Lindsay McKenna - Ride The Tiger

“No...I’d like to hear about your mother, your family—that is, if you don’t mind sharing it with me?”

A sudden lump formed in Gib’s throat. He cleared it once. His mother had died unexpectedly, too, in his arms, of a heart attack two days after he’d returned home from getting his wings. To this day, the memory brought up unparalleled grief. Gruffly, he muttered, “I’m concerned how you’re going to take your mama’s death.”

“With a lot of guilt and remorse,” Dany admitted rawly. “I always loved her, but she—” Dany couldn’t say it. It took every shred of strength left in her to not say more. How badly she wanted to let down her guard and talk to Gib, to tell him the awful truth that haunted her.

How terribly alone Dany really was, Gib realized. He ached to share the warmth of real family with her. But under the circumstances, as IO in this matter, it was impossible. He knew he’d better bring things back to a more professional level. “Well,” Gib said hoarsely, “I think I’ve got enough information from you today to start the investigation.”

“Will you have to come back?”

The terror in her voice was real. Gib stared down at her. “I don’t like this any better than you do, but I’ve got a general waiting for this report. I’ll talk to the constable tomorrow.”

Wearily, Dany backed away from him.

Gib felt like a heel. He could see the grief and despair in her ravaged eyes. “You know, you might think of selling the plantation and leaving the country. This place is too much for one young woman to run by herself.”

Dany managed a strained smile at his gentle tone. Sweet God in heaven, but she was fractions of a moment from stepping into the cradle of his arms again. “I’d never sell this place, Major. It’s been my whole life for the last six years.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I was finishing up my degree in economics from the Sorbonne in Paris when my father became very ill with liver cancer. I graduated days before his death.”

Hungry to know more about Dany, Gib couldn’t help himself. “Did you know he was dying?”

Dany shook her head. “Father had ordered my mother not to tell me. He felt it was more important that I study, get good grades and receive a diploma. He thought if I knew, I’d want to come home and not continue to study in Paris full-time.” She looked away, fighting tears. “He was right.”

Inwardly, Gib seethed with anger. How callous and unfeeling her parents seemed to have been toward Dany’s obvious needs. “So you arrived home to find him dying?” he growled, unable to disguise all his anger.

“When my father said they couldn’t come to Paris for my graduation, I knew something was very wrong. My parents had always pushed me to get a degree. Neither of them had one, and they wanted me to better myself.” Dany walked slowly to the sofa and sat down. “He told me over the phone how proud he was of me that I had graduated with honors, but that he couldn’t make the trip. When I asked why, he just told me I’d know more when I came home.”

“Good God,” Gib breathed savagely, but stopped himself from saying more.

Dany saw the accusation in his eyes. “They loved me the best they knew how, Major.”

“It sure as hell wasn’t enough,” he rasped. “Not nearly enough.”

Again, Dany felt the overwhelming protectiveness emanating from him. It was such an incredibly different feeling, one she’d never encountered before. It acted as a stabilizer to her raw, spinning state. “Perhaps not,” Dany ventured softly. “When I got home, I found out the truth. I spent the last five days with my father—at least I had that time with him. We really talked for the first time in our lives about a lot of things...important things. It was from him that I really began to understand about my parents and what they meant to each other. I stopped being angry at them after that, because I knew they both loved me in their own way, and gave me what they had to give me.”

It wasn’t much, Gib wanted to tell her, swallowing his anger. “How did your mother react to your father’s death?”

“Terribly. She went to pieces after he died. For a year, she stayed in bed. The doctor said she had suffered a severe nervous breakdown, and he prescribed a lot of tranquilizers. After she got over the grief of my father’s passing, I spent another year getting her off the drugs—she’d become addicted to them. Gradually, Maman came out of it and began to live again. I picked up the reins of managing the plantation, and really, it was easy for me, because I understood what had to be done. Our workers are my extended family. I spent more time with them than with my parents when I was growing up. So when my father died and I assumed control, they remained loyal.”

“And you’ve been running this huge place by yourself ever since.” Gib was amazed in one sense, but he had his own mother’s example to look to, running their large Texas ranch and providing the bare essentials of life for five people. The set of Dany’s chin and the flash of pride in her eyes told him she was made out of the same bolt of cloth his mother had been.

“It has been hard,” Dany assured him with a small smile. “But also it’s been my salvation—my friend, if you will. I could bury myself in farm work and the accounting books or the mountains of export papers when things got tough with my mother. The Vietnamese people who work and live on our land are wonderful. They love this plantation and the soil as much as I do. The children I grew up with are now working with me. Most of their parents are old, but I refuse to kick them off the land. I ask the elders to contribute what they can, and in a way that gives them respect and importance. We operate more like a village hamlet than an agricultural business.”

Gib shook his head. “This place seems too big for one person to handle effectively.”

Dany shrugged. “I don’t have anything else to do. I’m used to working twelve to sixteen hours a day, Major.”

Gib knew it was past time for him to leave. Crossing to the sofa, he picked up the report. “I’ll be back later,” he promised. “Next time, I’ll call ahead.”

Dany nodded, chewing her lower lip with worry. “Couldn’t you just call me? We could talk over the phone.”

Gib shook his head. “No. I don’t like this any more than you do, but it’s got to be done.”

Dany felt suddenly crushed—and angry—at his insensitivity to her plight.

Settling the garrison cap on his head, Gib looked over at her. Anger was in her eyes, but so was something else. Something that triggered his protective mechanism. “I’ll be in touch,” he promised huskily.

“Colonel Parsons wants to see you right away,” Sergeant Jeffrey said from his desk.

Frowning, Gib dropped the pencil onto his own desk. Damn. What now? “Thanks, Jeffrey.” Locating his utility cap in a lower drawer, Gib got to his feet and walked across the hollow-sounding plywood floor of the tent toward the door. He knew what the colonel wanted—an update on the Villard investigation.

As Gib left the hot, steamy confines of the tent and stepped out into the morning sunlight, the temperature and humidity, both well into the nineties, hit him squarely. He settled the dark green utility cap on his head, the bill almost brushing the bridge of his nose to shade his eyes from the blinding sun.

Marble Mountain was a small base in comparison to Da Nang, which lay to the north of them. It had been erected on virgin white sands at the edge of the turquoise-and-emerald ocean. For as far as the eye could see hard-backed tents and other structures more solidly built out of wood dotted the hilly landscape. In addition, a series of bunkers sat nearby to protect against enemy attack. The place reminded Gib of a hive of busy bees, except that the men were clothed in dark green jungle utilities. In the last month the marines had moved over eight thousand men into Da Nang. Was it the start of a larger American build-up? Gib wondered. On his last tour, he’d worked exclusively with ARVN soldiers, and there had been very few GIs in Vietnam, except in advisory capacities such as his own. Things were changing now, and it bothered him deeply. Part of the reason he’d volunteered for a second tour was because of his strong and personal ties with the Vietnamese ARVN soldiers. Now it was looking more and more like a U.S.-staged event. Stateside, they still called it a “conflict,” but every day Gib felt it looked more and more like war.