Free His Very Own Girl by Carrie Lofty Page A

flickered to life on the screen. The film turned out to be Heaven Can Wait . Joe kissed Lulu’s forehead and settled in to enjoy his own little slice of heaven on earth.

 
    chapter six
    Don Ameche and Gene Tierney were doing their best to turn on Lulu’s waterworks. They’ll make it, she thought. Through all the misunderstandings and disappointments, they would make it.
    She surreptitiously wiped her cheeks. The last thing she needed was for Joe to think she was the kind of girl who welled up over make-believe lovers. In fact, she couldn’t let Joe get any ideas about her, good or bad. They were less permanent than a weekend pass.
    Whispered words echoed inside the theater’s high walls. At one point the bare brick had probably been bunted with endless yards of velvet, muffling the sound and lending a graceful air, but now the space felt industrial, like a warehouse with former aspirations of elegance and culture.
    She let her eyes drift shut, lulled by the film’s closing moments. In that intimate blackness the ground rushed up to meet her. Lulu fisted her hands. Her whole body tensed as she prepared once again, over and over, for impact. Breathing as if she’d just run to catch a motor bus, she sat up and scrubbed her scratchy lids. The back of her throat ached for a drink—water, ale, anything.
    “You all right?”
    She nodded her reply, unable to trust her voice.
    It wasn’t fair. She’d saved that bloody airplane. She’d hit the ground at the gentlest possible angle, with nothing but the slice on her knee by way of injuries. She’d won . And ever since that unusually bright afternoon, she’d ferried dozens of aircraft with hardly a scratch of fear. Her mechanical incidents had numbered nil. Yet her resting mind insisted on playing out the blackest outcomes, tormenting her with those fleeting seconds just before she’d carried off the impossible—the seconds before she’d known whether she would live or die.
    Dwelling on something so unalterable wasn’t her habit. She didn’t like it. Not one bit.
    What really got her game was that she’d closed her eyes when Joe had kissed her. She’d closed them and reveled in seeing only black, no hint of airplanes or crashes or terror. Only the flash fire of his kiss had existed, transforming his embrace into happiness and his body into her treasure.
    What was wrong with her? He was one of literally dozens of men with whom she’d shared time in the years since Robbie’s suicide. She’d allowed a few kisses, some more wrought-up than others, but none had affected her with the same ardency.
    She wanted to do it again.
    She stared down at where her hand rested on the sleeve of Joe’s uniform tunic. He was a soldier. He would leave soon. He would die, or he would return so irrevocably damaged as to become an entirely different man. She was volunteering for another colossal heartache if she spent any more time with him.
    “Show’s over.” His warm breath smoothed over her cheek.
    Lulu blinked. The screen had gone dark. “Sorry.”
    He wiped away a tear with the same consideration he’d shown when tidying her lipstick. “Quite an ending, wasn’t it?”
    It had been happy. That’s all she needed. With the gloom of real life, who needed to add fictional sorrows?
    The lights came up for intermission. Soldiers left their dames to find refreshment. Lulu’s back ached and her neck muscles were bunched into knots. The evening was abrading her emotions in ways she hadn’t anticipated, wearing through her reserves like steel wool rubbed across her inner wrist. All she’d wanted was a night out. Something fun and light after a hard week in the air.
    Ah, Paulie, what did we get me into?
    She only had to hold tight for another few hours, through the newsreels and the second feature. Then Joe would be out of her life. She could go back to aimless fun, new soldiers, and her date with destiny at Marston Moor. She could even crook her finger at Nicky. Had Lulu been in