Out of the Ashes (16 page)

At times like this, when the shadows were long and the streets were quiet, he felt most at peace with the ruins. He no longer was unnerved by the tragedy, but, instead, embraced the serenity of the city preserved in its final hour. When he stood alone among the stones, he could almost understand Sera’s love for the place, her need to uncover its mysteries.

Sera. Christ, a shiver still ran up his spine every time he thought about how close she’d come to dying in his arms. He’d never been so afraid in his whole life, not even when he’d faced enemy fire as his unit helped push the Germans out of Tunisia.

Three days had passed since the accident, and the site seemed so empty without her here. He’d better get used to it.
Heberto
told him it might be two weeks before she made it back to work. She was still suffering the effects of aspirating the dirt and mud, combined with several bruised ribs from where the rear door had slammed into her. Neither was conducive to digging in the dirt.

In no hurry to start digging himself, David climbed the crumbling stone tower and sat on his usual perch overlooking the German encampment. Even this early, the Nazis were up and active, preparing themselves to dominate the rest of the world, one country at a time.

Sitting back to watch their movements, David wondered how Sera was doing.

The morning after the accident, he’d left the hospital before she woke up, not sure if she would want him there. Afterwards, he had started to go see her a thousand times, but always stopped himself before he made it out the door. She hadn’t wanted to speak to him before the accident. Why would she want to see him now?

Instead, he’d kept close tabs on her through
Heberto
, who was working the site with David while Sera was gone. The old guy told him that since she inhaled dirt into her lungs, the hospital had kept her under observation for pneumonia. But that danger had passed, and she had been released, with Maria watching over her like a mother hen.

David banged his head on the side of the stone tower. It hurt, but he felt he deserved the pain. Hell, he deserved a big, swift kick in the ass. If he hadn’t kissed her and then turned around and told her that stupid lie about there being someone else, he could go to see her now. But according to
Heberto
, she hadn’t asked for him, hadn’t even mentioned his name. Obviously, she didn’t want to see him.

Damn, but he hated lying to her. Not that their whole relationship hadn’t started out with one big lie about who he really was. But at least they had become friends. She’d opened up, started joking with him, maybe even flirted with him a bit, if he wasn’t mistaken. And now they were right back to how they were in the beginning. Her walls were back up, keeping him out, and he was peeking over another one to spy on the Germans every chance he got.

A flash of sunlight off metal caught his attention. A familiar dark head was moving among the Germans in the camp below. He grabbed the binoculars he kept stashed among the rocks and took a closer look.

Giovanni Ragusa. Realization hit David right between the eyes. When he first saw Giovanni in the ruins, he knew that he’d seen him somewhere before, but had never been able to place where. All along, Giovanni had been right under his nose in the Nazi camp.

What the hell was he doing down there?

David pulled out a ration ticket and handed it to the vendor in the baker’s stall. In return, he received two small loaves of hard day-old bread. It wasn’t much, but it would be lunch for the day and maybe dinner, too.

Passing a shop window, he stopped to look at the merchandise on display. A new pair of shoes, a record player, and a silver-plated shaving kit were among the items offered—not that many, including himself, could afford such luxuries.

Taking the main road out of town, he turned onto a dirt road leading to one of the vineyards that littered the countryside. He was always amazed at how high the vines grew, a good fifty feet in some places. He’d learned that it was so the farmer could then plant vegetables beneath them, using every available speck of ground.

David sat under one of the many vines, beating Frank to the rendezvous spot, but not by much. Breaking one of the loaves in two, he offered Frank one half before the usual cigarettes could be lit. If David wasn’t careful, he might get hooked on the damn things.

Frank took a big bite and scrunched up his face. His Adam’s apple bobbed in an effort to swallow it.

“Man, this tastes like shit.”

David bit off his own chunk. The bread was hard and dry, its texture like cooked sawdust in his mouth.

“Yeah, with the war rations the way they are, even the bakers can’t get good flour to make a decent loaf of bread.”

“I know what you mean,” Frank continued, chewing around his mouthful. “It’s the same all over Italy.”

David thought of the meager meals he was eating lately. Combined with the hard work at the ruins, he’d lost a good deal of weight in the month he’d been there. His clothes hung on his lean frame, and his suspenders were the only thing keeping up his pants. If he hadn’t blended in with the starving Italians before, he did now.

“I’ll tell you, the pasta here is grey, the cheese tastes like rubber, and it’s been so long since I had anything with meat in it, I think I’ve turned vegetarian.” David eyed Frank’s well-fed physique. “It doesn’t look like you’ve been starving.”

“The army feeds me pretty well,” he said with a chuckle. “Hey, I could probably sneak you some rations. It’ll be the army issue stuff, but at least there’s meat, or what used to be meat, in it.”

“That’s right. You get to go back to camp every week and eat goodies from home, while I’m stuck playing the starving Italian day in and day out.”

“Speaking of playing Italian, you haven’t run into any more ‘problems’ have you?”

David knew he was referring to Sera.

“No, she doesn’t suspect a thing. I’ve made sure to keep my distance.”
And I had to hurt her to do it
. “She’s not around right now, anyway. She got hurt at the site and will be out of commission for at least two weeks.”

“Lucky for you.”

“Yeah, real lucky.” But not in the way Frank thought. Luck was that Sera was still alive.

He gave Frank his report on the German camp’s movements. They appeared to be bringing in fresh troops, probably in anticipation of an Allied invasion from the south. He even told Frank about seeing Giovanni in the camp. He still hadn’t figured out what he was doing there, but the possibility that he was helping the Germans hide munitions in the ruins had certainly crossed his mind.

David couldn’t help thinking about Sera and the way Giovanni treated her. Worse, the way she let him treat her. The guy had sleaze written all over him. Of course, after kissing her and then telling her there was another woman, she probably thought David was just as much of a snake as Giovanni.

Who was he kidding? At least with Giovanni she knew what was coming. David, on the other hand, was lying to her face, and she had no idea, no notion, that it was all an act to protect her, or that the charade was eating him up inside.

As ridiculous as it was, he felt like he needed to make it up to her somehow. As much as he knew he should keep his distance, he wanted to see the smile back on her face and to hear her laughter. He wanted things to go back to how they were before he screwed things up with that kiss.

Frank’s offer of rations planted a seed of an idea.

“I think I just might take you up on your offer.”

Frank looked momentarily confused. “What offer?”

“I need you to get something for me.”

* * *

“
Merda
.” Shit.

The soft thud of Sera’s hairbrush landing on the rug in front of her dresser sounded almost mocking as she dropped it for the third time. Dropping it wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t taken her a month to pick it up each time.

Gripping the dresser for balance, she grasped the brush’s wooden handle between her toes, raising the brush half way up to meet her outstretched hand. At this point, the maneuver became painful. She winced as a sharp twinge shot through her ribs.

Snatching the offending hair apparatus before it could tumble to the floor again, she straightened slowly and tried to catch her breath.

Under a minute. Not bad. She was getting faster every day at retrieving dropped items with her toes.

She hated feeling this helpless. After three days in the hospital, she was trapped in her apartment, barely able to walk across the room, much less venture outside. She desperately wanted to go back to work, but with her bruised ribs, she was just getting to the point where she could dress herself without Maria’s help.

She missed the ruins. She missed the feel of the dirt running through her fingers. She missed the smell of the ashes mixed with the fertile earth as she dug deeper and deeper in the pit. She missed the excitement that came with each layer she removed, wondering if something priceless might lie just underneath.

She missed David.

It hurt that he hadn’t come to see her even once. Didn’t he care?

He must,
her heart told her.
Otherwise, why would he have stayed by your bedside throughout the first night?

Yes,
her head reminded her,
but then he vanished in the morning, and you haven’t seen him since. Maybe he doesn’t care that much after all.

Heberto
had told her how David had saved her, digging her out of the dirt like one of her archeological finds. And of how she’d stopped breathing, and he’d forced life back into her.

Looking at her reflection in the mirror, Sera reached up and touched her lips. She didn’t remember him doing it, but somehow she could still feel it—the pressure of his mouth on hers, his breath in her lungs. She closed her eyes and licked her lips, almost able to taste him.

A sudden knock at the door startled her out of her fantasy, making her flinch and knock the hairbrush off the dresser and onto the floor again. Not bothering to pick it up this time, she shuffled to the door.

“I’m coming. I’m coming,” she grumbled as the pounding continued. She jerked the door open with as much force as her injuries allowed. “What?”

Her irritation was quickly replaced by surprise. David stood in the hall, looking better than a good steak dinner, which she hadn’t had in nearly three years. For a moment, she wondered if her wayward thoughts had conjured him to her door.

“So, how’s the wounded bone-digger?” he asked, his cocky grin making him look devilishly handsome.

Closing her gaping mouth, she clutched at the neck of her old bathrobe. Damn, she wasn’t even dressed, and it was two o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. Most people would expect any decent person to be dressed by now.

David raised his dark brows in question. “Are you going to let me in, or should I just continue this one-sided conversation with myself out here in the hallway?”

“Oh.” Sera shook herself and stepped back, running a nervous hand down the side of the hair she hadn’t managed to brush yet. “What are you doing here?”
Now, over a week since you snuck out of the hospital on me.

“I would think that was obvious.”

She watched as he glanced around her tiny apartment, and she cringed. The cramped space looked like a bomb had hit it, with piles of clothes strewn about and dirty dishes stacked high in the sink. Normally neat and tidy, she found it just hurt too much to keep it clean right then. She hated to imagine what he was thinking.

His gaze returned to her. “I’m here to see you.”

“Why?”
Why didn’t you come sooner?

David shrugged. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Fine. Better.” Sera winced as she cinched the sash of her robe tighter. “Still a little sore.”

“That’s good.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking unusually nervous. Did she really make him that uncomfortable? “I was also wondering when you’d be coming back to work.”

Sera walked over to the kitchen table, suddenly aware of her bare feet peeking out from beneath her robe.

“The doctor says another week, but I hope it will be sooner.”

Pulling out a chair, she eased herself into it. David stepped forward as if he were going to help her, but for some reason stopped himself. Probably because he didn’t want to get too close to a woman who looked like she hadn’t bathed in a week.

“I’m glad to hear it, because I’ve been digging holes all over the place and haven’t found a damn thing.”

“You’ve been doing
what
?” Her preoccupation with her bedraggled appearance evaporated as a cold chill raced up her spine.

“Digging holes.”

Holes. Oh, no. Her site. The carefully laid out excavation plan. The artifacts.

“Oh, God. What have you done? Holes? You can’t just go around digging holes. Didn’t you learn anything I taught you?”

Sera felt like she was going to be sick. She pushed herself from the table and shuffled to her dresser, her ribs screaming in protest every step of the way.

“Don’t worry. It’s just a few here and there.”

She jerked a pair of trousers from the drawer.

“How many? How deep?”

David shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “Only a couple of dozen or so. Some are only as big as my fist, but there are a few you can stand in.”

“Stand in?” Sera felt her stomach plummet to somewhere around her shaking knees. “Please tell me you didn’t dig holes that deep.”

Panic raced through her. How could he do that to her site? After all the hard work they’d done, he may have ruined everything. Oh, to think of all the priceless artifacts that may have been destroyed forever. She wanted to cry. But there would be time for that later. Right now she had to go to the site and see for herself what damage he’d done. She needed to save what she could.

Struggling with her clothes, she grunted as a sharp pain shot through her ribs. Wrestling to get her foot into her pants leg, she nearly toppled onto the bed.

“Calm down, Sera.” David’s rich, deep laughter made her pause, balancing precariously on one foot. “I was just kidding. Yes, I have been working at the site, but
Heberto
has been there to guide me every step of the way. I haven’t moved so much as one clod of dirt without his approval.”

Relief relaxed her tense muscles until aggravation took its place.

“That was not funny.”

“I know, but watching you hop around like a deranged bunny-rabbit was.”

Sera hurled her trousers at David’s head, only to be repaid with a sharp jab of pain in her side, making her nearly double over.

“Oh, ouch.”

Before she knew it, he was by her side, helping her to sit on the edge of her bed.

“Careful, we don’t want you to hurt yourself any worse than you already are.”

“Well, you should have thought about that before you started teasing me.”

“Sorry, but I couldn’t resist.” His easy smile slowly faded, and his sparkling eyes softened to a warm, chocolate brown. “You scared the hell out of me, you know.”

“I wasn’t too thrilled with being buried alive myself.” Sera swallowed hard around the lump that suddenly formed in her throat. When had he sat down on the bed next to her? “Thank you… for saving my life.”

“I guess that makes us even.”

“What?” Distracted by the heat of his body so close, she barely heard what he said.

“When you saved me from smothering under the tent. We’re even now, I suppose.”

“Yes. Even.” She remembered when the tent collapsed on him—and what came after. Was it her imagination, or was he leaning closer? Or maybe she was leaning toward him. Did it matter?

David stared at her mouth, as if he too was recalling their kiss and wanted nothing more than to repeat it. Then he cleared his throat, abruptly making her aware of how close she was to him and how far away she should be.

He stood suddenly, taking a step, then another, away from the bed. Away from her.

“I brought you something.”

“You did?”

“Yes. Wait right here. I’ll just be a second.” He turned and went to her door, stepping briefly out into the hallway.

Sera shook her head to clear the confusing ride his moods were taking her on. One minute he was teasing her, the next he looked ready to eat her alive, and then he acted like he couldn’t get far enough away from her.