The Unsung Hero (5 page)
Kelly knew he was testing Tom, seeing if the younger man were brave enough to use the D-word in front of him.
Tom met her eyes across the bed and smiled slightly. It wasn’t even a full smile, and just like that, she was fifteen again, her heart kicking into double time. God, he was even more good-looking than he’d been in his leather bomber jacket, astride his Harley, hair down past his shoulders.
These days, he wore his hair very short, as if he didn’t give a damn about the fact that his hairline was receding. And it was thinning pretty drastically on top. But that was okay. Short hair looked good on him.
There was no doubt about it: in a few years, Tom Paoletti—the boy who’d worn a ponytail all through high school—was going to be the best-looking bald man in the world.
As Kelly watched, Tom turned and looked Charles directly in the eye. “How’s Joe taking the fact that his best friend is dying?” he asked.
Dying. There it was. The truth. Boldly, bravely tossed out among them, unveiled. So many visitors tried to push it away, but it would lurk, festering in the corner of the room, always present, putting everyone on edge.
“It’s been hard for him,” Charles said, answering Tom with an equally rare honesty. “Can you stay for a while? It would be good for Joe if you could stay for a while.”
What a liar. Charles hoped Tom would stay. Yet he would’ve preferred it if Kelly, his own daughter, packed her things and went back to Boston.
Tom made some vague sound that was neither yes nor no.
Like her father and despite her jealousy, Kelly, too, hoped that Tom would stay—but for entirely different reasons.
“When did your father grow a sense of humor?” Tom lowered himself into one of the chairs at the Ashtons’ kitchen table.
Kelly was putting ice into a couple of tall glasses, pouring them both some lemonade. She had her back to him, and even dressed as she was in wide-legged pants and a loose sleeveless silk shirt thing, Tom was hyperaware that the girl he’d drooled over had grown up into a woman who had a body to die for.
Now, as back then, she still dressed conservatively. Ever the good girl, she didn’t flaunt what God had given her. But even now, as back then, nothing short of a heavy robe would’ve successfully hidden it. And even that was disputable.
“I think it reemerged when he stopped drinking,” she told him, bending over to put the lemonade back in the fridge.
Tom tried not to look at her ass, but damn, there it was, even more perfect than ever. As she turned to face him, he pulled his gaze away just in time, pretending to be fascinated by the clock in the microwave across the room. He looked up at her and smiled as she handed him the glass, as if he’d just noticed she was there. Not staring at your body.
She smiled back at him, no doubt still completely oblivious to the effect she had on him. He could remember her walking through the halls of the high school, totally clueless to the fact that heads turned wherever she went. At thirty-two, she still exuded that fresh innocence, that sweetness that made him want to protect her from the world—and from himself.
Mostly from himself.
“How’s your mother?” he asked.
“Fine. Remarried. She’s living near Baltimore.”
“Mine’s in Florida. So when did you move back to Baldwin’s Bridge?” he asked as she sat down at the table, across from him. “Or is this just a visit?”
“I’m living half here, half in Boston, although the Boston half usually ends up being one night a week. My father refuses to let me hire a nurse, so I end up driving out here most nights. Thank God for Joe. He was the one who called me—about a week after they first found out it was cancer. If it were up to my father, I probably still wouldn’t know.”
“How long has he got?” Tom quickly added, “If you don’t mind my asking so bluntly.”
Kelly shook her head. “No, it’s good,” she said. “Really. Most people tiptoe around it.” She took a deep breath, as if bracing herself. “He’s got maybe a month before he’ll need to start a morphine drip, before he’s so weak he can’t get out of bed. Right now he’s handling the pain with pills. And he’s got good days and bad days. On his good days, he’s pretty mobile, although his hips give him trouble—that’s a totally separate issue. An age thing, not related to the cancer. I got a walker; I just put it in his room. I’m hoping he’ll just start using it. Maybe after today . . .”
For several long seconds, she faded out, staring into space, shoulders slumped, looking completely exhausted. But even tired, even sixteen years older, she had flawlessly beautiful skin. Sure, she had some lines—laughter lines around her eyes and mouth—but in Tom’s opinion they made her look even more attractive, made her look less like a porcelain doll and more like a real, living, breathing woman. Her face was still heart shaped—maybe a little bit fuller, her cheekbones more pronounced.
Her blond hair was slightly darker, slightly longer than shoulder length. But as before, she wore it back from her face in a smooth, perfect ponytail. He’d once tried to get her to show him how she did that—his hair always lumped and bumped when he pulled it back.
He ran one hand over his buzz cut, aware of how different he must look to Kelly after all these years.
She looked exactly the same, with those ocean blue eyes a man could drown in. With those gracefully shaped, naturally red lips—soft lips he’d dreamed about kissing more times than he could count. Dreamed about, but never tasted.
Not even once.
Until that one crazy night he’d completely lost his mind.
Did she even remember?
For one moment, out on the driveway, when he’d turned the corner and was face-to-face with her for the first time in years, he’d sworn he saw an echo of that night in her eyes. But now . . .
It wasn’t the kind of thing that could be brought up gracefully under normal circumstances, let alone the current situation. “So, Kel, your dad’s dying. But hey, remember that night in Joe’s car, when we nearly . . .” Yeah. Real smooth.
And even if she did remember, it was probably something she wanted to forget. Still, he owed her an apology, and sooner or later he was going to have to bring it up.
As if realizing she wasn’t alone, Kelly shook her head, and forced a smile. “The commute’s been tough,” she said. “I’m sorry; I went in and back this morning already. I didn’t mean to space out on you.”
“Living with your father can’t be too much fun, either,” Tom countered. “It never was a picnic for you, living here. And then to have to come back like this . . .”
She tried to make light of it. “Yeah, right, that was me—the poor little rich girl.” She leaned forward. “How are you, Tom? You look good.”
He let her change the subject. “I’m doing all right.”
It was basically true—if he left out the part about the weeks spent in a coma, Rear Admiral Tucker’s attempt to disband his SO squad, his thirty days of convalescent leave, and his spotting the Merchant at Logan Airport—a fact that made Admiral Crowley believe he was crazy. Sure, outside of that, he was peachy keen, thanks.
“Are you here by yourself?” she asked.
Was her question small talk or a polite fishing expedition? He answered honestly. “Yeah, I’m still relentlessly single. I travel a lot and . . .” He shrugged and ran his hand again across his hair. “Actually, I’m surprised you even recognized me, now that I’m hair challenged.”
She laughed. “Aside from the hair, you look exactly the same. And I happen to like your hair short.”
“Thanks for lying, but—”
“I’m not lying.” She held his gaze, and something in his eyes—maybe another echo of that long ago night that Tom couldn’t hide—made her suddenly look away, a slight flush on her cheeks.
She took a sip of lemonade, and he watched her delicate throat move as she swallowed, watched as she caught a drop from her lips with the very tip of her tongue.
Lemonade. His mainstay fantasy had always started with Kelly inviting him in for a glass of lemonade. One thing would lead to another, which invariably would lead to Kelly dropping to her knees in front of him, usually right here in the kitchen of her father’s house.
Kelly Ashton’s fantasies no doubt featured a white dress, a veil, and a ceremony in church—the end result of a man getting down on his knees. She probably didn’t even know what was implied by a woman doing it.
She was far too nice.
He stood up and set his empty glass in the sink. “I should go find Joe,” he said. “He doesn’t even know I’m in town.” Coward. He should face her, right now, and apologize.
“How long will you be home?” Kelly asked.
Home. God, what a word. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“If you’ve got the time,” she said, “I know my father would love to see you when he’s feeling a little better. Maybe you and Joe could come over for dinner—not necessarily tonight. I’m sure you want to spend tonight catching up. I know you’re also probably planning to visit your sister, so tomorrow night’s probably not good, either. . . .”
“I was going to stay only until the weekend, but actually . . .” Once he admitted it, there’d be no turning back. Still, with Charles Ashton dying, how could he just desert Joe? So he said it. “I’ve got thirty days.”
“Thirty!” Kelly stood, too, her face brightening. “Oh, my God, Tom, it would be great if you could stay! You know, this thing for the Fifty-fifth is next week and I’m sure Joe would love—”
“Whoa. Wait. I don’t know. What thing?”
“The celebration,” she said as if that explained everything. She laughed at the look on his face. “Didn’t you see the decorations they’ve been putting up all over town?”
“Flags,” he remembered. “I thought they were left over from the Fourth.”
“No, it’s for this celebration thing,” she said. “It’s going to be a big deal—Senators Kennedy and Kerry are both coming for the opening ceremony. It’s a four-day reunion of the Fighting Fifty-fifth. Hundreds of family members—descendants of the men who served with the Fifty-fifth in Europe—as well as the surviving soldiers are coming from all over the country. I think I read in the paper that there’s fewer than a hundred of the men still alive. My father’s one of them.”
“I knew your dad was in the Second World War.” Tom leaned back against the counter, watching her. He’d said he was leaving, but he couldn’t seem to move any closer to the door. “That’s where he met Joe. In France.”
“You’re going to love this,” she said, “unless you already know, in which case I’m going to have to hit you for not telling me. But Joe’s getting a special seat onstage at the celebration ceremony next Tuesday.”
“But he wasn’t in the Fifty-fifth, he wasn’t even Army.” It didn’t make sense. “He was Air Force—a rear-turret gunner on a reconnaissance plane.” Getting Joe to talk about it had been like pulling teeth and Tom had eventually given up. He knew far more about his own grandfather, Joe’s brother, a man Tom had never met because he’d died at Anzio.
“Joe was shot down over France in ’42,” Kelly told him.
Jesus, Joe hadn’t told him that. His entire discussion with Tom of what he’d done in World War II was limited to a single sentence: “I served in Europe.” Damn.
“I’m not sure exactly what he did—Dad doesn’t talk about the war much, either—but it had something to do with the Fifty-fifth, something Joe ended up getting a Medal of Honor for.”
Tom nearly fell over, and for the first time in months his dizziness wasn’t from his head injury. “Holy shit, Joe’s got a Medal of Honor? Excuse my language—I’m floored.” He had to laugh. “You’d think he might’ve shown it to me at least once. I mean, forget about putting it on display in the living room. . . .”
“The celebration starts August 15th, the anniversary of V-J Day, the official end of the war,” Kelly told him. “The story I heard—through the newspaper, of course, God forbid either Dad or Joe tell me directly—is that on August 15, 1945, after the war was finally over, the men from the Fighting Fifty-fifth made a pact to meet fifty-five years later, in the year 2000. I think it probably seemed cosmic, the way the numbers added up. And 2000 must’ve seemed so far away back then. It truly was the future, you know? Yet there they were, part of millions of Allied troops who’d made the world safe for that future.
“They chose to meet in Baldwin’s Bridge, because for many of them this was where it all started. Did you know there was an army training center here during the Second World War?”
Tom shook his head.
“This was where those men first came, where the Fifty-fifth was formed. The base was out where they built that new Super Stop & Shop about five years ago. There was a fire there just after the war, and they tore down the remaining buildings in 1950. By the time we were in high school, there were just woods out there.”
“I didn’t know any of that,” Tom admitted.
“Joe and Dad still aren’t talking about it, but they went to a celebration planning committee meeting last week,” she told him. “You ready to hear something weird?”
He had to laugh. “Like none of this is weird enough?”
Kelly smiled, too, but wanly. “Maybe you won’t think this is strange, but I did. Last week, when they came back from that meeting, they were arguing furiously. And Joe’s been walking around in a snit ever since.”
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