My Sweet Valentine Read Free Page A

air raid, Tilly’s heart ached for those whose lives would be changed for ever. The very thought of anything happening to her Drew made her heart pound with anxiety.
    In an attempt to distract herself she asked him, ‘Will you write about this in one of your newspaper articles?’
    ‘Yes,’ he confirmed. ‘And about how brave you all are.’
    ‘You’re brave too, because you’re here with us when you don’t need to be, when you could be safe in America,’ Tilly reminded him.
    ‘No,’ Drew said softly, shaking his head. ‘There is only one place I can be, Tilly – only one place I want to be – and that is here with you.’
    ‘Oh, Drew.’
    For a few precious seconds the intensity of their love wrapped a protective coat around them that excluded everyone and everything else. Within that protection Tilly gave Drew a look of burningly passionate love that madehis heart turn over – with male desire for her, yes, but also with a need to protect her from that desire.
    To distract herself from her anxiety over Tilly, Olive turned towards her friend Audrey Windle, who had stood back when Tilly and Drew had first appeared. She had seen the look on Olive’s face and guessed she was anxious about her young daughter and the handsome American reporter.
    Now as they stood side by side in their WVS uniforms, Olive asked Audrey with genuine concern, ‘Have you had any news from your nephew?’
    ‘Yes, thank heavens,’ the vicar’s wife responded. ‘His plane was shot down over the Channel, as you know, Olive, but we heard only this morning that, miraculously, a naval vessel saw his parachute and was able to rescue him. He’s got a broken leg, mind, so he’ll be out of action for a while.’
    She paused and then offered, ‘Tilly’s young man seems nice. I know the children at the Christmas party were all thrilled with the presents he gave them when he played Father Christmas.’
    ‘He is nice,’ Olive felt obliged to confirm truthfully. ‘And generous. It was lovely of him to think of doing that for the children.’ Her maternal anxiety couldn’t be abated, however, and before she could stop herself she was saying anxiously, ‘Tilly is so young, though, and there’s a war on. Even if there wasn’t, he’s American; ultimately he will go back there. It’s his home, after all.’
    Audrey Windle gave Olive a sympathetic look. Then, in an effort to distract her, she gestured towards a WVS mobile canteen, which was parked close by and manned by three very busy WVS workers.

    ‘Do you think we should offer to give them a hand? They look very busy.’
    ‘Yes. I was just going to ask you the same thing.’ Olive knew hard work was always a good antidote to worry. She’d still be able to keep an eye on Tilly from the mobile canteen, and it went against the grain with Olive not to offer to help fellow members of the Women’s Voluntary Service if she thought she could be useful.
     
    ‘Want some help? I should say we do,’ the woman behind the counter told Olive and Audrey fervently. ‘It’s the firemen I feel the most sorry for. Parched, they are, after the fires they’ve had to put out.’
    Olive nodded, quickly getting to work alongside Audrey. It was a small enough thing to do, set against what the fire and rescue services were doing – the providing of cups of hot tea – but everyone who worked in the WVS knew how much that homely brew meant to both the bombed-out and frightened, and those who were desperately trying to protect and save them.
    ‘Ta.’ One of the firemen took the cup of tea Olive had just poured for him, his helmet pushed back to reveal his soot-smeared face.
    After draining the tea almost in one gulp he told her grimly, ‘He’s good at planning, Hitler is, you’ve got to give him that. Coming in at night when the Thames’s tide was at low ebb and then knocking out one of the main pumping stations first so that there wouldn’t be enough water pressure for our hoses. Lost a hell of