v1.5
July 2007
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Epilogue
1934
Jackie was flying a plane, so Jackie was happy.
Soaring high, catching the breezes, winking at the setting sun, Jackie stretched and the plane stretched. Jackie moved and the plane moved. As though the body of the plane were a second skin to her, she could move the airplane as easily as she moved her arm or her leg. Smiling, she dipped one wing downward to look at the beautiful high mountain desert of Colorado.
At first she didn't believe what she saw. Sitting in the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest road, was a car. Thinking that the vehicle had been abandoned, she turned her plane, dipping the wings, turning on a dime, to backtrack to have a second look. The car hadn't been there yesterday, so perhaps someone needed help.
She swooped down as low as she dared, not that the piñon trees, rarely over twenty feet tall, were going to interfere with the height she needed to stay aloft. As she came back for a second pass she saw a man stand up from the shade of the car and raise his arm in greeting. Smiling, she turned her plane back toward her home base. He was all right, then, and as soon as she landed at her airstrip in Eternity, she'd call the sheriff to send the stranded traveler some help.
She was chuckling to herself. Travelers often were stranded in Colorado. They looked at the flat landscape off the side of the road and decided to see nature up close. But they didn't take into consideration the thorns as large as a man's little finger and rocks whose sharpness had not been worn away by heavy yearly rainfall.
Maybe it was because she was laughing and not watching what she was doing that she didn't see the bird, as big as a lamb, that flew straight into her propeller. She doubted that she could have avoided hitting it, but she would have tried. As it was, everything happened very quickly. One minute she was flying toward home and the next minute there were feathers and blood all over her goggles and the plane was going down.
Jackie was a good pilot, one of the best in America. She'd certainly had a great deal of training, having received her license at eighteen years of age, and now, at thirty-eight, she was an old hand. But coping with this bird took all of her knowledge and skill. As the engine began to sputter, she knew she was going to have to do a dead-stick landing, a landing without power. Quickly, tearing off her goggles so she could see, she looked about for a place to set it down. She needed a wide, long clearing, someplace free of trees and rocks that could tear the wings off the plane.
The old road to the ghost town of Eternity offered the only possibility. She didn't know what had grown or rolled across the road in the many years that it hadn't been used, but she had no other choice. Within the flash of an eye, she lined up the nose to the "runway" and started down. There was a boulder blocking the road—it had probably rolled down during the spring thaw—and she was praying to stop the plane before she hit the enormous rock.
Luck wasn't with her, for she plowed into the rock. As she crashed, she could hear the sickening crunch of her propeller being destroyed. She didn't think anymore. Her head flew forward, hitting the stick; she was out cold.
The next thing Jackie knew, she was being held in a pair of very strong, masculine arms and carried away from the plane. "Are you my rescuing knight?" she asked dreamily. She could feel something warm running down her face. When she put up her hand to wipe it away, she thought she saw blood, but her eyes weren't functioning properly and the daylight was fading fast.
"Am I badly hurt?" she asked, knowing the man wouldn't tell her the truth. She'd seen a couple of men mangled in airplane wrecks, and as they lay dying everyone had reassured them that tomorrow they'd be fine.
"I don't think so," the man said. "I think you just bumped your head, cracked it a bit."
"Oh, well, then, I'll be okay. Nobody's head is harder than mine." He was still carrying her, but her weight didn't seem to bother him at all. As best she could, considering how dizzy she felt, she pulled her head back to look at him. In the fading light he looked great, but then, Jackie reminded herself, she'd just cracked her skull in a plane wreck. For all she knew, he had three heads and six eyes. No one could be so lucky as to crash in the middle of acres of nothing and find a handsome man to rescue her.
"Who are you?" she asked thickly, because all of a sudden she felt very sleepy.
"William Montgomery," he answered.
"A Montgomery from Chandler?" When he said yes, Jackie snuggled against his wide, broad chest and sighed happily. At least she didn't have to worry about his intentions. If he was a Chandler Montgomery then he was honorable and fair and would never take advantage of the situation; Montgomerys were as honest and trustworthy as the day was long.
More's the pity, she thought.
When they were some distance from the plane, near his car, which she could just make out in the dim light, he gently set her on the ground. Cupping her chin in his hand, he looked into her eyes. "I want you to stay here and wait for me. I'm going to get some blankets from the car, then build a fire. When you don't show up at the airfield, will anyone come looking for you?"
"No," she whispered. She liked his voice, liked the air of authority in it. He made her feel as though he'd take care of everything, including her.
"I was planning to spend the night out here, so no one will look for me either," he said. "While I'm gone, I want you to stay awake, do you hear me? If your head is concussed and you go to sleep, you might not wake up again. Understand?"
Dreamily, Jackie nodded and watched him walk away. Very good looking man, she thought as she lay down on the ground and promptly went to sleep.
Mere seconds later he was shaking her. "Jackie! Jacqueline!" he said over and over until she reluctantly opened her eyes and looked up at him.
"How do you know my name?" she asked. "Have we met before? I've met so many Montgomerys that I can't keep them straight. Bill, did you say your name was?"
"William," he said firmly, "and, yes, we've met before, but I'm sure you wouldn't remember. It wasn't a significant meeting."
" 'Significant meeting,' " she said, closing her eyes again, but William sat her up, draped a blanket around her shoulders, then rubbed her hands.
"Stay awake, Jackie," he said, and she recognized it for the order it was. "Stay awake and talk to me. Tell me about Charley."
At the mention of her late husband, she stopped smiling. "Charley died two years ago."
William was trying to collect wood and watch her at the same time. The light was fading quickly, and he had difficulty seeing the pieces of cholla on the ground, as well as the deadfall. He had met her husband many times, and he'd liked him very much: a big, robust gray-haired man who laughed a lot, talked a lot, drank a lot, and could fly anything that could be flown.
Now, looking at her, drowsy, he knew he needed to warm her up, get some food inside her, and make her stay awake. Right now she was in a state of shock, and that, combined with her injury, might keep her from seeing another dawn.
"Jackie!" he said sharply. "What's the biggest lie you ever told?"
"I don't lie," she said dreamily. "Can't keep them straight. Always get caught."
"Sure you lie. Everybody lies. You tell a woman her hat is nice when it's hideous. I didn't ask you if you had lied or not; I just want to know what your biggest lie was." He was stacking up what wood he could find as he questioned her, his voice loud; he couldn't let her sleep.
"I used to lie to my mother about where I was."
"You can do better than that."
When she spoke, her voice was so soft he could barely hear her. "I told Charley I loved him."
"And you didn't love him?" William encouraged her to talk as he dropped a pile of wood near her feet.
"Not at first. He was older than me, twenty-one years older, and at first I thought of him as a father. I used to skip school and spend the afternoons with him and the airplanes. I loved planes from the first moment I saw them."
"So you married Charley to get near the planes."
"Yes," she said, her voice heavy with guilt. She sat upright and put her hand to her bloody head, but William brushed her hand away and turned her face up toward his as he used his handkerchief to wipe away the blood.
After he'd reassured himself and her that the cut on the side of her head was minor, he said, "Go on. When did you realize that you loved him?"
"I didn't think about it one way or another until after we'd been married about five years. Charley's plane was lost in a snowstorm, and when I thought I might never see him again, I found out how much I loved him."
After a moment of silence she looked at him as he bent over the wood he was trying to coax into a fire. "What about you?"
"I didn't once tell Charley I loved him."
Jackie smiled. "No, what's the biggest lie you ever told?"
"I told my father it wasn't me who dented the fender of the car."
"Mmm," said Jackie, becoming a little more alert. "That's not a very horrible lie. Can't you come up with something better?"
"I told my mother I wasn't the one who'd eaten the whole strawberry pie. I told my brother that my sister had broken his slingshot. I told—"
"Okay, okay," Jackie said, laughing. "I get the picture. You're a consummate liar. All right, I have one for you. What's the worst thing a woman can say to a man?"
William didn't hesitate. "'Which silver pattern do you like best?' "
Jackie grinned. She was beginning to like this man, and her overwhelming sleepiness was starting to subside.
"What's the worst thing a man can say to a woman?" he asked.
Jackie was as quick to answer as he had been. "When you're shopping and the man says, 'Just exactly what is it you're looking for?' "
Chuckling, he walked the few feet to his car to open the door and remove camping gear. "What's the nicest thing a man can say to a woman?"
"I love you. That is, if he means it. If he doesn't mean it, then he should be horsewhipped for saying it. And you? What's the nicest thing for you?"
"Yes," he said.
"Yes what?"
"Yes is the very best thing a woman can say to a man."
Jackie laughed. "To any question? No matter what she's asked, it's what you most want to hear?"
"It would be rather nice to hear yes from a woman's lips, at least now and then."
"Oh, come on, a man who looks like you has never heard a woman say yes to whatever you asked her?"
His arms full of blankets and canteens and a basket of food, he grinned at her. "One or two, but no more."
"Okay, it's my turn. What's the kindest thing you ever did for someone and didn't tell anyone about?"
"I guess that would have to be adding a wing to the hospital in Denver. I sent the money anonymously."
"Oh, my," she said, remembering how rich the Montgomerys were.
"And you?"
Jackie began to laugh. "Charley and I had been married for about four years, and with Charley you never stayed in one place long enough to learn your neighbors' names, much less put down roots. But that year we had rented a small house that had a very nice kitchen in it, and I decided to cook him a marvelous Thanksgiving dinner. I talked about nothing else but that dinner for two weeks. I planned and shopped, and on Thanksgiving Day I got up at four a.m. and got the turkey ready. Charley left the house about noon, but he promised he'd be back by five when everything would be ready to serve. He was going to bring some of the other pilots from the airfield, and it was going to be a party. Five o'clock came and there was no Charley. Six came and went, then seven. At midnight I fell asleep, but I was so angry that I slept in a rigid knot. The next morning there was Charley, snoring away on the sofa, and there was my beautiful Thanksgiving dinner in ruins. You know what I did?"
"I'm surprised Charley lived after that."
"I shouldn't have let him live, but I figured the worst thing I could do was not let him have any of my dinner. I bundled everything up in burlap bags, went to the airfield, took up Charley's plane and flew into the mountains—we were in West Virginia then, so it was the Smokies—where I saw a dilapidated old shack perched on the side of a hill, a measly little trickle of smoke coming out of the chimney. I dropped the bags practically on the front porch."
She pulled her knees up to her chest and sighed. "Until now I never told anyone about that. Later I heard that the family said an angel had dropped food from heaven."
He had the fire going now, and he smiled at her over it. "I like that story. What did Charley say when he got no turkey?"
She shrugged. "Charley was happy if he had turkey and happy if he had beans. When it came to food, Charley was into quantity, not quality." She looked up at him. "What's the worst thing that's happened to you?"
William answered without thinking. "Being born rich."
Jackie gave a low whistle. "You'd think that was the best thing that had happened to you."
"It is. It's the best and the worst."
"I think I can see that." She was thinking about this as William poured water from a canteen onto a handkerchief and, with his hand cupping her chin, began to clean the wound on the side of her head.
"What's your deepest, darkest secret, something that you've never told anyone?" he asked.
"It wouldn't be a secret if I told."
"Do you think I'd tell anyone?"
She turned her head and looked up at him, at the shadows the firelight cast across his handsome face: dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, that long Montgomery nose. Maybe it was the unusual circumstances, the dark night surrounding them, the fire at the center, but she felt close to him. "I kissed another man while I was married to Charley," she whispered.
"That's all?"
"That's pretty bad in my book. What about you?"
"I backed out on a contract."
"Was that really bad? If you changed your mind…"
"It was a breach of promise, and she thought it was very bad."
"Ah, I see," Jackie said, smiling as she wrapped her arms around her knees. "What's your favorite food?"
"Ice cream."
She laughed. "Mine too. Favorite color."
"Blue. Yours?"
She looked up at him. "Blue."
He came to sit by her, dusting off his hands. When Jackie shivered in the cool mountain air, he put his arm around her shoulders, as naturally as breathing, and pulled her head to his chest. "Do you mind?"
Jackie couldn't even speak. It felt so good to touch another human being. Charley had always been cuddly and affectionate, and she had often sat on his lap, snuggling in his arms, while he read some airplane magazine aloud to her.
She didn't realize she was drifting off to sleep until his voice jolted her awake.
"What's the biggest regret in your life?" he asked sharply.
"That I wasn't born with a few Mae West curves," she answered quickly. She used to whine to Charley that the guys treated her like one of them because she looked like them: an angular face, with a square jaw, broad shoulders, straight hips, and long legs.
"You are joking, aren't you?" William said, his voice full of disbelief. "You're one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. I can't tell you how many times I've stopped dead in my tracks as I watched you walk down the streets of Chandler."
"Really?" she said, now wide awake. "Are you sure you know who I am?"
"You are the great Jacqueline O'Neill. You've won nearly every flying award that is given. You've been everywhere in the world. You once were lost for three days in the snow of Montana, but you managed to walk out."
"Actually, I rolled down a mountain. It was only by luck that I landed at some cowboys' camp."
He knew she was lying, for he'd read everything written about her at that time. After crashing in a snowstorm, she had made her way out, climbing down the side of a steep mountain by using dead reckoning, by navigating with the faint sunlight during the day and the stars at night. She'd kept her head, often leaving huge arrows made from tree branches in the snow so airplanes looking for her could find her. Smiling, he tightened his arm around her shoulders and was pleased when she moved closer to him.
"Ah, how do I walk?" she asked tentatively, not wanting to sound as though she were asking for a compliment, which was just what she was doing.
"With long strides that eat up the earth. Grown men stop what they're doing just to watch you walk, your shoulders back, your head held high, your beautiful thick hair catching the breeze, your—"
Jackie started to laugh. "Where have you been all my life?"
"Right here in Chandler, waiting for the day you would come back."
"You might have had to wait forever, because I never thought I would return. I was so restless back then. All I wanted was to get out of this tiny, isolated town. I wanted to move, to go places and see things."
"And you got to do that. Was it as good as you thought it would be?"
"At first it was, but after seven or eight years I began wanting things, like a flower box. I wanted to plant seeds and watch them grow. I wanted to know for sure that where I went to sleep was going to be the place where I woke up."
"So after Charley died, you came back to dreary old Chandler."
"Yes," she said, smiling against his chest. "Boring old Chandler where nothing changes and everyone knows everyone else's business."
"Are you happy now?"
"I— Hey! why am I doing all the answering? What about you? Why haven't I met you before? But that's right, it was not a 'significant meeting.' I don't think we have met before, because I would have remembered you."
"Thank you. I take that as a compliment." He moved away from her to throw more wood on the fire. "How about something to eat? A sandwich? Pickles?"
"Sounds delicious." She could tell that he didn't want to discuss their original meeting, and she figured it was because she'd probably snubbed him. She used to do that to men; it saved her pride. She'd tell a boy she wouldn't be caught dead at a dance with a bullfrog like him rather than tell the truth—that she couldn't afford a new dress.
She'd grown up in Chandler. After her father died when she was twelve, her mother, who considered herself a southern belle, had prostrated herself on a fainting couch and spent the next six years there. They had insurance money, and her mother's brother sent them money, but it was barely enough. It had been left up to Jackie to see that the decaying old house at the edge of town didn't fall down on top of their heads. While other girls were learning to wear lipstick, Jackie was spending her weekends hammering the roof back on. She chopped wood, built a fence, repaired the porch, built new steps when the first set wore out. She knew how to use a hand saw, but had no idea how to use a nail file.
One day when Jackie was eighteen an airplane flew overhead, a long banner tied to its tail announcing an air show the next day. Jackie's mother, who was as healthy as a dandelion in a manicured lawn, decided to have a fainting fit on that day because she didn't want Jackie to leave her. But Jackie did go, and that was where she met Charley. When he pulled out of town three days later, Jackie was with him. They were married the next week.
Her mother had gone back to Georgia where her brother refused to put up with her hypochondria and put her to work helping with his six children. Judging from the letters Jackie received until her mother's death a few years ago, that had been the best thing for her. She had been very happy after she'd left Chandler and gone back to her own people.
"Twenty years," Jackie whispered.
"What?"
"It was twenty years ago when I left with Charley. Sometimes it seems like yesterday and sometimes it seems like three lifetimes ago." She looked up at him. "Did we meet back then, before I left with Charley?"
"Yes," he said, smiling. "We met then. I adored you, but you never even looked at me."
She laughed. "I can believe that. I was so full of youthful pride."
"You still are."
"Pride maybe, but no longer am I youthful."
At that, William looked at her across the fire, and for a moment Jackie thought he was angry at her. She was about to ask him what was wrong when he briskly stepped around the fire, pulled her up into his arms and kissed her firmly on the mouth.
Jackie had kissed only two men in her life: her husband, Charley, and a pilot who was just taking off and might not come back. Neither of those kisses had been like this one. This kiss said, I'd like to make love to you, like to spend nights with you, like to touch you and hold you.
When he released her, Jackie fell back against the ground with a thud.
"I think there's still a little youth left in you," William said sarcastically as he pushed a stick back into the fire.
Jackie was speechless, but her eyes never left him. How in the world could she not remember him? There were at least half a dozen Montgomery's in her high school class, but she couldn't remember one named William. Of course the Montgomerys all seemed to have five or six last names on the front of their family name. Maybe he'd been called something else, like Flash or Rex, or maybe the girls just called him Wonderful.
After William kissed her, there was an awkward silence between them, which he broke. "Okay," he said enthusiastically, "you get three wishes, what are they?"
She opened her mouth to speak but closed it again, looking up at him sheepishly.
"Come on," he said, "it couldn't be that bad. What is it?"
"It isn't really a bad wish at all. It's just that it's so… so boring."
"Jackie O'Neill, the greatest female pilot who ever lived, has a thought that's boring? Not possible."
Right away she realized that she didn't want to tell him her wish because she didn't want to disappoint him. He seemed to know all about her—if one can know anything about another from records broken and set, from inflated newspaper accounts that dramatized happenings that were in truth actually rather ordinary.
"I want to put down roots, stay somewhere, and Chandler is familiar to me," she said. "Now that I've seen the rest of the world, I know Chandler is a nice place. But I can't live anywhere if I don't have a way to make money." She put up her hand when he started to speak. "I know, I know, your family and the Taggerts pay me well when they want me to fly somewhere, but I'll never make any money in a one-man operation. I want to hire a few young pilots, run a little business. I'd like to delegate some of the work. I'd like to run passengers and freight, maybe some mail, between here and Denver, but I'll need a healthy nest egg to be able to set up an operation like that."
"But…" He couldn't think how to word his thoughts so he wouldn't be offensive.
But Jackie knew what he was thinking. "Jackie O'Neill, the greatest female pilot of this century reduced to flying mail from Colorado to the East Coast. Queen of the snap roll reduced to hauling picture post cards. Oh, the horror of it. Oh, the great tragedy of it. Is that what you're thinking?"
William ducked his head, but she could see that his face was as red as the fire. A man who blushes, she thought.
"All that daredevil stuff is for kids. I've had my fill of it."
He came to sit by her again and looked at her earnestly. "I'm sure you could get your business established if you wanted it. There are ways to make that kind of thing happen."
If you have as much money as the Montgomerys do, she thought, but of course she didn't say that. "Even the very, very best pilot has to have an airplane, and the last time I saw mine, its nose was pressed against a three-ton boulder." There was a patronizing tone to her voice.
"I see your point." As he put his arm around her, he kept his eyes lowered. "Wish number two."
"Nope. I want your wish number one."
"I have only one wish. I wish I could accomplish something on my own, something that Montgomery money couldn't buy for me." He looked at her. "Your turn. Second wish."
"Curly hair?" she asked, making him smile.
"Tell me the truth. There must be things in life you want besides a business." He made it sound as though she had disappointed him by not wishing for a magic carpet or perhaps world peace. "What about another husband?"
There was so much hope in his voice that she laughed. "Are you volunteering?"
"Think you'd accept my offer?"
At the eager, almost-serious tone in his voice, she tried to pull away from him, but he held her fast. "All right, I'll behave."
"What's your second wish?" she asked.
"Probably to be as good a man as my dad."
"With your lying you're not as good as the Beasley girls."
He laughed, and the tension between them was gone. "So you won't tell me your other wishes, your other wants out of life?"
"If I told you, you'd think I was ridiculous."
"Try me."
There was something earnest about him that made her want to tell the truth. If she'd been with some of Charley's friends, she'd have made up something entertaining, like winning the Taggie, but now she just wanted to say what she really wanted. "All right, what I want most is normalcy. For the first twelve years of my life I had an ailing father and a hypochondriac mother. After my father's death, I had an invalid mother. I longed to go to school dances and such, but I didn't get to. One of my parents always needed me. For the last twenty years I have traveled and flown and had an enormously exciting life. Sometimes it seemed that every day brought some new and thrilling event. Charley was as unsettled, as fidgety, as my mother was unmovable. I've had lunch at the White House, been to about half the countries of the world, met an enormous number of famous people. After the…" She barely glanced at him. A few years ago she had performed a service that had to be done at the time, and afterward America had made a fuss about it. "I've had my photo in the newspapers," she finished.
"An American heroine," he said, his eyes glowing.
"Perhaps. Whatever I was, I loved it all."
"But then Charley died and you changed," he said, sounding almost jealous.
"No, it was before that. Somewhere in there I realized that people wanted my autograph for themselves, not for me. Don't get me wrong, I loved it all. But one day after Charley and I, in separate planes, had spent three days with no sleep, on harrowing flights through a raging forest fire, I was told the president was calling to congratulate me. I sat there on a stiff chair in some dingy little office and thought, Not again."
She smiled. "I think that when you get to the point where a call from the president of the United States elicits nothing but boredom, it's time to do something else."
William was silent for a moment. "Normal. You said you wanted normal. What is normal?"
She grinned at him. "How would I know? I've never even seen it, much less lived it. But I don't think calls from the president, champagne in hot air balloons, living in hotels, and being rich one day and poor the next is normal. It's exciting, but it's also very tiring."
He chuckled. "It's true that we all want what we don't have. I have had the most normal life in the world. I went to the right schools, studied business administration, and after college I came back to Chandler to help run the family businesses. The most exciting thing I ever did was spend three days in Mexico with one of my brothers."
"Yes?"
"Yes what?"
"And what did you do in Mexico during those three days?"
"Ate. Saw the sights. Fished a little." He stopped. "Why are you laughing?"
"Two handsome young men alone in a place as decadent as Mexico and you went to see the sights! Didn't you even get drunk?"
"No." William was smiling. "What is the most exciting thing you've done?"
"It would be difficult to choose from the list. Dippy twist loops are rather exciting." Her head came up. "Once I had a Venetian count try to tear my clothes off."
"You found that exciting?" William asked coldly.
"It was, when you consider that we were flying at about ten thousand feet and he was crawling across the plane toward me. A few sideslips and he got back in his seat. But he was crying that an airplane was the only place where he hadn't yet made love to a woman."
William laughed. "Tell me more. I like hearing about your life, it beats mine."
"I'm not sure that's true. I once made a dead-stick landing—that's with a dead engine—in a plane with no wheels and only one and a half wings. That was more excitement than I wanted."
"Which countries did you like best?"
"All of them. No, I'm serious. Each country has something to recommend it, and I try to overlook the bad parts."
William was silent for a few minutes, staring into the fire. "Charley was a very lucky man to share so many years with you. I envy him."
She turned her head up to look at him, frowning in concentration. "You sound as though you've been carrying a torch."
"For you? Yes, I have. I used to adore you from afar."
"How flattering. But back then you could have told me you loved me and offered me a few Montgomery millions and I still wouldn't have stayed in Chandler."
They sat together, his arm slipping about her shoulders as they watched the fire. "What do you need to open your freight business?" he asked.
"Seriously?"
"Very seriously."
She took a moment before she answered. She may have just had a bump on the head, but her brains were still intact. Charley had drummed into her that a pilot without any money must always be on the lookout for an airplane-lover who did have money. "Now, that's a marriage made in heaven," he used to say. She wouldn't want to take advantage of this man, but if he was bored and had pots of money, maybe they could find something that would help him occupy his time.
She took a deep breath, trying to banish her feelings of guilt. If he wanted to do something for her, it was because he believed her to be an American heroine. But if Jackie took money from him, it would have to do with something much less altruistic, something much more primitive, such as putting bread on the table and maybe a few really nice dresses on her back. "A couple of good, light planes. A full-time mechanic, hangars, a few old planes I can cannibalize for parts, money for salaries until I can pay the pilots."
"Anything else you need? A partner perhaps?"
Right away she knew that he was suggesting himself. Now was not the time to make such a decision. Her head was still seeping blood, and her thinking was fuzzy. However, it was delicious to think of this man as her partner. Smiling, she looked up at him, trying to place him. "Who are your parents?"
"Jace and Nellie."
"Ah, that explains it. Half the town is parented by those two."
William smiled. All his life he'd heard jokes about the number of children in his family. "Twelve in all." He was emptying the big picnic basket that seemed to hold enough food for half a dozen loggers. Without saying a word, he began making her a sandwich. Jackie watched in astonishment as he made it just the way she would have made it for herself: chipped beef piled high, lots and lots of mustard, tomatoes; then he sliced a sweet pickle and placed the slices on top of the tomato, using two leaves of lettuce to protect the bread so it wouldn't get soggy. Watching his face, she could see that he wasn't paying any attention to what he was doing, that he was concentrating totally on whatever was running through his mind. But it was odd that he would make her a sandwich that was just what she would have made, especially since her sandwiches were, well, unique.
"Look what I've done," William said. "I was going to make you a sandwich first and now I…" He looked at her. "What do you want?"
"Just like the one you made for yourself."
His handsome face showed a moment's consternation before he smiled. "Honest? Everyone hates my sandwiches."
"Mine too," she said, reaching out her hand. "How about halves and I'll make the second one? I cut up olives instead of pickles."
"And then everyone complains that the olives fall off."
"The idiots don't know how to hold the bread."
They looked at each other across the sandwich and smiled. "Do you think we'll be able to sandwich this friendship together?" Jackie asked and they both laughed. "What do you think of ketchup?"
"Hate the stuff."
"Onions?"
"Overpowering. All you can taste is onions. Popcorn?"
"I could eat my weight in it. You?"
"Same here." Leaning back on his elbows, he looked into the fire, and she could tell that he was getting ready to say something important. "If I came up with the money for a few planes and the other things, would you consider me as your partner?"
"Ever flown before?" It didn't matter if he had, but the question gave her time to think. Even if he weren't a Montgomery and endowed with all that that name meant, she was good at judging people and this man was salt of the earth, rock solid. Sometimes things around an airport could get hectic, maybe even frightening when there was a crash, but she doubted if this man would panic if caught in a volcano. The problem was that she knew she was ripe for involvement with a man. It had been two years since Charley's death and over a year since she'd returned to Chandler, and she was lonely. She was tired of eating alone, sleeping alone, tired of sitting alone in the evenings with no one to talk to. And this man was very, very attractive, both in looks and in disposition.
"I have been taking lessons for two years," he said softly, looking at her with eyes that were almost pleading.
"All right," she said just as softly, and when she did, she could feel little chills on her body. She liked this man, liked him very much. She liked the way he took responsibility, liked what he talked about, liked the way he moved, the way he ate, what he ate. She liked the way he kissed her, the way he made her feel when he kissed her. In all her life she didn't remember ever just plain old-fashioned liking a man as much as she did him. She'd been attracted to men before—she'd be a liar if she didn't admit that—but there was a difference between being sexually attracted to a man and wanting to cuddle up with him and eat popcorn and tell each other secrets.
Years ago there had been a gorgeous pilot whom Charley had hired to work with them. He was so divinely handsome that she could hardly speak to him; the first time she saw him she dropped a wrench straight through the engine and almost hit Charley on the head. For days she had been tongue-tied when she was near him. But after a few weeks she'd begun to grow used to his looks and soon found out that he liked his own looks even better than she did. After spending six months near him she couldn't remember that she'd ever thought he was handsome. She'd learned in her long, happy marriage with Charley that what was important between a man and a woman was friendship.
"All right," she said, holding out her hand to shake his. "But on one condition."
He took her hand and held it firmly. "Anything. Anything at all."
"You have to tell me what your deepest darkest secret is. And I want the truth, no telling me about contracts that are a matter of public record."
William groaned. "You are a fierce bargainer, Jackie O'Neill."
She wouldn't release his hand. "Tell me or we don't work together."
"All right," he said, with a slow grin. "You make me an olive sandwich sometime and I'll tell you the truth about Mexico."
"Oh?" she said, raising an eyebrow.
There are times in a person's life that are magic, and that night was one of them. Later, Jackie thought the night was perfect, perfect in every way, from the storybook rescue, to a romantic cut on her forehead, to a handsome man taking care of her. And take care of her he did. He made sure she was fed and warm and comfortable. More than that, he made her feel good. He flattered her by knowing every aerobatic stunt she'd performed, every record she'd set, every accident she'd had. It was almost as though he'd been in love with her for years.
They talked as though they were old friends—friends, not lovers. Jackie often got tired of men whose only interest was in trying to get a woman into bed, who directed their every word, every gesture toward that end. They bragged about themselves, told how much money they had, how much land they owned, how they were better than other men. But William was as comfortable as a woman friend.
Somewhere during the evening, he had her stretch out on his pallet of blankets and put her head on his firm thigh. Leaning back against a tree, he stroked her hair and encouraged her to talk about herself. Within seconds she found herself telling him about Charley, about her years with him, of the frustrations and hardships, of the triumphs and the failures.
In return he told her about his life of perfection—or at least that was how he described what to Jackie seemed like an ideal situation. He had never had anyone be cruel to him, never had anyone take an instant dislike to him, never had to struggle for anything.
"My life makes me wonder about myself. If I were tested, would I hold up?" he asked, frowning into the fire. "Would I be able to do something without my father's money and the support of the Montgomery name?"
"Sure you would," Jackie answered. "You'd be surprised at what you can do when you have to."
"Like land a plane that's just had the propeller knocked off by an eagle?"
"Is that what that was?"
"You brought that plane down as easily as someone stepping off a chair. Were you frightened?"
"I had too much to do to be frightened. Hey!" She looked up at him in the soft light. "Why haven't you married? Why hasn't some woman snatched you up already?"
"I haven't met a woman I wanted. I like a woman to have a head on her shoulders."
"A beautiful head, no doubt," Jackie said sarcastically.
"That's of less importance than what's inside the head."
"You know, I like you. I really do."
"And I have always liked you."
She was silent for a moment. "I wish I could remember you."
"Time enough. Are you cold? Hungry? Thirsty?"
"No, nothing. I'm perfect."
"That you are."
Jackie was embarrassed by his compliment but pleased by it, too. "When do you want to start… ah, our partnership?" When do you want to start spending enormous amounts of time together? was what she wanted to ask him.
"Tomorrow I have to go to Denver for a few days, and I'll get money from the bank there. I'll return on Saturday. How about if I come to your place in the afternoon? Can you give me a list of what you need so I can pick it up in Denver?"
She laughed at that. "How about some new planes for a start?"
"What type would you like?"
He was as serious as she was being lighthearted, and Jackie was suddenly serious too. "How about a couple of Wacos for a start?" And, she thought, maybe later something heavy that can carry a dozen rich passengers in style.
"All right, I'll see what I can do."
"Just like that?" she said. "I snap my fingers and two new planes show up?"
"They're not free. I come with them. You have to take me with the planes."
That didn't seem like much of a punishment. "I guess beggars can't be choosers." Stretching, she yawned, snuggling her head on his leg.
"I think it would be all right if you went to sleep now," he said, tucking the blanket around her.
"What about you?" she asked dreamily. "You need to sleep too."
"No, I'll stay awake and watch the fire."
"And protect me," she murmured as she closed her eyes. No, she didn't think there was going to be any problem with this man's reliability. Smiling, she dozed off, feeling as safe as though she were home in her own bed, not in the open with coyotes howling in the distance.
"Good morning."
Wearily, Jackie sat up on the hard ground, and for a moment she didn't know where she was. Blinking against the bright light of day, she squinted at the woman sitting on the rock across from her.
"Would you like some coffee?"
Rubbing her eyes, covering a yawn, Jackie took the tin mug that was held out to her. "Who are you?"
"William's sister."
"Oh," she said, still too groggy to ask any questions, but she looked around. William's car was gone, and in its place was a pickup truck.
The woman—pretty, dark haired, about thirty—smiled. "You must be confused. Here's what happened. Last night my mother had one of her spells, as the family calls them. She often gets the idea that one of her children is hurt, is going to be hurt, or is in some danger. Since most of these hunches of hers are correct, my father listened when she said that her son William was lost. That was at about three this morning. I happened to be up, so I said I'd go. It wasn't difficult to find William; he'd left a map showing where he'd be." She raised her eyebrows in sisterly mockery. "William is a very responsible person." She said this last in a sarcastic voice, accompanied by some eye-rolling, as though she also thought William was a bit of a stick-in-the-mud.
Jackie opened her mouth to defend him, but she closed it. "So you found us."
"Yes. I guess my mother sensed the danger you'd been in." She nodded toward Jackie's airplane, still smashed against the boulder.
"Where is he?"
"William? Oh, he had to leave. He said he had to get to Denver as soon as possible, that he had to buy something very important. He wouldn't tell Dad or me what it was." She looked down at her coffee cup. "Do you have any idea what he's after?"
Jackie pulled her knees into her chest and didn't answer. William was very responsible, she thought, feeling a little bit of a thrill run through her. A man who knew what responsibility was would be nice to be around. Charley had been a lot of fun; people loved Charley—but they didn't have to live with him. Charley never remembered where he put anything; Jackie used to say that she'd spent half of her life looking for whatever Charley had lost that hour. When Charley agreed to go to two different houses for dinner on the same evening, it was Jackie who had to play the villain and get him out of one engagement. There was never a question of how much money Charley brought home; he never got that far with whatever money he received. One time they had spent a grueling week with an air show, flying through a burning barn for the edification and delight of a few hundred farmers and their families. The owner of the show made the mistake of giving Charley their pay while he was in a bar. Charley was brought home the next day, too drunk to stand up, and he hadn't a penny left; he'd bought everyone round after round of drinks. No, responsibility in a man was not something Jackie was used to.
"Whenever you're ready, Dad and I will take you back to Chandler, and we'll send someone for the plane."
"Thanks, that would be great." Drinking the last of her coffee, she stood and stretched. Looking about her, she couldn't help smiling. Last night William had said he would take care of everything and he'd already started. He was not only a man of responsibility but a man of his word as well.
Many years ago Eternity was a thriving little town, close to the big city of Denver, on the way to San Francisco. The discovery of silver was the reason for the town's existence, and for years the inhabitants thrived. They built rather quickly, but thanks to a Rumanian carpenter, who had grown wealthy, the buildings were sturdy and well constructed. They weren't the usual flimsy fire traps that were the mainstay of so many towns that sprang up and died within a decade.
After the silver was played out, most of the residents left the town to die a slow death, but in the 1880s there was a short-lived revival. A rich young woman from an extremely wealthy eastern family named Montgomery moved to town and opened a dress shop that was patronized by other wealthy people from hundreds of miles away. But the young woman fell in love, began to produce babies, and lost interest in the dress shop. And when her interest slackened, so did the quality of the shop. Gradually the town of Eternity renewed its downhill slide, and more people left. The ones who stayed produced children, who left as soon as they were able. Each person who left sold his home and land to the relatives of the young woman who'd once tried to revive the town, until at last every house, every piece of land, was owned by the Montgomery family.
By the beginning of the twentieth century there was no one living in the town, and the buildings, which had weathered the years well, thanks to the expert carpenter and his harassed crew, were vacant.
Nearly two years ago, only days after Charley's death, Jackie had received a letter from the scion of the Montgomery family telling her that his family, now living in the nearby town of Chandler, Colorado, needed a freight service from Chandler to Denver to Los Angeles, and if she was interested in the job, he would build to suit. She accepted his offer right away, but it was six months before she could meet all of her commitments and free herself to move to Chandler. When Charley died, she'd been too grief-stricken to consider her future, but after he was gone, she found that a lot of her ambition had gone with him. Maybe Charley's praise when she accomplished some great aerobatic feat had pushed her to higher and more difficult deeds. Whatever it was, she no longer wanted to spend her life traveling around the world flying upside down in an airplane before audiences that were holding their breath in fear.
She sent Mr. Montgomery a detailed list of what she'd need: a landing field, a hangar big enough for four planes—she had great hopes for the future—and a comfortable house that she could eventually buy, since it was her dream to own her own home, a place that no one could take from her.
After her decision, she had to figure out what to do with Pete, Charley's mechanic. She had known Pete since she was a girl; she'd met him the day she met Charley, and he had always been there. But that didn't mean she knew anything about him. Pete didn't talk, rarely said a word. At first she'd found his constant silent presence almost eerie, for he was wherever Charley was and he was absolutely loyal to him.
"Doesn't he ever say anything?" Jackie had demanded of Charley when they were alone in bed. Sometimes she thought she should look under the bed to make sure Pete wasn't there.
Charley'd just laughed at her. "Don't ever underestimate Pete. He may not talk, but he sees and hears everything. And he's a brilliant mechanic."
"He gives me the willies," she'd said, but Charley laughed at her again, pulled her on top of him, and began kissing her. They'd rarely mentioned Pete after that; he was just something that was there, rather like the planes themselves.
Over the years she began to understand how valuable Pete was, and when the thin little man saw that Jackie was also loyal to Charley, that she didn't run around with other men, didn't give Charley too hard a time, he began to take care of her, too. Pete made sure that her planes were ready and that nothing that a mechanic could foresee was wrong with them.
Gradually, over the years, Jackie grew used to him and talked to him at times, and somehow his silent presence was comforting. He never offered any advice, never even made a comment when she talked to him. He just listened to her and let her sort out her own problems.
After Charley's death it was natural that Pete should stay on the circuit with her, but when she decided to move to Chandler, she had no idea what he would do. She told him what she had planned and fully expected him to say that he'd start working for one of Charley's thousands of male friends. But Pete listened to her, his weather-beaten old face showing nothing; then he said, "When do we leave?" Those few words told Jackie that he had transferred his loyalty to her, and she knew it was high tribute. Charley had said that Pete was a snob; he'd only work for the best. No amount of money could make him work for someone he thought was less than the best. So when Pete said he was going with her, she knew he was complimenting her on her talents and on the decision she had made. On impulse she kissed his leathery old cheek and then had the great pleasure of seeing him blush.
So she had flown to Chandler, and Pete had driven her car, pulling a trailer full of all the necessities of their life—that is, mechanics' tools and engine parts. Neither she nor Pete owned any furniture or much clothing to speak of.
She had no idea what she'd find in the renovated ghost town of Eternity. She was prepared for run-down houses with the wind whipping through the boards—she and Charley, when they were down on their luck, had certainly lived in such places—but what she'd found was beautiful. Mr. Montgomery had renovated the town's hotel for her and it was, quite simply, lovely. The lobby had been freshly covered with cream-colored wallpaper splashed with pink roses. All of the oak woodwork had recently been varnished. Brand-new telephone wires had been strung from Chandler into Eternity so she'd have a telephone. A beautiful bathroom of pink marble had been installed on the first floor. Everything was clean and welcoming.
The town livery stables had been turned into an enormous hangar with overhead doors so they could work on the planes in bad weather. The parsonage—Charley would have laughed at that—had been made over for Pete. The blacksmith's shop had been converted into a machine shop with tools so new and fine they almost brought tears to Pete's rheumy eyes.
Outside, Mr. Montgomery had built Jackie the best runway she'd ever seen; no expense had been spared. And in the fields behind the town were three wrecked planes that could be cannibalized for repair parts.
Never in her life had Jackie felt so welcome as she did in this town. She was close enough to Chandler so as not to feel isolated but far enough away to have privacy. She knew that she had come home.
She also knew there had to be a catch, so when she went to Mr. Montgomery to negotiate a salary, she was prepared for a fight. She could almost hear Charley telling her, "Stick to your guns, kid. Don't let him cheat you. Set the highest price you can think of and bargain from there." By the time she saw Mr. Montgomery, whom she'd known all her life, her hands were sweating. She wanted the pretty little ghost town so badly that she thought she'd pay him to let her live there.
Thirty minutes later she walked out in a daze. Mr. Montgomery had offered her three times what she had been planning to ask him for, and he'd given her a bonus for signing a two-year contract. She'd be able to buy furniture. She'd be able to buy things that would belong to her!
Now, a year later, she was serving tea in the living room of her pretty house.
"What in the world is wrong with you?" Terri Pelman asked her friend as Jackie entered her living room, a tray of tea things in her hands. Over the last year she'd spent every cent she'd earned on making her house beautiful: fat upholstered chairs, a deep couch covered in mossy green and rose, a needlepoint rug, a mahogany desk, antiques everywhere.
"Nothing is wrong with me," Jackie said, setting the tray containing a lovely teapot and cups down on the table in front of the sofa. No one who'd ever known Jackie would have guessed how she hungered for pretty things. With Charley she'd always lived from hand to mouth; Charley believed that possessions weighed a person down. "Absolutely nothing."
"You can't lie to me, Jacqueline O'Neill. I'm not the press whom you can bamboozle. I've known you all your life, and something is definitely going on."
Smiling, Jackie sat down on a chair slipcovered in a cotton print of flowers and paisley ferns. As she sipped her tea, she looked at her friend. They were the same age, both thirty-eight, but no one would have guessed it from looking at them. After they'd graduated from high school, Jackie had taken off to spend her life in every corner of the world, but Terri had married her boyfriend the day after graduation. She had produced three children within as many years, kids who were now big, hulking boys of nineteen, eighteen, and seventeen. With each child Terri had gained weight and had never lost it, and somewhere along the way she had decided she was old. When Jackie chided her for not taking care of herself, Terri would say, "The kids and Ralph only care what I put on the table, not what I'm wearing when I do it. I could look like Harlow and they wouldn't notice."
"Come on, tell me," Terri urged; then, her eyes widening, she gasped. "You've met a man! That's it, isn't it? We women are such fools. Even marriage can't cure us of falling in love, and if marriage can't cure a person, nothing can. So what's he like? Where did you meet him?"
Jackie wanted to tell Terri about William, but she didn't want to look like a fool. What if William hadn't been as affected by their night together as she had? What if he thought it was an ordinary encounter? Maybe he'd forgotten about her by now, forgotten about their partnership. Charley would have. Charley often got drunk and met people and made them feel he was their best friend. He made plans to do things together, got them enthusiastic, but twenty-four hours later, when the people sought him out, ready to act on the plans, he could hardly remember them. Of course it was left to Jackie to smooth ruffled feathers and get Charley off the hook once again.
"Actually, it isn't a man," Jackie lied as smoothly as she could. "Well, it is, but not in the way you mean. You remember when my plane went down a couple of nights ago?"
Terri shook her head in disbelief. After being in an airplane crash, anyone else would have been in a hospital getting medical care and flowers, but Jackie was absolutely nonchalant about the mishap. She spoke of her plane crashing the way one might speak of going to the beauty parlor. "Yes, I remember," Terri said, marveling at her friend's bravery.
"There was a man there and—"
"What? You met a man in the middle of nowhere? What's his name? Where does he come from? Did he try anything?"
Jackie laughed. When they were in high school, she and Terri had barely known each other. Terri had had a normal family while Jackie's had been strange and eccentric. It was after Jackie left Chandler that they got to know each other. When they were both twenty years old, Terri had sent Jackie a letter of congratulations on winning her first race, saying that she understood Jackie's life because her own life was quite exciting as well. On the day Jackie had won the race, Terri's son had caught a wasp in his mouth, where it managed to sting his tongue before he swallowed it, her husband had dropped a crate on his foot and would be out of work for a month, and she had found out she was pregnant with her third child. "Now all I need is a plague of locusts and my life will be complete," she'd written. "Please tell me about your boring life; I need something to counteract the thrill and exhilaration of mine."
The letter had appealed to Jackie. She had received a lot of letters from people who had known her in the past, but many of those letters made her feel guilty, since the writers usually said that they doubted if she remembered them now that she was so famous. It was as though they thought that winning a race that was reported in the newspapers had instantly wiped out her memory. Or that every celebrity she met replaced an "insignificant" person from her past.
Happily, Jackie had written Terri all about the race, about the people she had met, about what it was like to soar high above the crowd at air shows. At first, she wrote of the applause, but as the years passed, she began to write of the defeats and the heartaches. She wrote of people whom she'd seen die in fiery crashes, of men and women who passed in and out of her life. She wrote of Charley and how sometimes his irresponsibility nearly drove her mad. She told Terri that she envied her her quiet, peaceful life, envied her her husband, who was always there for her, who was interested in their home and the kids.
Terri tried never to let on to Jackie how much their correspondence meant to her. The letters they exchanged were, at times, the best part of Terri's life. She used all her creativity to make her letters to Jackie interesting and fun and, above all, light. It was wonderful to have a glamorous and exciting woman like Jackie write to her with such intimacy and such trust. Jackie began to see Terri as wise beyond her years, someone who had had a chance to go off and see the world, but who had wisely decided to stay at home and settle down and raise children.
Terri never wrote anything to disabuse her friend of this notion. Oh, she was sarcastic at times, always making wisecracks about Ralph and the boys, but somehow Terri presented a picture of a life that was so good, so splendid, that she had to make jokes about it. If she told the truth she'd be able to do nothing but brag.
The real truth was that Terri had married the first man who asked her because she was terrified of ending up an old maid. Although he wanted to wait to have children, she was so afraid Ralph would leave her that she got pregnant on their wedding night—or maybe a week or so before, she was never sure. She never wrote Jackie the truth about her life—that her husband spent most of his time with his men friends drinking beer and that when he was home he held a newspaper in front of his face and slept. Instead she wrote Jackie of a life that sounded as though it had come out of a book written by Betty Crocker. She told of the garden she and her husband planted so they would have fresh vegetables and herbs for the boys. The truth was that her husband had lost his fourth job in as many years and her father had planted a small garden in her back yard to help feed her family. Of course the boys were just like their father and wouldn't touch a vegetable, so Terri had spent long hours canning produce to trade to a bachelor hog farmer for the meat the men loved. Terri wrote Jackie that Ralph always spent Sundays with his family; actually, he was sleeping off Saturday night. She told Jackie how quietly rewarding it was having a family. She painted a glorious picture of tiny loving hands bringing her flowers, of little mouths eating her delicious food. Terri poured every bit of her imagination into her narrations of an ideal existence.
It was writing those letters, and planning what she was going to write, that got Terri through some of the roughest times of her life. While one big, sturdy boy was terrorizing the little girl next door and the second one was throwing his food against the kitchen wall, while Terri was in the bathroom throwing up because she was carrying the third one, she thought of how she'd present her life in letters to Jackie.
When the boys grew older and as big as their father, she couldn't control them, and the letters she exchanged with Jackie became even more important in her life. Her husband's attitude toward child rearing was that the meaner the boys were, the more masculine they were. The more often they got into trouble in school, the prouder he was of them. Terri tried to talk to him, to tell him that he was encouraging their delinquent behavior, but his reasoning was that this was the way he had been raised and he'd turned out all right. Terri knew better than to point out that he'd never been able to keep a job for longer than eight months because he got into fights with his bosses. His sons were turning out just like him, arguing with teachers and principals and store owners and anyone who happened to get in their way.
Terri's real life and the life she wrote Jackie about bore little relation to each other. Now that her big, awkward sons were nearly grown and were rarely at home, the brightest point in her life was these visits to the old ghost town to spend time with Jackie. She had no idea if Jackie knew the truth about her life. It wouldn't have been too difficult for her to find out, as everyone in Chandler knew everyone else's business, but somehow Terri doubted Jackie did. To the folks of Chandler, Jackie was a celebrity, and she didn't think people would be rushing to tell her about Nobody Terri Pelman's boring life.
So, as often as possible, Terri visited Jackie, and the two of them kept up the façade of Terri's splendid golden life in which she had everything: the steady love of a good man, three beautiful children who had turned into fine, upstanding young men, and a lovely, gracious home.
"It wasn't like that," Jackie said, laughing. "It wasn't a romantic encounter. I mean, he did kiss me but—"
"You crash a plane, a gorgeous man comes out of the night, rescues you"—she raised her eyebrows—"and kisses you, and you say, 'It wasn't like that.' So, Jackie, what was it like?"
"Terri, you are incorrigible. I don't think you'll be happy until you get me married and pregnant."
"And why shouldn't you be as miserable as the rest of us?"
"Sometimes I almost think you mean what you say. If I didn't know the truth about how much you love that family of yours I'd—"
"Tell me!"
"Really, there isn't much to tell." Actually, Jackie thought, that was the truth. What had passed between her and William could have been one-sided. She didn't want to tell Terri what she was feeling and then end up looking as though she'd made a fool of herself over some man. And most definitely she did not want to tell Terri that this man was one of Jace and Nellie Montgomery's sons. For some odd reason, Terri seemed to believe that every man in Chandler was worthless. Maybe she thought she'd gotten the only good one, or maybe it was just that familiarity breeds contempt. She'd known all the men of Chandler for so long that she considered them incapable of inspiring passion or even love. Terri had her own idea of a perfect man: the more exotic the better. She once asked Jackie how she could have been to France and not fallen in love with a Frenchman. "Or an Egyptian," Jackie had said, laughing. "They're the best-looking men on earth."
"This is really a business arrangement. I mentioned my wanting to start a freight business, and he said he was looking for something to do, so it just happened. He's gone to Denver to buy a couple of planes."
"And that's it?"
"That's all there is to it."
Terri didn't say anything, but put her teacup down, leaned back in her chair, and stared at her friend. "I'm not leaving here until you tell me everything. I can call Ralph and have him send my clothes here. If the boys get lonely for their mother I hope you won't mind if they come to stay with us. They'll be no bother at all."
At that threat Jackie almost shuddered but caught herself in time. Terri was a perfect example of the saying that love is blind, for those huge, semiliterate, lecherous sons of hers were no pleasure to anyone except her. The last time one of them had driven to Eternity to pick Terri up, he had cornered Jackie in the kitchen and started telling her how a woman like her must be "dyin' for a man" and he'd be "willin' to scratch her itch." Jackie had brought her foot down hard on his instep while "accidentally" dropping a skillet on his left hand. Since then Jackie had volunteered to drive Terri home whenever her friend was unable to borrow a car.
"I… I liked him," Jackie said, wanting to talk to someone about William but at the same time not wanting to talk. Her reaction to William didn't make any sense, since Jackie had been married for most of her life, but the truth was, she had never been "in love." She had married Charley so she could get out of Chandler. Charley had known that and hadn't cared that he was being used. He was quite willing to trade a few marriage vows for the company of a long-legged colt of a girl with an insatiable curiosity and a willingness to work such as Charley had never seen before. Within twenty hours of meeting her, Charley had a feeling that she would take care of him. He hadn't misjudged her. In all their years together, she had made sure the bills were paid, that they had a roof over their heads, and she had smoothed out all his problems, making Charley's once tumultuous life as peaceful as it could be. He had repaid her by showing her the world.
"I liked him," Jackie repeated. "That's all there was to it. He was there when I crashed, he took care of me, and we talked. Very simple." Talked as though we'd known each other forever, she thought. Talked as though we would never stop; talked as though we were friends, old friends, new friends, best friends.
"Who is he?"
"Ah, uh, William something, I don't remember."
"He lives in Chandler?"
"I'm not really sure." She talked quickly so Terri wouldn't ask her why she'd agreed to be partners with a man whose last name she didn't know. "Terri, really, you're making too much of this. It was nothing. I've met a thousand men in my life, given flying lessons to hundreds of them, and this one is no different."
"You can lie to yourself, but you can't lie to me. You are blushing like a schoolgirl. So when do I get to meet him?"
"I don't know. I think his sister said he might be back on Saturday." The day was emblazoned in her mind. Saturday, late afternoon, she'd been told. At three p.m. Jackie planned to be wearing a pretty little yellow and white pinafore, something with ruffles around the wide straps and a white blouse underneath. She might just dab some perfume in a few strategic places and have bread baking in the oven. He had seen her in a leather flying suit, hair plastered to her head by a cotton-lined leather helmet, so next time she thought it might be nice to show him another side of her—say, the side that could take care of a house, maybe even be somebody's wife.
Jackie's head came up at the sound of Terri's laughter. "Oh, honey, you have it bad, very bad. You remind me of myself when I was eighteen years old." Terri's tone said clearly that the way Jackie was acting was understandable in an eighteen-year-old but rather silly at thirty-eight.
At the sound of a horn, Jackie jumped, her head swiveling toward the window, again causing Terri to laugh. "That's my eldest," Terri said.
"You must invite him in for milk and cookies," Jackie said, but she hoped she wouldn't have to endure the smutty leers of the "boy."
"No, I must return," Terri said, bravely trying to keep the misery out of her voice. Her three sons and husband always felt betrayed when she dared take an afternoon off and not stay in the house at their beck and call, so they punished her by doing what they could to destroy the house while she was away. She knew that now she would return to food spilled on the floor, screen doors left open to admit thousands of flies, and angry men complaining that they hadn't been fed in hours. "I'll call you on Sunday, and I want to hear everything," Terri said as she left Jackie's house, running because her son was lying on the horn so it made a constant stream of deafening noise.
Jackie tried to be sensible during the following days, but it wasn't any use. She tried to talk to herself, telling herself that she was an adult woman, not a frivolous, starry-eyed girl, but she didn't listen to her own advice. She cursed herself for having been born a woman. What in the world was wrong with women anyway? They met a man who was nice to them, and within minutes they began planning the wedding. She told herself that it had been an ordinary encounter, that what had made it seem extraordinary was that she had just been hit hard on the head. Otherwise she would have had her wits about her and she wouldn't have given another thought to the incident.
She made herself remember all the many men she'd met over the years. There was the time she'd been on a boat with Charley and a very nice man who… well, the truth was, he was more than nice. He was absolutely gorgeous, tall, with dark blond hair, crystal-clear blue eyes, and he had spent eighteen years or so in various universities studying a number of subjects, so he'd been fascinating to talk to. He was brilliant, educated, terribly handsome, everything a woman could want, but although they had spent the whole four days of the trip together while Charley was prostrate with seasickness, Jackie had not fallen in love with the man. Of course, she argued with herself, she had been married, and maybe that had something to do with it. Maybe William was the first interesting, handsome man she'd had any contact with since she'd become a single woman.
She had to smile when she thought that. After Charley's death she had been amazed at the number of men who came to "pay their respects." At the time she had been grieving, wondering what she was going to do with herself without Charley to take care of, and suddenly there were many men offering her anything she wanted. It was flattering and annoying at the same time.
She didn't so much as go out with a man for six months after Charley died, but the combination of loneliness and the constant invitations she received broke her. After months, she began to go out to dinner and movies, to auto races, to picnics. You name it and she went to it. And at each one it was the same thing: "How many brothers and sisters do you have?"
"Where did you grow up?"
"Where did you go to school?"
"How many races have you won?"
"Who are the celebrities you've met?"
"What was it like having dinner at the White House?"
After six months of these dates, she began to consider having cards printed with vital information on them, so she could avoid having the same boring conversation over and over. Didn't anyone ever have anything interesting to say? Like "What's the biggest lie you ever told?" she couldn't help thinking. That was what William had asked her. And he had made her a sandwich she liked, not a conventional sandwich of grilled cheese or beef with mustard, but a real sandwich.
A year after Charley died she had moved to Chandler, for she was tired of the circuit, tired of people who had seen so much and done so much that they were dying of ennui by the time they were thirty. Jackie was afraid that if she stayed with them she would become one of them. She wanted to be with people who had wonder in their voices when they talked of airplanes. "I don't know how those things stay up," they'd say. Words that once bored her to tears, words that made her angry with their very stupidity, now pleased her with their simplicity. She liked Chandler, liked the people in it, people who had done little in their lives—little except keep the world going, that is.
And now, here in this sleepy little town, she had met a man who had done what no other man since Charley had been able to do: he had interested her.
On Thursday she cleaned house. On Friday she went shopping and spent twice her three-month clothing budget, and when she got home she decided she hated everything she'd bought. She went through all the clothes in her closet, pulling out things she'd kept for years. She couldn't decide whether to try to look like a sweet-tempered housewife or a sexy woman of the world. Or maybe she should aim for the movie-star-at-home-look of tailored trousers and a silk shirt.
By Saturday morning she was sure that her whole life depended on this afternoon, and she knew that whatever she chose would be wrong. When she awoke that morning she was angry, angry at herself for acting like a love-starved girl, for making something out of nothing. Maybe this man wouldn't show up. Even if he did show up, it could be very embarrassing to be dolled up as though she were going to the school dance. What if he came wearing work clothes, ready to get started overhauling a plane engine or whatever he wanted to do? What if he didn't show up at all?
She went to the stable that had been converted into a hangar, climbed a ladder and began trying to take the ruined propeller off her wrecked plane. The first thing she did was drop the wrench, tear one fingernail half off, then cut the bright red polish off another nail. Holding her hands up to the light, she grimaced. So much for having beautiful hands, she thought, but then she shrugged. Maybe it was better that she didn't try to impress him.
Standing on a ladder, wearing greasy coveralls that once had been a rather pleasant gray but were now stained into a non-color, Jackie was pulling on the bent propeller with a wrench. Wiping her hair out of her eyes, she left a smear of grease on her cheek as she looked around the shaft and saw a pair of feet. Expensively shod feet. After wiping her face on the sleeve of her coveralls and smearing more grease on herself, she looked down to see a good-looking young man staring up at her. He was a tall man, with dark hair and eyes, and he was staring at her in a very serious way, as though he expected something from her.
"You need some help?" she asked. Most people who came to Eternity, if they weren't friends, were tourists wanting to see the ghost town, or they were lost.
"Remember me?" he asked in a very nice voice.
She stopped trying to loosen a nut and looked down at him. Now that he mentioned it, there was something familiar about him. But she couldn't place him. No doubt he lived in Chandler and she had gone to school with him.
"Sorry," she said, "can't seem to place you."
Without so much as a smile, he said, "Do you remember this?" Holding out his hand, he had something in his palm, but she couldn't tell what it was.
Curious, she climbed down the ladder to stand in front of him. She was considered a tall woman, but this man topped her by several inches, and now that she was closer to him, he seemed quite familiar. Taking the trinket from his hand, she saw that it was a school pin. CHS was embossed in gold on an enameled background of the school colors, blue and gold. At first the pin meant nothing to her, but then, looking into the tall man's dark, serious eyes, she began to laugh. "You're little Billy Montgomery, aren't you? I wouldn't have recognized you. You've grown up." Stepping back, she looked at him. "Why, you've become quite handsome. Do you have hundreds of girlfriends? How are your parents? What are you doing now? Oh, I have a thousand questions to ask you. Why haven't you come to see me before now?"
There was only the smallest smile on his face that betrayed that he was pleased by her enthusiastic greeting. "I have no girlfriends. You were always the only girl I ever loved."
She laughed again. "You haven't changed much. You're still too serious, still an old man." Easily she slipped her arm into his. "Why don't you come in and have a cup of tea and tell me all about yourself? I remember how awful I used to be to you." As they started walking, she looked up at him. "It's hard to believe that I used to change your diapers."
Still smiling, arm in arm, they walked toward her house. Billy had never talked much when he was a child, and now his silence gave Jackie time to remember. He and his brothers and sisters were her first baby-sitting job. He had given her her first experience in child care and her first experience with dirty diapers. After that first day, she had gone home to tell her mother that she would never, never have any children, that children should be kept in a barn with lots of straw until they were housebroken.
She'd always liked Billy. He was so quiet and always ready to listen or to do whatever Jackie wanted to do. If she suggested reading a book aloud to the other kids, they'd invariably want to play monkeys-in-the-grape-arbor. If Jackie wanted to play rolling-down-the-hill, then the kids would want to sit quietly in the house and play with their dolls or trains.
But Billy was different. He always wanted to do what Jackie wanted to do when she wanted to do it. At first she thought he was just being agreeable, but too many times over the years Billy's mother had asked Jackie what she was going to do with the children that day. When Jackie told her, his mother would laugh and say, "That's just what Billy was saying he wanted to do."
Jackie was pleased with the quiet little boy, but she wasn't so pleased when she wasn't baby-sitting and he'd show up wherever she was. If he was downtown with his family and he saw Jackie, he'd leave his family and follow her. Never mind that sometimes he had to cross a wide street in front of rearing horses and motorists frantically slamming on their brakes. He just wanted to be with Jackie wherever she was. Jackie's mother started to tease her daughter, saying that Billy had fallen in love with her. Jackie thought it was kind of cute until Billy began showing up on her doorstep in the evenings. Then he became a pest. He became the pesky little brother she never had—and had never wanted.
Her mother made an agreement with Billy's mother that Jackie would look after Billy three afternoons a week. When Jackie heard, she was furious, but her mother wouldn't listen, so Jackie decided to get rid of the kid. She planned to do that by scaring him to death. At fifteen she was a complete tomboy, and Billy, at five, was big for his age and quite sturdy. Jackie would climb a tree, leaving Billy alone at the bottom for hours. She hoped he'd complain to his mother, but he never did. His patience was endless, and he seemed to have a sixth sense about what he could and could not do. When he was five, he wouldn't swing on the rope tied to the tree branch that overhung the river, nor would he when he was six, but when he was seven, he grabbed the rope and swung. Jackie could see that he was terrified, but he set his little mouth and did it, then dog-paddled over to her in the water. She was tempted to not say one word of congratulations, but then she grinned at him and winked. She was rewarded with one of Billy's rare smiles.
They were better friends after that. Jackie taught him to swim and allowed him to help her around her house. Billy, who spoke only when he had something to say, said that Jackie's house was more fun than his. In his house the servants got to do everything, but at hers the people got to do the good stuff themselves.
"That's one way of looking at it," she'd said.
Billy's mother was the one who suggested that he ask Jackie to go to the movies with him. Jackie, who had no money for such frivolities, was thrilled—until she saw the most handsome boy in her class outside the theater. She stopped to say hello to him, but Billy put his little body between them and told the six-foot-tall teenager that Jackie was his date and he should get lost—if he knew what was good for him. It was six months before the ribbing at school stopped. The other kids were merciless in teasing her about her three-foot-tall bodyguard who was going to bruise their kneecaps with his fists. "Do you pick him up to kiss him good night, Jackie?" they taunted.
By the time Billy was seven the townspeople referred to him as Jackie's Shadow. He was with her whenever possible, and no matter what she did she couldn't make him stop following her. She yelled at him, told him what she thought of him, even tried telling him she hated him, but he was still always there.
One day when she was seventeen, a boy walked her home from school. They stopped by the mailbox for a moment, and as the boy reached out to remove a leaf from Jackie's hair, out of the bushes sprang little seven-year-old Billy, as wild as a wet cat, launching himself at the unsuspecting boy. Jackie, of course, wanted to die. She pulled Billy off the boy and tried to apologize, but the boy was embarrassed because Billy had knocked him flat into the dirt road. The next day at school everyone gleefully renewed taunting Jackie about her midget lover whom she kept hidden in the bushes.
Billy's mother, a sweet woman, heard of the fracas and came to apologize to Jackie, justifying her youngest son's actions by saying, "He loves you so much, Jackie." That was not what she wanted to hear at seventeen. She wanted to hear that the captain of the football team loved her, not some kid half her size.
She wouldn't speak to Billy for three weeks after that episode, but she relented when she woke up one morning and found him asleep on the porch swing. He'd climbed out of his bedroom window sometime during the night and waited for the milk truck to arrive. After hiding himself among the milk cans, he got out when the driver stopped at Jackie's house, where he curled up into a ball on the hard slats of the swing and fell asleep. When Jackie saw him, she said that he was a curse of the magnitude of the plagues of Egypt, but her mother thought Billy was cute.
Billy had been tagging along behind her the day she met Charley and fell in love with the airplanes.
Billy had said, "Do you love airplanes more than you love me?"
"I love mosquito bites better than I love you," she'd answered.
Billy, as usual, said nothing, which always made her feel worse than if he'd yelled or screamed or cried like other kids. But Billy was an odd little boy, more like an old man in a kid's body than an actual child.
When she ran away from home with Charley, she was too cowardly to face her mother, so she left her a note. But she was halfway to the airfield when, impulsively, she ran back. She caught a ride with a man she knew, and he dropped her off at Billy's house, where a birthday party was going on. Most of Billy's eleven brothers and sisters, along with most of the children of Chandler, were terrorizing each other and making enough noise to cause an earthquake, but there was no sign of Billy. His mother, calm in the midst of chaos, saw Jackie and pointed to the side of the porch.
She found Billy there, sitting alone, reading a book about airplanes, and as Jackie looked at him she thought that maybe she did love him just a little bit. When solemn little Billy, who rarely smiled, saw her coming toward him, his face lit up with joy. "You never come to see me," he said, and the way he said it made her feel guilty. Maybe she'd been too hard on him. After all, they'd had some laughs together.
He looked at her suitcase. "You're going away with them, aren't you?" There were tears in his voice.
"Yes, I am. And you're the only one I'm telling. I left my mother a note."
Billy nodded in an adult way. "She wouldn't want you to go."
"She might make me stay."
"Yes, she might."
She was used to his old man ways, but she could see his sadness. Reaching out her hand, she ruffled his dark hair. "I'll see you around, kid," she said and started to turn away, but Billy flung his arms around her waist and held her tight.
"I love you, Jackie. I will love you forever and ever."
Dropping down on her knees, she hugged him back. Then, holding him away from her, she smoothed back his hair. "Well, maybe I love you a little bit, too."
"Will you marry me?"
Jackie laughed. "I'm going to marry some fat old man and go see the world."
"You can't," he whispered. "I saw you first."
Standing up, Jackie looked down at him, at the tear streaks down his cherub cheeks. "I've got to go now. I'll see you again someday, kid. I'm sure of it." Even Jackie didn't believe those words; she planned to leave this one-horse town and never return. She was going to see the world! On impulse, the way she did most things, she pulled her blue and gold school pin from her blouse and handed it to him. What did she need with a pin from a nowhere school in a nowhere town?
Billy was staring so hard at the pin in his palm that he didn't realize Jackie had started to walk away, walk at her normal pace, which was closer to a run. "Will you write to me?" he called, racing after her, trying to keep up but failing.
"Sure, kid," she called over her shoulder. "Sure I'll write."
But of course she never did. In fact, she hadn't thought of Billy more than half a dozen times over the following years, and then only when she was with a group that was laughing and comparing small towns. To the accompaniment of raucous laughter, she'd tell the story of little Billy Montgomery who had plagued her from the time she was twelve until she'd escaped at eighteen. A couple of times she'd wondered what had happened to him, but she knew he had the Montgomery money and connections, so he could do anything he liked.
"Probably married now and has half a dozen kids," some guy said once.
"Not possible," Jackie said. "Billy's just a kid. I used to change his diapers."
"Jackie, I think you ought to do a little arithmetic."
To her horror she had realized that "little" Billy Montgomery was about twenty-five years old. "You're making me feel old," she'd laughed. "It couldn't have been more than three years since I left Chandler." She groaned when Charley reminded her that they had been married for seventeen years.
So now, many years after she'd left Chandler, she was standing face to face with the little boy who had flung himself on her and sworn that he'd love her forever. Only he didn't look too much like the little boy she remembered. Six feet one if he was an inch, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, very handsome. "You must come in and have some hot chocolate," she said, "and some cookies." She wanted to remind herself that, compared to her, Billy was just a child. Looking at him, it wasn't easy to remember that he was a boy.
"I'd prefer coffee," he said, motioning to her to lead the way.
Once inside the house she felt awkward and had to force herself to move. "How is your family?"
"All of them are well. And your mother?"
"Died a couple of years ago," she said over her shoulder as she moved into the kitchen.
Billy was right behind her. "I'm sorry. Here, let me help you," he said, reaching above her head for a canister of fresh coffee beans.
Jackie started to turn around and found herself looking straight into Billy's sun-browned throat, then, as her eyes lifted, at his chin, a chin so square it could have been sculpted with a carpenter's hand plane. For a moment she found her breath catching in her throat. Then she stopped herself and stepped from under his encircling stance. "My goodness, but you do look like your father. How is he, by the way?"
"The same as he was when you saw him four days ago."
"Yes, of course. I…"
Billy smiled at her, at some joke that only he knew, then pulled out a chair at the table in the corner of the pretty kitchen and motioned for her to sit down. "I will make the coffee," he said.
"You can do that?" Jackie was of the school that believed that men could do nothing except what they were paid for or received awards for. They could fight wars, run huge businesses, but they couldn't feed themselves or choose their own clothes without a woman beside them.
Billy poured the right number of beans into the grinder, then began to turn the crank, all the while watching her with a slight smile.
"So tell me all about your life," she said, smiling up at him, trying her best to remember that she had once changed this man's diapers.
"I went to school, graduated, and now I help my father do whatever needs to be done."
"Managing the Montgomery millions, right?"
"More or less."
"No wife or children?" It seemed impossible to think that a kid she used to baby-sit could possibly be old enough to have a wife, let alone children.
"I told you that you were the only woman I would ever love. I told you that on the day you left."
At that Jackie laughed. "On the day I left, you were eight years old and your nose came to my belt buckle."
"I've grown up since then." As he said this he turned around and poured the ground beans into the coffee pot, and Jackie couldn't help noticing that he had grown up very, very well. "So how's your family?" she asked for at least the third time.
Billy turned, removed his wallet from his back pocket, took out a stack of photographs, and handed them to her. "My nieces and nephews," he said, "or at least some of them."
While the coffee was brewing he bent over her and showed her the photos, some of them of groups, some of individual children. She liked the fact that this man was sentimental enough to carry photos of children with him, that he knew their ages and something about the personality of each child. But for Jackie the experience wasn't all that pleasant. She remembered the parents of these children as children themselves. There was one little dark-haired girl who was the same age as her mother had been when Jackie had last seen her.
"I think I'm getting old," Jackie murmured. In her own heart she hadn't aged a day since she'd left Chandler. She still felt eighteen, still felt that there were lots of things she had to do before she became a grown-up and started acting like an adult. She wasn't yet sure what she wanted to do with her life. She'd had a long adolescence flying airplanes in shows and races, doing stunts and tricks to dazzle the world, but now she was nearly ready to settle down and become an adult. She thought she might be ready to marry a "real" man, a guy who had a nine-to-five job, a man who came home at night and read the newspaper. She was even thinking that maybe now she was about ready to start a family. Terri thought this was hilarious since two girls from their high school class were grandmothers already.
"You'll never be old, Jackie," Billy said softly, from just beside her ear.
His breath on her skin made her jump, and Jackie had to mentally shake herself. What was wrong with her that she could allow the nearness of a child like Billy to affect her? "What—" she began but stopped as she heard a plane. It sounded as if it was coming in to land.
Putting down her coffee cup, she went through the living room and out the front door toward the landing field, Billy just behind her. As she shaded her eyes against the sun, she could see the plane heading toward the airstrip. Immediately Jackie knew that the pilot wasn't very experienced: the plane was too low too soon.
The pilot managed to land the plane but only by the skin of his teeth, and Jackie planned to give him a piece of her mind. He could have taken the chimney off the old house on the hill, and the impact could have caused the plane to crash.
As she briskly walked across the field, Billy passed her to get to the plane first, and he held up his arms when the pilot stepped out. Jackie realized belatedly that the pilot was a woman. Only a female could be that slender, that delicately curvaceous, and only a beautiful woman could so easily accept a man's uplifted arms to help her down. She removed her goggles and leather helmet to release a torrent of midnight black hair before turning to Jackie with a look of chagrin on her lovely face. "I was so hoping to impress you," she said, "but instead I nearly killed myself, a few trees, and…" She looked at Billy. "Was that a chimney I nearly hit?"
"None other," he answered.
The words of scolding died on Jackie's lips. She remembered the time she had wanted to impress Charley with her flying skills only to fly her worst when he was around. Instead of lecturing, she smiled at the girl.
"You remember my cousin Reynata, don't you?"
At first Jackie didn't, but then she looked at the girl in horror, "Rey? You're little Rey?" When she had known this girl Reynata had been a plump five-year-old with perpetually dirty clothes and skinned knees. She was always trying to run after the older children, always falling and hurting herself. Now she was tall and beautiful and nubile. "Of course I remember you," Jackie said, trying to sound gracious, but wondering if her hair was turning gray with every one of these "adults" she met. After shaking hands with the young woman, Jackie invited her in for coffee.
"I'd love to, but I saw the truck just down the road and— Ah! Here it is now."
Jackie stood where she was as Rey, all energy and movement, ran toward the road leading into Eternity where a large truck was just now coming into view.
"I think I'd better help," Billy said, then moved forward to follow his cousin.
Puzzled, Jackie followed them slowly. Just what was going on? The plane Rey had flown was a Waco, so shiny-new that it must have left the factory yesterday. It was the type of plane that she had told her rescuer, William, that she most wanted. Was this a coincidence or was the plane from William?
By the time she reached the truck, it was being unloaded and things were being carried into the old hotel that she rented from Billy's father—a bed and linens, a chair, a couple of small tables, lamps, clothes, and a rack to hold the hangers. The whole situation was so confusing that it was several moments before Jackie could speak. "Would you mind telling me what is going on?" she asked Billy after pulling him aside. "And would you mind telling those men to stop putting furniture inside my house? I already have enough furniture."
Billy looked surprised. "The top floor is empty, isn't it? You didn't rent that floor, did you?"
"No, I didn't. Your father—"
"Oh, I bought the hotel from Dad. He charged me five dollars for it. I tried to get him down to one dollar, but he wouldn't hear of it. At first the scoundrel wanted ten, but I don't have a degree in business for the fun of it. I won't be cheated, even by my own father."
Jackie was sure the story was very amusing, but at the moment she wasn't ready to be amused. "What is going on?"
"I guess I should have asked your permission first. I mean, it is your house, or at least the bottom three floors are, but I really didn't have time to ask. I had to make arrangements as fast as possible to give us as much time as possible to get ready for the Invitational. I thought it would be much more convenient if I lived nearby instead of driving from Chandler every day, so I bought the hotel from Dad and hired people to clean the top floor. My mother found the furniture in the attic for me and—"
"Wait a minute!" she half shouted. "What do you have to do with the Invitational? What do I have to do with a race like that? Why do you keep talking about 'we'?" The instant she said the words, she knew the answer. Standing in front of her, shading her from the sun, was not little Billy Montgomery but William, her rescuing knight, the man who had pulled her from a wrecked plane, the man who had intrigued her with his talk, had made her interested in life, and had even made her think about love once again. He was the man she had been fantasizing about, dreaming about, conjuring up a future with. The man she was beginning to fancy that she was in love with was actually a very tall little boy.
Embarrassment was Jackie's first emotion. "I think there's been a mistake. You'll have to remove your furniture and go back to Chandler."
With her head down so he wouldn't see her reddened face, she started toward the hotel where the men were carrying a small table through the front door. But William caught her arm.
"Jackie—" he began.
"Didn't your family teach you to call your elders by their proper title? I'm Miss O'Neill to you."
He didn't release her arm. "I think we should talk about this."
"I don't think we should talk at all. Hey!" she yelled to a man leaving the hotel to go back to the truck. "Don't take anything else inside. Little Billy won't be staying."
The men chuckled as they looked from Jackie to William, hovering over her. He was several inches taller than she, a good deal heavier, and he didn't look like anyone's idea of "little Billy."
William gave the men a curt nod. "Take a break," he ordered. Then, still holding Jackie's arm firmly, he pulled her down the street, a tumbleweed blowing across their path. He didn't say a word as he pulled her into a building that had once been one of Eternity's saloons. Inside were half a dozen broken chairs and a few dirty tables. Firmly he ushered her to the only chair that had all four legs and sat her on it. "Now, Jackie—"
Like a jack-in-the-box, she came out of the seat immediately. "Don't try explaining anything to me. This has been one huge mistake, that's all. Now I want you to get your things out of my house—" She hesitated. "Or, if the place now belongs to you, I shall be the one to move." At that statement her heart wrenched. She had taken a ninety-nine-year lease on the first two floors of the hotel, planning to lease a floor a year until it was all hers. When she'd first approached Jace Montgomery about renting the hotel, he'd asked for more than she had to spend, so she asked him how much per floor. Trying to keep from smiling, he had divided the rent into five equal parts. Then Jackie had asked for a discount for renting two floors. With a ten percent discount, she was able to afford both floors, and after six months she'd added the third floor, at a twelve and one-half percent reduction. The ninety-nine-year lease made her feel secure enough to spend all the money she had in decorating it, and now she was going to have to leave her pretty house.
"I'll start moving now."
"What is wrong with you?" William asked, putting himself between her and the door. "You'd think I'd jilted you in a love affair. I thought we agreed that we were going to run a business together. Was there any more between us? Something I didn't know about?"
Jackie sat back down, praying that she would be able to live through this day. Of course he was right. She was acting like an idiot. There had been nothing between them except what was in her head. He had known all along that night who she was, had known that she was old enough to be his… well, his older sister. He had known that she was his former baby-sitter.
So that meant that everything, absolutely everything that she had imagined herself feeling, was all on her side. He had kissed her, but she had to be honest with herself: it wasn't a kiss to set the world on fire. Well, maybe at the time she'd thought it was a great kiss, but in hindsight it was more of a friendship kiss. And what about all their talk? That had been normal too. If he wanted her awake he couldn't very well have asked her boring questions about her second grade teacher.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked.
She was looking at him and thinking that this could not possibly work with both of them living under the same roof in the isolated ghost town. She would have liked to think that the town gossips would be up in arms, but the truth was that they would no doubt think of her and William as teacher and pupil, with no possibility of scandal. Jackie was sure this was the way William saw it, too. Jackie was his mentor, his hero, his teacher, the one who had shown him how to catch bugs, how to swing on ropes, how to hold his breath for a full minute. No, she was sure she would have no problem with William.
The problem would be with Jackie herself. For the life of her she could not look at this gorgeous young man and remember that he was just a boy and that she was, by comparison, an old woman. When you feel that you are eighteen, it's difficult to remember that you aren't. Sometimes it's a shock to look in the mirror and see the aging face looking back. Never again was a man going to say to her, "When you wake up, you look like a kid." Now she didn't look like a kid even after an hour spent putting on makeup. Oh, she looked good, and she well knew it, but she no longer looked eighteen and she never would again.
"I think it would be better if you lived in Chandler," she said in her best adult voice. "It would be better for… It would just be better, that's all." She did her best to keep her voice neutral. If you lusted after a man ten years younger than you, a man you used to baby-sit, was that incest?
"In order to start a business we must spend a great deal of time together, and I think it would be ridiculous to have to drive the forty miles back and forth to Chandler every day. What if we wanted to discuss something at night?"
"Telephone."
"What if you needed help with the planes?"
"I've gotten along rather well without you until now. I think I can continue to manage."
"What if I suddenly had a question?"
"Wait until morning. You know, like you have to wait until morning to open your Christmas presents."
He walked away from her, put his foot on the rail of the bar, his elbow on the counter, and his head on his hand. Now all he needed was a shot of red-eye and a six-gun at his hip and he'd look like a gunslinger, Jackie thought. Out, she thought. She definitely had to get him out of Eternity and as far away from her as possible.
After a while he turned back to her, his face serious, and she remembered the solemn little boy he had been. "No," he said, then held out his hand to her as though to help her up.
Jackie didn't feel quite old enough yet to need help getting out of a chair. "What does that mean? No?"
"It means that I will live in Eternity for as long as it takes. I have decided."
"You have—" she said, nearly sputtering. For a moment she felt as though she were again his baby-sitter and he were disobeying her, but when she stood in front of him, she had to look up, and she was looking into the eyes of a man, not the eyes of a child. Turning on her heel, she left the saloon, her anger evident with every step she took.
She walked for some time, walked far out into the desert that surrounded Eternity and tried to think about what she was doing. It embarrassed her greatly that she had felt such… such strong feelings for this young man that first night. Why hadn't some sixth sense told her that she knew more about life than he did? Why hadn't she picked up on the clues that she was dealing not with a grown-up but with a large child? And of course there must have been clues. There was… And, well, there was… Think as hard as she might, she couldn't remember anything that would have been a clue that he was a great deal younger than she was.
Except maybe that he was a lot of fun that night. Why was it that the older people got, the less they wanted to laugh? It would seem that the opposite would be true. Age needed laughter to help it along. Where once you bounced out of bed in the morning, as a person got older there wasn't much bouncing. Laughter might help a person through all the aches and pains, the muscles that no longer stretched but seemed to catch in place. But the older people got, the less they laughed. Maybe that was a way to guess their age. If they laugh fifty times a day, they're kids. Twenty times a day means they're in their twenties. Ten times a day and they're mid-thirties. By the time they reach their forties nothing seems to make them laugh.
About a year ago Jackie had gone out with a very nice man to dinner where they had met three other couples. Throughout the dinner there had not been one scrap of laughter. It had been all talk of money and mortgages and where the best steak bargains could be had. Later, her date had asked Jackie if she'd had a good time, and she had replied that the people seemed… well, a little old. To this the man had stiffly replied that his friends were younger than she was. "In years only," she had snapped, and that was the last time she'd heard from him.
So now her problem was one young man, one very young man by the name of William Montgomery. She needed to get rid of him, needed to get him away from her. She didn't trust herself around him. She had felt a pull toward him the night he had taken her from the plane, and she'd felt it again this morning. Maybe it was just the absence of male company for so many months, especially when she had spent so many years almost exclusively with men, but she didn't think so. There was something about Billy's solemnity, something about the way he did what he said he was going to do, that appealed to her. Hell, she thought, after years of Charley, she might fall in love with a blue-faced monkey if the creature followed through on his ideas, if he did what he said he was going to do.
As Jackie drove into the ghost town that had become home to her, she couldn't seem to keep her heart from leaping a bit. The light on the porch glowed warmly, and more lights shone from inside the house. Someone was waiting inside for her. It wasn't an empty house but one warm with the life of another person.
Mentally she shook herself, forcing herself to stop fantasizing. The man inside was just a boy, and he was her business partner and nothing more. Quietly, so as not to alert him, she closed the car door and entered the house. It was redolent of cooking, alive with warmth and light. Never had the pretty house felt more welcoming.
He was standing in the kitchen, facing the sink, his back to her. His sleeves were rolled up, his strong brown forearms damp with soapy water as he washed a sink full of dirty dishes. For a moment she stood silently in the doorway watching him. She knew that he was a banker, a student of numbers, a man who had spent most of his life with his nose pointed toward a book, but he had the body of an athlete. Having grown up in Chandler, she knew that the Montgomerys loved any form of exercise; they rowed and swam, rode horses, climbed up rock faces to the tops of mountains, walked when they could have ridden.
William's body was evidence of all that exercise. Under his thin cotton shirt, his brown back was one hillock of muscle after another, hills and valleys of a landscape of great beauty. Strong thighs strained against his trousers, tight buttocks curved against the fabric. Jackie had to put her hands to her sides, her fingers curled into a taut ball, to try to still the ache she felt at wanting to touch him. She wanted to slip her arms about his waist, press her face against his back, then feel him turn to kiss her upturned face.
"Would you like some coffee?" he asked softly, his back still turned toward her. His words made her jump. How long had he known she was there? Had he been watching her face in the reflection of the dark kitchen window in front of him?
"No," she managed to whisper as she turned to leave the room. She should, of course, have accepted his offer of coffee, then sat down with him and had a bit of conversation. She had sat with hundreds of men in the evenings, talking of planes or of people they both knew, of politics, of anything that came to her mind. Rarely had she been attracted to any of them. And certainly she'd never felt like this before. What caused attraction anyway? she wondered. What made you able to sit and talk comfortably with one man and not with another? Often she'd seen women fall hard for some guy or another, men who didn't seem in any way special to her. Now she was the one who was falling, the one whose palms got sweaty whenever a certain man was near. She was the one who was unable to talk or even to think coherently when he was close to her.
But whatever she felt for him, she reminded herself, this man was taboo.
Her head came up, and she gave her best adult smile to William. "Isn't it past your bedtime?"
She meant to insult him, to put him in his place, which was in the nursery, but he didn't look insulted. Instead, he gave her a slow smile that made her feel quite warm. "I wouldn't mind going to bed. How about you?"
To her consternation, Jackie felt herself blushing like an eighteen-year-old virgin. Worse than her confusion was the fact that she could think of no lighthearted put-down that would let him know that he was a boy while she was a mature, sophisticated woman.
Looking at her confusion, he gave a little laugh, then said, "Come outside. I want to show you something."
Companionably he slipped her hand through his strong bent arm and led her outside. "I missed you tonight," he said softly, holding on to her hand when she tried to pull away. "All right," he said cheerfully. "I'll behave. I have been thinking about expansion."
That got her attention. "Expansion? How can we expand something that hasn't even been born yet? When you're as young as you are, you think that everything is possible, but when you get older, you learn that there are limits to what a person can do." There, she thought, that should do it. That should put him in his place. Her body might lust after him, but her mind was a great deal wiser than his.
William didn't even seem to notice the little bit of wisdom she was offering him. "When you're as rich as I am, a great many things are possible."
So much for wisdom, she thought. When it came to a toss-up between wisdom and money, unfortunately money usually won. She told herself that she should be offended by his blatant reference to his wealth, but on the other hand, she rather liked it. She'd always had contempt for people who pretended that they had a difficult life in spite of the fact that they had servants lounging about, waiting for the opportunity to serve.
However, like what he said or not, she wasn't going to miss an opportunity to remind him of the age difference. "I think that as you grow older, you'll find that there are some things in this world that carry more weight than money."
"And what are they?"
"Intelligence. Wisdom. Happiness. Ah… ah…" She thought for a moment, then looked up into his smiling eyes, the moonlight on his hair. He was firmly holding on to her hand. With a sigh of defeat, she said, "What's your idea?" She was a woman who liked to do, and this talk of philosophical ideals was wearing on her.
William laughed—that patronizing little laugh that was beginning to annoy her—kissed her on the forehead as though she were a child, and pointed to the empty fields that lay to the south of Eternity. "We could build another airstrip there, a place where a couple of big planes could take off. A Bellanca maybe. Is that the right name?"
"Yes," she said softly, "that's the right name."
"We could start a carrier service from Denver to Los Angeles."
"This is Chandler, not Denver."
"We open an airstrip outside Denver, but we run the business from here, carrying goods from my family to Denver, delivering there, picking up people and cargo in Denver, then flying to Los Angeles."
He didn't seem to notice how quiet Jackie had become. "Who's going to fly these planes?"
"You can train people. I have a few cousins who'd love to learn how to fly. And if you become the first woman to win the Taggie, you'll attract many women who want to learn to fly. Maybe you could have all women pilots. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
She was sure he was trying to be nice to her, saying he'd fund a company of all women pilots, and in other circumstances she'd have been grateful, but now all she heard was the word "Taggie." Instantly she pulled away from him. "Win the Taggie? Are you out of your mind? I have no intention of entering that race, much less trying to win it."
"Why?" he asked simply. "You're the best pilot in the world, better than any man, certainly better than any other woman. You can fly rings around anyone. Last year the man who won the Taggie didn't have half your experience or skill. He was nothing compared to you."
Heaven, but it felt nice to be confronted with such blatant hero worship. Especially since she knew that what he'd said was true. She'd once flown with the winner of last year's Taggie, and at the time she'd thought he shouldn't have a license to fly a child's string toy, much less his own plane. He'd won on luck, not skill.
"I'm not going to enter that race or any other," she said, turning on her heel and starting to walk away.
He caught her arm. "But why, Jackie? You're the best pilot in America, maybe in the world, but you never enter any of the big races. You used to set records for endurance and speed, but a few years ago you stopped entering races. It was as though everyone else kept moving forward but you stopped. I used to think you'd lost your nerve, but that's not true; I've seen that you haven't lost your nerve. So why won't you enter the race and win it?"
"Because I'm too old," she said quickly, wanting to say anything to make him stop talking about this. "My reflexes aren't as fast as those of these youngsters flying today. I've been in this business a long, long time and—"
William said a very vulgar word that perfectly and quite correctly described what she was trying to make him believe. "You are lying to me. Why?"
She hated it when people didn't believe what they were told. Why couldn't people just accept what others told them? Why couldn't William accept that she was too old to fly in that blasted race and leave it at that? "I don't like races," she said. "They are a useless waste of gasoline in a time of need in our country. While other people are hungry, pilots are engaging in senseless waste. When you're older, you'll realize that money can be better spent in more intelligent ways than on races and other folderol."
At that little speech, William snorted in derision. "What's wrong with the American economy right now is the absence of money in circulation. People are hoarding what funds they have, too terrified to spend. What this country needs is more spending, not less. And races like the Taggie give depressed people pleasure."
He stopped talking and looked at her hard, as though he wanted to see inside her soul. When she turned her head away so he couldn't see into her eyes, he put his fingertips under her chin and raised her face to meet his eyes. "There's more to this than you're saying. Why won't you tell me the truth?"
Angrily she jerked away from him, moving into the darkness of the night, into the black shade of the old dress shop so he couldn't see into her eyes. Stupid, she thought, it was really stupid of her to feel so bad because she was disappointing him. Many, many people had thought she should enter races and competitions, and she'd laughed their suggestions off. But she had an irrational desire to please William.
In spite of what she meant to say, the words that came out of her mouth startled her. "Why? What does it matter whether I win some race or not?" There was an almost plaintive tone to her voice, she thought in disgust. Why don't you like me as I am? she seemed to be saying.
"I want you to be remembered," he answered simply, and it didn't take a genius to know what he meant. The history books always remembered the people who did the most, the best, who flew the highest, the fastest, the longest, whatever. If Jackie stopped setting records, winning races, the things that she had done would die with her. Never in her life would she say so aloud, but she had thought of this many times. Sometimes she felt anger and quite a bit of envy to read that some whippersnapper of a pilot who didn't have as much knowledge in his head as Jackie had in her little finger, had won a place in the history books by setting some aviation record.
"You've thought of it," he said, as much to himself as to her. When she turned away from him again, he took a deep breath. "All right, I'll stop. For tonight, anyway, but not forever. You're going to tell me the truth if I have to…"
"To what?" she asked, meaning to challenge him in a tough sort of way, but her voice came out instead in a tone of teasing.
"I'll have to challenge you to a duel." Even in the dark she could see that his eyes were sparkling.
"Do I get to choose the weapons?"
"Sure," he answered in the same tone. "Anything you want. Swords, pistols." He wiggled his eyebrows. "A wrestling match."
"Airplanes," she said. "We will duel with planes." She started laughing when William groaned as though in great agony.
As they laughed, their eyes locked. What was more dangerous than shared laughter? Laughter was more powerful than all the kisses in the world. You could keep from falling in love with a man whose only attraction was a feeling of sexual interest, but how could you not fall in love with a man who made you laugh? Laughing with a man made you dream of a life with a man who could see the bright side of life, a man who would smile when the going got worse.
"Don't," she said softly and turned away from him, starting back to the house.
He didn't move from where he was but instead watched her walk away from him.
Two days later, after yet another restless night, Jackie knew she had to do something. Each night she seemed to turn over many times, and each time she awoke and listened for a sound from William. Of course she knew that he was two floors above her and she couldn't possibly hear him, but that didn't make any difference. She knew he was there; she could feel his presence.
On the morning of the third day, at about three a.m., she awoke and had a mature, intelligent talk with herself. Her conclusion was that either he had to leave or she would go crazy. When she was younger, she always liked to know why she did something, and if she found that her behavior was based on something childish, like jealousy or envy, she tried to overcome the feeling. But with age came the wisdom to know that everyone was human. For whatever reason, she knew that she had to get rid of him. Suppose Terri came to visit and found her and William occupying the same house? She could hear all the snide hometown things that would be said about "robbing the cradle" and "wet behind the ears." If this were Paris she might get away with what seemed to be occupying her every waking and sleeping thought, but this was backwoods, unsophisticated Chandler, Colorado, and a thirty-eight-year-old woman did not take up with a man ten years younger than herself.
And if the age difference wasn't enough, there was William's talk of the Taggie. She needed to stop that right now. William had the eyes of a zealot, of a do-gooder. He meant for her to win that race so she could enter the history books. With that sparkle in his eyes, he was likely to do something absurd, such as announce to the town that she was going to enter, hoping to force her to change her mind.
As she began to dress, Jackie couldn't help feeling sad, for she knew that what she was doing was possibly the stupidest thing she'd ever done in her life, but even that knowledge didn't keep her from doing it. Having a man with the money and business acumen of William Montgomery was something that every underpaid glory hound of a pilot dreamed of. William wasn't trying to steal the spotlight from Jackie, nor was he trying to take over the directorship of the business. He just wanted to stay in the background and do all the boring work of managing the money. He deferred to Jackie at every turn, saying things like "I'm sure you know best."
It was infuriating. But what was really infuriating about him was that she loved being around his slow, deliberate ways. She didn't know how else to explain it: William made her feel safe.
The first day he had asked her where she kept her books, and they then had gone through an annoying hassle while Jackie figured out that he wasn't trying to get into her bedroom where she had her one and only bookcase. He had wanted ledgers telling who owed what and how much to her. "Oh, that," she'd said, then began to rattle off to him how much various people in town owed her for the use of the airfield, for carrying a package to Denver, for begging a ride with her to Trinidad. She could remember who had paid her and how much was still owed. She remembered dates of flights and how long they took. She remembered who had paid her in chickens and who in cash.
After sitting spellbound while listening to this rendition of her monetary life, William blinked a few times and said he'd buy ledgers and draw up a proper set of books. Trying to be as flippant as possible, Jackie had swept from the room, tossing over her shoulder, "I hope you don't expect me to record every penny I make in some book."
Jackie's plan was to make William say he was leaving; also she wanted to make it quite clear to him and to anyone visiting them that there was nothing whatsoever between them except business. So maybe in trying to reach this end she hadn't exactly been the most gracious of business partners. And it was indeed stupid to try to sabotage herself, but with every passing day she liked William more.
Nothing she said seemed to bother him. He was the soul of calmness. When three people had called in one day to cancel planned flights to Denver, she could have pulled the hair out of the nearest person, which of course was William. All day long she'd picked on him. "Of course, what would a kid like you know about disappointment?" she said. "You haven't been alive long enough to understand how difficult life can sometimes be." William hadn't said a word to her, just raised one eyebrow in a way that made her want to crawl under a table. It would have been easier to believe he was a kid if he had acted like one.
With each passing minute Jackie could see the possibility of danger in being too near this young man. So she strengthened her resolve to stay away from him. The first night he had used her kitchen when she wasn't there, but the second night he'd asked if he could come down from the top floor and use her kitchen, since all he had was a hot plate. She didn't feel she could refuse him this request, and for one long, delicious moment, she thought of sitting at the table in the kitchen with a man and laughing across a bottle of wine. She had to shake herself to make the image go away. At dinnertime she had found that she had to make an emergency drive into Chandler to pick up a box of tissues.
While she was in the local diner having a plate of something the cook called the day's special, Reynata had come to sit by her.
"Do you mind?" the young, beautiful girl asked.
"Not at all," Jackie replied.
After the girl was seated and had ordered a Coke, she looked at Jackie. "Are you going to be the first woman to win the Taggie?"
That had brought Jackie out of her melancholy. "Where did you hear something like that?"
"One guess."
Jackie smiled. "I seem to remember that William did mention that. He has a bad case of hero worship. You know, a lot of young men feel that way about older women."
"I'm not sure that's how William feels about you." Rey was smiling and fiddling with her straw.
At that Jackie jumped up from the table. "Look, there is nothing between Billy Montgomery and me except a business arrangement, and anyone who says there is, is a damned liar! He's a kid to me and nothing more. I used to change his diapers. I can't even look at him without seeing him with a milk mustache on his fat little-boy face. I'm always wanting to pat his head and sing lullabies to him. I want to—" She broke off because every person in the diner had stopped talking and was looking at her.
Great, Jackie thought, where there had been no suspicion, now there was. "I have to go," she had mumbled to Rey before practically running out the door.
So now, after three days of William's calm, of William's organization, of William's eyes, which sometimes made Jackie shiver, she knew that she had to get rid of him. But how? Insults didn't seem to affect him—they never had. When he was a kid, Jackie had said lots of rude things to him to try to get him to go away, but nothing had worked. And oddly enough, she had begun to enjoy his silent company. He was so rock solid, something dependable in her life that seemed to have no stability.
So, now, how did she make him go away? Make him go away before the whole town started talking about the two of them?
"Would you like to go flying with me, Billy?" Jackie asked in her sweetest voice. "I'd like to see what you can do with a plane." The smile she gave him made honey look poisonous. It had taken some thought, but she had remembered William's caution, his great love of safety. As a child, the only time she'd ever been able to get rid of him was one day when she'd pulled him onto a log stretched high across a cold, rock-filled, rushing stream. He'd walked the log, but later he'd said, "I don't like you anymore," and Jackie hadn't seen him for over a week. Of course she wouldn't admit it back then, but she'd found herself missing him. In the end, she'd "stopped by" his house for a visit. His mother had pointed Billy out and Jackie had found herself walking toward him. They didn't say anything—nothing so ridiculous as apologies—but when she left, William was tagging along behind her, and it was four whole days before Jackie had told him he was a nuisance.
Today, she thought, this airplane was going to be another log across a stream. Only this time she wouldn't go after him and bring him back.
One of the Wacos William had purchased was equipped with pilot and student gear so the plane could be flown from both seats. William was in front, Jackie in the back. Pete, her mechanic, gave the propeller a turn, and Jackie gave a thumbs-up sign to William as he started down the runway.
Again she smiled at him. He looked so sweet, so innocent, sitting there, and his every gesture told her that he wanted to impress her with his flying skills. William was so methodical that she wondered if he'd taken lessons just because his heroine, Jackie, knew how to fly.
But Jackie knew that flying, like anything else in life, was a talent and talent could not be taught. You could teach a skill and a person could learn to fly by the book, but there were some who had the talent and some who didn't.
A few years ago a manufacturer had produced a beautiful little single-wing plane. He thought it was going to revolutionize aviation, and with great hope, he sent the first test pilot up. The plane performed better than anyone had expected, but a few hours later the pilot, for no apparent reason, crashed into a mountain.
The designer tried to tell people that the crash was the result of pilot error, but pilots, a superstitious lot, said the plane was jinxed. Another prototype rolled off the line and a second pilot took it up. Exactly the same thing happened. After the second crash, no one in the flying world could get near the plane without crossing himself or laughing, or both.
Desperate, the designer went to Jackie and offered her a large sum of money to take his plane up. Jackie felt that if your time came, it didn't matter if you were on the ground or in the air and she would much rather be in the air, so she accepted the man's offer. Many people asked her not to go, but she didn't listen to them.
In the air, the little plane was a dream. It handled beautifully, the stick so easy that she felt she could almost go to sleep while flying, and she wanted to stay up forever. Unexpectedly, the first tank ran out of gas about thirty minutes before it should have. The engine sputtered and died in the air. Without much concern, Jackie flipped the switch to the second tank and restarted the engine. Nothing happened. Either the second tank was empty or there was a blockage in the line and the gas couldn't get to the engine.
"This is it," Jackie said to herself and for a moment she wondered how she could tell the people on the ground that what had killed the other pilots was a faulty fuel line. Oddly enough, considering she was facing certain death, her head was completely clear as she looked at the switch to the gas tank. On and Off, the little printed label said. Or did it read, Off and On? She flipped it the other way, tried the engine, and it started.
Laughing, she brought the plane to the ground and had the great pleasure of informing the designer that the only thing wrong with his plane was that someone had labeled the fuel switch wrong. The other pilots had inadvertently switched it off. No one but Jackie had thought of flipping the switch the other way. Talent. Instinct. Whatever. Jackie had lived because she didn't fly by the book.
After ten minutes in the plane with William, Jackie knew that he would never have thought to flip the switch the other way. William was an utterly perfect flyer. There was a rule behind every movement he made. He took no chances, was absolutely safe.
After thirty minutes, Jackie was bored to tears. Couldn't he understand that flying was creative? Airplanes had nothing to do with books. Airplanes moved through the air. What could be more creative than that? Yet William flew as though there were road signs stuck in the clouds. She fully expected to see him extend his hand and signal a right turn.
After forty-five minutes, she could stand no more. Motioning to him that she wanted to take over, she took the controls.
There were two ways to fly: with passengers and without. Usually Jackie tried to behave herself when she had a passenger, but now she wanted to make William say that he didn't want to be partners with her and maybe, too, she wanted to show off a bit.
First off: clean out the cockpit. Daredevil pilots loved to brag that they had very clean cockpits. All they had to do was turn the plane upside down and give a little wiggle to the wings. Simple. Of course you had to make sure the seat belt was fastened. It had happened that people had fallen out.
Jackie turned the plane upside down and wiggled, then did it again. Quickly she came out of the position to move forward and swoop upside down again. She didn't want to miss a smidgen of debris. Dust and dirt, a few chewing gum wrappers, flew past her face. In front of her, William's strong hands were gripping the sides of the cockpit as he held himself in.
Jackie had made a good living and a name for herself with barnstorming and thrilling crowds. The more chances she took, the more she got paid—and she was paid very well.
Twists came next. She flipped wing over wing over wing. Quickly she went into a loop, turning in a complete vertical circle. This was followed by her own special creation that someone had called a dippy twist loop, in which she did a twist and a loop at the same time.
When she came out of the dippy, she went into a stall and the world suddenly seemed unnaturally silent until she started the engine again.
Years before, when she was learning to fly, Charley had made sure that she knew how to handle herself in every emergency. He'd made her take off from beaches, roadways, ball parks, racetracks. She'd had to fly right-side up, upside down, in crosswinds, tailwinds, no wind. He'd taught her how to handle a fire on board and ice on the wings. When there was thick fog between her and the ground, he'd shown her how to orient herself by burning a hole in the fog with her engine heat. He'd taught her how to land on water and what to do if she was swept out to sea.
She decided to show William nearly everything she'd learned. She raced around tall trees, calculating the distance between them by inches. One miscalculation and the wings would have been torn off. The moment she was through the trees, she did a couple of snap rolls. Nailing the nose to the horizon, she did several three hundred and sixty degree lateral turns, one after another, coming out about a quarter of an inch before she would have flown smack into a mountain.
About a week after she ran off with Charley, during which time he'd rarely let her out of a plane, he'd said, "Kid, you got a gyroscope in your head. If you're upside down and backwards it's all the same to you. You know where you're going." Now Jackie flew upside down for a while, maneuvering through the trees with her head pointed toward the ground.
She knew she was getting low on gas so she headed back to Eternity, writing her name in the sky as she went. Skywriting lost something with no flares attached to the tail of the plane, but the motion was the same.
As she hit the hard-packed runway in Eternity, the engine died from lack of gas. Perfect, she thought. She had calculated perfectly. Charley would have been proud of her.
After Jackie landed the plane, William stayed in his seat, not moving, his head back, his eyes closed, and she could see that he was fighting hard not to be ill. There weren't many people who could go through what William had just experienced and not lose a meal. But somehow he was managing to control his stomach.
Standing up, Jackie reached her hand out to him, and briefly—very briefly—he opened his eyes to glance at her, then gave a faint shake of his head. He was not going to accept her offer of a steadying hand when he disembarked.
On the ground, Jackie politely looked away as he somehow climbed down from the plane without anyone's help. When she turned to look at him his face was white, his skin clammy-looking, and he wasn't too steady on his feet.
"All right, Jackie," he said solemnly, as he took a deep breath, working hard to control his nausea. "You win. I'll pack my bags and leave. I'll be out of here in a matter of hours."
Now that she'd done what she planned, she couldn't help feeling bad. She didn't want to discontinue their friendship; she just wanted him out of her house and out of her life on a daily basis. "William, I…"
When he turned to look at her, his eyes blazed, and his white skin was tinged with the deep glow of anger. No, there was more in his eyes than anger; there was rage. Old-fashioned life-endangering rage.
When he spoke, his voice was very soft and very quiet. "So now I guess you'll tell me you want to be friends. That you've always had a high regard for me and you'll always treasure my friendship." He took a step toward her, looming over her. "I don't want your friendship, Jackie. I never wanted your friendship. Since I was a little boy I've wanted your love."
At that statement she made the mistake of giving the slightest smile, and that smile seemed to make something in William break. Even as a child he had been mild-mannered and sweet-tempered, but now he seemed to turn into something fierce, something dangerous. When he took a step toward her, she stepped back.
"Does my wanting your love amuse you? Is it something to make you laugh? Stupid little Billy Montgomery following tall, eccentric Jackie O'Neill around. Oh, yes, you've always been eccentric. Even as a child you were different from everyone else. The other kids were trying their best to be carbon copies of each other, but not you. Oh, I know you thought that what you wanted was to wear the latest fashions and be part of the group, but the truth was, you loved climbing on your mother's roof and hammering the tiles in place. You loved having an excuse to get away from the other kids in your class so you could do exactly what you wanted to do. When you were sixteen and no girl would be caught dead climbing trees and swinging on ropes, you were doing those things. You have always done what you wanted and the rest of the world be damned."
He wasn't presenting a very pretty picture of her. He made her sound odd and selfish. She opened her mouth to speak, but he leaned over her until her back was bent.
"And I loved you for having the courage to be who you were. You didn't try to conform. In this town where everyone knows everyone else, you found a way, an excuse, to be who you wanted to be. You found a way to do what you wanted to do. And when an opportunity came for you to get out of here, you didn't hesitate, you took that opening. No fear, no second thoughts, not even a backward glance. You saw what you wanted and you went after it.
"I loved that in you, Jackie. I may have been a little boy, but I saw quite clearly what you were and what you were going to do, and I loved you for it. I'm a man now and I know that what I felt then wasn't puppy love. I don't have any way to explain it. I loved you as a man then, and that's the way I love you now."
"Now?" she whispered, looking into his eyes. It certainly was difficult to think of him as a child at this moment.
"Yes, now! Maybe we're alike but in opposite ways. Since the first time I saw you I have loved you. I was just five years old when my mother opened the door to you. You stood there, fifteen years old, too tall, too thin, your hair hanging in your eyes because you'd been in too much of a hurry to tie it back. You were pretty in an obscure way, but you weren't going to make any man's heart stop beating. You very nearly made mine stop, though. I looked up at you and I fell in love with you, and I've never stopped loving you since."
He seemed to grow taller as he leaned over her even farther. "I was the one who got my father to establish the Taggie, hoping to entice you back to Chandler. I was the one who had my father write to you after Charley died and ask you to start a flying service for our family. I anonymously sponsored six air shows for you and Charley at times when I knew that Charley had drunk your funds away. It was my uncle who pointed out to the president your good deed in saving the burn victims."
She was blinking at him. "You?" was all that she could whisper.
"Yes, me. I have loved you always. Always. Without hesitation. Just as you took one look at an airplane and knew that flying was what you were supposed to do in life, I took one look at you and knew that you and I were meant to be together. I've dated very few women. I've never been to bed with a woman because I felt I would have been betraying you. I waited for you, and while I was waiting, I took care of you to the best of my ability."
Suddenly he straightened and glared at her. "And now this. You."
The way he said "you" made her skin crawl.
"I misjudged you. I thought you had a spine. I thought you had the courage of your convictions. You could run away with a man twice your age and thumb your nose at an entire town. You learned to fly an airplane better than any man alive, and you can laugh at the idea that a man is equal to you. You swung on tree branches when other girls were afraid to get their hair wet. You can do whatever you want in life. You live life exactly how you want, without thought for what the rest of the world thinks, but when it comes to loving, you're a coward. You're ready to throw me away merely because our drivers' licenses say we're different ages."
She started to defend herself, but he wouldn't allow it.
"Don't you dare try to lie to me or to yourself. The only thing standing between us is your ridiculous notion that we shouldn't be together because of our ages. You won't let yourself get to know me. You're afraid to have a conversation with me for fear you might find out that I have a head—a man's head—on my shoulders. I'm no more a boy than you are an adult. I was born an old man, and you, Jackie, were born a child, and you'll always be a child. You will never grow up, or at least you'll never grow old. Do you know one of the reasons I love you so much?"
"No," she whispered.
"Because you keep me young. No matter how old you get, you will always have the freshness of a child. You have no idea how other people's minds work. We who are ordinary think about mortgages and our aching backs, but you don't. You never have and you never will. You think in terms of doing whatever you want at any time you want. If you want to fly an airplane, you do so. Never mind that other people tell you not to. I was eaten with jealousy of Charley. He knew exactly what you were and he had sense enough to reach out and grab you. You were grateful to him, but he knew that he should have been on his knees kissing the ground in thanks that he'd had the privilege of meeting you. He knew that you'd take care of him and make him laugh while you were doing it. He knew your value very well."
William gave a little snort. "Before you left, Charley ruffled my hair and said, 'Better luck next time, kid.' You were a prize for him then, and you're a prize now."
William's handsome face distorted into the barest of sneers, and the way he looked her up and down made her feel ashamed of herself. "At least you were a prize. I never thought it would happen, but you got old, Jackie. You became an old woman."
He stood in front of her for a moment as though waiting for something. Maybe he expected her to throw her arms around him and tell him that she hadn't grown old, and her proof was that she was willing to live with a man ten years younger than she was. But she couldn't do it. She just couldn't do it. No matter what he said, when she looked at him, she saw little Billy Montgomery, and until she got that image out of her head she'd never be able to think of him as anything except a child.
After a long moment of silence, at last he said, "All right, Jackie, you win. Or do we both lose?" He gave a sigh that came from deep within him. "I'll pack and be out of here immediately."
She didn't move as he walked away. Part of her was sad, but a big part of her was relieved. Now she'd have no more indecision, no more agony. No more watching his strong young body move about the house; no more lying awake to listen for the sound of him.
As she turned away from the house, she wanted to walk, walk for hours and miles. She didn't want to see him leave; she wanted to put off entering the empty house for as long as possible.
She wasn't crying, so she should have been able to see where she was going, but for some reason she wasn't looking. Maybe her mind was too preoccupied, but whatever the reason, she didn't realize that there was no ground in front of her, just a steep drop down into a rocky arroyo filled with rusting debris from generations of litterers. Usually agile, she tried to catch herself, but her foot landed on loose rock and she went tumbling.
She didn't fall very far, but she landed in the middle of a rusty heap of metal that had once been a Ford. Dazed for a moment, she shook her head, mentally feeling if she'd broken any bones. She hadn't. Everything was all right, and she couldn't help smiling in relief. Still smiling, she wiped her hand across her forehead and felt the hot, thick, dampness that could only be blood. Pulling her hand away, she saw that it was covered with blood and there was more flowing out of what looked to be a deep cut in the palm of her right hand. All around her were sharp edges of rust-covered metal, and she knew that she'd cut herself on one of them. Thoughts of lockjaw immediately went through her head.
"Jackie!"
She wasn't surprised to hear William's voice, shouting for her with some urgency. As a child he'd been able to sense when she needed help. And no matter where she was, he could always find her.
"Here," she shouted up toward the ridge of the arroyo, but her voice didn't come out as a shout. It sounded weak and helpless, as though she were a shadow instead of a real person. But William obviously heard her, for he appeared at the top of the arroyo, high above her head, stopping for a moment, his back to the setting sun, as he looked down at her.
She had no idea how bad she looked until she saw William's face. He was as pale as she felt. Glancing down, she saw blood all over her—on her shirtfront, on her trousers, and no doubt on her face—and her hand didn't seem to be in any hurry to stop bleeding. An unending supply of fresh red blood seemed to be slowly making its way out of her palm.
Jackie closed her eyes for just a moment, but it was long enough for William to make his way down the arroyo. As though he were far away, she heard him tearing down the hillside, rocks flying. Dreamily she smiled and wondered if the rocks were moving out of William's way.
"Jackie," he said softly, "wake up. Do you hear me? Wake up."
"I'm not asleep," she answered, but she felt odd, as though she were in her body yet not in it. "Haven't we done this before?" she said, smiling. "Are you going to rescue me again?"
"Yeah, kid. Hang on and I'll get you out of here."
She smiled at his calling her kid. Charley used to call her kid. In fact most all men she came to know very well called her that at one point or another. She was vaguely aware of William moving about her. When she heard the sound of ripping cloth, she opened her eyes as wide as they would go, which didn't seem to be very far. William was bare-chested, his broad chest covered with nothing but clean, smooth muscle, no hair on his chest to speak of, just that lovely warm-looking skin.
"Listen to me, Jackie," he said. "You've lost quite a bit of blood and you seem to be going into shock. I want you to concentrate and do what I tell you. You understand?"
She nodded, smiling a bit, but she came alert when he quickly tied a tourniquet about her wrist, using strips of his torn shirt. There hadn't been any pain before, but that thing hurt.
"Does it hurt?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered, trying to be brave.
"Good. The pain will keep you awake. Now I'm going to get you up and out of here so a doctor can stitch you up."
"It doesn't need stitches. Really. It's hardly a scratch. Just a little cut. A bit of tape will fix it."
"Coward," he said, as he hoisted her over his bare shoulder and began the climb up the hill.
Jackie thought that her entire body was the same width as one of his shoulders. She was coming out of her initial shock, and her hand was beginning to hurt. "If your father fires you, you can get a job rescuing damsels in distress. Of course, it will be hard on your wardrobe. William, aren't I awfully heavy?" She practically purred the last remark, hoping he'd say that she weighed nothing at all.
"Yes, you are. You look rather thin, so one would think you'd be light, but you're not. You're quite substantial."
What had she expected from a man who organized everything inside her kitchen cabinets by size? Whimsy?
"You know, I can walk. I cut my hand, not my foot, and I'm feeling better now. If I'm too heavy for you, I should walk."
"No" was all William said.
When he reached the top of the steep arroyo, she thought he would put her down, but he didn't. Instead, he held on to her and walked back toward the house. She really was all right now, except that pain was shooting up her arm and beginning to fill her entire body. Her arms were hanging down William's back, and there was so much blood on her hand that she couldn't see the cut very well, but she told herself it wasn't very deep. Surely it wasn't deep enough to need stitches. She had always bled a great deal, hadn't she? That was just a sign of her good health. In fact, she didn't see any need to call a doctor. A little soap, a good tight bandage, and she'd be fine.
As though he were reading her mind, William said, "Stitches and no argument."
With a grimace, she put her hand back down and stopped looking at it.
Three hours later, stitched up, as she said, like a Hong Kong suit, and ensconced in bed, Jackie felt like an idiot. How could she have been so stupid as to fall down the side of a canyon?
While she was contemplating her lack of intelligence, her bedroom door opened and William entered carrying a tray of food, which he placed over her knees.
"Chicken soup, crackers, salad, lemonade, and chocolate pudding for dessert. Now eat and get well."
"Really, Billy, I am perfectly capable of feeding myself. Anyone would think I'd just had a bout of typhoid fever from the way you're acting. I'm going to get up and—" While William watched with a knowing expression on his face, she pushed the tray away and started to stand up. Immediately she felt light-headed and dizzy. The back of her hand to her forehead like the Victorian dainty she felt like, she lay back down on the bed.
"What were you saying? You're not feeling bad are you, Jackie? It's just a little cut, a mere twenty-six stitches, and the loss of enough blood to keep three vampires healthy for a month. So why are you in bed? Why don't you take a plane up? Do a few stunts?"
She was sure she deserved his sarcasm. After all, she had acted like a baby during the stitching. Young Blair had raced to her house, driving his father's car as though it were a grounded airplane, and the moment Jackie saw him, she had started trying to talk him out of sticking needles in her skin. Young Blair—called that to distinguish him from his mother, also a doctor and also named Blair—had blinked at her a few times, but then he had looked at William as though for permission.
"Stitch. I'll hold her."
And that was what was done. Young Blair stitched while William held Jackie in his strong arms and soothed her as though she were an infant. He stroked her hair and asked her really dumb questions about airplanes. He seemed to be trying to make her angry or to make her laugh, or maybe he just wanted to distract her. To some extent he succeeded, for after the twentieth stitch, William's constant questions, added to the pain, annoyed her to the point that she said, "William Montgomery, you don't know anything about airplanes. You might as well have stayed with paper airplanes for all you know about flying. You have no talent, no feel for the machines or the air."
"Why won't you enter the Taggie?" he shot back, taking advantage of what she was going through to find out what she refused to tell him.
"Because— Oh! What are you using? A needle for stitching saddles? That happens to be my flesh you're gouging."
Young Blair didn't pay any attention to her as he continued stitching her hand. "Almost finished. This is a very bad cut, Jackie, and I want you to use your hand as little as possible for the next few days. I want you to give this time to heal. And that means no flying."
"But—"
William cut her off. "I'll take care of her."
"And who is going to take care of a youngster like you?" Jackie shot back, in so much pain that she didn't care what she said or whose feelings she hurt.
William didn't seem in the least bothered by her nasty remark. "I've hired an eighteen-year-old virgin to change my diapers. Do you mind?"
Jackie could feel her face turning red as she looked at Young Blair's head bowed over her palm. He didn't look up, but she could feel him smile. William had implied that she was jealous and that they were lovers—which of course was far from true. She wanted to explain to the doctor, but she couldn't think of what to say.
After the stitching was done and Jackie was at last free to rest her head against the pillows, she couldn't help feeling annoyed that Young Blair had taken William aside and talked to him as though he were Jackie's husband or even her father. "Keep her quiet," she heard Young Blair saying softly. "She'll be okay in a day or two, but she's going to need looking after until then."
"Of course," she'd heard William say, as though it was understood that this young—very young—man would take care of her.
So now William had prepared her a meal and was insisting that she eat it. "I'm not hungry," she said, and even to her own ears she sounded like a whining child.
William stood over her, looking down at her from his great height. "All right," he said softly, "have it your way. I'll call a nurse and pay her to take care of you for the next few days. I won't impose myself on you further."
"I can take care of myself," she said defiantly.
"Can you?" He arched an eyebrow. "How are you going to wash your hair with one hand? I guess you could leave it full of dried blood. Of course you might attract flies, but what does that matter? You're tough. You can take it. How are you going to feed yourself with one hand? There isn't enough food in this house now to feed a goldfish much less a hungry female. I think I'd better call a nurse. I believe I heard that Miss Norton is free."
At that name Jackie paled. Miss Norton was every child's nightmare of a nurse: big, strong, utterly unsympathetic. She had been born full-grown, with steel gray hair, wearing a starched white uniform and looking about fifty years old, and she'd never aged a day since her birth, which had to have been over a century before Jackie was born.
"I… Uh… Couldn't someone else come? Whatever happened to dear, sweet Mrs. Patterson?"
"Some of the mothers in town figured out that that cough syrup she was giving the kids was straight whiskey. We suggested she might be happier in a town other than Chandler. You can put up with me, I can call Miss Norton, or you can find your own nurse. But one thing I won't do is leave you here alone to take care of yourself. Not that you deserve my assistance after what you did to me today, but I cannot leave you here alone."
He cocked his head to one side. "What is your problem with me anyway, Jackie? Have I made an improper gesture toward you? Have I said anything to make you think that I have depraved intentions toward you?"
"Nooooo," she said, using what willpower she had to keep from blushing. Considering how much blood she had lost today, it was a wonder she could blush.
"Then what is wrong? Do you think that I might make advances toward you? After all, as you constantly remind me, I am just a boy. How could a mere child like me do any of the things you seem to think me capable of? Besides, you're an old woman, remember?"
"Yes," she said hesitantly. "I guess so. I mean, yes, of course."
"All right, Jackie, I'll be honest with you. I'm a Montgomery, remember? Have you been away from town so long that you've forgotten the pride of my family? Do you think I'd try anything with a woman who has made it crystal clear that she can hardly bear the sight of me? Today you went to a great deal of trouble to show me that you wanted nothing to do with me. You showed me that you'd rather end a lifelong friendship than be around me. Do you know how you made me feel this afternoon?"
"You were rather explicit on that point," she said, trying hard not to remember all the things he had said to her. She had never felt so small as he had made her feel today.
"Okay, so you made me feel bad, and I gave you some of your own back. You've made it clear that you don't want me, that you never have, that I am and always will be a boy to you. So be it."
She was trying to read the expression on his face but couldn't. Even as a boy, Billy had been unreadable. He'd followed her around, but she'd never understood whether he liked her or just thought of her as an oddity.
"Right now you need help and it's easy for me to give it. Young Blair said you could move your hand in about a week. I'll do whatever you want. I'll stay, or I'll leave and hire someone else to take care of you, whatever you want. If I stay, it will be on terms of…"
He smiled. "Remember all the times you baby-sat me? Maybe now I can return the favor. I'll baby-sit you. Doesn't that seem like a fair trade?"
"I… I don't know," she managed to say. The entire right side of her body hurt, her hair itched, and she was extraordinarily tired. She didn't want to make decisions now. She just wanted to be clean and to sleep.
"Come on," he said, reaching out for her uninjured hand and pulling her out of bed. "You can't think now. You're going to take a bath, I'm going to wash your hair, and then you're going to sleep."
"I don't think—"
"You rarely do. You act first and think later." When she was standing in front of him, he looked into her eyes. "Jackie, do you really think I'm the kind of boy who'd take advantage of a woman when she's hurt and in pain?"
Something about what he said made her frown. Maybe it was the use of "boy" and "woman" together. But no matter what bothered her, she knew that he would not take advantage of her. He wasn't the type of man a woman had to be afraid of. It was more likely that William should fear women.
"You can't wash my hair," she said at last. "I can do it."
"Not with one hand you can't."
What he was saying and what he was doing confused her. Maybe she shouldn't have compared him to Charley, but Charley was the only man she'd ever really known. Charley had been a great father figure, he'd given orders and made decrees, said no more often than yes, but as a mother he was the worst. Thank heaven Jackie had almost always been as healthy as a pilot after the first solo, because during the few times she was ill, Charley had been annoyed and had stayed out of the house until she was well. She remembered running a fever, being horribly weak and in the kitchen trying to open a can of soup.
Maybe the men you knew well in your life shaped your ideas of what men should and should not be, because now she wondered if it was really a masculine thing for a man to wash a woman's hair. Which of course was absurd. If a man did "women's things," did his male body parts fall off? Or shrivel up until they were useless? Of course not. It was just that the two men in her life, her father and her husband, had spent their lives sitting on chairs asking her to bring them things. And maybe that was what she'd come to expect of men, that the woman was to give and the man to receive and when a man gave, it was somehow… not right, or not wholly masculine.
William had his arm around her shoulders in a companionable way, a nonsexual way, and she found his touch very confusing. This morning he had been yelling that he loved her, had loved her, but now he didn't even like her very much. Yet he was leading her into the bathroom to… what?
"Stop thinking so much," William said as he opened the bathroom door. He left her for a moment as he got a glass of water then took a pill from a little jar on the side of the sink. "Here, take this."
"What is it?"
"It could be a drug made from an ancient herb found in a tomb in South America, guaranteed to make a woman do anything a man wants her to do. Or it could be a painkiller that will make you feel the pain in your hand less. What do you think?"
She didn't even smile as she took the pill from his hand and swallowed it with the water.
"Okay, now off with that bloody shirt."
Jackie opened her mouth to say something, but what could she say? She had on a brassiere, and that certainly covered what little she had on top. And hadn't she often appeared in halter tops in public in the summer? What was the difference?
Abruptly, William grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face him, his nose to her nose. "Jackie, I am not a rapist. I am not a man who would take advantage of a woman who has lost a lot of blood. I am not so… so needy of female companionship that I have to resort to trickery to get a woman's clothes off. All I want to do is to wash a couple of quarts of blood off of you. You are a disgusting sight and you stink. Now will you be sensible and take your shirt off? You can wrap a towel around yourself so I won't see anything, but whatever you do, let's get you clean."
The pill had begun to take effect: the pain was lessening and she was starting to feel woozy. With a little smile she started to unbutton her blouse, but it was difficult to do with only one hand. Pain shot through her when she tried to use her bandaged hand. In the end, William efficiently unbuttoned her blouse and slipped it off her shoulders. After that, she didn't give him any difficulty. One minute she was a thirty-eight-year-old woman and the next she was a child in pigtails leaning over a basin having her hair washed.
Jackie was startled to find that the most sensual thing in the world was having a man wash her hair. When she went to the beauty shop and a woman washed her hair, she did a good job, but she was always in a hurry because she had six other women lined up waiting to use the sink. But as every woman knew, men knew that the world would wait for them, so they took their time.
William's strong hands massaged her scalp. No fingernails to hurt her skin, no rushing, no feeling that he wanted to get this over with. The pain pill made her feel dreamy, as though she'd had a couple of drinks after a hard day's work. She wasn't drunk, but she wasn't quite sober. She just felt relaxed, and her body grew warm and soft with the pleasure of the massage that William was giving her. His fingers caressed her scalp, then her neck muscles; he seemed to know exactly which muscles were tight and where to rub to make her relax.
All too soon he rinsed her hair for the second time, wrapped a towel about her head, making her feel like a movie star, and stood her upright.
"I'm going to fill the tub while you undress and put on your robe."
With that, he turned his back to her and turned on the tub taps. After only seconds of hesitation, Jackie stripped off her filthy, stiff clothes, took her robe from the hook on the back of the door, and put it on. When William looked back at her, he had the tub full of steamy hot water with a five-inch-thick layer of foamy bubbles on top. If she plunged under that thick, opaque layer, she'd be completely hidden from sight.
"I'm going to get some more towels; you climb into the tub. And be careful you don't get your bandage wet." Before he left, he turned out the light so the only illumination in the room was through the glass transom into the bedroom.
After he left the room, she removed her robe and stepped into the hot, hot water. There was nothing more luxurious than a tub full to the brim of steamy water, topped by soft, fragrant bubbles. Rarely in her life had she allowed herself the pleasure of a long soak in a tub. Rarely did she have the time, but, more important, she seldom did things of such a decadent, purely sensual nature for herself. One could get clean in a shower, so why bother with all the time and waste of water and soap?
Closing her eyes, she let the water soak through her skin, all the way into her bones. The bubble bath had been a gift from Terri two Christmases ago. Terri had the idea that a single woman did such delicious things as lounge about in a tub of hot water, but Jackie had never opened the jar. It smelled like a basket of freshly picked apricots warming in the sun, sweet and rich and luscious.
She was two-thirds asleep when William quietly opened the door to check on her. Turning her head as it rested on the back of the tub, she smiled at him. He smiled back and closed the door.
She must have been asleep when he reentered the room half an hour later and began to wash her face. When she opened her mouth to object, he said, "Don't even think of protesting," so she leaned back and closed her eyes. She was too sleepy, too relaxed, to think of anything. He washed her blood-encrusted face and neck, then her unbandaged left arm and hand. When he moved to the end of the tub, seated himself on the rim, pulled one of her feet out of the water and began a soapy massage of her foot, the feeling was too heavenly to consider resisting.
It was nearly dark in the bathroom and the gentle foot massage along with the hot water, the smell of the bubble bath, combined with the pill, made Jackie feel quite wonderful. It sometimes seemed that she had been working all her life and she'd never taken time to enjoy anything. There had always been goals to achieve and, if nothing else, the responsibility of putting bread on the table.
When William stopped massaging, she smiled at him, so handsome in the golden light that floated in from the bedroom.
"Thank you," she whispered as he moved toward the towel rack to take a fluffy white towel and hold it out for her.
"Get out and I'll dry you off."
As he said this, he turned his head to one side and closed his eyes. Reluctantly leaving the tub, Jackie stepped out, soap still clinging to her skin, and allowed him to wrap her in the towel. Her arms were pinned to her sides inside the towel and it was perfectly natural that his arms should go around her as he rubbed the ends of the towel up and down her back. In spite of her relaxed state, she shivered.
"Cold?"
"No," she whispered and found herself putting her head on his shoulder.
Pulling away from her, he lifted her chin with his fingertips. "You are exhausted." At that he swept her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom where he stood her beside the bed and handed her a pair of pink pajamas. "Put them on. I'd help you, but you'd remember it in the morning and hate me."
That made her laugh, and while he busied himself with putting all her cosmetics on top of the mirrored bureau in precise military order, she slipped into the pajamas, then gratefully got into the bed.
"Better," he said as he tucked the covers about her chin.
"Did you learn how to bathe people and tuck them in from your baby-sitter?" she teased.
William stopped tucking and gave her a very stern look.
"My baby-sitter's idea of bathing children was to yell 'Fire' and have the fire department hose them down."
Jackie giggled. "That's not true."
"Word of honor. And she never tucked us into bed. All she did was say 'Bed!' and by golly, we went. If one of us dared to disobey her, she'd tie our feet together and dangle us over the balcony until we reconsidered our stand on going to bed."
"That's not true either."
"It is! I swear it."
"There must have been something good about your baby-sitter. She couldn't have been a complete monster."
"Mmmm, yes. She was unique. She had no idea what a schedule was, so when we were with her we could eat cereal for dinner and steak for breakfast. And she never tried to force us to be what we weren't."
"Oh?" Jackie said encouragingly.
"Sometimes parents have very odd ideas about their children. They think they should all be alike. They seem to think there is an ideal child, and they try to make them all like that ideal. If a child doesn't like sports, parents say, 'You should get out and play football.' If the kid likes to play games outside, parents say, 'Why don't you ever sit down and read a book?' It seems that whatever kind of a child you are, someone wants you to be different."
"But your baby-sitter wasn't like that?"
"No, she wasn't. She liked or disliked people for what they were. She didn't try to change them."
Jackie found this conversation extraordinarily interesting and very much wanted to continue it, but she was falling asleep. "She didn't try to change you?" she whispered, her eyes closed.
"No. She didn't complain that I was too… whatever. She didn't complain that I wasn't like the other kids, because she was like no one else, either, and she understood what it was like to be different."
"A misfit. You were both misfits." Her voice was barely audible.
"No, we were both unique." Leaning forward, he kissed her forehead. "Now go to sleep and maybe the Good Fairy will bring you what you most want during the night."
She smiled at that and was still smiling when he turned out the light and left the room.
When Jackie awoke the next morning she was immediately aware of a throbbing in her right hand and a spectacularly empty stomach. Too weak and too lethargic at first to get out of bed, she slowly became aware of a dull thudding noise coming from the direction of the kitchen. Curiosity won over her lethargy, and, too, there was a smell she couldn't identify coming from the kitchen: chicken? herbs? freshly baked bread? and something tangy, like hot apple cider. She got up and followed where her nose led.
William was just outside the kitchen, standing on the little flagstone pavement, straddling her unhinged screen door, which he was shaving with a small hand plane. The sun came in through the bright white lace curtains of the kitchen, and the round pine table was loaded with bowls of food covered with weighted cloths.
For a while she watched him, his strong back straining against a pale blue cotton shirt that was frayed at the cuffs. His strong, lean hands moved the plane along the edge of the door in what was almost a caressing motion.
Smoothing her hair with her hands, Jackie resisted the temptation to go back to the bathroom and spend an hour or so on her face and hair, maybe do her nails too. She forced herself to stay where she was. She wasn't going to give in to silly female ploys. "What are you doing?" she asked.
Turning, he smiled at her, a smile as bright as the sunshine. "Fixing a few things." He leaned the door against the side of the house and came toward her. "Let me look at my patient." Tenderly he put both his hands on her head and turned her face toward the light.
"My hand was hurt, not my face."
"You can tell a great deal from looking into a person's eyes."
"Nearsightedness? How much the person had to drink the night before? That sort of thing?"
"In your case, no. The whites of your eyes are clear this morning, whereas last night they were gray with pain and fatigue. Are you hungry?"
"Famished."
"I thought so. Have a seat and I'll get you a plate."
She allowed him to wait on her. It was so pleasant being waited on by a man that she didn't protest, didn't say that he was her guest and that she should be waiting on him. This morning she didn't feel as though he were her guest. This morning she felt… She didn't want to look too deep into how she felt.
Maybe it was the aftereffects of the pain pill or of the pain itself, but this morning she wasn't as nervous as she usually was around him. Usually she felt as though she had to run away from William, that her life depended upon getting away from him, but this morning the world seemed kind of fuzzy and pretty, as though she were seeing it through foggy glasses.
She sat quietly while he poured steaming coffee for her and didn't complain when he loaded it with both sugar and milk—coffee for a child, she thought, but she knew that today it would taste good.
"Breakfast or lunch?" he asked.
A quick glance at the clock told her that it was nearly one o'clock in the afternoon and that she had slept nearly fourteen hours. She doubted if she'd ever before in her life slept that long.
"Lunch," she answered, then watched as he piled her plate high with a generous scoop from an enormous chicken pot pie. Creamy gravy oozed over chicken, carrots, and peas. There was coleslaw flavored with fennel, and bread still warm from the oven. Hot apple cider filled a stoneware mug.
"Did you cook this?" she asked in disbelief.
He laughed. "Not quite. Compliments of my family's cook. One of my brothers drove it out here just an hour ago."
She was too busy eating to comment, ignoring the fact that William was staring at her, watching her with a dreamy smile on his face.
"Jackie, how long has it been since you took a vacation? A real vacation? No planes, nothing that even resembles planes."
"I've never wanted such a time." She smiled at him over her half-empty plate of food. "What about you? When was your last vacation?"
"Exactly the same time as yours."
They laughed together.
"Okay," he said, "I am the Red King and—"
"Who?"
"The Red King, as opposed to Alice's Red Queen."
"I see."
"Whatever. I declare this a holiday. No setting up books, no planning the future, no—"
"No talk of the Taggie?" she prompted.
"No talk of the Taggie. Now, what exactly do people do on a holiday?" He looked genuinely puzzled.
"Let's see… Spend more money than they can afford. Sleep in unfamiliar, uncomfortable places. Eat strange food that makes them sick. Get up at four a.m. and spend sixteen hours wandering around looking at things too big, too ancient, or too something-or-other to comprehend, all the while wanting nothing more than a good night's sleep at home in their own bed."
"Sounds great, doesn't it?"
"Divine."
"Anyplace you want to go?"
"You mean a place far away and exotic?"
"Sure."
She grinned. "How about if we walk up to one of the old mining towns and see if we can find anything interesting? Maybe we'll find silver nuggets."
"Sounds exotic enough for me. Do you think you're up to it?"
"Yes," she answered. "I'd like to get outside into the sunshine." In spite of her hurt hand, she felt good. She felt lazy and peaceful, not anxious or restless as she usually did. Maybe it was the loss of blood from yesterday; maybe that was why she didn't feel like avoiding William's company today. Or maybe it was that she felt a bit sorry for herself, like when you're on a diet and you make excuses for giving yourself a treat. You tell yourself that you deserve this because you sneezed and you might be coming down with the flu and it's not good to starve yourself if you're ill. So you eat a five-scoop ice cream sundae.
Now she felt as though there were special circumstances between her and William. Yesterday he had rescued her, maybe even saved her life by keeping her from bleeding to death. So how could she continue her demand that he leave her house today? She'd have to be polite and nice to him, and tomorrow she'd resume her vigilance and make him leave. But for today, she'd be nice to him. And maybe in being nice to William, she would also be nice to herself.
"If you've finished eating everything on the table, let's get you dressed and go."
"I can dress myself," she said sarcastically.
At that he reached across the table and unbuttoned the top two buttons on her pajama top. "Now you button them back up," he said.
Jackie made an attempt with the buttons, but pain shot through her hand when she tried to move it. William just sat still, a smug look on his face as she tried to show him that she could fasten the buttons with her left hand. After several frustrating minutes, she looked up and stuck her tongue out at him. He could be such a brat at times. "I'll bet that you've made yourself completely at home while I was asleep," she said, trying to save her dignity. "What else have you taken liberties with besides my kitchen door?"
He kept smiling. "I tidied a few things."
At that Jackie got up from the table and opened kitchen drawers. She had been so proud of moving into her pretty house, and she had given a great deal of thought to where she wanted to put things. She had put cooking utensils in a drawer near the stove. Things that she used near the sink were placed near the sink. She'd put the equipment she used most often near the front of the drawers and the things like an egg sheer way to the back.
William had rearranged everything in her drawers. Where there had once been a pleasant, creative jumble, now every utensil was in military order. All of the spoons from everyplace in the kitchen were now in one drawer, lined up perfectly by size and material. Wooden spoons were together, then enameled, then stainless steel. Never mind that she cooked with some of the spoons, dyed socks with one, and used one to clean hair out of the drains. They were all together now. The same with the knives: her roofing knife was next to her bread knife. The pots of plants on her windowsill were arranged by size so they looked like a set of Russian dolls. He had placed a scented geranium next to the herbs so she'd have to read the labels rather than just reach for a stalk of basil.
His presumption was annoying at the least, and it would take hours to re-sort her kitchen drawers. But for now she'd do the best she could to let him know what she thought of his arrogant male assumption that he knew more about organization than she did—and that he had a right to rearrange her personal property.
She gave him a beautiful smile. Then, one by one, she opened the drawers and ran her uninjured hand through the too-orderly contents, jumbling them thoroughly.
At the third drawer, William jumped up from the table, frowning. "You're doing this out of defiance, but it makes much more sense to have an organized kitchen, an organized life, for that matter. The way I have everything, you could find things if you were blind."
"But I'm not blind, am I?"
She opened drawer number four, but William caught her hand. "Stop that." When she tried to pull her hand away he held it and pulled her against him.
"There is no excuse for disorganization!" William snapped and Jackie began to laugh, and her laughter made him smile. "I'm not going to let you do that," he said. "Do you have any idea how long it took me to sort everything in those drawers?"
"Less time than it took me to put them in order in the first place." Within seconds their disagreement turned into a playful tug-of-war, with William pulling her hand back every time she reached for a drawer knob.
"You're an idiot, you know that?" she said, laughing, pulling against him. "This is a stupid idea of organization. I put things where I use them."
"Ha! You may have started out that way, but now you just put things wherever you happen to be standing. Ninety-nine percent of this stuff was in one drawer, the drawer closest to the sink where you take them out of the dish rack. Laziness is your organizer."
So what if there was more than a little truth to his words? It was dreadful when people got to know you well enough to see your faults. It was so much better before they knew you well and thought you were perfect.
"Let me go," she said, wriggling against him. Then somehow she was fully in his arms, facing him, her arms pinned between them.
"I like this," he said, beginning to nuzzle her neck. "You smell good, like sleepy perfume."
"Like what?"
William was kissing her neck. His hands were firmly on her back, pressing against the thin fabric of her robe and pajamas.
"I… I don't think you should do that." Her head was back and her eyes closed. She should stop him, she thought. But it was the ol' ice cream subterfuge. How could she stop a fully grown man when she was so weak from loss of blood? She'd stop him when she felt better.
"Jackie, you are so beautiful. Do you have any idea what you look like in the morning?"
"Like I slept in the barn?"
"Yes." His lips were on her earlobe now. "You look warm and soft and sweet, so very sweet. Your voice is a little husky, and your eyes are only half open." His hands slid down her back to the curve of her buttocks, moving no farther, just resting firmly on that curvaceous area, as his lips crept to the center of her throat.
"William, I, ah, I think I'd better get, ah, dressed."
"Sure," he said, and stepped away from her so quickly she staggered back against the sink, where she caught herself with her good hand. He walked toward the doorway of the kitchen and stood there a moment, his back to her. She could see his shoulders moving as he took one deep breath after another as though to calm himself.
"I don't think we should do that again," she said softly.
"Me neither." His voice was firm, as though he was telling himself that he could not again do what he had just done. When he turned back to her, he was smiling once again. The only difference she could see was that the skin around his neck seemed to be a little pinker than usual.
With a detached air, William took a step forward and deftly, swiftly, unbuttoned her pajama top all the way down. "Now go get dressed. I'll do the buttoning and tie your shoelaces." His head came up and there was a look of pleading in his eyes. "But, Jackie, please try to close your own zippers."
She started to laugh, but the look in his eyes was too serious. "I'll do my best," she said solemnly, but she was bubbling with joy inside. It was lovely to feel desirable, she thought as she practically skipped to the bedroom. When you're seventeen and men desire you, it's frightening. You have no idea what to do with them. At that age you want to be thought of as an intelligent woman, no longer a child. At seventeen you want to prove to your mother that you are an adult, that you can get a man, just as she did, and that you are adult enough to be able to run a house and take care of that man—just as she did. It annoys you that all a man can think of is putting his hands inside your clothes. Why weren't seventeen-year-old boys serious about life and the future? Didn't they know what lay ahead for them? There were few things in life more serious, more earnest, more confused, than a seventeen-year-old girl.
But at thirty-eight, you no longer had to prove yourself to your mother. By thirty-eight you knew that running a house and taking care of a man wasn't some great challenge; it was just repetition. Over and over again, washing his socks, figuring out what to feed him, doing the same things again and again. At thirty-eight you wanted to feel desirable—and you wondered what had happened to all the seventeen-year-old boys who couldn't keep their hands off girls. Just as a woman began to relax and want to have a little fun, she found herself married to a man whose only desire in life was to sleep until dinner, then sleep until bedtime. What happened to all that energy? All that lust?
Sometimes it seemed to Jackie that men and women were mismatched. When she had first married Charley, she wanted to prove to him that she was worth his having married her. To her this meant cooking and keeping his clothes clean and, of course, flying. She so wanted to impress him with her flying. But Charley liked to spend afternoons in bed; Jackie wanted to spend afternoons in a plane.
Now, many years later, Jackie felt that she was where Charley had been years ago. She'd proved herself to herself
—to the world, actually—and now she wouldn't mind… She wouldn't mind spending an afternoon or so in bed with a man.
Of course, she reminded herself, not this man. This man, this very young man, William Montgomery, was off limits. If she missed the company of a man she should look for someone more… appropriate. Yes, that was the right word. Appropriate meant the right age, the right social background, the right everything. It meant a man who could help her along life's pathways. Yes, that was right. An older man would have the wisdom to help a woman. At that thought Jackie snorted. She'd had one man in her life who was as much a father as a husband. She didn't need a third father in her life.
Jackie shook her head to clear it. Just enjoy this, she thought. As an elementary school teacher's students might fall in love with her, so William thought he was in love with an older woman. And she was mature enough to enjoy his attention, wasn't she? Enjoy it and handle it.
Smiling, feeling that she was being a mature adult, she did the best she could at getting out of her pajamas and into a pair of loose gabardine trousers, a rayon shirt with patch pockets, and a big white cardigan tied about her shoulders. She managed the zipper on her trousers, but the buttons were impossible. She took just a bit longer with her hair and face than she would have on an ordinary day, but she excused herself for that. Every woman wanted to look nice when she went out, didn't she? Never mind that many times in the past Jackie had laughed at women who fixed their hair just so before flying an airplane. An hour in a dust storm and you were lucky to have any hair left, much less have it arranged.
Holding her shirt together, she walked into the living room where William was occupying himself by rearranging the drawers of her desk. When she let out an exclamation, he turned and told her she looked beautiful, and there was honesty in his eyes.
"Would you mind staying out of my drawers?" she snapped angrily.
He was buttoning her shirt. "Is that drawers as in knickers?"
"Most certainly not!" she said, sounding like a shocked schoolmarm in a bad novel. "Would you behave yourself?"
"That depends on what one defines as correct behavior. From my point of view I am behaving myself."
"Then behave yourself from my point of view."
Bending over, he picked up a picnic basket, slipped the handle over his arm, then took her arm with his other hand. "Just as soon as you decide what your point of view is." He didn't give her a chance to reply to that nonsense. "Are you sure you're up to this?"
She knew that he was referring to her injury, but for some reason the question annoyed her. Did he think she was too old to go hiking? Was he hinting that she'd be better off in a rocking chair by the fire? "I can outclimb you, city boy, any day of the week. While you've been pushing a pencil, I've been crawling all over airplanes, pulling engines from—" She stopped because William was laughing at her. She narrowed her eyes threateningly, which just made him laugh harder.
"Come on, Tarzan, let's go," he said as he slipped his arm through hers and led her toward the door.
Who would have believed, she wondered, that little Billy Montgomery would turn out to be so much fun? Just plain old-fashioned fun. So maybe he didn't like to ride upside down in an airplane, but there were lots of people who wouldn't consider that activity fun. But William did enjoy other things.
For one thing, his sense of humor was childlike and physical. Jackie enjoyed the kind of humor where people sat in a bar and exchanged bons mots, but she also enjoyed the slip-on-a-banana-peel type of humor. William all too clearly understood her outburst when he'd asked her if she felt well enough to go hiking, so he pretended to be old and tired and ill, thereby forcing her to help pull him up the hills. The pulling, then William's collapsing against her in mock fatigue, made for a great deal of physical contact. Every few minutes he seemed to have his arms around her, his head on her shoulder, his face pressed into her neck. She told him to stop what he was doing, but there was about as much strength in her words and her gestures as there was in wet seaweed.
When Jackie allowed herself to be honest, she enjoyed this play with William. She'd missed play as a child and as a young woman. For all that William was right when he said she did what she wanted when she was growing up, what she had really wanted was to be an adult, to be independent. When she was ten years old she wanted to be an old woman. One time her mother had said in exasperation, "Jackie, are you ever going to be a child?"
Could a person age in reverse? Could a person get younger as she got older? When she was in high school all the kids wanted to do was play and have a good time. Jackie had been completely disdainful of them; all she thought of was her future and what she was going to do, how she was going to get out of this one-horse town and do something with her life. Other girls her age were saying they wanted to "Marry Bobby and be the best wife in the world." Jackie's arrogant laugh was now an embarrassment to her.
She had missed play. She had missed a time of courtship with Charley. What honeymoon they'd had was spent inside an airplane. He was her teacher as well as her husband. She had loved it then and she was glad for it, but now she wanted to relax, to… to smell the roses.
William made her laugh. He teased her and chased her around a tree, and in the late afternoon he spread a cloth in the sunlight, on sun-warmed rocks near the edge of a cliff, so they could sit and look out at a spectacular view. From the basket he removed a banquet: wine, cheese, bread, olives, mustard, cold fried chicken, tiny portions of pâté in the shape of flowers, sliced tomatoes, cold lemonade—a feast.
Jackie leaned against a warm rock and again allowed William to wait on her.
"You've been thinking very hard all day," he said as he poured her a glass of red wine.
"I hate it when you know what's going on in my head."
After waiting a moment in silence, he said, "You want to tell me what's been occupying your thoughts?"
She didn't want to tell him anything. Always in her head was the knowledge that soon what was between them would have to end and that it wasn't a good idea to get any closer than they were. But the truth was that she did feel close to him. "I was thinking about all the things you said yesterday."
"Jackie," he began, and she sensed that he was going to follow with an apology, but she waved her hand to stop him.
"No, don't say anything. I deserved everything you said. When I was a kid, I felt that I had to be the best, that I had to succeed. What no one ever seemed to understand was that I wished I could be like the other kids. I tried. I wanted to be part of the groups that went to the drugstore after school and sipped sodas and flirted with boys. But for some reason I couldn't seem to do the right things."
She drank her wine and looked off into the glow of the sun, low in the sky. "You know my friend Terri Pelman? Well, back then I only knew her slightly, but I used to envy her so much. In school she was so popular, always surrounded by boys. She always knew what the latest fashion was and always wore it correctly. No mistakes, nothing out of place or wrong, as I always seemed to get things. I wanted a life like hers, wanted the captain of the football team to be crazy about me, but it just didn't happen. Can you imagine how that was?"
"Yes," he answered simply, and she knew that he understood. She remembered how many times she'd heard the other children teasing William because he followed Jackie around. She remembered that one of his older brothers had beaten up a couple of boys because of something they'd said to William. Although William had not reported what was said, his sister had heard it and repeated it, so his brother fought for him.
Jackie doubted if she would have found out what was said except that she didn't see Billy for a few days, so she wandered over to his house—not to see him, of course, but maybe to run an errand for her mother.
William, using a rake nearly twice as tall as he was, was tackling the leaves on the entire vast lawn of the Montgomery house while his older brother, sporting a remarkable black eye, slept under a tree. Billy wouldn't tell her what was going on, so she woke his brother and made him tell. No one, no matter what size or age, could intimidate Billy, but her age and size quickly intimidated his brother, so he told her. It seemed that some kids who were about four years older than Billy had been hanging around near the bridge with absolutely nothing to do, when one of them said, "We could always have a rock race. William against that boulder over there. My money's on the rock."
When Jackie heard this, it was all she could do not to laugh; she had to wait until that afternoon when she was alone, and then she howled. Billy's brother's punishment for beating up the boys had been the job of raking all the leaves off the front lawn. Billy had taken on his brother's punishment.
Now, many years later, she looked at Billy the man and said, "Participate in any rock races lately?"
She could almost see his mind working as he tried to understand what she was talking about. When he remembered, his face lit up, and he smiled before he turned toward her, his eyes twinkling. "You know, my brother took offense at that remark, but I never did. I thought the other kids were stupid for jumping from one thing to another. They couldn't understand that life needs planning. Half the fun is in the planning. Maybe I didn't say much and maybe because of that they thought I was a dullard, but I was always planning tomorrow and the next day and the next."
He paused a moment. "Something I've discovered in life that others don't seem to know is that if you plan hard enough you can make things happen."
"Yes," she said, but didn't ask what he wanted to make happen. She didn't want to hear. "You do understand. Just as you were different without meaning to be, so was I. I was strange and when I couldn't fit in, I began to thumb my nose at the other kids, telling them and myself that I didn't need them."
"And then you fell in love," he said softly.
"With Charley?" There was disbelief in her voice.
"Something a little larger than Charley."
She smiled. "Ah, yes, airplanes. You know, I used to think that airplanes were male, but the older I get, the more I think that planes are female. They're no longer something I'm trying to conquer, but they're my very, very good friends. Someone I've shared a great deal with."
"And what about men?"
She looked off into the horizon and didn't answer him.
He persisted. "What do you want to do with your life now, Jackie?"
She didn't look at him, but when she spoke, there was passion in her voice. "Something in me has changed. I don't know what it is. For so many years I wanted to conquer the world. I had such a clear view of what I wanted and how I was going to get it, but I accomplished everything I set out to win, and now I don't know where I'm going to go next. Part of me is angry that the world seems to be moving while I'm standing still, but part of me just wants to sit still and let it go by. Part of me wants to grow roses and—"
Abruptly, she broke off and took a deep drink of her wine.
"And have kids," he filled in for her with amazing—and annoying—accuracy.
"Ridiculous! Do you realize that two girls from my high school class are now grandmothers? What would I do with kids, anyway? Besides that, what man my age wants to start a family?" She stopped because she was protesting too much. A family of her own was not something she had thought too much about in her life. She'd been too busy with planes and taking care of Charley to think about a bunch of kids. Now the urge to see the world was no longer pulling at her, and yet she still wanted to participate in the world.
"I guess what I really want is everything. Everything the world has to offer is what I want. I don't want to give up anything, yet I want to add everything that I don't have."
William was smiling and the sun on his face made him especially handsome. "I can't give you everything, but I'd love to marry you and give you as many kids as you want."
Jackie knew he was serious and for a moment her mouth was dry. There was an almost overwhelming urge within her to say yes. The feeling was every bit as intense as what she'd felt the first time she saw an airplane. Then she'd known nothing about the world. She'd had no idea of the cruelty of people, how they were going to judge her and her abilities before they met her. Now she was older and she'd experienced a great deal of pain as well as joy and she knew what people were going to say. If she married William they would see nothing except the age difference.
"Don't answer," he said, forcing a smile. "It was just a thought."
"Yes, just a thought." She tried to compose her face so that when she turned to him he wouldn't see what was in her eyes. "We are too serious. What we should be thinking of is who is going to clean up the kitchen. And you are going to put my kitchen back the way it was, the way I want it. And my desk, too."
"Ha! Do you know that you have a packet of needles and thread in your desk and a stapler in your sewing basket?"
She didn't know any such thing, but didn't doubt it. Sometimes a person got busy and put things where it was handy, but that wasn't any of his business. "It doesn't matter where I put things. It's my house."
"Only temporarily. Did I mention that I own all the houses in Eternity, as well as the land?"
At that Jackie laughed. Only a Montgomery could say he owned a town in that offhand tone of voice. "So, did you get the buildings for your twenty-first birthday?"
She meant it as a joke, but from the way William's face turned red, she knew she had guessed right, and she gave a whoop of laughter. "Every other person on earth would ask for a trip around the world or a mansion or even a diamond necklace, but what does my rock-solid, always-thinking-ahead William ask for? A ghost town! A run-down, worthless old town that people didn't want even when it was alive. What in the world made you ask for this place?"
When he looked at her, his eyes were intense. "I could build a landing field here." His answer was simple, but it said so much. He'd said that he was always planning, and the town and the airfield had been a lure to her. Even though she had been married to another man and had had no intention of returning to her hometown, William had been planning to bring her back. What was it he had said? That if you plan hard enough you can make things happen. Was she here today because he had wanted her so much, planned so hard, that she had returned?
She smiled at him. Whether things worked out between them or not, she couldn't help being flattered. Charley had never courted her; he'd always made her feel that he was doing her a favor by taking her away from two-bit Chandler. He had let Jackie court him with work and more work and more work. But now here was a man who had spent years planning to win her.
"You make me feel valuable," she said softly. "You make me feel as though I am the most precious object in the world."
"You are."
There was such sincerity in his voice that Jackie didn't know whether to be pleased or embarrassed. She was some of both. In the end, all she could say was "Thank you."
This is heaven, Jackie thought. Next to fifteen snap rolls one after another, this was as good as life got. She was on her pretty couch, doing the best she could to keep her mind on the radio program that William had on, but the truth was, she was watching him as he polished a foot-high stack of shoes, both his and hers. She complained and she hated his presumption, but maybe it was rather nice to open a sewing basket and take out a pair of scissors instead of a stapler. And it would be nice to put on shiny shoes.
It was raining outside, so William had built a fire to take the chill off the cool mountain night. He'd insisted that Jackie stretch out on the couch, a thick blanket draped over her, and she was to do nothing but be quiet and listen to the radio. And watch him, she thought. Who would have thought that seeing a man do something as domestic as polish shoes could have such an effect on her? In a way this simple action made her think more of love than all his kisses did. As Jackie well knew, it wasn't passion that made for a good marriage, it was the little things. If something needed to be assembled, could one of you read the directions while the other constructed? In Jackie's experience, a man didn't like to take orders from a woman for anything at all. Did the two of you bicker? That petty arguing could ruin evenings and afternoons.
Jackie had learned that it wasn't enough for two people to fall in love; they had to get along on a day-to-day basis, had to be able to live in peace and harmony.
And that was her problem with William. He was very easy to live with. Forget that he had really stupid ideas about organization and was obsessed with putting things into what he thought of as the proper order. Day by day he was very easy to be with. When he was hungry, he didn't look to the nearest woman to produce hot, delicious food as though it were a gland secretion. Nor did he expect her to do everything on earth for him. Right now he was polishing Jackie's shoes, something she'd done only a couple of times in her life. After all, who was going to notice whether her shoes were polished or not? The other pilots? Charley? The airplanes?
His voice made her head come up. "Jackie," he said, and the innocence of his tone immediately put her on guard. He sounded as though he had done something he shouldn't or was about to do something he shouldn't.
"Yes?" she said with what she hoped was just as much innocence.
"While I was straightening your desk, I came across something rather interesting."
"Oh? And what was that? A pair of scissors half an inch out of line?"
He ignored her sarcasm, so she knew he was after bigger fish. "I found a letter from a national magazine asking you to please write something for them about flying."
"Oh," she said and tried to think of some way to get him onto another topic. But she knew that his main goal was to put her into the history books, and if he couldn't do that by making her win races, maybe he could do it by turning her into a writer.
"I think that's a splendid idea," he continued innocently. "What you know about airplanes is invaluable. You could help a new generation of young women learn about flying, make them want to fly. You could share your skills and inspire a whole nation."
"True, but if I were that good, I wouldn't ever need to get inside a plane again. I could just sprout wings and fly myself straight to heaven."
Again he ignored her. "Look at this. The magazine has sent a sample article: 'Nita Stinson, the Flying Typist, talks about her first flight.' " Looking at the article, William gave a snort of derision. "Flying Typist, indeed. You are a real pilot."
"For your information, Nita happens to be a friend of mine, and she's an excellent pilot." There was some hostility in her voice, as though she were ready to fight for her friend.
"I apologize. I meant no offense. Forgive me if I happen to think that you are the best pilot, male or female, in the world. Your flying could make the Angel Gabriel sick."
When she glanced at him, he gave her a smile that let her know he was paying her back.
"So," he said, "why don't you try writing?"
With a helpless look on her face, she held up her bandaged hand, showing him that she was incapable of such a task.
Instantly William grabbed pen and paper. "Tell me what you want to say and I'll write it."
"Flying is fun. I like it. You should try it."
"Come on, Jackie, be serious. You must have something you'd like to say to the millions of young women out there who wonder what it's like to be a pilot."
She thought for a moment, then smiled. "Yes, there is something I'd like to say to the world. Got your pen ready?"
With a smile of satisfaction, William began to write as Jackie spoke.
"Whatever is the lowest occupation a woman ever has, that's what she is for the rest of her life. Even if she becomes president of the world, people will say, 'Miss Jones, a former receptionist, is now president of the world.' The implication is that she is getting above herself, because we all know that deep down inside, Miss Jones is really only a receptionist. On the other hand, if a man becomes president of the world, people say, 'Mr. Jones, who used to work in a mail room, is now running the world.' The implication is that Mr. Jones is magnificent for having pulled himself up from his lowly position. The difference between the two is that Miss Jones is a receptionist pretending to be a world leader while Mr. Jones was a world leader in the making even when he was sorting the mail."
Before she had completed the first sentence, William put down his pen and stopped writing. When she'd finished the whole statement, she smiled at him in a smug way. She wasn't about to write a bunch of sugar-coated, violet-scented articles to try to make young women enter aviation. A woman needed to have all the conviction in the world to fly an airplane, because the flying world was tough. It was tough facing men who felt certain that you were going to fail merely because you were female and therefore, in their opinion, not intelligent or competent.
"Is that what you had in mind?" she asked sweetly.
"It's what I had in mind, but I don't think it's what the magazine wants. Come on, I'm hungry. Let's go argue about who cuts up your food. I love the way I get to win."
Laughing, she allowed him to help her into the kitchen.
When Jackie awoke the next morning, it was to a delightful sense of well-being. She was still sick, wasn't she? Well, not really sick, but incapacitated enough to feel that she did not have to make a decision about William leaving. When she was well, he would, of course, have to leave, but for now she could put off that decision with a clear conscience. He was a friend and he was helping her. That's all there was between them.
What a glorious Sunday morning it was! William made blueberry pancakes and served them smothered in butter and syrup, and they laughed together like children. It was odd how childish two adults could be when they were alone. Everything either of them said seemed to be brilliant or funny or both to the other one. She didn't remember their laughing this much when they were children. Jackie had always considered life a challenge, something that had to be conquered, and William had seemed to think that Jackie was his challenge. Whatever had been in the past was now different, for they fit together easily and happily.
After breakfast William washed the dishes while Jackie, with a great show of pain that she didn't really feel, dried them. When the dishes were clean they went into the living room where William offered to read her the comics from the newspaper. It was the most natural thing in the world that she should sit in the circle of his arm so she could see the pictures. And she was eating an apple, so she'd take a bite, then give him a bite, then take one herself. It was a scene from paradise.
The sound of a horn and the crunching of gravel at the approach of a car sent a look of horror across Jackie's face.
"It's Terri," she said in fear, as though the worst possible thing had happened. The next second she had thrown William's arm off her shoulders and she was standing upright, frantically trying to straighten the room. It seemed that everywhere were signs of William's cohabitation. She had to remove all trace of him!
"What's wrong with you?" he asked, not having moved from the couch.
"That's Terri," she said, as though those words explained everything. William's house slippers were on the floor by the big chair. His shirt with a torn pocket was draped across her sewing basket; she'd promised to repair it for him when her hand healed. There were three magazines with his name on the subscription labels on the coffee table. His coat hung on the peg by the door.
Frantically she tried to gather up every trace of him, and when her arms were full, she looked about for some place to hide everything. What if Terri had some reason to look inside the coat closet? What if she wanted to look in the pantry? Jackie headed toward the bedroom, then stopped. That was the last place she should hide William's things.
Calmly William came forward and took the things from her arms. "I'll take care of them," he said softly.
There was something in his tone that she didn't want to hear. No doubt she had hurt his feelings, but she couldn't think of that now. She'd have to worry about soothing him later. "Terri can't see that I have a man living here with me," she said, trying to cover her actions with a lie. But one quick glance at William's eyes told her that he didn't believe her. He knew that she was embarrassed because the male things in her living room belonged to an "inappropriate" man, a younger man, and therefore not a man she wanted to introduce to her friends with pride.
As Jackie scurried about, looking for any other evidence of William's presence, she tried not to think about what she was doing. Later she'd make William—and herself—believe that she was only trying to protect their reputations.
She looked up at him, standing there with an armload of things that were clearly his. "Maybe you…" she began.
"Sure," he said, then turned on his heel and went toward the stairs.
She started to call after him but caught herself just as there was an urgent knock on the door. She turned and went to answer it.
"What in the world were you doing?" Terri asked. "I must have knocked four times. I just heard about your accident this morning. Why didn't you call me? Maybe I could have come out here and taken care of you."
"How kind of you to offer, but I was fine. Really."
"That's not what I heard." Terri walked past Jackie and looked around the room. There weren't many clues to the presence of another person but, even to Jackie's eyes, the room was different: less messy, more perfectly ordered, too tidy.
"Something is going on," Terri said as she turned and looked hard at her friend. "What's going on?"
"Nothing," Jackie answered, but she had to clear her throat in the middle of the word. Even to herself she sounded as though she were lying.
"Mmmm," Terri said, obviously not satisfied. "So what have you been doing with yourself this week?" As though she felt extremely tired, which she did, Terri plopped down on a big down-cushioned chair. Her husband had lost another job this week, and they'd had a blazing fight. "A job isn't like a set of keys," she'd yelled at him. "You can't just lose it for no reason. What did you do?" It was better not to remember what had happened after that. Only because Jackie had been injured was Terri allowed out of the house today.
But she didn't want to talk about her life. She didn't want to talk about it or think about it. Jackie had the exciting life; Jackie had everything that was good in life, everything a person could have.
Easing her weight off her bruised hip, Terri put her hand behind the cushion of the chair, and like Little Jack Horner, she pulled out a plum in the form of a man's sock.
Holding it up, at first she looked puzzled. Then, when she saw the redness of Jackie's face and when Jackie snatched the sock from her hand, Terri began to laugh. "You have a man," she said, smiling. "That's why it took you so long to answer the door. Oh, do tell me who he is." It seemed that even a bad marriage could not cure a woman of hopefulness about romance. Even though her own man was no good, Terri honestly believed that somewhere out there was a knight in shining armor who was made for her.
At the look of embarrassment on Jackie's face, Terri began to push. "Who is he? I can't believe that something is going on and you told me nothing. I haven't heard a whisper of anything in town, so you're doing a great job of hiding it. You must tell me who he is."
"No one," Jackie said tightly. "You want some tea?"
"Sure, but I want information more."
It was all Jackie could do to keep from snapping that what was going on in her life was none of Terri's business. But Terri was an innocent, and so Jackie tried hard not to lose her patience no matter how many awkward, probing, embarrassing questions Terri asked.
"What kind of tea do you want?" Jackie asked finally, her hand gripping the tea canister so hard her knuckles were white.
"Whatever he drinks," Terri said smugly, making Jackie grimace.
"Looking for something?" William asked Terri's son. At first glance, the "boy" didn't seem to be doing anything wrong, just walking around the airplane parked in the hangar, but William knew everyone in Chandler. The Pelman men were worthless, lazy, stupid, and hostile. William didn't trust this overgrown lout even to go to church without an ulterior motive.
"What are you doin' here?" the big kid asked, his thick black brows pulled into a scowl. He was handsome in a brutish way, with thick lips and deep-set eyes, but he had that air of defensiveness that stupidity and arrogance often gave people. Whether he meant to or not, he seemed to be daring anyone to contradict him, daring anyone to hint that he wasn't as smart as the rest of the world.
Abruptly his face brightened and he looked pleased with himself—rather the way a monkey might look when it figured out the problem some scientist had set for it. "You're after her, ain't ya?"
"I beg your pardon?" William asked stiffly. He wasn't sure, but he thought this Pelman was about eighteen years old and named Larry.
"This here Jackie. You're after her, ain't ya?" To William's horror, Larry nudged him with his elbow as though they were fellow conspirators, the best of friends. "I've had my eye on her since she came to town. Mom says—not that she knows anything—that this lady flyer's been all over the world, so I figure she's done some things. You know what I mean?" He winked at William. "Done some things that the ladies of Chandler ain't even heard of. So now this Jackie is here in this one-horse town, and I ain't heard nothin' about her doin' nothin' with nobody, you know what I mean? So I figure she's dyin' for it. And I figure I'll just help myself to what she's got. She's kinda old, but I figure she'll be grateful to have a real man in her bed. She's probably beggin' for it after all this time and after havin' to put up with them fancy foreign fellas. 'Course I can see that you was here first, so I'll let you have her all you want, what with you bein' a Montgomery and all. Hey! Maybe later you can pay me back, since I saw her first. You can give me and my dad jobs. Nothing too hard or anything, just somethin' kinda friendly like, with maybe a bonus now and then. What'd'ya say?"
"Have you seen my shoes?"
In speechless horror, Jackie turned toward the kitchen door to see William standing there, a little-boy-lost expression on his face. She had just spent thirty minutes trying to make Terri believe that there was no man in her life, certainly not any man in Chandler, and now here was William. Asking about his shoes, no less!
She wanted to scream at him, but she knew that whatever she said would only make things worse. Within one hour after Terri saw William Montgomery in her house the town of Chandler was going to be alive with the gossip that old Jackie was having an affair with very young William.
"If it isn't Billy Montgomery," Terri said. "I haven't seen you in ages. What have you been doing?"
Jackie braced herself. What was William going to say to that? Was he going to tell the truth? That he was spending his days trailing Jackie about, just as he'd done when he was a child?
"Jackie and I are going into business together."
"How nice. How is your mother? And your father?"
While William was answering these questions, Jackie looked at him. Usually William was very tidy, every hair in place, his shirt tucked in just so. But now he was slightly disheveled, and there seemed to be a place on his cheek that was darkening, as though it might be a bruise. Glancing down at his hands, she saw that the knuckles on his right hand were bleeding slightly. When he saw where her eyes were going, he put his hand behind his back and kept on talking to Terri, answering her questions about his family.
"And how did you do in school?" Terri was asking.
It took Jackie a long moment to grasp the fact that it had not entered Terri's head that William could be the man who was staying with Jackie, the man Terri had been asking about with all the gusto of an interrogator during the Spanish Inquisition.
The truth was, Terri was talking to William in that tone of voice that adults used with children. An aren't-you-cute voice. Any minute Jackie expected to hear her ask if William had washed behind his ears.
"So you've been taking care of Jackie," Terri was saying. "That's very kind of you, especially when you have your own life to lead. A handsome young man like you must have a hundred pretty little girlfriends."
"A few," William said with a soft smile.
It was a smile that enraged Jackie. It was the smile a boy would give to an older woman when he was trying to be on his best behavior.
Outside, a horn began to blow insistently—Terri's horrible son demanding that his mother leave and leave now.
"If you need any help with Jackie, let me know," Terri was saying as she started to put on her coat. Graciously, William held it for her. "You always were a gentleman. Wasn't he, Jackie? You remember how he was. Even as a little boy he was so polite."
Jackie could say nothing. She didn't want to remember that she'd known William as a little boy.
"But of course you remember," Terri said when Jackie didn't answer. "You were his baby-sitter, and he used to follow you everywhere. Oh, the escapades you two had! And now, Billy, how nice it is of you to help Jackie when she needs it. Well, please remember me to your parents, and maybe you can get together with my children."
"Yes," Jackie said in a very nasty tone. "Maybe we can arrange play dates for them. In a sandbox. Or maybe we can take them to the circus. They could ride the elephants and eat cotton candy."
At her hateful tone, Terri looked surprised and confused. "Well, yes, maybe."
"Jackie's hand hurts her," William said placidly, and his calmness made Jackie even angrier. "It puts her a bit on edge."
"Walk me out to the car, will you?" Terri said to Jackie.
Her hands clenched at her side, Jackie walked with her friend to the car where her big son sat glowering behind the steering wheel. As they approached, he turned his head away, but not before Jackie saw a smear of dried blood leading from his nose across his cheek.
"Don't think you can put me off," Terri said cheerfully as they reached the car. "I mean to find out who the man in your life is."
Jackie's teeth were locked together. "William is not a child, you know. In case you haven't noticed, he is a man." She had not meant to say that.
Terri looked puzzled, as though what Jackie had said had nothing whatever to do with what was going on in the world. "Of course he's a young man. I didn't mean to imply that he wasn't. Do you think I hurt his feelings by asking him about his parents? Children that age can be so sensitive."
"William is not a child!" Her words sounded more forceful than she meant them to. Why couldn't she be sophisticated and cool-tempered? She might as well tell Terri the truth about how she was beginning to feel about William.
"No," Terri said calmly, "Billy is not a child, but once you've seen a person in diapers you tend to always see that person in diapers." She cocked her head to one side. "What is wrong with you? I think it's very nice of Billy to take care of you. You've certainly taken care of him often enough. I remember how he was always on your heels. Everyone in school used to laugh about little Billy Montgomery following you around." She reached out and patted Jackie's arm and gave her a sad look. "Billy must be the closest thing you'll ever have to your own child."
"Only if I had given birth to him when I was ten years old!" Jackie snapped with a great deal of venom.
Terri looked startled by Jackie's fierceness. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I'm sure that your childlessness must be a sore point with you. I meant nothing by what I said. I just think it's nice that Billy is here with you. It's kind of him."
Jackie could say nothing, absolutely nothing. Terri had meant well, but she had succeeded in making Jackie feel about a hundred years old. According to Terri, Jackie was infertile, an old woman who had already lived her life, and there was no hope of any future for her. According to Terri, Jackie should be grateful that a young man like William "helped" her when she was "invalided." Instead of a cut hand, Terri made Jackie's injury sound as though she had old-age arthritis and was confined to a wheelchair, and sweet young Billy Montgomery, out of the goodness of his heart, was wheeling her around.
Terri put her hand on the handle of the car, but then she quickly grabbed Jackie's arm and pulled her away where her son couldn't hear them. "Don't think I've forgotten about that man you have in your life. You won't be able to keep a secret from me."
"I'm keeping no secrets from you," Jackie said angrily—and honestly.
Terri looked as though she wanted to weep. Jackie was the highlight of her life, and she could not figure out what she had done to offend her. Maybe Jackie was telling the truth and didn't have a man in her life. Maybe Terri had read the signs wrong. Maybe Jackie's sudden, inexplicable hostility had arisen because Terri had assumed something that wasn't true and now Jackie was embarrassed that there was no man in her life.
"You do remember that I told you about Edward Browne? He's been asking about you again," she said softly, glancing at her big son, sulking in the car. "He's asked about you several times. He really does like you, and he's a great catch."
So many emotions were raging through Jackie that she couldn't speak, so Terri seemed to take her silence as encouragement.
"He's a very nice man, Jackie," Terri said persuasively. "He's about fifty-five years old, a widower. His children are grown, so you wouldn't have any problems there. Stepchildren can be a handful, you know. He's quite well off, so he could support you after you quit flying."
Jackie felt that Terri meant, "When you come to your senses, decide to grow up, and quit fooling with those silly airplanes, there will be a man to take care of you."
Terri didn't have any idea of the thoughts going through Jackie's head. To her, the prospect of Edward Browne was wonderful. The man owned every shoe store within a hundred-mile radius, and he had a lovely house furnished with antiques he had inherited from his parents. The thought of a steady, reliable man, of a house that was well cared for and orderly, was Terri's idea of heaven. She no longer wanted excitement in her life. The drunken rages of her husband and the bloody fights between him and their sons were more excitement than she'd ever wanted. In Terri's mind, happiness was buying something pretty and fragile and feeling sure that it wasn't going to be broken within twenty-four hours.
"Edward Browne is such a nice man," Terri encouraged. "He's lived in Chandler for fifteen years, and everyone has only praise for him. Not a word of scandal. His wife was lovely, and they seemed to be very much in love. He was devastated when she died two years ago, and I understand he's very lonely. Every unmarried woman in Chandler from twenty to fifty has been after him. He'll go out with them now and then, but he never goes out with the same woman more than twice. Yet he's asked me about you several times. I told him he should call you, but he said that he wants to know you'd welcome him. I think he's rather shy, and, Jackie, you know that you can be intimidating. I think he considers you a celebrity, so he's a bit afraid of calling you without prior permission."
Terri was looking at Jackie intently. "Can I tell him it's okay to call you?"
"I… I don't know," Jackie said honestly. Why did life have to be so complicated?
As far as Jackie could tell, there was no way to get rid of Terri except to agree to allow this man, Edward Browne, to call her. And why shouldn't Jackie go out with this very, very appropriate man? Was she engaged to someone else? Even dating someone else? In love with another man? No, she was not. She was completely and absolutely free. And besides, her attraction to William was probably about ninety percent loneliness. She was used to being surrounded by people, and now she was suddenly so alone that probably any man, no matter what age, would look good to her.
"Tell him to call me," Jackie said with some conviction—not much, but some.
Terri hugged her friend and then got into the rusty old car beside her angry son, who sped away so fast that flying gravel peppered Jackie's legs.
Once Terri was gone, Jackie braced herself to face William. She didn't like the fact that he'd so blatantly announced his presence to Terri. Had Terri been a little more astute she might have figured out that Jackie and William were… well, were whatever they were.
In the house, she found William sitting on the couch, calmly reading the paper. When he looked up at her he seemed to expect her to sit by him and finish reading the comics, just as though Terri's visit had never happened.
"I want to talk to you," she said sternly, the door barely closed behind her.
"What have I done now?" he asked, amusement in his voice.
She wasn't going to treat this matter lightly. Didn't he realize what kind of rumors could be spread? "You may get away with playing the little boy with Terri, but it won't work with me." She had every intention of berating him for endangering her reputation by implying that he was living with her when he came into the room asking about his shoes. But to her horror, that was not what came out of her mouth.
"How could you have allowed Terri to treat you like a child?" she demanded.
William blinked at her a couple of times. "Is that what you're upset about?" He put his newspaper back in front of his face. "Older people always treat younger ones like children. Forever. They never stop, no matter how old you get."
It seemed to her that William meant to end the discussion there, but Jackie suddenly became very angry. "Older!" she sputtered. "What does that mean? Terri is exactly the same age as I am. Actually, she's three months younger than I am.
Obviously unperturbed, William turned a page of the newspaper. "Some people are old at twenty, and some are young at sixty."
"And just what is that supposed to mean?"
To further her anger, William didn't bother to answer. He just kept reading that blasted newspaper, his face hidden from her view. It was difficult, if not impossible, to have a serious argument about one of life's more profound issues with oneself. From the very beginning it seemed to her that William had failed to take this age difference seriously. He acted as though it mattered not at all.
"What did you do to Terri's son?" she asked, trying another way to get a reaction out of him.
"Did my best to teach him some manners, something he needed to be taught."
Part of Jackie wanted to thank him for interfering, and part of her was more than a little annoyed. Every woman wanted to be a beautiful princess whose honor was fought for by a handsome young man, who, of course, later turned out to be a prince. But in the real world Jackie didn't like the implication that she belonged to William and therefore he had the right to do whatever violent thing he had done to Terri's son.
Princess or no, William's lack of reaction was taking the wind out of her sails. She wanted something from him, but she didn't know what. "There's a man in town who wants to go out with me," she said, trying to sound as though this were an ordinary occurrence, but even as she spoke she knew she was trying to make William jealous. When he didn't look around his paper, she continued. "Terri says he's awfully nice." Warming to her subject, she fairly purred as she looked at the newspaper William held in front of his face. "Edward Browne. Do you know him? Terri says he's a wonderful man. Older, experienced. He was married for years, so he's already broken in, so to speak. Must know a lot about women."
She stood where she was, waiting for some reaction from him. After a while, he slowly folded the section of newspaper he was reading, neatly put it on top of the other sections—one could hardly tell that the paper had been opened—and opened another section.
"I think you ought to go out with him," he said from behind the paper.
"Wh… what?"
"Mr. Browne is a nice man. My mother likes him a lot, and my dad too."
"You want me to go out with him?" Even to her own ears there was disbelief in her voice.
"I think you should." He looked at her from around the paper. "Really, Jackie, you need to get out more. You can't just go from Charley to me. You need to look at the choices out there."
She didn't know whether that statement made her angry or just plain confused. "For your information, I've known lots of men besides you and Charley."
"Mmmm," he said. "Fancy foreign fellers."
"Fancy… ?" Those were not William's words. It was almost as though he was quoting someone else. "What in the world is wrong with you?"
"I have no idea what you mean. You said Terri suggested you go out with Edward Browne, and I agree that you should. Have I done something wrong? I assume you do want to go out with Mr. Browne or you wouldn't have brought it up, would you?"
What could she say? That she wanted to make him jealous? "Yes, of course it's a good idea. I'll… I'll tell Terri."
Before she could form another thought, the telephone rang. Listlessly she answered it. Terri was calling to tell her that she had just "happened" to see Edward Browne on the street, and they had started talking, and, well, it seemed that Edward would love to take Jackie to dinner tonight. Would that be all right with her? Terri asked this question as though she were asking Jackie if she'd like to be given a couple of million dollars.
Jackie refused to think about what she was doing. Yes, it would be all right, she told Terri. She'd meet Edward at the Conservatory, Chandler's nicest restaurant at eight o'clock tonight.
"Oh, and, Jackie," Terri said, "wear that beige silk dress of yours. The one with the gold buttons."
"I thought I'd wear the coveralls I wear when I work on the planes," Jackie said with great sarcasm. She'd had her fill of people implying that she didn't know how to behave, how to dress, how to run her own life. Immediately she felt guilty for speaking to Terri so waspishly. "I'll be there, and I'll look as respectable as I can."
"All right," Terri said timidly, knowing that she had again done something wrong. But this time she felt that the end justified the means, because she knew that Jackie and Edward were perfect for each other and would fall madly in love with each other. Someday Jackie would thank her for having introduced them.
Putting down the phone, Jackie glanced at William, his face hidden behind the newspaper. "I have a date tonight," she said and cursed her heart for leaping into her throat. She very stupidly had a vision of William throwing his paper aside, sweeping her into his arms, and telling her she mustn't go out with any other man.
But nothing happened. In fact, William's only comment was an uncaring grunt, so Jackie, her shoulders drooping, left the room. She missed seeing William ball up the section of paper he was reading and throw it into the fireplace so forcefully that he displaced a log, which made the front log roll onto the floor and nearly set the rug on fire. Jackie missed seeing William stamping the flames out of the rug, the floor, the hearth, and four magazines with a fury that would have wrecked a less solidly built floor. An hour or so later, when she returned, dressed for her date, William was quietly still reading the paper, as though Jackie's leaving on a date meant nothing to him.
Jackie had to admit that, if judged by looks alone, Edward Browne was everything a woman could want in a man: tall, solidly muscular, with just enough fat on him to let a woman know that he would enjoy good cooking, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped. He had dark hair with just a bit of gray at the temples, and beautiful dark eyes. Although he was very handsome, there was a quietness about him that said he had no idea that he was attractive.
No wonder the women of Chandler are killing themselves over him, Jackie thought.
"Miss O'Neill," he said, extending his hand. "I can't tell you how pleased I am that you accepted my invitation. I have been an admirer of yours for years."
"Not too many years, I hope," she answered, eyes sparkling, but he looked puzzled and didn't seem to understand her sense of humor.
Graciously, with the good manners that he'd probably had all his life, he held out a chair for her. There was a rather long, awkward silence as they looked at the menu. Then Edward competently ordered a bottle of French wine.
Once the orders were placed, Jackie had to keep herself from looking at her watch. This was going to be a very long evening. She hoped that William was wondering where she was and what she was doing. Sternly she reminded herself that it didn't matter what little Billy Montgomery was doing or thinking. He was only a temporary part of her life.
"The entire ritual of dating is deplorable, isn't it?" Edward said, looking at her across the candlelight. "It takes two perfectly ordinary people and makes them nervous and uncertain. It puts them in an impossible situation and asks them to discover good qualities about each other."
Jackie smiled. "Yes, I find it quite awful."
His eyes were twinkling. "Has Terri told you as much about me as she's told me about you?"
At this Jackie laughed. The FBI didn't know as much about criminals as Terri had told her on the phone about Edward Browne, and Terri had emphasized repeatedly how interested Edward was in Jackie. "I think he's been in love with you from afar for a long time," Terri said. "He knows a lot about you and has asked me thousands of questions."
"And no doubt you've made me out to be a saint," Jackie said.
"Did you expect me to tell him about your bad points?" she asked, then said something that made Jackie groan: "He loved seeing my scrapbook about you."
So now Jackie wondered exactly what Terri had told this man. "Yes. Terri could not stop talking about you. The only thing she left out was whether or not you have any tattoos."
Again Edward looked puzzled. "No, none," he said seriously. "Oh, I see. You're referring to the fact that I was in the navy."
Jackie was referring to nothing at all, just trying to inject a little levity into the situation, but she had not succeeded. The arrival of the salads kept her from having to explain.
"I guess we can skip the talk of our early lives," he said. "Of course with you it's easier since you are a world renowned figure."
Jackie hated it when people said that. It made her sound as though she didn't need what other humans needed: love, companionship, warmth.
For a moment Edward toyed with his salad, and Jackie watched him. She didn't know him at all, of course, and she had accepted his invitation in a fit of pique, but as she looked at him, she thought, This is the type of man I should marry. This man was perfect: perfect age, background, education. This was a man she could introduce to the world and everyone would say, "What a wonderful man your husband is!"
"Do you miss your husband as much as I miss my wife?" he asked softly, so softly that Jackie almost didn't hear him.
His question was from his heart, so Jackie answered from the same place. "Yes," she said, then waited for him to speak again. There was an air of sadness about him, a romantic air, she thought and again realized why Terri and the other women were trying so hard to get him married.
"You know what I miss the most?" When she shook her head, he continued. "I miss having someone who knows me. My wife and I were married a very long time, and she could look at me and say, 'You have a headache, don't you?' Every year at Christmas our grown children give me slippers and ties, but my wife gave me little ships in bottles or scrimshaw carvings of ships, because only she knew of my dream to sail around the world when I retire. She bought all my clothing in exactly my taste, cooked just what I liked. It took us many years together to reach that stage of comfort, and now it's what I miss the most."
Jackie was silent for a while as she thought of Charley and how he'd also known so much about her, both good and bad. "When my husband wanted me to do something that I didn't want to do, he knew just how to wheedle me into doing it."
Edward smiled at her. "Cora always spent too much money. Not on herself but on me and the kids. Sometimes I'd get furious at her, but she always knew just how to soothe me."
As the salad plates were taken away, Jackie knew that they were talking about loneliness, the great loneliness that one felt after having been close to someone and then having lost that person. They were talking about the things that they missed. Like the affectionate names Charley had called her. On the day she met Charley, he'd called her an angel and she'd liked that very much, but after a week he stopped calling her his angel. A year or so after they were married she asked him why he'd stopped. Charley had smiled and said, "Because you, my dear, are not an angel. You are a little devil."
Jackie feared that she was attracted to William because of her deep loneliness. Wasn't a warm body better than no body? She and William were actually ill-suited, weren't they? He was too set in his ways for her, wasn't he? There were too many differences between them, weren't there?
"What are you planning to do in the future?" Edward asked.
"I'm expanding my freight and passenger service with William Montgomery as my partner."
"William Montgomery? Oh, you mean little Billy?" He chuckled. "But I guess he's not so little anymore, is he? How old is he now?"
"Twenty-eight," she said as she gripped the stem of her wineglass.
"These children do grow up, don't they? Doesn't it amaze you that one day you see a child riding his tricycle and the next day he's getting married?" He smiled warmly at her as the waiter delivered the entrée. "Of course there's our own mirror, too. One day we're laughing teenagers and the next we're middle-aged."
Jackie tried to share his smile. Was it a shock to every woman the first time she heard herself referred to as middle-aged? Jackie guessed that thirty-eight was middle age, but the term still seemed more suitable for her parents than for her.
"You didn't have any children, did you?"
"No," Jackie answered softly. The way he asked the question made her sound as though her chances were over.
He looked down at his plate, and she could see that he had something he considered important to say. "The woman who marries me will get to have children."
"Oh?" Jackie asked encouragingly.
"Yes." He smiled warmly at her, obviously liking her enthusiasm. His wife had always felt sorry for any woman who didn't have children. She said that a woman without children was "incomplete."
"I have a son and a daughter in Denver, and I am proud to say that I have two grandchildren—a boy six months old and a girl two years old. Beautiful, brilliant, talented—" He cut himself off and laughed self-consciously.
"I'll be showing you pictures in a minute." When Jackie opened her mouth to ask to see them, he waved his hand. "Absolutely not. I want to hear about you. You say that you're planning to expand your flying business. I think it's wise of you to go into business with a young man like Billy. He has the backing of the Montgomery money, and with his youth he can do the flying for you."
Jackie gave him an intense look. "William's not a very good pilot."
"Ah, too bad, but I'm sure you can hire others. Doesn't he have young cousins who fly? I seem to remember a few of them buzzing around."
"I rather like buzzing around myself," she said, her head down.
Immediately Edward knew that he had offended her. "Of course you do. Forgive me. I didn't mean anything. You are years away from retirement. It's just that retirement is close at hand for me, so I think it's that way for others too."
He was protesting too much, and it was obvious that he was backtracking merely to make her feel better. There was an awkward silence in which Jackie kept her head down and moved her fish about on her plate. She'd ordered fish so she could cut it with a fork; she wouldn't have liked to ask a man to cut her steak for her. Only William— Stop it! she commanded herself.
Edward didn't fully understand what he had said to offend her. When his wife had reached forty—an age Jackie was fast approaching—she had cried for two days. She'd said it was the end of youth and that she didn't want to be middle-aged. Maybe that was Jackie's problem. She was refusing to face the fact that she wasn't a kid anymore. No longer would the newspapers write stories about her being the youngest person to do so and so. Maybe her eyesight was failing, or her reflexes. Maybe she was seeing the younger pilots doing so well, then seeing her own body aging, and it was making her angry. Aging often made a person angry at first.
Maybe, he thought, she was worried about whether or not she was still attractive to men.
"I like mature women," he said. "They know more about life." His eyes twinkled. "They don't expect so much of a man."
He meant to make light of himself, but Jackie didn't take the remark that way. "Do you mean that an older woman knows she has to take what she can get in a husband, that she can no longer expect some gorgeous young man to sweep her off her feet?"
That was not at all what he meant, but he didn't say so. Something seemed to be bothering her, and he didn't know enough about her to figure out what it was. He decided it would probably be better just to change the subject.
"I'm going to sail around the world someday," Edward said brightly, trying to introduce a whole new topic. A more pleasant one than aging.
"Are you?" Jackie asked, trying to work up some interest in what he was saying. She knew that he hadn't meant to demean her by saying that he liked mature women. She was a mature woman. So why did William's words—"I'd love to marry you and give you as many kids as you want"—echo in her head? He hadn't said, "as many kids as you have fertile years left." Could a mature woman have a dozen children?
"Have you always been a sailor?" she forced herself to ask.
The question embarrassed Edward, for he knew she thought he'd meant that he was going to sail a boat himself. Considering her skills with a plane, it was understandable that she would assume others were as capable as she was.
"I meant that I'm going on a cruise ship with a few hundred other people."
"Oh" was all that Jackie could reply. She had been in towns when a cruise ship had pulled into port and suddenly every shop, every restaurant, would be overrun with tourists buying anything that could possibly be called a souvenir.
"Come with me, Jackie," Edward said, surprising both of them.
"What?"
"I'll make all the arrangements, pay for everything. I don't expect you to marry me. I'll book us separate cabins, and we'll be traveling companions, friends. We'll see the world together. Or maybe you'll be seeing the world again." He reached across the table and took her hand in his large warm one. "I know we could be friends. I've read so much about you, and I'd love to hear all about your exciting life. I'd love to hear about the time you flew those burned children to the hospital and the president called you. You must be full of hundreds of stories."
"Rather like taking a radio with you, huh?"
"I beg your pardon."
"Taking me with you to tell you stories would be like having your own radio with you at every moment. You could feed me a dinner and I'd perform. Buy me a trinket and you get a story. Pay for a whole cruise and you get relief from the tedium of months on a ship with nothing to do."
By the time she finished, he was sitting straight in his chair, and there was a closed look on his face. It was a businessman look rather than an I'm-out-with-a-pretty-woman-for-dinner look.
"I apologize," she said, then took a deep breath. "Mr. Browne, I don't mean to be offensive, but I think you've fallen in love with Terri's glorification of whatever I may have accomplished in my life. I'm a woman, just as your wife was a woman. I'm not a public institution, nor am I an especially good storyteller. I've led an exciting life, and I have no intention of retiring yet."
Oh, heavens, but she was making a mess of this. This was a very nice person, just like Terri. But why did she have the feeling that ninety percent of Terri's and Edward's interest in her was based on her fame? What other reason would this man have had for asking about her? She certainly wasn't the most beautiful unmarried woman in town. So why was he interested in her?
He had already answered that question: he wanted companionship. He was fifty-five years old, and he was no longer looking for long legs and a woman to start a family with. At this stage in his life he wanted someone to talk with and what better candidate than a woman who'd traveled all over the world and was "full of stories"?
After Jackie's outburst there was no way to salvage the evening. They spent the rest of the meal in awkward silence.
When Jackie returned home she wasn't surprised to see the house dark and no sign of William anywhere. What had she expected, that he'd be waiting up for her?
She shook her head, trying to clear it. There was nothing between her and William, nothing at all, and there wasn't going to be. He said he loved her, even though she had done everything possible to keep him from loving her. She winced when she thought of flying the airplane upside down and making him ill. Even if she couldn't return his love it hadn't been very polite of her to be so nasty about everything.
As she headed to her bedroom, she felt as though each foot weighed a thousand pounds. William, William, William, her brain kept echoing. He seemed to be all she could think of, yet he was forbidden. He was the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. "And we know what happened there," she said out loud as she opened the door.
As soon as she turned on the light, she knew that something was wrong. At first she didn't know what it was and for a moment she stood in the doorway looking at the room. It was exactly as she'd left it; she could see nothing different, much less wrong. It was the same in the kitchen, everything as she'd left it.
Suddenly she realized that that was what was wrong: nothing was different. In only a short time she had grown used to William's orderliness, the way he put everything away—maybe he put things in the wrong place, but at least they were out of sight. But tonight nothing had been put away. On the kitchen countertops was evidence that William had prepared himself a meal, but the dirty dishes were still in the sink, not even soaking in soapy water. On impulse, she opened the refrigerator door, and instead of the orderliness she usually saw, the contents were in chaos. It looked as though a drunken two-year-old had gone on an Easter egg hunt in the icebox.
She didn't know why the disorder in the refrigerator should depress her, but it did. Maybe she should have felt better at this evidence that William was upset at her going on a date with another man, but somehow this made her feel worse. Maybe "hopeless" was the right word. "Jackie," she said aloud, "you are hopeless. You just met a perfect man who liked you and you're depressed because your business partner didn't clean up the kitchen."
Despondently she walked through the dark house toward the bedroom. She knew that this was her chance to end things between her and William. In the morning she should tell him that she'd had a marvelous time with a marvelous man and she was very much interested in a future with him. What was that French word? "Insouciance." Yes, she should deliver her story about tonight with insouciance.
But instead of playing the lady who doesn't care, the second she entered the bedroom she flung herself on the bed, the down comforter practically hugging her as she burst into tears. How could her life have taken this terrible turn? Why did she think about William all the time? Tonight there hadn't been a minute when she wasn't wondering what he was doing, what he was thinking. She had compared that nice Mr. Browne to William in everything he did and said.
When she felt a strong male hand on her head, a hand that could only belong to William, she wasn't surprised at his presence. Wasn't he always there when she needed him? If her plane crashed into a rock, he was there to save her. If she cut her hand, he stopped the blood. And before, if she and her husband had needed money, William was the one who knew what was wrong and anonymously helped them.
"You want to tell me what's wrong?"
With her face buried in the coverlet, she shook her head. No, she didn't want to tell him, if for no other reason than because she herself didn't know what the real problem was.
It seemed quite natural when William pulled her into his arms. He was leaning against the headboard, his long legs stretched out on the bed, as he pulled her across him, her head on his broad chest.
"Drink this," he said, holding a snifter of brandy to her lips, and when she'd taken several deep swallows, he put the glass on the bedside table. "Now tell me what's making you cry."
"I can't tell you," she wailed.
"Then who can you tell if not me?"
He was, of course, unfortunately right. She couldn't tell Terri because Terri couldn't know about William. William was a secret. But William was her friend, had been her friend for as long as she could remember.
"How was your… date?" he asked, a catch in his voice.
With her head against his heart, Jackie could feel the emotion inside him. Now she should tell him in elaborate detail about tonight. She should stop William—and herself —from thinking there could ever be anything between them. "It was perfect," she said. "He was perfect." The words were at odds with her tone of voice, which said that "perfect" meant "horrible." The tears started to flow with renewed vigor.
"Oh, William," she said, clinging to him, tears wetting his shirt, "I know what I should do. I should marry some man like Edward Browne. He's perfect for me. He's the right age, the right background. He's even the right size for me. Everything is perfect. He's lonely; I'm lonely. We're a match made in heaven."
William handed her a tissue, and she blew her nose loudly. "He was such a nice man and I was awful to him. I took everything he said the wrong way. He… he called me a mature woman."
"That shows that he knows nothing about you," William said with heavy sarcasm.
Jackie sniffed. "He didn't know anything about me. He wanted me to tell him stories about my exciting life. He made me sound like a lady explorer showing slides of the natives."
Tears started up again. "But he was so very nice. Why was I so awful to him? And why don't I ever do what's good for me? Why don't I do what I should do?"
"Why aren't you in love with this man if he's so perfect?" William's words were calm, but with her face against his chest, she could feel his heart racing, feel the tension in his body as he talked of something that meant so much to him.
"Because he's so… so old," Jackie blurted. "He's no fun! Not like you are. You make me laugh. You make me—"
She broke off to look up at him. "Why are you smiling?" She couldn't help feeling betrayed by that smile. "I'm pouring my heart out to you, and you're laughing?"
"Jackie my love," he said slowly, pulling her even closer. "Only you would think of me as fun. No other girl in the world has ever accused me of being fun. Many times I've been in a group that wanted to do something I considered stupid or dangerous, and when I said no, they've called me an old man."
"Kids!" Jackie said in derision.
At that, he chuckled, his hands caressing her upper arm. "You know what I love about you, Jackie?"
"Nothing about me is lovable," she said heavily. "I'm an idiot."
He ignored that statement. "One, just one of the things that I love about you, is that when you were a child you were an adult, and now that you're an adult you're a child. I think that when you were born you were about twenty-five years old and you've never changed. And probably never will."
"I'm not twenty-five years old. I'm a mature woman. Oh, William, what am I going to do? This man is so good for me." me.
"So's broccoli."
"What?"
"Broccoli is very good for you. A person should eat broccoli every day. Actually, people should only eat boiled chicken, broccoli, and brown rice. A person should never eat chocolate or ice cream or buttered popcorn."
"What are you talking about?"
"Edward Browne. He's broccoli."
"Oh," she said, beginning to understand. "So I guess you think you're chocolate ice cream."
"More like vanilla, I'd say."
In spite of herself, she smiled. "You think highly of yourself, don't you?" As suddenly as it had appeared, her smile disappeared. "William, what am I going to do? You and I can't… We can't be together. You know that as well as I do. But I think about you all of the time. Even tonight when I was with that very nice man, I… Oh, William, what am I going to do?"
Only the pounding of his heart under her cheek betrayed that William was affected by her words. In a way, she was telling him that she loved him, wasn't she?
"I have one question for you," he said. "If you'd never known me as a child and you first met me when your plane went down, if I were the same age as you or a few years older, what would you feel for me?"
Jackie didn't answer right away, but gave the question the thought that it deserved. There was William's sense of humor, which was so different from other people's humor. She loved his honesty and the way he could laugh at himself. Of course there were many other men in the world who had a sense of humor; he wasn't the only one. But there were too many Edward Brownes of the world, men who didn't laugh. There were too many Edward Brownes who considered themselves old because that was what their passport said.
But would William be different if he were thirty-eight instead of twenty-eight? Quite suddenly she had some insight into his character. If he married a younger woman he would take the responsibility of teaching her—Jackie knew all too well that older husbands considered two-thirds of their job to be teaching their young wives about life—so seriously he'd turn into an old man five minutes after he said, "I do." Oddly enough, she knew that it would take someone like her to keep him young. He needed someone who flew airplanes upside down now and then, someone to keep him from turning into that rock the children had said he was.
"Jackie? Are you going to answer me? Tell me the truth. What would you think of me if you knew nothing of me from the past? And if my birth certificate had a different date on it?"
"I'd think you needed me," she said softly. "Needed me to keep you young."
Jackie was still talking—she didn't know what about—when she felt William's breath in her hair. It was as though one minute they were innocent children comforting each other and the next they realized they were adults capable of very adult feelings.
She quite suddenly became aware of his strong hands on her back, his lips that were now pressed against her neck.
"William," she whispered.
He didn't seem to hear her as he pulled her closer to him, her body, her breasts, full against his chest. She felt more than heard him groan as her softness touched the steel strength of his chest.
Slowly, as though it were the most important thing he'd ever done, William buried his hands in her hair and brought his lips to hers. He'd kissed her before, but not like this. Before, he'd been in control; he had seemed to want to show her something. Those kisses had had a beginning and an end.
But this kiss was tenderness. It was all tenderness and gentleness and sensitivity. It was as though he'd been wanting to press his lips to hers for a long while and now that he was being allowed to, he was going to savor every second of it. There was something else in the kiss: vulnerability. He was allowing her to see how very much she meant to him, allowing her to see his longing and yearning, and his love. He was showing her how easily she could hurt him. In that kiss he was not protecting himself, but allowing his innermost feelings to be seen and felt. He was trusting her.
She knew that he would never take what he hadn't been offered, so if the kiss continued past a kiss, it would be up to her to make the first move. William had too much respect for her to do anything that she would regret later.
The kiss continued, then deepened, and the longing she felt in him increased. It was almost as though she could feel his very soul in that kiss. When he pulled away from her he was trembling from the iron will he was exerting to keep himself under control. She felt that he would like to leap on her, maybe tear her clothes off, make wild love to her. But instead he was limiting himself to one gentle, long kiss.
"William," she whispered.
"Yes?" His normally deep voice was husky with suppressed emotion.
"I…" She didn't know what to say. Women were indoctrinated from childhood with the notion that a man should be the aggressor. Of course, after years of marriage a woman often found that if she didn't start things, things wouldn't get started. So now she wanted to tell William that it was all right, that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. Maybe this was wrong and maybe she would regret it tomorrow, but then maybe the world would end and tomorrow would never come.
She didn't use words to give permission but used the age-old device of opening herself to him, allowing her body to tell him yes. Turning fully toward him, she opened her mouth under his, pressed her legs against his, allowed her body to soften.
She was afraid he would ask her if she was sure she wanted to make love with him and thereby give her yet another decision to make. But William didn't waste time with words. Instead of speaking, he looked at her with the most delighted pair of eyes she had ever seen. His look was that of a boy who'd been given his first taste of ice cream and who meant to enjoy every bit.
She had, of course, thought more than she wanted to admit about the fact that William had mentioned, in a rather angry moment, that he was a virgin. More than once she had awakened at night and imagined being an older woman teaching a shy—yet highly desirable and utterly gorgeous—young man what to do. She imagined herself as a worldly-wise French courtesan, remembering to be gentle and kind, thinking of his needs and his first impressions. She would want to make his first sexual experience memorable for its sheer beauty.
Dreams alone in bed had nothing to do with reality. And this reality was about two hundred pounds of enthusiastic, hungry male. There was no shyness. No hesitation. The beauty of it was in the exuberance, the energy, the unbiased delight, in William's sheer joy and surprise.
Brother! Could William unfasten buttons quickly. One minute she was fully clothed and the next she was wearing nothing. One minute she was expecting languor and the next she was smiling happily in delight as William began touching and tasting her skin.
William's hands were all over her at once, searching, exploring. His mouth followed his hands, and when Jackie moaned in pleasure he seemed to have found the keys to heaven. With one hand on one breast, his mouth on the other, he tried different movements to see what felt best to both of them. As far as Jackie could tell, everything felt best.
"William," she tried to say, but he had his hands all over her and that lovely mouth of his was sending such shivers of delight through her that she could hardly think. "Your…" She broke off because she couldn't remember what she had meant to say. Who could remember something as complicated as words when he was touching her like that? His hands were on her thighs, his strong palms running over the curves of her legs. Now she understood the fascination men had with virgins. To think that this man had never done this to another woman! It made her seem more than special. It made her feel unique, unequaled, like the queen of the world. That this divine man had never been touched by another female made her feel that he was hers in a way that nothing else could.
Her body was turning to mush, pliant, soft, easy. "Your…" she tried again.
"My what?" he managed to whisper, his voice filled with the intoxication of pleasure he was experiencing.
She tugged at his shirt collar. She was fully nude, deliciously nude and open to William's eyes and hands, but he had on all of his clothes.
After the ease with which he had removed her clothes, she wasn't surprised when his came off in the flash of an eye.
Heavens, but he was beautiful. Skin like something newly hatched, something that had been born yesterday. Soft, downy hair on his chest, muscles strong and new, glistening with strength and youth. She wouldn't have thought it possible but the sight of his beautiful body made her grow even more limp with desire. Eagerly her hands sought any and all of him that she could touch; then she twisted her body so she could put her mouth on his clean bare shoulder, and her hands moved downward.
She was not prepared for the bliss, the rapture, that was apparent on William's face and in his voice when she took the most private parts of him into her hands. If nothing else, her pleasure was in knowing that he was not comparing her to anyone else. No other woman had touched him. No woman had put her hands or lips on him. He was hers alone.
When he moved his big, heavy body on top of hers and prepared to slip inside her, Jackie arched her hips to meet him. Never had anything felt as right, as proper, as "what was meant to be" as did this joining of her body with William's. The word "home" echoed through her brain: he had come home; she was now at home. They were where they were meant to be.
"Yes, yes," was all she could say as William began to move on top of her. "Ecstasy" didn't begin to describe how he made her feel. There were no words to describe the joy. There was the excitement that always accompanied sex, but with William there was more. He seemed to touch some deep, remote area of her that had never been touched before. This act that she had experienced before had been a physical one, but now it was deeper than that. It was almost spiritual, because she felt that she was bonding with this man in the last possible way. They had been friends, had exchanged thoughts and secrets, but this exchange had until now been denied them.
If Jackie had thought about it—and she had, far more than she'd admit to herself—she would have expected the first time with William to be of the very shortest duration. Happily—very happily—she was wrong. After several minutes she began to wake up inside.
"William, you are wooonnnderful," she said dreamily, her back arched, her eyes closed. She heard him laugh, that smug laugh of men when they are very proud of themselves. Then he pressed his sweaty chest on hers and nuzzled her neck.
For the next week, Jackie lived in a dream world. Her sexual experience had all been with Charley, so, in a way, she was as new to sex as William was. When Jackie met Charley, he had been to bed with any woman he could get to say yes, or even to say maybe. By the time he met Jackie he knew what he liked, how he wanted to do things. He'd tried every position, every possible variation. Like all women, she'd been very curious and she'd asked him to tell her of his past experiences. She'd heard how some girl in Singapore had been great at so-and-so, and then there was this girl in Florida who'd been especially good at something else. At the time Jackie hadn't thought about it, but years later she knew that she had felt intimidated. How could a skinny thing like her compete with those women who knew so much? She'd said this to Charley once and he'd laughed at her, told her she was the best of all of them and he'd rather go to bed with her than all the women in the world. At the time she'd felt better, but still, there was that nagging little worry that maybe other women had been more… more what? Enticing? More technically skilled?
With William she felt free, free from comparisons, free from having to live up to the standards of anyone else. And who would have thought that freedom was the headiest aphrodisiac on earth?
Also, who would have thought that solid, dependable, upright-citizen William Montgomery would be a demon in bed? In all the years she'd known William she'd seen little evidence that he was creative. On the contrary, he seemed to be the epitome of follow-the-rules. Even as a child he had always colored inside the lines.
For one week they did nothing, absolutely nothing. The excuse they gave themselves, and Pete, was that they needed to wait until Jackie's hand healed before they could fly or work on engines or even look at the financial aspect of setting up a business. The truth was—a truth that they didn't openly admit to themselves—that they were so interested in each other's bodies that they could think of nothing else.
Jackie told herself not to compare William to Charley, but she couldn't help it. Charley was a very sexy man. He seemed to think about sex all the time and he loved sexual innuendo. Everything—soaring airplanes, chairs, whatever —reminded him of sex. He thought about sex, joked about it, wanted to discuss it.
William could not have been more different. Looking at him, fully clothed, across the breakfast table, Jackie couldn't believe this was the same man who'd been in bed with her an hour before. With his clothes on, there was no one more dignified than William. He was so cool, so remote, so private, that butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. For all of his youth, William was an old man, had an old man's established habits. She'd seen people older than he ask him for advice, and the first time she had a problem that didn't involve him, she planned to go straight to William. So it was easy to think that if she had been asked, or if she had thought of it, which she had, she would have assumed that William might be a bit shy in bed. True, he had been affectionate and tender toward her, but still, she was taken aback by how ardent he was.
To her delight, she found that once William got his clothes off, he became as sensual as a child. Children would see a mud puddle, think the mud felt nice and cool, so they'd take their clothes off and smear themselves with the ooze. They had no preconceived ideas that one wasn't supposed to like mud because it wasn't "nice" or "civilized." This innocence, this sensuality, was something that William brought to bed. He had no desire to get things over and done with so he could roll over and go to sleep. He wasn't just interested in that climactic moment and nothing else. William liked all of it.
Jackie had never for a moment thought that she was sexually repressed. In fact, a woman had once asked her what she saw in a man as old as Charley, and Jackie had laughed in a very naughty way. She'd had her disagreements with Charley and her complaints about him, but there had never been any sexual problems between them.
At least that was what she thought—until she met William. No wonder men wanted a woman who was a virgin; no wonder a man was ready to kill if "his" woman touched another man: if women were allowed to jump into bed with lots of men they might start comparing, just as she now compared Charley with William. If women compared lovers, what would happen to the world? Would men have to stop saying, "I'm the best, baby," and start having to prove that they were even good?
If she'd ever been to bed with a man like William before she went to bed with Charley… well, she didn't want to think about it.
After the first couple of days she stopped comparing the two men and allowed herself to enjoy. She would never be able to explain it to anyone—not that she'd try—but William made her feel as though she, too, were a virgin. They caressed each other, looked at each other, and touched as though they were the first couple to discover how nice skin against skin felt.
They didn't talk about sex or even seem to think about sex. Sex was something that just seemed to happen, something spontaneous and joyful, something clean and happy and delightful. They seemed to be saying, "How would it feel if I did this? Or this?" William lay still for as long as she wanted while she ran her hands over his hard thighs, over his broad chest.
And kissing with William was as though they'd invented this delicious practice. Charley had always felt that kissing was a waste of time. "I like the more serious stuff, kid," he'd said. Jackie had no idea that she was as starved for kissing as a man in the desert was for water. She and William kissed constantly. Nude, she stretched out on top of him and kissed his face—his eyes, his long nose—teasing him that it took sixteen kisses to get far enough down it to suck gently on his lower lip. She felt his teeth with her tongue, running her tongue over the contours of his mouth.
And then they traded places and he kissed her, his hands caressing her arms and shoulders while his lips traced every outline of her face. They spent hours in bed, touching, looking, kissing, exploring. Jackie sometimes thought that they were like Adam and Eve and they were the first two people to have felt such pleasure.
When they made love it seemed to be different every time. Sometimes there was such urgency that they couldn't get their clothes off fast enough. Other times lovemaking took hours. However long it lasted, it always seemed to catch them unawares. One minute they'd be sitting on the couch —William reading the newspaper, Jackie sewing a button on his shirt—and the next second their clothes would be hanging from the light fixture. Afterward they'd look at each other with startled expressions, as though to say, "How did that happen?"
Lovemaking itself was divine. Freedom, she thought. The headiness of freedom. With William she knew she wasn't being judged or compared. She knew that whatever she did was, to him, the right way, the only way. It was amazing how it changed her outlook when she knew that someone liked whatever she did. After the first couple of days, she and William seemed to adopt the attitude of "Let's try this and see how that feels." Feeling. It was everything to both of them. Touching hands, touching lips, trying different positions during sex.
And then there was William's creativity. It was as though he'd saved all of his imagination for this one ongoing event. He'd sat through school and studied other people's words and spat them back out with all the inventiveness of a parrot, but here at last he'd found a place where there were no rules he had to follow. Sometime during the third day, during a moment when sweat was dripping off both of them, William said, "Jackie, I like this," with such feeling that she laughed out loud. "Me too," she'd answered.
The only person they encountered during this week was silent Pete. They did their best to keep their passion from his sight, but they weren't successful. Jackie recalled an Arabic saying that she had always liked: "There are three things you can't hide: pregnancy, love, and a man riding a camel." She and William proved the second one true. The morning after their first night together, they cautioned each other that it would be better to keep their newfound passion from others. William had reluctantly agreed. "Since you won't marry me, I guess we should," he said. Jackie had just said that it would be better for both their reputations.
They had gone outside, confident that they were the greatest actors on earth and that no one would know anything was different between them. For all of approximately eleven minutes they were able to fool Pete. He was cleaning distributor segments with a cloth soaked in kerosene and, trying to act as though everything were the same, they stood, one on either side of him, and talked of that day's activities. Jackie and William didn't look at each other for several minutes. Then William said something about picking up some passengers for Denver, and when Jackie answered him, she made the mistake of looking into his eyes. For several moments they were silent, just looking at each other over Pete's head. The next moment Pete looked up, and his face turned as red as though he'd stumbled into the bedroom of a honeymoon couple. In the blink of an eye he left the hangar, leaving Jackie and William standing alone, doing nothing but looking at each other. It was a gaze that nearly ignited the kerosene.
Without exchanging a word, without so much as a raised eyebrow of communication, they turned toward the house. The door was barely closed before their clothes were on the floor and their hands were clutching at each other's bodies. They didn't leave the house again for two days.
Their idyll ended on the eighth day when Mrs. Beasley, the town gossip, walked into the bedroom and saw Jackie and William in bed together.
William and Jackie were alone in the house, sitting together on the sofa in the living room. Or perhaps "together" wasn't the right word, since Jackie was perched at one end, as far away from William as possible. This morning, the town snoop, who prided herself on having no idea what a closed door meant, had walked into their bedroom. No doubt she had felt it was her duty to see exactly what was going on way out there in that ghost town, so she'd put on her best hat and made up an excuse to borrow something from Jackie. Which of course was absurd since Mrs. Beasley lived much nearer the stores, as well as other neighbors, than Jackie did.
But she'd seen what she'd hoped to see: something to satisfy her hunger for gossip. She had scurried out the door and sped away in her little car so fast William couldn't get into his trousers and catch her before she left. It had always been a town joke that the fastest runner in the world was a Beasley girl with a hot piece of gossip.
So now everything that Jackie had not wanted to happen in Chandler had. She had wanted to become respectable, to prove to the townspeople that she wasn't fast or easy, that she deserved a place in their town. For once in her life, she'd wanted to conform, not be an outsider. But this morning Mrs. Beasley had ruined her one chance. Now she was going to have to go into town and see people's eyes shift to one side when they saw her. She was going to know that they were repeating every story ever passed around about her.
William didn't want to leave, but Jackie begged him to go to Denver for a few days. "I need to face this alone," she said, referring to the people of Chandler.
"Face what alone, Jackie? What is there to face? Do you think we're the first people in this town to have gone to bed together before marriage? Half the children of this town are politely called 'premature' because they were born six months after the wedding."
She wasn't going to answer him, because he knew as well as she did that the two of them were not an ordinary couple.
When she didn't respond, he turned and left the room, moments later reappearing with his suitcases. He started to take her in his arms, but she held him away. With a hardened jaw, he picked up his luggage. "I'll be back in three days," he said, then left the house.
Jackie didn't have to wait long for the sky to open up. It opened in the form of Terri, her face angry, her body rigid as she stalked toward the house, ready to do battle.
"Is it true?" she asked as soon as Jackie opened the door, not even bothering with conventional greetings.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," Jackie said, trying to keep her dignity. Why did people always think they should talk to you "for your own good"? "Would you like some tea?"
"No, I don't want any tea. What I want is to try to talk some sense into you. You aren't thinking of marrying this… this child, are you?"
Jackie gave a great sigh. "William is not a child. He is a full-grown man."
To her consternation, Terri collapsed on the sofa in tears. Jackie had not expected this. She had expected outrage and anger from her friend, but not tears. Jackie went to her, put her arm around her shoulders. "Talk to me."
"No," Terri said, "you don't want to talk. Do you know how much you mean to me, Jackie? Do you have any idea how important you are to my life?"
Unfortunately, Jackie did have an idea how much she meant to Terri. She couldn't be oblivious to those dreadful sons of hers; she'd heard talk of Terri's husband, who couldn't hold a job. A couple of times in town Jackie had seen Terri unaware, had seen the misery on her face; it was not a face that she showed to Jackie.
"Yes," Jackie said, handing Terri several tissues. "I think I know."
"You are my idol. You are the idol of lots of women in America. You aren't just someone ordinary like me. You're special."
Yes, Jackie thought, and that was one of the major problems of her life. She had wanted to fly airplanes, but she'd never wanted to be a celebrity.
Terri looked at her. "Are you going to marry him?"
"I… I don't know."
"Then he has asked you?"
Jackie didn't answer, which was all the answer Terri needed.
"Have you thought this through?"
"Yes, of course I have. I've thought about everything. There's nothing you can say that I haven't run through my head a thousand times."
"Have you thought of always looking older than he does? Younger women will makes plays for him, and when they see you they'll say, 'Your wife is old.' It's better to be younger and prettier than the man."
It was as though Terri were parroting Jackie's own thoughts. She had played devil's advocate with herself a thousand times. "Age compatibility is not a guarantee of happiness," she said tiredly, but her bored tone didn't stop Terri from continuing, while blowing her nose in the tissues.
"All your friends will treat him like a boy, not like a man. You'll be talking about things that happened in your life that he won't remember because they happened before he learned to walk."
Jackie hadn't wanted to get involved in this, but already Terri was beginning to make her angry. "Why is age a consideration when the woman is older but not when the man is? Does a man who is in love with a younger woman worry that he's going to be talking about things that happened before she was born? Or does he laugh and pat her on the fanny and say something like 'Now, honey, you go on back to the kitchen and let us grown-up men do the talkin'?' Are you saying that that sort of thing is good? That is to be encouraged?"
Terri didn't answer. She must have been formulating these questions for the past day and a half, ever since she'd heard about what Mrs. Beasley had seen. "How can he take care of you? You're a grown woman."
"If he were marrying a twenty-four-year-old woman, no one would question a twenty-eight-year-old man's ability to take care of her," Jackie said. "No one would question that he was a man. Why is he reduced to being a child just because his wife is older than he is?" Jackie was beginning to warm to the subject. "And while we're at it, I'd like to know what needs a twenty-four-year-old girl has that I don't. Companionship? A man who takes responsibility for a wife and maybe children? Sex? Being there when I need him? What does a younger woman need that I don't?"
Terri gave her a look of pity. "It's a matter of wisdom. In thirty-eight years, I hope you have learned more than he has. Think how stupid and immature you were at twenty-eight. Think what you've learned about life since then."
Jackie threw up her hands in exasperation. "You know what I've learned in my lifetime? I've learned that I don't want to spend any more of my life with a man who sets himself up as some sort of demigod to me. Charley wasn't just my husband; he was a dictator. He made all the rules; he knew everything."
"But that's the way it's supposed to be," Terri practically shouted, frustrated and frightened. She knew very well how horrible marriage could be, and she wanted to save her friend from a misfortune she could foresee as clearly as though she had a crystal ball.
"Who made that rule?" Jackie snapped back, but then tried to calm herself. She knew that Terri had nothing but the best intentions toward her. Terri thought that Jackie was making a horrible mistake, and she was trying to prevent that mistake. "Who says the husband has to be a teacher and instructor to the wife? Why can't the two of them be equal? William and I are equal. He knows about home and family and stability. I know about excitement and impulsiveness and living for the moment. If we were the same age or if he were like that perfect man you wanted me to marry, I would have to adapt to his ways. An older man would never bend to my ways. If William married a younger woman he'd bully her into organizing her hairpins. She would look up to him as though he had all the answers, and poor William would feel an obligation to supply them—as he knows them. But I know, because I've seen so much of the world, that there is no right way or wrong way of doing anything. I don't expect William to tell me how to think, how to live, how to set my dressing table in order. I just want him to… to…"
"To what?" Terri asked, her mouth set in a line that said she wasn't going to believe anything Jackie had to say.
But Jackie didn't care that she was fighting a battle she was destined to lose. "To love me. I want him to be my friend. To care about me as I am. I don't want to change him, and he doesn't want to change me. I don't put the unbearable weight on his shoulders of needing to have the answers for everything. We are equals."
"But, Jackie," Terri said softly, as though explaining something that everyone else on earth knew, "a man needs to feel that he is the man. Maybe you and I know that there aren't five men in the world who know half as much as any woman, but it's important to a man to think he knows more than the woman he loves."
At that Jackie laughed. "Terri, if you think that William honestly believes I know more than he does because I'm older than he is, then you don't know anything at all about men. How old were your sons when they decided they knew more about the world than you because you were a mere female?"
In spite of her feeling of imminent disaster, Terri couldn't help a smile. "Nine. No, eight years old."
"Right. I'm the one saying that William and I are equals, not him. We are equal because I do not look to him for all the answers. When I married Charley I thought that because he was older he knew everything there was to know. It was hard on both of us when I began to realize that he was human like all the rest of us. Both of us wanted to get back to the time when I had looked up at him with starry eyes filled with the belief that he could do anything, but once that belief is gone, it's gone forever. With William I don't expect him to know everything. I expect only what he's good at: steadfastness, a calming presence in the storm of my life. I haven't deified William; I see him for what he is, and I like what I see."
Jackie smiled. "You know, it must be a relief for him to be liked for what he is instead of having to try to be what some romantic girl thinks he is."
Jackie was beginning to feel better. As the words came out of her mouth she became more and more convinced of the truth of what she was saying. "Why is it that a man can be a child at fifty but not an adult at twenty-eight? It's common for women to complain that their husbands take more care than a couple of two-year-olds, so why is it inconceivable that a man can be grown up at twenty-eight? William says—"
Terri could see that she was losing Jackie, that, once again, Jackie was doing just what she wanted and the rest of the world be damned. "And we all know how much sense we had at twenty-eight." Her voice was heavy with sarcasm. "At twenty-eight I was weighed down with three kids and a husband who couldn't hold his job but could hold his liquor. And at twenty-eight you were flying planes through burning barns."
"I refuse to reduce a man to one characteristic: his age," Jackie said angrily. "Ask me about his reliability, his ability to think in an emergency, his kindness, his sense of honor, his honesty, his sense of humor, the way he takes care of others. Why are these things worth nothing and his age is everything?"
Terri opened her mouth to say something else, but she closed it. She could see that there was no use talking to Jackie; she had made up her mind. Terri stood up. "Obviously I am wasting my breath. When this boy breaks your heart, Jackie, I'll help you put the pieces back together."
That statement made Jackie angry. "Is it a guarantee that because I am older in years, not in spirit, William and I are destined to fail?"
Terri started toward the door, meaning not to say a word, but then she turned back. "You have all the answers, don't you, Jackie? You've been everywhere, done everything, so of course you know it all. How could I know anything? I've lived in the same town all my life, my husband is in training to be the town drunk, and my children will no doubt spend their adult lives in prison. So how could someone as insignificant as I am know anything?"
"Terri—" Jackie began, her hand out to touch her, but Terri moved away.
"Jackie, I will be there if you need me," Terri said and left the house.
Jackie leaned against the door and began to cry. "Why can't life be simple?" she whispered, tears running down her cheeks. "Why can't I be like other people?"
There was no answer.
"Surprise!"
Jackie stared in open-mouthed astonishment at the people standing in the doorway of her house, five men and two women, their faces alight and happy. Their expressions did not reflect what she was feeling inside.
"Bet you didn't expect us, huh, Jackie?"
"No," she said as politely as she could, but her heart had fallen to her feet. Only yesterday she'd had to deal with Terri, and in the hours that had passed since then, she hadn't stepped outside her door, afraid of what the other people in Chandler were saying about her and William.
Now there were seven people standing at her door, old friends of Charley's, old drinking buddies of his. Men and women who had once been part of her life but who were no longer.
As she looked at them, laughing, holding up bottles of wine, wanting to stay up all night to celebrate, she realized how much she had changed during her time in Chandler. In Chandler, if someone saw your light on at three a.m., they'd call you the next day, usually at six a.m., to ask what was wrong with you.
"Come in," she said, smiting, holding the door open wide. Once they were inside, she went to the kitchen, knowing they would be hungry and that later probably at least two of them would need cash.
"Jackie, come in here and tell us what you've been doing these last two years. We saw a barn full of new planes out there. Where'd they come from?"
At those words, Jackie's hands froze as she was cutting the fourth sandwich. So that was why they were here: they'd somehow heard of her new business and wanted in on it.
Suddenly she had an overwhelming desire for William to be there. He would politely but very firmly let these people know that they were hiring only reliable people, not old-timers whose best years had come and gone.
At that thought, she shook her head to clear it. She was an old-timer. These were her people, her own age.
"Come and get it," she called as she carried a tray of sandwiches and pickles into the dining room where the table was already littered with beer and wine bottles. One of the men was carrying in suitcases.
"Hope you don't mind a little company for a few days, Jackie," one man said. "We didn't think you'd mind, what with this whole hotel to yourself. You must get lonely now and then and want a little company."
"No, of course not. Sure," she said, trying to force a smile, and she was sent back in time to when she lived with Charley. He was a very generous man; what was his belonged to everyone else as well. He was considered generous, but it was Jackie who'd had to buy the food and cook the meals and do everyone's laundry.
So now they were here wanting jobs and food and free lodging. How was she going to tell them to get lost?
"Hello."
She looked up and there stood William, so strong and tall and clean. The sunlight behind his head made him look like a rescuing angel. Dropping three empty bottles, Jackie rushed to him, and he opened his arms to her, pulling her against his chest, holding her close. Vaguely she was aware of the hush behind them, but she didn't care what they thought. Until this moment she hadn't realized how much she had come to depend on William, on the strength of him.
"Hey, Jackie, are you gonna introduce us?"
One by one, Jackie introduced the people, only six of them in the room since one of them, Charley's oldest friend, had stepped out for a moment. With enthusiasm, they said hello to William and invited him to join them.
Jackie was holding her breath, as these were the first people she had introduced William to as "her" man, and she was waiting for their reaction. As far as she could tell, there was nothing unusual in the way they acted. Within minutes they were telling William lies about their exploits in airplanes and William was telling them about nice hotels in town where they could stay. Jackie bad to hide her smile. She could relax now; William was here to take care of her. He wouldn't allow these people to take over the house, nor would he give them jobs unless they were qualified.
Five minutes later Charley's friend Arnold returned to the room,
Gladys, being much too friendly with William, clutched his arm to her bosom and said, "And this gorgeous young thing belongs to Jackie."
Arnold smiled and held out his hand. "I didn't know Jackie and Charley had any kids," he said.
There was instant silence in the room. Only William seemed to be at ease as he took Arnold's hand and shook it. "I am hoping to persuade Jackie to marry me," he said smoothly, seemingly unperturbed by what had just been said.
As for Jackie, she wished the floor would open so she could sink down inside the earth and never be seen again. Turning on her heel, she walked out of the room, ignoring Arnold's apologies ringing out behind her and the group's pleas for her to return.
When she got outside, she wasn't surprised to feel William's hand on her arm. He was trying to make her stop walking, but she meant to get into a plane, as that was the only place where she felt really safe.
"Jackie," William was saying, "the man is half drunk, and even sober I doubt if he can see past the end of his nose."
"He could see what everyone else can see."
William grabbed her shoulders. "Jackie, I've had about all of this I can take. I love you. I love you. I don't care how old you are, what race you are, whether you're fat or skinny. I love what's inside you." When she didn't respond, he dropped his hands from her shoulders. "But it's your decision," he said, and his voice was cold. "You have to decide."
She moved away from him and kept walking toward the plane, and within minutes she was airborne.
If William thought she had flown recklessly the day she took him out, he would have been horrified to see her now. She buzzed trees, flying so low that the top branches scraped the plane. She flew straight toward a mountain, not knowing until the moment she pulled up whether she was going to miss it or not. When the plane, its engine straining, almost didn't make it, part of her didn't care.
She flew for hours, right side up, upside down, sideways, every which way the plane would turn.
When she ran out of gas she was at ten thousand feet and hovering over a mountaintop. Below her was a flat, treeless meadow, and she dropped the plane onto it, neither knowing nor caring whether she would overshoot it and plunge over the side of the mountain into oblivion.
She made the landing, the nose hanging over the mountain, the wheels at the very edge of the precipice.
For a moment after the engine sputtered to death, she sat where she was, leaning her head back, her eyes closed beneath her goggles. She was on top of a mountain with an empty fuel tank, and the only way out was to walk down and climb back up with a can of gas.
She got out of the plane, but she didn't start down the mountain. Instead, she sat down on the edge of the cliff, looking out over the long, magnificent view and waited for some wisdom to come to her.
No wisdom struck her, but hail did. In the late afternoon the skies opened up and hailstones came down on her head. Jackie moved under the wing of the plane.
When night fell, she curled up in a ball, pulled about her the leather clothes she'd quickly donned before going up and dozed some. She still couldn't think. In fact, she hoped she'd never think again. She wished she could go back to the time when life was easy, when she was younger and knew all the answers.
Early the next morning she wasn't surprised to hear a plane approaching. Of course William would look for her. Didn't he always rescue her? He was always there to save her, whether she needed money or stitches or help in dealing with intrusive people. When the plane was directly overhead, she stepped out from under her own aircraft and waved to the pilot, letting him know that she was unharmed. In reply, he waggled his wings, so she knew she'd been seen. From this distance the pilot looked to be one of Charley's friends. Feeling guilty for having caused so much trouble, she realized that William would have put all of them to work in the search for her.
She was hungry and tired and knew she was being a great bother to a lot of people who were worried about her, but she still didn't start down the mountain. And she hoped that no one would come after her. Especially not William. Right now she needed to think.
Only she couldn't seem to think. There were too many voices inside her head. There was William's voice, urgent and imploring. There was Charley's voice saying, "What will it matter a hundred years from now?" There was Arnold's voice and Terri's voice. How Terri's voice echoed in her head!
But most of all there was Jackie's own voice. He will want a younger woman. He deserves better. He deserves a woman who can give him a houseful of children.
"Stop it!" she said, putting her hands to her ears. Why couldn't she hear what she'd told Terri? How wise she had been then, so very wise. She'd said all the right things. So why didn't she believe them?
It was late afternoon, and she was light-headed with hunger. She knew she should head down the mountain, but still she didn't go. Still she hadn't made a decision.
When she heard the unmistakable sound of someone coming up an old elk trail to the top of the mountain, she knew without a doubt it was William. With her jaw set, her arms folded across her chest, she braced herself to wait for him. What was she going to say to him?
To her utter disbelief, she saw, not William, but his soft, plump mother, Nellie, struggling up the mountain, a huge, heavy picnic basket under her arm.
It took Jackie a few moments to recover herself, and for a moment she thought she was having hallucinations.
But Nellie's words made her react. "I do believe I'm having a heart attack," she said, a smile on her lips. Then she slowly sank to the ground.
Nellie was not having a heart attack. She was just not used to climbing, and the exertion combined with the altitude was making her feel that she was dying. For several busy moments Jackie's attention was off herself and on Nellie, but within minutes they were sitting in the shade of the wing of the plane and eating from the prodigious amount of food Nellie had hauled up the mountain.
Patiently, Jackie waited for the lecture to begin. But Nellie said nothing about William or about the two of them together. She commented on the weather and the fact that Jackie's plane was nearly over the edge of the mountain, but didn't mention anything important.
Finally, Jackie could no longer wait for the lecture to begin. "You think I'm stupid, don't you?"
Nellie didn't seem fazed by Jackie's abruptness. "No, dear, I think you are one of the finest young women I have ever met."
Jackie snorted in reply.
Nellie didn't seem to notice her sarcasm. Instead, she changed the subject. "Why won't you enter the Taggie?"
Jackie smiled. She could refuse to tell William, but not his mother. "I don't like being a celebrity, and I hate instrument flying, which is what flying has become today. You don't need talent, you need a degree in mathematics. In a few more years people like William are going to be better fliers than I am."
Nellie smiled at the innocent conceit in Jackie's words.
"Why don't you want to marry my son?"
So, Jackie thought, here it was. "A lot of reasons. For one thing, he deserves better. And then there's my vanity. I don't like all the gossip and the talk."
Nellie laughed. "You have indeed stirred up a lot of talk. My poor husband can't walk down the street without someone telling him the latest bit of gossip about two unmarried people being in bed together. You have scandalized all of Chandler. I'm sure you must be the first couple in this town to jump the gun."
Jackie turned red with embarrassment and looked down at the ground.
"You know what they're saying now? That maybe something was going on between the two of you when you were children."
Jackie blinked a couple of times at that. "What?"
"Yes. Mrs. Beasley says that the bond between you and my son all those years ago was not natural."
Jackie opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it. Then she began to laugh. "But William was a child! And a pest. An absolute pest. I did everything to get rid of him. If that isn't natural, I don't know what is."
"Did you try to get away from him? I seem to remember the two of you being inseparable. I remember that you always told William to leave you alone, but when he did stay home you always came to get him."
"I did no such thing," Jackie said indignantly.
"What about the time he had the flu? You stopped by every day."
"I was worried about your whole family."
"William was the only one who was ill."
Jackie picked up a stick and started to draw circles in the dirt. "He was just a kid. Still is. Always has been."
"You never thought so. You used to ask his advice about any number of things. You always loved adventure, but before you did anything, you asked William if he thought it would be all right."
"I didn't," Jackie said, sounding like a schoolgirl.
Nellie didn't answer for a moment. "Did you know that William didn't speak for a whole month after you left Chandler? He wouldn't talk, would hardly eat. The only way he would go to sleep at night was if I'd hold him and rock him. I was afraid he might lose the will to live."
"And I never thought of him." Jackie ran her hand over her eyes. "And now he's all I do think of. I don't know what to do. William wants to marry me. But there are… differences between us. People—"
"Damn people!" Nellie said.
Jackie had never been more startled by any statement she'd ever heard. Nellie Montgomery was the calmest, gentlest, most easygoing person in the world. Nothing ever made her lose her temper, not twelve children climbing all over her, not even three of them dripping blood at the same time. Nellie was the person you wanted to be near during a calamity; she'd have remained calm in the face of a barrage of bullets.
But now she was cursing.
When Jackie looked at her, Nellie's face was not the soft, sweet one she'd always seen. This was the face of anger.
"Jackie, grow up!"
That made Jackie sit up straight, her eyes widening.
"Do you think other people have easy lives and you're the only one with problems? You've been lucky so far."
"Lucky?" Jackie whispered. How had her life of poverty and struggle been lucky?
"Oh, I know what you're thinking, that I'm one of the Montgomerys and therefore I know nothing but luxury and ease. But you're wrong. All your life you've been able to do what you wanted, when you wanted to do it. And you've had people who loved you along the way. Now that you have one little obstacle, you turn tail and run. Why don't you stop being so selfish and think of someone besides yourself?"
Jackie, still in awed silence at this woman's unusual outburst, was shocked further when Nellie began to clean up the picnic food in preparation to leave.
Jackie wanted to defend herself. "I don't understand. I'm not being selfish; I'm thinking of William. This is as much for him as it is for me."
"No, it's not!" Nellie said fiercely. Then suddenly she put her hands over her face and began to cry.
Jackie did the only thing she knew to do: she put her arms around Nellie and pulled her to her.
"I'm sorry," Nellie said, sniffing and moving away. "It's just that I can see things more clearly than you can because I've lived through the same problems. Years ago I was in the same situation with my husband."
"I don't understand. Your husband isn't younger than you are."
At that Nellie laughed. "No, dear, Jace isn't younger than I am. But age, in my case and in yours, means nothing, absolutely nothing. You see, you're afraid of what other people will think. I've learned in life that if you give people power over you, they will misuse it."
She put her hand on Jackie's. "A true friend is one who wants what is best for you, not for him or for her."
Nellie took both of Jackie's hands in her own. "Years ago Jace wanted to marry me, but I said I couldn't because other people—people I thought loved me—said I shouldn't marry him. They said their only concern was for me. It took me a long time—almost too long—to realize that they were thinking only of themselves and not of Jace or me. People can be very selfish creatures."
"I… I hadn't thought of that."
"No, you've thought only of doing what everyone else does. Most women marry a man about five years older than they are, then live their lives exactly as they've been told to. Tell me one thing, Jackie. Do you love William?"
"Yes." Her heart could be heard in that one word.
"Then what else is there?"
Jackie just looked at her, not having an answer.
"My dear, you don't seem to realize that all there is in life is love. That's all there is. Money doesn't matter, what you own doesn't matter, how old you are, who your friends are, what you accomplish in life, means nothing. The only thing worth anything is love. Love is what makes our time on earth worth something. And you know something else? Love, true love, is rare. It doesn't happen very often. Most people spend their lives searching for it and never find it."
She paused, but her eyes were intense. "Tell me, Jackie, if you looked at the ground here and saw a big diamond sticking out, what would you do?"
"I would pick it up," Jackie said softly.
"What if the diamond were perfect except that it had a tiny flaw, a crack say, along one edge, would you throw the whole diamond away because of this one flaw?"
There were tears coming to Jackie's eyes. "No, I'd keep it, flaws and all."
"My son is perfect, but to your eyes he has a flaw: I gave birth to him ten years after your mother gave birth to you. Are you going to throw away my son because of my error?"
Jackie was crying harder now. "I don't know," she said honestly. "I don't know what to do."
After a moment, Nellie stood up and started to walk away, meaning to leave Jackie with her head on her upraised knees, but Nellie turned back. "Are you coming down with me?"
Jackie gave Nellie a crooked smile. "How many of the people of Chandler are down there waiting for me?"
"A few," Nellie said, smiling.
Which, of course, meant half of Chandler. "Is William there?"
Nellie's face was serious. "No, he's not. He said you'd know where he was."
That statement made Jackie's heart sink. No doubt William was waiting for her in some place she was supposed to remember. She hadn't seen it in twenty years, but she was supposed to remember it. "I'll be down in a moment," she said. "I want to do something with my face." And give myself more time to think, she thought.
"Ten minutes," Nellie said. "But no more. People are worried about you."
"Yes, of course," Jackie answered, both of them knowing that she still hadn't made a decision.
The moment Nellie was out of sight, Jackie went to the plane, climbed onto the wing and looked inside the cockpit for the little metal box she carried inside. She almost always had cosmetics with her in case she unexpectedly flew into the press. And now, if she was going to have to face the citizenry of Chandler, it would be better if her face wasn't marked with tears.
She found the box and as she was rummaging inside looking for a lipstick buried under three maps and a compass, she saw a large white envelope on the bottom. For a moment her hands as well as her heart seemed to stop beating, for she knew very well what she was seeing.
Slowly she pulled the envelope out and opened it. Inside was the invitation to participate in the Taggie. She had received it the day of Charley's funeral, and it had changed her life. Three days before, she had awakened not to Charley's horrendous snores but to an unnatural silence. Charley was not asleep beside her, he was dead. He had died of a massive heart attack quietly and peacefully in his sleep, with what looked to be a half smile on his lips.
For days after his death Jackie hadn't been able to think, but as people Charley had known, people who had loved him, gathered to say good-bye, everyone seemed to assume Jackie would continue doing what she had always done. They assumed she'd keep flying higher and longer and faster.
It wasn't until the day of the funeral that she had absently opened the mail and seen the invitation to the Taggie in her hometown, and with it was a letter from Jace Montgomery. It was at that moment that she realized she was sick of it all. She was sick of constantly moving, of having no roots. She was sick of seeing her name in the newspaper, of having people take photos of her, of being asked the same stupid questions over and over. She wanted a home. She wanted what other people had.
Without another thought, she wrote Mr. Montgomery that she would accept his offer to return to Chandler and start a freight business, but she would not enter the race. She didn't tell him or anyone else that she was afraid not of losing the race but of winning it.
Now, holding the torn and dirty invitation, she walked to the edge of the cliff and stood there looking out over the deep ravine. Wasn't all of life invitations, she thought. Didn't every person in the world constantly receive invitations? Some were golden, some made of lead; some were big and some little. Some were blatant and some subtle. But what made life interesting was which invitations a person chose to accept. Most people accepted only the safe invitations, ignoring the unusual or the ones that involved risk.
But Jackie had never been afraid of risk. Jackie had, as William had said, always done exactly what she wanted to do. She had accepted the invitation her mother had offered that said she could be different from the other children, that she could stay away from the other children who seemed to be stamped out of the same mold. She had accepted Charley's invitation to live a life of adventure and excitement. And along the way she had accepted and refused invitations however she wanted to. All of it done without hesitancy, just doing what she instinctively knew was right for her and no one else.
But now William was offering her another invitation, probably the greatest invitation of her life, yet she was hesitating. Why was she hesitating? Because William was younger than she was? Or was there another reason?
Was she refusing William because she was afraid? Was she, as Nellie had said, afraid of what people would say? She'd never been afraid of that before. Or was she afraid of loving someone as much as she loved him? If she loved him this much now, how much would she love him after she saw him hold their child in his arms? How much would she love him after she'd lived with him for years, gotten to know him so well that his thoughts were as familiar to her as her own breath? What if she came to love him so much and then, like Charley, he died?
She'd been able to survive Charley's death because she had always kept her independence. She had always kept her own identity, always been with him but separate from him at the same time. She'd loved Charley, but they had been two people. With William she didn't feel separate. She felt as though they were one, as though they blended together, like two colors of paint being mixed. She was yellow, the color of the sun, an exciting color, while William was blue, the color of peace and tranquility. Together they blended to make green, the color of the earth, the color of home.
She looked down at the ragged invitation in her hand, and after a moment a slow smile came to her lips. Raising her eyes skyward, she felt the warmth of the sun on her face. "I don't care," she whispered. Her smile grew broader and her voice louder. "I don't care what happens in the future. All I want is now. I love him. I just plain love him, and that's all that matters. Not what anyone else thinks matters. Nor does the future matter. I love him. Do you hear that?"
Her voice rose to a shout. "Do you hear that, world? I love him."
Still smiling, she began to tear the invitation, first in half, then into quarters, again and again, until it lay in tiny bits in the palm of her hand. Then, raising her hand toward the sun, she lifted it palm upward and let the wind catch the bits. Like a flurry of tiny white butterflies, the pieces caught in the air, playing in the drafts, before sailing away down the canyon.
When the last piece was no longer in sight, she turned and started down the mountain.
They were there, waiting for her, Charley's friends who had been flying since dawn looking for her. Many people from Chandler were there, too, curious, wanting something to break the monotony of life. There was Arnold, still apologizing for putting his foot in his mouth about her and William, explaining that he meant he didn't know that Charley had any grown children. This time Jackie heard the truth in his voice, so she told him it was all right, then kept going, her eyes searching the crowd for any sign of William. But he wasn't there. And it was right that he shouldn't be. It was her time to go after him.
Jace Montgomery was standing at the bottom of the mountain, looking at her, his face searching hers, wanting an answer. Abruptly, it hit Jackie that everyone in town knew how much she and William loved each other, had always loved each other. Perhaps they had always been a couple in the eyes of the townspeople.
When Jace saw her expression, he smiled and a dozen years seemed to fall away from his handsome face. He didn't say a word, but just pointed to a car parked nearby, and Jackie strode toward it. What was it William had said about her? That she walked "with long strides that eat up the earth."
Within minutes she was in the car and heading toward town, and it wasn't until she was nearly there that she suddenly knew where William was. He was waiting for her by the little pond where she'd taught him how to swing on a rope and later pushed him into the water and said, "Swim or die."
He was sitting there patiently, waiting for her. Her rock, she thought, pausing a moment to look at him, the sunlight glinting off his precious head. No, not her rock, her diamond. Her diamond that had no flaw.
"Hello," she said when she was standing less than two feet from him.
He didn't look up, nor did he say anything, so she sat down in front of him. Still, he avoided her eyes.
"I've been behaving pretty badly the last few days," she said.
"Yes, you have."
She smiled. "You could say something nice."
"I don't feel very nice."
"I think you do," she answered, trying to put some humor in the situation, but he didn't laugh.
For several moments she sat in silence, trying to figure out what to say, but could think of nothing. "Damn it, William! What am I supposed to say? That you were right and I was wrong? Is that what you want to hear?"
Slowly he turned to look at her. "That might make for a start."
She opened her mouth to tell him what she thought of him, but then she laughed. And the next minute she launched herself on top of him, kissing his face and neck with vigor.
William was holding his chin up. "I want more than one apology, Jackie. I want about a thousand of them."
"Ha!" she said, beginning to unbutton his shirt and kiss her way down his chest.
William took her shoulders and held her away from him to look into her eyes. "I'm not going to start this again unless I have some assurance that you aren't going to leave me again. I can't stand any more days like the last few. Jackie, I'm serious. Either you're mine completely or not at all. No half measures."
"I love you," she said. "And if you want me I'm yours."
"Permanently? Marriage and all that?"
"Marriage and everything."
Still he held her away from him, looking into her eyes as though to ascertain if she was telling the truth. "What made you see reason? What made you see what an idiot you've been?"
She smiled. "I talked to an expert on love."
"Oh? A clergyman or a psychiatrist or an exotic dancer?"
"None of those. I talked to someone who has given and received enormous amounts of love, and she made me realize that nothing else in life matters." Jackie's head came up. "William, I love you more than I love airplanes."
William blinked at her a moment, then pulled her into his arms and nearly crushed her to him. "Now I know you're serious."
Jackie giggled and began to fiddle with his belt buckle.
"No you don't," he said, standing and pulling her up with him. "There may be a Beasley lurking in the bushes. We're going right now to get married."
"Now? But, William, I need a bath and—"
"I'll give you one later."
"Oh?" she said, with a great deal of interest in her voice. "And what else do I get if I marry you?"
He pulled her into his arms. "A lifetime of love," he answered softly.
She caressed his temple with her fingertips. "And that's all I want."
She started to kiss him, but he turned his head away.
"Nope. You get nothing until you've made an honest man of me." Taking her hand, he began to lead her back toward the road so fast she was tripping over plants and rocks. "Did you know that if you're married to the sponsor, you don't have to pay a fee to enter the Taggie?"
"Is that so?"
"So maybe you'd like to enter the race."
"No," she said happily.
"You want to tell me why not?"
"William, I have a confession to make. I am terrified of heights. Can't bear them."
He opened the door of the car she had driven and helped her into the seat. "Jackie, you are going to be the death of me.
"No, William, my darling, I am going to be the life of you," she said softly.
He bent forward to kiss her but drew back. "No. I'm not kissing you until you have Montgomery attached to your name."
"Along with everyone else in town," she said, leaning back in the seat and smiling as she watched him walk around the car to get into the driver's seat. For a moment she closed her eyes, and in that instant she could see the joy that was their future. Nellie had said that only love mattered, and she was right. Nothing in her life had given so much deep satisfaction as had knowing that this man loved her and she loved him.
William shut the door, released the brake, and started driving. They didn't say anything, but he picked up her hand and kissed it, and that kiss said everything.
She had made the right decision.
Terri's husband ran off with a traveling stripper, taking their eldest son with him. Edward Browne consoled her for her loss, and they were married a few months after Terri's divorce. Edward decided that the challenge of straightening out Terri's remaining sons was more interesting than spending months aboard a cruise ship, so he dedicated himself to them. The younger boys turned out not to be as stupid as they seemed and, when encouraged, found that they rather liked using their heads instead of their fists. Both of them graduated from college and led productive lives. As for Edward and Terri, they thanked heaven every day of their lives for having found each other.
Jackie and William had two children and lived happily ever after.