At her. Kelly jerked her hand back, mortified.

But he somehow knew what she was thinking and was instantly contrite. "Kel, no-I'm not . . . I'm laughing at me."

She didn't get it.

"As much as I want to, I can't take you to the beach," he explained. "You have no idea what goes on down there."

"Yes, I do." He wanted to. His words made her bold again, and she kissed him, as sweetly as he'd kissed her. "And what I don't know, you could teach me."

She heard Tom groan again.

And then he pushed her back onto the passenger's side, fastening the seat belt around her, and started the car. And for several heart-stopping moments, she was both terrified and elated.

But instead of taking the road to the beach, he sped up the hill. Toward home.

"Tom-"

"Don't," he cut her off, his voice rough as he took the turn onto their street. "Don't say anything else."

"But-"

"Please," he said.

I love you. Kelly clamped her teeth tightly over the words.

Joe came out of his cottage as soon as Tom pulled into the driveway.

Her mother came from the main house, looking suspiciously from Kelly to Tom. "Where have you been? Do you know it's almost midnight?"

"Meet me later tonight," Kelly whispered to Tom. "In the tree house."

Her mother had swept her inside, but before the door closed, Kelly looked back at Tom. He was lifting her bike out of the back of the station wagon, but he looked up and directly into her eyes, and she knew from the heat she saw there that he'd meet her. She knew it.

But by two A.M., she was finally ready to believe the scribbled note he'd left for her. "I'm sorry. I can't do this."

Still, hope won out over doubt, and she went to sleep believing that he couldn't have kissed her the way he had unless he loved her, too.

But the next day, Tom had left town for good. To Kelly's complete shock, he'd gotten a buzz cut. He'd joined the Navy and was shipping out. She didn't even get a chance to speak to him without Joe and her parents overhearing.

"I'm sorry," he told her quietly, as he shook her hand-shook her hand-and she knew it was true. He was sorry. He didn't love her.

She had been a fool even to think that he might.

Kelly had kept her distance from him the few times he came home on leave that first year he was in the service. She pretended not even to notice he was in town, hoping desperately all the while that he'd approach her. But he never did. And then, a few weeks before she turned seventeen, her parents separated, and she and her mom moved out of Baldwin's Bridge.

Kelly's visits to her father had never lined up with Tom's visits home to Joe.

Until now.

Tomorrow night she was having dinner with him.

With wild Tom Paoletti.

And this time she was playing his game, by his rules.

Charles drifted, dreaming about ice.

Dreaming about frozen daiquiris, in big, wide-mouthed glasses filled with crushed ice. He and Jenny'd gone to Cuba for their honeymoon. The trip had been exorbitantly expensive-the entire week had probably cost more than Cybele's house in Ste.-Helene. The irony hadn't escaped him, even back then-he'd paid big money to travel by plane from the ice and snow to a place that was hot, and then he'd paid still more for a glass of that very same ice that had probably been shipped on the plane with him.

Not just ice. Ice and Cuban rum. It went down like sugar candy. And after a few glasses, even the idea of spending the rest of his life with the childishly selfish Jenny had seemed positively grand.

Charles awoke with a start, with Luc Un's foot jabbing him sharply in the side as the Frenchman muttered something dark he didn't quite catch. The meaning was unmistakable, though-you bum.

The two Lucs and Henri and Jean-Whoever-Claude or Pierre or maybe even another Luc, who could keep them straight?-were all still darkly unhappy with Charles for making them learn how to darn socks. In truth, Charles had done nothing. He'd merely made sure he was busy and working every chance he got. It was the only way he had to fight the Nazis-by freeing up Cybele and the other women so that they could do more dangerous work. Which, he told himself, was fine with him. If he had a choice, if he couldn't be shipped safely back home, then he'd stay here in this kitchen, thanks, right until the end of the war.

He was much faster with his needle now-not as fast as Cybele or Dominique, true, but certainly the fastest among the men.

Joe had been next. Charles hadn't been at it for more than a day before Joe had picked up a needle and joined him.

Trying to earn points with Cybele, no doubt.

As far as Charles could tell, Joe had earned only one of Cybele's luminous smiles.

No kisses.

Charles was the only one who'd received that particular prize.

Of course, Cybele had been careful not to be alone with him since then. And that was a good thing, he reminded himself.

He'd entertained her with stories about Baldwin's Bridge-but only when Joe was around to act as interpreter. And chaperon.

Now Joe, he was a piece of work. He was so quiet, you'd almost forget he was there. But the beans and fresh greens on the table at dinner were courtesy of Joe. And whenever there was an uproar in town, whenever the Germans had a truckload of supplies stolen out from under their noses or a train was derailed in the night, whenever downed American pilots mysteriously escaped Nazi capture, well, chances were that was courtesy of Joe, too.

For all their differences, Charles liked Joe. He respected Joe.

And he didn't need his degree from Harvard to know that Joe was in love with Cybele.

It was a wondrously pure, worshipful love. The kind that a woman like Cybele Desjardins deserved. A saintly love. An honest, respectful, humble, and true love.

There was no doubt about it-Joe would do anything, anything for her if she so much as asked. Yeah, he would lay down his life for Cybele.

Who had kissed Charles a week ago.

Now, Charles had kissed a lot of women in his relatively short life, and on a scale from one to five, with five being that greatest number of inches an enthusiastic woman's tongue could go down his throat, that tiny little kiss had been a solid zero.

Not a single tongue had been involved. It was nothing. Zilch. It was the kind of dry, dutiful kiss he might bestow upon his elderly maiden aunt. It was completely platonic. It was . . .

Christ, who was he kidding? That kiss had been anything but platonic. It had trembled with emotion and barely contained passion. It had been a promise-the very slightest whisper of a promise, true, but a promise of paradise, for sure.

He'd thought about that single, tiny kiss for hours, days. He'd spent more time dreaming about it than any other kiss he'd ever partaken of in his entire life.

And when he wasn't thinking about that kiss, he was thinking about Cybele's eyes. Eyes that a man could lose himself in for an eternity. Eyes that saw so much, that knew so much. Impossibly beautiful eyes.

And her mouth. Graceful lips, full and moist. Slightly, charmingly crooked teeth she didn't try to hide when she smiled.

And yes, he'd thought about her body plenty, too. The slight curve of her hips beneath her skirt, the oversized dresses that both concealed and revealed her less than ample breasts. Compared to Jenny, she had the body of a boy. Or at least he'd imagined she did. He'd spent a hell of a lot of time imagining.

God help him, but he wanted her. He ached for her, he burned for her-Jenny and Joe be damned.

"Guiseppe!" Dominique burst through the kitchen door. She lunged for the man sitting across from Charles at the kitchen table, crumpling to her knees in front of him, erupting in a whispered explosion of undecipherable French.

Undecipherable to Charles, that is. Joe seemed to get what she was saying, his face tightening, his eyes suddenly hard.

He stood up, issuing orders rapid-fire. Charles could only make out some of the words. Market basket. Egg money.

Luc Un was the only other man in the house. The others had strayed too far the night before and hadn't been able to get back before dawn. But now Luc went one way, Dominique the other, gathering the market basket and the carefully hoarded egg money Cybele kept hidden in her wooden gardening shoes.

Joe found his hat and headed purposefully for the door.

Charles pulled himself clumsily to his feet. "What's happening?"

"The Germans have shot Andre Lague. They're searching his house. Dominique fears that Cybele's there, that she'll be arrested, or-" He opened the door. "I'm going out to find her. To warn her."

Out. Into town. In broad daylight.

Was he nuts?

Charles grabbed the cane Cybele had given him and hobbled after Joe. "There's four of us. We can each head in a different direction."

Joe turned to give him a disbelieving look. "You're not going out there. What if you're stopped? You don't have any papers."

"Neither do you." Charles knew for a fact that Joe's papers hadn't yet been replaced. He'd overheard Cybele-the forger that they'd used in the past had been arrested. Cybele was trying to get hold of the supplies needed to do the work herself.

"If she was at Lague's, she could well be dead already," Joe said harshly.

"And if she wasn't, she might show up there at any moment," Charles countered, "and give herself away. I can help find her." He pushed past Joe, out the door, into the bright sunshine for the first time in weeks.

The sky was brilliant blue, sheer perfection. Cybele could not be dead. Not on a day like today. God couldn't possibly be so cruel.

But Cybele had whispered to him that the sky had been a beautiful shade of blue on the day her husband and son had died.

Joe took off his battered hat and jammed it onto Charles's head, covering as much of his blond hair as possible. "If you're captured, she'll never forgive me." He shot off some orders to Dominique and Luc, who dashed away. "I'm heading to the Lagues'. You should stay here in case she comes back."

"Her friend." Charles hobbled after him, whispering, suddenly aware he was speaking English. American English. Out on the street in Nazi-occupied Ste.-Helene, France. "Marlise. The one who's about to have a baby. Cybele said something this morning about bringing her fresh spinach from your garden."

"In French," Joe hissed. He didn't stop. "Only in French. Marlise lives above the bakery. The bakery. Bread. Baker. Go there and come right back. Do you understand me?"

"Oui."

Joe pointed up the street. "That way. God help us all if you're caught." And then he was gone, moving faster than Charles could manage, leaving Charles alone.

But not completely alone.

Holy God. There were people walking toward him, on the opposite side of the street. Two older women. One man in a dapper business suit, its cut straight from a Paris showroom.

Charles hunched his shoulders in the ragged shirt he was wearing, lowered his head, and, his heart pounding, hobbled past.

None of them looked up. None of them called out to him, or challenged him in any way.

The sidewalk was uneven, the cobblestone street in dire need of repair. He tried not to stare like an American tourist at the ancient stone buildings. Many of them were crumbling, yet they still had a fairy-tale air to them, a European magic, as if there should be a sign out in front of each, boasting "Cinderella slept here."

It was harder to walk up the hill than he'd anticipated, every step sending flames of pain through his leg. But that was a good thing. It counteracted the glacier of fear that threatened to turn his circulatory system into a solid block of ice.

Finally he was there. At the bakery.

Marlise lived above it, Joe had said. Looking up, Charles could see windows above the storefront. But there was only one door-the one leading into the shop.

He heard them before he saw them. The clatter of feet on the street that could only be made by German army-issue boots. The hair on the back of his neck stood straight up, and he turned. Four Nazi soldiers in full uniform. Heading straight toward him. Or maybe toward the bakery. He didn't wait to find out which.

A narrow alley separated the building from the one next door. He didn't slow down or speed up. He just kept on moving, as if that alley had been his intended destination. Dear, sweet Jesus. What if instead of helping Cybele, he led the Germans directly to her?

There was no door along the side of the building, and he went around to the back.

Again, there was only one door, and it belonged to the bakery. It was ajar, the fragrant scent of fresh bread floating out of the kitchen. He hobbled up the steps, and inside, and . . .

And there was Cybele. Sitting in the kitchen with a heavily pregnant woman.

The woman, Marlise, made a small squeak of surprise as he stepped through the door without knocking.

"I'm so sorry-we have no work today," she said. "Nor scraps to spare-"

Cybele's eyes widened only slightly at the sight of him. She stopped Marlise with a hand on her arm. "He's a friend of mine," she said quietly. "I think it must be urgent."

Marlise turned away, as if she didn't want to see and remember his face.

"A cup of water for my friend," Cybele said, her eyes still on Charles's face, "and then we'll go."

Marlise pointed to the sink, and Cybele quickly washed out a cup, then filled it with water.

Charles realized he was dripping with perspiration. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt, then took the cup, his fingers briefly touching hers. Her hand was trembling.

"Merci," he started to say as he handed the cup back to her, but she put one finger to her lips.

Cybele set down the cup, then led him back out the door, watching, ready to reach for him if he had trouble on the steps.

She was silent as she led the way farther into the alley, away from the bakery door. But then she turned to face him.

"I know this can't be good news," she whispered. "So don't try to make it bearable, Charles."