Once a Warrior (30 page)

Realizing he didn’t have time to give her more than a quick lesson, Cain said,  “Just point it at their balls and shoot.”  He grinned crookedly then. “If it’ll help improve your aim, pretend it’s me.”

She answered with a sickly smile of her own. Then she watched, her stomach churning, as he stepped out of the wheelhouse and approached the rail with his hands raised. He’d dropped anchor in the middle of the canal. That was smart, she realized, because the guerrillas would have to swim if they wanted to confront them physically. Distance, however, was no barrier against their bullets.    

Cat had no idea what Cain said when he spoke to them in Vietnamese, but was relieved to see the guerrilla leader’s sneer turn into a smile. Then he pointed to the French flag he was flying and said something else in a vicious tone that caused all three of them to burst out laughing. Obviously relaxed by the “hail fellow, well met” atmosphere, he pulled a cigarillo and his Zippo out of his jeans pocket and fired up.

That prompted their leader to make a new demand.

Cain spoke to them in Vietnamese again, then addressed Cat in English over his shoulder. “Lay the gun on the floor and go below. In the drawer under the bunk, there’re some cartons of cigarettes. Lucky Strikes and Chesterfields and Salems. Bring me a couple of each.” 

Knowing that he was fraternizing with the enemy, had probably even cursed America’s presence in their country, didn’t keep her from racing across the deck and down the hatchway to do as he’d ordered. She’d been so tired and depressed last night that she hadn’t even noticed the drawer. Now, as she pulled it open with shaking hands, she discovered that it contained several dozen neatly stacked cartons of cigarettes.

Tell him for me that he’s a goddamned traitor.

Colonel Howard’s words rang in her ears as Cat slammed the drawer shut and carried the cigarette cartons back up on deck. Her arms loaded, she moved toward the rail. Cain threw his burning cigarillo into the stagnant brown water, where it drowned with a sizzle, then took the cartons from her and tossed them, one by one, to the guerrillas on the canal bank. 

Their leader still wasn’t satisfied, however.

He glanced at Cat speculatively, gestured at first himself and then her, and said something to Cain.

Despite the sweat that was beading on her face and pouring down her back, Cat froze. She might not understand the language, but she understood perfectly well what that leer on the leader’s acne-scarred face meant. He wanted her.

His followers smiled their hearty approval of the suggestion.

To her relief, Cain replied with a negative shake of his head and an unequivocal, “No.” 

Cat relaxed her guard too soon. Whether Cain was simply taking advantage of the situation or trying to emphasize his point with the VC, she couldn’t even begin to guess. But when he pulled her into his arms, tipped up her chin with a callused thumb and dipped his head, she knew exactly what he was going to do.  

“Sorry,” he said softly just before his hard mouth captured hers in a kiss.

Shudders coursed through her, liquid and hot, as his lips moved over hers. A whimper of protest issued from her throat and her hands made a futile attempt to push him away. She pressed her lips together tightly, trying to deny him access to that which he sought so avidly. 

But his mouth was as skillful a thief as he was. It slanted against hers, taking her breath. It gentled on hers, winning her trust. Then it opened over hers, robbing her of the will to resist.

Her fingers clutched the front of his T-shirt and her head fell back. An aching deep inside her yawned wide. Her lips parted and his tongue arrowed home with a force that licked at her thighs, her stomach, her breasts. A tremulous sigh shook her whole body as feelings she’d thought she’d buried came flooding back. His heat seared her through their clothes. She welcomed it, wanted it, nurtured the flames it ignited in her.

Cain pulled back once to look at her face, saw himself in the cloudy depths of her eyes, and then his mouth crushed down on hers again. He hadn’t meant for things to go this far. Had merely intended to show those stupid bastards that they couldn’t have her. But now that he’d touched her, now that he’d tasted her, he couldn’t let her go.  

The sun beat down on them with fiery fists as he angled his head to deepen the kiss. She tilted hers, the better to accommodate him. Her world careened when he used his tongue to make slow, sweet love to her mouth. Her senses reeled when he cupped her derriere and pulled her higher and harder against the front of his body. She clung to him dizzily, her fingers sinking into the long, straight strands of his hair and surrendered to the power of his lingual persuasion.     

Cat had never received such a blatantly erotic kiss. Not even from Johnny. Had always held something of herself back. Even from Johnny. Now guilt pierced her to the core at the realization that she’d given her all to Cain, and she shrank away from him. There was fire in him like nothing she’d ever experienced before, and she wanted to put it out before it was too late.

“Stop,” she pleaded, batting at his hands and backpedaling to put some distance between them. “Please, stop.”

His breathing was so harsh that it was several seconds before he could speak coherently. “What’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter?” she repeated stridently. “I’m married to another man, that’s what’s the matter!”

Ignoring the boiling cauldron churning in his stomach, he lashed back with, “A man who’s officially presumed—”

“Don’t say it!”  She knew in her heart that it was true, and yet she wasn’t ready for such a truth. “Presumed is a hell of a long way from confirmed.”

Cain stood silently for a moment, watching her struggle with her emotions. He wanted to turn away, but forced himself to face the pain in her eyes. The pain he’d put there, he reminded himself in disgust.

“This is all my fault.”  He dragged a repentant hand through his hair. “I instigated it. You have nothing to feel guilty about.”

Her face burned, as much from shame as from the scrape of his beard. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

“I guess I don’t,” he admitted, his own ire rising now. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“I’m as much of a traitor to my husband as you are to your country!”               

The instant the words left her mouth, Cat wanted to snatch them back. She’d always had something of a temper. A sharp tongue on occasion, as well. Her father blamed it on her red hair, while her mother claimed it was because he’d spoiled her rotten. But she’d never intentionally hurt anyone before the way she had Cain just now.

And she
had
hurt him. She’d seen it in his bleak expression right before he’d turned his back on her. Saw it yet as he stood motionless at the rail, staring out at the bank. His feet were braced a shoulders’ width apart. His hands, balled into fists, were held rigidly at his sides.

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.