the better part of two months cooped up in a tank with four other men, so he’d pitched his tent near the lake and away from the crowd. But sending Anne-Marie into a field full of sex-starved soldiers, he acknowledged now, would be like sending a lamb to the slaughter.

“Why don’t I go get it for you?” he offered.

Relief swelled through her. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“I need to talk to my tank crew.”  Most of whom, he suspected, were busy “liberating” the tall bottles of wine and the squat bottles of cognac they’d been given by the grateful French who’d lined the roads as they’d rolled through their newly-liberated villages. He took three steps away from her before he stopped and did an about-face. “Wait here, I’ll—”

“Be right back,” she finished for him.

“Count on it.”  When she smiled at him again, Mike suddenly had the sensation of all the world slipping away so that only he and she were alone in it together in this place and at this time.

As she watched him walk away, Anne-Marie pressed a hand to her jittery stomach. For some reason, it felt as if she had just swallowed one of the butterflies fluttering about the bird-foot violets and the genet blooming in the field. Her heart was behaving erratically, as well. It seemed to be thundering at a thousand pulses a minute.

She attributed her strange reaction to the heat. Either that, or to the excitement of knowing that she would soon have the life-saving medicine her grandfather needed. She refused to even consider that it might be the man now carrying the wooden box back from the bivouac area who excited her so.

How could she repay his kindness? 
That
was what she should be concentrating on, she chided herself. Yet her unruly mind kept recapturing the memory of the taut, well-muscled torso beneath the uniform.

Determined not to be caught staring at him, she studied the small chicken still roosting in her bicycle basket. Ordinarily, it would feed only two people. Now she decided that extra vegetables and wine would stretch it enough for three.

* * * *

“Tell me the name of that dish again.”

“
Coq au vin
.”

Mike didn’t even attempt to repeat it for fear of making a fool of himself. He just hopped into the jeep he’d parked at the curb and nodded his appreciation. “It was delicious.”

“Even the turnips?”  Standing on the step in front of her house, Anne-Marie wore a floral-patterned skirt, a simple white blouse and a mischievous smile.

He grinned, remembering the surprise he’d received when he’d forked what he’d thought were mashed potatoes into his mouth and discovered they were puréed turnips. He must have made a grotesque face, because she’d flashed him a concerned glance. But then, as the turnips’ sweet, buttery taste had melted over his tongue, both his facial and his throat muscles had relaxed, and they’d gone down with surprising smoothness.

“Even the turnips,” he admitted on a laugh.

“And the coffee—”she splayed her slender fingers at the open collar of her blouse—“it wasn’t too bitter for you?”

It had tasted like something out of a test tube, but he couldn’t tell her that. “No, it was fine.”

She saw through his lie. “We can’t get good coffee yet, but soon—”

“It was fine,” he repeated. “Really, everything was just great.”

Dinner had been a convivial, bi-lingual affair, but now the sun had disappeared below the horizon and GIs in combat boots either sat in groups at the sidewalk café in the square or walked arm in arm with local girls along the dusky streets of the village.

“I’m sorry the room was so dim,” Anne-Marie apologized for at least the third time since Mike had arrived. “But our electrical wires are still being repaired.”

“The candles gave us enough light.”  And he’d enjoyed watching their soft flames flicker across her face as she’d sat between him at one end of the table and her grandfather at the other, serving as their interpreter through the meal.

She stepped down, onto the narrow sidewalk that ran past the house. “The
girandole
belonged to my grandmother.”

“The what?”

At his puzzled expression, she searched for the appropriate English word to describe the silvered bronze and crystal table accessory. “Candelabra.”

He cocked her a grin. “Gotcha.”

“It was a wedding present from her parents.”

“Very pretty.”  But not nearly as pretty as she was right now, Mike thought. She’d brushed out her hair, and the evening breeze was sending the honeycomb strands dancing around her face and along her neck and throat. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands to keep himself from doing something he was sure he’d later regret. Like reaching over to grab her and kiss her senseless.

Anne-Marie clasped her own hands together in front of her and twisted her fingers together nervously, wondering if she had said or done something to offend him. What else could make his eyes go so dark and his expression so grim?  Or him so obviously anxious to leave?

“My grandfather asked me to thank you again for the medicine,” she said on a rush of breath.

“I’m glad I could help.”  But recalling the way the candlelight had thrown the bones of Dr. Gérard’s face into sharp, almost skeletal relief, he wondered if she knew the old guy was dying.

“And for the cigarettes, too.”

He’d gotten his hair cut and picked up his clean uniform. Then, remembering his manners, he’d stopped by the Red Cross Clubmobile to see if there was something he could take as a sort of hostess gift. At a loss, he’d bought a carton of Lucky Strikes.

“I didn’t know if either one of you smoked—”

“No, we don’t. But American cigarettes are more valuable than francs. Especially for bartering.”

“Maybe you can trade them for more turnips,” he said, deadpan.

She raised one of those dark brows that provided such a striking contrast to her pale skin. “I’ll call you when they’re ready to eat.”

The two wits smiled at each other in the lavender twilight.

“Well,” he said with a philosophic shrug, “it’s getting late.”

Disappointment swamped her as the silver bars on his broad shoulders winked goodbye to her. “When does your battalion have to leave?”

“I don’t know.”  He shrugged again. “Our equipment is in better shape than anyone expected, so March Order could come any day.”

“Do you think you’ll still be here tomorrow?”

“If I had to guess, I’d say yes.”  But in the skewed reality that was war, he’d learned, yesterday was always long ago and tomorrow was always far away.

“Then we have time,” she said when he reached to start the jeep’s motor.

He retracted his hand and tilted his head at her. “Time for what?”

Anne-Marie felt her face flame as she gazed into his eyes. She’d never been one to flirt, not even before the Occupation, and she had always spurned the advances of the male Résistance members who became enamored of her. Now here she was, all but throwing herself at an American soldier who would probably forget her as soon as he was gone. And praying he wouldn’t say no.

Or notice how shaky her smile was. “Time to go on a picnic.”

Because she’d pronounced it “
peek-neek
,” it took him a few seconds to translate. Even then, he stared at her blankly for another heartbeat or two. “A picnic?” 

“Yes.”  She took a deep breath. “Tomorrow.”