Nimble as a deer, he hopped across the rocks and waved Ellie forward. Arms outstretched like a cat over her bathwater, Ellie wobbled on her toes as she timed each footstep to the next rock like a dance step. Her foot touched the log. With a snap, the log gave way. Ellie lurched forward with arms flailing, and Barrett caught her and swung her to shore before she landed facedown in the muck.
He set her straight and turned back to Kat. “You’ll have to jump the last step.”
Her right foot slid forward on the first step. Ridiculous hobnailed shoes. Why hadn’t she taken them off beforehand? The next sharp-tipped rock found her foot teetering for a grip. Oh, that was why. One, two, three. She stopped to judge the jumping distance to shore and Barrett’s outstretched arms.
She misjudged.
Her toes sank into the water lapping the shore mud. Barrett’s arm snaked around her waist and yanked her out before her heels had a chance to land.
His face loomed over her, mere inches away. “What did I say about wet feet?”
She curled her fingers into the front of his shirt, soaking in his warmth as the night air threatened to chill her from the outside in. “Good thing you caught me, then.”
The corner of his mouth curved, then quickly flattened. Straightening, he set her on her feet and stepped back. The warmth evaporated, leaving the chill more pronounced than before.
“Keep moving.”
Barrett twisted his head left and right as they crested the slope up from the bank. Gone was the tender lover from a few hours ago who had held her so passionately in his arms, kissing her with the urgency of a dying man. Before her now was a man on a mission. But something had changed that wasn’t due to the Nazis on their trail. He’d held her for the briefest of moments after she almost slipped into the water, his strong arms tightening around her and his mouth eased into that smile that made her heart turn somersaults. And then it was gone. As if he’d dropped an iron curtain to divide them.
A wind whipped up and tugged at her jacket. She held the flimsy material closer to her chest, wishing she’d had time to grab an extra pair of . . . pair of what? The brothel girls didn’t own anything beyond flimsy to offer them. She shivered. Barrett had been so warm. Surely the chill or adrenaline from the escape had twisted her perception. He would never push her away, not now, not when they had dared to bare their innermost needs to one another. Not when I love you reverberated in her heart.
A deserted vineyard stretched in the valley below. Dead vines tangled together in row after row of what had surely once been a prized harvest of grapes. A reminder of ordinary days not so long ago, it had crumbled beneath the never-ending march of jackboots.
Like gnarled snakes coiling together, the vines provided somewhat of a break from the wind squeezing between the threads of her jacket and skirt. Kat plucked a dead leaf still clinging to one of the branches. She didn’t know much about wine except which was proper to drink with each food course, but the leaf was a sole reminder of the bounty once produced here. Perhaps the grapes had even made it into one of the bottles gracing her father’s table. The dead bleakness stretching down the rows on either side of her assured her they’d never know.
Nazis. They killed everything, from people to ideals and right down to the simplest pleasures in life.
Nearing the end of the row, Barrett held his hand up for them to stop. “There’s a road up here. I’ll step out and see if there’s a sign to tell us where we are.”
Ellie latched on to Kat’s arm. Her body shivered from head to toe. “Hopefully far and away from where we were.”
Kat chafed her hand over her sister’s to stir blood back into the icy extremities. “We’ve been walking three hours, so that’s roughly fourteen kilometers.”
“That’s it? I’m surprised the Nazis aren’t breathing down our necks by now. Do you suppose that madam gave us up? Or one of those girls?”
Kat stamped her feet to keep them from freezing to the insides of her shoes. What she wouldn’t give to turn this vineyard into a burning inferno right about then. “She assured me that everyone in