Once a Warrior (29 page)

“When Johnny what?” he prompted softly.

She raised her head and met his gaze. “Proposed to me.”

A strand of hair had blown across her lips. Cain gripped the wheel hard with both hands to keep from reaching over and brushing it aside. “Sounds like a real nice memory.” 

“Yes.”  Cat hadn’t thought of it in quite that way before. She smiled a secret little smile that told him she’d temporarily left him and this whole helllacious scene behind. “Yes, it is.”  Then she tucked that tempting strand of hair behind her ear and widened her smile to include him. “Thanks for reminding me.”

What the hell was going on? he asked himself. He should be focused on the mission, and the mission alone. Instead, he felt himself being pulled, tugged at, by the woman standing beside him. A woman who no more belonged in his world than he did in hers.    

“You’re welcome.”  Disgusted at himself for letting her get to him, he scoped the water again, almost wishing Charlie would pull out of one of the myriad canals that fed into the river and pick a fight with him.

“And for rescuing me.”  She was still amazed at how instinctively she trusted him. With that raven hair and black eye patch, he looked like a pirate, a man who not only attracted danger but also actively courted it. Yet she felt completely safe with him.       

He gave her that half-smile again, the one that just barely curled his lips. “It was either take you with me or leave you there to talk the Viet Cong to death.”

Ignoring his gibe, she squinted at the riverbank and saw nothing but unrelieved blackness. “Where are we, anyway?”

“We just passed Shanty Town.”

“Wherever that is.”

“The last and largest slum on the outskirts of Cholon.”

“We’re going south.”  It wasn’t a guess; she’d glanced at the compass.

“Very good.”  His plan was to tool a few miles down river, then find a safe berth in some little canal off the beaten path. Since Charlie favored the night, he figured they were better off traveling by day.

“I got an A in Geography,” she said smugly.

He bit back a smile at the sudden image of her in a parochial school pinafore, starched white blouse and saddle shoes. “Then you can navigate.”       

Cat yawned and looked over at Cain sheepishly. “Sorry. It’s been a long night.”

“And it’s not over yet,” he said, watching white tracers arc across the sky.

She glanced at her wrist and realized she’d left her watch on her bedside table. “What time is it, anyway?”

He checked the clock on the instrument panel. “Almost three.”

“And we left the hotel—”

“A little after midnight.”       

She yawned again. “It seems like days ago.”

He took a drink of beer. “Why don’t you go below and get some shuteye?”

“You believe Johnny is dead, don’t you?”

Her question caught him off-guard, like a Surface-to-Air missile at ten thousand feet. For a moment he was dumbstruck. He studied her in profile. She was the picture of calm, staring out the glass. But like the river, he knew, she was roiling beneath. 

“Lots of guys have come walking out of the jungle after a crash that should have killed them.”  He couldn’t tell her that he was living proof of that. Not without blowing his cover. If he closed his eye, though, he could still see the doctor looking down at him sympathetically and saying how sorry he was that they couldn’t save the other one.

“But?”

“They’re the exception, not the rule.”

Feeling her control starting to frazzle, she lowered her head and looked at her hands. Later she could grieve. But now, not knowing what waited around the next bend, she needed to keep it together. 

“I guess I’ll go lie down for awhile.” 

“I could be wrong, you know.” 

 She raised her head and smiled, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Good night, Cain.”

He stared down at her for a long reflective moment before he turned his attention back to the river. “Good night, Cat.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Good morning.”

“What time is it?”

“Why?”  Cain grinned at her over the mug of coffee he’d poured from the pot on the stove, his eye gleaming like polished silver. That was the only thing about him that could even remotely be called “polished,” though. His hair was rumpled, his clothes wrinkled, and a night’s growth of dark stubble shadowed his jaw, carving intriguing hollows in the planes of his face. “Are you playing ‘Beat the Clock’?”

“Very funny,” Cat sniffed as she swung her legs over the side of the bunk and sat up. Then she shoved her own disheveled hair out of her eyes and squinted at him. She’d only meant to lie down for a few minutes, to cry for a little while, and had never dreamed that she would actually go to sleep. But the rocking of the boat and the rumbling of the engines had been so soothing that she’d just drifted off. And had slept like the proverbial log.

Now the sun was peeking through the porthole, almost blinding her with its brightness, and the smell of freshly perked coffee filled the cabin.

She breathed in its delightful aroma. “Is there enough of that to go around?”

“Sure is.”  When she made to get to her feet, he waved her to remain where she was and set his own mug aside. “I’ll get it.”

“Oh, thanks.”  She planted both palms in the small of her back and arched it, stretching her cramped muscles.

“Milk or sugar?” he asked her over his shoulder.

“You have sugar?”

What he had was a small pink-and-white box of cubes in the pantry, which she’d apparently overlooked the night before. “One or two?”     

“Two, please.”  It felt strangely intimate, watching him pour and stir sugar into her morning coffee. She squirmed, discomfited by the thought, and wished that she’d just gotten up and done for herself.

Waiting on her didn’t seem to bother him in the least, however. To the contrary, he appeared happy to do it. He was neat too, sponging off the counter after setting the pot back on the burner and replacing the box in the pantry. Much neater, she mused, than—

Mentally Cat sprang erect. There was no comparison between Johnny and Cain. None whatsoever. Johnny was her Blue Angel, while Cain was . . . She skimmed her gaze over the unruly hair, the broad shoulders that stretched the seams of his T-shirt, that tough, street fighter’s body. Cain was the devil’s own.

“One coffee, two sugars.”  He caught her studying him from behind when he turned to face her. For an instant their gazes locked, reinforcing the feeling of intimacy that had so flustered her only seconds ago. Then that buccaneer’s grin curled his mouth, and he handed her the mug.

Flushing slightly, she smiled her thanks and took a sip. The sweet, steaming liquid scalded her tongue, but she wouldn’t have spit it out if her life had depended on it. Feeling as if she’d swallowed a flaming sword, she racked her brain for something—anything—to say.

“I didn’t hear you come down this morning,” she finally managed.

“I washed up, but I figured showering and shaving would be pushing it.”  The sunlight caught his wide, white smile in his beard-darkened face.

She looked away from that disturbingly attractive smile. “Did you get some sleep?” 

“Couple of hours.”  He’d backed into a narrow canal, out of the line of fire, and had gone below to see if she was all right. She’d been curled up in a ball on his bunk, the silvery paths of her tears streaking her pale cheeks. Before he could do something stupid, like bury his face in her copper-penny tangle of hair that provided such a striking contrast to those black pajamas, he’d gone back up on deck and stretched out on the portside bench. And had awakened with an erection like a telephone pole.

“Where are we now?” 

“About thirty miles south of Saigon.”

“How much farther do we have to go?”

“You’re a regular Baby Snooks this morning, aren’t you?”

Back on familiar ground, Cat tossed him a cheeky smile. “Keep that up and I won’t offer to make you breakfast.”

“You can cook, huh?”

“I make a mean cheese omelette.”

“A cheese omelette I can handle.”  Leaning back against the sink, Cain took another sip of his cooling coffee and eyed her across the cabin. “But mean”—he shook his head and smiled slowly—“it’s way too early for mean.”

He was coming on to her, she realized, and felt herself go cold all over. And she, a married woman, was coming right back at him. Blocking out an unbidden image of Johnny’s serious face, she pushed to her feet

“I’ll wash up, and then I’ll fix us something—” Her voice broke, and though she turned away quickly, he saw the tears spring to her hazel eyes.

He saw the ghosts, too. The husband who had disappeared without a trace and the life she had planned with him shredded by the winds of this stinking war. Vexed, he topped off his coffee and headed for the hatchway.

“I’ll be topside if you need me for anything.”  And she would need him, he told himself. Before this ended, she would need him as much as he was beginning to need her.

Cat felt so hot and sticky and smelly that she decided to take a shower. In lieu of shampoo, she washed her hair with soap. After she’d toweled off, though, she was in a dilemma as to what to put on. She couldn’t force herself to wear her underclothes again until she’d rinsed them out in the sink, so she settled on the pantyhose and black pajamas.

She combed her hair and left it loose, figuring the sun would bake it dry. Found toothpaste in the medicine cabinet, next to the mosquito repellent, and spread some on her index finger to brush her teeth. Then, praying that the bra and panties she’d left hanging on the only towel rack got dry before Cain needed to use the bathroom again, she went back out into the cabin and whipped up their breakfast.

The heat and the humidity that greeted her on deck staggered her almost as much as the tricolors he was flying. 

“What’s with the French flag?”  She’d almost dropped the paper plates and plastic forks she was carrying when she saw it hanging limply from the mast that speared up into the bleached blue sky.

Cain smelled his soap on her skin when she entered the wheelhouse and decided that the second—okay, the third—best route to a man’s heart was through his nose. Nodding his thanks, he took the first and dug in. “I found it when I was tearing this baby apart and figured it might come in handy someday.”      

Since Johnny had left, Cat had eaten most of her meals alone. Now, even though it meant she had to stand, she opted for company. “But given the hundred years of bad blood between the French and the Vietnamese, isn’t that a little like waving a red flag in front of a bull?” 

He swallowed and shook his head. “Not this week.”

She paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Why not this week?”

“Great omelette, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“Nice and fluff—”

“The French flag,” she reminded him. 

He savored the last bite. Swallowed it reluctantly. “Charles de Gaulle said something the other day that really pissed off the Americans. Now he’s back in Charlie’s good graces.”

“Charles de Gaulle?”

“The president of—”

“And the leader of the Free French during World War Two.”

“You certainly know your French history.”  The language too, he recalled with a rueful smile.

“I ought to.”

“Why’s that?”

 “My mother is French. She met my father during World War Two, and they were married in Paris.” 

Finished eating, he set his empty plate on the instrument panel. “Ah, that explains the cheekbones.”

She tilted her head back just as he turned to look at her. “Whose cheekbones?”

His smile deepened as he took her plate from her limp fingers. “Yours.”

“Mine?”

“Accents
grave
”—his forefinger grazed first her right cheekbone, then her left—“and
aiguë
.” 

Shivers chased over her skin. At the same time, the air in the wheelhouse grew heavy and thick, making it hard for her to breathe. Thrilled yet terrified by the tenderness of his touch, she stepped back on legs that had jellied and looked past him.

Cain read the fear on her face and blamed himself for putting it there. “I’m sorry, Cat, I shouldn’t have done—” 

“There’s someone out there.”  She said it so softly that it took a few seconds for her words to sink in.

When they did, his pulse hit a lick and his nerves sang to life. He heard it now, the sucking sound of footsteps in the murky rice paddy that lay just a couple of klicks beyond the canal. Viet Cong returning from their hard day’s night in Saigon, he wondered, or Americans tracking them down?         

Panic beat like bat wings in Cat’s throat when six Vietnamese guerrillas wearing pith helmets stepped up onto the bank, which was covered with knee-high saw grass, and pointed their guns at the occupants of the boat. Their faces were young, but sinister. All had the menacing expressions of men who weren’t afraid to either kill or be killed.

“I can see— Oh, God—they’ve got—”

“Don’t go off the deep end on me now, for Christ’s sake.”  Cain’s voice was low but harsh and brooked no argument. “Just do exactly as I tell you—no questions, no complaints—and we’ll be fine. Understand?” 

She made herself breathe in, breathe out, slow and normal. “Yes.”

It was too late to curse himself for not getting an earlier start, Cain thought, as he pivoted on his heel and saw the guerrillas’ hostile faces. Or for not locking and loading instead of fooling around with Cat. He only hoped it wasn’t too late to talk them out of plugging him full of holes. God knew what they would do to her if they killed him.

Because he was smart enough not to do anything stupid in the name of heroism, he yanked the .45 out of his waistband and twirled it, presenting her with the butt of it. “Do you know how to shoot this?” 

She took it, surprised at how heavy it was, and gripped it with both hands as she looked at him fearfully. “No. I—I’ve never even held a gun before.”

“
Lai day
!”  The tallest of the VC, who seemed to be in charge of the small squad, waved his Soviet AK-47 in an impatient come-here gesture.