by Anne Stuart
She could just picture it, crammed into the front seat of Sparks's aging roadster with Clancy. Or worse, stuck in the rumble seat looking at the back of his head. "No thanks, I'd prefer to walk." She shuffled some papers. "I take it Clancy's back?"
"Sure is. His plane's a beauty, too. Wanna see it?"
"Later."
"Want to talk to Clancy?"
"I don't have anything to say to him."
"Okay, boss. I told him he could run those two bankers up to Kenosha for you tomorrow morning. You've been pushing yourself too hard recently. Give yourself a break, kid. You'll live longer."
She stifled her instinctive protest. "Thanks, Sparks. I may just sleep in tomorrow."
"I'll believe it when I see it. 'Night, Angie."
"Good night, Sparks."
She waited again, waited until the cavernous, echoing hangar lapsed into a thick stillness. She finished her pack of Luckies, tossed the crumpled paper into her wastepaper basket and stood up. Tomorrow, or the next day, would be soon enough to face Clancy. She'd been so convinced she'd never see him again, she couldn't quite shift gears.
They'd pulled the Fokker into the hangar, and its bright red sides glistened in the half light. She stopped for a moment, transfixed.
It was absolutely gorgeous. The Mona Lisa of airplanes, the Moet champagne of twin engines, the Sistine Chapel of aircraft. She stood utterly still, drinking in its unearthly beauty as a paroxysm of covetousness swept over her. She wanted that plane, as much as she'd ever wanted anything in her life. Or almost as much.
"Pretty, isn't she?" Clancy murmured, materializing from out of the shadows like a ghost.
"Pretty's too nice a word for her," Angela said, too rapt in contemplation to remember she was angry with him. "Gorgeous. Magnificent. Incomparable. Splendid."
"Yes," he said softly. "You are."
Her brain focused sharply. She turned, looked at him in the half light and promptly slapped him across the face.
Without hesitation he slapped her back. "I told you not to do that again, Red," he drawled, looking not the slightest bit regretful. "I don't take kindly to being slugged."
"Neither do I."
"Then maybe you've learned your lesson."
"What are you doing back here?" She was determined not to put a hand to her face. In retrospect she knew he'd pulled his punch. He could have hit her a lot harder. "Sparks was sure you'd left for good."
"I told you I'd stick until Olker was washed up. I'm a man of my word." He bent his head to light a cigarette, the match flaring briefly in the shadowy light.
"Are you? Sparks said you'd taken everything with you. That sounded like a farewell note you left for me."
He grinned then, glancing up at her over the cigarette. "I figured I owed you something after that last night."
"Nothing happened!"
"No? Your memory's that good after you've passed out?"
"Don't try to con me, Clancy. Are you telling me something happened that night?" She kept her face impassive, fighting down the absolute panic that she might have been wrong after all. She knew immediately that it wasn't the loss of her outdated innocence that bothered her. It was the fact that he would have taken advantage of her like that. That he would have cared so little about her that he would have used her the first chance he got.
He leaned back against the bright red side of his plane. "What do you think happened that night, Angel?"
"Don't play games with me, Clancy."
"Games are fun. You're too serious all the time. Come on, take a guess."
"I think I got drunk, passed out and you drove me home."
He nodded, taking a deep drag of his cigarette. "That about covers the basics. You're missing the best parts, though. You haven't mentioned dancing so close you almost crawled inside my skin. You haven't mentioned making out on the dance floor. You haven't mentioned me carrying you up to my room."
"I guess I forgot about that," she said in a rough little voice, knowing her face was as red as a schoolgirl's in belated embarrassment.
He grinned. "I guess you did. However, you also forgot to mention passing out the moment you got there, so that I had no choice but act like a gentleman, something completely out of character for me. You're having a bad influence on me, Angel."
"Is that why you ran away?"
He frowned, staring at his cigarette intently. "I resent that."
"You mean you didn't run away?"
"I mean I resent your knowing that I ran away." He pushed away from the plane, dropping his cigarette on the floor and squashing it beneath his boot. "Want a tour of the Angel? She's almost as pretty from the inside."
"The Angel?" she echoed, horrified. "What made you name her that?"
"Inspiration," he said.
"I wish you'd change it. People might think you named it after me."
"I did." He reached out a gentle hand and touched her face, his fingers rough-textured and unbearably sensitive. She shivered beneath his light touch, wanting to move closer. "I've marked you," he said, his voice husky. "I shouldn't have done that."
She shouldn't do it, she knew she shouldn't, but her brain and her hand didn't seem connected. She reached up and touched him, the imprint of her hand against the faint stubble of new beard. How he could look so attractive and so unkempt at the same time was totally beyond her comprehension. "I shouldn't have hit you first," she said.
He caught her wrist. "Angel..."
She yanked her hand away quickly, moving out of reach before her brain could melt completely. "I'll see the inside of the plane tomorrow," she said hastily. "When it's safer."
He didn't try to follow. "What do you think I am, the Big Bad Wolf? You're as safe with me as you want to be."
"That's what I'm afraid of," she muttered. "Good night, Clancy. See you tomorrow." She was half afraid he'd try to stop her, but he didn't move as he watched her walk away without saying a word.
It wasn't until she'd almost reached the door when his voice broke the silence. "Don't make that flight, Red."
There was no mistaking the seriousness in his voice, but she stalled. "What flight?"
"Don't play games. The Newfoundland-to-Havana flight. There's no reason to attempt it. It's over too much water, it's too dangerous. Besides, you don't need to prove anything to anybody."
She didn't bother asking him how he knew. She'd probably blabbed it herself in her drunken state. "Just to myself, Clancy," she said. And she closed the door very quietly behind her.
*
Constance had worn black for three days, carried a lacy handkerchief wherever she went and managed to look both suffering and brave when questioned about her bereavement. But then Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs opened at the local movie theaters and Constance quickly cheered up, going around the house singing "Whistle While You Work" until Angela was ready to scream. Or hope some other blond actress would die young and give Angela the blessed relief of another period of mourning.
Angela threw herself into her preparations with fierce concentration. For some reason she was convinced that they were all going to try to stop her. Sparks and Clancy, now that they knew what she planned, were both disapproving and admonitory, doing their utmost to talk her out of it given half the chance. Parsons continued in his own taciturn way, seldom volunteering an opinion other than to tell her it was a damn-fool stunt.
She knew it was. Even the insatiable public had lost interest in record-setting flights that had no other purpose than to fly faster than the last human being. Amelia Earhart's current world-wide sojourn was being followed with intense interest, but Angela suspected, and she knew AE did, as well, that this would be the last of the great flights. From now on, people were going to concentrate on the more practical aspects of long-distance flying. Clancy had the right idea about passenger airlines. In the not too distant future, flying across the Atlantic would be a regular occurrence for anyone with the nerve and the passage.
If she had any sense at all she'd forget
about her flight. But this time, for once in her life, she wasn't going to show any sense. She had the money, she had the plane, she had the charts and the connections. She was going to follow Hal's route, exactly, and she was going to beat the current record by hours. And then she'd be able to rest.
"She's as ready as she's going to be," Parsons said, pulling his head away from the engine and closing the cover.
Angela looked up from the chart she was studying. She was sitting cross-legged on the cement floor of the hangar on a blisteringly hot day in late-June. Her office was too warm, the smell of spilled gasoline too strong for her to stomach. The Lockheed was over in the far corner of the hangar by a sliding door that let in what little breeze there was on such a sultry day, and the floor was a relatively cool place to work.
She would have preferred to be flying, but Sparks had taken his usual lesson up in the Avian, and Clancy wasn't back from a run to East Lansing in the Percival. She'd cast a brief, longing glance at the Fokker, then righteously put it out of her mind. Clancy would dismember her if she even touched it without his permission.
"What'd you say?" she inquired lazily.
"I say she's ready. The plane's ready, if you insist on making that fool flight. There's no way she's going to be in better shape."
Angela felt the familiar tightening in her stomach, tension and fear and excitement all wrapped up in one large knot. She set the chart down. "All right," she said with deceptive calm. "I'll check the weather."
"You know where you're going in Canada? Where you're going to refuel along the way? Have you considered...?"
"I've considered everything," Angela said, hoping it was true. "If the plane's ready, so am I."
"I sure the hell hope you know what you're doing," Parsons grumbled.
She glanced at him curiously. "What does it matter to you, old man?"
Parsons shrugged. "This is a pretty good berth. I like the Chicago area, and I kind of like your planes. You're not half bad yourself. So I'd just as soon you didn't take a header into the Atlantic Ocean trying to prove something that doesn't need proving."
"You don't know what I'm trying to prove," she said.
"Do you?"
She didn't answer, busying herself scooping up her papers. But several hours later, after she got the unwelcome word that the weather in the northeast was cloudy and rainy, Clancy asked the same question. And with Clancy, she couldn't duck.
"You're going to do it, then," he said, more a statement than a question as he lounged in the doorway of her office.
She looked up, her face composed. "Have you been talking with Parsons?"
He didn't deny it. "He just said he gave you the green light. I want to make sure you know what you're doing."
"I know what I'm doing. Unfortunately the weather isn't sure it's going to cooperate. There's a storm front heading toward the maritime coast of Canada. If it weakens by the time I get there, I should be fine. If not, I'm likely to be stranded for days."
"So you're going to be sensible for once in your life and wait until all danger is passed."
Angela grinned. "I'm always sensible, Clancy. You know that."
The noise he made was something between a harrumph and a snort. "How about joining us for a drink at Tony's? Will and Sparks and I have every intention of talking you out of this fool idea."
"Will's going? I didn't think he went anywhere but to his room and to the movies."
"Sparks strong-armed him. Hell, you can't blame the man for avoiding Tony's. He's on the wagon, you know."
"I know. Why do you think I haven't been there?"
A light of amusement danced in Clancy's dark eyes. "Don't tell me you're laying off the hooch?"
"Exactly."
"But you're so damned cute when you're tight, Angel. If you keep on the straight and narrow, there's no way I'm going to have my wicked way with you."
She smiled sweetly. "That's right, Clancy. Better set your sights on someone more available."
He shook his head. "No can do, toots. I'm the kind of man who doesn't give up once he decides he wants something."
She felt a queer little tingling in the pit of her stomach. He looked so cheerful, so casual and friendly lounging against her doorjamb, that she couldn't quite believe he meant what he was saying. "And have you decided you want me?" Her voice was deceptively calm.
He straightened upright and for a moment she thought he was going to advance on her. There was a determined gleam in his eyes, one she'd learned to be wary of, and the knot in her stomach tightened and lowered.
And then he laughed, breaking the sudden tension. "You figure it out, Angel. Meet you at the front in ten minutes, okay? You've got the only working car between us."
She let out the breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding. "Ten minutes," she agreed. And then, as she watched him saunter away, wondered why in heaven's name she'd been fool enough to agree to it.
Tony's Bar and Grille was already crowded when Clancy pulled up outside, handling Angela's Packard with deft assurance that hadn't kept her from watching him like a hawk. He shouldn't have held out his hand for the keys when the four of them had left the hangar. But then, she shouldn't have given them to him, either. She hadn't wanted to put up an argument in front of Sparks and Will, and she didn't realize till later that her acquiescence was far more remarkable than any resistance she might have shown.
None of them were in particularly festive moods as they threaded their way through the crowded tables. She knew every person there, up to and including Robert Bellamy, who was busy trying to flirt with Betsey as he nursed a dark whiskey and soda. He glanced over at them when they came in together and his handsome face creased in a sudden, ugly frown. By the time they'd threaded their way through the crowd of friends and acquaintances to find a table in the corner, Bellamy had disappeared, his drink left half empty on the highly polished walnut bar.
"Are you okay?" she heard Clancy ask in a solicitous voice, and she almost answered, assuming his concern was for her. It took her only a moment to realize it was Will who was in trouble. His scarred skin was pale behind the thick glasses, and he was ducking his head, crammed back into the corner of the room as if this was the last place in the world he wanted to be.
"Fine," Will muttered in his scratchy, ruined voice. "I don't like bars much anymore."
"Do you want to leave?" Angela put her hand on his scarred one. "I can drive you home—"
"No!" He cleared his throat. "Please, I don't want to make a scene. I'll be fine."
"What can I get you folks?" Betsey appeared in front of them, Robert Bellamy forgotten as she sashayed her rayon-covered hips at the appreciative Clancy.
"Vanilla Coke for Angela and Will," Clancy said, in his usual high-handed manner. "What're you having, Sparks?"
"Boilermaker," Sparks said cheerfully.
Betsey leaned forward, displaying her spectacular cleavage. "And you'll be having the usual, Jack?" she asked in a breathy voice.
He leered back at her, Angela thought grumpily. "Sure thing, babe. And why don't you make everyone's a double? We've got hard work ahead of us, trying to talk Angela out of making some damned-fool flight."
Betsey glanced over at Angela with friendly curiosity. "No one's ever talked Angie out of anything. Good luck."
With various levels of appreciation, the three men watched Betsey's magnificent hips wiggle to the bar, while Angela controlled her own sour reaction. If only Betsey weren't so darned nice, she'd be able to despise her. As it was, all Angela could do was be jealous.
"Jack?" Angela said, once Betsey had brought their drinks and turned her attention back to Robert Bellamy, who'd reappeared as if by magic. "She calls you Jack?"
"It's my name," he said with a shrug.
"All his women do that," Sparks said cheerfully, ignoring the undercurrent. "I guess he hypnotizes them into thinking that if they call him by his first name, they can somehow hold on to a piece of him. It's as regular as clockwork—he sets h
is sights on a dame and they start in with 'Jack this' and 'Jack that.' I wish I could figure out something that easy."
Angela's smile felt frozen to her face. "Well, Clancy," she said, emphasizing his last name, "what did you boys want to talk to me about?"
Clancy leaned forward, touching her face, a look of devilment in his eyes. "Call me Jack."
She almost slapped him. He must have read her intention for the sudden blackness of his eyes warned her. He would have slugged her back again, and all hell would have broken loose. The bar was full of men who considered Angela their kid sister. Clancy wouldn't have an unbroken bone in his body.
She put her hands on the table, tapping her fingers against the red-and-white checked table cloth. "Clancy," she said again, deliberately. "I don't have all night."
She knew that was the wrong thing to have said the moment it left her mouth, and she was waiting for his next inflammatory statement when Parsons broke in. "Neither do I. Listen, Angie, this flight is just plain stupid. Why do you want to go do such a fool thing for? The flight's been done maybe half a dozen times in the last ten years, and the record's close to unbeatable. Why do you want to go risking your life just to make a new record that'll stand for maybe a year or two, maybe less?"
"That's not why I want to do it," she said in a low voice. "Sparks understands."
Sparks lowered his bushy eyebrows and stared at his beer. "No, I don't, Angie," he muttered.
She should never have come, she knew that now, but she'd gone too far to back down. Besides, it was time Clancy heard the truth. "It's for Hal," she said finally. "I can't stand the thought that he lost. That he let that last flight beat him. For his sake I want to finish it. To end it in triumph, not in failure." She paused, her voice harsh, as the familiar tears burned the back of her eyes.
If she expected Clancy to be touched, even deeply moved, she'd picked the wrong man. "I don't think that's it, Red," he drawled, toying with his glass of rum. "I think you feel guilty that you didn't really love him and you're trying to prove to everyone that you did."