Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(30)

It is the moment Rio had hoped to avoid. Strand is oblivious, Jack being just one more soldier with a shovel. Jack nods at Rio, tries and fails to smile, and ends up seeming to grimace in disgust. Rio raises her hand in a guilty, halfhearted wave and the jeep roars on by, its dust-cloud swirling over Jack.

It doesn’t matter. Strand is Strand, while Jack is just Jack.

“Where are we going?” Rio asks, raising her voice to be heard over the rush of wind in her face.

“I, uh . . . I arranged a little privacy.”

“How much privacy?” Rio asks archly.

“It’s a room in a hotel, but we can leave the door open. And I’m told there’s a shower.”

“Uh-huh.” A slow, skeptical drawl.

Strand grins at her. “You know, being in the army has made you cynical.”

“Being around men all day and night will do that to a girl.”

“I imagine that’s true. Say, how are you, Rio?” It’s a serious question, more serious than it would have been back home, more serious than it would have been on the Queen Mary. As she feared, the sight of her in an OD T-shirt reassembling her weapon like an automaton has left an impression.

She shrugs. “Fine as anyone, I guess. Sick of living in the dirt. Sick of the same three things to eat every day. Sick of hearing the same old stories from the same old people day in, day out. I swear if Suarez starts in again on the time he caught a fly ball at Yankee Stadium . . . But I’m okay.” She smiles and reaches out to touch his hand on the gearshift. “Let’s make a deal.”

“What deal?”

“No more war talk.”

He reaches awkwardly with his right hand and she shakes it, softening the grip of her muscles, wishing the pads of her fingers and palm weren’t hard with calluses earned wielding shovels and hauling supplies. The morning had been spent hauling food supplies into the mess tent with Beebee and pretending not to notice as Beebee stole roughly 10 percent of what they unloaded for use as “trade goods.”

The hotel is a relic of French colonial influence, even flying a faded and tattered French tricolor over the door. A new sign has been nailed beside the front door that reads: Amis et Alliés Well Coming.

Friends and allies welcome. Given that Vichy French forces were firing on Americans just months earlier, it elicits a skeptical grunt from Rio. But inside there’s a desk and a manager and a bellman, and overstuffed leather chairs arranged around low tables topped with beer bottles and glasses and overflowing ashtrays.

The bellman, a surly young Arab, shows them to a third-floor room that is clean enough and furnished with a dresser with peeling veneer . . . and an iron bed.

“Get us a bottle of Champagne,” Strand orders the bellman.

“No have,” the bellman says, but with something in his eyes that suggests the answer may be only temporary. Sure enough, when Strand hands him a ten-dollar bill, it turns out the hotel does indeed have a bottle of Champagne.

“You can close the door,” Rio says. “I’m not worried about my reputation.”

“But what about my reputation?” Strand asks with a wink. He closes the door.

Rio notes her own lack of concern for propriety and reputation. She would never for a moment have considered being in a closed hotel room with a man back home. The very idea was outrageous. She’d have slapped the face of any man who suggested such a thing.

They kiss, a tentative first peck, and then a longer kiss, and then a kiss that threatens to end with both of them on the bed. Rio pulls back and says, “I’m going to find the shower.”

The shower is down the corridor. It is none too clean but wildly luxurious by army standards, with actual tile on the walls. Rio strips down and turns on the cold water, which, as she expects, is plenty warm, and in any event there is no hot water. She uses a bar of fragrant soap to shampoo her hair and carefully clean every square inch of grime from the rest of her.

“Wow,” Strand says, as she lets herself back into the room.

Rio hesitates a moment then closes the door behind her. Is she sending him a signal she doesn’t mean to send?

Or do I mean to send that exact signal?

“Should we taste that bubbly?” she says, striving to find a voice that sounds less like Rio the GI and more like Rio the girl from Gedwell Falls. This new-old voice sounds false to her, but Strand is not here to see her as she is now.

Is he?

“It would be a waste of a generous tip not to,” Strand agrees. He pops the cork and pours. Strand and Rio both drain their glasses and take the refill more slowly.

Strand sits in the only chair and pulls it close to the bed, where Rio perches on the edge of the mattress.

There’s nowhere to sit but the bed, Rio assures herself, but the shower and the distinct memory of Strand’s bicep have set off some turmoil within.

I can sit on a bed without it meaning anything.

A bed. With a man. In a hotel room.

With the door closed!

“I can’t believe you’re actually here,” Rio says, trying in vain to ignore the bickering voices in her head.

“I’m amazed at my own resourcefulness,” Strand says.

They fall silent, looking awkwardly in the direction of each other’s feet.

“So, really,” Strand says at last. “How has it been? Have you seen action?”