Sgt. Billy's Bride. Bonnie Gardner

through a puddle of ketchup on the paper from her burger, then put it slowly into her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully as if she were using the exercise as a stalling tactic. Was she trying to decide what to say, or was she trying to avoid putting her foot in her mouth again?

      Or was he just reading too damned much into the whole thing?

      The silence between them grew awkwardly long.

      It was hard not having anyone to talk to about it. It sure wasn’t anything he could discuss with any of the guys on the team. Not even his roommate, Ski Warsinski, knew how he felt. He’d tried talking with the chaplain, but he’d only mouthed the standard platitudes. Bill didn’t want comfort. He wanted to yell, to shout, to curse God. He couldn’t do that with the chaplain. Maybe he could unload on Darcy, because after tonight, he’d never see her again.

      He reached across the table and snagged one of Darcy’s French fries. He wanted to talk about it, but he didn’t know what to say.

      “I’m sorry about your mother,” she said softly. “Are you in Florida to be closer to home?”

      Bill swallowed, then swallowed again. This time it was a lump of emotion he forced down his throat, not a morsel of potato. “Yeah,” he said, his voice thick and husky. “We don’t know how much time she has.”

      Darcy reached across the table and placed her hand over his and squeezed. It was such a simple gesture, but so warm, so giving that it touched something deep inside him. “I’m sorry,” she said simply. “Cancer?”

      Bill shook his head. “Congestive heart failure. Every time I see her, she’s weaker.”

      Nodding, Darcy spoke. “I understand. Sometimes, heart patients seem so healthy, it’s hard to believe that they’re sick. Other times, they can appear so fragile that you wonder how they’ve held on as long as they have. It must be quite a burden for your dad.”

      Bill drew a deep breath and let it slowly out. “Dad died when I was five. Momma worked hard to keep my older brothers and sisters and me fed and clothed, and now I want to make her last days easier,” he said, his voice hoarse. He paused and swallowed, then moistened his dry lips.

      “She used to be such a loving, giving person,” Bill went on. “It so hard to see her this way.” He looked down at Darcy’s hand, still covering his. Her skin was so soft, the fingers so delicate, he should hardly have noticed that it was there. But the comfort she provided was enormous.

      Darcy didn’t respond. Maybe she knew that words weren’t necessary. There was nothing to say, but her silence seemed to tell more than a Sunday sermon.

      Bill glanced at the clock over the pickup counter. Almost ten. At the rate he was going, he wouldn’t get home until midnight. He cleared his throat. “I reckon we’d best get on, then,” he finally said, his voice strained, thick.

      “Yeah. I guess so.” Darcy lifted her hand, and in spite of the negligible weight she’d removed, his hand felt cold without it there resting on his.

      DARCY GAZED OUT the window and tried to stay awake and on the lookout for a motel. So far, all she’d seen were local places that looked none too reputable. She might be eager to get away from Dick, but she wasn’t that desperate. And Bill had agreed to let her ride along as far as Montgomery where there were more to choose from and the choices were likely cleaner.

      In the meantime, she had to keep her eyes open. That had been easy when they were driving through the countryside on the small, back roads. She’d been riding shotgun, helping Bill to guide them through the dense fog, and the constant motion and the stops and turns had kept her alert. Now that Bill had pulled onto I-65 and the fog was gone, the never-changing scenery, unbroken by bright lights or towns, and the comfortable seat seemed to hypnotize her.

      Bill turned up the radio and opened a window, to keep from going to sleep himself, she supposed. As it was, her long, sleepless pre-wedding night and even longer day, began to catch up with her. Darcy found herself nodding off and, she tried to think of something to keep her awake.

      She yawned. “Do you have a girl waiting for you at home?” she said, trying to make conversation.

      Bill shrugged. “Nope.”

      She didn’t know why she cared, considering she was hitchhiking and she’d never see him again after tonight, but that small bit of information about him seemed sad. “Do you have other family in Mattison?”

      “Yeah.”

      Darcy shrugged. Of course, he did. He’d already mentioned siblings. Obviously, he wasn’t in the mood to talk. “Would you rather I be quiet or do you need me to talk to help you stay awake?”

      “Naw, I’m fine. It isn’t that late yet, and we’re trained to do without sleep. It’s part of the job.”

      “Oh. I’ll just shut up then. When we get to town, you can drop me off, and I’ll be out of your hair.”

      “No problem.”

      Darcy wondered how much company she could be, sitting there like a bump on a log. She felt about as useful as training wheels on a tricycle, but she was grateful not to have to make idle conversation. Just being in Bill’s strong, silent presence was comforting.

      The quiet companionship would be over too soon, she thought as they passed a road sign announcing that Montgomery was thirty-eight miles away.

      Thirty-eight miles. At seventy miles an hour, that meant about thirty more minutes in his company. Thirty-eight miles and Bill would drop her off at some motel. Thirty-eight miles and she could get a good night’s sleep and then figure out what to do with the rest of her life.

      Montgomery was big enough to have several hospitals, she supposed. Hospitals were always short of nurses. Maybe she could get a job at one of them and start over free from pressure from her family. Free of Dick.

      Then she wondered if it wouldn’t be better to just keep going without letting anybody know where she was. Even Bill Hays knowing that she had ended up in Montgomery might bring Dick and her family to her.

      No, she wasn’t trying to hide from them. She just didn’t want to deal with them for a while. She needed time to get her head together. She wasn’t ready to face Dick, her parents, or even Uncle John right now.

      She wanted to be just plain Darcy and to have the luxury of time to explore who that really was. Dick Harris and the Stanton family with their long military tradition couldn’t seem to understand that.

      Darcy leaned back against the seat, pillowed her head with her bent arm against the window frame, and closed her eyes.

      THE LIGHTS of the city loomed ahead of him, and Bill sighed. In just a few minutes, Darcy would be gone.

      The roadside information signs indicated a wide selection of discount motels at the first exit, and he sighed again. He engaged the turn signal and started to ease into the right lane.

      Then Bill looked across the seat to Darcy, sleeping on the seat beside him. Yes, he knew she expected him to stop at a motel in Montgomery, but she looked so peaceful curled up there that he didn’t have the heart to wake her. What had made her so tired that she dropped off next to a stranger? He flipped the turn signal off and remained on the highway.

      There were plenty of other motels on the road ahead before they got through Montgomery. Who said they had to stop at the first one? Darcy hadn’t. She could get a room at the last one out of town just as easily.

      Bill drove on through the sleeping city, then he drove past the last Montgomery exit, crossed the Alabama River and approached the first off-ramp for Pittsville just a few miles from Mattison. There were fewer motels here, but they were close.

      Close to what? he asked himself. Or maybe to whom?

      And why was he attracted to this woman he’d just met? It wasn’t as if he were looking for a woman, even if he had time for one. Duty, physical training, night school and his mother kept him busy enough for three men. The last thing he