Lindsay McKenna - Ride The Tiger

Dany made an exasperated sound. “Affiliation? Major, I’m neutral! I don’t deal with them at all! I have the local leader’s word that he will not cross or use my plantation in any warlike activity or purpose.”

“Would that be Binh Duc?”

Inwardly, Dany winced. “Yes.”

Gib looked up measuring the expression in her eyes and the tone of her voice. “You know him?”

“Of course I do!” Frustrated, Dany cried, “I’ve lived here all my life, Major! Just because I know Binh Duc doesn’t mean I consort with him! Is that what you’re implying? That I’m a VC sympathizer?”

Grimly, Gib held her angry, hurt gaze. “You tell me. Are you?”

“No!”

“Then who do you think planted that mine?”

Rubbing her forehead, tears jamming into her eyes, Dany whispered, “I don’t know!”

Gib had no defense against her. His heart jagged with the pain he was causing her by asking such brutal questions. The tears in her eyes made him feel like hell. “On the other hand,” he began hoarsely, “if the VC felt you weren’t being neutral in some way, they could have planted it.”

Dany stood very still, fighting an overwhelming—and ridiculous—need to be held by Gib Ramsey. She couldn’t forget the feel of his arms around her after the explosion, or the husky tone of his voice as he’d tried to soothe her panic and grief. Stiffening her spine, she rattled, “That’s entirely possible, I suppose, but we’ve done nothing to make the VC think we’re anything but neutral.” She agonized over the possibility. Binh Duc was fully capable of doing such a thing.

Grimly, he said, “It’s known that your mother and a certain marine general were pretty serious about each other.”

Dany’s heart thudded once, hard, in her breast. She felt the iciness of fear stab through her gut. “What?” she whispered.

Gib saw the disbelief and shock in her eyes. Was Dany putting on an act, or was this real? His heart told him she was genuinely stunned by his statement. “I’m privy to certain information that confirms your mother was very serious about this general. What do you know about it?”

“N-nothing.” Dany stood there, feeling suddenly dizzy with dread. Had Duc found this out? Was that the reason for the mine? She touched her brow and stared down at the teak floor. “My mother’s life was private. She always shared silly gossip with me when she came back from luncheons and charity benefits, but I never knew...really knew about her...” She grasped for the right words. Amy Lou had always been a tease to men and, like a butterfly, had never stayed with one man very long since Dany’s father’s death. Why hadn’t her mother told her how serious she was about this general? Tears drove into Dany’s eyes, and she forced herself to look at Gib.

“How much do you know about her relationship with the general?” she demanded in a choked voice.

“That he was going to ask her to marry him the day she died in that mine explosion.”

“Oh, God....” Dany wavered, then caught herself.

“Didn’t you know?”

Covering her eyes with her hand, Dany dragged in a deep breath. It all made sense now. Amy Lou had known the general for six months, gone out with him with a regularity that hadn’t marked her other relationships. Why hadn’t Dany realized it? Lamely, she admitted, “I didn’t know. She never told me.”

“But if Binh Duc had known, wouldn’t he have had reason to plant a mine, feeling you were no longer neutral?”

“I—I don’t know.” And she didn’t. Trying to stop the tears that threatened to fall, Dany squeezed her eyes shut and took a huge, ragged breath. “All I want to do now, Major, is live here in peace. I don’t like the VC, their methods or their political philosophy. Nor do I agree with the South Vietnamese bringing marines from America here.” Stormily, Dany held his gaze. “I want nothing to do with anyone. Is that clear? I don’t condone any political position. My home—our land—is what’s important. That, and the people of my village. I care about human beings and I care about surviving this damned war. It’s like a cancer touching all of us!”

Her cry seared Gib. Before he realized what he was doing, he’d set aside the report papers and risen to his feet. Dany stood so alone and forlorn. He ached to put his arms around her and protect her in a purely human response to her need. Something cautioned him not to, though, and he halted a foot away from her.

“In some ways, we have a lot in common. In others, we don’t,” he said in an effort to somehow assuage all the pain he’d brought to bear on her this morning.

Dany was wildly aware of Gib’s proximity. The urge to fall into his arms increased tenfold until it was an almost tangible, driving thing. She stepped away from him, afraid of the unexpected emotions he seemed to trigger in her. “How do you mean?” she whispered, her mouth suddenly dry.

Gib smiled gently. Dany’s face was dotted with a sheen of perspiration. The noontime heat was turning the drawing room into a steam room in his estimation. But there was a different kind of heat rising in him—a slow building fire he needed to fight.

“You gotta understand Texans,” Gib said gruffly, scrambling to find some neutral ground between them. He couldn’t go on torturing Dany with his questions. Her grief was too fresh, and the jolting realization that her mother had been ready to become engaged obviously had been too much for her to cope with. In an effort to soothe her, he began to talk about himself—the private side—something he’d done very little of since coming to Vietnam. “Texans are a unique breed in the United States, and we’re real family oriented. My daddy died in a freak pickup accident when I was ten, so Mama raised the four of us by herself, plus ran the Ramsey ranch. We shared a love of the land. I was raised on hard, dry Texas earth. Midland’s part of the oil-boom country of Texas, but my daddy always raised herefords. His death ended up bringing us even closer together—a tight-knit team bound and determined to make ends meet.”

Gib’s voice was like a balm to Dany’s shredded emotions. There was so much to this complex man. Dany tried to tell herself she was interested because he was American, and she wanted to know about American things because the blood ran in her veins. “So you grew up poor?”

“Dirt poor,” Gib said. He motioned to her bare feet. “And just like you, the four of us ran around in ragged coveralls and bare feet most of the time. The only time we saw a pair of shoes was when we had to go to school, and then we wore them grudgingly. The baby of our family, Tess, hated shoes. She used to get punished at school for taking them off in class and walking around barefoot in the halls.” Gib smiled at the thought of his stubborn baby sister—now an equally stubborn young woman who was also living in Vietnam, determined to help the peasants through her civilian-relief job.

Dany smiled hesitantly at the light of happiness shining in his hazel eyes as he reminisced. She could hear it, too, in his low, deep voice. “Your mother is a very special woman, then,” she said. “A strong woman loyal to the land and to the four of you.” Dany wished her own mother had simply loved her, wanted her. She didn’t mind that Amy Lou wasn’t really strong in many ways.

“Yes,” Gib agreed, “she was very special—to all of us.”

Dany tilted her head. “Was? Is she dead?”

Gib’s mouth quirked, and he glanced down at her. He saw in her eyes the sudden compassion for him, for his loss. It triggered a deluge of old, poignant memories. “You get me going here, and I’ll rag your ear off with stories about my life and my family. I don’t think you want to hear that,” he jested weakly.