The Bells of Times Square by Amy Lane

Author:Amy Lane [Lane, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Published: 2014-08-18T16:00:00+00:00

He didn’t return to the house immediately after putting his boots on and using the outhouse. Instead, he went around the garage, to the back where the garden that had provided such bounty sat. He looked around, wondering what remained that Walter hadn’t picked yet. He saw a patch of cattails by the irrigation ditch and walked there, pulling out the older ones to wash off the roots in the small stream.

He knelt in the rich black earth, feeling the sun on his back, and closed his eyes as the water sluiced over his hands. How long had Walter lived here, alone, during the winter months? What was it, early May? Nate’s plane had gone down over a month ago, but Walter had been in this place in the depths of winter, living off canned preserves and caught game. His lover had been killed; he’d been captured, then escaped under brutal circumstances, and arrived here. Where he’d spent months when the woodland, the garden, and the house itself were covered in snow.

How long would Walter have to stay here? How long would he have to gaze through the boarded slats of the deserted house before his heart froze? Before he believed that love was an illusion, and that joy was for anyone, anyone besides the man who had never had another soul to cling to?

Nate had just reconciled himself to working a little harder, being a little more patient with his stubborn lover when a woman’s voice sounded across the clearing.

“Bonjour!” she sang in French, and Nate shot to his feet and started running, stopping halfway to the house to drag in air because he wasn’t quite ready for a sprint.

“No! No, don’t go,” she continued in that musical, lower-class French. “If I meant you harm, I would have told Horst about the boots!”

That froze Nate in his tracks. The boots—the boots he and Walter had placed outside the doorway. Slowly, he turned around and saw the girl to match the voice. Dark hair, dark eyes, tiny upturned nose, and a square jaw—unmistakably French. She emerged from the forest growth surrounding the garden clearing and regarded Nate cannily. He regarded her back, staying stubbornly silent. He was not sure his French was up to conversation.

“Yes, see? You are the one with the larger boots. Where is your smaller companion?”

Walter. “I am alone,” he said shortly in French, hoping his accent was close to the working-class French this girl spoke.

“Mesonge!” she exclaimed, laughing. Lies. Bullshit. Well, it was, but she didn’t need to know that.

“What is it you want?” he asked, not joining her in laughter.

“I thought you’d want to know,” she said, arching her brows lazily over her brown eyes, “the man I’m fucking, he’s an officer in the SS. At night, you should maybe tuck your boots in, or I’ll have to tell him why I can’t return.”

Nate almost dropped his water. He had to knot his stomach to keep from disgracing himself right there as he stood at the edge of the irrigation ditch.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.