by Anne Stuart
"How good is he?" She had the unpleasant feeling Sparks wasn't telling her everything. She'd always trusted him, implicitly, but this time he was holding something back.
"The best there is," Sparks said simply.
She set the cup back down and turned to face him. "You'd be the one to know," she said. "Where is this paragon right now?"
"Doing what you'd be doing. What any decent pilot would be doing. He's checking over the planes."
It took all Angela's self-control not to protest. Clearly Sparks was both proud and nervous, like a mother hen with a prized baby chick, and for his sake, and the sake of common sense, she didn't say a word. He was right—any decent pilot would be checking out the equipment before committing himself to a job. If the maintenance was sloppy, the hangar a mess, it would translate into a safety factor sooner than anyone cared to think about it.
Despite Martin's shoddy work, she knew she had a setup worth being proud of. She stifled her instinctive resentment at the thought of some hotshot pilot passing judgment. Sparks was right—she needed help, particularly if she were going to follow through with her dream of making the Newfoundland to Havana run.
But she was damned if she was going to be coerced into hiring someone who thought he was God's gift to airplanes. And she wasn't going to be impressed by anyone, anyone at all, unless it was her decision.
"The setup's okay." The voice was grudging from the man who appeared in the office door without warning. He filled the space, and one look told her she didn't like him.
"Glad you approve," she said wryly, giving him her coolest once-over, looking for faults.
There were more than she cared to count. For one thing, he was too tall to fit in the crowded cockpits of most airplanes. For another, he was too handsome—she never did trust a handsome man, and Bellamy had just proven her prejudices justified. Not that the man standing there was a pretty boy. He was a little too rugged looking, a little too tough to make it in Hollywood these days. His hair was almost black, slicked back from a widow's peak over strong brows and a pair of wicked dark eyes. His mouth was full and sensual, his jaw firm, the cleft in his chin almost ridiculously masculine. And damn him, he was looking her up and down with the same cool appraisal that she was giving him.
"I didn't say there wasn't room for improvement," he added, not moving from his spot in the doorway. He was dressed in khaki pants and an old leather flight jacket, as if he didn't give a damn about modern sartorial requirements. He glanced toward the anxious Sparks. "This the boss lady?"
Before Sparks could speak, she stepped forward briskly and held out her hand, firm and businesslike. "I'm the boss lady. Angela Hogan, to be exact. If I decide to hire you, you'd be taking orders from me."
He stared at her outstretched hand for a moment, then lifted his eyes to her face. "If I decide to take the job," he drawled, "I'd take orders from nobody."
"Children, children," Sparks admonished, stepping between them. "That's no way to start out a working relationship. Listen, Angela, you need Jack. You need his skills as a pilot, you need his ability to bring in business. And Jack, you need Angela. You need a steady job, you need planes to fly and you need a space to keep your plane while you work on her. It's a match made in heaven."
"I'm not too sure of that," Angela muttered. On top of everything else, Sparks’ Jack looked annoyingly familiar. She'd seen that face before, that arrogant, too-handsome face, and it wasn't on a movie screen. There was something about him she didn't like.
"No, Sparks is right," the man said. "We could help each other out. It's up to you, lady. I'm better than you could hope to get in the normal run of things. You want me or not?"
Oh, no, Jack whoever you are, she said to herself. I don't want you at all. "Yes," she said, to her own amazement. "On a trial basis."
"Sounds good to me. I'll let you know if I don't think it'll work out," he said carelessly. "When do I start?"
She stifled her irritation at his high-handedness. Her instincts, usually reliable, were telling her to put him to work. For now. "Monday," she said. "We don't have anything set for tomorrow."
"It's supposed to be a beautiful day. No lessons lined up?"
She glared at him. "No lessons lined up," she agreed through her teeth.
"I'll see what I can do about that. Come on, Sparks. Let's go find something to drink. It's too late for coffee." He started out the door without even a farewell.
"One moment," Angela said in her sternest voice, half expecting him to ignore her.
He didn't, however, turning back to stare at her out of those bold dark eyes. "Yeah?"
"Have you got any other name besides Jack? I like to keep good records."
His mouth curved in a self-mocking grin. "Clancy," he said. "You just hired yourself Jack Clancy." And without another word he was gone.
Chapter Two
The bungalow was dark and quiet when Angela let herself in that night. She'd been lucky to find the small house within a ten-minute drive from the hangar. Even if the aging Packard she inherited from her grandmother decided to give up the ghost, she could always walk, and shank's mare definitely had its advantages during these warm spring days. Once she got to work, she was either trapped inside her windowless office or tucked inside the comfortable little cockpit of her favorite Lockheed Vega, neither spot terribly good for stretching her legs.
"Constance?" she called as she unlocked the flimsy front door and stepped inside. No answer, but then she hadn't expected one. On a Saturday night her gorgeous younger sister wouldn't be home by nine-thirty. If she wasn't at the movies, she'd be out with any of the scores of handsome young men who swarmed after her like bees around honey. Constance had learned early how to play them against each other, keeping everyone happy and enjoying herself tremendously.
Moving through the shabby, one-story house, she reached behind her for the row of tiny, cloth-covered buttons that ran down her back. Constance's one practical gift was a talent for dressmaking, and she insisted on getting the details right. The Vionnet day dress would have been a lot easier to manage if she'd just put a zipper under the arm, like most of Angela's ready-to-wear dresses had. But no, she had to cover seventeen buttons with silk, and Angela had to risk dislocating her arm to get herself out of the silly dress.
She dumped it on Constance's unmade bed, sank down on her own neatly made cot and began to peel off her stockings. No runs, thank heavens. Silk stockings cost a fortune, and this particular pair hadn't earned its keep yet. All they'd merited was an overlong look from Jack Clancy's dark eyes.
Jack Clancy, she thought, standing up and shimmying out of the girdle she certainly didn't need. Of all the men to turn up at her penny-ante operation, why did it have to be him! He made Hal Ramsey's solid reputation fade into obscurity. Clancy was the first man to fly nonstop from Hawaii to Oakland, the first man to fly from Capetown to England, holder of more records than Angela could even begin to remember. He was absolutely fearless, a man to reckon with, the sort of pilot Angela had always instinctively avoided. The kind of man whose face turned up in the gossip section of the paper as often as the news section. Along with his taste for record-making flights, he'd had a definite affinity for beautiful women and high living, and the newspapers had always found him a fascinating counterpart to Charles Lindbergh's straight-arrow reputation. If only Lucky Lindy had shown up at her hangar that night, she thought, smiling at the absurd thought. Though having Jack Clancy appear out of the night was almost as unbelievable.
She didn't need daredevils in her business; she didn't need flying aces, barnstormers, war heroes. She needed someone who knew how to get a heavily loaded plane from point A to point B in a minimum of time with the minimum of fuss, someone who could teach a clumsy novice how to handle the intricacies of single-engine Vega, someone who could do his job and keep his nose clean.
Jack Clancy was a born troublemaker. He hadn't been around for the last few years, and Angela had almost forgotten his existence. Sparks said his
plane was somewhere down in South America; maybe he'd been involved in the dangerous flying down in the Andes. Pilots were heading to all corners of the globe, constantly looking for new challenges, ignoring the more basic challenge of setting up reliable air transport here at home.
If Clancy was looking for adventure, she'd have to make very certain he didn't find it here in Evanston. She'd use him—she'd be a fool to turn down a pilot of his undeniable gifts because she didn't like his reputation. That reputation had never hinted at carelessness in the air, or there would have been no question. But he only took the informed, intelligent chances any pilot had to take. He just showed more reckless daring getting himself out of the messes anyone could get into.
The sooner he tired of her business and went looking for his own kind of trouble, the sooner she would be able to hire someone safe and dependable, someone like Sparks. And then maybe her topsy-turvy world would begin to right itself.
Angela unhooked her bra and dropped it onto the bed, pulling a plain white nightgown over her head and staring down at her own narrow cot. The one bedroom in the tiny bungalow didn't hold two full-size beds, and while she’d shared the double bed for years with Constance, she'd finally decided she needed to sleep through the night without getting kicked. Naturally Constance kept the double bed, Angela making do on a cot made for someone five inches shorter than Angela's angular five feet eight inches.
It had been a rotten, miserable day and a rotten, miserable night. Tomorrow things could only get better. What was the heroine of that wonderful book about the Civil War always saying? "I'll think about that tomorrow." Maybe she should reread Gone With the Wind and learn how Scarlett O'Hara managed to avoid facing her problems. For one short night, Angela wished she could learn that trick.
But she was no Scarlett, able to concentrate on herself. She was going to worry about Charlie Olker, worry about getting money out of Cousin Clement, worry about Jack Clancy. And if the latter invaded her dreams, they were going to be nightmares.
*
"So what do you think?" Sparks demanded, draining half his beer with a hearty gulp.
Clancy took his time with his own mug, letting the noise and the sound of Tony's Bar and Grille wash over him. "About what?"
"About the king of England abdicating," Sparks said cynically. "Don't treat me like a sap. What do you think about the job? About Angela?"
Clancy shrugged. He'd known Sparks for close to fifteen years, knew him well enough to recognize that the big lug had a crush the size of the Hindenburg on his precious Angela. "Seems okay," he said. "It'll do for the time being. I'd work for Il Duce if it meant I'd get my plane up here sooner."
"What the hell does Angela have to do with Mussolini? She's a classy dame, Clancy, even if you're too blind to see it."
"Not my type, Sparks. I like 'em small and busty, with bleached blond hair and not too much intellect. And curves. I like curves." He took another sip. "You can keep your Angela Hogan."
"Not mine, Clancy." Sparks blew the remaining foam from the dregs of his beer. "Not mine."
"Look, I'm easy to please," Clancy said, changing the subject. In all the years he'd known Sparks, they'd never since talked about anything more personal than airplanes, though to Clancy's mind you couldn't get much more personal than that. He didn't want to start filling in for Dorothy Dix's advice to the lovelorn. "The setup's neat, clean. The planes seem in decent enough shape despite that jerk Miss Hogan had working for her. There's plenty of room for my little baby when she gets shipped up here. This place is fine, too. The room upstairs has its own outside entrance, its own bathroom, and the bed's big enough to share if I get in the mood. And the beer's cold, the food's hot, and they carry my brand of Scotch. What more could a man ask?"
Sparks grinned. "I thought this would be your kind of setup. And you'll like Angela, once you get used to her. Not your type at all, you're right. But she's jake, Clancy."
Clancy thought back to that hostile, snooty face. She was pretty enough, if you liked them aristocratic, skinny and cold. He liked her hair, what he could see of it, even if she pulled it back away from her face. And she had pretty eyes despite their suspicious expression. Good breasts, too, beneath that ridiculous dress. No decent pilot ever wore a dress like that, he'd thought at the time. And he'd never seen a pilot with legs like hers.
"I'll take your word for it," he said lazily. "In the meantime, tell me where I can find someone a little more my style."
"What's your style?"
"Hell, you know," Clancy said lazily. "Someone with blond hair that came out of a bottle, real curves, someone who's got a chest that isn't stuffed with tissues. Someone who wouldn't tire your brain with stimulating conversation."
"I can think of several who fit that description, but you're not their kind of man," Sparks said morosely "You're not rich enough."
"That's all right. I know how to get around gold diggers. I just flash 'em my pearly whites, tell them about what a war hero I was and offer to take 'em up in my plane."
"I suppose there's always Constance, Angela's half-sister," Sparks suggested. "They're as different as night and day. Anyway, your plane's not here and Constance wouldn't be impressed with a pilot. Her sister's the next best thing to Amelia Earhart and Amy Johnson."
Clancy sat up a little straighter. "The hell you say."
"She is. Not that she'd give you a second look, you playboy. Besides, she's still in mourning for her fiancé."
"She's got a dead fiancé? No wonder she has that touch-me-not look."
"She's always had it."
"Then maybe the fiancé didn't mind dying."
"I'm talking about Hal Ramsey."
Clancy shrugged again. "You expect me to be humbled? Pilots die all the time—it's part of the business, and I'm not going to start getting sentimental at this time in my life. Ramsey was okay. So was Jeff Hawkins, Bart Livingston, Sam Waters, Izzy Maroni, Thomas Mitchell..."
"Sam died?" Sparks’ voice was hoarse with sudden sorrow.
"Two years ago. I thought you'd heard."
"Where?"
"The Andes. Damned condor flew through the windshield of the plane he was navigating, broke his neck. It was over fast." He kept his voice cool and unemotional.
"What happened to the pilot?"
"He managed to land without any further trouble. Too late for Sam, though."
"Sorry, Clancy. I know you did your best."
Clancy met Sparks’ sorrowing gaze and he managed an ire laugh. "I never could keep anything from you, could I? I guess that's when I decided that breaking records didn't really matter. All that mattered was flying. And that's what I intend to do from now on. No flights around the world, no races, no stunts. Just getting up in the air and not coming down until I damned well have to. And no more navigators."
"I hope everyone doesn't feel that way about navigators." Sparks signaled for another beer.
"Eyes bothering you?" Clancy was careful to keep his voice light.
"I never could fool you, either. It's not that bad yet," he said with a laugh, and Clancy knew he was lying. "But the time is coming, and I'd be a sucker not to know it. Hell, Clancy, I can't stay out of airplanes. I'd sooner go down in a blaze of glory than be grounded. You know that—you must feel the same way."
"Don't worry, pal," Clancy said. "For you I'd even consider another navigator. In the meantime, let's talk about more important things. Like whether that waitress over there has a brassiere that isn't stuffed with tissue."
*
It was early afternoon before Angela got back to the hangar. Church had taken a goodly portion of the morning, with a vivacious, slightly hung-over Constance at her side.
Angela had had a hangover herself, not from alcohol but from too many cigarettes and too little sleep. She was just as grateful for the silence, knowing that when Constance decided to break it the chatter would be nonstop.
Sure enough, by the time they left the old Lutheran church on Market Street, her sister was jabb
ering up a storm. "You should have seen the clothes Joan Crawford wore! I swear, that Edith Head is an absolute genius. If I were a star I'd want her to design all my clothes. Not that Vionnet isn't wonderful, but a little staid, don't you think? More your style than mine."
"I wouldn't exactly call my life staid," Angela said dryly.
"Not your whole life. Just your social life," Constance shot back, running a perfectly manicured hand through her marcelled blond hair. "Tell me honestly, how long has it been since you've been on a date? Been out to the movies? Gone dancing? You used to love to dance. And don't say no one's asked you. All you have to do is lift your little finger and a dozen men would fall at your feet."
"I wouldn't be able to dance if I had to step over them."
"Joke all you want to. You're not getting any younger, you know. You're pretty close to being an old maid already. If you aren't careful you'll turn around and find that life has passed you by."
"Life isn't going to pass you by, though, is it?" Angela countered, gazing at her half sister curiously. The dress she was wearing was another of her talented designer knock-offs, but for her own ripe figure she'd chosen a Valentina day dress, made of rayon, just a little tighter than it needed to be, a little shorter, a little brighter.
"Not if I can help it," Constance said. "You know, I thought I'd finish that evening frock for you. Maybe when Clement comes back to town you can wear it to entice some money out of him."
"How did you know Clement was out of town?" Angela asked.
Constance shrugged. "He called when you were at the hangar. Honestly, I don't know what you see in him. He's awfully old and boring."
"I don't see anything in him. For one thing, he's my cousin. For another, he's married."
Constance's wicked little grin had entranced more than one man. "There are ways around that."
