by Janet Dailey
“Do you come here often?” He placed his hat on the seat of a side chair and sat down opposite her, combing fingers through his hair to rumple its flatness.
“Yes, sometimes.” She opened the menu and pretended to study its familiar fare.
“What will you have?” After she told him, Mitch gave their order to the waitress. “Do you have a good burgundy?”
The waitress gave him a blank look, and Cappy stepped in to inform him dryly, “You aren’t in Washington, Mitch. This is a dry county—no wine, no beer, nothing … except for some potent moonshine if you know the right people to ask.”
A curt nod of dismissal sent the waitress away from their table. Cappy felt the hard probe of his gaze. “And do you?” he asked tersely.
“Let’s say a friend of a friend does,” she countered, and opened her purse to take out a cigarette. Ignoring his offer of a light, Cappy struck her own match, and dragged the smoke deeply into her lungs before exhaling it.
Finally, Mitch lit his own cigarette. For long minutes there was only silence at the table, broken intermittently by the tap of a cigarette on the shared ashtray.
“Aren’t you going to ask me about your father’s promotion?” Mitch inquired with a grim-lipped look. “It only came through last week.”
“Did he ask you to mention it to me?” Cappy studied the lipstick-stained tip of her cigarette.
“No.”
“Then I don’t have to bother to offer him any congratulations, do I?” she retorted, the hope dying that he might have sent her the message as a conciliatory gesture. “How’s Mother?”
“I think she’s finding it awkward being caught in the middle between you and Colonel Hayward.”
“She isn’t in the middle. She’s on his side.” She shied away from further discussion on the subject of her father and their feud. “Let’s talk about something else.” Conversation, however stilted, was preferable to the strain of a continued silence.
But talking, instead of easing the tension, merely increased it. As the meal progressed, their exchanges became more staccatolike, as if each was trying to outdo the other’s clipped sentences. When Mitch picked up the bill for their meal, Cappy nearly bolted for the door in her eagerness to have this wretched evening end.
Outside the sun had gone down, taking with it some of the searing heat. A handful of evening stars glittered in the purpling blue sky while a waning moon turned a sleepy eye on the occupants of the jeep speeding back to the airfield.
A guard at the entrance waved them through the gate. But Mitch didn’t stop at the barracks. Instead he continued on to the criss-crossing air strips and followed an access road to the end of one of them. Flarepots had been set out on the adjacent active runway for that evening’s group of night flyers.
The jeep bounced to a stop and Mitch switched the motor off. Frowning, Cappy turned to look at him. Both his hands grasped the wheel as he gazed out the front windscreen. In the deepening shadows of night, the muscles along his jaw stood out, catching the faint sheen from the moon and intensifying the grim and angry set of his features.
“Why did you bring me here?” Cappy demanded impatiently.
The blunt question seemed to prod him into action. A hard glance was thrown her way, as if he suddenly remembered she was there, then Mitch was swinging out of the jeep.
“Let’s walk.”
Obedience to a command was almost a conditioned reflex. Cappy was out of the jeep and taking a step to follow the tall, uniformed figure whose hands were thrust into the side pockets of his creased trousers, before she realized what she was doing.
“No.” She came to a stop. “I don’t have to take orders from you.” Mitch halted and half turned to look at her, his face shadowed by the brim of his cap. “You can go for a walk if you want, but I’m going back to the barracks.”
With her rebellion announced, Cappy swung away and aimed for the distant set of low buildings beyond the curved humps of the hangar roofs. As she started for the barracks, she heard the trotting thud of his footsteps break into a quick pursuit. When his hand caught the crook of her arm she tried to shrug it off, but his fingers tightened their grip and she was pulled around, held by her upper arms.
“You’re not going anywhere, Cap, until I find out what’s happening here. You’ve changed and I don’t like it.” Mitch bit out the words, his teeth flashing whitely in the shadowed planes of his face.
“I’ve changed?” she repeated in stunned anger.
“You openly admitted tonight that you frequent the Bluebonnet Hotel. Do you think I don’t know what’s going on there? Do you think the talk hasn’t gotten around?”
At first she frowned at him in puzzlement, then impatience swept it aside. “You aren’t making any sense.” Cap flattened her hands against his beribboned breast pockets to push him away.
His hands tightened their grip, giving her a hard shake. “The word has spread to every air base in the area. At each stop before coming here, I was told by everyone from mechanic to lieutenant—if I wanted a good time, go to the Bluebonnet Hotel in Sweetwater where one of those ‘pretty little women trainees’ would take care of me.”
“That’s a lie,” Cap answered emphatically.
“From one source, maybe two, I would have questioned it.” His voice was tight and low. “But it was all up and down the line, and several could personally vouch for the truth in it.”
“I don’t believe it.” Her lips came firmly together in solid resistance to what she was hearing.
“Come on, Cap. Are you trying to tell me you don’t know what’s going on?” he taunted.
She pulled back to stare at him. “What are you thinking, Mitch? That I’m one of these trainees supposedly bestowing her favors on any soldier that comes by?”
“I must have amused the hell out of you.” He ground out the words, his jaw tightly clenched. “Always so damned proper and respectful—holding your hand and kissing you at the door when I really wanted …” Mitch hesitated a split second. “…to take you to my bed and make love to you till morning. Why aren’t you laughing, Cap? It’s very funny.”
“What’s funny is how happy I was to see you when you walked into that classroom today—” Bitterness thickened her voice. “—and now, how I can hardly wait for you to leave.”
“Dammit, Cappy, tell me it isn’t true,” He shook her shoulders, whipping her head back, exposing the creamy arc of her throat.
“No.” Tears stung her eyes at his perfidy. “You come here with a host of accusations and insinuations. It’s up to you to prove them, not me.”
Cap felt the loosening of his hands, the withdrawing from her, and wrenched her shoulders slightly to twist out of his hold. She walked away, and this time no footsteps came after her. Anger and pain were all wrapped up in one another. The barracks looked so far away, long rectangular shapes a shade blacker than their dark backdrop. She wanted to break into a run, but pride and the impracticality of trying to run in highheeled shoes kept her at a fast walk, her shoulders squared and her head high.
After she’d gone about a hundred yards, Cappy heard the motor of the jeep start up. Soon its headlight beams were sweeping the rough track in front of her and she moved to the side at its approach. When it pulled up alongside her and slowed to a crawl, she refused to look around.
“Get in the jeep, Cappy,” Mitch ordered, somewhat tiredly.
“I’ll walk, thank you,” she retorted without slackening her pace or turning her head.
With a rough shifting of gears and a tromping on the footfeed, the jeep lurched ahead of her and screeched to a stop. Mitch pushed out of his seat and vaulted over the low door to stand directly in her path.
“You’re going to ride in the jeep, Cappy,” he said flatly.
“What’s the matter, Mitch? Are you afraid someone might see me walking back to the barracks by myself?” she taunted. “They just might figure that you got fresh with me—and what would they think of the major then? After all, he could
n’t even make time with a so-called whore.”
“Shut up, Cap,” Mitch ordered through his teeth.
“I hope you don’t expect me to believe for one minute that it’s my reputation you’re worried about.” She doubled her hands into rigid fists at her side. The jeep’s engine idled in a steady growl while the headlamps cast twin trails of light piercing through the darkness beyond them.
“If you don’t get in the jeep, Cappy, I’ll pick you up and put you there. You’ll fight me, but I’ll win. Let’s spare each other all that physical wrestling.” Again, he sounded tired.
His reasoning was inarguable. With a small dip of her head, Cappy conceded and walked to the passenger side, climbing in unaided. Behind the wheel again, Mitch shifted gears and the jeep lunged forward. They had nothing to say to each other, not then and not later when he dropped her off at the barracks.
In the bay, Cappy managed to elude most of the questions with a plea of fatigue. After morning reveille, too many other things crowded in to distract her baymates’ attention from her outing the previous evening.
At noon mess, Marty was late in arriving so they saved her a place in line. When she joined them, Marty’s gray-green eyes were bright with speculation.
“I just heard your major is going to be staying here a few days, Cap.”
“He isn’t my major,” she said in an expressionless voice. “He’s a friend of my father’s, not mine.”
Eyebrows were raised in skepticism, but no one pursued the topic. It was her coldness and closed-in look that told them the major was a touchy issue, so they didn’t probe.
The following day, rumor raced through the base. Chicago carried it to her compatriots: “I heard they’re going to make the Bluebonnet off-limits.”
“What? Why?” Marty protested.
“There’s been some complaints of some sort.” Chicago indicated her lack of more specific knowledge with a shrug of her shoulders. “I think Cap’s major has something to do with it.”
Marty turned, cocking her head to the side, wheat-colored strands of hair escaping from under the bandanna. “Do you know anything about this, Cap?” She narrowly eyed the brunette who had been so uncommunicative about the visiting officer.
“No.” Though it was a flat denial, Marty had difficulty believing it.
When Cappy arrived at the flight line on the third day of Mitch’s extended tour, she saw the sleek, twin-engined AT-7 being given a preflight ground check—Mitch’s plane. Good riddance, she thought, but with regret for the lost illusion of the warm, strong man she had believed him to be.
“Hayward.” Her instructor, Jimmy Ray Price, peremptorily summoned her with a wave of his hand.
“He sounds like his usual friendly self, doesn’t he?” Eden murmured in dry mockery.
Her mouth briefly quirked in a smile of agreement before Cap split away from the group to jog over to her waiting instructor. She was ready to do some flying, hoping it would shake off some of this flatness she was feeling.
“You wanted me, Mr. Price?” She crisply reported to him.
“Nope. But the major wants to see you before he leaves.” He jerked his head in the direction of the twin-engine.
Her glance skipped past the short bulldog of a man to the parked aircraft. Cappy wanted to refuse outright, but every instinct warned against it. Her credo of survival was not to let the other person know you’d been hurt.
It was a full minute before Cappy noticed the odd way the instructor was staring at her and realized how long she had been standing there. Self-consciously she let her glance fall away from his stare.
“Thanks,” she mumbled and headed across the hangar apron to the twin-engined transport.
As she walked in front of the airplane’s nose, she spied Mitch in conversation with his pilot. She ducked under the wing tip, conscious of the little drum of her pulse. At almost the same instant, Mitch observed her approach and said something to the pilot, dismissing him. He came forward a few steps to meet her while the pilot climbed into the plane.
“I understand you wanted to see me, sir.” She kept her gaze level and her expression bland, but her teeth were gritted.
His gaze was narrowed and thoughtful while the corners of his mouth deepened in a line of regret. “I was wrong, Cappy. I owe you an apology,” he said. “I had the right place—the Bluebonnet—but I was mistaken about the women involved. It seems some … camp followers, shall we call them … set up business in the hotel. They have been telling the soldiers they’re part of the contingent of female pilots training here at Avenger. I jumped to conclusions, Cappy, and I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted. And it’s Miss Hayward to you,” she countered with icy calm.
His look became impatient. “I admit I made a mistake, and I’m sorry. Dammit, what more do you want?” Mitch demanded roughly.
“I could forgive a simple mistake, and even overlook the fact you were willing to take the word of other men. But I can’t forgive that you wanted to believe it was true about me.” She observed the faint recoil, proving she’d hit the target deadcenter.
With a smart pivot, Cappy turned to walk away. The air shimmered with heat, making the distant concrete look wet. That’s the way her eyes felt, so hot and bright, yet they were painfully dry. She hadn’t gone five steps when Mitch caught up with her, and swung her back around to face him. His expression was hard with anger.
“You’re damned right I wanted to believe it,” he admitted. “Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve never let me get close to you. I wanted to believe that behind your coolness there was some kind of passion. And I was jealous as hell that someone had tapped it before I could. Maybe that makes me a rotten bastard, but I don’t care.”
Cappy was thrown by his totally unexpected admission. She stared at him in confusion as a propeller chopped the air, caught, and revved into full power. They were blasted by the propwash, dust swirling around them in eye-stinging clouds. Mitch pulled his cap down tighter on his head and hooked an arm around Cappy to draw her out of the driven wind to the end of the wing.
“Nothing’s changed, Cappy,” Mitch practically shouted to make himself heard above the engine noise. “You’re going to see me again.”
While she was scraping her wind-blown hair away from her mouth to deny it, Mitch took advantage of her momentary distraction and covered her lips with his own in a long, hard kiss. She tasted his hunger and frustration, the wanting to stay and having to go. Just for a minute, she leaned into him. The desire was strong to reach out to him, but she wouldn’t give in to it, torn by the feelings he aroused and the bitter truths she knew. The Army was a rival that would always win. In the end, she pulled away from him, fighting the ache inside. His eyes were like dark velvet when he looked at her.
Above the roar of the engines, a cheering sound could be faintly heard. Both of them became aware of their audience of trainees, vocally offering their approval of the romantic scene they had just witnessed. Mitch smiled and winked at her, amused by it, but Cappy backed away from him, averting her gaze and striking out for an empty hangar.
From the coolness of its shade, Cappy watched the powerful twin-engined transport lift off the runway, its wheels retract into its belly, and its flap-setting change. She tensed at the sound of footsteps approaching her from behind. With a backward glance, she recognized the deep red-brown color of that pigtailed hair. Eden was the only one who sported that particular shade.
“Missing him already?” Those dark eyes were a little too keen in their inspection.
“Not hardly,” Cappy answered with a short laugh. “No one in their right mind falls in love with an Army man.”
“But you fall in love with your heart-not your head,” Eden reminded her.
“Not if you’re smart, you don’t.” Cappy pushed herself away from the post she’d been leaning against. “It’s time to do some flying, isn’t it?”
Chapter XI
WORD CAME DOWN from the control tower to the waiting p
ress corps that the powerful AT-6s and the twin-engine AT-17s were entering the traffic pattern and would be landing shortly. Off to the side, dusty zoot-suited figures watched the scurry of activity. Unlike the reporters and photographers, they were interested in the planes themselves rather than the pilots.
“It won’t be long before we’ll be flying them.” Eden observed a sleek, single-engined advanced trainer zoom onto the runway. Beneath the certainty in her tone, there was also an eagerness.
Graduation ceremonies were scheduled on the following day for the 43-W-2 class of women pilots who had completed their training in Houston, staying behind when Rachel’s group had transferred to Sweetwater. The long cross-country flight was the last one they’d be making as trainees. Tomorrow they would be full-fledged ferry pilots.
“Not all of us,” Chicago corrected her with a certain dullness. All of them went through the motions of denying her claim, but from one source or another, they’d all heard about her lack of proficiency in instrument flying. “We all know it’s true. I’ll never pass my check ride.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Marty insisted, but she also had a hunch it would take a miracle.
The big planes came wheeling up to the hangars, the roaring engines churning clouds of dust. While newsreel cameras cranked the footage and photographers aimed their lenses at them, the pilots, one by one, bounded out of their planes and pulled off their nets to let the wind blow their hair. These female pilots were pictures of beauty and confidence with their bright eyes and shining faces.
“I wish that was us.” Marty expressed the envy all of them were feeling. Not because of the attention they were receiving, but for successfully completing the rigorous and demanding training program. “I want it so bad I can taste it.” Her husky voice vibrated with the near ferocity of her desire.
No one replied or commented. It was a feeling that went too deep to articulate. Flying was an all-consuming passion for them. They wanted it so fiercely that, even in the beginning, they had gone against convention, defied the disapproval of parents or left behind families, and ignored the raised eyebrows of friends to have what they wanted. It was a bit like being horse-crazy. High flight had an addictive power and excitement to it that nothing else could match. They’d willingly go through the hotbox hell of the Link trainer and the brain-scrambling confusion of instrument flying for those moments of supreme exhilaration in the lofty solitudes of the sky.
