The Unsung Hero (10 page)
She crossed her arms, leaving him dangling. “Sullivan?” she repeated skeptically. “Of the Tokyo Sullivans?”
“Adopted.” He smiled then, revealing straight, white teeth—no doubt the result of years of expensive orthodontics. Mallory couldn’t keep herself from running her tongue over her own slightly crooked front teeth. God, it so wasn’t fair. She hated him, and hated herself for being envious of an effing geek.
She lifted one eyebrow. “Was there something you wanted?” she asked pointedly, omitting the word loser at the end. It was there, however, in her tone and attitude.
The geek didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he was just used to it. “Yeah, actually,” he said, juggling his Day-Glo yellow backpack and opening the front zipper. “I was watching you for a while, and I’m wondering if you might be interested in . . .”
Here it came. The disgusting proposition of the day.
He triumphantly pulled a rather worn-looking business card from his pack, but Mallory didn’t let him finish.
“Let me guess,” she said. “You’ll give me twenty whole dollars if I put something else in my mouth besides this cigarette. Is that what you want, junior?”
David-the-geek actually looked surprised, and then embarrassed. In fact he even blushed. His baby-soft cheeks actually turned pink.
“Oh,” he said. “Well, no, um.” He laughed. “As, uh, lovely as that sounds that’s not what I . . .” He cleared his throat and held out the business card. “I’m an artist, and I was wondering if you might be interested in posing for me.”
Mallory didn’t take the card. “Posing. I suppose this is where you tell me I would do this posing back in your apartment. Oh, and by the way, you want me to pose naked, right?”
“Well, as much as I’d like that, it might make it hard for me to concentrate, so if you could wear a bikini—”
“What, do I look like some kind of fool to you?” She glared at him. “I’ve heard a shitload of lines before, Einstein, but yours wins the stupid award. No way am I going anywhere with you. Not in this lifetime.”
She swiped the card out of his hand, pointedly tearing it in half and dropping it onto the puddled sidewalk as she walked away.
“Hey,” he called after her. “I didn’t get your name.”
Yeah, right. Mallory didn’t even bother to look back.
Joe opened the bathroom door at Tommy’s gentle knock. He made a show of drying his face with his towel so he didn’t have to look the younger man in the eye.
“You all right?” Tom asked.
“No,” Joe admitted, feeling stupid. Charles was eighty years old. It was a miracle he’d lived this long. The fact that he was going to die shouldn’t have been so distressing.
“You want to talk?”
“No.” Joe had his back to Tommy as he hung up his towel on the rack by the sink, but he heard the kid laugh.
“Now what made me guess that’s what you’d say?” Tom asked. He sighed. “Needless to say, I’m here. You know where to find me if you change your mind.”
Joe gave the kid an uh-huh sound as he made sure his towel was spread out to dry, cut precisely in half by the rack, the corners neatly lined up.
“I figured I’d go pick up some paint tomorrow.” Tom deftly changed the subject. “The kitchen’s looking pretty gray. Between the two of us, we can slap on a few coats, have it done by Sunday, piece of cake. That is—if the Hero of Baldwin’s Bridge deigns to do such menial labor as painting.”
Joe didn’t answer. A comment like that didn’t deserve any kind of response.
But Tom blocked his way out of the bathroom. “You know, you could’ve at least told me that much,” he said mildly.
Joe couldn’t have loved Tommy more if he’d been his own son. He looked at him for several good long seconds. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I couldn’t have.”
________________________________________
Five
9 August
“IT’S HIM, ISN’T it? It’s Joe.”
Kelly was gazing up at the statue that was on the Baldwin’s Bridge common—the picture-perfect lawn between the world-famous hotel and the town marina. But now she turned to find Tom standing behind her.
She wasn’t one bit surprised that he should be here this morning, too. No doubt he had been as eager as she to take another look at the statue that was boldly labeled “The Hero of Baldwin’s Bridge.”
“Hey,” she said in greeting, trying not to blush, thinking of the way she’d kissed his hand last night. The way he’d run away afterward. Good thing she hadn’t gotten close enough to kiss him on the lips.
“Taking the day off?” He didn’t sound as if he were thinking about anything but here and now. He sounded . . . like Tom. Casual and friendly, with an undercurrent of sexuality he couldn’t lose even when he was being casual and friendly.
“Hah. There’s no such thing.” She tried to sound just as casual, hoping he couldn’t tell that every time she so much as saw him she started flashing hot and cold and having fantasies of him kissing her, right here, in public, on the Baldwin’s Bridge common. “I mean, yeah, this is supposed to be one of my stay home days, but odds are I’ll be paged and end up going into Boston.”
Tom was wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap. Much of his face was hidden, but what she could see looked tired, as if he hadn’t slept well or the headache he’d mentioned last night was still bothering him. He smelled great, though, like sunblock and coffee and fresh laundry. She resisted her urge to press her nose against the clean cotton sleeve of his muscle-hugging T-shirt and breathe in deeply.
“Check this out.” Kelly dug through her purse for the copies she’d made at the library from the microfiche machine. “It’s from The Baldwin’s Bridge Trumpet.”
He laughed. “We think alike. I was going to the library next.”
“I was there for over two hours and this was all I found,” she told him. “Maybe you’ll have better luck.”
“May 8, 1946,” he read as she handed him the copies. “That’s nearly a year after the end of the war.”
“Yeah, it was a year after V-E Day. The town had a special statue unveiling. For this statue,” she explained, glancing up at it again. “It was commissioned and paid for by Mrs. Harper Baldwin to remember a son and a nephew who’d died in the war. According to what it says in the article, she had two other sons. Both served with the Fifty-fifth, and both survived, thanks at least in part to Joe, who risked his life to warn the division of a coming attack. Mrs. Baldwin had the artist use a photo of Joe as the model for this statue, but honored Joe’s quote unquote most humble request to leave his name off the statue.”
Kelly watched as Tom silently skimmed through the three pages of news articles and looked at the pictures. Joe, looking uncomfortable, standing stiffly next to Mrs. Harper Baldwin, surrounded by a crowd of well-dressed townfolk. Joe in his uniform, impossibly young. He was twenty-two in 1946, after the war. When he’d first been shot down in France, he’d been only eighteen. Eighteen.
“The second article has a brief recounting of the incident in which Joe saved the division,” she told Tom. “It doesn’t say much more than what Dad told us last night. Although it does mention that Joe . . .” She moved closer to him to read over his shoulder, her arm brushing against his as she reached to point out the passage. She had to clear her throat. “Here it is. ‘Joseph Paoletti, who is currently employed as the Ashton family groundskeeper in Baldwin’s Bridge, met Charles Ashton, an officer with the Fighting Fifty-fifth, when Lieutenant Ashton was wounded in France in June 1944. Mr. Paoletti helped hide the wounded officer from the Nazis after a German counteroffensive that pushed the battle line far to the west, leaving Lieutenant Ashton stranded deep within enemy territory.’ “
She looked up at Tom. “My father was there, too. Behind the German lines. Did you know about that?”
He looked at her pointedly over the top of his sunglasses, and she laughed. “Dumb question,” she said. “Like either one of the silent twins would’ve told you. Sorry.”
As she watched, Tom looked from the blurred newspaper photograph of Joe—a young Joe, but still so serious—up to the grim-faced statue.
“It’s definitely Joe,” Kelly agreed, gazing at the statue, too. “He’s got those Paoletti eyes.”
Tom laughed. “You mean those shifty Paoletti eyes?”
She turned to face him, horrified. “God, no! You don’t have—”
“Whoa,” he said. “Easy! I was just kidding.”
She was standing close enough to see his eyes behind his sunglasses. “No, you weren’t. There may have been people in this town who didn’t like or trust you, Tom,” she said fiercely, “but I was never one of them.”
He gave her one of his little half smiles. “Yeah,” he said. “I know. I . . . always appreciated that.”
Kelly was standing much too close but she purposely didn’t back away. Her attraction for him was mutual. It had to be. When he wasn’t around, she doubted its existence. But when she was with him . . . She wasn’t imagining this electricity that crackled between them.
He’d apologized last night for kissing her all those years ago. But he hadn’t apologized for leaving town the next day with only the lamest of good-byes. She’d kept waiting for him to mention that, but he hadn’t. Then all of a sudden he was about to go find Joe, so she’d reached out to shake his hand.
Way to initiate a seduction—with a brisk handshake. She knew she had to do something, and that was when—stupider and stupider—she’d kissed him.
On the hand.
Genius.
In retrospect, she came up with all kinds of snappy replies to his apology. Like, “You don’t need to apologize for something I enjoyed immensely and am dying to do again.”
Right—as if she’d ever find the nerve to say something like that to him.
“So explain,” Tom said now, glancing up at the statue looming above them. “He’s got Paoletti eyes. I’m dying to hear what that means.”
What was she supposed to tell him? That his version of those hazel Paoletti eyes had the power to make her melt? To make her heart rate increase? To fuel some pretty powerful fantasies, particularly when combined with the memory of a few stolen kisses in the front seat of a station wagon?
“Well,” she said carefully, “I think it’s probably a window-to-the-soul thing. Maybe it comes from being part Italian, but neither you nor Joe are very good at hiding your emotions. Which is really wonderful,” she added when it looked as if he was about to protest. “And maybe it’s because of that, but you both always look just a little bit sad. Even when you’re smiling.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “Probably comes from keeping so many secrets.”
He laughed and dimples appeared in his cheeks. “I don’t have any secrets.”
“Sure,” Kelly said. “Aside from the fact that you’re a Navy SEAL and everything you do is a secret, your life’s an open book. But, whoops, you don’t manage to come home to visit more than twice a year, because your career is your life.”
She had him there.
“And Joe,” she continued. “All these years I thought he was just a gardener—turns out he’s an international man of mystery. Every time I turn around, he’s got another secret.”
“Only about the war,” Tom protested. “There are plenty of men who returned from Europe and didn’t say a single word about it to anyone. It’s not that hard to understand.”
“What about his personal life?”
“What personal life?” Tom asked.
“See?” she countered triumphantly, smiling up at him.
He was silent then, just gazing down at her, still standing much, much too close. Kelly felt her smile fade. Kiss me.
She could see the sign for the bank from where she stood. Seventeen years ago, Tom had pulled into the dark bank parking lot, jammed his car into park, dragged her into his arms, and kissed her.
Right there.
Just a stone’s throw from where they were now standing.
It had been, without a doubt, the hottest, most powerful sexual experience of her life. And she’d kept her clothes on the entire time.
For him, it had been only something for which to apologize.
He shifted slightly back, putting more space between them. Still backing away, even all these years later.
“Why didn’t Joe ever get married?” Kelly asked. Why didn’t you ever get married? was the question she really wanted to ask, even though she already knew. He wasn’t the kind of man who would willingly settle down. And that was a good thing, she reminded herself. If she could manage to strike a match and ignite their attraction, neither of them would get hurt.
She motioned toward the papers Tom still held, pointing at the picture of Joe. “Look at him. He was delicious. And as if looking like this isn’t enough,” she added, “he just so happens to be one of the nicest guys in the world—and a war hero with a statue made in his likeness. I’m sorry, but the women in town had to be lining up to meet him.”
“You know, I asked Joe about that once,” Tom told her. “I wanted to know why he didn’t marry my grandmother—his brother’s widow. She’d moved to Baldwin’s Bridge a few years after Joe did. He got a job for her as a cook in your father’s house after the war. It was obvious he liked her, and I’ve seen pictures—she was gorgeous. She must’ve married my grandfather when she was seventeen. So there she was, a war widow at the ripe old age of twenty-three, with a five-year-old kid in tow—my father. Joe helped her rent a house in town, helped her get settled, but that’s as far as it went.
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