His arm slid from around her waist, and his hand came up to cup her breast in a warm, intimate gesture. The blanket was around his shoulders, which brought it down to the middle of her rib cage. Lisa was suddenly overwhelmingly aware of her nakedness—and his. To her embarrassment, a little tingle of wanting ran clear down to her toes.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you have beautiful tits?” he murmured against her skin, his fingers gently stroking a soft peak. Lisa felt herself color hotly, although she knew it was silly to do so.
“Did they?” he persisted, shooting her an indecipherable look. His fingers continued with their distracting task.
“No,” she admitted truthfully, wriggling a little as she tried to get free. Despite his illness and his injury, he held her easily.
“Not even your husband—what’s his name?” His voice was very low; he shot her that odd look again.
“Jeff. And, no, be didn’t.” As if Jeff would tell her that her breasts were beautiful—or had ever even thought so.
“He must be crazy—or blind.” Sam was probing—oh, so casually—for information. Lisa felt her heart speed up; she was afraid he could hear it pounding under his ear. He almost sounded jealous—which was wishful thinking on her part, Lisa admitted with an inward grimace. Then the thought occurred to her: Why should she wish him to be jealous?
“Are you hungry?” She was determined to banish her wayward thoughts before they were irrevocably set on paths that were better avoided. Sam rested against her silently for a moment, and Lisa feared that he was not going to allow the subject to drop. Then he removed his hand from her breast, and looked up at her again with those soul-destroying blue eyes.
“Yeah. But I’ve got a problem that’s a little more urgent—I’ve got to go to the bathroom.”
“Oh.” After caring for him as she had, Lisa knew that it was ridiculous to feel embarrassed—but she did. After all, ministering to the needs of a man who was out of his head with fever was a very different matter from helping a man who was very much awake and aware. A man she found far too attractive for her peace of mind.
“If you’ll let me up, I’ll—I’ll get the pan.”
“Is that what you’ve been doing?” he asked with a grimace of distaste. “No, thanks. I think I can manage to walk outside.”
“I doubt if you can even stand up,” Lisa protested, appalled at the idea of him standing and walking—and probably falling—after the debilitating events of the last few days.
“Really, I don’t mind—about the pan.” Lisa said this in a diffident tone, in case—as unlikely as it seemed—he was embarrassed about having her attend to his needs.
“Well, I do,” he answered firmly.
Then, before Lisa could argue with him further, he rolled off her and got rather shakily to his feet. He was obviously very weak and swayed alarmingly as he stood towering next to her. Immediately she ran around to prop herself under his good arm. To her surprise, he accepted her help—as far as the door. From there he insisted on going on by himself. Taking a single look at his grimly determined face, Lisa didn’t argue. She was in a fever of worry, until, after about ten minutes of nail biting, he came back around the corner of the hut, his hand braced against the surprisingly solid wall for support. For just an instant she registered the sheer physical splendor of his naked body before hurrying forward to help him. He shrugged away from her touch, clearly intending to walk the few feet into the hut under his own steam. She paced herself anxiously beside him, trying not to feel hurt at his rejection of her assistance. But once inside, with the door shut and bolted behind them, he seemed only too glad to let her help him ease back down onto the blanket.
“You got wet,” she accused as he lay back, exhausted. Small droplets sparkled in his hair and a few more rolled waywardly down his face and chest.
“That overhang is damned narrow,” he said, grunting.
Lisa, clucking like an anxious hen, pulled his shirt out of the combat pack and used it to wipe him dry.
“Now, what about that food?” He sounded weaker. Lisa was afraid that his little journey out into the rain had done him no good at all. Silently, she went to open a can.
Lisa had to help him eat. When he had swallowed several mouthfuls, he began to shiver and pushed the food away.
“I’m cold,” he said, and his shivers grew more violent.
Lisa set the food aside and came under the blanket with him, cradling him in her arms as tremors shook him. She hadn’t bothered to undress, but his head twisted restlessly against the roughness of her shirt until at last she unbuttoned it and pulled his head down onto her breasts. Then at last he lay quietly. Lisa thought he was either asleep or unconscious. She was surprised when he looked up at her, his hands clutching her waist beneath her opened shirt.
“Sing to me,” he muttered. “That song you were singing last night. I like it.”
Fighting a wave of fierce tenderness for him that seemed determined to engulf her despite her best efforts, Lisa began to hum the Brahms lullaby that had been Jennifer’s favorite. Gradually she added words; after a while he sighed heavily and seemed to sleep.
He lapsed in and out of sleep for most of that day. Awake or asleep, he wanted her near him, his hands clutching her close with an almost desperate strength. It didn’t seem to matter whether he was burning with fever or shaking with chills—either way, he clung to her as if he was afraid that she would vanish if he relaxed his grip.
He talked a great deal, most of it incomprehensible to Lisa. From the few words she could understand, she thought he imagined himself caught up in some long-distant war. Once or twice he called again for Beth, sounding so unhappy that the pain she felt was overlaid with pity for him. Beth was a very lucky woman, Lisa thought bleakly, and tried not to let herself be too moved by the way Sam seemed desperately to want her own presence. It was more than likely that he thought she was the absent Beth.
But at least once, when she tried to wriggle free of his grip, he knew precisely who she was. As she pried gently at his imprisoning hands, those blue eyes opened and looked directly into hers. She held her breath, not knowing if he was rambling or coherent.
“Don’t leave me,” he muttered. “Lisa, don’t leave me. Let me hold you. You’re so warm, and soft. . . . Please don’t leave me.”
He was begging—begging her, Lisa, not to leave him. Lisa smiled shakily down at him, feeling a tremendous warmth steal over her.
“I won’t leave you,”
darling,
she almost added, but managed to bite back the word in time. Her arms curled around the back of his head, her fingers stroking the rough silk of his hair as she held him.
“Promise?” he demanded, his eyes still fixed on her. He seemed to know what he was saying. . . .
“I promise,” she affirmed softly. This seemed to satisfy him, for he sighed deeply and closed his eyes.
The next day he was much better, never once lapsing into delirium. He no longer kept Lisa chained to his side, and she managed to feed and wash herself and help him do the same. Toward afternoon, he once again made the trip outside, but when he came back in he didn’t return at once to his pallet. Instead he chose to sit up, his uninjured shoulder propped against the wall. He was naked, as he had been for the last three days, but it seemed not to concern him in the least. His eyes were fastened on her, but she wasn’t sure if he really saw her. He seemed to be thinking deeply about something.
“Here,” she said after he had sat there for perhaps five minutes, apparently oblivious to the chill bumps that were breaking out in ridges along his arms and legs. Scooping the blanket from the floor, she wrapped it around him. He accepted her gesture without a word, but when she would have moved away he caught her by the wrist, pulling at her. Hunkering down beside him, she looked at him with a question in her eyes. He regarded her with a brooding look of his own.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” he said finally. “I owe you one.”
Lisa returned his look with cooling eyes. Whatever she wanted from him—and she was not even sure that she wanted anything—it certainly wasn’t gratitude.
“I owed you,” she countered brusquely. “Now we’re even.” And she pulled her wrist away and stood up.
By the time another twenty-four hours had passed, he was so much better that his healing shoulder wound caused him more discomfort than the remnants of the fever. It was still raining, but the torrent was beginning to slacken. In another day or so they would have to move on, whether or not Sam was well enough to go. Lisa thought of the miles they would have to trudge to safety with danger and possible death lurking all around, and felt dread run along her veins like droplets of ice. Biting her lip resolutely, she did her best to banish it, although it refused to disappear completely. Still, she told herself that she would face whatever happened when it happened. In the meantime, she had to concentrate all her energy on getting Sam well again.
He had put on his shorts and pants, the first time he had gotten dressed since he had become ill. The clothes made him seem almost like a stranger. Lisa felt faintly ill at ease, cooped up in such close quarters with him. To pass the time, they took to playing tic-tac-toe and hangman in the dirt floor. Sam was clearly superior at tic-tac-toe—he played with a devilish strategy she couldn’t quite get the knack of—but she beat him five times out of six at hangman. After all, words, as she informed him with a superior grin, were her stock in trade.
They talked, but not about anything important. Sprawled on their stomachs in the dirt like two kids, not caring that they were getting filthy, they kidded and played like children barely out of nursery school. When Sam finally won at hangman—on “incendiary,” as in “bomb,” for God’s sake!—he practically crowed with triumph. Lisa laughed at him, accusing him teasingly of cheating because he had put too many spaces in the game. Watching him as he grinned at her, his black hair falling carelessly over his forehead and his blue eyes sparkling, she wondered once again how she had ever thought he wasn’t handsome. Unshaven, dirty, still pale and weak with fever, he was so good-looking that he stopped her breath. His raffish, rakish look, accentuated by that broad, bare chest and the faint scar bisecting his cheek, only added to his wicked attraction. Lisa was conscious of a sudden, almost irresistible impulse to kiss him. . . .
“Tell me something,” she said casually, her eyes on the new game they were just starting.
“Ummm?” he answered absently, clearly engrossed in trying to figure out what an eight-letter word with a
g
in the middle could be.
“Who’s Beth?”
XII
S
AM
felt all his muscles tighten warily.
“How did you hear about Beth?” If Frank, the only person in whom he’d ever confided, had told her about Beth, he’d wring his damned neck for him if ever he saw him again. That part of his life was behind him forever. He saw no point in remembering it.
Lisa’s green eyes met his. “You called for her. When you were delirious.”
“Oh.” Inwardly, Sam was cursing himself. He remembered dreaming that he was back in ’Nam, in the days after he’d first been sent into combat. He’d been wounded, his face blown to hell, temporarily blinded—although he hadn’t known it was temporary at the time—by a grenade that had come out of nowhere while he was sleeping. All through that awful time he’d called repeatedly for Beth, had even had the chaplain write to her and tell her what had happened to him, for God’s sake. She hadn’t even bothered to reply, as he should have known she wouldn’t. Especially since the chaplain had included the news that he had been blinded. Beth would want no part of a man who wasn’t whole.
“Who is she?” Lisa persisted.
Sam looked at her, as she lay on her belly on the floor, her chin propped up in both hands, her lovely hair curling wildly around her perfect face. God, she was beautiful, he thought irrelevantly. Then a wry smile curved his lips. Her emerald eyes were fastened on him for all the world like she was a kid waiting for a bedtime story.
“She—was—my wife.” Gracing Beth with the title of “wife” was doing her too much honor, Sam thought. She’d never been his wife, not even at the beginning when he’d loved her as madly as only a young boy can love. She’d been more like his live-in whore, sleeping with him and letting him feed and clothe her while she waited for something better to come along.
“You’re married?” Lisa’s voice sounded odd, almost hoarse. He slanted an inquiring look at her while he jerked his head in the negative.
“I
was
married,” he corrected. Then, seeing her exasperated look, he amplified that a little. “We got a divorce.”
“Why?”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. He hated talking to anyone about his past. It was like giving them a little piece of himself, something they could use to bind him to them. He especially hated talking to women about his past. In fact, he never had. His fiasco with Beth had turned him off females for every purpose but one for the rest of his life. He wanted no part of the faithless creatures.
“If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”
Her hasty disclaimer, oddly enough, had the effect of making him want to talk about it for almost the first time in his life. Something about this girl, young and spoiled and quick-tempered though she was, made him feel like he could confide in her. The ghost of a grin twitched up one corner of his mouth. One thing he sure couldn’t accuse her of was having mercenary designs on his earnings. Compared to what she was no doubt used to, even the money he would get for this job—the half that failure entitled him to seemed like an enormous sum to him—would be a drop in the bucket to her.
“I don’t mind,” he answered, surprised that he really didn’t. “What do you want to know?”
Lisa looked up at him, her face very pale and earnest. Sam felt like grinning again. Dressed as she was, with those absurd, too-big fatigues swamping the delectable curves of her body, her face clean of even the smallest scrap of makeup, and those huge, jewellike eyes fixed eagerly on his face, she looked ridiculously young. Younger than Jay. Maybe fifteen . . .