"Yes, and she didn't even tell me! She should at least have talked it over with me."

"Oh dear," Kay said. "I didn't realize I'd spilled the beans. I thought you knew."

"I was probably the last to find out," I said, taking a gulp of one of the drinks that had been set in front of me.

"Tell me, Billy. Why is it that men always look at every decision a woman makes as if it revolves around them? You're moping about here instead of going out on the town with Diana and toasting her success, all because she did something without consulting you. As if she needed to. Your feelings are hurt, that's all."

"But she could get killed. Look what happened to her in Algiers-"

"Look what happened to you in Sicily."

"What about it? I'm OK now."

"Exactly."

Kay raised a slender hand and nodded to her empty glass as a waiter passed. He skidded to a halt and took it, assuring her he'd be right back with a fresh drink. Kay could always count on attracting attention, mostly the admiring type, from men, and occasionally the jealous sort from women, especially if they were attached to those admiring men. She'd been a model before joining up with the Mechanised Transport Corps, and it showed in her graceful movements, calm assurance, and killer good looks. But she was no debutante dressed up in khaki. She'd driven an ambulance in the East End of London during the Blitz, digging out the living and the dead from bombed and burning buildings, before she'd been assigned as Uncle Ike's driver. When Kay was sent to North Africa, her transport had been torpedoed, and she'd spent a night bobbing in a lifeboat on cold ocean waves as destroyers depth-charged the waters around the survivors. And she'd endured her own loss in this war, so I had to admit she might know what she was talking about.

"OK, I get your point. It's just that where I come from women don't go off and jump out of airplanes behind enemy lines."