The Undaunted

Three Words

Jack raised an amused eyebrow at Jenny as she hopped determinedly into the driver's seat of the jeep but, grinning indulgently, joined her, sliding into the passenger seat beside her and together they roared off down the road.

"You know you're going the wrong way," Jack observed after a minute.

"There's a stop I want to make first," Jenny replied smiling mysteriously.

Jack reached over and gently brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers. "Whatever you say. I'm in your capable hands, Jenny."

Jenny gave him a sidelong glance, with a smirk and an arched brow. "Don't tempt me, Lieutenant Colonel," she said, and he laughed.

His laugh turned to silence, and she became aware of the tight clenching of his jaw when she pulled up outside Natalia's boarding school. He turned to look at her in silent amazement.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "I saw her yesterday afternoon. I can come back and see her later if..."

"I'm sure," Jenny assured him, the beautiful light in his eyes making her throat clog with emotion. She didn't elaborate, didn't explain that she knew how much he missed the little girl, that she knew he wrote to her twice a week and that he constantly questioned whether he had done the right thing in putting her into boarding school so young. "I want to see her too."

She didn't say that she knew he would ordinarily be spending the day with Natalia and that, after the night they'd had, the joy they'd found in one another's arms, it didn't seem fair to keep that joy to themselves. But she knew he understood when he leaned over and tenderly kissed her lips.

"Thank you," he said softly.

He jumped out of the jeep, eager as a little boy at Christmas, and returned a few minutes later with Natalia, who had her arms wrapped around his neck as if she would never let him go.

"Jenny!" she cried, wriggling out of his arms and scampering over to the jeep to wrap her arms around Jenny's neck as well. "You both came!"

"We did," Jenny laughed as she embraced the little girl back, and she knew in that moment that she'd done the right thing.

"A whole day with you and Papa!" Natalia exclaimed.

Jenny's throat tightened and tears filled her eyes as her gaze locked with Jack's questioningly.

He cleared his throat. "She's been calling me that since she came to Paris," he said, his voice husky. "The teachers say it's because she's with a lot of other girls who talk about their Papas."

"And because you're more like a father to her than anyone else," Jenny said, squeezing his hand and taking the opportunity, while Jack settled Natalia on his lap in the front of the jeep, to wipe her eyes.

There were very few vehicles on the road and it took only a couple of hours to reach the chateau. They never once ran out of things to say, especially Natalia, who filled them out on every minute detail of each day that it passed since she had started at school.

"With a memory like that and such attention to detail, she'll be following in your footsteps before you know it," Jack said to Jenny. "Then I'll have two reporters to contend with."

"And you'll love every minute of it," Jenny said with a broad smile and if Natalia hadn't been in the car, she would have pulled over and kissed him, just because of the way he looked at her.

At Havre de Rêve, they bumped along the one sweeping drive. It was overgrown, as it had been last year, with angelica and soapwort, wild pansies and wild orchids painting color into the landscape. But the typically formal chateau garden had been lost through wartime misuse and neglect, but Jenny liked it all the more for the perfusion of wildflowers and the wild plum and wild mulberry trees, the oaks and sweet chestnuts that had been allowed to flourish untamed.