Free The Color of Secrets by Lindsay Ashford

you. Where’d you go to—the cemetery?”
    Bill kept on walking as Jimmy disappeared back inside the car to bid his girl a lingering farewell. He’d almost reached the brow of the hill when he heard the car’s engine hum into life. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the Bentley ease out of the muddy track and onto the road. The moon came out from behind a cloud, falling on the girl’s face as she leaned out of the window to blow Jimmy a kiss. It could have been a child’s face.
    “Is she old enough to drive?” Bill asked when Jimmy caught up with him.
    “Hell, I don’t know.” Jimmy grinned. “How old do you have to be in this country? But she sure knows what she’s doing—in the front seat and the back!” He gave Bill a sly look. “Come on, tell me: you make out or what?”
    “Like I said, it’s none of your goddamn business!”
    “I hope you’re not telling me you went all that way for nothing?”
    Bill stared at the road ahead, refusing to rise to the bait.
    “You gonna see her again?”
    “Yes I am, if you must know,” Bill replied, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “I’m taking her out next Sunday afternoon. How about you? Are you and Philippa planning to go for another drive ?” He gave Jimmy a sideways look. “You’d better watch out, man—I don’t think her daddy’s going to be too impressed if he catches your black ass on his shiny leather seats!”
    “Makes it more of a thrill, though, doesn’t it?” Jimmy whispered as they crept past the dozing guard at the entrance to the camp. “Doing it with a white girl, I mean.”
    Bill stopped dead and gave his friend a long, hard stare. “You say that,” he said, raising his hand to touch the fading bruise beneath his eye, “and you’re no better than the son of a bitch who gave me this!”

    Eva and Dilys sat in the shade of the wooden bus shelter, waiting.
    “I think that must be him,” Dilys said, jumping to her feet at the sound of a car engine. She ran along the pavement, waving furiously when the car came into view.
    Eva watched as the Dutch soldier leapt out and swung her sister into the air in a tight embrace. In daylight he looked a little younger, perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three. Still far too old for Dilys, though. She wondered if he would think so, too, when he saw Dilys without the makeup she’d plastered on for the dance.
    Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Bill coming around the corner on foot. As she went to hug him, she saw Dilys wheel around, staring at them both with undisguised curiosity.
    “You can put your eyes back in now,” Eva said, turning to her sister after giving Bill a long, slow kiss. Eva had not lied to Dilys about Bill—she had simply let her make her own assumptions about the giver of the nylons. Her sister had not mentioned Eddie since that initial gibe and seemed happy that Eva was getting out. The look of shock on Dilys’s face now gave her an odd feeling—the same feeling she’d had when people outside the Civic Hall had turned to look at Bill hugging her on the steps. It was like wearing clothes without underwear on a hot day—rather daring but very liberating.
    She smiled as Dilys turned, openmouthed, to Anton. Anton didn’t seem to notice her sister’s reaction. He stepped forward and offered Bill his hand.
    “Congratulations,” he said in his slightly accented English.
    “What for?” Bill towered over him, looking down at the blond Dutchman with a bemused smile.
    “Sicily,” Anton replied. “Without your people the Allies would never have taken it.”
    “I guess not,” Bill said. “Unfortunately I didn’t have much to do with it.”
    Eva saw his eyes cloud and wondered what he was thinking. “Come on,” she said, steering him toward a farm gate, “Let’s go for a walk.”
    The sun beat down on them as they strolled through a field waist-high with wheat. “When do I get you to myself?” Bill whispered, his lips brushing her ear.
    “I