Kaleidoscope.

by Danielle Steel.

To three very special little sisters: Samantha, Victoria, and Vanessa, precious little ladies, and their very big sister, Beatrix, who is so lovely, and their three big brothers, Trevor, Todd, and Nicky, and little brother Maxx, who are very special too:May each of you be blessed with good lives, and good fortune, good hearts, and good people to love you and who you love well.May you always be safe, and strong, and happy ... and together!And may each turn of the kaleidoscope bring you joy!The first turn, which was our turn, brought you to us, one by one, special gifts, greatly loved, precious people.And may your own turns bring you love, and flowers ... never demons ...Hold fast to each other, beloved ones, bring each other strength, and laughter and good times and love ... just as once we brought them to you.With my love, for you and your Daddy, and with ours, for each other, and you.With all my heart, ds.

PART ONE.

Solange

Chapter 1.

The rains were torrential northeast of Naples on the twenty-fourth of December 1943, and Sam Walker huddled in his foxhole with his rain gear pulled tightly around him. He was twenty-one years old and he had never been in Europe before the war. It was a h.e.l.l of a way to see the world, and he had seen more than he'd ever wanted. He had been overseas since November of '42, fighting in North Africa, and taking part in Operation Torch until May of '43. He had thought Africa was bad with the deadly heat and desert winds and the sandstorms that left you half blind with red eyes that burned for days and tears constantly pouring down your cheeks, but this was worse. His hands were so numb he could hardly hold the cigarette b.u.t.t his buddy had given him as a Christmas gift, let alone light it.

The wind from the mountains went right through your bones, it was the worst winter Italy had ever seen, or so they said, and he suddenly longed for the torrid heat of the desert. He had reached Sicily in July, with the 45th Infantry, attached to Clark's Fifth Army, and after Sicily they had been in the battle of Naples in October. And the battle of Termoli after that, but for two months now they had crawled over rocks and through ditches toward Rome, hiding in barns when they found them, stealing what food they could, fighting the Germans every inch of the way, and bleeding over every inch they covered.

"s.h.i.t...." His last match was drenched, and by then so was the b.u.t.t that had been his only Christmas present. He was twenty-one years old, and when the j.a.panese struck Pearl Harbor he had been at Harvard. Harvard ... the thought of it would have made him laugh if he hadn't been so bone tired.

Harvard ... with its perfect life and its pristine Quad and its bright young faces so sure they would one day run the world. If they only knew ... it was difficult to believe now that he had ever been a part of all that. He had worked so d.a.m.n hard to get there. He was a "townie" from Somerville, and all his life he had dreamed of going to Harvard. His sister had laughed at him, all she had wanted was to marry one of the boys in her high school senior cla.s.s, any of them would do, and she had certainly slept with enough of them to audition for the part. She was three years older than Sam and she had already been married and divorced by the time Sam finally got into Harvard, after working at every odd job he could for a year after finishing high school. Their parents had died when he was fifteen, in a car accident on a trip to Cape Cod, and he had wound up living with Eileen and her eighteen-year-old "husband." Sam had walked out four months before Eileen's erstwhile spouse, and they had hardly seen each other after that. He had gone to see her once, to say good-bye, three days after he'd been drafted. She'd been working in a bar, had dyed her hair blond, and he had hardly recognized her in the dim light when he'd first seen her. She'd looked embarra.s.sed at first, and there was the same cunning light in her eyes he had remembered and always hated. Eileen looked out for number one, and her little brother had never meant much to her.

"Well, good luck ..." She'd stood awkwardly staring at him in a dark corner of the bar, as he wondered if he should kiss her good-bye, but she'd seemed anxious to get back to work, and didn't seem to have anything more to say to him. "Let me know where you are. ..."

"Yeah ... sure ... take care of yourself...." He had felt twelve years old again, saying good-bye to her, and he remembered all of the things he had never liked about his sister. It was hard to remember anything he had liked. They had always seemed like two people from different worlds, different lives, almost different planets. She had tortured him as a child, by telling him he was adopted, and he had believed her until their mother had whipped her one day and told Sam in her pathetic boozy way that Eileen was lying. Eileen always lied, she lied about everything, and whenever possible she had blamed Sam for whatever she'd done, and most of the time their father believed her. Sam had felt foreign to all of them, the big, burly father who had worked on a fishing boat all his life, the mother who drank too much, and the sister who partied all night. He had lain in his bed at times, imagining what it would be like to be part of a "real" family, the kind with hot meals on the table, and clean sheets on the bed ... a family from Beacon Hill perhaps ... who summered on Cape Cod ... a family with little children and dogs, and parents who laughed a lot. He couldn't remember ever seeing his parents laugh or smile or hold hands, and sometimes he wondered if they ever had. Secretly, he hated them for the tawdry lives they led, and the life they had condemned him to. He wanted so much more than that. And they hated him in return for his good grades, his bright mind, his starring roles in his high school plays, and the things he said to them, about other lives, other worlds, other people. He had once confided to his father that he wanted to go to Harvard one day, and his father had stared at him as though he were a stranger. And he was, to all of them. When he finally went to Harvard, it was a dream come true, and the scholarship he had won had been the gift of a lifetime ... the gift of a lifetime ... and then that magical first day, after working so hard for so long, and then suddenly three months later it was over.

The rain beat on his frozen hands and he heard a voice next to him for the first time, as he glanced over his shoulder.

"Need a light?"

He nodded, startled out of his memories, and looked up to see a tall blond man with blue eyes and rivers of rain pouring down his thin cheeks. They all looked like they were crying.

"Yeah ... thanks ..." Sam smiled, and for a moment his eyes danced as they had years before. He had been full of mischief once, aeons before. He had dreamt of being the life and soul of the drama club at Harvard. "Nice Christmas, huh?"

The other man smiled. He looked older than Sam, but even Sam looked older than his years now. After North Africa and the Italian campaign, they all felt like old men, and some of them looked it. "Arthur Patterson." He introduced himself formally and Sam laughed out loud as a gust of wind swept them both against the side of the foxhole.

"Charming place, Italy, isn't it? I've always wanted to come here. A truly marvelous vacation." He looked around him as though seeing beautiful girls in bathing suits and beaches with endless lovely bodies, as Patterson grinned and chuckled in spite of himself.

"Been here long?"

"Oh, about a thousand years. I was in North Africa last Christmas. Terrific place. We were invited by Rommel." He gratefully took the light from the tall blond man, lit the b.u.t.t and got two good drags before burning his fingers. He'd have offered it to his new friend but there wasn't time before the rain put out the mere half inch that remained, and he looked apologetically at his benefactor. "I'm Sam Walker, by the way."

"Where you from?"

He wanted to say Harvard, just for old times' sake, but that would have sounded crazy. "Boston."

"New York." As though it mattered now. Nothing mattered now, they were all names of places that didn't exist. All that existed were Palermo, Sicily, and Salerno, and Naples, and Rome, their ultimate goal, if they ever got there.

The tall blond man looked around him, squinting in the wind and rain. "I was a lawyer before all this."

Sam would have been impressed, but like the places they were from, the people they had been no longer mattered. "I wanted to be an actor." It was something he had told hardly anyone, certainly not his parents before they died, or his sister after that, and only a few friends, but even they had laughed at him. And his teachers had told him that he needed to study something more worthwhile. But none of them understood just what acting meant to him, what happened when he stepped onstage. It was like magic reaching from his soul, transforming him into the character he was playing. Gone the parents he had hated, the sister he had loathed, and all his own fears and insecurities with them. But no one seemed to understand that. Not even at Harvard. Harvard men weren't actors, they were doctors and lawyers and businessmen, heads of corporations and foundations, and amba.s.sadors ... He laughed softly to himself again. He sure as h.e.l.l was an amba.s.sador now, with a gun in his hand, and his bayonet fixed all the time so that he could run it through the guts of his enemies as he had time and time again in the past year. He wondered how many men Patterson had killed, and how he felt about it now, but it was a question you didn't ask anyone, you just lived with your own thoughts and the memories of the twisted faces and staring eyes as you pulled your bayonet out again and wiped it on the ground. ... He looked up at Arthur Patterson with the eyes of an old man and wondered briefly if either of them would be alive to see another Christmas.

"What made you want to be an actor?"

"Hmm?" He was startled by the serious look in the other man's eyes, as they both sank to a sitting position on a rock planted in the mud near their feet as the water in the foxhole swirled around them. "Oh, that ... Christ, I don't know ... it seemed like an interesting thing to do." But it was more than that, much more than that, it was the only time he felt whole, that he felt powerful and sure of himself. But he couldn't tell this guy that. It was ridiculous to talk about dreams sitting in a foxhole on Christmas Eve.

"I was in the glee club at Princeton." It was an absurd exchange, and suddenly Sam Walker gave a crack of laughter.

"Do you realize how crazy we are? Talking about glee clubs and drama clubs and Princeton, sitting in this G.o.ddam foxhole? Do you realize we probably won't even be alive by next week, and I'm telling you I wanted to be an actor...." He suddenly wanted to cry through his own laughter. It was all so G.o.ddam awful, but it was real, it was so real they could taste it and feel it and smell it. He had smelled nothing but death in a year, and he was sick of it. They all were, while the generals planned their attack on Rome. Who gave a d.a.m.n about Rome anyway? Or Naples or Palermo? What were they fighting for? Freedom in Boston and New York and San Francisco? They already were free, and at home people were driving to work, and dancing at the USO and going to the movies. What the h.e.l.l did they know about all this? Nothing. Absolutely G.o.ddam nothing. Sam looked up at the tall blond man and shook his head, his eyes full of wisdom and sadness, the sudden laughter gone. He wanted to go home ... to anyone ... even his sister, who had not written to him once since he'd left Boston. He'd written to her twice and then decided it wasn't worth the trouble. The thought of her always made him angry. She had embarra.s.sed him for all of his teen years, and several before that, just as his mother had ... and his stolid, taciturn father. He hated all of them, and now he was here, alone, with a stranger who had been in the glee club at Princeton, but he already liked him.

"Where'd you go to school?" Patterson seemed desperate to hold on to the past, to remember old times, as though thinking about it would take them back there, but Sam knew better than that. The present was right here, in the filth and frozen rain of the foxhole.

Sam looked at him with a lopsided grin, wishing he had another cigarette, a real one, not just half an inch of someone else's. "Harvard." At Harvard he had had real cigarettes, anytime he wanted, Lucky Strikes. The thought of them almost made him weep with longing.

Patterson looked impressed. "And you wanted to be an actor?"

Sam shrugged. "I guess ... I was majoring in English lit. I probably would have ended up teaching somewhere, and running the school plays for snotty freshmen."

"That's not a bad life. I went to St. Paul's, we had a h.e.l.l of a drama club there." Sam stared at him, wondering if he was for real ... Princeton, St. Paul's ... what were they all doing here? What were any of them doing here? ... especially the boys who had died here.

"You married?" Sam was curious about him now, like a Christmas angel who had been visited on him, they seemed different in every possible way, and yet they seemed to have some things in common.

Arthur shook his head. "I was too busy starting my career. I worked for a law firm in New York. I'd been there for eight months when I signed up." He was twenty-seven and his eyes were serious and sad where Sam's were full of mischief. Sam's hair was as black as Arthur's was fair, and he had a medium build with powerful shoulders, long legs for his size, and a kind of energy about him which Arthur seemed to lack. Everything about Arthur Patterson was more restrained, more tentative, quieter, but Sam was also younger.

"I have a sister in Boston, if she hasn't gotten herself killed by some guy in a bar by now." It seemed important to share information about themselves, as though they might not have another chance, and they each wanted someone to know them. They wanted to be known before they died, to make friends, to be remembered. "We never got along. I went to see her before I left, but she hasn't written since I've been gone. You? Sisters? Brothers?"

Arthur smiled for the first time in a while. "I'm an only child, of only children. My father died when I was away at school, and my mother never remarried. This is pretty hard on her. I can tell in her letters."

"I'll bet." Sam nodded, trying to think of what Arthur's mother would be like, trying to envision her, a tall, spare woman with white hair that had once been blond, probably from New England. "My parents died in a car accident when I was fifteen." He didn't tell Arthur that it was no loss, that he had hated them, and they had never understood him. It would have been too maudlin now, and it was no longer important. "Have you heard anything about where we go from here?" It was time to think about the war again, there was no point dwelling too much in the past. It would get them nowhere. Reality was here, northeast of Naples. "I heard something about Ca.s.sino yesterday, that's over the mountains. It ought to be fun getting there." Then they could worry about snow instead of rain. Sam wondered what other tortures they had in store for them at the hands of the generals who owned their lives now.

"The sergeant said something about Anzio last night, on the coast."

"Great." Sam smiled wickedly. "Maybe we can go swimming."

Arthur Patterson smiled, he liked this outspoken boy from Boston. One sensed that beneath the bitterness born of war, there was a light heart and a bright mind, and at least it was someone he could talk to. The war had been hard on Arthur in a lot of ways. Spoiled as a boy, overprotected as a young man, particularly after his father died, and brought up by a doting mother, in a highly civilized world, war had come as a brutal shock to him. He had never been uncomfortable in his life, or endangered, or frightened, and he had been all of those endlessly since arriving in Europe. He admired Sam for surviving it as well as he had.

Sam pulled out the K rations he had been saving as his Christmas treat, and opened them with a wry face. He had already given away the candy to some local children. "Care for a little Christmas turkey? The dressing's a little rich, but the chestnuts are marvelous." He offered the pathetic tin with a flourish and Arthur laughed. He liked Sam a lot. He liked everything about him, and instinctively sensed that he had the kind of courage he himself didn't have. He just wanted to survive and get home again to a warm bed, and clean sheets, and women with blond hair and good legs who had gone to Wellesley or Va.s.sar.

"Thanks, I've already eaten."

"Mmm ..." Sam murmured convincingly, as though eating pheasant under gla.s.s, "fabulous cuisine, isn't it? I never realized the food was this good in Italy."

"What's that, Walker?" The sergeant had just crawled past them, and stopped to stare at them both. He had no problems with Sam, but he kept an eye on him, the boy had too much fire for his own good, and had already risked his life foolishly more than once. Patterson was another story, no guts, and too G.o.ddam much education. "You got a problem?"

"No, Sergeant. I was just saying how great the food is here. Care for a hot biscuit?" He held out the half-empty tin as the sergeant growled.

"Cut it out, Walker. No one invited you over here for a party."

"d.a.m.n ... I must have misread the invitation." Undaunted by the sergeant's stripes or the scowl, he laughed and finished his rations as the sergeant crawled past them in the driving rain, and then glanced over his shoulder.

"We're moving on tomorrow, gentlemen, if you can take time out from your busy social schedules."

"We'll do our best, Sergeant ... our very best ..." With a grin in spite of himself, he moved on, and Arthur Patterson shuddered. The sergeant admired Sam's ability to laugh, and make the other men laugh too. It was something they all needed desperately, particularly now. And he knew they were in for tougher times ahead. Maybe even Walker wouldn't be laughing.

"That guy's been riding my a.s.s since I got here," Arthur complained to Sam.

"It's part of his charm," Sam muttered as he felt in his pockets for another b.u.t.t, in case he'd forgotten one, and then like the gift of the Magi, Arthur pulled out an almost whole cigarette. "My G.o.d, man, where did you get that?" His eyes grew wide with desire as Arthur lit it and handed it to him. "I haven't seen that much tobacco since the one I took off a dead German last week." Arthur shuddered at the thought, but he imagined Sam was capable of it. It was partially the callousness of youth, and partially the fact that Sam Walker had courage. Even sitting quietly in the foxhole, cracking bad jokes, and talking about Harvard, one sensed that.

They slept huddled side by side that night and the rain abated the next morning. The following night they slept in a barn they'd taken over in a minor skirmish, and two days later they headed for the Volturno River. It was a brutal march that cost them more than a dozen men, but by then Sam and Arthur were fast friends. It was Sam who literally dragged Arthur and finally half carried him when he swore he could no longer walk, and it was Sam who saved him from a sniper who would have killed them all.

When the invasion at Nettuno and Anzio failed, the brunt of breaking through the German line at Ca.s.sino fell to Sam and Arthur's division. And this time Arthur was wounded. He took a bullet in the arm, and at first Sam thought he was dead when he turned to him as the shot whizzed past him. Arthur lay with blood all over his chest, and his eyes glazed, as Sam ripped his shirt open, and then discovered that he had been hit in the arm. He carried him behind the lines to the medics and stayed with him until he was sure he was all right, and then he went back and fought until the last retreat, but it was a depressing ordeal for all of them.

The next four months were a nightmare. In total, 59,000 men died at Anzio. And Sam and Arthur felt as though they had crawled through every inch of mud and snow in Italy as the rains continued, and they made their way north to Rome. Arthur was restored to duty rapidly, and Sam was thrilled to have him near at hand again. In the weeks before Arthur was shot, they had developed a bond which neither of them spoke of, but both felt deeply. They both knew it was a friendship that would stand the test of time, they were living through h.e.l.l together and it was something neither of them would ever forget. It meant a lot more than anything in their past, and for the moment even anything in their future.

"Come on, Patterson, get off your dead a.s.s." They had been resting in a valley south of Rome, in the steady march to defeat Mussolini. "The sergeant says we move out in half an hour." Patterson groaned, without moving. "Lazy fart, you didn't even have to fight in Ca.s.sino." In the weeks after Arthur had been hit, they had struggled for Ca.s.sino, and fought until the entire town was reduced to rubble. The smoke had been so thick that it had actually taken several hours to see that the huge monastery had been totally destroyed and had virtually disappeared from the sh.e.l.ling. There had been no major battles since then, but constant skirmishes with the Italians and the Germans. But since the fourteenth of May, their efforts had been stepped up, as they joined the Eighth Army to cross the Garigliano and Rapido rivers, and by the following week all of the men were exhausted. Arthur looked as though he could have slept for a week, if only Sam would let him. "Up, man, up!" Sam nudged him with his boot. "Or are you waiting for an invitation from the Germans?"

Arthur squinted up at him through one eye, wishing he could doze for another moment. The wound still bothered him from time to time, and he tired more easily than Sam, but he had before the wound too. Sam was tireless, but Arthur told himself that he was also younger. "You better watch it, Walker ... you're beginning to sound just like the sergeant."

"You gentlemen have a problem?" He always seemed to appear at the least opportune moments, and to have a sixth sense about when his men were talking about him, and in less than flattering terms. As usual, he had materialized behind Sam, and Arthur scrambled quickly to his feet with a guilty look. The man had an uncanny knack for finding him at his least prepossessing. "Resting again, Patterson?" s.h.i.t. There was no pleasing the man. They had been marching for weeks, but like Sam, the sergeant never seemed to get tired. "The war's almost over, if you can just stay awake long enough to watch us win it." Sam grinned, and the crusty sergeant stared at him, but there was an entente between the two men, and a mutual respect which totally eluded Arthur. He thought he was a son of a b.i.t.c.h to his very core, but he knew that secretly Sam liked him.

"You planning to get your beauty sleep, too, Walker, or can we get you two on your feet long enough to join us in Rome?"

"We'll try, Sergeant ... we'll try." Sam smiled sweetly, as the sergeant roared over his head to the others.

"Move 'em outtttt!!!! ..." He hurried on ahead to roust the others and ten minutes later they were heading north again, and it felt to Arthur as though they never stopped again until the fourth of June when, exhausted beyond words, he found himself literally staggering through the Piazza Venezia in Rome, being pelted with flowers, and kissed by shrieking Italians. Everywhere around them was noise and laughter and singing and the shouts of his own men, and Sam with a week-old beard shouting in delight at him and everyone in sight.

"We made it! We made it! We made it! We made it!" There were tears of joy in Sam's eyes, matched by those in the eyes of the women who kissed him, fat ones, thin ones, old ones, young ones, women in black and in rags and in ap.r.o.ns and cardboard shoes, women who might have, at another time, been beautiful but no longer were after the ravages of war, except to Sam they all looked beautiful. One of them put a huge yellow flower into the mouth of his gun and Sam held her in his arms so long and hard that Arthur grew embarra.s.sed watching.

They dined that night in one of the little trattorias that had been thrown open for them, along with a hundred other soldiers and Italian women. It was a festival of excitement and food and song, and for a few hours it seemed like ample reward for the agonies they'd been through. The mud and the filth and the rain and the snows were almost forgotten. But not for long. They had three weeks of revelry in Rome and then the sergeant gave them the word that they were moving out. Some of the men were staying in Rome, but Sam and Arthur were not among them. Instead, they would be joining Bradley's First Army near Coutances in France, and for a while, they told themselves it couldn't be a very difficult a.s.signment. It was early summer, and in Italy and France the countryside was beautiful, the air was warm, and the women welcomed them everywhere, along with a few German snipers.

The sergeant saved Sam's hide this time, and in return two days later Sam kept the entire platoon from being caught in an ambush. But on the whole, it was an easy move with the German army in full retreat by mid-August. They were to press through France, join General Leclerc's French division and march on Paris. As the word filtered through the ranks, Sam quietly celebrated with Arthur.

"Paris, Arthur ... son of a b.i.t.c.h! I've always wanted to go there!" It was as though he'd been invited to stay at the Ritz and go to the Opera and the Folies-Bergere.

"Don't get your hopes up, Walker. You may not have noticed, but there's a war on. We may not live long enough to see Paris."

"That's what I love about you, Arthur. You're always so optimistic and cheerful." But nothing could dampen Sam's spirits. All he could think of was the Paris he had read about and dreamed about for years. In his mind, nothing had changed, and it would all be there, waiting for him, and for Arthur. He could talk of nothing else as they marched through towns and villages filled with excitement over the end of four years of bitter occupation. Sam was obsessed by the dream of a lifetime, and even the thrill of Rome was forgotten now as they fought their way to Chartres in the next two days, and the Germans were retreating methodically toward Paris, as though leading them to their goal, and what Arthur was sure would be total destruction.

"You're crazy. Has anyone told you that, Walker? Crazy. Totally insane. You act as though you're going on a vacation." Arthur stared at him in total disbelief as Sam rattled on between killing Germans. He even forgot to raid their pockets for cigarettes, he was so excited.

In the early hours of August twenty-fifth, Sam's dream came true. And in an eerie hush, with eyes watching them from every window, they marched into Paris. It was totally unlike their victorious march on Rome. Here, the people were frightened, cautious, slow to come out of their houses and hiding places, and then little by little, they emerged, and suddenly there were shouts and embraces and tears, not unlike Rome, but it all took a little longer.

By two-thirty that afternoon, General von Cholt.i.tz had surrendered and Paris had been officially liberated by the Allies, and when they marched down the Champs-elysees in the victory parade four days later on August twenty-ninth, Sam unashamedly cried as he marched with his comrades. The thought of how far they had come and how much they had accomplished, and that they had freed the Paris of his dreams left him breathless. And the shouts from the people who lined the streets only made him cry more, as the troops marched from the Arc de Triomphe to Notre Dame for a service of thanksgiving. Sam realized he had never been as grateful for anything in his life as he was for having survived the war this far, and having come to this remarkable city to bring freedom to its people.

After the services at Notre Dame, Arthur and Sam were deeply moved as they left the cathedral and they walked slowly down the rue d'Arcole. They were free for the rest of the afternoon, and for a moment Sam couldn't even think of what he wanted to do, he just wanted to walk and drink it all in and smile at the people. They stopped for a cup of coffee at a tiny bistro on a corner, and were given a small steaming cup of the chicory everyone drank, and a plate of tiny biscuits by the owner's wife as she kissed them on both cheeks. When it came time to leave she wouldn't let them pay, no matter how much they insisted. Arthur spoke a little French, and Sam could only gesture his thanks and kiss the woman again. They knew only too well how short of food everyone was, and the gift of biscuits was like bars of gold, offered to a stranger.

Sam was speechless with awe again as they left the bistro. Maybe the war hadn't been so bad after all. Maybe it was all worth it. He was twenty-two years old, and he felt as though he had conquered the world, or at least the only part that mattered. Arthur smiled down at him as they walked. For some reason, Rome had moved him more. Perhaps because he had also spent time there before the war, and Rome had always been a special place for him, the way Paris seemed to be for Sam, even though he had never been there.

"I don't ever want to go home, you know that, Patterson? Sounds nuts, doesn't it?" As he said it, he noticed a young woman walking ahead of them, and he was distracted when Arthur answered. She had flaming red hair pulled back in a knot at the nape of her neck, and was wearing a navy blue crepe dress that was so old it was shiny, but it showed all the rich curves of her figure. There was a proud tilt to her head, as though she had nothing to thank anyone for, she had survived the Germans, and she owed nothing to anyone now, not even the Americans or the Allies who had freed Paris. Everything she felt was spoken by the way she carried herself, and Sam stared at her shapely legs and the sway of her hips as they followed her down the street, all conversation with Arthur halted.

"... don't you think?" Arthur asked him.

"What?" Sam couldn't concentrate on what he was saying. All he could see was the red hair and the slim shoulders, and the proud way she moved. She stopped at the corner, and then crossed the bridge over the Seine and turned down the Quai de Montebello as Sam unconsciously followed her.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know yet." His voice was intense, his blue eyes serious, as though if he lost her from sight for a moment, something terrible would happen.

"What are you doing?"

"Hmm? ..." He looked at Arthur for the merest instant and then quickened his pace, as though terrified to lose the girl. And then suddenly, Arthur saw her too. He looked at her just in time to see her face turned toward them, as though she suddenly sensed them behind her. She had a face like a cameo, with creamy white skin, delicate features, and huge green eyes that bore right into them, one by one, and her gaze seemed to stop on Sam, as though warning him to keep his distance.

He was paralyzed by his lack of French and the quelling look she gave him, but when she began to walk again, he followed her with even greater determination. "Have you ever seen a face like that?" he asked Arthur without glancing at him. "She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." There was an aura about her that easily captivated the attention, and a strength one could sense even at a distance. This was not a girl throwing flowers at the Allied troops, or ready to throw her arms around the nearest soldier. This was a woman who had survived the war, and was ready to thank no one for it.

"She's a pretty girl." Arthur agreed, sensing the inadequacy of his own words, but feeling somewhat embarra.s.sed, too, by Sam's dogged pursuit of her every step. "I don't think she's too pleased at having us follow her, though." That was clearly an understatement.

"Say something to her." Sam was totally mesmerized by her as the distance between them narrowed.

"Are you crazy? That wasn't exactly a friendly look she threw us a minute ago." And they both watched her disappear into a shop, while they stood helplessly outside on the sidewalk.

"Now what?" Arthur looked embarra.s.sed to be pursuing this woman on a Paris street. Liberation or no, it seemed an awkward thing to be doing, and he didn't like it.

"We'll wait for her. Let's invite her out for a cup of coffee." He suddenly wished he had saved the plate of tiny biscuits. She was awfully thin, she probably hadn't seen anything like that in years, and she deserved them. All he'd done was crawl his way across North Africa and Italy on his belly, and march through France on his knees. h.e.l.l, what was that in comparison to surviving occupation by the Germans, particularly as a woman. Suddenly, he wanted to save her from everything that had ever happened to her, and anything that could happen now with thousands of Allied troops running crazed all over Paris.

She emerged from the shop carrying two eggs in a basket and a loaf of bread, and she glanced at them with obvious annoyance when she saw them waiting outside for her. Her eyes blazed as she said something directly to Sam which he didn't understand and he quickly turned to Arthur for a translation.

"What did she say?" It was obviously not anything endearing, but even that didn't seem to matter now. At least she had spoken to them, and there was a faint blush on Arthur's cheeks as he glanced at Sam in annoyance. This was most unlike him. He had behaved himself on the whole in Rome and everyplace else they went, with the exception of a few pinches and hugs and kisses, but this was something new, and Arthur was not at all sure he liked it.

"She said that if we take one step near her, she's going to go to our commanding officer and have us arrested. And frankly, Walker, I think she means it."

"Tell her you're a general." Sam grinned, seeming to regain some of his aplomb and good humor, as his desperation left him. "Christ ... tell her I'm in love with her."

"Shall I offer her a candy bar and silk stockings too, while I'm at it? For heaven's sake, Sam, come to your senses and leave the girl alone." She stopped in another shop just then, and it was obvious that Sam had no intention of leaving. "Come on ..." Arthur tried to induce him to leave, but to no avail, she came out of the shop as they were still arguing about it, and this time she walked right up to both of them, and stood so close to them that Sam thought he was going to faint from the sheer impact of being so near to her body. Her skin was so creamy-looking that he wanted to reach out and touch her arm, as she blazed at them in her very limited English.

"Go out! Go back! Go away!" she said, but despite the odd choice of words, they both got the message. She looked as though she were going to slap them, particularly Arthur, as though she expected him to be the sensible one and do something about Sam. "C'est compris?"