Chapter 10

“OKAY, THAT’S IT.” David straightened up from behind his camera, suddenly acutely aware that Bran was still kissing Mallory.

His friend lifted his head just long enough to say, “Aw, come on, take a few more,” before he kissed her again.

“I don’t need more.” David managed to say it evenly instead of shouting, God damn it, stop kissing her! “I only needed a few.”

Every time he’d drawn Marcus and Webster kissing in Wingmasters, Ren had claimed the picture was unidentifiable and had made him draw it over again. This time, for Nightshade, David was determined to work from a photo. But . . . “It’s not like there’s going to be a lot of kissing in this story.”

He turned around so he wouldn’t have to watch Mallory with her mouth locked on Brandon’s and her fingers in his wavy blond hair. Somehow it had looked a little less real through his camera’s lens.

“Besides, I’m out of film.” He may as well have spoken Swahili for all the attention either one of them paid him.

He crossed to the refrigerator, grabbed himself a can of soda, and opened it with a loud crack. He drank nearly the whole thing with his back still turned.

“Wow,” he heard Bran murmur to Mallory. “I kind of forgot where I was for a minute there.”

No shit, Sherlock. David drained the rest of the soda and crushed the aluminum can in his hands.

“Do you want to . . .” Bran laughed self-consciously. “This is going to sound crazy, but . . .” He laughed again.

But from the first moment I saw you, I felt a connection. David tossed the can into the bag he had for recyclables and sat down at his drawing table, suddenly exhausted. It was after eleven, and he had to be dressed and at the restaurant, ready to wait tables, in less than five hours.

“From the first moment I saw you, I felt this incredible connection between us,” Bran whispered.

Destiny. It was destiny. Yeah, right. David had heard Bran use these particular lines far too many times. At the beach, at a college party, on that camping trip they’d taken when they were both eighteen. The really stupid thing was, if David ever tried slinging that kind of crap around, he’d probably be tarred and feathered and run out of town. But Brandon got away with it. When Bran used it, he got laid. Talk about destiny.

“It’s like destiny,” Bran said now to Mallory.

Here it came: I’ve never felt anything like this before. David couldn’t stop himself from glancing over at them as he savagely sharpened his pencil. Bran still held her loosely in his arms. She could have pulled away—if she wanted to. Obviously, she didn’t want to.

“I’ve never felt anything like this before,” Bran said so sincerely.

Except for the four hundred and sixty-seven other times . . . Come on, Nightshade, use your super night vision to see clear through this son of a bitch.

It wasn’t that David didn’t like Brandon, because he truly did. They’d been best friends for as long as he could remember, but the thought of Bran taking Mallory home tonight, the thought of them together, making love in Bran’s apartment just downstairs from David, was too much to deal with.

He knew all it would take to stop it was four little words in Brandon’s ear—I like this girl. Bran would back off, but where would that leave David? With a girl who’d rather be with Brandon.

“Come out with me tonight,” Brandon murmured. “Are you hungry? We could go get something to eat.”

David started to draw rough sketches of Nightshade after Nightshade, running, jumping, flying, fighting evil, at her most invincible. He tried not to listen, tried not to care when Mallory finally spoke.

“I’m kind of gross with all this baby oil on me.”

“Sully already said he didn’t mind if you used his shower.” Brandon pushed her toward David’s bathroom as if it were a given she’d agree to go with him. “I’ll run and use my own—I live right downstairs.”

She hesitated, glancing over at David. “I’m not sure—”

“Hey, we can go over to that carnival, grab a burger, and take a ride on the Ferris wheel.”

She lit up, and David knew it was over. But then again, who was he kidding? He knew it was a given she’d spend tonight with Brandon before he’d even asked her to pose for him.

“It’s still in town, isn’t it?” Brandon asked. “You know, that carnival in the church parking lot?”

“It’s here until Sunday,” Mallory told him.

“Great. Come on, what do you say?”

David kept his eyes glued to his sketch of Nightshade. “All right” was what she said.

“Well, all right,” Bran headed for the door. “I’ll be back in ten—de-slimed. Later, dude,” he called to David, slamming the door behind him.

David heard her hesitate, but he didn’t look up. He just kept drawing. Finally, the bathroom door closed and locked, and he heard the shower go on. He put his pencil down.

There was a small mirror over by the door. He slipped down off his stool and crossed toward it, looking at his reflection.

After over an hour of shooting, his hair was standing up straight in places. He looked as if he’d put his finger in a light socket. He tried to push it down, but that only made it worse. And his glasses . . . The tape and the safety pin didn’t add to the fact that his glasses were about fifteen years out of fashion. The lenses were huge and thick and heavy as hell, a far cry from the little oval-shaped frames he now saw people wearing all over the place. He hadn’t noticed the new style until yesterday when Bran had pointed it out. David’d drawn a few sketches of his Julian character in civilian mode, with glasses on, and Bran had told him no one who looked like Julian would be caught dead in nerd glasses like the ones he’d drawn.

Nerd glasses.

They’d been just like David’s.

It seemed ridiculous. Glasses were merely a valuable instrument he used to enable himself to see. Why should it matter what they looked like?

Why should it matter what he looked like?

He took his glasses off and leaned closer to the mirror, squinting at himself in the glass. It wasn’t as if he were some kind of a horrible, deformed monster. His eyes, nose, and mouth were all in relatively normal places on his face.

Still, he was no Brandon, that was for sure.

But the flip side was that Brandon was no David, either.

And David wouldn’t trade his intelligence and his innate drawing talent for Brandon’s looks. Not in a million years. That was a no-brainer.

He had a hell of a lot going for him, and if Mallory was too shallow to see that, if she cared more about the kind of beauty that was only skin deep, if she was completely swept away by Brandon’s body and face, well . . .

Hypocrite. He was a complete hypocrite.

The reason he’d followed Mallory around town for days had nothing to do with her sharp sense of humor and her refreshingly acerbic personality. He’d followed her because she had a great ass, world-class breasts, and a face that was the perfect mix of exotic woman and sweet child. He’d followed her because he’d been completely swept away by her body and face.

The shower went off, and he put his glasses back on, quickly crossing back to his drawing table. He sat there, pretending to be engrossed by his sketch when the bathroom door opened several minutes later.

Mallory had put her clothes back on, but her hair was wet. She ran her fingers through it as she stood just outside the bathroom, clearly ill at ease. Brandon wasn’t back yet. It was just Mallory and David. Alone.

Again, David didn’t say a word. He just kept drawing.

From the corner of his eye, he saw her square her shoulders. She came toward him. It was the dead last thing he’d expected her to do.

“Lookit,” she said, “I know you probably think I’m an asshole, because I said one thing and now I’m doing another—”

“He only does short term.” David looked up at her. “Sometimes not more than one-night stands. Don’t expect more than that from him.”

She laughed. “God, I’m not gonna—” She broke off. “I guess you have no reason to believe anything I say, but I swear, I’m just going to ride on the Ferris wheel with him.”

“You don’t need to give me any explanations. I’m not going to judge you for doing what you want to do.” David just kept on drawing. “So you miscalculated your reaction to Bran. Big deal. If I were a girl, I would’ve slept with him a long time ago.”

She pulled his other stool up to the table. “I’m not going to sleep with him.”

“That’s not what he thinks.”

“My God.” She leaned closer to look at the sketches he’d done. “You are so good.”

“Hold it right there, don’t move,” he ordered her, pulling a fresh sheet of paper in front of him. She was looking at him with such wonder, such admiration, he wanted to capture it. With her hair wet, she looked both tougher and more vulnerable, her eyes enormous in her face. He drew her swiftly, and with just a few quick lines he managed to catch her energy, her soul—or whatever that life force was that burned so fiercely inside of her.

It was a selfish thing to do—drawing her that way, telling her not to move, forcing her to give him her full attention, to look at him while he took in every millimeter of her face.

He took longer than he needed, doing some shading, adding more detail than he normally would’ve. But finally, he was done, and still holding her gaze, he pushed it toward her.

Mallory stared at him just a moment longer before she looked down. She turned the sketch to face her, gazing at it for a long time before she looked back at him. “Is this her?” she finally asked. “Nightshade?”

He shook his head. “No, that one’s all you.”

She looked at the sketch again. “This is really how you see me?” She shook her head. “I don’t know, but that’s not what I see when I look into the mirror.”

He could hear Brandon’s footsteps coming up the outside stairs, and he stood, turning away from her. “Have fun tonight.”

“I just want to go to the carnival with him. Everyone from school hangs out there,” she said. “I just want to show up there with him. I want those bitches to see me out with this guy.”

David turned back. She was leaning toward him, intensity in her eyes.

“It’s a shitty reason for going with him,” she admitted. “I know that. I’m a jerk. But just once, I want—”

The door opened, and Hurricane Brandon swept in. “Ready, babe?”

“I want to be the one who’s envied for a change,” Mallory whispered, her eyes begging David to understand, “instead of the one doing the envying. It’s stupid, I know. You probably don’t understand—”

Brandon caught sight of himself in the mirror and made a slight adjustment to his still wet hair. “Come on, I’m starving; let’s blow this joint.”

Mallory stood up, folding the drawing carefully and putting it into her pocket as Brandon came toward her. He put his arm around her waist as if he had every right to touch her, his hand sliding possessively beneath the bottom edge of her shirt, his fingers touching what David knew had to be the warm softness of her skin.

As he watched, Bran pulled her toward the door, and then they were gone.

What Mallory had said wasn’t stupid. And David did understand. Being best friends with Bran, he knew a thing or two about envy.

Tom was in the convenience store when he saw him.

The man at the counter buying a pack of cigarettes and a lottery ticket wasn’t the Merchant. He was about the same height as the Merchant, but he was much younger. In his early twenties, with dark curly hair and average brown eyes.

Tom had made note of him—mostly that he wasn’t the Merchant—when he’d come into the store to get a cola and some pain reliever. The brisk walk into town hadn’t made him feel better. In fact, it had made his head pound even harder.

He grabbed a soda from the wall of refrigerators in the back of the store, wishing he’d taken something for his headache before he’d left the house, wishing he hadn’t come quite this far, because now he had to walk all the way back.

All the way.

It was a mile at the most. What was wrong with him that he should be daunted at the idea of having to walk a mere mile?

He headed toward the checkout counter, and that’s when he saw it.

The dark-haired young man left the store, pushing open the door with his right hand. And on the back of that hand he had a small, round, dark mark. A tattoo.

Tom wasn’t close enough to see the details, see if it was, indeed, the Merchant’s mark—the stylized open eye. But it was round and it was the right size.

He might’ve been mistaken. It might’ve been a coincidence. Except for the fact that he didn’t believe in coincidences. In the very same small town where he’d spotted the Merchant, he also coincidentally sees a man with a round tattoo on the back of his hand?

Not a chance.

His head was pounding and he felt sick to his stomach, but he’d been a SEAL long enough to know exactly what he had to do.

He had to follow the dark-haired man covertly, without him knowing he was being followed. He had to see where this guy was going, possibly find out where he was staying. And he had to try to get close enough to get another look at that mark on his hand.

“Sorry, changed my mind.” Tom set the bottle of soda down on the counter as he swiftly moved past it toward the door.

His headache and nausea faded to a dull background hum as he stepped out of the store and into the humid summer heat. The night was sharper now, clearer. He had a renewed sense of purpose and the entire world had an edge.

He saw the dark-haired man walking across the convenience store parking lot to . . .

Shit.

As Tom watched, the man pulled an old touring bicycle from the bike rack, climbed on, and began to pedal away.

Tom jogged to the rack, but the only other bike there was securely locked.

Double shit.

He could follow on foot, but running after a bike didn’t exactly qualify as covert.

Unless . . .

He was wearing shorts and sneakers, a T-shirt. As long as the dark-haired man didn’t go too fast . . .

Tom took off down the street at the fastest pace he could get away with and still look as if he were out for a leisurely recreational run.

For a small town, Baldwin’s Bridge was hopping. It was 2330, and the downtown area from the Honey Farms all the way past the hotel and marina, all the way to the beach, was still brightly lit and crowded with people. Tourists and vacationers and high school students were out in droves, wandering the quaint brick-paved streets. The music from the distant church carnival down by the beach gave the town an even more festive air.

The dark-haired man on the bike was moving faster than most of the strollers, but not by much. Brick roads, even ones as carefully kept as those in Baldwin’s Bridge, could be hell on a bike rider. Tom knew that from experience. Riding too fast could make a man feel as if he’d spent an hour with his balls being shaken by a hardware store’s paint mixer.

But Tom had to push himself faster as the dark-haired man turned the corner onto Webster Street, heading toward the beach and the church carnival.

Webster Street had regular pavement and a slight downward slope to it. By the time Tom reached the bottom, he was running as fast as he could, and the dark-haired man was still pulling away from him.

He’d soaked his T-shirt through, and his legs and lungs were on fire. He hadn’t run too often since his release from the hospital, certainly not this hard, never this far. And he hadn’t run at all over the past few days, not with the headaches he’d been having. Still, this should have been nothing. This was a garden party compared to the running he’d done regularly with Team Sixteen. Jesus, take a few months off, and it’s all over.

The pounding in his head had moved to a very prominent place in the foreground, directly behind his left eye, in fact. Tom staggered slightly as the road in front of him seemed to shift and heave.

He forced himself to keep his eyes on the dark-haired man. He’d slowed slightly because of the crowds around the entrance to the church parking lot, but Tom had to slow down, too.

His ears were roaring and the world was spinning.

One foot in front of the other. He’d done this before—he could do it again.

Music was blaring from speakers, and barkers trying to draw the attention of the crowd were shouting over it.

The bright lights, spinning dizzily with the carnival rides, only added to the chaos of the jostling crowds.

Tom could barely focus, barely see.

He searched for the dark-haired man, but he was gone. Completely swallowed by the crowd and confusion.

He lurched forward, unwilling or maybe just unable to give up. The frowning face of a disapproving mother flashed into his line of sight as a wide-eyed boy was yanked out of Tom’s path.

He needed . . .

He wanted . . .

He had to get out of this crowd, and he pushed his way to a clearing by the side of a food stand, desperate for air, but able to fill his lungs with only the cloyingly sweet scent of fried dough.

Hands on his knees, he tried to catch his breath, tried to grab hold of his equilibrium, tried to make the world stop moving and the lights stop swaying.

And there it was.

A bike. Leaning up against the railing of the Tilt-A-Whirl. It was quite possibly the dark-haired man’s bike—although Tom wasn’t completely sure. He couldn’t seem to focus well enough to see it clearly.

Tom moved toward it, back out into the crowd, searching for the dark-haired man. Christ, where were those blinding lights when he needed them? The people lined up to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl were standing in the shadows, and because of that, they all seemed to have dark hair.

Tom looked instead for the tattoo. Right hands. Right—

He saw it!

But then he saw another. And another. And . . .

There were dozens of them. He was standing here, literally surrounded by dozens of members of the Merchant’s secret organization.

Pain knifed behind his eyes.

Jesus, that didn’t make sense. That was wrong. It had to be wrong. He fought the haze, searching for the reason and . . . Cell size. Yeah. He knew for a fact that the Merchant never operated with a cell of more than ten, usually more like six or seven.

Yet there it was. That round mark. The Merchant’s eye. Everywhere he looked, everyone had one. He tried to look more closely, tried to see it more clearly, but his vision was blurred. He had to sit down. He had to . . .

One of the tattooed hands reached out to him. “Tom? Oh, my God, are you all right?”

The hand was attached to an arm, which, by following it, led him to a face. A familiar, female face.

Mallory. Angie’s daughter.

No, it was two Mallorys. They were both looking at him as if from a very great distance. Since when had she been recruited by the Merchant?

He grabbed her hand, pulling it closer to his eyes and . . .

It wasn’t an eye or even a tattoo. “It’s a fucking clown’s face,” he said, his voice distant over the roaring in his ears.

It was a badly smudged ink stamp of Bozo the Clown. Everyone had a fucking clown face on their hand.

“You pay ten dollars for the stamp,” the Mallorys told him in eerie unison. How the hell could she sound so far away when he was holding on to her hand? “And then you can ride all you want until the carnival closes at one.”

Tom sank to his knees.

“Jesus, Tom!” Mallory crouched down next to him as he let go of her hand and dropped to all fours. He just . . . needed to rest. . . .

“You know this guy?” Another voice—male, almost as young as Mallory—came from just as far away.

“He’s my uncle,” he heard her say. “I think he’s completely shit-faced. Bran, do you have a car? I need to get him home.”

“Um, no. Um, Mal, I, uh, I . . . think I have to go now.”

“Oh,” Mallory said. “Well . . . sure.”

“This is just a little too weird for me, you know? No offense, but . . . I’ll see you around sometime.”

“Right. Sure. I’ll see you.”

“Asshole.” Tom didn’t realize he’d said it aloud until Mallory laughed.

“You got that right,” she said. “I’m sorry, but it would be a little too effing weird for me just to leave you here to get rolled. Or picked up by the police.”

“I’m sorry,” he muttered through his haze of gray. “I’m not . . .” But he couldn’t remember what it was that he wasn’t. He focused on a sorry-looking patch of grass directly in front of him, focused on not giving in to the grayness. There was a reason he couldn’t just put his face on the ground and give up, wasn’t there?

“Don’t worry about it,” she told him. “He was pretty much looking for a way to ditch me after I turned down his generous offer to jump my bones. Like that was my grand prize for going out with him.”

“Last of . . . the romantics.”

She laughed again. “Come on, Tommy, back on your feet. Do you think you can walk?”

“Am I walking now?”

“Not exactly.” She tugged at him and he tried to help her, but his body was uncooperative. “Come on, Tom, I’ll get you home. Just lean on me.”

Kelly couldn’t sleep.

She sat out on her balcony, pretending she wasn’t gazing at the dark windows of Joe’s cottage.

She wasn’t gazing at just any windows. The windows she particularly wasn’t gazing at were Tom’s bedroom windows.

She willed him to get up out of bed and turn on his light. She willed him out his door, out of Joe’s house, and across the driveway. She bet he could climb up onto her balcony effortlessly.

And she’d been waiting almost seventeen years for him to do just that.

She willed him to come to her rescue, to save her from this sleeplessness that haunted her, from her anger and her grief and her pain.

It wouldn’t be the first time Tom had come to her rescue.

She’d been fifteen the first time he’d saved her. She’d arrived home from school to find that her father had consumed his physical limit of evening martinis about five hours too early and had crash-landed in the middle of the kitchen floor.

She’d searched for Joe, desperate to get her father to his bedroom before her mother came home—desperate to avoid the start of World War Three.

But it was Tom she’d found, gleaming with sweat, at his pile of weights back behind the garage. And after he’d helped her wrestle Charles into bed, Kelly had started in on her litany of excuses.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said. “He must’ve slipped on some water in the kitchen. Maybe he’s not feeling well—the flu’s going around. Maybe he had the flu and he was dizzy and he slipped on some water in the kitchen and—”

“Kelly, I know your father’s drunk.” Tom hadn’t let her get away with any of it. “I could smell the alcohol on him.”

Kelly had been shocked. Charles Ashton was an investment banker. He’d never missed a day of work because of his drinking, but from the moment he came home till the moment he went to bed at night he always had a glass of something potent in his hand. He wasn’t a public drunk, though. He’d sit out on the deck or in front of the TV and just quietly fade away.

You were safe if you didn’t get too close. If you did, he would lash out with that acerbic tongue, that scalding sarcasm. Nothing was good enough, no answer was acceptable. There had been nothing she could say that wouldn’t warrant the response of some belittling comment from her father.

So Kelly had learned to keep her distance. And she’d never, ever brought friends home with her. That was her rule number one.

She followed it devoutly, especially when Charles went into semiretirement. He worked from an office in Baldwin’s Bridge from nine to twelve. And then he came home and sat in that same damned deck chair all afternoon, until he staggered off to bed shortly after dinner.

“I know he drinks himself to sleep every night,” Tom had told her all those years ago, gently lifting her chin so that she had to look into his eyes. “I take the trash to the dump. I see the bottles. You don’t have to pretend with me.”

Kelly was mortified. Someone besides her and her mother knew. Tom knew. “Don’t tell,” she begged, suddenly afraid that she might throw up, afraid she might make it even worse by bursting into tears. “Please, don’t tell anyone.”

“Oh,” he said quickly, “no way. You don’t have to worry about that because I wouldn’t. I won’t. That stuff’s private. You can trust me.”

He was so kind, sitting next to her on the stone wall that framed one end of the driveway.

And for the first time that Kelly could remember, she’d actually been able to drop her upbeat pretense of optimism. For the first time, she’d finally had a chance to unload a little of her despair and anger at her father. None of her friends knew her father drank the way he did, and it was such a relief to finally have someone to talk to about it, someone she didn’t have to—as he’d said—pretend around.

And for a few weeks, in the magical evenings of the early summer, when Kelly went out in the yard to her tree swing after dinner, Tom would often appear and they’d talk. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes about her father, but mostly about nothing. Anything. Everything. Kelly’s friendship with Tom was based on a soul-baring level of honesty she’d never had before, and it was incredibly precious to her.

For a while she even dared to hope he had a crush on her, too.

But one day he just stopped coming out to the swing—about the time she heard from her friends that “that wild Tom Paoletti” was dating Darci Thompkins. Darci was a senior who owned a red convertible and had a reputation for taking her own top down as well on the deserted beach over by Sandy Hook.

It hadn’t been until later that summer, that, once again, Tom had come to Kelly’s rescue. That had been one of Kelly’s precious, golden days.

She’d fallen off her bike and skinned her elbow miles away from her house, up by Lennelman’s Orchards, coming home from a party at Ellen Fritz’s.

Tom had come by on his motorcycle—probably on his way to Ellen’s. But he stopped when he saw her sitting on the side of the road, her front wheel irreparably bent.

It was awkward at first, but it didn’t take long for them to fall into their old, familiar, easy conversation. They drove around for hours that afternoon and evening, first on his Harley, her arms tightly wrapped around him. God, that had been paradise.

Later, they rode around in Joe’s station wagon, after going back to pick up her bike. They’d stopped to walk through an antiques fair that filled the streets of nearby Salem, and they’d shared a large order of fried clams and French fries from the Gray Gull Grill down by the water.

And they’d talked and laughed for hours and hours.

It had been a wonderful, magical day.

And when it was nearly midnight, they’d been down by the marina, stopped at a traffic light. Kelly could remember gazing at Tom, her heart in her throat, wanting him to kiss her so badly. And when he’d turned to look at her . . .

She didn’t remember moving, but she must have. Both of his hands were on the steering wheel. Still, somehow, it happened. She was kissing him—finally, finally kissing him.

He made a low, desperate sound in the back of his throat as he pulled her closer, as he swept his tongue into her mouth.

Kelly had never been kissed like that before, and in the back of her mind she thought she should probably be shocked, but she wasn’t. It was too perfect, too right.

He tasted like the chocolate ice cream they’d shared, like the salty ocean air, like freedom.

Kissing Tom was everything she’d imagined and more.

Someone honked behind them, and Kelly looked up to see that the light had turned green. Tom hit the gas and with a squeal of tires pulled the station wagon into the bank parking lot, skidding to a stop. He killed the engine and pulled her back to him, kissing her again and again.

It was paradise.

“Oh, God,” he breathed, leaning back to look into her eyes. “Make me stop. I shouldn’t be doing this.”

His hands were in her hair and he was breathing hard.

She didn’t want him to stop, so she kissed him the way he’d kissed her, deeply, fiercely, stroking his tongue with hers, sucking him with her lips.

He made that same low sound, and she knew despite her inexperience, she’d kissed him the way he liked to be kissed.

Still, he pulled away. “My God, you’re dangerous.”

She was instantly uncertain. “Don’t you . . . ? But that was how you kissed me.”

He made a noise that wasn’t quite a groan, wasn’t quite laughter. “How many boys have you kissed, Kelly?”

She couldn’t meet his gaze. “I don’t know exactly. I don’t keep track.”

He didn’t say anything. He just watched her.

“One,” she whispered, “and it wasn’t anything like this.” She melted into the beautiful hazel green of his eyes. “Nothing’s ever felt like this. I want to kiss you forever.”

“You’re so sweet,” he murmured, and this time when he kissed her, he was gentle, his mouth soft, almost delicate against her lips. It was the most wonderful sensation she’d ever known.

“I really have to take you home now,” he told her quietly.

“It’s not that late,” she dared to say. “We could go down to the beach.”

That was where the high school lovers went to park, steaming up the windows of their cars. The bolder ones took a blanket and a dinghy out past Sandy Hook to Fayne’s Island.

She’d never been there.

“You really want to?” His voice sounded funny, tight.

“Yes.” She dared to glance at him again.

The muscle was jumping in the side of his jaw. She slowly reached out and put her hand on his knee.

“God help me,” he said. “Lord Jesus, save me.” He started to laugh.

At her. Kelly jerked her hand back, mortified.

But he somehow knew what she was thinking and was instantly contrite. “Kel, no—I’m not . . . I’m laughing at me.”

She didn’t get it.

“As much as I want to, I can’t take you to the beach,” he explained. “You have no idea what goes on down there.”

“Yes, I do.” He wanted to. His words made her bold again, and she kissed him, as sweetly as he’d kissed her. “And what I don’t know, you could teach me.”

She heard Tom groan again.

And then he pushed her back onto the passenger’s side, fastening the seat belt around her, and started the car. And for several heart-stopping moments, she was both terrified and elated.

But instead of taking the road to the beach, he sped up the hill. Toward home.

“Tom—”

“Don’t,” he cut her off, his voice rough as he took the turn onto their street. “Don’t say anything else.”

“But—”

“Please,” he said.

I love you. Kelly clamped her teeth tightly over the words.

Joe came out of his cottage as soon as Tom pulled into the driveway.

Her mother came from the main house, looking suspiciously from Kelly to Tom. “Where have you been? Do you know it’s almost midnight?”

“Meet me later tonight,” Kelly whispered to Tom. “In the tree house.”

Her mother had swept her inside, but before the door closed, Kelly looked back at Tom. He was lifting her bike out of the back of the station wagon, but he looked up and directly into her eyes, and she knew from the heat she saw there that he’d meet her. She knew it.

But by two A.M., she was finally ready to believe the scribbled note he’d left for her. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”

Still, hope won out over doubt, and she went to sleep believing that he couldn’t have kissed her the way he had unless he loved her, too.

But the next day, Tom had left town for good. To Kelly’s complete shock, he’d gotten a buzz cut. He’d joined the Navy and was shipping out. She didn’t even get a chance to speak to him without Joe and her parents overhearing.

“I’m sorry,” he told her quietly, as he shook her hand—shook her hand—and she knew it was true. He was sorry. He didn’t love her.

She had been a fool even to think that he might.

Kelly had kept her distance from him the few times he came home on leave that first year he was in the service. She pretended not even to notice he was in town, hoping desperately all the while that he’d approach her. But he never did. And then, a few weeks before she turned seventeen, her parents separated, and she and her mom moved out of Baldwin’s Bridge.

Kelly’s visits to her father had never lined up with Tom’s visits home to Joe.

Until now.

Tomorrow night she was having dinner with him.

With wild Tom Paoletti.

And this time she was playing his game, by his rules.

Charles drifted, dreaming about ice.

Dreaming about frozen daiquiris, in big, wide-mouthed glasses filled with crushed ice. He and Jenny’d gone to Cuba for their honeymoon. The trip had been exorbitantly expensive—the entire week had probably cost more than Cybele’s house in Ste.-Hélène. The irony hadn’t escaped him, even back then—he’d paid big money to travel by plane from the ice and snow to a place that was hot, and then he’d paid still more for a glass of that very same ice that had probably been shipped on the plane with him.

Not just ice. Ice and Cuban rum. It went down like sugar candy. And after a few glasses, even the idea of spending the rest of his life with the childishly selfish Jenny had seemed positively grand.

Charles awoke with a start, with Luc Un’s foot jabbing him sharply in the side as the Frenchman muttered something dark he didn’t quite catch. The meaning was unmistakable, though—you bum.

The two Lucs and Henri and Jean-Whoever—Claude or Pierre or maybe even another Luc, who could keep them straight?—were all still darkly unhappy with Charles for making them learn how to darn socks. In truth, Charles had done nothing. He’d merely made sure he was busy and working every chance he got. It was the only way he had to fight the Nazis—by freeing up Cybele and the other women so that they could do more dangerous work. Which, he told himself, was fine with him. If he had a choice, if he couldn’t be shipped safely back home, then he’d stay here in this kitchen, thanks, right until the end of the war.

He was much faster with his needle now—not as fast as Cybele or Dominique, true, but certainly the fastest among the men.

Joe had been next. Charles hadn’t been at it for more than a day before Joe had picked up a needle and joined him.

Trying to earn points with Cybele, no doubt.

As far as Charles could tell, Joe had earned only one of Cybele’s luminous smiles.

No kisses.

Charles was the only one who’d received that particular prize.

Of course, Cybele had been careful not to be alone with him since then. And that was a good thing, he reminded himself.

He’d entertained her with stories about Baldwin’s Bridge—but only when Joe was around to act as interpreter. And chaperon.

Now Joe, he was a piece of work. He was so quiet, you’d almost forget he was there. But the beans and fresh greens on the table at dinner were courtesy of Joe. And whenever there was an uproar in town, whenever the Germans had a truckload of supplies stolen out from under their noses or a train was derailed in the night, whenever downed American pilots mysteriously escaped Nazi capture, well, chances were that was courtesy of Joe, too.

For all their differences, Charles liked Joe. He respected Joe.

And he didn’t need his degree from Harvard to know that Joe was in love with Cybele.

It was a wondrously pure, worshipful love. The kind that a woman like Cybele Desjardins deserved. A saintly love. An honest, respectful, humble, and true love.

There was no doubt about it—Joe would do anything, anything for her if she so much as asked. Yeah, he would lay down his life for Cybele.

Who had kissed Charles a week ago.

Now, Charles had kissed a lot of women in his relatively short life, and on a scale from one to five, with five being that greatest number of inches an enthusiastic woman’s tongue could go down his throat, that tiny little kiss had been a solid zero.

Not a single tongue had been involved. It was nothing. Zilch. It was the kind of dry, dutiful kiss he might bestow upon his elderly maiden aunt. It was completely platonic. It was . . .

Christ, who was he kidding? That kiss had been anything but platonic. It had trembled with emotion and barely contained passion. It had been a promise—the very slightest whisper of a promise, true, but a promise of paradise, for sure.

He’d thought about that single, tiny kiss for hours, days. He’d spent more time dreaming about it than any other kiss he’d ever partaken of in his entire life.

And when he wasn’t thinking about that kiss, he was thinking about Cybele’s eyes. Eyes that a man could lose himself in for an eternity. Eyes that saw so much, that knew so much. Impossibly beautiful eyes.

And her mouth. Graceful lips, full and moist. Slightly, charmingly crooked teeth she didn’t try to hide when she smiled.

And yes, he’d thought about her body plenty, too. The slight curve of her hips beneath her skirt, the oversized dresses that both concealed and revealed her less than ample breasts. Compared to Jenny, she had the body of a boy. Or at least he’d imagined she did. He’d spent a hell of a lot of time imagining.

God help him, but he wanted her. He ached for her, he burned for her—Jenny and Joe be damned.

“Guiseppe!” Dominique burst through the kitchen door. She lunged for the man sitting across from Charles at the kitchen table, crumpling to her knees in front of him, erupting in a whispered explosion of undecipherable French.

Undecipherable to Charles, that is. Joe seemed to get what she was saying, his face tightening, his eyes suddenly hard.

He stood up, issuing orders rapid-fire. Charles could only make out some of the words. Market basket. Egg money.

Luc Un was the only other man in the house. The others had strayed too far the night before and hadn’t been able to get back before dawn. But now Luc went one way, Dominique the other, gathering the market basket and the carefully hoarded egg money Cybele kept hidden in her wooden gardening shoes.

Joe found his hat and headed purposefully for the door.

Charles pulled himself clumsily to his feet. “What’s happening?”

“The Germans have shot Andre Lague. They’re searching his house. Dominique fears that Cybele’s there, that she’ll be arrested, or—” He opened the door. “I’m going out to find her. To warn her.”

Out. Into town. In broad daylight.

Was he nuts?

Charles grabbed the cane Cybele had given him and hobbled after Joe. “There’s four of us. We can each head in a different direction.”

Joe turned to give him a disbelieving look. “You’re not going out there. What if you’re stopped? You don’t have any papers.”

“Neither do you.” Charles knew for a fact that Joe’s papers hadn’t yet been replaced. He’d overheard Cybele—the forger that they’d used in the past had been arrested. Cybele was trying to get hold of the supplies needed to do the work herself.

“If she was at Lague’s, she could well be dead already,” Joe said harshly.

“And if she wasn’t, she might show up there at any moment,” Charles countered, “and give herself away. I can help find her.” He pushed past Joe, out the door, into the bright sunshine for the first time in weeks.

The sky was brilliant blue, sheer perfection. Cybele could not be dead. Not on a day like today. God couldn’t possibly be so cruel.

But Cybele had whispered to him that the sky had been a beautiful shade of blue on the day her husband and son had died.

Joe took off his battered hat and jammed it onto Charles’s head, covering as much of his blond hair as possible. “If you’re captured, she’ll never forgive me.” He shot off some orders to Dominique and Luc, who dashed away. “I’m heading to the Lagues’. You should stay here in case she comes back.”

“Her friend.” Charles hobbled after him, whispering, suddenly aware he was speaking English. American English. Out on the street in Nazi-occupied Ste.-Hélène, France. “Marlise. The one who’s about to have a baby. Cybele said something this morning about bringing her fresh spinach from your garden.”

“In French,” Joe hissed. He didn’t stop. “Only in French. Marlise lives above the bakery. The bakery. Bread. Baker. Go there and come right back. Do you understand me?”

“Oui.”

Joe pointed up the street. “That way. God help us all if you’re caught.” And then he was gone, moving faster than Charles could manage, leaving Charles alone.

But not completely alone.

Holy God. There were people walking toward him, on the opposite side of the street. Two older women. One man in a dapper business suit, its cut straight from a Paris showroom.

Charles hunched his shoulders in the ragged shirt he was wearing, lowered his head, and, his heart pounding, hobbled past.

None of them looked up. None of them called out to him, or challenged him in any way.

The sidewalk was uneven, the cobblestone street in dire need of repair. He tried not to stare like an American tourist at the ancient stone buildings. Many of them were crumbling, yet they still had a fairy-tale air to them, a European magic, as if there should be a sign out in front of each, boasting “Cinderella slept here.”

It was harder to walk up the hill than he’d anticipated, every step sending flames of pain through his leg. But that was a good thing. It counteracted the glacier of fear that threatened to turn his circulatory system into a solid block of ice.

Finally he was there. At the bakery.

Marlise lived above it, Joe had said. Looking up, Charles could see windows above the storefront. But there was only one door—the one leading into the shop.

He heard them before he saw them. The clatter of feet on the street that could only be made by German army-issue boots. The hair on the back of his neck stood straight up, and he turned. Four Nazi soldiers in full uniform. Heading straight toward him. Or maybe toward the bakery. He didn’t wait to find out which.

A narrow alley separated the building from the one next door. He didn’t slow down or speed up. He just kept on moving, as if that alley had been his intended destination. Dear, sweet Jesus. What if instead of helping Cybele, he led the Germans directly to her?

There was no door along the side of the building, and he went around to the back.

Again, there was only one door, and it belonged to the bakery. It was ajar, the fragrant scent of fresh bread floating out of the kitchen. He hobbled up the steps, and inside, and . . .

And there was Cybele. Sitting in the kitchen with a heavily pregnant woman.

The woman, Marlise, made a small squeak of surprise as he stepped through the door without knocking.

“I’m so sorry—we have no work today,” she said. “Nor scraps to spare—”

Cybele’s eyes widened only slightly at the sight of him. She stopped Marlise with a hand on her arm. “He’s a friend of mine,” she said quietly. “I think it must be urgent.”

Marlise turned away, as if she didn’t want to see and remember his face.

“A cup of water for my friend,” Cybele said, her eyes still on Charles’s face, “and then we’ll go.”

Marlise pointed to the sink, and Cybele quickly washed out a cup, then filled it with water.

Charles realized he was dripping with perspiration. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt, then took the cup, his fingers briefly touching hers. Her hand was trembling.

“Merci,” he started to say as he handed the cup back to her, but she put one finger to her lips.

Cybele set down the cup, then led him back out the door, watching, ready to reach for him if he had trouble on the steps.

She was silent as she led the way farther into the alley, away from the bakery door. But then she turned to face him.

“I know this can’t be good news,” she whispered. “So don’t try to make it bearable, Charles.”

His name was melodious in its French rendition, soft and sweet on her lips.

“Just say it,” she begged him.

So he did. “Andre Lague is dead. Shot by the Nazis.”

She closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath. “And the children?”

“I don’t know,” he told her. “I didn’t hear anything about any children.”

“Andre and Mattise were hiding over a dozen children—Jews and Gypsies—in their attic.”

There was no way those children could have remained undiscovered. Not with the Nazis searching chez Lague. He knew that, and she knew it, too.

She was still trembling despite her attempts to steady herself and he couldn’t help it. He put his arms around her, pulling her close. She clung to him, and he was astonished by both her softness and her strength.

He heard his cane clatter to the ground as the entire world seemed to slow, as the earth itself seemed to grind to a halt.

She fit against him so perfectly, he wanted to weep. Instead he breathed in her sweet scent, closing his eyes as he felt the warmth of the sun on his face, as he felt his heart pounding.

Andre Lague was dead, but Charles was alive. And Cybele was alive, too.

He lifted his head to look down at her, at the way the sunlight shimmered on her eyelashes, the way it lit her delicate nose and cheeks.

Her eyes looked bruised and a little dazed, as if she weren’t quite certain where or even who she was. She searched his face in surprise as he gazed at her, and he knew, at this moment, he was unable to hide anything he was feeling. It was all right there, in his eyes.

His fear, and his intense relief at finding her safe. His grief and his anger over the death of her friend. And all his smoldering, selfish desire, his petty physical needs. His weaknesses and his self-disgust, his very knowledge that to kiss her the way he wanted would be wrong. It was all there for her to see as surely as if he’d been stripped naked.

He saw something wild flare in her eyes, and she stood on her toes, pulling his mouth down to hers as she hissed, “Kiss me! Quick!”

She nearly knocked him over, pushing him back against the brick building, out of the sunlight and into the shadows. She had turned to fire in his arms, her mouth burning his, her arms entwined around his neck, one leg encircling his, the softness of her thighs open to him as if she wanted . . . As if . . .

Charles pulled her tightly against him, filling his hands with the soft curve of her rear end, angling his head to kiss her harder, deeper. Dear God. He found the edge of her skirt as well, as he kissed her again and again. Reaching up, he ran the palm of his hand against the silken smoothness of her thigh.

He felt her fingers on the buckle of his belt, and his heart nearly stopped. Did she want? . . . Was she going to? . . .

He heard it then, the sound of leering male laughter, and he broke free from Cybele’s kiss to see three German soldiers looking out at them from the open bakery door.

Cybele pulled him back to her, kissing him again, her eyes open for a moment as she looked at him. And he understood.

She’d known the soldiers were there from the start. This wasn’t real. She wanted the Germans to think they’d met here in this alley for a sexual liaison, rather than to discuss the devastating death of their comrade in the Resistance.

This wasn’t real. His relief was mixed with a rush of disappointment so strong, he knew that if she’d actually unfastened his pants, if this hadn’t been pretense on her part, he would have made love to her right there in that alley, without any thought to who might be watching, without any thought to the child they could well conceive.

And without any thought to Joe, who loved her, or Jenny, his wife, to whom Charles had vowed to be faithful.

But it wasn’t real, and no matter how badly he wanted Cybele, he couldn’t have her. All he had were these next few moments, this period of make-believe until the Germans tired of watching.

So Charles kissed her.

Not fiercely, as they’d kissed just seconds ago, not hungrily, not that explosive wrestling match of lips and tongues that had made him ache with wanting to thrust himself deeply and just as savagely inside of her.

No, this time he kissed her slowly. He made his lips soft and he took her mouth gently, almost lazily—but much more thoroughly than before.

This time he took his time and tasted her, memorized her.

Loved her.

She melted, somehow managing to nestle herself even more completely against him.

He knew he should have been ashamed—there was no way she could miss his arousal. Her friend was dead, and here was Charles, clearly ready for a quick roll. He deserved a slap across the face for his insensitivity. But she didn’t pull away. She just held on to him, kissing him slowly, sweetly, until long after the Germans had gone back into the shop.

Finally she stepped back, and he let her pull free from his arms. He stood leaning against the bricks with his eyes closed, waiting for her to speak. Dreading what she might say.

He heard her ragged breathing as she tried to catch her breath, heard her clear her throat. “Please, Charles, forgive me—”

“Don’t.” He opened his eyes as he sharply cut her off. “You know damn well I don’t need an apology from you. I sure as hell have no intention of telling you I’m sorry, because I’m not.”

“En français,” she whispered, glancing toward the bakery door.

He couldn’t say what he needed to say to her in French. He didn’t know the words. But then again, he probably didn’t know the words in English, either.

He refastened his belt and picked up his cane, silently cursing the pain in his leg. Funny how he hadn’t noticed it at all with his hand up Cybele’s skirt. He didn’t know which was more awkward and unwieldy, his stiff leg or the fact that even now he was still almost completely aroused.

Maybe now she’d finally realize he wasn’t any kind of hero.

“We need to get you home, back safely inside,” she told him, trying her best to sound normal, as if mere moments ago her tongue hadn’t been in his mouth, as if her body hadn’t been warm against him, as if her very soul hadn’t touched his. Moving painfully, he followed her out of the alley. “Then I’ll go to Lague’s—”

“That’s too dangerous,” he told her harshly. Jesus Christ, did she want to die?

She didn’t meet his eyes. “I’ll be careful.”

“If you’re going, I’m going, too.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Exactly.”

She was clearly dying to say more, but there were other people on the street, and Charles’s French was too awful. They went down the hill as quickly as he could manage, through the front gate, and around to the back of the house. She all but pushed him through the kitchen door.

“Joe’s already gone there, looking for you,” he told her. “Let’s wait for him to return before—”

“Those children,” she said. “Two of them were mine.”

Two of them were? . . .

“They were staying here,” she explained. “In my attic. Two girls. Simone and little Rachel—she’s only four years old. But then, after you arrived, the weather was so hot, and I was afraid your being here would put them in danger. . . .” She was trembling again. “I sent them to Andre’s, to assure their safety.”

Oh, God. “Will they talk?” Charles gripped her shoulders and all but shook her. “Do they know your name?”

“They’re babies,” she said. “They knew nothing. Rachel called me Maman Belle.” Her lip trembled. “I need to go. If there’s even a chance . . .”

“There’s not.”

Charles and Cybele both looked up to see Joe standing in the door. He had tears in his eyes. “I was just there,” he said quietly. “The children were taken away in a truck. All of them.”

Cybele was silent, her face terrible. “Where?” she whispered.

Charles gazed at Joe, who met his eyes only briefly before looking away. The news wasn’t going to be good.

“Where did they take them?” she said again, her voice paper thin in the stillness.

Joe wiped away his tears with the back of his hand. He couldn’t answer, couldn’t speak.

“Where?” Cybele said, louder now, pulling away from Charles. “Where did those monsters take my children? I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them! Every one of them!”

She tried to push past Joe, to get out the door, but he caught her, held her.

She fought him, slapping and kicking, and he simply endured until she collapsed against him.

Cybele, who never cried, was sobbing as if her heart were breaking.

Charles couldn’t move. He stood there, with his own heart in his throat, unable to say or do anything.

As he watched, her knees gave out. She crumpled to the floor and Joe went with her, his arms still around her. He was crying, too, rocking her in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry, Cybele. I don’t know where they were taken. There’s no way I could know such a thing.”

“But there must be rumors. There are always rumors.” She pulled back to look at him, her breathing coming in ragged gasps. She searched Joe’s eyes, and her face crumpled. “To one of the death camps,” she breathed.

“Cherie, it’s only a rumor. We don’t know for sure.”

As Charles stood there and watched Cybele cry, he knew there was nothing he wouldn’t do to help stop this woman’s grief and pain.

Nothing.

But there was nothing he could do.

Absolutely nothing.