Page 14 of If You Were the Only Girl in the World
She gave a laugh. “Oh, that’s not true. I was angry.”
“You had good cause.”
“I did,” she acknowledged.
Katrina pulled back in his arms to examine him. The subject she thought of was for a younger more carefree girl, a woman who thought of a man as a candidate for husband. She had never been that woman, not since she sailed away from England ten years before. Still she had to ask, “What happened to your wife? You told me you have a son but no wife.”
He offered a sigh. “I married a woman from my village. A sweet lady who died giving birth to our son.”
“Oh, Nate.” She cupped his jaw. “I am so sorry.”
“He’s a fine boy.”
“I’m sure.”
“And I wouldn’t have him if it were not for you.”
She demurred. “Oh, I doubt—”
“No. That night you saved me from what would have been disaster.”
That he would credit her struck her as magnanimous and much maligned. “I think you knew what it was before you spoke to a stranger on the veranda.”
“Did I? A few words. A casual observation. Two strangers alone with the stars speaking the truth. My marriage would never have worked.”
“Nor mine.”
He grinned and tapped the tip of her nose with his index finger. “I do believe we saved each other.”
She nodded and grinned. “We did.”
He brushed his thumb over the curve of her bottom lip. “I’ll come to Paris. I don’t know when or how. But I will. I’ll write but the mail across the Channel is irregular. But I will come to call. Will you have me?”
She hugged him close, her heart breaking that she’d never see him again, that he’d die or forget her. “Have you? Of course. Nate, when you do come, I might never let you go.”
“Katrina,” he said as if he couldn’t believe she’d want him. And then he bent to put his firm hot lips to hers. His kiss was fast, hard, every claim she’d ever imagined from a man who truly could not live without her. He crushed her near again and his next kiss was a brand of heat and chaos. He traced her lips with his tongue and she opened, wanting his possession. He skimmed her cheek. “Don’t forget me.”
She caught his chin. “I never did. I thought so often about you. A gallant man. I’d known only a few. I wondered too in the still of many nights when I was weary or I had lost someone, if you remembered me. Or how you’d be if you were mine.”
He sucked in a breath. “Oh, Katrina, we’ll discover that together, shall we, eh? Soon. I’ll come to Paris.” His gaze ran over her in question and in a look of possession. Then he kissed her once more, a claim of lips and tongue and teeth.
He stepped back and she gasped in objection.
So full of his endearments, she reached up and brushed his mussed hair into better form. “Paris, yes. A promise.”
He lifted her hand and kissed the back. “Doctor, you are brave. Go. Save many. Be safe.Au revoir,darling.”
Slowly he turned away, straightening his coat, and with a heave of his shoulders, he strode away.
* * *
December 2, 1916
Rue Danton, Paris
“Une baguette, s’il vous plaît. Merci.” Katrina took her bread from the shop girl and hurried past the long line of customers toward the door of the patisserie.
Alice Durlinski strode beside her and pulled up her scarf around her throat as they stepped out to the street. “The price of bread has gone up yet again today by two centimes. Eleven centimes now. Good thing you and I can afford increases.”
