She nodded. ‘Our housekeeper was making wine.’
He had to shake in order to get rid of the shudder rippling over him. His grandfather had made wine once. It had been bad. The morning after had been downright miserable. Being fifteen might have had something to do with it. ‘That had to be worse,’ he admitted aloud.
Her cheeks had turned pink. ‘It certainly was awful.’ With a sigh, she added, ‘And like you, I had to swallow it or get caught.’
Curious, he asked, ‘So do you drink wine now?’
‘Not if I don’t have to,’ she answered.
The laugh they shared lightened the air between them. Hoping it stayed that way, but not wanting to put too much into it, he asked, ‘So which berries are we picking?’ The berries in the basket he’d taken from Charlotte were green and hairy. And more unappetising than any he’d ever seen.
She stepped near the bushes and pointed out a small cluster of berries. ‘Gooseberries.’
‘They’re supposed to be green?’
‘Yes.’
‘And hairy?’
She tried but couldn’t smother another giggle, even with her hand. ‘Yes.’
‘Most of the green berries I’ve seen haven’t been ripe, and hair, I associate that with mould.’
‘Well, you’re not in America, Sergeant Johnson.’
‘You don’t say?’
Her brief glance showed the shine was disappearing from her eyes.
Not wanting that, he asked, ‘Can I eat one?’
She shrugged. ‘Yes.’
‘You aren’t trying to poison me, are you?’
The shine returned to her eyes, turning them a thoughtful, shimmering brown. If he wasn’t careful, he could get lost in those eyes. Except he couldn’t look away because he knew what she was thinking.
‘You hadn’t thought about poisoning me?’ Coaxing, he added, ‘Come on. I know you did.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘But you are now.’
She laughed and handed him a berry she’d plucked. ‘Go ahead and eat one.’
He took it and ate it, puckering the entire time because his first reaction had been to spit it out. Swallowing twice to get it to go down, he shook his head. ‘That’s as bitter as Grandma’s grape juice had been.’
Hiding a smile, she continued picking berries and dropping them into her basket. ‘They’ll be sweeter later in the year.’
‘Then why don’t you wait until later to pick them?’
‘Because the more we pick now, the more we’ll have later.’ She held up one of the green berries. ‘They may taste bitter by themselves, but you’d be amazed by how good they are in a bread and butter pudding.’
He waited for her to pop the berry in her mouth, but when she dropped it in the basket instead, he shook his head. ‘I find that very hard to believe considering you won’t eat one.’
A hint of dog-eared determination crossed her face as she plucked another berry and popped it in her mouth. Her expression remained unchanged, except for a hint of a pinch to her lips as she swallowed.
‘Satisfied?’ she asked after swallowing again.
With her lips pinched tight, pink cheeks and the sunshine making her black hair shimmer, she was cute. Really cute. His mind shifted. ‘Why don’t you like Americans?’
He wanted to kick himself at how her face fell and she blinked slowly, as if trying to hide something. She bit her bottom lip before turning back to the berries.
‘That was a terrible trick you played,’ she said.
‘What trick?’
She cast him a scathing look while saying, ‘What trick? Have you ever been hit on the top of the head by a sweet? Well, I have and it hurts.’
Now he really wanted to kick himself. He hadn’t thought of that. ‘I’m sorry, I—’
‘Didn’t think of that? You only thought of a way to mock me. To get me to take your money?’
‘I wasn’t mocking you,’ he answered. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’ Noting there was more she was trying to hide, he shook his head. ‘Honestly, and I wasn’t trying to scare you either.’
She reached for another clump of berries, but stopped and balled her hand into a fist instead. ‘Are you trying to say it wasn’t another one of your jokes? Like the plane?’
‘Yes, or no, I’m not sure which is right. Yes, that’s what I’m saying, no, it wasn’t a joke.’
She eyed him critically.
‘I truly didn’t think about the candy hitting someone or that it would scare you.’ He huffed out a breath. Those were things he should have thought about, but hadn’t. These people had been taught—hell, the entire world was being taught to run and hide, protect themselves, from anything and everything falling from the sky. He’d talked to the school children about that very issue. ‘I’m sorry.’ Shaking his head, he admitted, ‘I’m not sure what else to say.’ He dug in his pocket and pulled out the candy bar. ‘I brought a peace offering.’
‘I don’t want a peace offering.’
‘Will you accept an apology?’
She looked around, not necessarily at anything in particular, just anywhere but at him.
They stood there for a stilled moment. Not sure what more to say or do, he didn’t as much as breathe.
She moved first, spun around and started picking berries again. ‘I still won’t take your money.’
‘That’s good.’ He dropped the candy bar into his basket and picked several berries before adding, ‘Because I spent it.’
‘It was yours to spend.’ She’d taken several steps away, clearing the berries off the bushes with remarkable speed.
He took a couple of long steps to catch up with her. ‘I bought candy with the money. Lots of candy. Ten, maybe twenty times more than what was dropped.’
Turning to face him slowly, she asked, ‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘You said it was rationed and hard to come by. We, the GIs, get it with our food packs. A wide variety. Some men like it, others don’t. So I bought up all I could. Figured I’d pass it out to the children and, being short on time, I came up with the idea of the pilots dropping it as they flew overhead.’
Her frown increased, but so did the thoughtfulness of her gaze. ‘Did you drop it other places?’
‘No, I guess you could call this my test run.’ Flashing her a smile that showed the guilt inside him, he added, ‘I guess I’ll have to rethink the delivery.’
She turned completely around, pausing briefly to look off at each of the children picking berries at different places in the long hedgerows encircling the field. ‘They certainly were excited yesterday and again today when they found a few more pieces.’
‘I suspect there are more children like those two boys who’d lived with Mrs Whitcomb.’ He glanced at the children picking berries. ‘Those boys had been miserable there.’
‘Yes, they had been and are much better off with the Butlers.’
He stepped up beside her. ‘You gave me the idea. When you said there wasn’t any candy. I knew where there was an abundance of that and sharing it seemed appropriate.’