Carly Read online

  Sam nodded his thanks.

  By now, the platoon had discovered that Carly’s thinner, lithesome body could do jobs in tight places easier and her smaller hands and slender fingers worked better for some of the more intricate tasks. Carly looked down at her hands, covered in grease and her nails clipped as far down as possible except for the thumb and index finger of her right hand. Sometimes her fingernails could grasp tiny things in a way no pliers could.

  Usually she and Bowie worked on their own as a team, with supervision since they were still in training. But the other members of the platoon regularly called on Carly for her specialized skills. For a moment, she felt satisfaction over this progress. Haskell still wasn’t thrilled to have her, but he’d ceased dogging her more than anyone else. But now we’re going to be deployed to a combat area.

  Carly rejoined Bowie, and the two of them worked side by side doing last-minute chores before putting the engine back together. She concentrated on what her hands were doing, letting the therapy of the routine job lull her fears. The end of the day came, and Bowie and Carly had not gotten as far as they needed to. The two stopped at Haskell’s door. “We’re going to come back after mess and finish,” Bowie said.

  Haskell nodded.

  After mess, Bowie walked beside Carly back to the garage in the chill twilight. It felt as cold as Alabama in January to him, but it wasn’t even Christmas yet. He pulled up the collar of his jacket and glanced at the pretty woman beside him. Something was wrong. Carly had barely lifted her eyes all through mess and now she was looking down as they walked. He knew he wasn’t all that good around women. Just ask his three sisters. But it had become obvious even to him that Carly wasn’t recovering from her trip home, or maybe something else had upset her. Was she worried about Saudi Arabia? But should he risk asking her or just let it ride?

  Inside the garage, the engine block had been lifted back into place. Bowie and Carly started working silently together, reconnecting everything and then checking the electrical wiring with an ohmmeter to make sure the connections were unobstructed. It was tedious and time-consuming labor. The evening chill came on stronger and Bowie closed the massive doors. They were alone in the low light of the vast warehouse of a garage, crowded with vehicles and parts. He glanced over at Carly. Tears were dripping down her face.

  He couldn’t ignore tears even if acknowledging them might take him into dangerous territory. “Carly, hey, what’s wrong?”

  She swiped at her face with the back of her hand, smearing a little grease on her cheek. “Sorry.”

  “What’s wrong?” He tightened a connection, put down the pliers, and wiped his hands on a nearby rag. He pulled out a clean handkerchief and dabbed the grease from her cheek.

  When he was done, Carly turned away from him. “Nothing.”

  He hated when women did that. Something was obviously very wrong. “You’ve been upset since you got back from your family. Are you still grievin’?” He could tell she was still crying from the way her shoulders kind of shook. He reached out and took them in his big grimy paws. She was so delicate and yet so strong. All he wanted to do was steady her, let her know he was concerned—though in all honesty, he’d wanted to touch her since the first time he saw her.

  Without warning, she rotated within his loose grasp, drawing nearer. She looked up at him.

  Close contact with her jolted him. She was just as sleek and soft as he’d imagined. But we’re just friends. Holding her loosely, cautiously, he waited. When she didn’t speak, he asked, “Do you want to talk about it?” He’d overheard his sisters use this line more than once when a distraught girlfriend had come by.

  Instead of speaking, Carly leaned forward and rested her head on his chest.

  This launched a response inside him as big as Desert Shield. From the very first, he’d thought Carly one of the most dainty and attractive girls he’d ever met. But they were soldiers in the army together. And he’d known from the little she’d told him about her family that she was way out of his league. After all, her stepfather was a police detective and her mom wrote articles for magazines and her family had a house with a name, Ivy Manor. He’d known a down-home boy like him didn’t have a chance with someone like Carly.

  But none of that mattered now as she pressed her face against him. His arms went around her but gently, so he wasn’t putting her under any pressure. After all, she could just be using his chest as a place to cry, to let out whatever her sadness was about. The desire to stroke her glossy blue-black hair taunted him.

  “I’m frightened, Bowie,” she murmured.

  “Of what?” He couldn’t resist now: he stroked her hair, shining in the low light.

  “I’ve been frightened all my life.”

  This sounded serious and baffling at the same time. Carly was in his platoon and his friend. He didn’t want to cross any line with her, but the temptation to lean down and find her lips with his nearly overcame his good sense. “What are you afraid of?” he forced himself to ask.

  She gave a little shudder that was somehow sexy. “It’s hard to put into words. I . . . keep having these . . . nightmares.”

  “What kind of nightmares?”

  She shook her head. “They don’t make sense. There are just some things I can never forget. I just know that none of them will make any sense until I have all the pieces.”

  This made no sense to Bowie at all. But that wasn’t unusual. He never understood his sisters. Still, holding Carly like this made him want to comfort her, to help her through this sadness. “You can trust me, Carly. I’d never tell anyone a word you told me not to.”

  “I know that.”

  He stroked her head again and the roughness of his calluses caught in her hair. He felt so clumsy and big around her. But when she moved her head as if asking him to stroke her hair again, he obliged. So soft, like silk. “Go da> and tell me then.”

  She shook her head against his chest. “It’s too long a story.”

  Then, before he knew what was happening, she had turned up her face and was looking at his lips. He was mesmerized by the way she ran her dainty tongue over her bottom lip. And then she was on tiptoe just inches from his mouth, poised in a silent appeal.

  Where this request had come from he didn’t have a clue. But he couldn’t say no to save his life. He lifted her off her tiptoes and pressed his mouth to hers. She reached up, wrapped her arms around his neck, and returned his kiss. A groan of satisfaction sounded deep in his throat.

  “Nice,” Sergeant Haskell said. “Very nice.”

  Bowie released Carly and stumbled back from her. “It’s not what you think,” he stammered.

  Haskell barked a laugh. “That’s funny. I thought you two were kissing. If you weren’t, what were you doing?”

  December 1, 1990

  Leigh didn’t believe her eyes. She read the brief note from her daughter again. “Mom, by the time you get this, I’ll be leaving for Saudi. Our orders are to be airlifted in three days. Our battalion will be supplying troops and repairing vehicles. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.” Then Carly gave Leigh her APO address. Only a few times in her life had Leigh felt this magnitude of shock. She recalled a time years earlier, when she had to identify a friend of a friend at a morgue. Now that same horror drove jagged shards through her.

  Without stopping to think, Leigh dialed Frank Dawson’s work number. She tapped the phone as she waited for Frank to answer. He came on line with a brisk greeting.

  “Frank, it’s me, Leigh,” she said abruptly. “Carly leaves for Saudi tomorrow. I don’t want her to go.”

  There was a pause at the other end of the line.

  “Frank,” Leigh repeated, “I don’t want her to go.”

  “I know what you mean. Lorelle should be arriving in Saudi today.”

  Leigh gasped. “Frank, no.”

  “I thought Cherise had written to tell you.”

  “Her letter came today.” Leigh slid down to sit beside the table. The mail was scattered
there. Cherise’s distinctive lavender stationary peeked out from underneath the electric bill. Leigh picked it up. “I hadn’t opened it. I opened Carly’s first.”

  “Cherise has taken it pretty hard. It reminds her all too much of my tours in Vietnam.”

  Leigh’s mind churned with images from the past: hippies burning draft cards, Chicago policemen clubbing yuppies—and her. “I can’t believe,” she whispered, “this is happening.”

  “I don’t think either of us thought our girls would enlist just in time for the next war.” Frank’s voice was harsh with emotion, too.

  “My daughter must not go to Saudi.” Shaking with resolution, Leigh spoke low in her throat, rasping almost. “I won’t have it.”

  “There isn’t much you or I can do about it. The U.S. is going to have over four hundred thousand troops in Saudi in time for the January fifteenth deadline.”

  “There must be something you can do. You can’t want Lorelle over in that awful place. They still make the women cover themselves from head to foot. They cut off thieves’ hands!” Leigh felt her voice thinning, spiraling out of control. “They behead murderers!”

  “Leigh, we didn’t choose the site for this war. Saddam Hussein did. The Saudis have allowed us, whom they view as infidels, to set up posts in their country.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Leigh declared. “I don’t want my daughter in such an awful place. It was bad enough that she enlisted, but this. . . .” She closed her eyes.

  “There’s nothing we can do but pray for their safety.” Frank’s voice blended understanding with uncompromising determination.

  “I can’t accept that,” Leigh snapped. “There must be something you can do.”

  “Even if I could do something, which I can’t, I wouldn’t try. Part of growing up is taking the consequences of one’s actions. Carly and Lorelle enlisted and now war has come, and they must face it. Just like we faced ’Nam in the 1960s.”

  “I don’t want my daughter in the middle of a war,” Leigh said, desperately searching for a way out, any way.

  “I don’t either, but what choice do we have?” Frank’s tone was dismissive.

  At last she understood the heart-stopping truth. He isn’t going to help me. She drew up what was left of her self-control and said a polite good-bye. She hung up the phone. And sat. She couldn’t move, breathe. She stared at Carly’s brief note on the kitchen table. It was as if someone had settled a heavy boulder over her lungs. She strained for each breath. Was it all going to happen again?

  Her mind drifted back to 1972, to her grandfather’s funeral at Ivy Manor and then to the joint funeral for Dane and Ted that same spring. Now this November, Kitty had passed away and had been buried near her brother, Leigh’s grandfather. Long ago, at her stepfather and fiancé’s funeral, people had said over and over, “Deaths come in threes.” She didn’t believe in superstition, but unbidden fear blossomed cold and dark inside her. Kitty was gone. Would Carly and Lorelle follow her in death just as Dane and Ted had followed her grandfather? “Oh, Kitty, I need you now.”

  Her fingers trembling, Leigh reached again for the phone and dialed Nate’s work number. His answering machine picked up. Barely able to speak, Leigh stammered, “Nate, Carly is being sent to Saudi. Please . . . please come home. I need you.”

  Five days later

  Carly knew she should have said no, but when Bowie had asked her to meet him after mess, she’d only nodded. Now in the early darkness of winter, they sat side by side on the picnic bench in a small, deserted park on base. Leafless branches flickered, rustling drily in the wind, and Carly thought about the desert da> of them. When would they return to trees?

  But most of all, she was very aware of the man sitting close beside her. She remembered the touch of his lips on hers and the feel of his arms, his strong arms around her. Had it been his embrace that had helped her sleep the night they’d heard about their deployment?

  “You never told me what you were frightened of,” Bowie said. “Is it because we’re being shipped to Saudi tomorrow morning?”

  Carly wanted just to say yes, leave out all but the simplest truth, and put an end to the conversation. But Bowie deserved better from her. “That’s part of it.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, heading to Saudi bothers me, too.”

  Carly nodded, but she felt compelled to reveal something else that had been bothering her. “I keep waiting for Haskell to say or do something.”

  “You mean because he saw us kissin’?”

  She nodded again, feeling a warm blush on her face.

  “He just told me to make sure I didn’t touch you unless it was after hours. And to keep a low profile.”

  Carly tried to sort out what these cryptic words indicated and failed. “What do you think that meant?”

  “You know, after you took care of Joe that day.” He looked as if to see if she understood what he was saying.

  “You mean the day he . . . touched me?”

  “Yeah,” Bowie went on quickly, “that kind of told everyone, ‘Hands off.’ And the sergeant doesn’t want that to change.”

  “What does one have to do with the other?” Carly asked, still baffled. Why would Haskell give her a pass on this? Was he softening toward her?

  “Well, maybe he thinks if the other guys see me kissing you, they might try it, too. And then there might be fights.” Bowie looked chagrined and slightly embarrassed.

  Carly exhaled loudly. What a ridiculous idea. She couldn’t help but grin. Men fighting over her? “So Haskell thinks I’m going to go luring his men to disaster?” she asked, momentarily diverted. “Kind of like a femme fatale?” Men, Carly thought.

  They sat in silence for a few moments. Then Bowie spoke up, “So what upset you? I mean, besides heading to Saudi?”

  Carly sighed. How she wanted to lay her burden down.

  Bowie tentatively touched her cheek. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  His accepting words released her. She turned her face in to his shoulder. “I have nightmares. I’ve had them for a very long time.”

  “What kind of nightmares?”

  She rubbed her face against his cotton camouflage jacket, feeling the hard muscles of his arm and chest. “When I was ten years old, I was kidnapped.”

  Bowie gasped and folded her in his arms. “What . . . what happened to you?”

  “I wasn’t molested. They just grabbed me and taped my eyes and mouth shut, put a sack over my head, and kept me tied up. Then two days later they dropped me off at a hospital.”

  “Did your parents have to pay a ransom or something?”

  “No, that’s what made it all so weird. I think my mom knew why I was taken and that it had something to do with my father. But she would never tell me everything—or anything, really.”

  “Was this a kind of custody battle?”

  Carly rested her head against his unyielding chest. He was so strong. “No, I was born out of wedlock, and I don’t know who my birth father is. I keep thinking he might have had me kidnapped so he could be with me. But if he did, he never let me know it was him. And I can’t think he was one of the men who scared me, was so rough with me, and made me cry.”

  “So your nightmares are about your kidnapping?”

  “I think so. In the dreams I’m just so very frightened and cold, and I can’t open my eyes or my mouth. I feel as if I’m being smothered. And shadows are moving toward me and I think they’re going to hurt me. And I scream but no sound comes out.”

  “Scary.” Bowie stroked her back.

  She shuddered at his gentle touch, breathing in his soap-clean scent. “They stopped while I was in basic. I got over them. It was great. I think I was too tired to have dreams or to remember them, and then at graduation, I felt as if I had made it, as if I didn’t need to be frightened anymore. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s a real high to graduate from basic. When did the nightmares start again?” He stroked her cheek.
r />   His fingers ignited magic sparks that danced through the nerves of her face and down her neck. “When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. I must have known that we would end up going there.”

  “Well, you know we won’t be on the front lines.”

  “Yeah, I know.” And then there didn’t seem to be anything more to be said. Bowie had no control over the U.S. army or Iraq’s. Carly remembered how Bowie’s kisses had made her feel. She had slept better that night. She leaned forward, tempting him to make the first move.

  “Can I kiss you again?” Bowie asked, sounding as if it would be too good to be true.

  He’s so sweet. Just like Nate. She nodded, not taking her eyes off his.

  Looking as if he’d just opened a birthday gift he’d really wanted, he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers.

  Her arms naturally circled his neck and she prolonged the kiss. She knew that she hadn’t sorted out her feelings about Bowie as a friend or possible boyfriend. But his kisses made her feel she could do anything, even sleep through the night.

  On Pearl Harbor Day, Carly arrived in a foggy and unexpectedly chilly Saudi Arabia. It had taken her company two days by airplane, with a stopover in Germany, to reach the Mideast. After a tense eight-hour flight from Germany, they’d been warned that the army didn’t have time for jet lag and Haskell had ordered them not to have any. With her duffel on her shoulder, Carly climbed down a narrow ladder from the upper deck of the C-5 onto the tarmac at the air base near where their battalion would be stationed. She felt fuzzy, as if she had left her brain somewhere over Italy.

  Bowie caught up with her and steadied her with a touch on her elbow. “You okay?”

  Carly had no answer for him. She hadn’t flown internationally since the summer she’d visited Paris with Chloe and Kitty. And when they’d arrived in France, they’d been whisked away in a limousine to a four-star hotel. She doubted those types of accommodations awaited her. Wishing a hot shower awaited her somewhere soon, Carly walked side by side with Bowie to where their platoon was meeting up.