CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
November 1943
While Thomas bathed, Ruby paced the apartment. She couldn’t stop thinking about the feel of his body, the way his mouth had lingered on hers.
When he emerged thirty minutes later, freshly shaven and dressed in gray slacks and a white shirt, he looked like a different person. His dark hair was still damp and curled at the ends, framing his chiseled face perfectly.
“You’re staring,” he said softly, smiling at her.
She looked away, embarrassed. “I was just thinking that it must feel nice to be clean after your long journey.”
“Oh, is that all you were thinking?” His tone was light, teasing.
“I might also have been thinking that you are even more handsome than I remember.”
His smile widened. “So you have been thinking of me.”
“All the time.” She took a deep breath. “We had a pilot here in January who said he knew you. Jon Payne. He was captured in Urrugne soon after.”
“I heard about Urrugne. Poor Payne. He was here?”
“I—I couldn’t believe how relieved I felt when he told me you were still alive, Thomas. I had no way of knowing, although I had the strangest feeling that I would have sensed it if you were gone.”
He took a few steps closer to her until they were standing just inches apart. He grazed her cheek with his thumb, as if he couldn’t quite believe she was real. “And you’ve continued to work on the escape line, Ruby?”
“Until the arrests in Urrugne. We’ve been inactive since the winter. I’m very sorry, Thomas; I don’t have any way to get you out of France right now.”
“I know.”
“And you still came to me?”
“I had to.”
They stared at each other for a moment. “I—I suppose you could try to venture out on your own, since you’ve made it out of France before. Or—” She paused and glanced up at him before returning her gaze to the floor. “Or you could stay here until we can find you a safe way out.”
“But won’t I be putting you in danger?”
She took a deep breath and looked into his eyes. “Any risk would be worth it, just to have you here.”
“You mean that?”
“But perhaps it’s foolish of me to suggest—”
He didn’t wait for her to finish. He pulled her into his arms, covering her mouth with his. When their lips met, she had the sudden, strange sensation that she was floating. He folded her in closer, and she could feel his body pressing against hers as his tongue softly parted her lips. She let out a small, unintentional moan, and he started to back away, but she grabbed his collar and drew him closer. She didn’t want this to stop. Ever.
But then there was the sound of the front door opening and closing, and they both pulled away, startled.
“Thomas?” Charlotte was framed in the doorway, her mouth hanging open as she stared at them. Lucien was behind her, his eyebrows arched in surprise.
“Um, yes, hello, Charlotte,” Thomas said, taking a step back from Ruby. “Lovely to see you again.”
“What are you doing here?” Charlotte asked.
“Don’t you think we’d better go inside before someone sees us?” Lucien hurried her into the living room and shut the door. “Hello,” he said to Thomas. “I’m Lucien, Charlotte’s friend. And you, it appears, are Ruby’s friend.”
“Yes, ah,” Thomas said in French, clearly still struggling to regain his composure. “Nice to meet you. I’m Thomas.”
“The Thomas?” Lucien asked. “The pilot?”
Thomas raised an eyebrow at Ruby and smiled. “Indeed.”
Lucien grinned. “Well then! Welcome back.”
OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL WEEKS, life changed for everyone inside the apartment on the rue de Lasteyrie. Ruby was happier than she’d ever been. She was in love, and she couldn’t bear the thought that she’d have to let Thomas go once again. But she knew that Lucien was making inquiries about escape routes, and that as soon as they found one, Thomas would be on his way. Each day together could be the last.
They’d fallen into a routine; in the mornings, Charlotte, Ruby, and Thomas would drink their weak grain coffee and eat small slices of stale bread together, and then Ruby would head out with ration cards, and Charlotte would leave with Lucien. She was officially his assistant now; she came home with ink-stained hands late each afternoon having spent the day forging papers for Jews in hiding and people who were part of the Resistance.
When Ruby returned from standing in hours-long ration lines each day, she’d knock three times on the sliding wall in her bedroom. Thomas would unfold himself from the closet, stretch his hands over his head as he climbed out, and smile that dimpled, crooked smile that always made Ruby’s heart melt. “What’s for dinner?” he would ask, winking at her, and she’d answer with something ridiculous, such as “Chateaubriand and caviar, of course.”
They’d spend the next hour or two holding hands and talking until Charlotte arrived home. Ruby couldn’t ask Thomas enough questions; she wanted to know everything about him. She delighted in answering his endless questions about her life too. She told him about her parents, what it had been like to grow up in Southern California, what New York was like in the springtime. He knew now that she hated mushrooms and loved baked pears, that she preferred big band music to jazz, that her favorite movie was Camille, and that she sometimes had nightmares about falling from the edge of a cliff into a black abyss. He, in turn, talked of his childhood in London, the games he used to play with his schoolmates, and the way he missed his mother every day. He told her what it felt like to be 14,000 feet in the air in the tiny cockpit of a Spitfire, how frightened he’d felt the first time he stalled in midair, how he sometimes felt racked with guilt over the German lives he’d taken.
Sometimes, they didn’t talk at all; they would sit on the couch and then his lips would be on hers, and they’d kiss until Charlotte came home. It never went further than that, though. Ruby had learned to be careful with her heart, and even though she knew she was already deeply in love with him, she worried what would happen once he was gone. Now wasn’t the time to be foolhardy about anything. His life was in her hands, as was Charlotte’s, and she couldn’t do anything to put either of them in jeopardy. She loved them both too much.
But everything changed on the fourth Thursday in November. At home in the States, it was Thanksgiving, and Ruby felt dejected all day thinking of her parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins gathered around the dinner table without her, holding hands and probably praying for her. Did they believe she was dead? Now that the United States was involved in the war, were the American papers filled with news of what was happening here? Could they imagine what her life had become? On a holiday like this, she couldn’t help but feel terribly homesick.
The lines at the butcher and baker were shorter than usual, and Ruby returned to the apartment more than an hour earlier than she had expected. Charlotte was out for the day, and Thomas looked surprised to see Ruby when she knocked on the hidden closet door. “Did you not make it to the shops?” he asked as he climbed out and followed her into the kitchen.
“No, I did.” She gestured to the small amount of food she’d placed on the dining table. “I thought perhaps I’d try to prepare something special for us tonight. It’s a special holiday back in the United States.” She told him about how her family would get together for roast turkey, cranberry sauce, and sweet potatoes. “I miss my family terribly. Of course I also miss roast turkey. Wouldn’t that taste amazing right now?”
Thomas drew her into his arms. “We could use our imaginations. We’ll have a feast!”
“I do have a few bottles of wine left. Perhaps we can open one tonight.”
“That sounds wonderful.” He kissed her, long and hard. “We’ll have potatoes for turkey. And this bread for the cranberry sauce.”
“Someday, when this war is over, you can come to my parents’ house for a real Thanksgiving meal.”
“I would love that.” Thomas was watching her closely and she could feel her cheeks turning warm.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I—I shouldn’t have said that. I know we don’t talk about the future.”
“I’m very glad you did,” Thomas said after a moment. He pulled her closer. “I hope you know, Ruby, that it has always been my plan to come back for you after the war ends. It has been since we first met. I will come for you.” He paused and waited for her to meet his gaze. “If you want me to.”
“Of course I do,” she whispered. “But I don’t want you to feel obligated.”
He looked surprised. “Obligated? Ruby, I love you.”
“You do?”
“Can’t you see that?”
And then, at once, she could. She’d known it all along, she supposed, but it was easier not to acknowledge it, not to open her eyes. “I love you too,” she whispered.
“Good.”
This time, when his lips touched hers, his kiss felt different than it had before. It was tentative but urgent, and she could taste the question on his tongue. Her answer was to burrow against him, making sure that she wasn’t holding back.
In a moment, his hands were under her dress, coarse and warm against her skin. “Ruby?” he murmured, and she understood that he was asking for her permission to go further.
“Yes,” she breathed, and then her dress was in a pool on the kitchen floor, followed by his shirt. His hands were all over her body, and her hands on his, and it was like nothing she had ever experienced before. It had certainly never felt like this with Marcel, who relied on the same rapid series of caresses each time, a dance that had clearly been choreographed long before she arrived.
With Thomas, though, everything felt new; there was nothing rushed or planned about it. When he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, she’d never felt more alive.
They made love twice, the first time urgently, the second time slowly and tenderly, gazing into each other’s eyes. And for the first time in more than three years, the war slipped away. It didn’t matter that Europe was being torn apart, that Paris was bleeding. The only thing that meant anything was this.
Afterward, as she lay in his arms listening to his heartbeat, reality began to crash back in. Charlotte would be home soon, bringing the outside world with her. Thomas would leave one day—maybe even one day soon—and they were all in danger all the time. How she wished she could take his hand and stroll out into the open with him, walk across the bridges of Paris, stroll through the gardens and museums, kiss him for everyone to see. But it was impossible, and soon, she would have to leave the cocoon of his arms and resume living in the real world.
For now, though, she nestled closer, breathing in the scent of him, allowing herself to dream, just for a moment, of a future in which this could be their reality.